Question? If there is no OGL did https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/d20-fight-club-d-d-5th-edition/id901057473?mt=8 this get some sort of license? Or do they just not care? Or is the D&D Basic free for anyone to use? Pardon my question I am new here.
-
The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is LIVE! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
D&D 5E So, 5e OGL
- Thread starter Michael Morris
- Start date
We have no way of knowing. One of the two - somehow they finagled an agreement with WotC (unlikely) or they're choosing to risk it.
No. It's only free for you to download and play at home. It's not free to redistribute in any form.
ZombieRoboNinja
First Post
Personally I worry that an OGL-type license would bring back the bad of the 3e d20 splatbook explosion along with the good. One of the great things about 5e is that you can make a ton of cool characters with just one book. There are certainly gaps (psionics, int-based martial tactical maneuvers/feats, etc) and plenty of room for more imaginative stuff outside of normal high fantasy tropes (artificers, robots, gunslingers, etc), but honestly I'll be happier if 5e never gets so bloated there are 50 different mechanical ways to achieve every character concept, like current 3.x/PF.
prosfilaes
Adventurer
What's bad about it? I've never played in a group that used third-party stuff for PCs, with the limited cases of the 3e Dragonlance books in a Dragonlance campaign, and a group that's now using a set of 3rd party PF psionics rules. It's easy to include only official stuff and exclude the third-party stuff.
Sacrosanct
Legend
yep. There can be a ton of crap, but no one is forcing you to play with it. But if there are some really good things, I'm glad they would have had the opportunity to be distributed
aramis erak
Legend
The problem lead to a downturn in local stores... as in, the D20 glut hurt the shopkeepers bottom line sufficiently that many were disinclined to continue as shopkeepers.
The problem was that there was, in about 2002, a massive demand for quality 3PP... but there was a glut of mediocre and poor quality stuff with high production values.
There was so much that shopkeepers had to guess, sight unseen, which was which. I've seen plenty of groups who do use 3rd party stuff... but mostly, they used ONE 3PP's work or another, but not two at a time.
I myself made use of some of Avalanche Press's work. Noble Steeds was excellent. Hell, it's still excellent. Of the pagecount, about half is just basic information on mounts and their capabilities. I have used it not just with D&D 3.0, but also with Pendragon and with WFRP1, simply for informing about what a horse can and cannot do. (I lost my dead tree copy to a friend who is a horse breeder. She said it's an excellent treatment.) Likewise, their I, Mordred, while I've never used it for d20, was the basis for a wonderful alternative pendragon campaign. And their Noble Knights book is likewise an excellent historical gaming supplement for 3.0.
But, despite the quality of the content, AP saddled most of their books with lurid sexualized-posture cover art.
Meanwhile, some utter drekh had much more sedate cover art, and sold quite well ... to shopkeepers. Unfortunately, it stayed there... until it wound up on the sale rack. I got Nyambe for $1... and Babylon 5 d20 for $2. Worth that price for the reading and art... but I'd never run either of them.
And I've seen high schoolers running the Scarred Lands setting.
Ravenloft 3e was by a 3PP, too... under license, but still, not WotC...
The real problem with the d20 glut is that stores simply couldn't tell quickly enough what was worthy and what wasn't.
agreed on that - there was a lot of crap with 3E, but you could easily exclude it by saying you only played with official WotC material or similar. Or, you could trim it further and say core rules only. Or, what I did was play with just official WotC material, and then take additional stuff on a case-by-case basis. Most of the stuff my players tried to add was perfectly fine, and in the spirit of their PCs, but there was a few things that were pretty "broken" they tried to get my blessing on that I had to edit or scale back. (Sorry dude, but the Duskblade's special feature is arcane channel 1, 2 or 3 times/day max... your PrC from the Groovy Netbook of Prestige Classes that allows your cleric to do it 1/day per level is really overpowered.)
Nellisir
Hero
That's completely true, but it's a massively different market now than it was in 2002. The big publishers aren't going to rush into the 5e market. Print costs are up, and print sales are down. The OGL is a known quantity. There is no pdf/niche publisher niche to be filled. Projects can be floated, evaluated, and money raised via Kickstarter.
In literal, calender, years, it's the difference between 1978 and 1990, or 1990 and 2002. A lot more changes than we might have realized.
prosfilaes
Adventurer
The problem is if they don't want to use the OGL, it would be exactly the basic set they most want to protect. If they OGL the Basic Set, they've lost control over 5E; people can extend any part of it freely and even clone it. With the 3E OGL, what's left might be a nuisance, but not more then the stuff they didn't release for 3E.
Similar Threads
