PCGen and Wizards of the Coast Stage Talks At GenCon!

[Mynex]

A great amount of positive things have occurred since Saturday at GenCon, and all of it can be attributed to Mr. Anthony Valterra from Wizards of the Coast!!!

Bryan McRoberts (Merton Monk), W. Robert Reed III (Mynex), Jason Buchanan (Lone Jedi), and Andrew McDougal (Tir Gwaith), sat down at the table with Mr. Valterra to address the concerns of Wizards of the Coast that related to PCGen. The meeting lasted nearly an hour. It was also very positive and relaxed in its entirety.

Mr. Valterra emphasized the need to remove the non-SRD material from the distribution sets of PCGen and make sure that this project remained in compliance with OGL and d20 guidelines. Mr. Valterra made a polite request that we stop using the material that is not in the SRD, and to follow the path we had taken for the 1st production release of PCGen, which was in compliance.

We also discussed what steps were necessary to become fully OGL and d20 compliant. We asked what changes needed to be done to the software and data files and how close we were to full OGL compliancy. We are proud to report that by taking a few more steps, we should be fully d20 compliant. Mr. Valterra was excited to hear how close we already were to achieving this goal and was more than willing to aid us in our pursuit of this. The staff at PCGen will be working very closely with Mr. Valterra and his group to ensure we meet those requirements.

In addition, there was some discussion about re-introducing our other data sets in the future. Those rely heavily upon our becoming completely OGL & D20 compliant. Once we have reached this, we will begin to discuss our other materials and have additional talks about the splat books, Forgotten Realms, Call of Cthulhu, Star Wars, and the other Wizards of the Coast D20 game systems. Since Wizards of the Coast has licensed the use of the Star Wars and Call of Cthulhu IP/PI materials they cannot grant us permission to use them. However, Mr. Valterra did state that he would be willing to consult with the licensees of those materials once we have reached compliancy.

This does not affect the permissions from other game publishers we have received, and we will continue to work on their data files and get them into PCGen. We will continue to make releases after the initial changes to PCGen to come into full compliancy.

There are great changes coming up for PCGen as we work with Wizards of the Coast on this issue. Stay tuned!

The PCGen Team

 

[Leopold]

bump

 

[kingpaul]

bump

Ah c'mon Leopold, no bumping this thread. I like reading all the other PCGen related threads that don't know the whole truth and jump to conclusions.

 

[Cergorach]

Nice! Very nice indeed!
What exactly do you guys still need to do to be in compliance with OGL? Do you guys want to use the D20 liscence (why?) and what would you need to do to be in compliance with it?

Keep us posted...

 

[D'karr]

PCGen Rocks.

I've been using the program since version 2.1.something. Thank you guys for doing such a great job.

I hope that WotC will someday, someway allow you to release the other non-SRD files for mass-consumption.

There are several players in my group that ended up getting certain books just because they saw the feats in PCGen and wanted to use them.

No matter what some naysayers might say your 'marketing' approach worked with them, I'm sure it has worked with others too.

Keep up the great work.

 

[merton_monk]

Why take PCGen to OGL/D20 compliance

Mr. Valterra was very reasonable - he told us that in order to use the SRD material we need to be OGL compliant. PCGen has always been very flexible, so we've been slowly removing all hard-coding of formulas/bonii/etc. out and moving them to the data files anyway, so becoming OGL compliant means completing that process, which should require a few more weeks. The biggest issue was moving the definition and impact of stats to a data file, which I've already done, though there are a couple of bugs that have been created by this which I need to squash. So I really think that becoming OGL compliant will be a good exercise for us and will make Wotc happy. Everyone wins.

Why become D20 compliant? Well, we wanted to know how we could get permission for all the non-SRD material. Wotc's response was - become D20 compliant and we'll consider it. Once we're OGL compliant, D20 isn't much further to go. It largely consists of moving "interactive" elements (like stat rolling and purchasing, hp rolling, etc.) to a data file. Again, this is actually a good thing from a purely functional standpoint.

What are the chances that we can get permission for all their material? I don't think anyone knows that - not even Anthony Valterra, though I have the impression that if we get to OGL/D20 compliance and our user group acts responsibly (no one starts distributing files which we don't have permission for) I think our chances are decent. A lot of publishers have told me that users have told them that they would only buy books that are in PCGen. That has convinced a lot of them to give us permission to get them into PCGen. Wizards is a publisher as well, so I think they can see the advantages of having their material in PCGen, though they obviously want to protect their rights and property as defined by the licenses they graciously created to spawn this industry.

I think this whole experience will make PCGen better than it was before and I'm quite pleased that we've had the chance to sit down with Anthony and discuss the specifics of what all needs to happen and how we can get there. Wotc could have easily gotten all mean and nasty - but they didn't. They've been very helpful and have gone to a lot of trouble to help us figure out what it will specifically take for us to become OGL compliant. They could have said, "You're not OGL compliant - we don't have time to deal with you, get off the 'net now or we'll see you in court".

Whether or not you like PCGen, knowing that they are willing to deal with people and not railroad them should be very comforting.

Bryan McRoberts
Benevolent Dictator of PCGen

 

[Breakdaddy]

Bryan and all of you folks of PCGen are MY GAWDS! You cats keep up the great work, I know I appreciate it and many others do.

 

[Mynex]

Bryan and all of you folks of PCGen are MY GAWDS! You cats keep up the great work, I know I appreciate it and many others do.

Thanks for the vote of support! Too many people have been dogging on PCGen, on E-Tools, on Wizards, etc... that it gets old.

*Start cheap shameless plug*

I called into Adlon's Mortality Radio show tonight and addressed some of the rumors/questions/issues that have been around... I'd suggest everyone grab it and give it a listen!

*End cheap shameless plug*

 

[kitoy]

I'm glad to hear that you're ironing things out with WotC. My heart was having palpitations when I thought about not having PCGen to help run my campaign. I literally do everything with PCGen, from keeping track of my players' characters, to generating NPC's, to customizing monsters. I don't know what I'd do without it.

I got really scared when I downloaded PCGen 3.0 and it didn't have the splatbooks and sourcebooks. I'm glad to see that you're working towards getting them back in.

 

[Ranger REG]

* shrugs *

You could manually input the data.