D&D 5E Upcoming OGL-Related Announcement!

[bhandelman]

Back then publishing D&D 3.0 products was the only way of publishing content without developing your own RPG system. In 2014 there is a good number of D20 variant you can publish for (PFRPG, 13th age, M&M) or non D20 (FATE, Traveller, D6, Savage Worlds, Runequest/Legend) if that is you taste.

Because these third party publishers now exist and thrive on such a market, I have no doubt if today an OGL for 5e was announced many would jump on it as soon as they could. The game is just too big, there is too much hype. DnD still holds the lead in mindshare, and the chance to tap into that is what lead to the d20 market growing so fast. It wasn't just the chance to publish RPG material without creating your own game, there were open games before then, it was the chance to publish DnD material. We wouldn't get a flood like we did then, but make no mistake there are plenty of small RPG publishers who would love a chance to release some adventures for 5e.

 

[Umbran]

True but you still can publish for it without too much hassle.

I know. But when I suggest WotC might do such a thing, I get flat rejections that negotiated licencing is unacceptable, infeasible, etc.

 

[Nikosandros]

Kenzer's a weird situation. They had an official D&D license for Kalamar up until 2007 - logo, branding, everything, as part of the settlement of a lawsuit regarding the Dragon Magazine Archive instituted by David Kenzer. After that they stopped putting the D&D logo on the products, but we don't really know the exact terms of the settlement. There's a more than zero chance they're perfectly entitled to continue using that phrase.

AFAIK, you're allowed to claim compatibility with a brand that you don't own. There are plenty of accessories such chargers and batteries that explicitly claim compatibility with Apple, Samsung, Nokia, etc.

 

[Thaumaturge]

Comparable with the Next version of the world famous fantasy role-playing game

Ooooh, good one.

I also thought maybe "World's Greatest Roleplaying Game" is something they put on the covers with the intent of letting 3PPs use that as part of whatever license the put out there.

Maybe if they contract directly with you, you can put on all of the logos and things, and if they don't you can say "compatible with the World's Greatest Roleplaying Game".

Thaumaturge.

 

[tomBitonti]

I'd like to ask: How does the OGL intersect with what is now possible with ePublishing?

I'm looking at this evolution:

1) Some friends have a long standing campaign, for which they have a detailed game world, NPCs, and characters. They have made a lot of house rules, and have been putting their information online (most immediately, for their private use), but with minimal or no security to prevent public view. They might use an online site which implicitly grants rights to service provides to use the online material in certain ways.

2) They get together and wonder if they could commercialize their game: They would like to create short ePubs of a campaign guide, of the major NPCs, and of the major PCs.

3) That turns out pretty well, so they decide to release a couple of modules in their game space. But, they are running out of cash for their company: They need a new server and better software, and would like to purchase some advertising, hire a part time editor, and pay for better art. They put together a more detailed business plan and create a KickStarter project.

4) That also turns out well enough, so they go a second round to put out a more detailed campaign book and a monster book.

5) Continuing, they put out an adventure path, and they make a second pass over their ePubs to put them into form for print-on-demand.

I presume that licensing appears at stage #2 (although, I worry about putting material on hosted sites, which usually includes certain granted rights to the service provider).

This is intended to match what seems to have been done in several cases for 3E, e.g., Necromancer, Iron Kingdoms, Scarred Lands.

A very large difference between the evolution, today, and what was possible a decade ago, is that ePublication leading to print-on-demand is now possible, enabling companies to produce and sell content with much less overhead, and with much shorter delivery pipelines.

Thx!

TomB

 

[Lalato]

It would totally depend on what products were made with it.

For me, the awesomeness of the OGL was/is best reflected in the products by Necromancer Games and Frog God Games. If the GSL had prevented those products from happening, then I would not have lauded the GSL as much as I do the OGL. Since Necro shied away from the GSL, my guess is that they would not have made the products they did, and the gaming world today would suck.

If the product volume produced under the GSL for 4E was the same for 3.x, then a lot fewer people would likely care about the license *unless* the GSL was used by people (fans) to just put their own stuff on the web (not charging for it) without being sued.

While I grok what you're saying, I'll still point out that you would have never known that those products weren't produced... so how could you have made a decision to withhold your appreciation for the license? As Morrus has noted... the GSL ain't that bad, I think this is especially true if you don't have physical product. For a PDF publisher it seems to work pretty well. If you have physical product, then you better have a plan for your inventory (Yikes!).

I have an alternative theory as to why the GSL isn't as popular as it could be. I think the DDI sucked a lot of the air out of the space where 3PP might exist. Every 4e group I've played with uses the DDI tools to some extent, and because it included the magazines, the character builder (and later the monster builder, etc) there really wasn't much space left for other publishers... with, or without, the OGL.

Sure, you could make content for 4e (and some did), but if you added new classes, powers, feats, etc... you were basically asking your audience to stop using the WotC tools. So anyone that did make a sale via the GSL was likely to end up with some frustrated folks on the other end. WotC was obviously not able to take on the technical requirements to make a character builder that allowed user created or 3PP content. Heck, they were only just able to keep up with their own changes and updates. The result is that those brave folks that did sign up for the GSL may have sold some product, but probably not as much as they could have if they had access to the DDI tools or if those tools didn't actually exist.

I should note that, people did eventually backwards engineer how to update the content in the original character builder... which was stupidly built for Windows systems only. And then the replacement was stupidly built with Silverlight (though this made it at least workable on MacOS). At any rate, I honestly think that the DDI tools were a subtle, but difficult to overcome, barrier to getting more 3PP content for 4e. Even those folks that created their own homebrew classes, feats, powers, etc would have been frustrated by the fact that they couldn't use them with DDI.

Anyway... just some food for thought. I could be completely off base here.

 

[sidonunspa]

Ooooh, good one.

ty ty

I also thought maybe "World's Greatest Roleplaying Game" is something they put on the covers with the intent of letting 3PPs use that as part of whatever license the put out there.

Maybe if they contract directly with you, you can put on all of the logos and things, and if they don't you can say "compatible with the World's Greatest Roleplaying Game".

That might very well be the case..

 

[Dausuul]

I should note that, people did eventually backwards engineer how to update the content in the original character builder... which was stupidly built for Windows systems only. And then the replacement was stupidly built with Silverlight (though this made it at least workable on MacOS).

Yeah, Silverlight for the character builder was ridiculous. What on earth did they plan to do with it? The character builder is a bog-standard "put stuff in the database, pull stuff out of the database, do a little business logic in the middle" system. Plain old ASP.NET or ASP MVC, with some jQuery or just regular Javascript to make the front end nice and snappy, would have made far more sense. (I assume they're committed to the Microsoft stack.)

The non-web-based character builder was meant to be the first stage of a comprehensive "electronic gaming" application, and WotC's in-house team had to scramble to salvage what they could after one of the key contractors died in a murder-suicide (seriously!). So I don't really hold the flaws in that one against WotC. But the web version was completely their baby.

 

[dd.stevenson]

I think it would be no problem at all. It's not a claim about being the world's greatest game - it's saying they are compatible with the world's greatest game, which is an entirely different claim. It would be like one hot dog company saying "We sell that other hot dog company's hot dogs" and not "we make the same kind of quality claims about our hot dogs as that other hot dog company". It's referring directly to the actual product in question with that trade dress at the other company, and saying they are compatible with that other company's products.

I am not saying this in a speculative way - this is the actual legal advice I'd give to a client (and I do represent d20 companies). WOTC just made that description part of their trade dress. You can make that same claim on your own about your own product if you wish - but don't refer TO WOTC's products with your own using that same claim, because you would likely be infringing on their trade dress. You'd be trying to create consumer confusion at that point.

Yeah, everybody, listen to Mistwell and not me. I was being sardonic* with my suggestion (because I think "world's greatest" is a dumb catch phrase), and certainly don't think that referring directly to a line on the phb cover is a smart way to avoid lawsuit.

* but only kind of sardonic--I'm still excited about 5E!

 

[Hussar]

There is probably one very big difference now that would impact the chances of a new "glut". There are so few game shops anymore.

Iirc there's about 25% of gaming stores now as opposed to 2000. And the ones that are left are going to be very choosey about what to put on shelves.

You won't get a glut of print products because the stores won't stock them.

Digital maybe but that's up in the air. Digital only publications tend not to be as visible.