Mr. Dancey's enthusiasm for the OGL is obvious, but he seems to be overlooking a lot of things in his article, a lot of legitimate concerns gamers have about the course of their industry. And make no mistake, it belongs to us.
Agreed, but given that he was the brand manager responsible for the revitalization of the industry via D&D3e and D20, I think Mr. Dancey is qualified to offer the insights he did in that interview. He may not always be right, but he has a voice of experience we should at least take into consideration.
First, he chews out publishers for noncompliance with the liscence. While I can understand his feelings in regards to those publishers who have entirely neglected to include the lisence (I recall the AEG Evil book had a sticker on the back page), he should make an effort to understand that the gaming industry is not comprised of lawyers; we are all fans. My initial enthusiasm for the lisence was based off the fact that it would allow the "little guy" easier access to the roleplaying market, and a chance for more backyard operators to get their stuff out there. If the motivation behnd the lisence is to open gaing up, rather than simply subvert pre-existing companies with resources to using the system promoted by WotC, then efforts must be made to help these small publishers, rather than threatsof litigation.
And if you are just a small time fan running a site with some D20 stuff on it, Dancey has said repeatedly that WotC (most likely) won't bother you about minor infractions. If, however, you are using the D20 license to it's full potential, and making money off of WotC's generous license, it is your responsiblity as a businessman(person
) to
fully comply with their license or face the consequences.
But my biggest gripe comes at the end of the interview, where he challanges other game designers for doing eactly what WotC did and creating the own OGL's. He asks why they can't simply use the pre-existing system.
Well, where I come from, people are hardly unanimous in their support of D20 system. I myself have many reservations about it. I think it works great for games that already have the d20 system in mind and that are primarily fantasy based.
I think you are misunderstanding what Dancey was talking about. Forget about D20 system and the D20 system license for a minute, we're talking about the OGL. Someone like White Wolf or Palladium, or Chatdemon's Lameass Games, could use the OGL to open up their system in the same way WotC did, thus creating a new open system, like D20.
What happens instead, like in the case of Gold Rush Games'
Action System open game system, is that they create a whole new base license. It's a simple matter of reinventing the wheel. Dancey obviously feels that the OGL is more than sufficient for opening up
any game system, and would like to see it become the industry standard for doing so. Dancey has in the past expressed his opinion that D20/D&D is the 'ideal' system for RPGs, but this is not another reflection of that opinion.
