RPGXPlorer - anyone tried it?

[kingpaul]

Any chance of that converting to XML, an option for PCGen to handle XML, or some such?

XML is something that's put pretty far back on the burner. Right now our coders are working on trimming code.

Do you know whether RPGT will use XML, other plain text, or a db backend? (I know, not really your beastie.)

No idea. You'll have to go to CMP's site to see what they intend.

 

[Anurien]

I think CMP are using C++ with a MySQL or some other cross-platform database (think it was MySQL, might be wrong, doesn't really matter though it was definitely a database of some sort) for RPGT.

 

[Mercule]

XML is something that's put pretty far back on the burner. Right now our coders are working on trimming code.

No idea. You'll have to go to CMP's site to see what they intend.

Both are what I expected you to say. Just checking.

 

[WingOver]

OGC content is by definition 'Open' therefore you could freely distribute any components labelled as 'Open' as long as you abide by the terms of the OGL itself. It is not possible to lock or otherwise render OGC data unredistributable without breaching the terms of the OGL.

Cool, I got that. I was wondering about your XML files (I think that's your format). Once the character generator is released and I have a chance to evaluate it and possibly buy it, what happens if I buy a dataset with OGC? Can I freely distribute it to my gaming group?

Similar situation as PDFs. What if a PDF has 100% open content? Can you distribute that freely? Or is some part of the PDF file not 'open' and therefore invalidates the entire file from being distributed? I realize you can copy/paste and share OGC all day long.

XML or PDF, they're both file formats which may contain OGC. I realize there must be some obvious legal reason you can't freely distribute PDFs with OGC, just not sure what exactly is preventing that (and if it also applies to your datasets).

 

[ladyofdragons]

Cool, I got that. I was wondering about your XML files (I think that's your format). Once the character generator is released and I have a chance to evaluate it and possibly buy it, what happens if I buy a dataset with OGC? Can I freely distribute it to my gaming group?

Similar situation as PDFs. What if a PDF has 100% open content? Can you distribute that freely? Or is some part of the PDF file not 'open' and therefore invalidates the entire file from being distributed? I realize you can copy/paste and share OGC all day long.

XML or PDF, they're both file formats which may contain OGC. I realize there must be some obvious legal reason you can't freely distribute PDFs with OGC, just not sure what exactly is preventing that (and if it also applies to your datasets).

Heh. You're asking a couple of non-RPGXplorer-specific questions there.

I thought it was just fine to redistribute 100% OGC, whatever the format. So hopefully you would be able to export the OGC portion of the dataset you purchased and distribute that to your group. The non-OGC portion would not be exportable. Since each item in RPGXplorer is tagged with a license designation, this should be possible.

Of course that's just my thought on how it should work, Anurien knows how it will work.

As for PDFs, IANAL and I don't want to start an OT flamewar here about distribution of IP, but I thought that if a PDF was 100% OGC it was transferrable. If the PDF contains a combination of OGC and Non-OGC, it is not. PDF products often have a combination of OGC and non-OGC. You'll see the publisher create "previews" made of the OGC portions of their product, and those items remain OGC in the full PDF but the rest of the document is under D20 or another license.

 

[WingOver]

That's what I figured about PDFs (that they contain a combination of OGC and closed content). I'm not interested in another discussion on the merits of file sharing and all that (seen enough of that lately!)

Bottom line: I just wanted to know if I could easily share OGC with my friends, including OGC purchased specifically for RPGX.

 

[Anurien]

The only possible stumbling block would be if the rule page was mixed content e.g. it contained artwork or other IP. I guess in this instance we'd have to prevent that from being distributed and probably have to provide an alternate version of the rule page containing just the OGC. I'm not sure on this though.

Pure OGC will be easily distributable. I doubt this kind of content will be charged for though, most likely it will emerge from the community for free.

 

[silvermane]

If the PDF contains a combination of OGC and Non-OGC, it is not. PDF products often have a combination of OGC and non-OGC.

Change "often" to "always". If a PDF product is given away for free, it still doesn't mean you can plagiarize it. Remember it's not only the text that can be non-OGC, but artwork layout and (the choice of) fonts as well.