Ringing the Cowbell - A D20 Question

[Man-thing]

Dungeon Dive 4 - The Necromancer's Lair by Amalara used a wide variety of monsters from a whack of sources. It reprinted all the stats in the module and provided a brief overview of the monsters in the appendix to assist gamesmasters with monster they may be unfamiliar with.

The major complaint from reviewers was that it contain too many new monsters and didn't focus on the MM monsters enough.

 

[Man-thing]

I actually wonder how many DMs want adventures that draw from a variety of sources.
To illustrate if we look at Wolfgang Baur's Custom Adventure project that is running here:
http://customadventure.livejournal.com/

I think most of the suggested monsters selected by patrons were SRD or even typical D&D oppoenents, with a few classic monsters from ToH also included.

 

[eris404]

I was thinking of Paizo as I wrote this. Dragon, and especially Dungeon, either prints full stat blocks or reprints the necessary bits from whatever supplement they are drawing from (usually).

I was thinking that as well - out of curiosity, does anyone know if they will accept articles and/or adventures with non-Wizards OGL content? I can't recall seeing anything recently that wasn't printed in a WotC product first (I think before 3.5 they had some articles on Freeport, but I can't remember exactly).

 

[big dummy]

In the recent thread about designing modules, people were asking why WOTC couldn't open up some of its material to the OGL and allow d20 publishers to use that material in modules. Not a bad idea, but, really, I have to ask, what's in it for WOTC? If WOTC allowed, say, the PHB 2 to be used in adventures, D20 publishers could then use the popularity of that book to sell their product. Which, in turn, might spur more sales of the PHB 2.

Maybe.

But, instead of leeching off of WOTC's popularity, why don't the d20 publishers actually take a moment to help eachother. Because the individual d20 publishers are so small, any effect they would have on a WOTC product would be comensurately small. However, consider for a second the enormous library of OGC material there is out there for publishers to draw from.

Looking at my own shelf, I see three Creature Collections, two Tome of Horrors and a Denizens of Avidnu. There are more monsters in those books than anyone could possibly use in twenty modules. Yet, every module that comes out, you almost never see anything from another publisher.

Consider the following adventure for a second. I freely admit that I suck at adventure design, but, just bear with me. A local important figure is last seen at the Dancing Bull (Mystic Eye Games, Urban Blight) and turns up missing the next morning. The party is hired to find this important figure. They enter the Dancing Bull and after whatever find the trail leads to a slaver ship run by Captain Whiskers, a slitheren rat man (Creature Collection Revised). Giving chase, the party embarks on a ship provided by the town to run down the slavers. The chase leads to a remote island where unspeakable rites are being performed on the slaves (AEG's Secrets).

Ok, the adventure maybe sucks, but you get the idea. I've used material from three different publishers, all OGC. Not only do I make a module that people might want to buy, but I tie it into other d20 products in the hopes that those who bought those books will buy my module. And, it's generic enough that those who have never bought those books won't overlook it. In other words, I have made my module that much more attractive. The other d20 publishers win in this situation as well since they get free advertising for their books. As a publisher I win doubly since I don't have to do the grunt work developing new creatures and other crunchy bits. I just use what's available.

I'm obviously missing something here. To me, this seems a very obvious idea. There are thousands of monsters, classes, PrC's, feats, spells, races, whatever that are OGC. Why is this resource being ignored so that everyone can reinvent the wheel? Why does publishing a book, be it sourcebook or module, automatically mean that the material must be 100% unique?

((Steps off his soapbox, still ringing his cowbell ))

I think it's a good idea. A federation of D20 companies and writers. Doubt it will ever happen but I would definately participate.

BD

 

[smilinggm]

Unless I am mistaken this is exactly what PCI and Green Ronin are doing with "OGL Interlink" line of books. Beyond this Green Ronin has allowed PCI to write Living Arcanis mods using Freeport. Also at one point Atlas Games was allowing PCI to use the Nyambe setting in Living Arcanis, but sadly that agreement has ended.


As for what Wizards would get out of opening more material to the OGL, Well I might consider purchasing more books from Wizards. IMHO not bad motivation for WOTC.

 

[der_kluge]

Some d20 books do use a fair amount of OGC from other d20 books.

But there are problems. First, consider that most d20 books don't have a wide audience, so if I rely on that OGC for my product, I'm sort of limiting the scope of my product to just those who might have had the original source, especially if I'm sort of building on that OGC and having a good knowledge of the foundation is helpful.

Secondly, there's a thin line WRT to copying OGC whole cloth from publishers, that I think make some publishers leary of just taking stuff and reproducing it elsewhere. I think that's fairly safely not going to happen, because there are a number of products that are 100% OGC compliant, and you could legally take those and reproduce them as is without legal repurcussion. That hasn't happened.

Lastly, a lot of OGC is "crippled" which essentially makes it unusable. Crippled content is like a monster, but the name of said monster is PI, or a new spell, the contents of which are OGC, but the name is PI. You can't really use that at all then, since the name of the thing is PI. Monte Cook is particularly bad about using lots of crippled content, and lots of very vague OGC statements with regard to what is and what is not open content. I mean, pick up any ol' Monte Cook book and try to ascertain exactly what in the book is open content. It's not easy.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The OGC people should take a page from the music industry.

All you have to do to cover a song is clear the license and pay the appropriate mechanical royalty- no permission is needed. Thus, as long as the paperwork is in order, any recently signed garage band can release an album while making utter hash out of classic tunes.

In the gaming context, that would involve a creating a clearing house to handle the licensing- one with all of the OGC material archived, ordered and searchable. Once the publisher files the proper forms, he's free to reprint the intellectual property as needed for his product (with credit given in the "legalese"). The amount of the royalty would depend on the amount of material used and would be payed based upon his sales. If he sells squat, he owes squat.

But what if you don't want someone using your nifty creatures in their products? Easy- whatever you don't want used by others, you don't file with the clearing house.

Under such a system, WotC won't have to worry about someone reprinting the PHB in their product (assuming it was filed with the clearing house)- publishers who did would owe WotC for that, and it would chew up the majority of their profits on that product.

Under such a system, an excellent but obscure monster could be used with impunity, with no worries about the consumer not owning the relevant original product- its reprinted in full in the new one. The company that created the critter would get a check based on sales of the new product...as well as word of mouth (which could drive demand for second printings or .pdfs).

 

[diaglo]

unlike Blue Oyster Cult i don't think d02 needs more cowbell.


i think they just need more sales and distribution.

i know i can't buy from a number of companies b/c they just don't carry them in the FLGS.

and yet i live 2.8 miles from a major distribution warehouse for White Wolf... which also makes for other companies like Necro etc..

it took me a week to get Of Sound Mind by Kevin Kulp delivered to my house ordering it online.

 

[Hussar]

DannyAlcatraz - It's funny. I suggested a similar idea a year ago. A 3rd Party SRD. I basically got called a thief by various publishers. In their view, I simply wanted their ideas for free and they were having none of it.

The part I found truly astonishing about all that was the fact that OGC is FREE already. If I wanted to start a wiki collecting every bit of OGC out there, so long as it was carefully editted to remove any crippled OGC or other complications, there is absolutely ZERO that publishers could do about it. To me, I see this as the best solution for d20 publishers.

Individually, d20 publishers simply aren't big enough to be able to draw on the pool of talent out there. But, by borrowing from eachother they can draw on eachothers talent. Those that publish good ideas have their ideas spread farther and those that publish garbage sink to the bottom.

As far as what percentage of reprint is good, well, that's for the market to decide. If modules are produced with 80% reprinted material and sell very well, then 80% is the benchmark. Conversely, if 20% sells better, then, that's where you end up.

IMO, this is an excellent way for smaller publishers to reduce costs and print better products. Instead of reinventing the wheel with nearly every product, why not use what works? Publishers already do it with the SRD, why not draw on 3rd party material as well?

BTW, Dungeon and Dragon will not print any 3rd party material. Period.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, the key to what I was proposing is that there are fees and royalties to be payed by those who use the material. Using someone's non-archived material without express permission would still be copyright infringement.

Using archived material without paying the fees and royalties would be copyright infringement, and probably would probably have contractual penalties as well, such as being barred from using the archive for a certain period, or paying double fees for the next N times the infringer uses the archive.