OGC Wiki?

[Yair]

But publishers are seemingly allowed to reproduce other publisher's OGC in their own products.

Looks like we'd be cutting in on Monte Reed's "The Best of OGC ][: Cut and Paste Hackjob".

Rude rude rude.

If a publisher can reproduce other's OGC FOR PROFIT then I say onward to the wiki.

It's not that simple.
Yes, Monte released "The Best of d20". That was out of offerings contributed to him for this purpose. No one's saying that if the publisher wishes his material to be published somewhere it still shouldn't be.
You may find Monte, or some other publisher, using some material from another's OGC. You will not, however, find them selling the OGC extract of Tome of Horrors, for example - although they could, and for cheaper, and at very low costs to produce.
Don't you see the difference between building on someone's work, and devaluing his work?

 

[jezter6]

As another poster pointed out, my product line, if the non-mechanics were taken out, wouldn't be a very big line. And that's the point. You don't buy the material just for the mechanics, and to assume that it is the only reason people purchase your material is actually somewhat insulting to the majority of gamers out there.

When you get right down to it, there's nothing that has been produced that a GM couldn't build on his own. The tools are there, examples are there, there's even step by step instructions on how to build everything from PrC's, weapons, magic items, spells, monsters, EVERYTHING!

When I bought various books, I did not purchase them for the mechanics. I purchased them for setting, fluff text, and details that are not considered OGC. After all, what is FR, Greyhawk, Shattered Lands, Year of the Zombie, Firefly, but just a handful of mechanics and a LOT of setting data? Pull all the PI setting data, and what do you have? Not a whole lot, when you get right down to it.

As for the Section 15, that's fairly simple to handle. A "variable form" that pops up, and insert the publisher name, the origin book, the date, and the author. One section 15 form, with the variable being buried in the data for the feat, weapon, vehicle, whatever.

As for cross pollination, no, you don't see much of it, but make no mistake, it's out there. I've asked for, and gotten permission, to be allowed to reprint Monte Cook's venom rules, I've been allowed to do a module for d20 Modern that crossed RPGObjects popular Blood & Guts line with my own just starting line, I've gotten permission from ENPublishing, Wizards of the Coast, The Game Mechanics, Ronin Arts, Green Ronin. Sure, it wasn't the whole book, often one or two small tidbits, but it is cross pollination. It's there, it's just not that blatant.

I look at the OGC Wiki like this...

It will happen. No matter what the majority of the publishers clamor. With "Crippled Content" being unethical at best, downright against the OGL at worst, the more publishers that move to it will not only alienate thier fan base, but other publishers.

Since it WILL happen, eventually, I'd rather be a supporter of it, and be able to control what goes into it from my writing, rather than it just being added.

On the format, I would want to see ALL flavor text/non-mechanics data pulled from an item going in. Just straight mechanics and nothing else.

No maps. No fluff text. No character names. No non-mechanics information at all.

[Feat name]
[Benifit]
[Special]

That's it.

With the presentation handled correctly (The item being looked up, with the section 15 at the bottom relating to that item, and the banner for the company that produced the item at the top, along with author name and publication of origin underneath the banner) it would not only generate interest, but clearly and definately show who the work belongs to, who came up with it, and where it is available.

Seeing the different ones, say, Paladin classes, also allows a browser to decide which versions of Paladins he likes better. And a book about Paladin classes is going to have much more desired data than just some variant Core Classes and some PrC's, it'll have non-OGC information out the wazoo, and that will allow the browser to also decide which one he wants.

Face it, the person who just goes there to get data, bare bones mechanics data, is more likely to get the PDF from a P2P network than to shell out $7.50 for it. They aren't the ones the site would be built for.

This is a wise man, who's opinion I respect. The only problem with this is the fact that some companies (LPJ, Ronin Arts, Adamant) are hinging their business model on short OGC material. Sure, the Pulp d20 class gareth puts out is 100% open and you could use the flavor text if you want to, in THAT case all you really want is the class. And if you get it for free without the flavor, why buy the original?

The thing I would 'hope' that a wiki like this would do is encourage publishers back to the sourcebook business model and let go the single item (or collection of 13 items) PDFs. IMHO, they are very expensive for little content, and clog your hard drive with 100 pdfs to find something.

If I could forsee that action coming from a wiki resource, I'd put the effort in myself.

 

[philreed]

The thing I would 'hope' that a wiki like this would do is encourage publishers back to the sourcebook business model and let go the single item (or collection of 13 items) PDFs. IMHO, they are very expensive for little content, and clog your hard drive with 100 pdfs to find something.

Keep in mind that I wouldn't do these products if people didn't want them. The focus may have changed but the product type is still in demand.

What you're effectively saying is that because you don't like this type of product it's okay if an OGC Wiki would kill sales of this type of product.

 

[Yair]

On the format, I would want to see ALL flavor text/non-mechanics data pulled from an item going in. Just straight mechanics and nothing else.

No maps. No fluff text. No character names. No non-mechanics information at all.

Seperating mechanics from fluff is just crippling the content. It can't be done. Some fluff must be retained as OGC for the designation to be clear and the mechanics meaningful.
I'll have zero tolerance to removing such fluff. Blotting out that an item is a cloak, for example, leaving just it's enhancements mechanics. You just can't use the item in a game without this information.
I'm also very attracted to publishing fluff OGC, much more than crunch OGC. I agree it must be handled with more care.

I think as long as print books are so much more usable than electronic products the wiki will have only a negligable effect on any large product. And as long as it is arranged as a wiki, and not as a full fledged fancy pdf format, it will have little effect on large pdf sales too.
Nellisir was right, size does matter.

 

[Henry]

Looks like we'd be cutting in on Monte Reed's "The Best of OGC ][: Cut and Paste Hackjob".

Rude rude rude.

I agree - the above did sound a little rude. Seriously, I can understand if you don't like what someone did with a product, but epithets are being a little unfair to the product.

If I'm not wrong, I saw at least two publishers... produce some regurgitated OGC book.

In both cases, IMO, the work was more than regurgitation of someone's work; in Creative Mountain's case, there was a significant amount of work in his PDF's (I should know - I bought those beautifully-formatted-and-crosslinked suckers rather than sifting through mountains of RTF documents for what I want!) Now, you've got Andargor's free HTML and HLP, you've got www.d20srd.org, etc. but when his/Anna dobritt's offering first came out, there wasn't anything equivalent available. (If I recall correctly, Anna started the project but didn't do any updating to it after the initial offering, and Mark took the ball and ran with it, but he could tell you history better than I).

In Monte's Year's Best d20, he both made a bit of pocket for himself, AND exposed a lot of unknown d20 publishers to the limelight with their consent. Like it or not, his name on the cover automatically ensured that the publishers included would be looked at by twice the size of their normal audience.

While you may claim it's hypocritical, I don't see the correlation, myself, and personally I think it's a bit unfair to say it.

One expansion to Phil's and Monte's positions: I can see what they'/re referring to, and I would have to agree that if a product were released for pay, there would be far fewer offerings available than through a fan-sponsored free Wiki. Once someone is making something publishable for pay, it's a whole different ballgame in terms of production value, efficiency, and respect for peer publishers' efforts - it's human nature and business nature.

 

[philreed]

But publishers are seemingly allowed to reproduce other publisher's OGC in their own products.

Looks like we'd be cutting in on Monte Reed's "The Best of OGC ][: Cut and Paste Hackjob".

Rude rude rude.

Please do not post about things that you know nothing about. I do not appreciate your attempt at humor and your failure to even know of my products, while implying that I do nothing but sell other publishers' OGC, is offensive.

I would rather see this thread remain civil and posts like that are most certainly not necessary.

 

[Henry]

Seperating mechanics from fluff is just crippling the content. It can't be done.

In some cases (Monte Cook's spells, for example) it can't be helped. A new name would have to be introduced for every spell, because while the spell's mechanics are OGC, the names are not.

"Wellspring of Soul's Light" would have to become "God's Ticked off ", or some such.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Seperating mechanics from fluff is just crippling the content. It can't be done. Some fluff must be retained as OGC for the designation to be clear and the mechanics meaningful.

I guess our definitions of fluff vary.

Example:

Cloak of Divine
And lo, did the painted one raise his hands, calling forth to the power of Milinko, and then laid his hands upon the beggar's head. A light surrounded them both, and when it faded, the beggars sores were healed, but he was forever marked with the sigil of the God.

The Cloak of the Divine first appeared in 452 DCE, in the hands of the High Priest of the Cult of Milinko The Painted God. Upon the death of the High Priest, it was used as a form of badge of office to allow the various High Priests to have a visible symbol of thier authority. From each High Priest can another power to the Cloak of the Divine, from the humble ability to create food and water, to the power of bringing the dead to life.

Yadda Yadda Yadda
Cloak of the Divine
Appearing as a simple wool cloak with a fur liner and the symbol of Milinko embroidered on the edges, the cloak is warm and comfortable to all who wear it. Those who wear the cloak are immune to energy, level, or ability drain, the effects of normal weather, are kept warm and comfortable, and the pain of wounds is dulled (natural healing is tripled)
Armor Class Deflection Bonus +3
Create Food & Water 5/day
Cure Disease 1/day
Ressurrect 1/month
cure Light Wounds 3/day
blah blah blah

Is how it appears in the book. In the Wiki it would appear as...

Cloak of the Divine
Author: Tim Willard Source: ENWorld Forums
Appearing as a simple wool cloak with a fur liner and the symbol of Milinko embroidered on the edges, the cloak is warm and comfortable to all who wear it. Those who wear the cloak are immune to energy, level, or ability drain, the effects of normal weather, are kept warm and comfortable, and the pain of wounds is dulled (natural healing is tripled)
Armor Class Deflection Bonus +3
Create Food & Water 5/day
Cure Disease 1/day
Ressurrect 1/month
cure Light Wounds 3/day
blah blah blah

Big difference.

I'll have zero tolerance to removing such fluff. Blotting out that an item is a cloak, for example, leaving just it's enhancements mechanics. You just can't use the item in a game without this information.

There's a lot of information that you don't need that an author or publisher doesn't actually need to put forward as OGC. Doing that, you run the risk of losing the rights to primary character, locations, etc. Most publishers are not willing to do that, and expecting them to do that is the same as expecting a movie writer to just give away the characters and locations of a TV or movie.

You may have zero tolerance for removing such fluff, but I'd have zero tolerance for some of my major characters being used by whoever wants to, without any type of oversight.

Larry Niven used to allow people to use the Kzin. He doesn't any more, and with good reason.

I'm also very attracted to publishing fluff OGC, much more than crunch OGC. I agree it must be handled with more care.

Cool, then we're on the same page.

I think as long as print books are so much more usable than electronic products the wiki will have only a negligable effect on any large product. And as long as it is arranged as a wiki, and not as a full fledged fancy pdf format, it will have little effect on large pdf sales too.
Nellisir was right, size does matter.

I'm also looking at emerging technology. With the Blackberry network gaining speed, devices becoming smaller, it won't be long until a small touchpad could be linked with your home PDF repository, allowing you to quickly and easily looking at your PDF's during a game.

If handled correctly, an OGC Wiki will help the game keep moving, and if we allow ourselves to fall behind on the tech curve, ignore emerging technology and trends, we're asking for big trouble.

For additional consideration, what if, tied to the OGC Wiki, was an OGC setting? Much like that tongue in cheek Wiki-Setting found on Penny Arcade (I think, I might be mistaken) involving ambulatory furniture, it could easily added to and expanded on, and might actually be an interesting project.

Keep in mind that I wouldn't do these products if people didn't want them. The focus may have changed but the product type is still in demand.

What you're effectively saying is that because you don't like this type of product it's okay if an OGC Wiki would kill sales of this type of product.

I've read your work, Phil, and refuse to believe that your products can be distilled down to just a few blurbs. I sincerly doubt that you'd lose business, and believe you would have more purchases. Looking at the items themselves would probably interest people in the product as a whole, if nothing else, out of curiosity of what else is in there that wasn't allowed to be inputted to the Wiki.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

As another poster pointed out, my product line, if the non-mechanics were taken out, wouldn't be a very big line. And that's the point. You don't buy the material just for the mechanics, and to assume that it is the only reason people purchase your material is actually somewhat insulting to the majority of gamers out there.

Actually, I find that comment more than somewhat insulting to me. I'm very good at mechanics design, and I am rewarded for it with customer loyalty.

If the mechanics aren't important, there'd be no need for the OGL/SRD. Nor would we see the phrase "broken" used quite as often as we do in reference to so many products. Publishers gain customer loyalty with clean, efficient, balanced mechanics design; and publishers lose customers with sloppy, confusing, and broken design.

Mechanics do matter. To a lot of gamers. To suggest otherwise is just silly.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Actually, I find that comment more than somewhat insulting to me.

Wow. So all you do is provide mechanics? No interesting background, no decent fluff? You book is nothing but 100% mechanics, with nothing else to offer?

I think you sell yourself short.

I'm very good at mechanics design, and I am rewarded for it with customer loyalty.

Yeah, nobody wants a book filled with busted mechanics. But I'm willing to believe you also have good text besides

Long Sword +2, keen.

Yes, your monster mechanics are probably excellent, but what about appearance, the way the interact, their society, thier diet, etc?

I'd be willing to bet it's BOTH that attracts your customers, not just nice clean mechanics.

If the mechanics aren't important, there'd be no need for the OGL/SRD. Nor would we see the phrase "broken" used quite as often as we do in reference to so many products. Publishers gain customer loyalty with clean, efficient, balanced mechanics design; and publishers lose customers with sloppy, confusing, and broken design.

I quite agree.

Mechanics do matter. To a lot of gamers. To suggest otherwise is just silly.

But they aren't the end all be all of the book. Acting like they are frankly baffles me.

I mean, if you want to be insulted by it, are considering I'm saying that mechanics are worthless and only junk, feel free to look me up on YIM and we'll scream at each other there. I'm not insulting you or your ability to do mechanics, but I sincerely doubt that your mechanical skills are the only reason your have a loyal customer base.