[OGL, Long] A completely Open Setting...

[Remathilis]

Greetings,

As a DM with no game currently running (down time), I was thinking about a setting to use for D&D. I bounced between a few differents (including my own home brew, but I want to give that a rest.) This got me thinking about settings in D&D...

Greyhawk is the default D&D setting. This is WotC's sale's pitch. If you just play with the Core books, you are assumed in Greyhawk. However, Greyhawk is suffering for two reasons.
1.) WotC is not supporting it.
2.) No one else is allowed to.

The latter is the important thing. Back in the dark ages of D&D (1e), Lots of different writers, (Gary, Rob, Len, Tracy, etc.) could write for TSR. They were all subsumed within Greyhawk. Greyhawk grew as a setting made by many authors, developing it in new and (sometimes conflicting) directions.

The Open Gaming Lisence gives publishers a chance to do that again. Lots of little writers could (theoretically) move a setting and flesh it out. A module here, a source book there, etc. However, the nature of publishing and competition has made many of these settings closed for development. Greyhawk, Realms, Kalamar, the Scarred Lands, Rokugan, etc. They are under lock and key from their publishers as settings. Thus, every publisher has a pet setting that they use for most of their modules/sourcebooks, and they rarely cross over...

But what about an open setting?

A setting which any publisher, from a DM with MS Word to a huge heavy hitter like Sword and Sorcery Studios could produce for?
A setting that grows over time based on the works of different authors and publishers.
A setting with completely open lands, gods, NPCs, etc. Everything Open Gaming, all things from it Open.
A setting flavorful enough to play in, generic enough to import to another setting?

Does one exist? COULD one exist? Would you buy it? Would you contribute to it? What would be the problems with this "open" source setting?

I'm interested to see if such a project is desired, feisible, and useful.

Thanks

 

[JacktheRabbit]

It could be done but you would need several things to make it work.

1. A map. You need something to start with so a map is a good place.

2. Framework. You need to determine if its high magic, low magic, common deity intervention, no deity intervention, overal technological level and a few other items.

3. A really good editor. You need one final person to kind of ok stuff. Otherwise things will not jive well and you will see inevitable power creep of a painful level.


Sounds like a potentially fun idea though. If soneone wanted to start a project I would be game.

 

[bwgwl]

3. A really good editor. You need one final person to kind of ok stuff. Otherwise things will not jive well and you will see inevitable power creep of a painful level.

this is the biggest hurdle as i see it. if anyone is allowed to publish things for this setting, you're going to get stuff with wildly different styles and writing quality.

if the setting really is 100% OGL, then you really can't have one editor looking over everything -- by definition, anyone can publish whatever they want for the setting.

but without a line editor to give the setting a consistent voice, it's just going to devolve into a horrible mish-mash of confusing and possible conflicting ideas.

 

[Signer]

I think a open setting would be cool, however problems would arise. Unless you have one group in control of defining canon (not very open) you could end with confllicts across the board in history, power level, current events, etc.

Just looking at d20 products in general you can see a wide range of balanced and unbalanced things. However, that alone wouldn't kill the setting. What would is if X Publishing comes out with "City of the Dead" an awesome city setting everyone loves and supports. Now Y Publishing puts out "Siege of City of the Dead" that develops it more with current events. However Z Publishing puts out "Fall of City of the Dead" that details a totally different set of current events. Now as people choose sides in which product they like a rift develops and you have alternate settings. What happens to the other publishers when they want to add more? They have to choose which version of City of the Dead canon they want to use and the setting starts to lose continuity and unity. (Just my 2 cents.)

Now I'm not saying an open setting is impossible, just that it would require good collaboration to prevent groups from stepping on each others toes when they create new products. They would need to be some sort of central organization to ensure the same topics aren't covered twice.

 

[Tiefling]

I think it would be best to create a new license specifically for shared settings. Call it the "Open World License" or something. It would include provisions for the setting creator to specify what could and could not be produced for the setting. The creator could specify whether or not he had to approve everything before it was published.

 

[haiiro]

Caution: Kind of Long...

Your proposal makes me think of three analagous (but not identical) concepts: Call of Cthulhu, the Cthulhu Mythos, and the Thieves' World novels.

Call of Cthulhu

Chaosium has the license to produce gaming material based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and by and large they do an amazing job of it. They also rely extensively on freelancers, but quality control is very high.

Over the years, a few other companies have been able to produce CoC stuff as well -- most notably Pagan Publishing, but also companies like Fantasy Flight Games and Triad Entertainment. I'm sure others will disagree, but of the third-party CoC materuial I've seen (which is quite a bit), only Pagan consistently puts out worthwhile stuff.

The Cthulhu Mythos

After Lovecraft started writing his loosely-connected tales of ordinary folk confronting otherworldly forces in a nihilstic universe, an ever-expanding circle of writers joined him in building up this setting and its concepts. Over the years, there have been a lot of authors producing Mythos tales -- some very good, some mediocre, and some very bad.

August Derleth in particular has had a far-reaching influence on Lovecraft's "world" -- he coined the term "Cthulhu Mythos," he started Arkham House (to keep HPL's work in print), and he wrote a lot of (generally bad) Mythos fiction. He also fiddled with Lovecraft's concepts in order to shoehorn them into his peculiar vision of how things should work (Lovecraftian deities as elemental forces, etc.). In other words, his influence has been a very mixed bag overall.

On the other side of the coin are authors like Robert Bloch and Rob Chambers, who have added to the Mythos in important and worthwhile ways.

The Thieves' World Novels

Conceived from the start as a shared world, the Thieves' World setting grew through short story anthologies written by various authors. The stories were selected and edited by the creators, and they generally wrote a story or two for each collection.

Predictably, some of the stories were good, some were just OK, and some really sucked. After reading a couple of the books, I stopped following the series entirely -- because unlike picking and choosing between CoC supplements and Mythos authors, I couldn't avoid buying the crappy stories in each collection.

Hopefully these rambling comparisons make sense to people other than myself...

In essence, I think an open setting would probably need some form of editorial control in order to work well. Although that might not be in the spirit of the idea, without it I think you'd wind up with a lot more crap than cream (in the same way that there are a lot more bad d20 products than good ones, IMO).

It is a very cool idea, and done right I think it could be sucessful. Out of curiosity, have you taken a look at <a href="http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/hosted/Jagged/umbragia/">Umbragia</a> or the Mor's End project (in the <a href="http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=18">Plots & Places forum</a>)? Both seem to have similar underlying principles to the open setting that you propose.

 

[Arnwyn]

Does one exist? COULD one exist? Would you buy it? Would you contribute to it? What would be the problems with this "open" source setting?

I'm interested to see if such a project is desired, feisible, and useful.

I don't know if one exists, but I don't think so (published, anyways).

Would I buy it? Heck, no! Not a chance. Settings under lock & key are bad enough on the consistency front - an "open setting" would be an absolute disaster.

Shared worlds stink, IMO. The more central control, the better the setting turns out. (Think old Greyhawk - Gygax, or old FR - Greenwood, for the good stuff.) Too many cooks, and all that...

 

[Darrin Drader]

Such a setting exists... sort of.

Although I am no longer a member of Dark Portal Games, creating an open setting was one of the goals of the company. In fact, this idea was introduced to a group of publishers, and at the time another publisher was interested in making one of their upcoming adventures comaptible with Arekoz. You'll also notice that like a few other settings, Buffside and Freeport are on the map. This was done with the knowledge and approval from both Thunderhead Games (now Mystic Eye) and Green Ronin.

The reason that most publishers aren't going to open up their worlds is for the reasons stated above, and also because settings don't sell as well as source material or monsters, though they generally do slightly better than adventures. Because of this, if a publisher wants to create a brand, they want all the dollars that are being spent on that brand to go to them. It makes sense since the only way to keep producing RPG material is to remain a viable business.

As for DPG, go to www.darkportalgames.biz and click on the OWL link (open world license). No, there isn't a license there at the moment, but creating a license to open up the world was one of the things that we were working on when I parted company with them. As for whether or not Tony and the gang are still pursuing this is something that they would have to answer.

 

[Remathilis]

Hmm... Some interesting responses so far...

I realized (even as I wrote that) there would be two major problems, continuity and quality. I've tried to mull over some ideas on how to work within this.

1.) "Fair Use Rules" I'm assuming this is closer to the Open World Liscense being batted around. Fair Use states some simple tenants, no earthshaking catastrophes, no major additions/changes to the ruleset (Look, according to X, Clerics can has harm at will!), making your work available for other authors, etc. I'm not sure how you could enforce it in this situation.
2.) A continuity editor to keep things in order. Going back to fair use, this would mean if you wish to use the setting and have it's logo on you item, you agree to subjecting your material to some kind of continuty scrutiny. Hopefully, this mixed with the fair use would keep kingly assassination and godswars to a minimum.
3.) Lots of expansion room. Keep the basics just generic enough to give lots of room within the boundries already mentioned.
4.) Cherry-Picking: As a last resort, the basic "core setting" would be generic enough to suit most DMs, and they could use supplements as they wished, ignoring those they didn't like.

Its not a perfect system yet, but such a setting might have potential.

 

[Mark]

I think the modules of Living Greyhawk are as close to this as it gets, currently. There are a number of promising toes in the pool along the lines of Freeport from Green Ronin and Bluffside from Thunderhead Games (now under Mystic Eye Games), but these are primarily components designed to be part of a larger whole, rather than a broad canvas on which anyone else can also paint.