Is the Unearthed Arcana SRD online?

[Cergorach]

Some ideas i'm tossing around with regardig 'grace' periods for OGC products. Guide lines like these should keep publishers motivated to actually think about what they designate OGC. Please keep in mind that these are guidelines and not 'laws'.

One year grace period: Those products that designate everything as OGC except company name and product name. Example: A Magical Society: Ecology and Culture

Half year grace period: Those products that designate all rules related material as OGC and don't 'cripple' it by designating things like spell and monster names as IP. Example: Unearthed Arcana or Book of the Righteous

Three months grace period: Those products that designate all rules related material as OGC and 'cripple' it by designating things like all spell and all monster names as IP. Or aren't clearly designating OGC. Example: Book of Strongholds & Dynasties

Six weeks grace period: Those products that designate all rules related material as OGC and 'cripple' it by designating things like all spell and all monster names as IP. And aren't clearly designating OGC. Example: Cry Havoc

No grace period: Those products that make it a point to not clearly designate OGC. Example: Some of the older Mongoose and Malhavoc products.

 

[woodelf]

Heck, the OGL lets me go well beyond the terms of "Fair Use" within a legal set of agreed upon rules.
[snip]
As such, any claims that this should not be done out of some form of "respect" for the publisher, or fair play, or anything other reason outside of the law, is essentially saying that we should cater to those that either (A) didn't understand the implications of the OGL (which I can assure you, WotC does indeed understand it),

Just to pick nits: the WotC OGL is only a mostly-agreed-upon set of rules--there are still quite a few ambiguous bits. And, most specifically, i'm not confident that WotC *does* understand it perfectly. Their latest PI declaration with the revised D20SRD took almost everyone by surprise, as it seems to be not supportable by the license, implying that either (1) they don't understand the license, (2) they understand it but don't like it and are hoping no one will challeng them on it, or (3) the license is poorly worded, and doesn't say what it's supposed to mean, so everyone else doesn't understand it--raising the question of whether the intent or the wording of a contract is the important part, if the drafter does a poor job of translating the intent into wording.

And what of a distribution such as the Pocket Player's Handbook? It's just a prettied up SRD, after all. And it's not free; it's a commercial product.

Is that past the boundaries of using OGC in good faith?

Of course not.

Yeah, i'm still waiting for an answer on that one, too. But, when talking about subjective qualities like "good faith", neither can you simply declare that it clearly isn't stepping over the line--perhaps it is (even though it's perfectly legal). Though i'm inclined to say it isn't, seeing as how WotC said, right from teh start, "sure, you can do that", and qualified it not with "...but we don't want you to" but rather "...but you'll fail".

 

[eryndel]

I'm not sure if I see how distributing the OGC part of UA is harmful at least to what I perceive the plan was for UA. I figured UA was released mostly OGC in an attempt to distribute much of these house rules into the systems and settings of other peoples games, primarily other publisher's settings. Having a large number of people who have access to that can only increase the potential appeal that any one house rule might have. More appeal for a rule, and the higher likelyhood a publisher might include in their source books.

Now, the question than is, if it was freely distributed, why would anyone bother to pick up the book, and so it would seem that this method would kill sales for the book. But there are a number of secondary reasons that would bolster sales. Though this might change in the future, generally electronic media isn't preferable to traditional media. I personally would much prefer a book than a pdf, though having both is handy. I know a lot of people who were happy to play D&D off of the SRD while money was tight and then later pick up a PHB. So, likely a sizeable number of people introduced to UA rules through free sources will eventually end up buying the hardcover when money permits, driving sales up.

Also, I can't imagine any later edition of D&D leaving what they started here with the OGL. If they did, I think they'd run the significant risk of leaving D&D behind. If 4th ed was not open, all the myriad companies who currently profit off of 3.X ed would be prohibited from making the switch to 4th, and thus would still have to produce material for 3.X. Anyone who makes good use of these settings and sourcebooks would then, by neccesity, also not make the switch to 4th ed. I'm not certain how much WotC dominates the d20 community - assuredly more than any one company but surely not more that all the other companies combined. This line of thinking would imply that a switch to a closed 4th ed would only bring a minority (perhaps a significant minority) of D&D players with. Maybe I'm being naive, but this doesn't seem to be a good business move.

 

[woodelf]

A potential selling point for whom? For a publisher who wishes to use those specific rules in a product that he is writing, yes.

I fail to see how a book having OGC is a selling point for a non-publisher customer. It's irrelevant. Good material (or "cool toys", as worded above) is good material, whether it's open or not open. If it's good, it will get used in-game. Period.

That's easy. OGC is good because other companies can build on it and improve it, and/or focus on what they're good at, rather than having to re-invent the wheel (or build wheels just so that they have a vehicle for their nifty new steering mechanism, to butcher the analogy). Therefore, the more that publishers actually build on one anothers' content, the better, in the long run, the game products, and therefore the game, for the consumer. Therefore, you should encourage the publishers to have much OGC, so that there is material to freely build upon. Therefore, you should prefer books that have not only good material, but good OGC. It's in your own self-interest as a consumer: more OGC now means better RPG books in the future.

And, despite people who seem to think that there is no "spirit of the law", the person who transcribes and posts an entire book of OGC for free is past the boundaries of using OGC in good faith.

What about the person who has a Cool New Idea which is a superset of someone else's Cool New Idea? IOW, what if you have a geniunely innovative contribution to make, but doing so would involve duplicating all (or nearly all) of someone else's product?

I'll put it another way: Anybody who is claiming that it's perfectably acceptable to copy and post the entire OGC portions of UA for free should also never, ever, complain about getting a speeding ticket, especially if they are only going 5 miles over the speed limit on an open country road with no other cars in site.

No, they shouldn't complain about getting a speeding ticket. They should complain that the speed limit is too low on that road, or demand the enaction of graduated licenses so that better drivers can go faster legally. Or accept the speed limit, and the ticket.

I've got no sympathy for anyone who breaks the law, gets caught, and whines about it. I frequently speed [on the job--there is no need for me to speed the rest of the time]. The consequences, should i get caught, are far more severe than for most anyone else (a <5mph-over ticket would cost me roughly $1000, because i drive for a living). Sure, i'll avail myself of legal remedies, should i get a ticket (pleading it down a notch, if i can), but i'm not gonna complain because i got caught doing something i knew i shouldn't've. I have very little respect for the people who race around, and then slow down the minute a cop comes into view: if you believe that you can safely drive faster than the speed limit, have the courage of your convictions and challenge the law: take it to court, push for legislation to change it, or lobby for a change in public opinion. If you don't believe that you can safely drive at that speed, then don't do it. And, whichever you do, accept the consequences. Not just speeding tickets, but accidents and injuries. I've got a real problem with people who complain about "speed traps". Were you speeding? Did you know it? Then you earned the ticket--the cops had nothing to do with it.

Likewise, don't complain because people reuse content according to a license you've voluntarily released yoru work under. You shouldn't be stupid--if people are killing you because of it, change how you use the license (such as making less of your book OGC, as one poster suggested). And, likewise, the reuser should consider consequences (such as providing an incentive to decrease the amount of OGC in future works).

Having the entire OGC portions of the book posted for free online does not seem reasonable to me.

Reasonable? Yes. It's supposed to be "open". Sensible? Maybe, maybe not--Grey Ghost managed to get off the ground by publishing a relatively no-frills hardcopy edition of a ruleset that had been available for free for years, and remains available for free to this day. It is not at all clear-cut that free access to the content inherently destroys sales of a book version of the content.

 

[woodelf]

Of course, one has to note: the original employee roster that released the OGL and d20STL back in 1999-2000 have now dwindled to less than a handful. Also noted, not everyone in WotC supports the Open Gaming Movement.

Ack! You're right: i've got to quit treating corporate entities the same as real entities. As their composition changes, so too can their attitudes, without any intentional deception on their part. And, in fairness, one can change one's mind, especially given new facts. IOW, i shouldn't completely discount the possibility that the original decision was made in good faith based on insufficient data, and that ~4yrs of actual data could change that decision.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

I think the point here is about all the people that are basically saying the 'spirit' of the OGL is irrelevant, and only the letter of the agreement matters.

Think of it this way: If there is a "spirit" of the OGL, it is the opening of game rules for redistribution by other sources, which the OGL permits and promotes, while protecting the artistic investment (fiction, backstory, art, etc.) and corporate image (logos, icons, company names, etc.) under the umbrella of Product Identity.

If the "spirit" of the OGL is about anything else, it's not mentioned in the OGL itself.

Here's an example: In my own works, I make it clear where Closed Material ends and OGC begins. I do my best to minimize PI within the OGC. I make OGC re-use easy, simple, and clear.

Yet my big project of the day (after cleaning up the first draft release of the Aedon Bestiary) is to transcribe a set of alternate magical abilities from a book that has the previously mentioned "Rules are OGC, text is not" condition on it.

Who has the "spirit" of the OGL in mind: Me or this particular publisher?

Now, here's a question: If I went through this entire book and "uncrippled" everything in it, effectively making a 100% OGC resource from it, am I going against the "spirit" of the OGL by transcribing all the rules from a single book or am I going with the "spirit" of the OGL by opening up content that was previously difficult to re-use?

To which I add: Those who believe that they can in any regards, either through the law or by way of preaching morality and ethics, retain control of Open Content after they have opened said content is fooling themselves. Open Content is part of a "shared body of work" and what can or can't be done with that content is dictated not by some vague, subjective view of what is right and wrong, moral, ethical, petty, or sleazy, but by the license that everyone that has released material under has agreed.

I imagine a lot of the people who staunchly stand by the OGL as a legal way of getting stuff for free are also people who complain if they're pulled over going 5 mph (or even 8 kph) over the speed limit in broad daylight on an open road, saying "But I was driving perfectly safely!" That's a double standard.

No, it's not. The person going over the speed limit is breaking the law and trying to say "I only broke it a little" to get out of their ticket. By contrast, reproducing/redistributing OGC is not against the law because the OGL is written specifically to permit and promote that very course of action.

The OGL was not created for people to get free RPG stuff (though it legally allows that to an extent); it was created so that publishers could re-use each others material so that lots of people could publish for the same system, a system which in the end sells more player's handbooks for WotC.

And this is effected how?

Question: How many people that didn't buy the Manual of the Planes now have access to Planar Rules because WotC themselves uploaded the material?

Question: How many people that didn't buy the Epic Level Handbook now have access to Epic Rules because WotC themselves uploaded the material?

Question: How many people have downloaded illegal copies of entire books, copyrighted material and Product Identity in-total, rather than obtaining the OGC material in a legal manner (which inlcudes SRD-styled downloads)?

Every publisher should be concerned about their books being scanned and circulated via p2p programs (and pdf publishers have it especially hard in this sense, as their material doesn't need to be scanned); none of them, however, should be concerned with rules-transcriptions being circulated within the bounds of the OGL because those bounds were agreed upon by them when they included the OGL in their work.

Heck, there's a company out there (can't remember which) that released the OGC part of their book prior to the release of the actual book (firearms rules, I believe), and re-use of those rules were already in motion when the book hit the shelves. I can't remember what product it was, but it would be interesting to see if their sales figures were effected by this or not.

I doubt anyone thinks there's anything wrong with someone putting OGC on their campaign websites so that all their players (even ones without the books) are on the same page.

However, I know I'd rather not see someone transcribe the entire text (or at least the OGC part) of UA or any other D20 product and simply post it for anyone to take. That hurts the whole D20 community, as it makes it less likely companies will release large quanitities of OGC, and more likely they'll release broken OGC.

The term is "crippled"... "Broken" is for bad rules that don't work well with the rest of the rules.

Now, as for a company turning draconian over this issue, it would actually put that company into a poor light. After all, they are profiting from Open Gaming but they are hesitant to add to Open Gaming. Do you really think such a business model is good for Open Gaming to begin with? I'd argue that basing the production of OGL'd products in the hopes that your material won't be reproduced and not planning your business model with that inevitability in mind isn't taking the realities of the situation into proper consideration. They would seem to have made the error of believing that Open Gaming is a company-only playground and that terms and conditions apply to Open Gaming that are not in any way, shape, or form manifest within the license itself or projected by any controlling entity within the community.

Whether releasing someone's OGC in this way actually affects sales or not, some publishers will have the perception that it does, and that's bad enough.

Bad for those that have that perception, you mean, as they have obviously established a business model that assumes some degree of control over their OGC that they don't really have. Which returns to the point I've made a dozen times: Make the non-OGC portions of your work viable beyond the reproduction of the OGC-portions, and the product will survive longer, better, and stronger.

If anything, the most viable way to publishers to "cap off" the lack of control is to permit co-adaptability statements (Ex: "This adventure requires rules from Skull & Bones by Green Ronin."). This would provide the publisher with a safety-net of sorts; the re-user, instead of reproducing the rules content, is able to simply make the declaration and then build off of the source. There are several examples of this, such as GR's M&M Superlink, and the pending Fields of Blood license. How many people would love to see such a thing for Malhavoc's Arcana Unearthed?

There are a lot of books that I would rather make references to (dozens of them, in fact, plugging them through my material while benefiting from their OGC without having to reproduce it). But the granting of such permission is currently the exception, not the norm, and that's in the hands of the companies, not the fans.

Sure, they should know going in that it's legal for people to do it, but that doesn't change the fact that some publishers clearly don't like it, and might be more likely to avoid it as best they can in the future.

Honestly? More power to them. No one should enter into a legal agreement they don't like.

By the same coin, however, they shouldn't complain about an agreement they made while fully aware of the implications ahead of time.

This is particularly important with regards to WotC. Some day, there will be a fourth edition. Hopefully, not for several more years, but some day, it will come. When it does, it's better for us as gamers if they continue to support the OGL. They're under no obligation to do so. Sure, they can't revoke the OGL, but it doesn't mean they have to continute supporting it. They don't have to ever add another word to it. If they start to feel that releasing stuff as OGC is hurting their sales, they'll probably stop releasing stuff as OGC, and that hurts us gamers and all the non-WotC D20 publishers.

No, it doesn't. This is like saying that php-Nuke is useless because part of the original team broke away and started Post-Nuke. The worst that will happen is that WotC will turn away from contributing to the rather large body of work that, aside from the occassional Core update, isn't really supported by them very much to begin with. If a few uptight people go with the "Well, D&D isn't that anymore, it's this..." mentality, so what? They, too, are walking away from a large body of work in favor of a smaller, more limited body of work, and that's their loss, not ours.

Even though I doudt 4E won't be Open, here's my prediction in regards to what will happen if such is the case: D&D will stop being the "leader" brand name and fall to the wayside as the d20 System and Open Gaming remain friendly to OGL Publishers and fansites.

 

[woodelf]

I never felt is was in the spirit of the OGL to allow people to blatently rip off the content of books and put them out there for free on-line for people to use. Nor was the spirit to provide a new game system.

I believe the true spirit of the OGL was to allow the following:

• To allow other publishers to create adventures and source-books for Dungeons and Dragons without having to go through a complex license process
• To maximize the marketshare of the D&D game

That's it. This was never an attempt to justify the GPL style of licensing that seems to be popular with younger people with a technical bent.

If that's the case, why did they make a viral license? If all they wanted was sourcebooks for D&D3E, why not release the content under a license that allows free reuse, subject to certain restrictions (such as those in the D20STL), but without any requirement to make those supplement open-content?

The actual actions pursued don't support your hypothesis of the policies behind them. Why release your content under a license specifically modeled after the GPL, if not to encourage GPL-style [re]use? Why divorce the licensing restrictions (the D20STL) from the content (the D20SRD) if you are only interested in promoting your brand? Why have the D20STL and WotC OGL be separate licenses at all?

Depending on what happens with UA on-line, I fear what will happen now is Wizards will no longer release OGL product for any new 3.5 products, and I'll bet D&D 4.0 will not be released under the SRD and OGL.

Possibly. Perhaps by then, the combined might of D20 System publishers will be sufficient that, given the choice between a more-restricted D&D license, or continuing to publish/expand on D20 System stuff, D20 System will be the choice. Ideally*, D20 System will trump D&D in the long run, brand-wise, and the makers of D&D will have to seriously consider *not* using an evolution of it for their next edition.

* n.b.: i said "ideally"--i have no illusions that it is likely.

 

[woodelf]

UA is a trial. And I think it is fair of WotC or individuals attached to WotC to let that trial run its course without trying to influence the outcome. How else will we know?

What constitutes "without trying to influence the outcome"? Not making the OGC freely available? Not dissuading others from making it freely available? Not helping others to make it freely available?

And what is fair? And to whom? WotC? The customers? Other publishers? The OGL movement?

I don't know. I honestly don't know. I would like to see a huge repositry of OGC collected in one place. All OGC ever published. Would this break the companies producing OGC? I hope not, because if it does, someting is very wrong with the building blocks that this OGL-thing is resting on.

Well, if that's your standard of "very wrong" then i'd say something is very wrong with the whole WotC OGL thing. Because, really, i think that most publishers are operating on teh assumption that they don't have to worry about wholesale republication (free or commercial) because of the barrier of effort required. And they are therefore behaving based on the assumption that, for the most part, it is a non-issue--that any wholesale republication that does occur will do so after their product is basically done selling anyway. If much or all OGC were to get rereleased in free form shortly after the product is, i think the system would break, or change.

 

[woodelf]

I think of it akin to an "all you can eat" plan. You can technically eat all the food at the buffet, but you tend to know when you've done too much.

Huh? If someone sets up an "all you can eat" buffet, and charges a flat fee, i'm supposed to stop eating before i'm full, just because i'm a big eater? Why? Because the restaurant didn't really know what they were doing? Because they don't actually mean "all you can eat"?

 

[barsoomcore]

Huh? If someone sets up an "all you can eat" buffet, and charges a flat fee, i'm supposed to stop eating before i'm full, just because i'm a big eater?

No, you're supposed to stop eating because otherwise, you'll turn into a big, fat slob.

See, it's the same with OGC -- if you use too much open game content you'll turn into a big, fat open game slob. And then none of the cool kids will want to play with you and you'll never get a date and you'll live your life in loneliness and THEN you'll be sorry.

You'll see.