Is the Unearthed Arcana SRD online?

[Bendris Noulg]

Speaking as one of the authors of Unearthed Arcana, it seems to me a little petty to simply scan/retype the entire product and make it available for free to anyone who wants it. That, I would say, is hardly in the spirit of the d20 license or the Open Gaming movement.

There's also the idea of getting this material into our house rules and more thouroughly intergrated with the rest of the components. Considering the list I posted above (Environmental Races, the alt. Classes, Prestige Classes, Generic Classes, Complex Skill Checks, Character Background, Action Points, Combat Facing, Metamagic Components, Legendary Weapons, Incantations, Reputation, Honor, Taint, and Sanity), that's a lot of typing time that could be saved and put into other pursuits if someone else has already done the job.

In addition, the presence of the SRD hasn't seemed to hurt WotC's sales overly much.

Yes, some people will likely use the project to avoid buying UA, but of them, how many were going to pay for it to begin with? When you consider the number of people that would "do without" and the people that would obtain illegal copies, the impact of sales gets smaller and smaller. Heck, this may even cause the (rare, I admit) chance that someone who doesn't think the book is "worth it" will see the material and decide that it is.

We made UA open content to encourage publishers to try out some new rules in their products, as well as to recognize some exciting concepts pioneered by other companies, not so that people could abuse that generosity by getting 95% of the book for free.

Actually, UA was the first WotC book I've bought since BoVD, reason being the lack of OGL'd products from WotC (no, I'm not ripping on them for not having more Open material, as it's their property and their right, only that it effects my purchasing).

Will some people use it for that? Yes... But see above.

Would you scan and distribute a Malhavoc product, or a Green Ronin product, or a Bastion product? They're all just as open as UA, but I'd hazard a guess that the authors and publishers wouldn't appreciate that either.

The material I'd actually use, yes. To which, that is about what I would be contributing to this (as well as what I already contribute to d20X): Material I'm using and thus will already be transcribing (or cut/paste from a pdf) for my own purposes (heck, my Section 15 is a half-page long as-is and I'm just getting warmed up).

When one considers how many people transcribe, scan, or copy/paste already for their own purposes, I'm surprised such "mini" SRDs don't already exist. Consequently, I do believe that there is a Midnight SRD project underway (there was a thread on it here, I believe, though I never read it).

If a d20 publisher wanted to use some of UA's open content, I'd imagine that we'd be willing to work with them to get the relevant material (particularly the longer sections). Obviously, I can't speak for the company, but in such a case, I'd recommend contacting Andy Smith on the D&D Business Team to explain your needs.

That's a lot of requests that Andy would be receiving. He'd either be sending out whole-copies to everyone or spending a significant amount of time doing short-order cut/paste(both of which would likely end-up in circulation eventually). And if the material is going to be given away so freely, why not upload it to the SRD page as a stand-alone SRD expansion? Would certainly save Andy a lot of trouble.

 

[Cergorach]

Speaking as one of the authors of Unearthed Arcana, it seems to me a little petty to simply scan/retype the entire product and make it available for free to anyone who wants it. That, I would say, is hardly in the spirit of the d20 license or the Open Gaming movement.

We made UA open content to encourage publishers to try out some new rules in their products, as well as to recognize some exciting concepts pioneered by other companies, not so that people could abuse that generosity by getting 95% of the book for free.

Would you scan and distribute a Malhavoc product, or a Green Ronin product, or a Bastion product? They're all just as open as UA, but I'd hazard a guess that the authors and publishers wouldn't appreciate that either.

If a d20 publisher wanted to use some of UA's open content, I'd imagine that we'd be willing to work with them to get the relevant material (particularly the longer sections). Obviously, I can't speak for the company, but in such a case, I'd recommend contacting Andy Smith on the D&D Business Team to explain your needs.

Andy, WotC modeled the OGL after the GPL, most GPL products are available for 'free'. So, please don't start about the spirit of things, WotC saw a business opertunity in Open Source, these are the consequences...

Now, i try my best to ensure that the product gets a good six months run before the OGC is released from the product, this should cover around 85% of the initial sales. We could have legally released the OGC parts within a day of it's release, we didn't, we don't really want to alienate a publisher (the hand that feeds us OGC).

Actually i'm bussy with the OGC from Green Ronin's Book of the Righteous, great stuff, still working on the 3.5 conversion for it. As for Malhavoc, getting there, it's just that some of the older products from Malhavoc have a ***** of an OGC designation and it takes a while digging true there. You should see a release of OGC in the next few months...

It's not about screwing publishers, it's about the 'spirit' of Open Source. First you make sure what's Open is available for easy access (text files online), second it's about building a better product from that Open Content, third it's about filling the holes that the available Open Content doesn't cover and see what you can do better.

I personally think that releasing OGC online after a certain period of time (six months to a year) might give a product a new influx of potential buyers. Come on, a 224 page full color, hardcover book for only $35 or $24.50 from Amazon.com is a steal. If people are really going to use a lot of material from the book, i'm sure they'll buy it and not mess around with a pile of b&w printouts.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

I on the otherhand I try to do what i say, sorry...

No problems... We have a "6 month buffer" at d20X as well. This one's personal, though.

 

[Grazzt]

I've got a question about UA

From WotC's point of view, what is the difference between releasing UA as a book with the OGL in it, and releasing the material as OGC in the SRD? Why did WotC opt to do what they did.

Money. Money is made off the books when peeps buy it. If they simply posted it on the web in the SRD they wouldn't make any coin because it would be available for free. Probably one reason you don't see it the content in the SRD...it would cut into sales. Why buy the book if you can get the main parts of it for free? And yes, I know the major parts of the DMG, MM, and PH are in (or are) the SRD...but those are core rules...everyone wants to own a nice shiny core rulebook.

 

[Wasgo]

Money. Money is made off the books when peeps buy it. If they simply posted it on the web in the SRD they wouldn't make any coin because it would be available for free. Probably one reason you don't see it the content in the SRD...it would cut into sales. Why buy the book if you can get the main parts of it for free? And yes, I know the major parts of the DMG, MM, and PH are in (or are) the SRD...but those are core rules...everyone wants to own a nice shiny core rulebook.

Plus you tend to need the full books. With Unearthed Arcana, you could easily grab whichever variant rules you needed without getting the whole book. Either way, Andy is right. Just because it OGL and it's WotC, doesn't mean the whole book should be posted on the web.

 

[Ranger REG]

Andy, WotC modeled the OGL after the GPL, most GPL products are available for 'free'. So, please don't start about the spirit of things, WotC saw a business opertunity in Open Source, these are the consequences...

With all due respect, OGL and GPL are two different licenses, even though both derived on the concept of Open Source.

You want to know more of what the OGL is intended, contact Ryan Dancey, the person responsible for this movement.

As for the "spirit" of Open Source, I don't see how you could proclaim yourself an advocate. No offense intended. The only recognized advocate for OGL is Ryan Dancey.

 

[Cergorach]

With all due respect, OGL and GPL are two different licenses, even though both derived on the concept of Open Source.

They sure are two seperate licenses, but...
http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/foundation.html
Exact quote:
The Open Gaming concept is based on the Free Software GNU General Public License created by the GNU Project.
General Public License as in GPL.

You want to know more of what the OGL is intended, contact Ryan Dancey, the person responsible for this movement.

Well, i don't know what Ryan intended with the OGL, maybe he can't even discuss what he intended. But what do you expect if you base your concepts on a well established concept that promotes open content for all (possible) contributors...
Quote from OpenGamingFoundation:
Game Rules and materials that use those rules that can be freely copied, modified and distributed.

As for the "spirit" of Open Source, I don't see how you could proclaim yourself an advocate. No offense intended. The only recognized advocate for OGL is Ryan Dancey.

What the bloody hell is a 'recognized advocate' or even an 'advocate' of Open Source or OGL? I understand the Open Source 'concept', whether it's OGL or GPL, i understand the consequences, and i like it. I'm willing to promote it, does that make me an 'advocate' , i certainly hope not, i hate that term ;-) But does that make my opinion invalid? I certainly hope not!

 

[barsoomcore]

There is no "spirit" to the OGL. It is a legal document. If you decide to release material using it, you agree to abide by all the conditions within it. If you're not prepared to have someone create and distribute (say) a pdf containing your OGC, then don't release your material as OGC.

It's NICE that people are trying to provide a window for sales. Just like it's NICE, for example, that my online copy of the Modern SRD encourages people to buy the book. I don't need to do that, however. The legal document under which the Modern SRD was released doesn't require me to do that at all. I do it because I want WotC to succeed.

I find Andy Collins' post a little strange, to be honest. The content of the book was released as open, so complaining that people treat it as such seems, well, weird.

I posted a goodly amount of Skull and Bones open content on my pirate campaign's website, for example, and made that available to people all across the web. I'm allowed to. It says so in the Open Gaming License.

Take it as a great compliment that people want to distribute your work so widely. That means many people perceive it as valuable.

Just my thoughts on the issue.

 

[Planesdragon]

You want to know more of what the OGL is intended, contact Ryan Dancey, the person responsible for this movement.

We've discussed this very issue at least three times on ogf-l--the list Ryan administers, where we tore apart each draft of the OGL. Each time, we came to roughly the same conclusion: don't worry about the legal copying. Assume that it will happen, and plan accordingly.

The people who would download and use a 100% legal OGC extract from Unearthed Arcana without buying the book are the same people who would download a 0% legal PDF scan of Unearthed Arcana from a P2P network. If they're not going to buy the book, they won't buy the book--and it's not worth it to disrupt your product enough to stop the 'pirates', because they will break just about anything that you do.


Taking off my FGA-advocate hat, I suspect that WotC released Unearthed Arcana with the OGL to see if they would get a sales spike as opposed to what their projections were. Hopefully, they'll see just such a spike--and they'll do the same for other rules-heavy books in the future.

 

[Wormwood]

Speaking as one of the authors of Unearthed Arcana, it seems to me a little petty to simply scan/retype the entire product and make it available for free to anyone who wants it. That, I would say, is hardly in the spirit of the d20 license or the Open Gaming movement.

I honestly never considered that.

Now I feel like a jerk, so I'm going to keep my files private from now on.*

My apologies.

*That is, until I complete my amazingly cool d20 project: the long-awaited CyberKatana 2000!