Is the Unearthed Arcana SRD online?

[woodelf]

@barsoomcore

No, just having 4E be different would force a choice- use that, or keep using 3.5 stuff. Certainly there is nothing to would make me "have to" use 4E, but I would have to choose whether I was going to use it or not.

or not choose, you know. I've played 3 different systems in the last month (you caught me at campaign-transition time), and i mean *completely* different: Icon (ST: DS9 RPR), Four Colors al Fresco, and Big Eyes Small Mouth. One of my coworkers is currently involved in weekly or bi-weekly D&D3E, D&D3.5E, Fading Suns, and maybe one other game. And so on. Even if you only play one game at a time, you can still play different games when you switch campaigns.

OK. I would rather see publishers keep producing OGC in the hopes that more publishers will actually use other publishers OGC and expand on it. Take mass combat rules. I like Eden's system, but it's not perfect. It would be nice to see another publisher take their system and flesh it out, just as an example. That obviously couldn't happen if Fields of Blood didn't have a lot of OGC (though it's not all OGC, unfortunately).

If they never do another UA, I doubt it would hurt. If they make 4E closed, it would hurt, in my opinion. We seem disagree there; I think we're at a point we'll have to agree to disagree.

And that's one of the biggest reasons i don't care if D&D disappears: it's not participating in the feedback loop. WotC produces lots of OGC, but they don't use it, so the D&D doesn't build upon the evolutions in the general D20 System community. If anything, it's holding development back: there's a powerful incentive to remain compatible with D&D, and that may stifle the more radical innovations.

 

[Ranger REG]

I let this slide the first time, 'cause it's just not relevant to the argument. But, if we're gonna get it right, i'll point out that it's not at all clear that the WP/VP system that AEG got permission from WotC to use in Spycraft remained closed content. According to the OGC/PI declarations, it is OGC. While it's true that there's a separate statement acknowledging special permission to use that subsystem, there's nothing in that statement to imply (much less state outright) that AEG didn't have authority to contribute it as OGC. So, while it is quite possible that WotC intended it to remain closed at that time, it appears that AEG didn't understand that, or goofed, and, regardless, rendered the content open. And, since, as far as i can find, no one at WotC or AEG has ever officially errataed that, i'd say that, even if Unearthed Arcana hadn't come out, that subsystem is definitely OGC by now. (i'll accept that there should be some allowance made for errors. But even a known error uncorrected for 3+ years (in this industry) pretty much has to be irrevocable by now--and, for all we know, it's not an error.)

While the argument is moot now, prior to UA, no one dared challenge the vague wording and tried to use the VP/WP system derived from Spycraft successfully. I believe the folk at Citizen Game wanted to use it -- albeit using different terms: Body and Vigor -- for Sidewinder: The Wild West Adventures but WotC denied them. Of course, rather than letting the court interpret that small print, they decided on an alternative health system.

It would be interesting had it gone to court -- at least it would or would not prove the flaw you pointed out -- but we'll never know now, won't we?

 

[Ranger REG]

And that's one of the biggest reasons i don't care if D&D disappears: it's not participating in the feedback loop. WotC produces lots of OGC, but they don't use it, so the D&D doesn't build upon the evolutions in the general D20 System community. If anything, it's holding development back: there's a powerful incentive to remain compatible with D&D, and that may stifle the more radical innovations.

Hmm. I think it's what every publisher trying to stay in the RPG business think about every time they want to release something new and innovative: to risk introducing some new innovation that may or may not take with the D&D fanbase, or remain conservatively safe within the strict adherence of the D&D ruleset, making it more palatable to D&D gamers.

But let's face it. The majority of the D&D fanbase really do not care about d20, SRD, and OGL. They care about only one brand: D&D. While there are open-minded D&D gamers, it's too few to make any one line profitably successful as D&D line.

Can you really blame WotC for the mindset of their fanbase?

 

[barsoomcore]

This thread just won't die, thanks to the patient efforts of hard-working souls like woodelf, Bendris Noulg, Ranger REG and others. Like me. Give us a hand folks!

Seriously:

Can you really blame WotC for the mindset of their fanbase?

You know, I kinda can. It's not impossible to think that D&D could be seen as something a bit more modular, a bit more customizable than it is.

Sure, everyone uses Windows (except me), but everyone has a custom desktop picture. Lots of people have custom system colours, cursors, etc, etc....

I'm not saying that would be the best plan or anything, I'm just saying, yeah, to some non-zero degree the "mindset of the fanbase" (I'm just going to pretend that's a non-problematic idea) IS the responsibility of WotC.

You know. Sort of.

 

[woodelf]

Sigil touched a subject that has been on my mind a lot the last ten years, patronage vs. copyright. As Sir Thomas Babington MacAuley said, copyright is a neccesary 'evil' that was used to let creative talent make a living. When portrayed this way, i can only say, that it was a good move at the time. These days however, it's not used to let creative talent make a living, it's used to let companies make profit, instead of making the people that actually wrote have compensation for their work. Note the use of the word compensation, compensation as in payment for services rendered, and not as in payment for taking an idea hostage and profiting from it.

If i could make just one change in copyright law, and that was expected to "fix everything", it'd be to only allow the person(s) that created an idea to hold the copyright. Companies may not hold copyrights. Descendents/inheritors may not hold copyrights. Governments may not hold copyrights. Universities may not hold copyirghts. A company can license a copyright, but only for the life of the creator, at most. And my gut reaction is to also, without explicit contracts to the contrary, only allow licenses from employees to last for the duration of the employment, though i haven't really thought through all the ramifications on that one.

Copyright was instituted to let creative talent make a decent living, because they couldn't get a decent patronage from the rich and where very limited in the exposure their work could get before being published. [snip]

I think the concern with patronage (vice copyright) was not so much not making a sufficient living, but rather censorship. But maybe it was both.

The fact alone that such a large portion of the worlds population is guilty of 'pirating' should tell you that there's something wrong with the current copyright laws. The problem now is that 'pirating' is actually promoting the idea that everything is free and the people that rely on patronage are suffering for that.

I think that is jumping to conclusions. There are a *lot* of possible explanations for why so much piracy goes on. I won't go into a lengthy sidetrack discussion here, but suffice it to say that, i think copyright could be "fixed" and it would have almost no impact on piracy. There're undoubtedly lots of factors, but i think the single biggest cause is not philosophical attitudes on IP, but simple distance: the pirates are socially distanced from those they hurt, and so can easily ignore it, and, moreover, they are emotionally distanced even from those they know they're hurting, because they're faceless immortal corporations, rather than people. I'd be happy to discuss the matter, but this isn't the thread for it.

 

[woodelf]

I am specifically targeting anybody who dumps entire published content online without either adding some value to it, and who doesn't care about being nice to the companies or creators who provide these rules, but just wants to get stuff free.

What about this:
i'm currently working on an extensive project: a complete "D&D 'Done Right'". So it'll have at least as much content as the 3 core D&D3.5E books. It may be released for free online--for the pragmatic reason that i don't think i could go head-to-head with D&D, even if i had gorgeous art and beautiful books and the best rules in the world. But i can only afford an excellent layout, probably no art, and as a PDF. And while i expect my total ruleset to be better than D&D3.5E at doing "D&D-style fantasy" (i wouldn't be doing this, otherwise), i know that that's not an objective truth, and it certainly won't be "the best rules in the world".

Now, all that was just background. Now we get to the question. I'm starting with a mix of Spycraft and Arcana Unearthed for my rulesbase, rather than the D20SRD. So, let's say i have the entirety of the feats, skills, and spells chapters from Arcana Unearthed included. Now, a non-generous reading of its OGC/PI declarations would force me to rename every single feat and spell, but i could otherwise use them verbatim. So, do you think i would have done anything, hmmm.... unkind? non-generous? inconsiderate?--i'm not really sure the term, here, but hopefully you get the meaning--if i were to do this: release essentially the bulk of the new rules of Arcana Unearthed for free, online? Does it count as adding value, in your opinion, that i'm giving all the various rules widgets OGC labels, where before they had none? I mean, from the standpoint of other reusers, i'm clearly doing them a favor (especially since coming up with sensible alternatives to such generic names as "stomp" for a feat that lets you stomp the ground is gonna be a bit of a chore). But from the standpoint of the originator, i may actually be doing a disservice: presumably, he didn't want it to be easy to reuse the stuff, or he would've given them usable names. On the gripping hand, i might be making both happy: the creator restricts his widget labels, and everyone else gets labeled widgets. So, any opinion on this? Does it matter if i'm effectively reusing the bulk of a ruleset when that ruleset happens to be one other than the D&D3[.5]E ruleset? Does it matter whether that reused ruleset ends up being 100%, 90%, or 10% of the resulting work? (IOW, is it any more or less of on offense to reproduce 90pp of a 100p work, than to create a 500p work that includes 90pp of a 100p work?)

 

[barsoomcore]

woodelf: your questions are too complicated and weighty for a Friday afternoon, but I'll say this -- when you're done, I want a copy.

 

[woodelf]

Dang it, lost another post.

Simply put, I don't think putting the OGC contents of UA online as an SRD is legal. Why? Because of this:

from the Open Game License

(d)"Open Game Content" means the game mechanic ...to the extent such content ...is an enhancement over the prior art".

I think the OGC in UA is fair game if you add something to it, but converting to electronic text and distributing for free isn't "an enhancement over the prior art"; you've actually made NO change to the prior art. You've merely altered its means of transmission. And if you haven't enhanced the "prior art", then it's not OGC and you can't distribute it.

First, the license is, here, talking about the designation/definition of OGC. The creator of a work decides what is OGC, not the reuser. When i create some material, i designate some portion of it (possibly 100%) as OGC. This has nothing to do with who reuses it--nobody could reuse it, and it'd still be OGC. Notice that where it mentions enhancement over prior art is in the definition of OGC, not the definition of "use" or "reuse".

Second, your elipses unintentionally gloss over some serious ambiguities in that clause of the WotC OGL. *if* there is a "must be an enhancement over the prior art" requirement, it applies to the creation of OGC in the first place. In which case, depending on who judges these matters, and how much change is required before it is an "enhancement", the entirety of the D20SRD could be deemed to not meet the requirement--after all, there's basically nothing in it (or D&D3E) that hadn't already been published in RPGs. However, as i alluded to, it's not clear that there is any such requirement. First of all, the "to the degree it is an enhancement..." bit could be referring to the whole clause, or just the category of OGC immediately preceding it. Second, it is not perfectly clear whether rules *must be* OGC, or the drafters just assumed they would be, or they are just the example for the clause, or somewhere in between. Third, it's not entirely clear how the "and anything else designated" bit interacts with the rest of the OGC definition--is the list of things that makes up the bulk of the clause exemplary or definitive? Fourth, the license says in this clause that OGC "means" "the work", yet later on in the license it quite clearly refers to the OGC being a subset of the work. And those are just the problems in that one little clause, and which i can think of off the top of my head and without the license in front of me to look at.

So, short version, two responses to you:
1: i'm quite confident you've misread the license, and the restriction you're quoting applies, if at all, to designation of OGC, not reuse.
2: if you look very closely at the WotC OGL, it gets pretty fuzzy. The more nitpicky you get, the less clear its meaning is. This is not a license that i'd gamble on precise interpretation of anything around the edges of what it allows. This is not a license that clearly, incontrovertably spells out everything--far from it. In their zeal to make it "plain English" and "usable by anyone", they threw out the baby (precision) with the bathwater (legalese), leaving us with a morass of ambiguous and contradictory statements, in need of a good English editor, and then a good law editor.

 

[woodelf]

Just nitpicking today:

In the case of the UA, the OGL makes the text-hacking legal so long as the scanners nobly put in the extra effort to strip away all copyrighted material/PI from the OCRed text before sharing the fruits of their labor.

That is, "strip away all non-open material from the OCRed text...". There is, generally speaking, no non-copyrighted material in any published RPG book--even the OGC is still copyrighted by the author or publisher. I suspect the term you were looking for there is "closed".

Even though all d20 releases contain some OGC,

Not all d20 releases contain some OGC: Star Wars D20, Wheel of Time RPG, just to name two off the top of my head.

and some open content has been made freely available as SRDs, as far as I know no third-party release has been popular enough to inspire text hacking of the print book or customization of the free SRD.

Arcana Unearthed. Spycraft. Possibly Mutants & Masterminds. Oh, and the Anime D20SRD and Mecha SRD have both gotten PDF treatments--and i'm working on them, too.

 

[woodelf]

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'VE JUST LOST ANOTHER HOUR TYPING ANOTHER LOST MESSAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[snip]
After 2 years on ENWorld, I've somehow managed to hit the wrong button 4 times in 24 hours and lose 4 posts and about 3 hours. Frustrated is not quite the word.

What the others said. Though i'd go one further and suggest just working in a text editor, and only pasting it into the message editor when it's all finished. Again, web-based BBSes suck, interface-wise, and are a huge step backwards compared to UseNet newsreaders, or even most email apps. Can vBulletin deliver the content via an NNTP port, too?