New GSL Announcement

[Jack99]

Thanks for letting us know, Scott. It's going to be a long 2 weeks wait on these boards...

 

[Nyarlathotep]

Is Pathfinder going to be open? Is it going to be so open that I can make my own Pathfinder SRD website so my players can play Pathfinder without having to buy the books? Or even republish a "pocket" Pathfinder? No?

Yeah, thats what I thought.

I'm not sure that is correct. From what I've read over on the Paizo site, it's all supposed to be open content. I could be wrong on this, but that was the gist of it.

 

[HyrumOWC]

Which brings up another interesting point. I don't see an OGL for any other company. Out of ALL RPGs companies, none have been as generous with their engine as WotC. NONE. Name one.

Mongoose RuneQuest, Mongoose Traveller, ACTION! System, FATE/Spirit of the Century.

There's 4, and 3 companies.

Is Pathfinder going to be open? Is it going to be so open that I can make my own Pathfinder SRD website so my players can play Pathfinder without having to buy the books? Or even republish a "pocket" Pathfinder? No?

Yes, it will be, because it's built on the OGL foundation and parts of it (the rules bits) will be open. You won't be able to use Golarion, but then again you can't use Greyhawk or FR or Eberron or Spelljammer either.

Look, I'm in this industry because of d20 and the OGL. Almost everything I've done in the OGL pool is close to 100% Open because I LOVE the concept of Open Gaming.

That being said, I'm nervous about the idea that if I jump into the 4e pool I can't have anything to do with 3.x, or even worse, stop selling my catalog of 3.x products. If, and I'll stress again, if, that's the case, then right now I'm not going to do anything for 4e. That may change in the future, based on a whole lot of other factors, but my publishing plans for 2008 now have nothing to do with 4e. I'll concentrate on the few remaining 3.x ideas I've got, plus our new Call of Cthulhu license, plus Chill.

Hyrum.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

hopefully our fears are unfounded and we can laugh at this thread in a few weeks from now.

 

[am181d]

Huh. I was about to post to say, "There's no way that WotC could/would draft a GSL that prevents a company from maintaining separate OGL and GSL lines," but Rouse's decision to stop commenting suggests things are much murkier than one might otherwise think.

Weird.

 

[GMSkarka]

Never mind -- Hyrum beat me to it, by pointing out to Mr. "Name One. Yeah, I thought so." just how mind-boggling wrong he is.

 

[Urizen]

Heck even companies like Green Ronin and Paizo, who built their entire business off WotC's game design don't reciprocate to open gaming or give to it the way WotC has. Is Pathfinder going to be open? Is it going to be so open that I can make my own Pathfinder SRD website so my players can play Pathfinder without having to buy the books? Or even republish a "pocket" Pathfinder? No?

Green Ronin is about to Open up their True20 license in May so that ANY Publisher can use their logo for free and create authorized products. They've BEEN doing this with Mutants and Masterminds for years.

If that's not reciprocating, then I don't know what is.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

Huh. I was about to post to say, "There's no way that WotC could/would draft a GSL that prevents a company from maintaining separate OGL and GSL lines," but Rouse's decision to stop commenting suggests things are much murkier than one might otherwise think.

Weird.

I think it's a wise move on his part though. There is another thread somewhere here about "Get D20 while you can" where he flat-out says that the d20 License isn't going away and then about 10 - 20 posts later says that he was wrong and the license is going away. Without having the GSL in front of him, I'd prefer not to hear speculation from company representatives because it may be wrong and the wailing and gnashing of teeth that would follow would be ... impressive to say the least.

 

[GMSkarka]

Huh. I was about to post to say, "There's no way that WotC could/would draft a GSL that prevents a company from maintaining separate OGL and GSL lines," but Rouse's decision to stop commenting suggests things are much murkier than one might otherwise think.

Yeah, call me cynical, but if one of the self-professed architects of the license ("Linae and I (and a lot of other people at WOTC) worked our butts off to get the GSLs done.") can't clearly say that the restriction is on a per-product rather than a company-wide basis....

Well, I'd say that's fairly ominous.

 

[Scott_Rouse]

Huh. I was about to post to say, "There's no way that WotC could/would draft a GSL that prevents a company from maintaining separate OGL and GSL lines," but Rouse's decision to stop commenting suggests things are much murkier than one might otherwise think.

Weird.

Have you ever read a contract that wasn't murky? We could argue about the word "any" for hours.

There are a lot of semantical arguments being batted around and with out the words in front of me I am just another batter at the plate.