Troll Lords OGL Lite

[JoeGKushner]

My Google-fu appears to be weak, young master, tell me of this mystery of which you speak.

I didn't want to derail the other thread. I believe that this is something like Castles and Crusaders from Troll Lords. There are supposed to be a few hardcovers coming out that cover different aspects, much like standard d&d but with more focus on the game.

 

[Desdichado]

Your answer is more obscure than simply the title of the game, though.

 

[Henry]

A bit of info on Castles & Crusades - it will be OGL, though not really an OGL Lite product. It will be in feel similar to old 1st edition AD&D, so it will be "lite" in that sense. It is designed to be more modular in approach than 3E, so that rules tinkering can take place with fewer repercussions to overall balance.

Just so I'm not spouting a bunch of marketing info, let me see if I can hunt the last thread that we discussed this on, as it may give you an idea of what it's supposed to be like. I believe in the last few pages of the thread, Cleaverthepit (that's Davis Chenault, the R&D head designer) gave a few rules teasers.

AHA!

I got to playtest Castles & Crusades!


As for a TRUE OGL Lite product, there really isn't a clear "successor" yet. The closest thing I have ever seen is ST Cooley's OGL Basic Player's Guide. It's meant to get a new player up to speed in 64 pages or less, and it does a fantastic job - it's reminiscent in feel to the old Tom Moldvay Basic D&D book from 1981 - it covers up to 4th level, and eliminates more complex things like Op Attacks and spell components in order to get someone playing quickly.

 

[trollwad]

Castles and Crusades is indeed going to be published by Troll Lords. I am under a NDA with the Trolls due to my infinitestimal (but fun) part in the boards discussing the game so I cannot say much about the game, except to say that work is progressing nicely (though I cannot say a specific date), the game rules are intended to be both modular and less 'heavy' than 3.0 or 3.5, and the game is intended to be more in the 'spirit' of od&d/1e/2e but are IMHO mechanically better put together than 1e or 2e. I am not a lawyer but it is reasonable to assume that it will use the OGL.

hope that helps. stay tuned...

 

[Ranger REG]

Well, if it is using any portion of the SRD, then they have to use the OGL. If it's an entirely different set of rules with no mechanic deriving from the SRD, then Troll Lord have the option of adding their ruleset under the OGL (or not).

After all, that's what Gold Rush Games did for their Action! System.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

I am not a lawyer but it is reasonable to assume that it will use the OGL.

I am neither trollwad nor a lawyer, but I think what trollwad meant was that it will use the OGL but not the d20 license. The d20 license requires that the meaning of certain terms (like armor class) remain unchanged, and I'd bet that a rules-light or earlier-edition-feel system will want to use different meanings for some of those terms.

This, BTW, is why Masters and Minions is not using the d20 license. In order to fulfill our slogans "Designed for every fan of every edition of the world's most popular RPG" and "Leave no gamer behind", we wanted to be able to release versions of the Horde Books that would already be converted for use in rules-light and retro systems. We queried the Open Gaming Foundation listserv (where folks aren't ususally lawyers either, but have spent lots of time thinking about such things) and their reply was, more or less:

Wizards might successfully bring a lawsuit arguing that you are diluting the d20 trademark if you put out two versions of the same product which are essentially identical except for conversion-related changes in their rules, one of which uses the d20 logo and one of which does not.

Food for thought for other publishers who think that rules-light is going to be a growing niche in the market! We're ultimately very glad we're not limited by some other restrictions of the d20 license: we can now present our own rules for creating monstrous characters and advancing them with experience, for example, and in the future we're looking forward to producing miniatures. Whether or not the lack of the d20 trademark recognition factor hurts our sales remains to be seen--we'll make our sales figures public so that others can be warned or encouraged (I hope) by our example.

 

[jmucchiello]

Actually, it will not use the d20 license because they will be including character generation information in the books. The whole point of the books is to reduce what you need down to a SLIM book. Their goal is 128 pages for the CCPHB. It will definitely use the OGL but will probably only reuse various names of things and complete redefine them. (Things like a spell called sleep or race called Halfling.)

I have signed their NDA, but all of this info has been stated before many times both here and on the public C&C message board at trolllord.com