Ranger REG said:
Legally, as long as you follow the terms of the Open Gaming License, you can distribute OGC for free.
Outside of that, it's a case-by-case basis. I have to think of the repercussion I might have not intended. Or if I am indeed sinister, then I have intended for that callous purpose.
[snip]
Hard to say. By default, I would respect their wishes especially if it is the product of their job. Even game designers and publishers need to get paid. If I redistribute OGC from their product for free, it would make it less and less attractive for others to get the product itself for a price.
Assuming you do it in such a way that it cuts into sales, which i think is an important caveat. Phil Reed has publicly stated that his "back list" sells almost as well as his new releases. So releasing a bunch of his OGC for free would have the very real potential of hurting his sales. Similarly, it is well known that a typical print RPG book sells better than 95% of it's total lifetime sales in the first 3 months, so releasing a bunch of that OGC 6mo after it's printed might not impact sales
at all. And once the book is out of print it, by definition, can't impact sales.
But here's the real problem i have with your argument. Or, rather, it's not a problem with your argument--that is, not a flaw in the logic--but rather that i dislike the world that describes, which i think is counter to the whole spirit of open-content development. You see, i see the real virtue of open-content development as "more, quicker, & better": you get more people working on stuff, so you can get more stuff; the synergies between those many people can help the same stuff occur more quickly; and the combination of more minds and the ability to easily build on others' work leads to better stuff in the end. However, that only works with free and easy reuse. If i have to jump through hoops (social or practical) to take that cool new rule and incorporate it into my game, i may just build my own rule. But, not only will i not have saved the time by reusing, i've also potentially sacrificed compatibility. What's more, i may actively work against compatibility: i don't want to be seen as plagiarizing the person whose rule i am not, legally speaking, reusing. Now, building a new mousetrap because it's better than the old one is Good. But building a new mousetrap just because they won't let me use the existing one is Bad. As a consumer, i want a better game--i want to see it evolve and improve and expand. This means that the good OGC should flourish and spread and spawn better OGC, and the bad OGC should fall by the wayside. But what you're suggesting is that the system will work in reverse: people will produce less and less good OGC, because that is what gets reused, and they'll produce more and more bad OGC, because nobody reuses that. That is not a Good thing. We have to persuade publishers that having their OGC reused is Good--
even if it cuts into their short-term sales. Because, in the long run, what keeps the hobby, and thus the market, alive is
good, new content. And open-content development can facillitate this, but only if there's no disincentive to actually utilize it. Now, to be clear, i agree that we should respect the producers--as all artists--and not cannibalize their sales intentionally. I just think that there has to be a solution somewhere between "don't do it" and "the license says it's OK" that still benefits the game, and thus the consumers, in both the shortterm and the long-run.
As for distinguishing between those who earn their living off this stuff, and those who do it for fun: i think that's an artificial distinction. Good work deserves credit and respect--and that includes paying what the author asks, and not ripping them off or undercutting their sales deliberately. But the amount of credit or respect (or money) should be proportional to the value of the work, not who made it. If Joe Schmoe puts out a cool PDF for $5, and i know that he's only hoping for a dozen sales to cover the evening's work and maybe get some beer money, that doesn't justify ripping him off any more than Phil Reed, who's using his PDF sales to put bread on the table, and counts on hundreds of sales per title.
For serious game designers/publishers. Just as you have third-party software developers having access to Microsoft Windows code to make commercial Windows-compatible games, you have third-party publishers having access to the ruleset to make compatible or familiar yet playable commercial RPGs. Third parties make money off of d20 and in turn promote WotC's sale of their core rulebooks (D&D, d20 Modern, Star Wars, etc.).
That argument doesn't hold up to scrutiny. If that was what WotC wanted, they could've set up a special developers' agreement, and licensed out the rules to as many (or as few) companies as they wanted to. It could've still been without content review, thus saving them the headaches. It could've still involved a no-fee license, thus encouraging adoption. They even could've set up pseudo-viral conditions on sub-licensing. But it didn't have to be viral, or involve publicly-available free content, if that was what they wanted. Those two elements point to them
wanting to encourage general reuse, by "fans" as much as "publishers", both for commercial products and for free downloads. Furthermore, there's the FAQ that WotC posted on their website right when the WotC OGL and D&D3E were new, explicitly saying that it was their
intent that this material be reused by fans and publishers alike, and that they weren't worried about wholesale reproduction because they were confident they could compete on production values and extras, even if someone else had access to the same basic content.
Though, that could mean you finished it and SJGames is working on the production part. 
Maybe. I mean, I need to in order to give my wrist a break. But sometimes the ideas come and you've got to get them down.
