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Paizo Announces New Irrevocable Open RPG License To Replace the OGL
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<blockquote data-quote="Abstruse" data-source="post: 8893936" data-attributes="member: 6669048"><p>Okay, seeing some confusion here about how Creative Commons works.</p><p></p><p>There are multiple different Creative Commons licenses:</p><p></p><p>CC-BY aka Creative Commons Attribution: You can download, copy, upload, share, distribute, modify, change, or otherwise use the content as you like for commercial or non-commercial purposes so long as you credit the original creator.</p><p></p><p>CC-BY-SA aka Creative Commons Attribution Share-a-Like: Same as above but you must also release your document under the CC-BY-SA license as well.</p><p></p><p>CC-BY-NC aka Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial: Same as the Attribution license but you cannot actively monetize. This means no selling, no paywalls like Patreon subscribers only, no using it directly in advertising (like a CC-By-NC song can't be bed music for a commercial). You can passively monetize through non-intrusive ads, accepting donations, stuff like that.</p><p></p><p>And you can mix them, so CC-BY-SA-NC means it must be shared under this license and cannot be used for commercial purposes. There's also the "No Derivatives (ND)" license, but that's mostly for artists wanting to release their work for free like music downloads or movies because you can't re-use the material in your own creations, which is against the whole purpose of an open gaming license.</p><p></p><p>The problems for using the Creative Commons as a replacement for RPGs are:</p><p></p><p>1. It's all or nothing. If you license a work under CC, then the ENTIRE work is under that license. This means that if you make a game system and release the rules in an SRD under Creative Commons, I can use it to make an adventure but I cannot designate that the new spells, monsters, magic items, etc. are also under CC while keep my story, characters, etc. under copyright. So I can't contribute to the open gaming community without giving away all my rights AND giving away my entire adventure (because releasing it under CC means that anyone can upload it themselves which directly impacts potential sales).</p><p></p><p>This is also an issue for artwork as all art would also be released under Creative Commons. This can get you into trouble if you don't have permission from the artist to do this as you're basically giving away their art.</p><p></p><p>2. Any products released under share-a-like must also be released under a share-a-like license, taking the choice out of the previous problem entirely and meaning no one can actually USE that license. They'd have to give away the entire product along with any intellectual property in it just to make anything at all.</p><p></p><p>The ability for creators to add more content as open gaming is what helps open game systems grow. With more content available, that means more resources for creators to use. So you can either take the first option when releasing your system so that it's CC-BY only and actively disincentivize people from releasing more open content, or you force them to release more content with CC-BY-SA but disincentivize any creation at all because it can't be effectively monetized (again, it can be re-uploaded and distributed by anyone else legally) and requires releasing rights to things you might not want to like characters and setting.</p><p></p><p>Now, there are companies that have made the CC license work for RPGs. Evil Hat releases under CC-BY so that people can use their SRD and they aren't particularly worried about encouraging creators to release their own material as well, while Posthuman releases under CC-BY-NC-SA which means that there's a lot of Eclipse Phase fan content out there, but no third parties creating content for sale because they can't sell it. But for most companies, the Creative Commons license isn't a good fit for a roleplaying game.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Abstruse, post: 8893936, member: 6669048"] Okay, seeing some confusion here about how Creative Commons works. There are multiple different Creative Commons licenses: CC-BY aka Creative Commons Attribution: You can download, copy, upload, share, distribute, modify, change, or otherwise use the content as you like for commercial or non-commercial purposes so long as you credit the original creator. CC-BY-SA aka Creative Commons Attribution Share-a-Like: Same as above but you must also release your document under the CC-BY-SA license as well. CC-BY-NC aka Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial: Same as the Attribution license but you cannot actively monetize. This means no selling, no paywalls like Patreon subscribers only, no using it directly in advertising (like a CC-By-NC song can't be bed music for a commercial). You can passively monetize through non-intrusive ads, accepting donations, stuff like that. And you can mix them, so CC-BY-SA-NC means it must be shared under this license and cannot be used for commercial purposes. There's also the "No Derivatives (ND)" license, but that's mostly for artists wanting to release their work for free like music downloads or movies because you can't re-use the material in your own creations, which is against the whole purpose of an open gaming license. The problems for using the Creative Commons as a replacement for RPGs are: 1. It's all or nothing. If you license a work under CC, then the ENTIRE work is under that license. This means that if you make a game system and release the rules in an SRD under Creative Commons, I can use it to make an adventure but I cannot designate that the new spells, monsters, magic items, etc. are also under CC while keep my story, characters, etc. under copyright. So I can't contribute to the open gaming community without giving away all my rights AND giving away my entire adventure (because releasing it under CC means that anyone can upload it themselves which directly impacts potential sales). This is also an issue for artwork as all art would also be released under Creative Commons. This can get you into trouble if you don't have permission from the artist to do this as you're basically giving away their art. 2. Any products released under share-a-like must also be released under a share-a-like license, taking the choice out of the previous problem entirely and meaning no one can actually USE that license. They'd have to give away the entire product along with any intellectual property in it just to make anything at all. The ability for creators to add more content as open gaming is what helps open game systems grow. With more content available, that means more resources for creators to use. So you can either take the first option when releasing your system so that it's CC-BY only and actively disincentivize people from releasing more open content, or you force them to release more content with CC-BY-SA but disincentivize any creation at all because it can't be effectively monetized (again, it can be re-uploaded and distributed by anyone else legally) and requires releasing rights to things you might not want to like characters and setting. Now, there are companies that have made the CC license work for RPGs. Evil Hat releases under CC-BY so that people can use their SRD and they aren't particularly worried about encouraging creators to release their own material as well, while Posthuman releases under CC-BY-NC-SA which means that there's a lot of Eclipse Phase fan content out there, but no third parties creating content for sale because they can't sell it. But for most companies, the Creative Commons license isn't a good fit for a roleplaying game. [/QUOTE]
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