"Quality Standards" in the d20 System Guide

[KingOfChaos]

"One rule for you, another for the peasants" is how this is looking to be. I am pretty sure that WoTC will continue to put out material like the BoVD when they feel the need to shock the market for money, yet they're trying to keep us from publishing similar works. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to publish 'poon d20' but I don't like the idea that someone at WoTC or Hasbro can just decide arbitrarily that they don't like my book and pull the plug on it saying 'this doesn't meet MY standards'. If you notice, the system guide is very vague, basically giving WoTC complete control over content and artwork of EVERY company still willing to use the D20 license. As a writer myself, I don't like this because not everyone is of the same opinion. I don't like Steven King's books, but does that mean he shouldn't be able to continue writing them if he wants to?

Sorry if I feel like I have a choke leash around my neck, slowly being tightened by an unseen and unknown master. As a writer, I feel I have the right to spin what stories come to me without the fear of having someone I don't even know saying "This isn't right" and pissing on my work and creativity. I am sure those of you who do not write could care less, but think of this: WoTC is deciding what you can and cannot buy, just like they're telling us what we can and cannot write/draw. I am pretty sure you guys don't need a chaperone telling you how to spend your money, just like I don't need a morality editor looking over my shoulder as I type.

As for Valar, let us not be a mob and create a scapegoat. WoTC had nothing to do with the printing of the BoEF so they had no responsibility when it came to its content. Someone at WotC got annoyed that Valar used their trademark to create a book about sex and wanted these rules enforced. If there had been a lawsuit against WoTC over the content of BoEF, don't you think we would have heard about it on EN World? There wasn't and most likely won't be, so while Valar maybe the catalyst for this change, its not entirely their fault. They were dealing with their own creativity and artistic outlook for their book and WotC just didn't like it.

 

[Harlock]

"One rule for you, another for the peasants" is how this is looking to be. I am pretty sure that WoTC will continue to put out material like the BoVD when they feel the need to shock the market for money, yet they're trying to keep us from publishing similar works. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to publish 'poon d20' but I don't like the idea that someone at WoTC or Hasbro can just decide arbitrarily that they don't like my book and pull the plug on it saying 'this doesn't meet MY standards'. If you notice, the system guide is very vague, basically giving WoTC complete control over content and artwork of EVERY company still willing to use the D20 license. As a writer myself, I don't like this because not everyone is of the same opinion. I don't like Steven King's books, but does that mean he shouldn't be able to continue writing them if he wants to? Sorry if I feel like I have a choke leash around my neck, slowly being tightened by an unseen and unknown master. As a writer, I feel I have the right to spin what stories come to me without the fear of having someone I don't even know saying "This isn't right" and pissing on my work and creativity. I am sure those of you who do not write could care less, but think of this: WoTC is deciding what you can and cannot buy, just like they're telling us what we can and cannot write/draw. I am pretty sure you guys don't need a chaperone telling you how to spend your money, just like I don't need a morality editor looking over my shoulder as I type.

Shawn, that's a tad overboard, don'tcha think? Three letters solve this problem for you. O, G and L. WotC isn't deciding anything for me. All this changes is the d20STL. The Steven King anology isn't even fair. If King's publisher decided it wanted to completely change to children's books, then that is closer but still leaves King the option of changing to a new Publishing House. It doesn't prevent him from writing, nor does a change in the d20STL change your ability to write, produce and publish D&D compatible material under the OGL. Still, it sucks that the wording is so vague but after all, "If you notice, the system guide is very vague, basically giving WoTC complete control over content and artwork of EVERY company still willing to use the D20 license," is accurate to an extent. D&D still belongs to WotC. The d20STL is still their license. Thank God for the OGL. Meh, Scarred Lands d20 or Scarred Lands OGL, either way it's still the main setting I'll play. Say, didn't that Monte fellow publish Arcana Unearthed as OGL with the follow-up releases all slated as d20? May be a new business model...

 

[Anubis the Doomseer]

Herein lies precisely the problem. Valar, by virtue of trying to exploit every possible loophole in both the d20STL and Open Gaming License - from the very first press release the company made, mind you - to play by the letter of the law while intentionally and grossly violating the spirt of the law as much as possible, has created the problem.

No. The problem pre-existed the press release from Valar - they merely exploited it. Responsibility for that problem's existance is Hasbro's, not Valar's.

And now every other third-party publisher has to suffer for it.

Only to the extent Hasbro wishes to punish them. Remember - claiming content control was, and is, only one option among many to handle this problem. Valar is not to blame if Hasbro chooses to use the wrong tool for the job.

Assume there are 30 d20 releases this month. Because that one book has been used to poleaxe the licenses, all thirty books will suffer repercussions.

Again, only if Hasbro continues down this road instead of backing up and making the proper changes to protect it's trademark. A simple addition of a "we do not condone the content of this product" mandatory statement or changes to the logo and compatibility placement would help in this regard.

I'm not pro-censorship outside of the realm of me as a parent censoring what my underage children see, hear, and read (and of course, personal "censorship" in deciding what I see, hear, read, and write). But this has not been about censorship.

It is. If the book were about car racing or yet another book about prestige classes Hasbro would have had ZERO problem with a larger than normal statment of compatibility and logo. It is the sexual theme of the book that has everyone in a tizzy.

The problem for me is not the BoEF itself - the problem for me personally is that Valar has urinated in the pool that all the other d20 publishers are swimming in and has caused a lot of collateral damage for them by doing so.

I see a lot of people have urination fetishes (or traumatic childhood memories), judging from the frequency of this image.

Valar has done nothing that hasn't already been done by others - sexual content book, I have a very similar "Encyclopaedia Arcane" done by a major 3rd party company on the exact same topic. Nudie art and compatibility information? Again, another company has been using Playboy softcore art on their products for years, no comment. The urine, to return to the image of our youth, is already in the pool - the outrage is focusing on the only person ot pointout their own urine. A certain amount of the outrage, I believe, is mock anger hiding their own underwater emissions that went unreported and unnoticed by the lifeguard.

- Ma'at

 

[Psion]

"One rule for you, another for the peasants" is how this is looking to be. I am pretty sure that WoTC will continue to put out material like the BoVD when they feel the need to shock the market for money

I'm not.

Consider who was in charge of the D&D brand when BoVD was published. I would be really surprised if WotC put out anything like BoVD in the near future.

That said, I really am not so sure BoVD goes against the new standards as stated.

 

[BVB]

I figure the retroactive clause is just a sneaky way to manipulate the market and injure WotC's competitors, who were falsely led to believe they had a "safe harbor" for their product content. The ability to constantly shift the playing field like this is a powerful weapon.

Next month, a new update to the guidelines: "If you've got an ugly elf in your d20 book, we can require that you pull it off the shelves. ... at great expense to your company. Bwah-hah-hah-hah!"

 

[Robbert Raets]

The one thing I've never understood is the 'retroactiveness' of the (and really, any,) license.

If a government lowers the amount of alcohol you may have in your blood while operating a vehicle or heavy equipment today, you can't be sued for being above this limit on your way home last night, now can they?

 

[KingOfChaos]

I'm not.

Consider who was in charge of the D&D brand when BoVD was published. I would be really surprised if WotC put out anything like BoVD in the near future.

That said, I really am not so sure BoVD goes against the new standards as stated.

You don't think a dwarf being ripped in half by a Kyton, with its intestine hanging out, isn't 'gratuitous violence'? How about Belial in his thong underwear digging his claws into the rear-end of a succubus as she rubs herself against him? That sounds an awful lot like gratuitous violence and maybe sexual situations in art, which the new licenses bans.

 

[Sirius_Black]

That said, I really am not so sure BoVD goes against the new standards as stated.

BOVD has no "bare female nipples?????" Or "art ... depicting excessively graphic violence?" Granted, the last one is so ambigious that one can imagine how many different interpretations will take place.

 

[Harlock]

I figure the retroactive clause is just a sneaky way to manipulate the market and injure WotC's competitors, who were falsely led to believe they had a "safe harbor" for their product content. The ability to constantly shift the playing field like this is a powerful weapon.

Next month, a new update to the guidelines: "If you've got an ugly elf in your d20 book, we can require that you pull it off the shelves. ... at great expense to your company. Bwah-hah-hah-hah!"

Come now, WotC haven't proven to be total ogres at this point. Look at the monsters that were part of the "gentleperson's agreement" that didn't make it into the SRD. WotC didn't laugh maniacally as they forced Paradigm Concepts and Goodman Games to stop work on their mindflayer and beholder books respectively. They in fact, after polite negotiations of a sort, let them go ahead and publish it, as far as my understanding of the matter goes. Again, this "shift" in the playing field does not affect the OGL. Sure it's a bummer to a lot of people, publishers, consumers and even WotC, I am sure, but it's not the end. Given how WotC has been willing to give a little here and there when people were polite (as in the example of Paradigm cited above) I don't forsee there being any immediate problems with this version of the d20STL other than a targetting of BoEF and Valar.

The problem comes in how they want to enforce this in the future as it is rather open-ended as it stands now. If someone new for WotC/Hasbro came in and wanted to be mean and start elimnating competition by drumming up violations, then it's gone way too far. The d20STL was too abuseable by publishers (obviously since they abused certain aspects of it) but now it opens itself to too much potential abuse by WotC. Surely there is some happy medium which can be reached.

 

[KingOfChaos]

You don't think a dwarf being ripped in half by a Kyton, with its intestine hanging out, isn't 'gratuitous violence'? How about Belial in his thong underwear digging his claws into the rear-end of a succubus as she rubs herself against him? That sounds an awful lot like gratuitous violence and maybe sexual situations in art, which the new licenses bans.