OGC Wiki?

[Yair]

Will it be closing up flavor text and such, or cutting down on the amount of open crunch?

Don't tempt him

How about "Everything that must be OGC by virtue of the OGL and prior OGC in its Section 15 is OGC. Everything else isn't"? Simple, effective, and no dichotomy needed. He can close off both.

 

[philreed]

Here's a question for anyone. How would you write your OGC declaration for the following item in order to protect your fluff and open any crunch contained in the description?



ARCHER’S GREATCOAT
Appearance: This richly crafted greatcoat is deep green in color and hangs down to the wearer’s knees. Thick straps wrap around the coat, fastening with gray metal buckles when the coat is closed. The left arm of the coat is leather while the rest of the garment is made of heavy linen. The entire coat is lined with white fur and is horribly warm to wear in all but the coldest of conditions. Down the left side of the coat are dozens of long pockets, each one of which is designed specifically to hold a single arrow.
Appraise Information: DC 16. This greatcoat was specially made two decades ago for the ranger Delphakae, a masterful woodsman that was as well known for his expertise with the bow as he was for his skill at tracking dangerous prey. The fur that was used to line the coat was taken from a winter wolf that Delphakae killed during the Goblinhost Campaign; a brutal goblinoid uprising that almost resulted in the death of thousands of human settlers.
Value: 565 gp (5 gp for the coat, 35 gp for the winter wolf fur, 25 gp for the artistry involved in the manufacture of the coat, and 500 gp for its historical significance).
Special Rules: The coat can be used to carry a total of 36 arrows, doing away with the need to carry a quiver. The coat acts as leather armor when worn and provides its wearer with a +2 circumstance bonus to Fortitude saves made to resist the effects of cold weather.

 

[philreed]

I didn't mean closing content that MUST be open, I meant decreasing the number of "must be open" items in a product....like cutting out most of the feats because they're open instead of having a ton of them in the book.

Now I understand. It's extremely unlikely that I would so something like this. I enjoy writing feats, spells, classes, and other items that -- and I'm agreeing with you here -- must be open because of their nature.

 

[jezter6]

Here's a question for anyone. How would you write your OGC declaration for the following item in order to protect your fluff and open any crunch contained in the description?



ARCHER’S GREATCOAT
Appearance: This richly crafted greatcoat is deep green in color and hangs down to the wearer’s knees. Thick straps wrap around the coat, fastening with gray metal buckles when the coat is closed. The left arm of the coat is leather while the rest of the garment is made of heavy linen. The entire coat is lined with white fur and is horribly warm to wear in all but the coldest of conditions. Down the left side of the coat are dozens of long pockets, each one of which is designed specifically to hold a single arrow.
Appraise Information: DC 16. This greatcoat was specially made two decades ago for the ranger Delphakae, a masterful woodsman that was as well known for his expertise with the bow as he was for his skill at tracking dangerous prey. The fur that was used to line the coat was taken from a winter wolf that Delphakae killed during the Goblinhost Campaign; a brutal goblinoid uprising that almost resulted in the death of thousands of human settlers.
Value: 565 gp (5 gp for the coat, 35 gp for the winter wolf fur, 25 gp for the artistry involved in the manufacture of the coat, and 500 gp for its historical significance).
Special Rules: The coat can be used to carry a total of 36 arrows, doing away with the need to carry a quiver. The coat acts as leather armor when worn and provides its wearer with a +2 circumstance bonus to Fortitude saves made to resist the effects of cold weather.

Personally, for a single item such as this, I'd probably not close any of it. It's too small of anything to really worry about really. Sure, there is fluff, but I wouldn't consider any of it enough to really consider closing, and I would probably have just removed all references to the Delphakae and just make it generic. No need to include that information in a description of an item, and it does me no good as a GM.

Anything that's a basic description of what an item, feat, or class does, is purely just to make people know what it is, and I personally feel it should be fairly wide open.

Honestly, why try to close it? So someone can't just take a bunch of items and re-release them free, or as some sort of equipment collection?

If I were to close stuff like that, I'd open up my product name with the requirement that you could use the whole text as 'open' only as long as you credited the source right there.

'From Ronin Arts 12.3 archer's coats' - Archer's Greatcoat.........yadda yadda....

I'd much RATHER that stuff like that was the case, that you could reuse OGC, but you had to cite the ORIGINAL source of the item directly.

 

[Yair]

Here's a question for anyone. How would you write your OGC declaration for the following item in order to protect your fluff and open any crunch contained in the description?

"Open Game Content consists of ... including all the names and Appriase DCs of the equipment, as well as their "value" and "special rules" paragraphs."
Of course, IANAL. And I would just release it all as OGC, too. I'd only close off entire pages or sections. If I really felt the need to present both OGC and closed content together, I would consider using a coloring scheme like Atlas Games does. (Did. So sad.)

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

A question:

Why publish something as OGC at all if you don't want people to republish it?

And a comment:

I'd like to publish a PDF of d20-based document based on a campaign setting I wrote a while back. I don't care about making money, but I also don't want to pay a lawyer to check my stuff and tell me whether it's kosher per the OGL. So while people might like my setting and have fun playing in it, they'll probably never see it because I don't want Hasbro or anyone else to sue me for looking at their IP in the wrong way. The same problem arises with a d20 SRD wiki. If anything that isn't actually open content gets posted, or if it gets posted in the wrong fashion, someone can be held responsible and sued. And if I don't think I'm lawyerly enough to satisfy the OGL myself even if I go at it with great care and diligence, I certainly can't imagine that a bunch of random internet entities will be able to satisfy it without infringing on 90% of what they post.

 

[philreed]

Personally, for a single item such as this, I'd probably not close any of it.

Yes, but now think about a product with 101 different short, single items. If it's all declared as OGC -- which I usually do -- what is to prevent the problem I mentioned earlier? (The entire collection of material being released online for free.)

 

[philreed]

Why publish something as OGC at all if you don't want people to republish it?

Because I do want people to have the ability to reuse material. I see it as completely different situations when someone selects an item or two and uses them as treasure in a dungeon than when someone starts posting complete products online for free.

I open material for the use of other publishers, not so that everything can be given away for free. And I think a lot of the other publishers that publish significant amounts of OGC feel the same way. (Though I do wish that at least a few of them would post in these sorts of threads.)

 

[philreed]

I think it boils down to what individuals think about the OGL. Some feel that it is a tool to allow the development of existing material, granting a publisher the ability to not reinvent the wheel and to sometimes even improve on an existing wheel. Others feel that is is a sign that all such material (that declared as OGC) should be completely free to the world.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Why publish something as OGC at all if you don't want people to republish it?

I'm not sure that's what's being argued here. From what I understand, the intent of the OGL is to open up material for publishers to use and encourage some forms of collaboration, not to create a bunch of freely distributable game material for fans. It can do that, too, but I'm not sure that was ever the primary intent.