NEWS: OGL and SRD dates/info announced

[pawsplay]

True. But then WotC might sue and you'd have to defend your actions in court. Which could get very expensive. I am not a lawyer either, but I have some idea what lawyers cost, and defending your actions in a trial would probably cost a whole lot more than five grand.

On the other hand, offering a settlement and destroying "infringing product" in the manner of disabling a download link would be simple. WotC obviously would not spend thousands pursuing an infringer who instantly folds.

WotC can only be victorious in this scenario ultimately by doggedly pursuing an infringer into court and winning a judgment. The result would send a message to other publishers, but would be hugely costly to WotC.

It's kind of an open secret, I think, that such a case is very likely to just lose. Furthermore, the sued parties are unlikely to be able to make any major financial restitution.

It's a much smarter business decision just to wait the 5 months and abide by their very nominal restrictions.

If the "nominal" restrictions make your product possible. The new license emphasizes a "heavy reliance" on the 4e book. Iron Heroes would be a nonstarter. M&M would be a non-starter. At least as I am reading it; perhaps original systems as in M&M would be okay and alternative PHB's like Arcana Evolved would not, I can't be sure, obviously.

These chicken games were played out in the 1980s, and they never went to court. Palladium did bomb The Primal Order (by WotC) out of orbit with legal threats, however. TSR went to the brink with the Judge's Guild before the issue was finessed. So I guess it's an open question.

But I know you can print a strategy guide to any video game you like. Surely you can print a strategy guide to D&D, as well. Just as a for instance.

As near as I can tell, the only thing you have to fear are companies hot enough to pursue a supposed infringement case to the bitter end, against the advice of most lawyers.

 

[Warbringer]

They're probably not worried thought because 4e has really change the rules, and none of those rules have been released as Open Game Content. In other words, all the cool new features of the new game system have never been released.

Except where they can be derived from the exisiting OGL.

 

[Hussar]

The more I think about this, I think that the $5K for the right to publish early isn't so much to keep the riff raff out or kill the small companies (though it may well do one or both of those things) as it is another marketting maneuver by WotC. Think about these facts for a moment:

1) 4E is contentious, as we can all attest to. Even if the majority of people move on to 4E, any customer attrition in such a niche industry is a bad thing. WotC is going to want to retain as much of their customer base as possible (hence the initial marketting to existing customers, such as posts by designers and developers on this very forum).

2) Any 3rd part company that is in a position to pay the $5K is a successful company, which means that it is a company with an existing, dedicated fanbase.

3) Said 3rd party companies want to remain successful, and they know as well as everyone else that most D&D players are going to be going to 4E, so they are powerfully motivated to publish 4E products.

4) WotC knows this.

Combine all these things and you get a situation where the desire to remain successful by the 3rd part copanies ends up serving as a statement of support for 4E for those fencesitters and anti-4Eers that are fans of those companies. When Necromancer and Goodman and Paizo sign up and announce that they'll be there for roll out, the fans of those companies and then motivated to buy 4E to continue to enjoy the products of the companies that they love. Moreover, they are told, even if tangentially, that 4E is in fact a good thing -- otherwise their favorite company wouldn't be signing on. In every way, it is a win for WotC, even if the costs of providing the 3rd party companies with all the necessary materials and support ends up costing more than $5K.

To use another analogy: the big, popular clubs in NY and LA are always comping celebrities. Why? because they want celebrities in their club, because celebrities draw in the paying crowds -- people want to be seen at the same club as P Diddy, or want a *chance* to see or talk to Paris. By taking the loss of a few bottle of Crystal, the clubs are getting hundreds or thousands in the door.

Quoted for Troof.

The situation between 3e and 4e is really very different. At the tail end of 2e, D&D was dying. TSR had been bought out by a company with no real RPG track record and a fairly loud group of fans decried them as "Magic'izing" D&D with 3e.

WOTC needed to get as much product on the shelves as fast as possible for market penetration. But, they didn't have the deep pockets to do it. So, they open up the OGL and let everyone and their brother push D&D stuff onto the shelves. Suddenly, an entirely new game looks like a mature RPG with loads of supplements, rather than a complete newbie to the hobby.

And it worked. Even though people got burned by the 3e glut and there was loads of crap out there, it still worked. D&D became popular again, brought back lots of lapsed players and brought in new blood. Fantastic.

This time around, though, it's different. 3e isn't dying. It might be showing its age a bit, but, lots of people are still playing 3e. We're not bleeding players into loads of other RPG's because our mechanics are showing their age. Sure, 3e might not be as profitable now, but, it's still chugging along nicely.

WOTC doesn't need help with market penetration in the same way. 3e is a strong brand with a large following. 4e will draw on that, unlike 3e which really had much less to draw on from the 2e brand.

So, we get six months of WOTC and a handful of the established big boys showing their stuff.

On another note, I truly hate the idea of losing the d20 hypertext srd. That was such a godsend. Not enough that i'm going to pony up 120 bucks a year for it, but, I'll certainly miss it.

 

[JohnSnow]

If the "nominal" restrictions make your product possible. The new license emphasizes a "heavy reliance" on the 4e book. Iron Heroes would be a nonstarter. M&M would be a non-starter. At least as I am reading it; perhaps original systems as in M&M would be okay and alternative PHB's like Arcana Evolved would not, I can't be sure, obviously.

Iron Heroes would only be a nonstarter if it insisted on including complete character creation rules and complete rules for play.

Eliminate the chapter covering ability score bonuses, or the chapter covering, say, combat, and you couldn't run the game without a PHB. You could still have variant classes, new feats, variant races, and special subsystems for skills, challenges, stunts, handling damage, and so forth.

There's plenty of variants of that kind in Thieves' World, The Black Company, Midnight and a hundred other products that were d20-compatible. And I'm sure anything that could be published under the d20-STL will be able to be published under the 4e license.

Some companies in the 3e era thought they could make products that would sell better by using the looser OGL rather than the d20-STL, and they succeeded, but I imagine that releases like Spycraft, True 20, Castles & Crusades and Arcana Evolved are precisely why the license has changed.

 

[Campbell]

Iron Heroes would only be a nonstarter if it insisted on including complete character creation rules and complete rules for play.

Eliminate the chapter covering ability score bonuses, or the chapter covering, say, combat, and you couldn't run the game without a PHB. You could still have variant classes, new feats, variant races, and special subsystems for skills, challenges, stunts, handling damage, and so forth.

There's plenty of variants of that kind in Thieves' World, The Black Company, Midnight and a hundred other products that were d20-compatible. And I'm sure anything that could be published under the d20-STL will be able to be published under the 4e license.

Some companies in the 3e era thought they could make products that would sell better by using the looser OGL rather than the d20-STL, and they succeeded, but I imagine that releases like Spycraft, True 20, Castles & Crusades and Arcana Evolved are precisely why the license has changed.

Here are the issues I see with derivative games under the proposed 4e OGL.

• If you cannot include seperate character creation or advancement rules within material that uses the 4e OGL it becomes impossible to publish a game like Mutants and Masterminds that fundamentally changes the way characters are created and advanced.
• It creates problematic referencing issues. If I'm playing Spycraft 3.0 I don't want to have to puzzle out when I need to look up a rule in the 4e PHB and when I need to look up a rule in the Spycraft 3.0 rulebook or possibly have to parse through both books, I just want to look it up in the Spycraft book.

 

[BarakO]

"The 4e OGL will contain some aspects of the old d20 license, and is more restrictive in some areas than the prior Open Gaming License. We are tying the OGL more closely to D&D. There is a free registration process, a community standards clause, enforceability clauses, and no expiration date. Phase One publishers who sign a NDA will have the opportunity to read the OGL before they pay the $5000 early licensing fee."

So, why in the world are they keeping the OGL itself secret? It's obviously done...

Seems to me that it must contain language that is going to upset many people, so they're keeping it under wraps so as to not affect their initial sales (and those that do get to see it are going to be under an NDA).

This doesn't give me a whole lot of confidence that I'm going to like what I find there.

 

[Aus_Snow]

It all sounds like good business sense, to me.

And, if I'm even reading it right, the SRD makes better sense this way too. Personally, I don't much like how the SRD currently is

Too many people by far have proclaimed loudly and often how they run their games using only the free rules available online, without even having to buy a single book, blah blah blah. This is not cool. WotC publishes a game system at great cost, and people effectively leech off them, when that is totally unnecessary? Yeah, great. :\

I think the new approach to the SRD is better. You want to use the rules from a RPG book? Buy the book.

 

[Nikosandros]

Quoted for Troof.

The situation between 3e and 4e is really very different. At the tail end of 2e, D&D was dying. TSR had been bought out by a company with no real RPG track record and a fairly loud group of fans decried them as "Magic'izing" D&D with 3e.

WOTC needed to get as much product on the shelves as fast as possible for market penetration. But, they didn't have the deep pockets to do it.

They didn't have the deep pockets? WotC was making tons of money from Magic and Pokemon when 3e was released.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I'll admit; I was one of the optimists.

Not anymore.


Nell.

Best Hope: Enough folks complain, and keep complaining, and WotC realizes that "STL as OGL" will cost them more money than "OGL as OGL". I think it is very likely that there is a strong reason why this so-called OGL comes with a NDA. :\

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

I guess I just have a different perspective. I too run a business. I'm in charge of an independent cable television provider, so I've been in the position of having to negotiate with companies MUCH larger than I am.

I view this from a consumer standpoint; if WotC wants my money, they have to provide products that I am interested in. They intentionally made changes to the base "fluff" of the game that I am not interested in. It is to their benefit to have 3rd parties willing and able to provide the original fluff material as soon as 4e is released. The Necromancer announcement is the first thing that has made me even consider changing.

Again, from a consumer standpoint, if WotC wants my money, they have to provide products that I am interested in. They intentionally made changes to the base rules of the game that I do not believe that I am interested in. I am not going to buy three hardcovers to find out whether I am interested or not. If there is an SRD that can settle that question, then if the rules are something I am interested in, I am likely to buy the books because (like nearly every other RPGer I have ever met) I like physical product. It is to their benefit to have an online SRD that accomplishes this function.

Now, with 3.5, they might feel burned by having an online SRD, because not everyone jumped ship from 3.0. Cry me a river, though. IMHO, 3.5 made some good changes, and some really boneheaded ones. YMMV. I know that there are people out there -- perhaps even a majority -- who prefer 3.5 to 3.0 100%.

IMHO, WotC is going to need 3rd-party partners and an online SRD to sell the game. Certainly they will need it to sell to DI. The DI might sell well on the basis of "added value". I predict it won't do so well on the basis of "We restricted your access compared to what you were used to unless you fork over the cash monthly, and you can pay more for these value added features if you want". I'm just not seeing that happen.

What really hurt WotC, IMHO, is that third parties produced the books they should have produced, earlier and better (and often using the same group of writers). Now, I see that they are restricting the license, presumably in part to prevent exactly that, and it makes me wonder exactly how much they intend to stifle innovation.

See, the game I am playing...my home campaign....belongs to me in my mind. It might use IP that belongs to WotC (although it should be noted that the eminant Col Pladoh has put some of that into question, suggesting for instance that Mind Flayers were his IP, not transferred to TSR, and thus not transferred to WotC, and has declared that he made them Open) and to other companies, but that's not what I come to the table for. I don't say, "What's the best WotC IP I can use?" I say, "What's the best tool to make the best possible game (according to my own criteria)?"

TSR got a lot of flack for trying to restrict end-user expression of creativity in the old days, for the very same "valid business concerns" that are being trotted out now to defend WotC's actions. And where did it get TSR?


RC