New GSL Announcement

[Enkhidu]

...Caveat, I don't think WotC is reusing anyone else's OGC in 4e. They hire their own designers for a reason.

Word for word? Agreed.

General implementation? Not so much. The seeds for a lot of ideas in 4e had a beta version in 3rd party products.

 

[BryonD]

I can see why WotC might not continue it, too. It's not a mystery, and no nuance is required. I've said it several times: They're walking back from the OGL.

Absolutely.
And that is completely reasonable, 100% within their rights and makes total sense from their point of view.

It sucks that we can agree with that and yet somehow disagreeing in any way with any other action taken by WotC (or reportedly taken) gets cast as rejecting their right to do what they want with 4E. It just ain't the case.

They can even put any strings they want in the GSL. Perfectly within their rights.
But having the right to do something that amounts to an attempt to stick their thumb in the eye of the gamer community doesn't make that action above critical response.

 

[BryonD]

I didn't call anyone a religious zealot, I said a "religious-like zeal", which is what I believe happens when you care more about the OGL as a thing unto itself rather than the bigger picture of letting the publishers publish D&D.

It is religious to see Open Gaming as a bigger picture than the most recent edition of a single game?????

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Okay, maybe it wasn't you, but I distinctly remember somebody using the exact phrase "Wizards doesn't understand the OGL". I could have sworn it was you.

I did say that the whole mess was caused by a misunderstanding and walking back from the OGL.

I'm pretty sure you have said at least once "Wizards doesn't understand Open Gaming" or something of the sort.

Do me a favor and don't quote me if you're not sure. I did not say they didn't understand Open Gaming.

What is immediately obvious to any publisher who has been paying attention since the first announcement, and who is familiar with the license, is that somebody at WotC, somebody in a position to set policy with respect to the OGL, does not understand it, as shown in Exhibit A (the corpse is still available for viewing on WotC's site):

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4news/20080108a

And when that news was announced here, I followed up with a very simple, straightforward question:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=215976

So, let's review: In less than 15 minutes from the time that I first read the announcement, I immediately saw a problem and brought it to WotC's attention. I was not alone.

What happened after that question was raised in January?

Back to the drawing board for months.

And here we are. It's still unclear whether their understanding of, or their policy towards, the OGL is complete even today. It does seem at least that their understanding firmed up, though that revelation seemed to affect the policy.

 

[jmucchiello]

It's still a critique, not so much of the OGL, but from the viewpoint that the OGL in itself was a superior license to any other.

You want a critique of the OGL? It's a steaming pile of dog doo. That said, it is also the most perfect, most open, most useful IP license for gaming on the market short of "Here's the store; do what you want".

You don't like the OGL because it is viral. How do you know the GSL is not viral too? The GSL puts more control in WotC's hands. But that doesn't mean they threw out the viral nature of the OGL. We won't know for sure until it is released. Up until now, we've only been given a glimpse of the manner in which the GSL is similar to the d20 STL. Nothing about the "content" portion of the license has been revealed. So your complaints about the OGL are orthogonal to the issues we can meaningfully debate. When we know how the content portion of the license reads, then you can debate those points. Until then....

 

[La Bete]

It is religious to see Open Gaming as a bigger picture than the most recent edition of a single game?????

Possibly when you start to Capitalise?

Gents - you've all been here before - you already know you're not going to convince each other, and it's already gotten to insults....

I mean I know that this thread is going to get locked and all shortly anyway, but unless you want it to go down in flames, perhaps there should be some cooling of tempers?

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Wulf, the sentence before the one you quoted said there were two enormous stumbling blocks. So you are agreeing with me yet your tone implies disagreement. Am I reading you incorrectly?

In the first part, I was mostly agreeing with you while expanding on your remarks. In the second part, I was mostly disagreeing with you that "hiring their own designers" meant much of anything with respect to how many concepts from Open design end up co-opted into 4e.

So it was a bit of both. Overall I'd say that means you read correctly.

 

[JohnRTroy]

It is religious to see Open Gaming as a bigger picture than the most recent edition of a single game?????

I don't think it's religious, and I can understand the concern, but I do believe those few who were saying they would rather the game be closed than have Wizards ask publishers to give up any products under the OGL are being short sighted and unfair to those publishers. It's sort of the Lady and Tiger story--the people who would rather Wizards close the system are like the ones who would choose the Tiger.

If the OGL is a strong movement, it will survive without the endorsement of WoTC, posion pill or not. If those publishers decide they'd rather do 4e, I guess it wasn't strong enough to survive. C'est LaVie

You want a critique of the OGL? It's a steaming pile of dog doo. That said, it is also the most perfect, most open, most useful IP license for gaming on the market short of "Here's the store; do what you want".

You don't like the OGL because it is viral. How do you know the GSL is not viral too? The GSL puts more control in WotC's hands. But that doesn't mean they threw out the viral nature of the OGL. We won't know for sure until it is released.

I think the OGL is great if your a publisher, but I think it hurt Wizards because it gave a little too much control away. It's a little lopsided, it's more beneficial for the licensees than the licensors. My only argument about the OGL is I think it's a little too loose.

As for viral, I suspect that element of the OGL is one of the reasons the OGL isn't being used anymore. My criticisms of viral is this--I think content creators should have the ultimate control over their creations, so I think the viral part shouldn't be mandated--the same reason I think the BSD license is superior to the GPL.

I actually see removing the viral clause as being helpful to the publishers, so they can produce new rules without having them placed in other compilation works or for free when they are trying to make a profit. And if you give them the choice, some publishers may allow their work as viral. But let them make that choice. So I am hoping the GSL gives them that incentive.

 

[Oldtimer]

I didn't call anyone a religious zealot, I said a "religious-like zeal", which is what I believe happens when you care more about the OGL as a thing unto itself rather than the bigger picture of letting the publishers publish D&D.

Oh, yeah?

Well, let me just say "caveman-like stupidity", which is what I believe happens when you care more about "winning" an argument rather than the bigger picture of truthfulness.

Your posts continue to twist and turn reality into a distortion field seldom seen outside of Science Fiction. Trying to rebut each craziness is futile at best. You are hard set in your conviction that Open Gaming is a hippie pipe-dream and conventional business thinking will always rule the world.

Oh, and it's "OGF-L", not "OGL-F".

 

[jmucchiello]

I think the OGL is great if your a publisher, but I think it hurt Wizards because it gave a little too much control away. It's a little lopsided, it's more beneficial for the licensees than the licensors. My only argument about the OGL is I think it's a little too loose.

Only because WotC didn't take the community content and merge it back into the game. The whole point of a viral license is to get back from those who get. If the licensors don't take content back from the licensees then of course they have a net loss. But they chose to take that loss. They could have taken back the licensees' content (swapping roles) and gained. The OGL is not lopsided. WotC's use of it was lopsided.

And even that may not be true. If you agree with Wulf that all OGC created under 3e is playtesting for 4e, then WotC got back infinitely more than they put into the OGL.

As for viral, I suspect it's one of the reasons the OGL isn't being used anymore. My criticisms of viral is this--I think content creators should have the ultimate control over their creations, so I think the viral part shouldn't be mandated--the same reason I think the BSD license is superior to the GPL. I actually see removing the viral clause as being helpful to the publishers, so they can produce new rules without having them placed in other compilation works or for free when they are trying to make a profit. And if you give them the choice, some publishers may allow their work as viral. But let them make that choice. So I am hoping the GSL gives them that incentive.

Publishers who wanted to control their content downstream have/had the option of making their innovations PI or of not making their innovations OGC in the first place. Green Ronin did it with Power Points in Mutants and Masterminds. You can't really reuse anything that is truly new from M&M because the new parts are tangled in the GR PI of Power Points. Monte Cook's AU/AE contains lots of innovative bits that he just did not claim was OGC. Both of them created separate licenses for people who wanted to reuse that material. There are plenty of similar examples.

Nothing about the viral nature of the OGL stopped them or other publishers from controlling things they did not want out of their control. You can be as generous or as stingy as you want with the OGL since you ultimately declare what is or is not OGC. So your critique of the viral nature of the OGL has no legs.

And as I said above, we don't know that the viral nature of the OGL is not also in the GSL.