OGL vs. non-OGL magazine

[Steel_Wind]

It is not just an issue of settings. In fact, I'd say it is only tangentially an issue of settings. The real issue is that D&D has long since grown beyond the SRD, and WotC has decided that adding to the SRD is not worth its effort. That means the vast majority of what *is* D&D now is not available for use by such a magazine. No Hexblade villains. No gem dragons. No magical locations or mobs. D&D is bigger, by far, than the SRD. Dragon and DUngeon gave us "3rd party" content that was as big as D&D was.

We've lost that, and any new magazine would lose it too.

No - we haven't. It was hardly ever there to begin with.

There was a thread on this back in the fall that I started asking that out of all of the 90 or so 3/3.5 hardcover books to add in for regular use in Dungeon, why not add in the Spell Compendium as "default core".

One. Just one single book, damn it.

Suffice to say that the hue and cry that erupted here from a lot of ENWorlders who swore by "core only" was enough to give me a new perspective on James Jacobs' job.

Fact is - Paizo don't really go beyond the SRD in Dungeon right now. The only place where they do on any regular basis is some iconic protected WotC creatures: mindflayers, yuan-ti, beholders.

And references - and not often at that - to campaign specific settings.

Non-standard feats, classes and spells? Hardly ever.

Overall - the use Dungeon made of this theoretical advantage of licensing - other than some iconic creatures - was few and far between. The reason is simple: their readers demand generic. That's the way it is.

The "loss" is far more illusory than real. Little will change.

 

[Erik Mona]

The latest Dungeon has an adventure based around a MMII creature, the

Spoiler

meenlock

. A quick scan through the pages revealed stuff from the MMII, MMIII, Fiend Folio, and Book of Vile Darkness, as well as yuan-ti which are not OGL material.

Dungeon's already done two recent modules involving the creature you mention (which I admittedly wish was in the SRD), so I'm not sure that's ground we need to re-cover in the near future. Our assumption is that many of our readers will have a good archive of recent Dungeons, so we're unlikely to focus on themes or monsters we've used recently in Dungeon, even though Pathfinder is an altogether different kind of fish.

Yuan-ti, frankly, are easily substituted for "snakemen" of many varieties, imho. To be sure, there are a lot of neat monsters we won't be able to use, but I'm confident in the ability of our writers and artists (many of whom invented some of those forbidden monsters in the first place) to create new stuff just as good.

In the case of Monster Manual 2, probably better.

--Erik

 

[Nightfall]

Rob,

Exactly! Plus even that loss is minor considering the fact there are TONS of core base classes out there, agreements that Paizo can reach with other publishers, AND the fact that with publication rights to Necromancer Games, plenty of access to things People can use.

Yeah loss of Iconic monsters suck, but there are ways around it. Especially with Lion's Den's Iconic Beastiary.

But to me, Paizo is fine doing this "their way." with the SRD AND OGL.

 

[Nightfall]

In the case of Monster Manual 2, probably better.

--Erik

Yeah but I'm curious...will you get permission to use say...Dragonlance Death Knight? Or have to stick to Tome of Horrors version?

 

[Steel_Wind]

Yeah but I'm curious...will you get permission to use say...Dragonlance Death Knight? Or have to stick to Tome of Horrors version?

A - does it really matter?

B - Sov Press is a WotC licensee of DL material. They cannot sub-license. So ... no.

 

[Erik Mona]

What I am sad about is that everyone who wants to run in Greyhawk, FR or Eberron is going to have to do their own conversions. At least Rise of the Runelords sounds like it would map pretty easily to any of those worlds...

Nearly everything we publish will be easily mappable to those worlds, imho, because nearly everything we publish will be easily mappable to a baseline campaign as defined by the core rules.

--Erik

 

[Erik Mona]

No - we haven't. It was hardly ever there to begin with.

There was a thread on this back in the fall that I started asking that out of all of the 90 or so 3/3.5 hardcover books to add in for regular use in Dungeon, why not add in the Spell Compendium as "default core".

One. Just one single book, damn it.

Suffice to say that the hue and cry that erupted here from a lot of ENWorlders who swore by "core only" was enough to give me a new perspective on James Jacobs' job.

Fact is - Paizo don't really go beyond the SRD in Dungeon right now. The only place where they do on any regular basis is some iconic protected WotC creatures: mindflayers, yuan-ti, beholders.

And references - and not often at that - to campaign specific settings.

Non-standard feats, classes and spells? Hardly ever.

Overall - the use Dungeon made of this theoretical advantage of licensing - other than some iconic creatures - was few and far between. The reason is simple: their readers demand generic. That's the way it is.

The "loss" is far more illusory than real. Little will change.

This is a very cogent post, in my view.

--Erik

 

[Erik Mona]

Yeah but I'm curious...will you get permission to use say...Dragonlance Death Knight? Or have to stick to Tome of Horrors version?

I wouldn't want to use the Dragonlance version. With respect, I like my death knights mixed in with Demogorgon. The 1E Fiend Folio was my Book of Mormon. If you want Dragonlance, use Dragonlance.*

The other option is to completely redesign a classic monster and simply use the name from the open content in the Tome of Horrors.

Lots of ammo there.

--Erik

* I didn't realize the irony of that analogy until I read it a second time.

 

[Agamon]

No Eberron, MM2 or MM3? To paraphrase Ari in another thread, I'd subscribe on this info alone if I wasn't already.

 

[Nightfall]

*figures Erik would use the base line code since it's a) true and b) how things have been done since they took over Dungeon and Dragon*


Steel,

Well no but I just was wondering...