Mike Mearls On the OGL

[Delta]

I'm somewhat amused by this. I've been in a lot of discussions where I point out that Ryan Dancey's original idea for Open Gaming was to have open, iterative advancement of the mechanics. (That's specifically what brought me back to the 3E.) But whenever I've said that I get massive flack for misunderstanding the goal of the OGL.

Well, here's Mearls now, again saying the exact same thing. It's the first thing he mentions in the article, the biggest section, and the only point of disappointment.

But once again I'll say that the fault for this not working lies squarely with WOTC. As the 800-pound gorilla, they had to demonstrate that outside rule changes and demands were being incorporated back into the core rules (as stated in Dancey's original FAQ, still up at Wizards.com). They completely didn't do that -- very quickly walking away from Open Gaming, ditching Ryan Dancey, and cooking up 3.5E within 36 months that took off in a completely unpredictable direction.

In later years the excuse for this has been that WOTC has such spectacular designers in-house that no one else's designs could possibly be useful in comparison. But that's classic "cathedral vs. bazaar" thinking which itself shows that Open Sourcing was being rejected by WOTC before it ever had a chance to prove itself.

 

[Fifth Element]

I picked up a copy of true20 revised yesterday at books a million, it was the last one left sitting right next to stacks and stacks of unsold 4e books.

Did you ask when was the last time they restocked both titles?

 

[frankthedm]

The blog brought up what seemed a good point on not enough companies were tweaking the system, but that would be very hard to do since leveling up was kind of a hands off thing for OGL/d20 IIRC. Plus any tweaks reducing player damage output would have nerfed book sales....

'Did any companies do an AC/saves/HP/damage per level revision of 3.5 for players NPCs and monsters?'

A few like True20 went away from HP/Damage, but did any keep them and track them [like 4e now does]

 

[ThirdWizard]

I thought the entire point of the OGL was for publishing d20 system products and derivitives, why would someone use the OGL for something non-d20 when the primary benefit of the OGL was access to using the d20 system in your product?

I'm not saying the OGL was not a success. I would never make that claim. I'm saying it wasn't a movement. And, there were games published under the OGL that weren't d20, the primary example that comes to mind being FUDGE. But, that's an outlier. And there are others. But, a few outliers do not make a movement.

I also know at least one of those publishers (Pinnacle) that didn't "get into the market under the OGL blanket", at least not unless the OGL was around back in '94-'95 when Pinnacle started publishing Deadlands, Great Rail War, Hell on Earth, etc. I'm pretty sure White Wolf was around before the OGL too, given that I remember my FLGS reducing the shelf space for D&D 2nd Ed. to make room for V:tM books.

When I say "market" I'm referring to the OGL market. And when I talk about a movement, I'm talking about traction in more area than WotC based publications.

Are you trying to say that the failing is that the OGL didn't attract established companies, or is it that the established companies didn't use the OGL to open source their existing products without converting them to d20?

Yes, that exactly. Almost no one opened content unless it was content that was derived from other OGC. There were very few contributers to OGC who were not required to contribute to it under the terms of the OGL.

To have companies release their non-d20 system under the OGL, the OGL would need to be maintained by a separate organization rather than a specific player in the market.

The fact that no version of the OGL cannot be revoked means that there would not have to be any maintaining going on anywhere. There is no danger in releasing your content as Open in that regard. It isn't really WotC's OGL in that context: genie, bottle, out.

But, my entire point is that the OGL wasn't a true movement simply because it was tied so specifically to Wizards of the Coast and Dungeons and Dragons and never really expanded beyond that. I'm not saying its a failing, exactly, of the license, and I'm certainly not saying the license was a failure. I'm simply pointing out its limitations as an Open Source movement.

 

[Mark]

In effect every single company that relased anything under the OGL added to the SRD.

Nope. Strictly speaking, they added to the pool of OGC which also includes the OGC material from the SRD but the SRD is a separate document.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

To say that OGL failed because there was not an iterative design process with a centralized evolving core is not quite correct. It did not develop a centralized evolving core because there was never a system in place to aggregate that core.

I think this is a critical point that no one to this point has really brought up before. People have placed that onus on WoTC, but I don't know that they ever really saw that as their role. My personal thought at the time was that if systems came into play that were demonstrably better than what WoTC produced that they would then use them. As Mearls rightly points out, thats a very tough call when you're dealing with something that has so much subjectivity involved.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I'm somewhat amused by this. I've been in a lot of discussions where I point out that Ryan Dancey's original idea for Open Gaming was to have open, iterative advancement of the mechanics. (That's specifically what brought me back to the 3E.) But whenever I've said that I get massive flack for misunderstanding the goal of the OGL.

Well, here's Mearls now, again saying the exact same thing. It's the first thing he mentions in the article, the biggest section, and the only point of disappointment.

But once again I'll say that the fault for this not working lies squarely with WOTC. As the 800-pound gorilla, they had to demonstrate that outside rule changes and demands were being incorporated back into the core rules (as stated in Dancey's original FAQ, still up at Wizards.com). They completely didn't do that -- very quickly walking away from Open Gaming, ditching Ryan Dancey, and cooking up 3.5E within 36 months that took off in a completely unpredictable direction.

I think that saying it was WotC fault isn't wrong. They never had the required "feed-back" mechanismn in place. Ryan either didn't think of installing it, or it was just impossible for him (or WotC itself?) to do so.

Thus, the iterative design could not happen in the SRD so that everyone can see it. It is nice if dozens of publishers offer Open Content, but if you have to find these dozen publishers first, it can be off-putting.

So, maybe if we'd want to create the perfect "OGL 2.0", there would need to be a "community repository" where people could present their changes, variants and subsystems.

The problem might be building the core in the first place now. 3E can only be used in the context of the OGL, 4E only in the context of the GSL. And without these two game systems, it's hard to find a universally accepted system.
Maybe a bunch of freelance designers could "hack" something together, but would it be accepted?

 

[chriton227]

I've seen this repeated time and time again. And, I've always asked the same question: What did 3rd party publishers add to the SRD?

Why does everyone get to crap all over WOTC for not putting their books up, but, everyone else gets a free ride?

I think it is because the SRD is the intellectual property of WotC, and only they have the right to modify it and still call it the SRD. The OGL just gave others the right to use the SRD in their products. Since only WotC has the authority to make changes to the SRD, other companies not making changes to it isn't a "free ride". And according to the OGL, any crunchy bits published under the OGL are available to other publishers, unlike the majority of the WotC products which were not required to be published under either the OGL or the STL since D&D is their property to begin with.

 

[Mark]

I think this is a critical point that no one to this point has really brought up before. People have placed that onus on WoTC, but I don't know that they ever really saw that as their role. My personal thought at the time was that if systems came into play that were demonstrably better than what WoTC produced that they would then use them. As Mearls rightly points out, thats a very tough call when you're dealing with something that has so much subjectivity involved.

By that logic, shouldn't 4E have been produced under the OGL?

 

[JDJblatherings]

'Did any companies do an AC/saves/HP/damage per level revision of 3.5 for players NPCs and monsters?'

Yes.