"Poaching" OGC

[Roger]

Lord knows I've tried. I've tried to use OGC where I could rather than invent my own.

In the majority of cases, it just wasn't suited to my needs. And/or it was just shoddy. I don't mean to sound like I think I'm God's gift to OGC or anything, but that's just been my experience.

(The two examples I'm particularly thinking of were rules for garrottes and rules for Tasers.)



Cheers,
Roger

 

[kenmarable]

As for the re-use, it has been rare, but I know that monsters are often used in adventures (I've personally used Tome of Horrors and Advanced Bestiary quite a lot). Also, there's been the occasional compilation, especially as part of a larger product - for example, Bastion Press/Dragonwing Games' Pale Designs: A Poisoner's Handbook compiled every OGC poison they could find at the time. It was a few pages out of the whole book, but it was still there.

Other than those two sorts of situations, re-use has been unfortunately pretty rare and random.

 

[Ranger REG]

Just for my curiosity, what's the difference between sharing OGC and poaching OGC? I mean, isn't OGC mean to be used and re-used, without or without alteration?

 

[Nellisir]

I understand there's been one very blatant example of poaching by one particular publisher.

Look at how that situation was dealt with.

I know everyone wants to be circumspect and polite, and let bygones be bygones, but I actually -don't- know about this "blatant example"; at least not that I know of. If I had, I wouldn't have started this thread. So, I don't know how it was dealt with.

 

[Ry]

I know everyone wants to be circumspect and polite, and let bygones be bygones, but I actually -don't- know about this "blatant example"; at least not that I know of. If I had, I wouldn't have started this thread. So, I don't know how it was dealt with.

Same here.

 

[Ry]

Just for my curiosity, what's the difference between sharing OGC and poaching OGC? I mean, isn't OGC mean to be used and re-used, without or without alteration?

Well, releasing an SRD for your game appears to be sharing OGC. Using a monster from that SRD is definitely taking advantage of that sharing.

Taking someone else's 100% OGC product, putting it in a new wrapper, and re-releasing it so it looks basically the same as the original and selling it for say, half the price of the original is definitely poaching.

Unfortunately, nobody seems to agree where to draw the line between the two. That makes it hard to use the OGL as a flag to say: "Hey everybody! Come on in and use this however you like! We want to see what you come up with!"

Since most publishers aren't fond of saying that, and most of the discussion about the OGL is publisher-focused, this situation appears to be perfectly acceptable. But I think it's bad for anyone who cares about an ecology of ideas, evolutionary design, and gaming as an effort with multiple kinds of participants all finding best practices and cool ways to mix things up. What we have now with OGC starts to feel like a closed copyright culture again because in addition to the OGLs you have to figure out what a publisher's opinion of the OGL is or risk getting badmouthed in front of a fairly internet-savvy community. So you're back to contacting each publisher that you use the ideas of, and being wary of using OGC.

In my opinion wariness about copyrights is a bad thing for a community with a lot of very talented nonprofessional writers, artists, and designers.

 

[kenmarable]

I know everyone wants to be circumspect and polite, and let bygones be bygones, but I actually -don't- know about this "blatant example"; at least not that I know of. If I had, I wouldn't have started this thread. So, I don't know how it was dealt with.

Well, I wasn't one of the parties involved, but I had heard names named and examples cited, so from what I recall:

Taking someone else's 100% OGC product, putting it in a new wrapper, and re-releasing it so it looks basically the same as the original and selling it for say, half the price of the original is definitely poaching.

is pretty much exactly what happened. Although I don't know exactly how much lower the prices were, and there was serious questioning of how new the wrapper was even. But basically publisher A (and C, and D, if I recall) released products that were 100% OGC. Publisher B then released pretty much the exact same content at a lower price immediately afterwards. Legally, it's 100% OGC, so it's fine. Ethically, it's really friggin' rude.

There were many, many other complaints against this publisher (including using the "product update" function of RPGNow to spam customers), and the end result was them getting booted from RPGNow (where the majority of this was taking place). RPGNow then revised their own policies to exclude those sorts of products (I don't know what the exact restrictions are, however). That was a couple years ago and I see they are back now selling at RPGNow.

Personally, I have no problems with names being named as long as both sides get to fairly represent their side. In fact, some threads at EN World and RPGNet at the time were clear about who was involved. (And since I wasn't one of them, I won't be the one to name names.) The market is better at self-policing if it is informed - as long as it is well informed of both sides. As a both a customer and a freelancer, I would never want to deal with a company that had even half the practices I've heard this one had. Needless to say, this company is on my (thankfully short) personal blacklist.

But, in that case it took the retailer to handle the situation if you were wondering how it was dealt with.

 

[Ranger REG]

Taking someone else's 100% OGC product, putting it in a new wrapper, and re-releasing it so it looks basically the same as the original and selling it for say, half the price of the original is definitely poaching.

100%? Like how Mongoose published the Pocket Player's Handbook (based on the 100% OGC-filled SRD)? Is that what you consider poaching?

No offense, but who's dumb enough to make a 100% OGC product that is not an SRD?

 

[Ry]

100%? Like how Mongoose published the Pocket Player's Handbook (based on the 100% OGC-filled SRD)? Is that what you consider poaching?

No offense, but who's dumb enough to make a 100% OGC product that is not an SRD?

Lots of people. I've released two myself.

 

[Nellisir]

No offense, but who's dumb enough to make a 100% OGC product that is not an SRD?

Necromancer Games and Bastion Press spring to mind.