New GSL Announcement

[SteveC]

Sigh. Well it was a nice couple of days, wasn't it? In looking at the decisions that seem to be coming from WotC and the "you are either with us or against us," attitude, I think a lot of the parties involved should do some research into the Law of Unintended Consequences. Take a look at the book Freakonomics for a little better idea of what I'm talking about.

What has happened here, to my mind, is that WotC has managed to create a strong possibility for competition for their new game in the method they've chosen to use to shut competition down. What do I mean? Well, by saying, "you're either with us or against us," and then defining that in extremely stark terms, they're making a lot of the OGL market become their competition because they'll have nowhere else to go. Will Green Ronin publish 4E? Almost certainly not at this point. Will Paizo? Will Mongoose? Will any number of excellent smaller publishers who do business in the different OGL systems? Nope.

Would all of these companies have made 4E products if the new GSL was merely a tweaked version of the OGL? I can't speak for them, but I'll speculate that they almost certainly would. Why? Because D&D is going to be successful! It's going to sell and people are going to play it, and you're going to have a market for your games!

If you have a company that produces, say, some True20 and M&M products, and they're selling for you, in addition to your D20 lines are you going to abandon them? Almost certainly not.

At this point, it is entirely in interest for one of the largest tier third party companies to make a competing product for 4E (such as Pathfinder) and to aggressively market this game to all of those third party companies to give them a niche. Would a game like this exist or really matter in the larger scheme of things if WotC hadn't made publishing an either/or decision? Almost certainly not. Will it now? I don't know, but it is in the interest of every current OGL publisher to make it matter, because it's their livelihood.

That's the unintended consequence: by trying to stifle "competition" (and I'm putting that in quotes because how much real competition is this to WotC?) they've given the key players every reason to compete with them. Or to try at least.

--Steve

 

[pawsplay]

IHowever I stand by my point, which as far as I can tell, was not addressed in any detail earlier. Letting 3rd parties use the 'Dungeons and Dragons' brand on their on their products is groundbreaking -- even when compared to the d20STL and OGL.

Not in the vacuum-cleaner bag industry. Not in the RPG-focused magazine business. But I'll allow this: in the 21st century hardcopy-published RPG segment, that ground had not been recently disturbed to a great extent until this came along.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

You misunderstand how the license works, if you think that adventures are somehow handled differently than sourcebooks or rules expansions.

It doesn't matter -- no matter the product type: No cross-licensed products would be allowed, for the reasons stated. Even if the product in question had only a minimum of open content, that would be the gateway through which the entire content of one license could be used with the other.

Fair enough. Although to clarify, I didn't think the license applied seperately, I just didn't think about how what might have worked when "dual-statting" adventures would have applied to rulebooks.

As an aside though, if (and I realize it's an impossible if) they were to allow dual-stating (with say a 4E header), couldn't the OGL specificy that anything under the 4E header was specifically disallowed from being open/OGL content?

Again I know it's not going to happen but it makes an interesting thought exercise (such as the scope of my thoughts are )

 

[GMSkarka]

As an aside though, if (and I realize it's an impossible if) they were to allow dual-stating (with say a 4E header), couldn't the OGL specificy that anything under the 4E header was specifically disallowed from being open/OGL content?

If you mean could a publisher declare the 4E-headed material as closed, then yes -- they could. However:

1) All it would take is one publisher to screw this up for the cat to be out of the bag -- and given the number of publishers who, to this day, screw up their implementation of the *existing* OGL, I certainly would have ZERO confidence in the security of this method.

2) Someone could still make the argument that the 4E material should be open under the "derivative content" clauses of the OGL.

Again I know it's not going to happen but it makes an interesting thought exercise (such as the scope of my thoughts are )

Somewhat less interesting for me as a "thought exercise", since I do this for a living. This *is* my "day job", and I've got a kid starting college in the Fall. This is a bit more stressful for me, as you might imagine.

 

[Orcus]

I dont think anyone should be mad at Wizards either.

Heck, the concept of letting us use their license is to help sell core books. In my view, this restriction--more than any of their other restrictions about content and sexuality and violence--actually aims right at the heart of that key purpose.

Now, dont get me wrong, I would strongly prefer that this clause not exist. But I'm not really in a position to gripe about that. They want to crush out 3E support and drive people to 4E, that's their choice. And I cant say it is a bad one. Others may feel differently. But it makes perfect business sense to me. I didnt see that coming. And I like to be right. So it aggravates me on that level. But it makes sense. The point of the GSL is to help sell 4E. One way to do that is to close off support for 3E. They cant revoke the OGL/3E SRD, so the only way to accomplish closing down 3E is to do exactly what they are doing. As their attorney, I probably would have advised them to do exactly that.

Clark

I know it is bad form to quote yourself, so sorry for that. But I keep coming back to this same premise.

Yes, I am mad about the "poison pill" and I think it is shortsighted and I think it was poorly handled and implemented. But I have to put that aside. That's my problem, not theirs.

The bottom line is they are still doing something amazing--they are opening 4E. I continue to feel that is an amazing accomplishment.

Here is where it starts to become their problem and where I am calling for calm till we see the final terms and for Wizards to consider addressing a specific concern that was likely an unanticipated consequence: backstock.

If they go through all the trouble of making a GSL it has to be because they know there is value to 4E support by third parties. And I strongly feel there is. YOu dont make a license like this so that no one uses it. You make it so it is used. So that 4E is supported. I'm not sure Wizards realizes the pdf/backstock issue. Many companies who would love to support 4E and who do not publish 3E standalone lines and who are happy to jump right in on 4E and not make another 3E product might still not use the GSL -IF- it requires that company to also turn of pdf sales of its old products. Many, many companies have a pretty substantial back catalog that creates a surprisingly nice stream for the companies. Having to forgo that would likely mean that nearly every company that has a backstock that wants to support 4E wont do so beacuse they cant give up the backlist pdf sales.

So here is my open plea to Wizards:

I know why you did what you did. I understand it. Whether or not *I* like it isnt really material. I know why you did it and it makes sense. But please consider something that you may not have considered: prior backlist pdfs. Let us continue to sell those. The fans love them. Collectors want them. We cant reprint the books. But people want that stuff. It has nothing to do with supporting or not supporting 4E. Please grandfather that stuff in.

That is all I ask. I'm not even asking you to remove the poison pill (though if you did, that would be great; I think the minimal detriment of allowing, say, GR to keep doing MM is outweighed 100 to 1 by the fact that they will be awesome supporters of 4E. Same with Paizo and others.). Please consider the backstock issue. Because a good number of publishers, myself included, might not go to 4E if we have to give that up. And I cant imagine those things were the intended target of the "noncompete poison pill".

I'm defending Wizards on this, in the big picture. I dont like the way it was done at all and I disagree with the choice, but that isnt my call. Being able to support D&D is amazing.

And I'm not faulting Scott or Linae. I know they fought hard to get this done. I know they are behing 4E 100%. And I know many of us want to support 4E 100%. Now lets try to work on removing the uninteded issues that might slow down that 100% support.

Clark

 

[kalanijasmine]

Clark, I am 100% in agreement that the GSL was almost axed, and, like you, I am fully in support of the effort that went into getting us any GSL by people like Scott and Linae

I would appreciate some feedback from yourself, Linae, or Scott regarding a concern I have about signing onto the GSL and publishing 4th edition materials (see below)

In 2004, I seriously considered publishing third party material for 3.5, as I believe in my ability to publish high quality material - for the fact that I was almost published as a child author at the age of 7, was published in a short story anthology in 1997, and later in 2003 in the Sedona Journal (a major spiritual publication). In addition, I have been working on my own game system since 1997 (The Lethal Game System), and have spent considerable time over the last decade reverse engineering the game systems of numerous companies in order to determine what made their products successful, and what mistakes were made in said products which detracted from its overall enjoyment.

However, I decided not to enter the third-party market at that time due to the incredible difficulty I would have had making my products visible in the sea of third party material already on the market.

Disappointed as I was, I could not justify the commitment to producing third party material, and so continued working on fine-tuning the LGS in my spare time. While I have put the LGS on hold for the next 2 to 5 years in order to allow the hype surrounding 4e to stabilize, I have made the commitment to myself to make the transition from amature developer to professional FT developer - and would like to commit my creative resources to producing 4th edition material as I believe that my products will have greater visibility should I enter the third party market at this time.

My only hesitation about supporting 4e, is the remote possibility that by doing so, the GSL will somehow prevent me from publishing the "Lethal Game System" (LGS) and "Lethal Fantasy" products I have spent the last 10 years developing, or that by publishing the LGS, I will be unable to continue supporting fourth edition and/or publish new 4th edition material.

I would love it if I was able to support both game systems - Dungeons & Dragons and Lethal Fantasy (a gritty d12 system).

As to whether Lethal Fantasy and the LGS are OGL material or not - At this time, they are closed material, however, I have been giving serious thought to adopting some form of third-party licence for my own products also, as I too, believe in the concept of open gaming.

Given the fact that the OGL is not compatible with the GSL, I will definately not be publishing my material under that licence. I may however, choose to adopt some other existing licence (eg. The CC) or find some way of drafting up my own version of an open game licence for use with my product.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

Somewhat less interesting for me as a "thought exercise", since I do this for a living. This *is* my "day job", and I've got a kid starting college in the Fall. This is a bit more stressful for me, as you might imagine.

My apologies if I've annoyed you.

 

[Scipio202]

Clark, I am 100% in agreement that the GSL was almost axed, and, like you, I am fully in support of the effort that went into getting us any GSL by people like Scott and Linae

Some time after you went to bed last night, I posted the following question as I am concerned over my ability to publish my own independent product should I decide to publish 4th edition products.

While I am under the understanding that the GSL cannot prohibit me from publishing my own independent game system (as it would be some violation of the Sharman Act), I would still appreciate some feedback from you, Linae, or Scott as I would love to support fourth edition if at all possible.

It may matter if you want to publish your own system under the OGL, or if you just want to publish it in a closed manner (or under a non-OGL open license). If the latter was okay with you, then I'd have to imagine the GSL would allow it. To do otherwise would be equivalent to saying "once you use GSL, you can't publish any product that isn't GSL", which I think would be impossible.

 

[Urizen]

I could speculate on how many of the larger publishers aren't going to go the 4th edition route at this point, but what really interests me right now is, who IS?

I know Necromancer will, but who else?

Will Goodman games choose to drop lines like C&C and Xcrawl in favor of newer versions (if possible)?

Would Crafty games drop Spycraft, or more likely revise it for a Modern GSL license?

What about Kobold Quarterly and the Open Design projects?

This decision by WOTC impacts so many publishers. It boggles the mind to think they would go so far as to risk alienating nearly every other 3rd party publisher, just to keep people from publishing OGL-based gaming materials.

Yeah yeah, business is business, and people can sit here and say "But it's AWESOME they kept it open," and all that... But at what cost?

From a consumer standpoint, If I no longer get to buy cool Spycraft products, or true20 products, or C&C products all because Publishers had to make a decision, and chose to go the way they felt was best for their company, I'd be pretty pissed off.

 

[Scipio202]

I have a question for publishing company owners. Suppose the "one open license per company" clause of the GSL were such that if you created a wholly owned subsidiary company to technically be the licensee for the GSL you and your staff could still produce and sell (different) OGL and GSL products at the same time. Do any of you know how much of a business/legal difficulty such a procedure would be?