OGL To Be Renamed Game System License (GSL)

[Alzrius]

OSRIC does serve a purpose, to support a game system Wizards won't license, and its creator said he'd shut it down if there was a legal version of it available similar to the 3e OGL license.

A 4E-style OGL work would serve a purpose too - to allow for 4E-compatible products that otherwise can't be published under the GSL. Likewise, there'd be no need for such a work if the GSL didn't have the restrictions that it has.

Most publishers--the truly professional ones, the ones who want to create complimentary and supplementary products from D&D, the ones who would pay the license fee to get the early adopted ruleset--will likely want to use the GSL.

It's fallacious to suggest that only publishers who want to pay the license fee are the "truly professional ones." There are many who simply can't afford it. Similarly, there are plenty of publishers who want to make complementary (not complimentary, though I'm sure they'd want to do that too ) and supplementary D&D products, but can't because they wouldn't meet the nebulous "community decency" clause, or because they want to make something that isn't medieval fantasy, but are bound to refer to the PHB.

I'll bet there are enough incentives for them to use it--can say "D&D compatible" on it--and it will also likely protect their own derivative works from being reused. They want to make a decent amount of money.

All businesses, and people involved in business, want to make money. But that doesn't have anything to do with having their derivative works being reused, necessarily. We don't know that the GSL won't have clauses about Open Game Content, and such a feature was a high point in the OGL.

One of the problems with the OGL is that a lot of people used it in an exploitative manner. I'm not even talking about publishers who creating alternate PHBs. I'm talking about the people who would compile OGL rules on-line for free from people's products. Here are examples.

Actually, it's wrong to say "a lot" of people exploited the OGL. Almost no one did; there were just a few individuals who republished large tracts of OGC. That aside, people who created alternate PHBs weren't necessarily exploitive. They were also just operating from a business standpoint; it's easier to market their books as not needing another book to be used.

Wizards releases a 100% OGL content book, Unearthed Arcana. People start taking the whole book and making it part of their online OGL-SRD collections. Instead of showing support for this with buying the book, people just cut-and-paste the whole thing on-line. I think Andy Collins was right to be annoyed.

David Pulver said GOO released their own SRD for their D20 rules. When they released D20 Mecha, lots of clones showed up immediately, making GOO's own product redundant.

Somebody puts up a SRD clone of Green Ronin's True20 ruleset. He then defends himself online saying that's what the OGL is about, and that you "shouldn't use it if you don't want this to happen". And some people would berate people like Monte Cook for releasing what they called "Crippled OGL", since sometimes he'd keep certain monster names and other items from being reused.

Far more people purchased those books than used the OGC-derivatives. Some revenue was lost, yes, but the purpose of the Open Gaming License was to put the materials out there for ease of use without making money the primary concern. In some cases some people took this to an extreme that was frowned upon, but that isn't a reason to scrap the entire system.

There is also a happy medium between a book being 100% Open and a book that uses "crippled content." Most books in the d20/OGL community do a good job of finding this medium.

So, basically, the OGL in my opinion is flawed because of this viral nature. It's a virus all right, it's like a contagion. I fully suspect the new license is designed to be complementary to people allowing the secondary publishers to protect themselves from behavior like this.

I respect your opinion, but I disagree with it quite a bit. Likewise, the existing OGL already has provisions to allow publishers to protect themselves from this type of behavior. There are guidelines for declaring aspects of books PI, which protect the contents of the works just fine.

There's a lot of people out there who want a free lunch. The OGL was too open.

I disagree. First, I don't think anything can really be "too open," unless it poses some sort of danger to the public (I certainly wouldn't want to see the guidelines for how to make nuclear bombs available online, for example). Regarding people who want a "free lunch," who wouldn't take something that's freely and legally offered? Similarly, the publishers know what they're doing when they release something to be 100% OGC. If they offer it for free reproduction, my sympathy for them is somewhat mitigated when someone reproduces it free online. There is a way to make things OGC in a manner that belies legally cut-and-pasting the entire book.

I think this new license would help the secondary publishers protect their own content. Unless the GSL is incredibly draconian, it will be embraced by most publishers and I think many fans as well, in fact it may offer the protections they need to prevent the freeloaders from taking their hard work.

I have no doubt it will be embraced, but I don't think that anyone will be particularly rejoicing over its having additional restrictions; those restrictions might not be particularly reviled, but I personally don't think the publishers are cheering for having these additional restrictions added to the GSL - especially since we've yet to see any particular restrictions around open content, and the reproduction of open content (since that's what you seem to be talking about).

As it stands now (so far as I know) there's nothing to stop a publisher from making a 100% open book under the GSL.

If you want total control over your IP, make your own game, don't reverse engineer D&D.

Actually, total control over your own game would entail not using any sort of open-license system at all, which includes the OGL and GSL.

If you want to support the OGL, use the 3e rules.

The OGL unto itself encourages the creature of new rules; doing so does support it.

Be like Richard M. Stallman, show that you will only play 3e because of the OGL. He only uses Free Software, he doesn't try to go reverse engineer Windows or the latest game, he takes a moral stance.

I don't understand the idea of "playing 3E because of the OGL." Are you saying that if 3E had no OGL, people shouldn't play it at all?

I don't know much about Richard Stallman, so I can't really comment on that, but there's nothing "moral" in what you're advocating. You're advocating good business sense, which is removed entirely from morality.

I think that open content is the moral stance, because it doesn't concern itself with business practices. When something is open, the creator gives it to anyone who wants it, free of all restrictions and restraints - which include asking for money for it - no matter what the product is. Whether it's a game or an appliance or a medicine, letting people have it as they want it, without being concerned with how much profit is in it for you, is (I think) a moral stance.

The GSL might be good from a business sense; I don't know, since I'm not a businessman. But I personally don't like that it imposes additional restrictions, compared to the OGL, so that WotC and other publishers can maximize their profits. I'm personally more concerned with keeping the game open to as many people as possible, without putting profitability into the equation. I have that luxury because my finances don't depend on making money from the game.

I don't think the two necessarily have to work at cross-purposes though. I think that you can have open content (in a game, at least) and still be able to turn a profit with it. I just think that the OGL is the best example we've seen of that.

The only incentive to "reverse engineering" the 4e D&D game and attempting to release it under the OGL is to continue the exploitation, to say "f--- you Wizbro, I'm gonna take your game and publish it online". You have the GSL, and the game is still being published, so there's no excuse that you can't use it freely.

Unless what you want to make falls under its restricted terms. In that case, such a person has no recourse to legally publish what they want to make (they can put it out as a for-free netbook or similar work, but even that's technically illegal).

If you say "game rules can't be copyrighted", then do it but don't use the OGL as an excuse or a shield (and I think if Wizards wanted to push an RPG might seem more like a book than a game, legal precedent could someday be set protecting RPG's copyrights, but that's an aside).

Games aren't books, so they can copyright everything that isn't part of the rules already, but as you said, that's an aside.

The OGL isn't meant to be "an excuse" or "a shield," as it's quite forward in serving its purpose: to make the mechanics published under it usable by anyone, free from restrictions.

I personally would take a dim view of anybody doing that, and I hope Wizards decides to make an example of anybody who does.

Fair enough. I personally would take a shining view of anyone who makes a 4E-compatible OGL product. I do hope Wizards would try to make an example of them, though, because such efforts would likely fail, helping to legitimize such activities further.

 

[JohnRTroy]

Here's my point.

Basically, it is up to a content creator to license their work as they see fit.

If Wizards wants to use a different license for 4e, more power to them. They are using a new license which I think most people will agree with.

You have the right to make products under 4e under the new rules.
You have the right to make products under the 3e ruleset with the OGL.
You DON'T have the right to make products under 4e as part of the OGL.

I think that open content is the moral stance, because it doesn't concern itself with business practices. When something is open, the creator gives it to anyone who wants it, free of all restrictions and restraints - which include asking for money for it - no matter what the product is. Whether it's a game or an appliance or a medicine, letting people have it as they want it, without being concerned with how much profit is in it for you, is (I think) a moral stance.

But it's up to the individual to decide. The person who rips off another person's property is not moral. It's the "Golden Rule". I don't consider making a profit to be immoral. You bring up medicine but one product saves lives. I would think it wrong for a company to sit on a product while people are dying--Tamiflu had threats to reverse-engineer it when there was a rumor of a shortage during a potential pandemic. I can understand from that perspective.

But an RPG is pure entertainment. There's no moral right to have "Free D&D". It's like the talk about file sharing. When people say artists should be paid, some people say "hey, you can't stop file sharing, musicians don't have a right to an income, soon it will be people who love it just for the music". What a load of bull. Can't afford music? Fine, do without or seek legal means to get it. Don't download stuff for free.

When it comes to entertainment, I follow the golden rule..."Do Unto Others as You Would Have The Do Unto You". I wouldn't take somebody's content and put it up for free online because I wouldn't want somebody to do that to me, and even if I disagreed with the right to make a profit for my own work I want the creator to have that choice.

3e is Free. 4e is not. "Forcing" it to be Free is something I think only people with impure intent would do. You won't see Necromancer, Green Ronin, Paizo, Goodman Games, etc, attempt some of the stuff some people are suggesting. They've been run by freelancers who understand how the business works, and would follow the Golden Rule. And I think most fans of the products understand this.

 

[Lizard]

But it's up to the individual to decide. The person who rips off another person's property is not moral. It's the "Golden Rule". I don't consider making a profit to be immoral. You bring up medicine but one product saves lives. I would think it wrong for a company to sit on a product while people are dying--Tamiflu had threats to reverse-engineer it when there was a rumor of a shortage during a potential pandemic. I can understand from that perspective.

Using the OGL *as written* isn't "ripping someone off".

"Here, take this sandwich. It's free."
"Free? Really?"
"Sure, it's yours. Take it if you want it, it's good."
"Uh...sure! OK!"
"Thief!"

Doesn't work.

No one was forced to use the OGL, but, if they chose to do so, they accepted the viral nature of the license and opened their work. To complain that someone else does exactly what the license explicitly permits them to do is somewhere beyond "disingenuous".

I cannot speak for other creators, but when I see my work reused in someone else's product, I am thrilled, because it's the most sincere compliment I can be paid by another developer:"You did this better than I could, so I'm using it."

 

[Voadam]

Here's my point.

Basically, it is up to a content creator to license their work as they see fit.

If Wizards wants to use a different license for 4e, more power to them. They are using a new license which I think most people will agree with.

You have the right to make products under 4e under the new rules.
You have the right to make products under the 3e ruleset with the OGL.
You DON'T have the right to make products under 4e as part of the OGL.

The OGL gives the right to make derivative products from OGC. If you can get 4e stuff from OGC then the OGL does give you the right to make products using that OGC derived stuff.

WotC irrevocably gave people the right to produce stuff under the OGL. They licensed their work as they saw fit at the time and made that decision irrevocable under the license they issued.

If wizards wants to offer a different license for 4e stuff or even offer no license at all that is within their rights, but it does not change what people can legally do under the old license.

 

[JohnRTroy]

I wasn't aiming the "ripping off" comment at the OGL use in 3e.

It's being aimed at the people who want to adapt 4e, which is NOT OGL, into an OGL, for whatever reason they feel justified to do so. I've got no problem with people continuing to use the 3e OGL, just not for adapting 4e rules.

But that being said, I still think "ripping" books like Unearthed Arcana, GOO, True20, etc, while legal and part of the OGL, still violates a Golden Rule. Whenever I bring this up people defend the OGL as worded...

But considering the fact that Wizards has decided to get rid of the OGL as it stood in the past, I have a feeling part of the change was based on this "ripping".

 

[Lizard]

I wasn't aiming the "ripping off" comment at the OGL use in 3e.

It's being aimed at the people who want to adapt 4e, which is NOT OGL, into an OGL, for whatever reason they feel justified to do so.

Yeah, well, good luck with that, whoever tries it. I think a lot of the changes in 4e were done solely to make that as difficult as possible.

But that being said, I still think "ripping" books like Unearthed Arcana, GOO, True20, etc, while legal and part of the OGL, still violates a Golden Rule. Whenever I bring this up people defend the OGL as worded...

Since those books took advantage of the SRD, how is it wrong to do unto them what they did unto WOTC?

(UA is a very interesting case. The only reason to publish a Big Book of OGC is to have it be used, then WOTC went out of their way to make it as hard to use as possible. The frak?)

But considering the fact that Wizards has decided to get rid of the OGL as it stood in the past, I have a feeling part of the change was based on this "ripping".

May be, but this then leads to the question of why they designed it that way in the first place. This isn't some odd loophole; it's a design intent, explicitly stated so in the SRD FAQ.

 

[JohnRTroy]

Since those books took advantage of the SRD, how is it wrong to do unto them what they did unto WOTC?

(UA is a very interesting case. The only reason to publish a Big Book of OGC is to have it be used, then WOTC went out of their way to make it as hard to use as possible. The frak?)

Legally it's not wrong.

Ethically? I think verbatim copying of entire rule sets crosses a grey line. I'll bet UA was meant to test to see if an OGL book would sell better. Maybe they thought some campaign settings would adapt specific rules like the Sanity rules, the Taint rules, Incantations, the Bloodlines, etc.

But ripping the whole thing into an on-line product that directly competes with and discourages people from buying the book and instead going with the substitute can be seen as predatory. And I'm sorry, just creating a hyperlinked set of rules does not "add significant value" IMO. It's not really a complementary or supplementary product, it's a substitution product.

I have a feeling the new GSL will have provisions to allow people to create derived products and protect their own derived product. This will make it more fitting for creators.

 

[Alzrius]

Basically, it is up to a content creator to license their work as they see fit.

I agree, but that stance necessitates accepting that, once they see fit to open-source their work, they're voluntarily relinquishing control over it. If they don't like what someone else does later, that isn't the fault of that person making whatever it is that the creator doesn't like. That includes adapting it to mimic or otherwise recreate other works.

If Wizards wants to use a different license for 4e, more power to them. They are using a new license which I think most people will agree with.

You have the right to make products under 4e under the new rules.
You have the right to make products under the 3e ruleset with the OGL.
You DON'T have the right to make products under 4e as part of the OGL.

I don't anticipate most people having a problem with the GSL either, and certainly most of those who do have a problem won't feel that it's enough of one to take any sort of action.

However, those who do feel so inclined to take action are within their rights to use the OGL to do so, so long as they violate none of its guidelines. You can't, technically speaking, "make products under 4e as part of the OGL" because 4E itself isn't part of the OGL. You can, however, make products under the OGL that are otherwise compatible with 4E.

But it's up to the individual to decide. The person who rips off another person's property is not moral. It's the "Golden Rule". I don't consider making a profit to be immoral.

I don't consider making a profit to be immoral either; I just don't consider it to be necessarily moral either. If morality is in part made up of altruism, then doing something for one's own profit must run, if not against that, then at least not with it.

It's up to the individual to decide, but that idea means that you could very well have someone who makes a 4E-like system under the OGL from a moral position.

You bring up medicine but one product saves lives. I would think it wrong for a company to sit on a product while people are dying--Tamiflu had threats to reverse-engineer it when there was a rumor of a shortage during a potential pandemic. I can understand from that perspective.

But an RPG is pure entertainment. There's no moral right to have "Free D&D".

There's already a free D&D, namely the d20 mechanics released under the OGL. The question you've raised is about the morality of altering that to be (more) compatible with 4E D&D, and I think that it's certainly possible.

It's like the talk about file sharing. When people say artists should be paid, some people say "hey, you can't stop file sharing, musicians don't have a right to an income, soon it will be people who love it just for the music". What a load of bull. Can't afford music? Fine, do without or seek legal means to get it. Don't download stuff for free.

As Lizard pointed out, this is a false analogy. No one is stealing anything from anyone, and no one is intentionally attempting to deny someone else from making money - the latter may happen, but that's a side-effect that occurs whenever there's economic competition.

When it comes to entertainment, I follow the golden rule..."Do Unto Others as You Would Have The Do Unto You".

As do I.

I wouldn't take somebody's content and put it up for free online because I wouldn't want somebody to do that to me, and even if I disagreed with the right to make a profit for my own work I want the creator to have that choice.

And I want the people to have that choice. If there's a set of restrictions out there that I disagree with, my interpretation of the Golden Rule is that I would have others selflessly try to remove or bypass them for my sake - likewise, I want to do that for their sake.

3e is Free. 4e is not. "Forcing" it to be Free is something I think only people with impure intent would do.

And I disagree with the idea that only people of "impure intent" would do that. The GSL restrictions mean that a lot of great 3E products will never have the chance to exist in the 4E paradigm, and on behalf of those who would write such works, as well as those who would read and purchase them, I don't like that.

You won't see Necromancer, Green Ronin, Paizo, Goodman Games, etc, attempt some of the stuff some people are suggesting. They've been run by freelancers who understand how the business works, and would follow the Golden Rule. And I think most fans of the products understand this.

Strictly speaking, you can't have a company "run by freelancers," since by definition freelancers aren't employees of a company - you can have one run by former freelancers.

I doubt the bigger companies would published 4E-style OGL materials, since they feel it would be discourteous to WotC. That's certainly a fair point, and I don't begrudge them that. But I feel the current restrictions are discourteous to the fans, so I (and perhaps some smaller companies) would. My interpretation of the Golden Rule is focused on the people who play the games, not the people who make them.

And I think most fans of the products would understand this, too.

 

[Oldtimer]

But that being said, I still think "ripping" books like Unearthed Arcana, GOO, True20, etc, while legal and part of the OGL, still violates a Golden Rule. Whenever I bring this up people defend the OGL as worded...

Violates a "Golden Rule"? I'm sorry, but that is complete nonsense. This is just old-fashioned protectionism at its worst.

Ryan Dancey understood it, but I see there are still many people who don't understand it at all. I can just hear Gollum... it's mine... mine... my precious...

 

[Cergorach]

*shrugs*
A lot of what's in 4E is and was already being done by a lot of folks/companies, progressing this further isn't that strange. But I do expect other folks to call foul and start claiming that X 'ripped off' a certain rule/concept from 4E.

Examples of 3E products with 4E features (a few):

General changes
- More core classes available.
- More 'balanced' ways of calculating the CR/EL (Upper_Krust).
- Generally moving away from instant death effects (damage instead save or die).
- Rewriting of Grappling rules (Morrus).
- Removing or simplifying Attacks of Oppertunity.
- Many discussions about removing PrCs and folding the abilities into Feat like powers.

Unearthed Arcana
- Attempts to rectify multiclassing inconsistencies for spellcasters.

Arcana Evolved
- 'Standard' levels go up to level 25 (using the same rules as the first 20).
- Racial levels.
- Removing and streamlining skills (Move Silently + Hide = Sneak).
- No alignment.

Dragonstar
- Half dragon PC race (ie. Dragonborn).

SpyCraft
- Action points.
- More Feats and Powers per level.
- 'Simple' NPC generation.
- Level based bonus to AC.
- A lot of bonuses are based more on Feats and Powers then on direct level bonuses.

Book of the Righteous
- Shedding alignment restrictions for 'Paladins'.
- Different Cosmology.
- Suggestion to remove the 'pokemon' mount.

Iron heroes
- Removing the requirements for Magic Items in an adventuring party.

Path of Sword/Shadow/Magic/Faith
- Legendary Classes.