Is it OK to distribute others' OGC for free?

[wedgeski]

What if PP is right now working on a collected and revised version of those books? Would releasing that material as free OGC have an impact on their upcoming release?

Or more to the point, what if they found out about Cergorach's little project and phoned him up and asked him not to do it?

 

[Cergorach]

And not a surprise at all. I greatly dislike that type of declaration, myself. As I feel I've demonstrated by my own releases. But, how many steps is it from releasing UA for free to someone releasing a Bastion or Green Ronin product for free? Where, exactly, is the line?

Not much room between UA and for example a Green Ronin release, the Book of the Righteous OGC is almost finished. There's a lot of OGC in there, but only about a third of the book is OGC, the rest is IP, and what great IP it is. I'll release it first verbatim, and then 'upgrade' it to v.3.5. Will this make me unpopular with GR, probably (a shame really because i really like those folks). The reason why i chose BotR is because i needed an interesting Pantheon for a completely OGC campaign setting, BotR provided that Pantheon.

On the other hand i've been putting off reusing the Bastion Press pantheon OGC, those folks have a book in the pipeline that uses that content (upgraded to v.3.5). I won't release that verbatim for some time.

Not yet. But the more times something like this takes place with a product, no matter the publisher, the more likely it is that I will be the target of such action. Am I being overprotective and worrying? Maybe. I honestly don't know what the right action is at this time.

It's a bit of russian roulette, if you changed your policy in declaring OGC for the worse, chances are that you draw unwanted attention to yourself that might initiate just such an action your trying to negate. Personally i would say, continue on the course you've started and hope for the best.

Those spaceship pdfs for example are great for adding value to a product that OGC assimilation can not copy, maps, graphics, etc.

I'm not sure what I think of this. To toss out a thought:

What if PP is right now working on a collected and revised version of those books? Would releasing that material as free OGC have an impact on their upcoming release?

*catches thought and throws it back*
If they are, they haven't announced it on their page or any of the publishing channels. If they are working on it, they aren't very smart by not announcing it. If this would happen, it would be a shame for them, but i'm not going to not act based only on ifs.

 

[Cergorach]

Or more to the point, what if they found out about Cergorach's little project and phoned him up and asked him not to do it?

Oh that woul be fun, my response would be: "Give me one good reason not to do it!"

Uh... Because we ask (nicely)? => "Sorry, not good enough!"
Uh... Because we're trying to sell it to another party? => "Hmm... Sorry, not good enough!"
Because we're working on a v.3.5 version and want to release that in six months => "Hmm... Yeah sure, but in return i want an electronic version of the updated book. In return i'll not distribute the OGC in there (or in the v.3.0 books) for the next two years. And i want to sign a contract."

I'm more then happy to do someone favor, but if that requires me to can a load of work, then there better be something that compensates that canned work...

 

[philreed]

Not much room between UA and for example a Green Ronin release, the Book of the Righteous OGC is almost finished. There's a lot of OGC in there, but only about a third of the book is OGC, the rest is IP, and what great IP it is. I'll release it first verbatim, and then 'upgrade' it to v.3.5. Will this make me unpopular with GR, probably (a shame really because i really like those folks). The reason why i chose BotR is because i needed an interesting Pantheon for a completely OGC campaign setting, BotR provided that Pantheon.

It's possible Green Ronin has a 3.5 BotR planned. If we're lucky one of them will stop by and get involved in this thread.

Here's a new question:

Why do you feel it is your responsibility to release any material? What is wrong with the idea of anyone that wants specific OGC going out and buying the source product?

 

[Psion]

Here's a question:

Should I stop being generous with my OGC declarations?

That's really a question for you to answer.

Currently, 99% of the D20/OGL products Ronin Arts publishes are 100% OGC. If people are going to start collecting and releasing that material for free (or, because the threat of such action exists) would it be a good idea for me to start using something like:

"Material derived from the SRD or existing open game content is released as open game content. All other material is closed content and protected by copyright."

I don't make it a habit to collect and re-release material for free. But I will say this much: that would make it much less likely that I would buy your products. And to make it clear, I just bought one last night, and think 4 or so over the last few weeks, so I'm not speak posteriorly here.

I don't know how broadly this applies, but for me, the promise of the OGL is the promise never to worry about "Rob Repp-ism" again. I feel that when I create something for my campaign, I should be free to talk about it, to show people it, and so forth. "Crippled OGC" annoy me to the point I consider it barely tolerable. That would likely push me over the edge. (After all, if I felt I HAD to republish a character made with crippled OGC, I could cipher out the crippled sections. But if I had to republished closed content, I'd have to rewrite it from scratch.) (And yes, that does mean if I have a choice between using closed books by WotC and Kenzer, or a book with open content, all else being equal, I'll use the OGL book.)

Rob Repp acting as a representative of TSR put a certain chill through the early era of D&D on the net.

The other half of the promise of the OGL to me is the idea of the community building a shared body of work that we all can draw from, but that we give something back to that shared body of work. To me, if you are taking and not giving back, you are sort of freeloading.

So there you have it. You have you vision of what's not ethical. There's mine.

(That said, isn't that technically against the terms of the d20 system trademark license, which requires you to have 5% OGC?)

Is that what I should be using? Feels quite stingy to me. But it would protect a lot of my material.

To be clear, I'm fine with people using the OGC I release in their own products. My concern is that my material will be strip mined and posted online which will have a significant effect on my sales.

Opinions on whether or not I should change my manner of releasing OGC?

I think that the proof would be in the pudding. I don't think you should do it, for reasons already explained. If someone actually starts strip mining your material and you actually start losing sales, then I would admit you have a case based on your economic situation (but I would still stop buying your stuff.) I would also agree that such a person doing that would be reprehensible, even if not criminal. But I think that, making the wild assumption that an appreciable amount of computer-centered gamers like myself share my views on OGC, making such a move preemptively would hurt your sales.

 

[philreed]

I think that the proof would be in the pudding. I don't think you should do it, for reasons already explained. If someone actually starts strip mining your material and you actually start losing sales, then I would admit you have a case based on your economic situation (but I would still stop buying your stuff.) I would also agree that such a person doing that would be reprehensible, even if not criminal. But I think that, making the wild assumption that an appreciable amount of computer-centered gamers like myself share my views on OGC, making such a move preemptively would hurt your sales.

Well, in case I wasn't clear I'm not making such a change at any time that I know of. It was more of a hypothetical to help illustrate my feelings on the subject.

And thank you. I hope you enjoyed the PDFs that you bought.

 

[wedgeski]

Because we're working on a v.3.5 version and want to release that in six months => "Hmm... Yeah sure, but in return i want an electronic version of the updated book. In return i'll not distribute the OGC in there (or in the v.3.0 books) for the next two years. And i want to sign a contract."

Hmm. I definitely don't know what to make of that.

This is certainly an interesting thread.

 

[Cergorach]

It's possible Green Ronin has a 3.5 BotR planned. If we're lucky one of them will stop by and get involved in this thread.

Hmm... I don't know if i would be that happy with that...

Here's a new question:
Why do you feel it is your responsibility to release any material? What is wrong with the idea of anyone that wants specific OGC going out and buying the source product?

Not my responsibilty, rather something i want to use for other projects. These verbatim OGC documents are nothing more then reference documents. As i said in another thread, i want to make a seperate rules set that incorporates rules from the UA. The UA SRD is nothing more then a reference document for that purpose. Why do i release it to the public? Well, when i have a discussion with someone about my rules set i want to be able to link to the source material that i used and that my discussion partner has the very same reference material as i have. Sure i don't need to distribute everything from the UA, but the added work for completeness is negible. Plus i'm a completist, i hate doing things half way...

The same goes for the other OGC projects, i intend to reuse a decent amount from those products. For now i'm concentrating on fantasy stuff (Arsenal and Factory are the exception), later i intend to work on some cyberpunk.

[edit]
Sure i could make new rules and materials for everything, but that kind of defeats the purpose of OS. I prefer changing what i don't like to rewriting what i already like.
[/edit]

 

[philreed]

The other half of the promise of the OGL to me is the idea of the community building a shared body of work that we all can draw from, but that we give something back to that shared body of work. To me, if you are taking and not giving back, you are sort of freeloading.

I wanted to touch on this.

I use existing OGC in my own releases. I _love_ to use existing OGC since it often inspires new ideas. I completely agree with the above statement and, in fact, that statement covers why I release so much OGC.

What I don't do is use all of the OGC from a product. And, at times, my OGC use is as limited as the name of an organization or god (as long as it's OGC) and even then just a passing mention. For those without the original product my reference means nothing -- for those with the original product it creates a sense that my product will slot into their campaign.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

All the stuff which was released and is still published in some free form or another.

The OGC and the OGL will only die when people stop using it, and that applies to both publishers AND players.

But no NEW stuff will be produced.

If enough people do as you propose, WoTC will have two choices:

Let D&D die as a business. Which means that eventually, D&D dies as a game, except for a few people running 20 year old free content off the web.

or create a DND 4.0 that is incompatible with 3.0/3.5 and revoke the OGL/d20 licenses.

EDIT: The third choice, as Philreed has pointed out, is for "crippled" OGC to become the industry standard, in order to make it as difficult as possible for people to strip out the content.

Which do you prefer?