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<blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1489357" data-attributes="member: 10201">Hmmm. I'd say the spirit of the WotC OGL is &quot;share the text&quot;--the rules were already reusable, only the expression was protected/owned. The WotC OGL makes it crystal clear exactly how much you have to change the expression (i.e., not at all) to not step on the original creator's toes.&nbsp;Not necessarily. They may be preventing it being reused. Which is bad for them, however, not good. And not necessarily bad for the potential reuser.&nbsp; Let's say that you want ship-to-ship fighting rules for your pirate game. There are two books out there with them. Book A has good rules (9/10), but would require rewording significant chunks because only &quot;the rules&quot; are OGC, not the particular expression. Book B also has good rules, but not quite as good (8/10), but all of them are OGC. If those in Book B are good enough for your purposes, you may just forgo those in Book A. Or,&nbsp; take the best ideas from Book A and apply them to make Book B's OGC just as good or better, thus not only not reusing or crediting Book A, but obviating the need for anyone else to do so in the future. Since ideas aren't protected to begin with, you can't prevent this, and if you've made it hard for the particular expression to be reused people will probably just not bother trying. Similarly, if i'm gonna have to rework the expression radically to reuse the rules, i may just forgo doing so at all, and invent my own.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="woodelf, post: 1489357, member: 10201"] Hmmm. I'd say the spirit of the WotC OGL is "share the text"--the rules were already reusable, only the expression was protected/owned. The WotC OGL makes it crystal clear exactly how much you have to change the expression (i.e., not at all) to not step on the original creator's toes. Not necessarily. They may be preventing it being reused. Which is bad for them, however, not good. And not necessarily bad for the potential reuser. Let's say that you want ship-to-ship fighting rules for your pirate game. There are two books out there with them. Book A has good rules (9/10), but would require rewording significant chunks because only "the rules" are OGC, not the particular expression. Book B also has good rules, but not quite as good (8/10), but all of them are OGC. If those in Book B are good enough for your purposes, you may just forgo those in Book A. Or, take the best ideas from Book A and apply them to make Book B's OGC just as good or better, thus not only not reusing or crediting Book A, but obviating the need for anyone else to do so in the future. Since ideas aren't protected to begin with, you can't prevent this, and if you've made it hard for the particular expression to be reused people will probably just not bother trying. Similarly, if i'm gonna have to rework the expression radically to reuse the rules, i may just forgo doing so at all, and invent my own. [/QUOTE]

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