OGC Wiki?

[Yair]

Let me ask this.

Why do you want an OGC Wiki?

That is an excellent question, and I've been spending the last ten minutes contemplating it. So although I'm not its inteded recipient, I'll give my answer.

My main wish from an online resource is for it to serve my tabletop campaign. I want to be able to point the players to a URL and say "See there? That's the description of the realm. See that page? Those are the Action Point rules we'll use."
A second goal is for this to be legal, as doing crime to play the game leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, detracting from my enjoyment. Even posting an FR storyhour on these forums is likely a copyright violation or at least fishy enough that one could, in theory, be sued over it. I'd like to engage in gaming without partaking in criminal activity, thank you.
Thirdly, I want to make my stuff public. It's an exhibitionist, emotional desire to show off. Even if my stuff isn't exactly stellar, it is mine and I like to share and show it.

These are my goals. I never said they are realistic.

An OGC wiki allows one to browse a wide range of OGC in an easily-used digital format. You can point people to pages in it so they can read a class, or feat, or whatever. You can pick and choose bits of rules and copy-paste to create a house rules document. It can serve my game.
It does so legally. Anything I take off the wiki - rules, a setting, an adventure, anything at all - I can freely quote, republish on my site, comment on, change, edit, and so on. Legally. Fairly.
And it allows me to publish my stuff in a nihilistic frenzy, and browse though other people's stuff when the mood strikes me.

Which is why I'm inclined to support such projects.

I'm not at all saying that I'm going to support this wiki. Both as a matter of generally being lazy and busy, and as there are compelling arguments against setting up such a wiki. But this post isn't about that, it's about why I want an OGC wiki, not why I don't want one.

 

[dpmcalister]

Just because it's OGC doesn't mean it should be free. I think that's where people get confused. An OGC Wiki is, in effect, giving away hours of work that you would otherwise have to pay for. Personally, I don't agree that an OGC Wiki is needed, although I would love for the publishers to put together a package whereby you could pick up the electronic version of a dead-tree book you've bought at a reasonable price (I know some do, but I'd like to see it as standard).

 

[philreed]

Just because it's OGC doesn't mean it should be free.

Exactly. By making all of this material available for free it:

1. Devalues the work.
2. Ensures that the amount of OGC released in the future will drop to almost nothing.

 

[Vascant]

*chuckles* Phil, I honestly think you are taking the wrong approach here..

Try this..

Go ahead and do it, don't talk about it.. Just do it..

*waits 10 days*

The idea dies as people realize the work involved.

This happened with the NPC Wiki thing, people are naturally lazy. As soon as a few of them realized they could just get NPC Designer and never need the place it lost its appeal. One thing you can bank on, people will be lazy and in the end, what little does get done will serve as an a free ad to your work and products.

 

[Nellisir]

Let me ask this.
Why do you want an OGC Wiki?

First of all, I agree with everything Yair said. I want an OGC repository (wiki or not) to
a- have easy, electronic access to OGC I already own, thus reducing the amount of time I have to spend scanning or cutting & pasting from a pdf (or a text copy of said pdf). Note that this is something I already do -- an OGC repository would make it easier. The Hypertext d20 SRD is a godsend.
b- allow my players access to OGC material of use in my tabletop game.

Exactly. By making all of this material available for free it:
1. Devalues the work.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this. I don't think you're saying that something free is of less intrinsic value than something with a monetary cost; the most valuable piece of OGC is also the one that's been free since the beginning - the SRD.
It's unclear if you mean devalued in a monetary sense (ie, free OGC is stealing from the publishers), or an intrinsic sense (ie, free OGC is crap).

The argument could be made that OGC made available for free devalues the author/publisher, since no return comes to them...but this is true of any reused OGC.

Finally, since it's forbidden to indicate compatibility and product names are usually PI, any free OGC will have a hard time contaminating its source material, particularly with a large Section 15.

2. Ensures that the amount of OGC released in the future will drop to almost nothing.

Any publisher that quits releasing OGC will, by definition, have quit using the OGL, the SRD, and the d20 license. They'll be writing for, or creating, an entirely different game system than the one this website is dedicated to, and probably the one they built their company on. So, yeah...good luck with that. They'll be replaced by someone better able to take advantage of the changing market.

They can attempt to cripple OGC, but that has two negatives for a dubious positive. Crippling OGC in an attempt to prevent legal reuse establishes an adversarial relationship with the consumer, and doesn't prevent said reuse. That which is crippled can be uncrippled. Certain items must be OGC. Failure to mark them as such courts legal action, not to mention hypocrisy.

I believe consumer knowledge about the OGL is only going to rise. "Amateur" OGL-compliant campaign websites are going to rise. Those websites, which will become increasingly sophisticated as technology progresses, are a publisher's best friend. The people that run them are educated, intelligent, and proficient in internet use. They are hubs in their local gaming community, with connections to people who aren't aware of the OGL or online publishers. They are the people publishers should be courting, not threatening.

Cheers
Nell.

 

[philreed]

They can attempt to cripple OGC, but that has two negatives for a dubious positive.

So far I haven't seen a single company lose sales because of conflicting, confusing, and restrictive OGC declaration.

 

[Nellisir]

Just because it's OGC doesn't mean it should be free. I think that's where people get confused. An OGC Wiki is, in effect, giving away hours of work that you would otherwise have to pay for.

What you mean, is:

An OGC Wiki is, in effect, giving away hours of work that you would otherwise be paid for.

That happens everytime someone reuses OGC. If WotC includes your OGC in their collection, you don't get a dime of it, NOR does is the perceived value of your OGC increased through exposure. You'll just be an entry or three (or thirty, in Phil's case) in their Section 15.

 

[Nellisir]

So far I haven't seen a single company lose sales because of conflicting, confusing, and restrictive OGC declaration.

Companies have lost my sales because of conflicting, confusing, and/or restrictive OGC declarations.

Do you think OGC declarations have become MORE or LESS clear since the OGL was introduced?

 

[The Lost Muse]

I was under the impression that if someone so desired, they could take the Open Content from one product, whether that is the SRD or another work, and use it in their own product so long as they included the proper information in Section 15.

Whether or not they charge for that product is not covered by the provisions of the Open Game Licence - if I wanted to I could take all the feats that are open content from each d20 or OGL book I have, make a *.pdf of it or post it on a website, and give it away for free so long as I made sure that information was in there.

I will say that it's important to actually BUY products, becuase without supporting publishers there will be nothing new, but it is possible to set up a project such as this while remaining perfectly legal.

 

[philreed]

I was under the impression that if someone so desired, they could take the Open Content from one product, whether that is the SRD or another work, and use it in their own product so long as they included the proper information in Section 15.

Yes, this is allowed. The problem I've encountered is publishers just using OGC without crediting it* or, even worse, making up names for my products and not using the actual names.


* There are actually now products on the ENWorld gamestore that do this. It seriously pisses me off.