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OGC Wiki?

jezter6 said:
Nope. It's up there. In HTML, although alot of it is yellow text on white background, so it is 'crippled' a bit.

I still think it's awesome that he does that.

So very sorry. That is not the way it is supposed to be. I have fixed it and it should be working correctly. My big bad. Also, that was only the Tales of Gaea HTML. Shades and Neb should be working fine.

Thanks,
Bill
 

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jezter6 said:
See, it's already not the great OGC collection the name implies. It's 'some' of the ogc that's not as cool as the other OGC that you want 'protected.'

This is why voluntary publisher input on this will fail miserably.

You completely missed my point. The rules would be there. It's just the individual components that would not be there (after two or three that would be included as examples).

What you're telling me is that you want ALL material for free. Not just rules and systems, but ALL of it. For free.
 

I'm not even saying it has to be free. I'd debate paying for such a resource. I've debated putting one together myself.

I'm saying that posting only 'previews' of your OGC doesn't make it a valid 'complete OGC collection' that it is billed to be. I wouldn't be interested at all if I knew that publishers were going to add only the bits and pieces they don't care about being free if they weren't going to put together the complete OGC collection. Instead it becomes only another preview page which I can get at rpgnow and ENGS.
 

jezter6 said:
I'm not even saying it has to be free. I'd debate paying for such a resource. I've debated putting one together myself.

I'm saying that posting only 'previews' of your OGC doesn't make it a valid 'complete OGC collection' that it is billed to be. I wouldn't be interested at all if I knew that publishers were going to add only the bits and pieces they don't care about being free if they weren't going to put together the complete OGC collection. Instead it becomes only another preview page which I can get at rpgnow and ENGS.

I actually hadn't figured it would be complete. I figured it would be a place for people to show off. On the one hand you'd have publishers putting up some of their favourite work with two purposes: to show how good it is so you'll buy their books, and to draw attention to stuff that they would genuinely like other people to use in their products, because they think it's good enough to be popular...which seems to be the two reasons why people tried to get their stuff into The Best of d20. On the other hand you'd have the non-professional crowd just putting up neat stuff like monsters and spells they wrote because there's somewhere online to put it. Think how many entries that are archived in this very website, and think how much of a pain in the ass it would be to search through and find interesting things. A wiki would make that easier.
 

Phil I'm not going to comment on ethics of copyright etc etc. I've said my peace in these threads in the past.
However your suggestion to have publishers putting out their rules frameworks in a wiki sort of environment is very appealing. What would you need to start doing this? I'm sure there are many rule ideas and frameworks out there that would benefit from this.
 

I would like to note that such a site/wiki really has little to do with the OGL. Publishers can very well put stuff in it that is closed, it's just a window to their goods and need not be confined to OGC.
 

I'm late to the party but I'd like to add a few comments and hopefully rest Phil's aching wrist. :)

I agree with Phil and Joe GB (and forgotten others I'm sure). An OGC Wiki or other collection would reduce the amount of future OGC. This isn't a threat (We're gonna take our ball and go home), it is the logical means to remain in business in the face of a shifting market.

Currently the OGL allows anyone and everyone to reuse the material released as OGC. We know this. It is a risk. Some publishers avoid the risk and they obfuscate and cripple their OGC declaration making it impossible for easy legitimate use of their content. Other publishers take the risk and release easy to reuse content.

The risk is that someone will deficate in their nest and cause the current model of openness to be less desirable to publishers. I think the best analogy is the prisoner's dilemna. Two people commit a crime. The police have no admissable evidence but know they have the two criminals. The crime has a 25 year mandatory sentence on conviction. They go to suspect 1 and say, if you turn state's evidence on suspect 2 and plea guilty to a lessor charge, you'll only serve 5 years in prison. They make the identical offer to suspect 2. If neither suspect takes the deal, they both walk free. But can they take that chance? If suspect 2 turns on suspect 1, he serves a shorter sentence. So instead of a guarenteed 5 years and out, he's taking 50/50 odds on 25 years or 0 years.

Once a large repository of OGC develops, the risk taking publishers stand to lose sales. In the face of a shifting market they will either turn to a less friend declaration of OGC or they will go out of business. In either case, the amount of future OGC goes down.

Yes, you can take any of my products, copy the text into a new document and republish it. I can't stop you. It would hurt my sales though and my ability to maintain my 100% OGC stance would be jepardized by it.

Yes, I entered into OGL publishing fully aware of the risk I was taking. This was not a surprise I discovered after publishing for a while. I entered with eyes wide open.

No, using the prisoner's dilemna as an example does NOT mean I believe that OGC reusers are in anyway criminals. Theoretically, if suspects 1 and 2 are best buds who look out for one another, they'll walk when the police are required to let them go. I take the chance that you are all stand-up gamers who will walk rather than taking the sure-thing that benefits you most at the expense of your fellow gamers.

No, specific examples of Monte Cook's OGC declarations are not really relevant to this discussion.

And finally, whether or not you agree information wants to be free, freeing OGC just because one can will cause change in the availability of future OGC.

Did I miss any angles? We make our OGC declaration based on an optimistic view of how gamers will treat the work we've done. Once that optimism becomes unfounded, there will be a shift in how future works treat OGC.
 

I never expected this thread to grow into a monster! I appreciate HinterWelt chiming in, but I've revised my solution:

1. We construct a communal OGC wiki, but we limit it to registered, responsible users.
2. We only upload OGC that is a. four years old or older, b. given away for free or c. uploaded by the publisher itself.

At their discretion, publishers or authors could also add a tag to their work saying "This material written by John Travolta, published by Reality, Inc." This is normally not permitted by the OGL, except with the copyright holder's permission. I think, however, it'd be free advertising.


HinterWelt said:
So very sorry. That is not the way it is supposed to be. I have fixed it and it should be working correctly. My big bad. Also, that was only the Tales of Gaea HTML. Shades and Neb should be working fine.

:D :D :D

You accidentally limited the free content you gave away! You tyrant! That's too funny :P
 

Khuxan said:
I never expected this thread to grow into a monster! I appreciate HinterWelt chiming in, but I've revised my solution:

1. We construct a communal OGC wiki, but we limit it to registered, responsible users.
2. We only upload OGC that is a. four years old or older, b. given away for free or c. uploaded by the publisher itself.

At their discretion, publishers or authors could also add a tag to their work saying "This material written by John Travolta, published by Reality, Inc." This is normally not permitted by the OGL, except with the copyright holder's permission. I think, however, it'd be free advertising.
:nods: A more sensible plan. I bet you will still get flack from publishers that don't want their 4-year-old OGC published (evergreen products and all), but I'm not inclined to agree with them.
I would personally like to add a "d) is so crippled that releasing it into the open will serve the community and publishers". But that would take you into very murky legal water.
How do you intend to fight accusations of breach and legal actions against the site/you?
Where do you intend to set up the wiki, and with what program? Who will maintain it technically? I believe the best solution would be setting up a dedicater server with MediaWiki installed, but that costs money, a significant amount of money, as well as some know-how.

Since you are going with a member-only editing policy, I recommend setting up an "In Production" section which only members can see so people could comment on the material and compliance with the OGL and OGC designation before it is published.

No offense, but I've seen a fair number of such attempts go nowhere. I wouldn't believe someone can succesfully pull it off until they, well, do.

Yair
 

Yair said:
I would personally like to add a "d) is so crippled that releasing it into the open will serve the community and publishers". But that would take you into very murky legal water.

Not at all - the stuff would still be OGC, so we'd be legally entitled to do such a thing, we'd just be in murky moral water.

Yair said:
How do you intend to fight accusations of breach and legal actions against the site/you?

Mmm, I know you shouldn't take anything for granted, but has any d20 publisher in the last five years been sued? I'm sure even the most tyrannical and protective of publishers would accept a removal of the contencious (Sp?) material as sufficient.

Yair said:
Where do you intend to set up the wiki, and with what program? Who will maintain it technically? I believe the best solution would be setting up a dedicater server with MediaWiki installed, but that costs money, a significant amount of money, as well as some know-how.

Since you are going with a member-only editing policy, I recommend setting up an "In Production" section which only members can see so people could comment on the material and compliance with the OGL and OGC designation before it is published.

No offense, but I've seen a fair number of such attempts go nowhere. I wouldn't believe someone can succesfully pull it off until they, well, do.

Yeah, I haven't really thought that far forward. Funds = $0.00, so any advice would be appreciated. My only thought is Wikispaces, since it's free and (somewhat) intuitive.

Advice?
 

Into the Woods

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