Is the Unearthed Arcana SRD online?

[Wasgo]

I agree with what you say. It is cool for WotC to make things OGC. (Though they had to make some of it OGC, as the book used OGC). I'm all for politeness. It would be cool to send WotC an email, saying what you're doing, and thanking them, even though (or especially since), WotC have said that chunks of UA are Open Game Content and people are free to distribute it. But - as far as I can see - none of that was Andy's point. Andy's point was it is a bad thing for people to make a UA SRD, he's wrong, but even so has still managed to sabotage the project, and make a bunch of people who were trying to do a really neat thing for others feel unreasonably bad about themselves.

Andy isn't saying don't use the OGC, nor is he saying using OGC is bad. He's saying don't take the WHOLE book, which is the hard work of many authors, and potential profit for WotC and post it on the web. Plus he's right...people are treating this book differently because it's Wizards of the Coast. One could easily take the books made by the Game Mechanics, By Green Ronin, by Guardians of Order, by FFG, and everyone else and post almost the whole book on the web. With other companies, there is an acceptance this would be hurting them, but just because it's WotC, no one cares. The book was made OGC to allow other Publishers and Fans to use the mechanics in their own works. The worst part is, if we actually managed to hurt their sales, we'd probably never see any OGC from them again.

 

[Maggan]

No love for you, dr. WotC

Plus he's right...people are treating this book differently because it's Wizards of the Coast. One could easily take the books made by the Game Mechanics, By Green Ronin, by Guardians of Order, by FFG, and everyone else and post almost the whole book on the web. With other companies, there is an acceptance this would be hurting them, but just because it's WotC, no one cares.

I think it is a gross generalisation to say that people don't care if WotC is losing money on UA or not. I think there are other factors at work here.

I don't think that people are putting off typing in other companies OGC because of an acceptance that it would hurt said companies. It's just not as high a demand on the OGC stuff they produce.

WotC sells tons of books. Tons and tons and tons of books, compared to everyone else. There will always be a higher demand on WotC OGC, partly because they are the market leader, and partly because WotC OGC is seen as a baseline for d20. So many, many more want that baseline than say... the OGC from Skull&Bones (which is one of my favourite books, and almost all of it OGC).

Just for the record, btw. I'm against posting the whole book on the web, such as in the form of a scan. But I support extracting the OGC, retyping it and then publising that on, say, the web.

UA is a rad book. I have it, I bought it as soon as it hit the shelf. I don't think making the OGC available as a pdf will impact sales. People want books, not pdf:s. At least that's what we've been hearing in the thread on best-selling d20 supplements.

I also think that those people that are compiling pdf:s with the 3.5 baseline, including the UA stuff, is doing the community a great favour. I hope they don't stop doing that. They have my support.

As does WotC. I love 3.5, I love UA. I think Andy Collins is doing a fine job on D&D.

For me, those two sentiments does not exclude each other. Let OGC be open and free, just as it says in the OGL.

Cheers!

Maggan

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

People are treating this book differently because it's Wizards of the Coast. One could easily take the books made by the Game Mechanics, By Green Ronin, by Guardians of Order, by FFG, and everyone else and post almost the whole book on the web. With other companies, there is an acceptance this would be hurting them, but just because it's WotC, no one cares.

I think you're looking at it from the wrong perspective.

It is simply because this material comes from WOTC that it has enough inherent value for people to take the trouble to transcribe it.

In other words, it is the first instance of Open Gaming Content that has enough widespread acceptance and interest for a project of this kind to receive any kind of acceptance.

There have been other attempts at collating Open Gaming Content, most notably from the Free Gaming Association, that never went anywhere, and it wasn't because folks were worried that publishers would be upset, it was simply due to a lack of interest.

It is not because people somehow feel like WOTC "deserve" to be "ripped off" but other OGC publishers don't.

Deserves got nothin' to do with it.

Wulf

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

See Maggan, there you go. Damn near simultaneous.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

Can't a game designer have an opinion that goes against the general concensus without having his head bitten off?

His opinion going against the "concensus"? Yes, you are right. However, in this case, his opinion is against the general purpose of the OGL, which does kind of put him in a bad light: He benefits from the OGL by producing his own material via Malhavoc but then complains about the unavoidable ramifacations of that license.

Andy isn't saying don't use the OGC, nor is he saying using OGC is bad. He's saying don't take the WHOLE book, which is the hard work of many authors, and potential profit for WotC and post it on the web. Plus he's right...people are treating this book differently because it's Wizards of the Coast. One could easily take the books made by the Game Mechanics, By Green Ronin, by Guardians of Order, by FFG, and everyone else and post almost the whole book on the web. With other companies, there is an acceptance this would be hurting them, but just because it's WotC, no one cares. The book was made OGC to allow other Publishers and Fans to use the mechanics in their own works. The worst part is, if we actually managed to hurt their sales, we'd probably never see any OGC from them again.

Funny you should mention FFG...

From the Introduction of Midnight, Page 3, second paragraph after The Open Game License:

In fact, all rules-related material is designated as Open Game Content. You can use this material in your own works, as long as you follow the conditions of the Open Game License. You can copy the material to your website or even put it in a book that you publish and sell...

Actually, there's a paragraph like that in every FFG product I own (Spells & Spellcraft, Giantcraft, School of Illusion, etc.). And what do you know..? They're actually doing it.

It is kinda nice to see at least one OGL-using entity has a full understanding of exactly what Open Gaming is and exactly what is being given away. The only thing the OGL protects is a company's "image" (logos, trademarks, product and product line names, layout, etc.) and fictional elements (game world information, history, myths, character names, flavor text, etc.). Thus, it is important for any OGL publisher to understand is that once you designate something as OGC, you are surrendering control of that material forever, with only a Section 15 entry as your only benefit.

And, yes, that is also true for WotC.

 

[woodelf]

Including UA into the SRD would bring M&M and Swords of Our Fathers (and the Modern SRD!) into the Section 15 of every derivitive work thereafter, regardless of whether any of these options are used within the product.

So? If the promise of open-content development is fulfilled, there could easily be products down the line with eth D20SRD listed in the Sec.15, but nothing of its actual content left. True, it's not that likely in the short term, but in the long term a game could evolve from it that has changed everything--after all, Ars Magica started out as AD&D houserules (IIRC).

 

[woodelf]

I have OCR'd AU for personal use from my copy and have it on my hard drive. Its almost 11 megs. Unfortunately, it is completely unedited and would probably be illegal for me to transmit to you (especially since you don't own a copy of the book). I might be wrong here, but I'm not completely sure. I don't know the OGL that well.

You know, that's a good point. Though, IIRC, the PI declaration is both clear and succinct, and, from my perusal, the PI could be excised with very minimal effort--it's mostly clearly-distinct elements, like the yuan-ti bloodline. So, if you want to take the effort to excise the PI, and then send the OGC on to me, the offer to do a nice layout on it still stands.

 

[nikolai]

I don't think Andy is "evil". I'm sure he is kind to puppies and small children, and would be a wonderful person to get to know socially. He is welcome to his point of view, and is entitled to hold an opinion that goes against the consensus without having his head bitten off.

The problem is that his tragically misguided comments influenced the opinions of others, which killed what was a perfectly legitimate and very useful project. If people had just though: "Hey Andy, you're a really cool game designer, but your views on OGC are off the wall: let's ignore them", everything would have been fine. But because of his status people paid attention, which in turn led others to try to correct his errors, which in turn derailed both the UA SRD project and the thread. The thread evolved from "Is there a UA SRD?", to "Let's make a UA SRD", to "Let's not make a UA SRD", to "The reasons for not making a UA SRD aren't very good" and is slowly moving towards "It must not be nice for Andy, getting all this criticism".

I'm sure Andy's big enough to handle the criticism. If you're high profile and post that making a UA SRD is a bad thing (and those doing it should stop) to a thread devoted to making a UA SRD, it will cause controversy and people will criticise your opinions. I'm sure Andy's a great person and none of this is meant personally, but he is mistaken on this.

Is anyone out there still interested in making a UA SRD?

Wasgo; I'm not sure that anything you said contradicted what you quoted me as saying. Andy thinks a UA SRD is bad, and I was talking about a UA SRD. Andy's views on the validity on making a portion of UA's open content available online were not mentioned by him.

 

[woodelf]

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.

Would i? Maybe. If i didn't it wouldn't be because of codling the publisher, however; it'd be because i didn't think it was worth the effort. You seem to be taking releasing OGC in a reusable format as a personal insult. I see it as just the inverse: a compliment. Nobody's gonna take the effort to do this (whether retyping or OCRing) unless they think the rules are good.

For example, i'm working on (on and off--it's not the top priority right now) a complete free D20SRD-based fantasy game that will significantly change most of the elements of D&D3E. At this point, it looks like the skill/combat mechanics will be based on Spycraft, and it will incorporate significant elements of Dynasties & Demagogues, Book of Distinctions and Drawbacks, and Net Book of Feats. Why? Not because i want to "screw over" the producers of those (ok, NBoF doesn't count, since it's free to begin with), but because those are the "cool bits"--the best things i've found out there for their respective elements of D20 System rules.

Now, as for the spirit of open-content development. First, as someone else mentioned, it's Ryan Dancey himself who suggested a couple months ago making an expanded SRD available online, incorporating as much worthwhile OGC as possible. Second, i don't think you can put the D20STL and "open gaming movement" in the same category, WRT their spirits/attitudes. Open-content game development is, or should be, about using open-content development models to make the best RPGs possible. That means maximal reusable content, and minimal barriers to reuse. The D20STL is about boosting D&D3E sales by licensing out trademarks. This necessitates barriers to reuse, or, more precisely, barriers to the nature of content so as to minimize competition between WotC products and others' products.

IMHO, the WotC OGL itself fails to conform to "the spirit of open-content development", by the inclusion of trademark-use restrictions and, much more importantly, by failing to require making reuse practical. IMHO, *requiring* the release of OGC as actual, functionally-reusable content is a necessary element of open-content development. Just as, in the software world, one of the defining characteristics is releasing the source code, in the RPG world i believe that you should release your OGC in a reusable digital format (ASCII, HTML, RTF--something like that). If there is anything that is against the spirit of open-content game development, it is complaining when people reuse your content, even if that reuse is to make it available for free.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

So?

You seem to have mistaken me. What I was suggesting, more or less, was that incorporating UA into the SRD would have this effect, which just "feels" wrong, if you take my meaning. Alternately, they could (being the SRD) not include these line items and simply add any as-yet unincluded authors to the SRD authorship.

What you describe is an unavoidable inevitability in regards to OGC re-use. For instance, I use two Base Classes, a few Feats, and Skill Expansions from AEG's Mercenaries. It is unfortunate, but unavoidable and thus accepted, that the Section 15 for Mercenaries includes over a half-dozen books that I know for a fact I'm not re-using material from.

Thus, my statement was one of line-items appearing within the SRD's Section 15 (within the Legal.pdf file) right from the start rather than line-items appearing from using material from UA itself or a UA-SRD file.