Mike Mearls On the OGL

[frankthedm]

Does it seem odd to anyone else that one of its executioners is pulling the bell rope for the death knell of open gaming?

Considering that his current employer wants to be the Executioner, Mearls better be ringing the bells if he likes his job!

 

[BryonD]

I don't think this is true. I think the decision to respect the wishes of third-party publishers is the primary reason it didn't happen. Doing it would have generated ill-will between those publishers and the maintainer of the wiki, which would have been a bad thing for the community.

No, you are flat out wrong.
If anything the pro-wiki side got indignant and more than ever committed to doing it to those who didn't want to share. Respect and avoiding ill-will was NOT a concern.
The reality was that it was going to take a lot of time and effort and frankly, the people most fired up about getting a free collection in one place were the people least inclined to get off their butts and do the work required.

 

[howandwhy99]

No, what seems odd is the amount of people that declare that Mearls is saying open gaming failed, when his blog post concedes that the opposite is true.

Woah, woah, woah. Please don't read into my post. He's not declaring it justly dead. Only that it is so, dead.

EDIT: Or is that my mistake? Are you not referring to my post at all in your conclusion?

 

[The Little Raven]

Are you not referring to my post at all in your conclusion?

Not referring to your post. Just talking about the general attitude from people that only seem to look at the blog post title and don't bother to read that he feels it's a success that had a few areas of failure.

No, you are flat out wrong.

Got any objective proof, because opinions don't mean anything to the people that don't hold them?

If anything the pro-wiki side got indignant and more than ever committed to doing it to those who didn't want to share. Respect and avoiding ill-will was NOT a concern.

There's a difference between ranting on forums about how you're going to do it, and actually going through with the process knowing what can result from it.

I may talk about how I'll hold my landlord accountable for not clearing brush on my hillside, because it's a fire hazard, but when it comes down to the result (us clashing and me probably moving), it's the result that I'm worried about, not the time and effort required.

The reality was that it was going to take a lot of time and effort and frankly, the people most fired up about getting a free collection in one place were the people least inclined to get off their butts and do the work required.

There are people in every hobby that are willing to do all kinds of tedious work like this. People did it with the hypertext SRD, the Blue Rose SRD and other things like those.

 

[Remathilis]

Well, regardless of anything else, they don't need to re-publish the core rules with every update they could have made. Just re-publish them once every 7-10 years, somewhere between 3.5 and 4.0, y'know, when they have substantial changes. They could even release it as "PHB II" or "The Next Edition," with a host of new options, saying "Your old stuff still works, and now here's some new stuff using a slightly more cohesive ruleset, add these into your campaign as you go, we will use them going forward."

This would have a similar effect to a new edition without the complete disconnect from the previous edition. A "sweet spot" between 3.5's minor changes and 4e's major changes.

That's a false requirement (regardless of anything else).

Ok, but that leads to some problems...

3.75 syndrome. It took WotC 3 years to come up with a collection of rule changes they felt warranted a sub-edition. If 4e hadn't come around, I could easily see a 3.75 (or revision 2, or whatever) coming out this year. Considering we have about 8-10 years on an edition, this would've meant that before 3e ran its course, we would have had to buy the core rule-books as often as three times, if we wanted to keep to the latest version of the system. (and if you were a publisher, if you wanted to keep up with WotC's changes you'd have to dump stock and adopt 3.75 or be left in the dustbin as so many 3.0 products were after 3.5...)

New Rulebook, New Rule. Perhaps instead of buying new core-books, we add the rules-addition to a yearly supplement (something 4e is trying). However, if the idea was to change (and not simply add) rules, you'd end up with PHB2, MM3, or other books of that caliber being REQUIRED for play, since the new rules for grapple are in PHB2 you'd need to buy that book to reference them (in say, a Goodman Game's module where the new rules are present). Think how many 3.5 books got the "Swift and Immediate Actions" sidebar reproduced? Times that by the new bard class, the revised grapple rules, the fixed incorporeal description, the new polymorph spell, etc...

What is an edition. The last (rhetoric) question is; when would the next revision of 3.X become 4e? Would the next revision to the game simply be 3.75 dressed up as 4e? How much of the game would have to change?

 

[redcard]

Guys, you're missing a core tenant of the Open Source movement. It's one of the reasons why most , if not all Open Source projects are FREE as in beer and free as in money.

"Release Early, Release Often" is a best practice in the Open Source software world. If you cannot do that, you will be successful. So , the question of "could wizards do it?" is answered simply by stating that they'd probably switch to PDFs , have to go quarterly or monthly, and likely would charge a subscription fee.

Or just put it all on the web for free.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Woah, woah, woah. Please don't read into my post. He's not declaring it justly dead. Only that it is so, dead.

If by "dead" you mean "overall a success" ?

 

[Nadaka]

This post just made my day. It's like "alterna-english" or something. "...deployed...version control system...open portal...change/addition sumissions."

I totally agree with it, btw.

Its what I do... I am a programmer, this is how I make a living.

 

[Mark]

And remember, several key OGC producers objected to having their OGC compiled into something like an SRD.

I think I might remember a few more details on this than you seem to be remembering, or discussing now anyway. I think some publishers were nervous about the abilities of some re-users to get the copyright and OGL info correct (and that's a fair thing to be nervous about) and some others who went with 100% OGC products felt the community should give them a sell through period before re-using/redistributing it in its entirety (seems kinda fair). Some small few that had previously went with 100% OGC vowed to trim back that generosity if their stuff was going to be freely distributed in its entirety by others (another reasonable reaction since they had been opening a ton of stuff that had not been required to be open). I think there were a ton of viewpoints and permutations to this issue and some few people (you in particular) who are discussing it as if it was simple or black and white are ignoring the actuality of things.


You need to reassess the way in which you are broadbrushing OGC pubs, especially if you want to see more of them get involved in projects like an OGC wiki and even moreso if you want them to be as or more open with OGC declarations in the future. If there are specific publishers you have a problem with, speak of them specifically and link to your evidence of actual wrong-doing, if it exists. This use of "a lot of publishers" and "several key OGC producers" is starting to make you look like you are just rabble rousing.

 

[Korgoth]

Well, honestly, my FLGS hated the OGL. Sure, it produced some good products, but now every Tom Dick and Harry who could buy the rights from a movie product would create a RPG using D20. There are rows upon rows of merchndise that will never sell , will never be played, and are just crap products. Yes, there were gems, and that's awesome, but there were a lot more stinkers than gems.

No offense but this is absolute baloney. I mean sure, your FLGS might hate the OGL. But that's not the OGL's fault... it's the FLGS' fault. I mean what, did hit men show up from their distributor and force them to order 50 copies each of "Philately D20" and "The Complete Book of Gastric Disturbance D20"? No. No one forced them to order those unsold books. They ordered those unsold books because of poor business acumen. Sorry but how else to explain it?

If you don't keep up with your industry then you're going to make poor business decisions. If you order a ton of stuff that won't sell, that means you don't know your industry, your customers or both. You can't just tell your distributor "I'll take 5 of everything" and expect to do anything besides take a bath on half your merchandise.

I always hear about this "OGL glut". Guess what? In capitalism, having a glut of crummy merchandise is a self-correcting problem. People quickly figure out that Goodman Games produces a quality product and Schlamazel Scriptorium does not. One stays in business and the other doesn't.

By the same token, your FLGS, as nice and goodly as they may be, need to learn how to be discriminating in their orders in order to be more profitable... or they too will go down. And that's true whether there's an OGL or not.

Your statement amounts to saying that the OGL was bad because it doesn't allow your FLGS to be clueless.