D&D 5E (2014) Upcoming OGL-Related Announcement!

[DaveMage]

Hopefully they will do something like Paizo did - both a community use policy (for fans not selling anything) and a separate license for those that do sell stuff.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Hopefully they will do something like Paizo did - both a community use policy (for fans not selling anything) and a separate license for those that do sell stuff.

Yes becuse fans and companies don't need the same thing... And inwould be very happy with a closed licence

 

[I'm A Banana]

Why isn't it? It's their playground that they're letting everyone else play in. It's not like they can't set the bar wherever they want as far as quality goes.

There's a few reasons.

The biggest one is probably that "quality" is immensely subjective. There is no one authority on what is "quality" and what isn't. If the Edition Wars have taught us anything, it should be that. If WotC tries to appoint some Quality Czar to police all the D&D-compatible things produced in 5e, they are introducing artificial controls on what is "quality" that people are going to disagree with. This rules out potentially amazing products, and enforces a particular kind of very limited scope of what "quality" is.

That kills the innovation that can spring from an open market, reducing the value of the goods to whatever value others place in this person's (or team's) designation of what "quality" is, which erodes much of the point in having a supported marketplace to begin with.

The next biggest is likely that quality control is itself a quixotic goal. There has been no edition of D&D that has been perfectly balanced and perfectly well-executed after about a year of development. Arguably, shorter. If WotC can't guarantee that they themselves will produce reliably quality material (digital products, poor adventures, supplements with poor balance, ignored feats, etc.), then they sure as heck aren't going to be able to ensure quality from outside sources.

Which, again, is why I'm thinking that the "for pay" stuff is going to be directly licensed rather than an open OGL license. This lets them have oversight on projects and probably sets a fairly high bar for entry. Some guy banging away on a Word doc in his home likely won't be able to get his stuff in print for pay. Release it as a Netbook Of ... sure, no problem. But, if you want to get a book on the bookshelves sitting on the same shelf as the WOTC D&D books, I'm not really seeing a problem with letting WOTC be the gatekeepers here.

Absolutely nothing will be able to stop some fan from bypassing a license, charging for her material, and being entirely within the law. d20+modifiers vs. DC in a world of magic and elves is not in any part copyright or trademark. Hell, it's not even original WotC material -- d20s existed before D&D and so did magic and elves. They don't own the playround. They can't STOP you from playing on it. It's not theirs. They didn't build that. What they have control over is a brand, not a game.

Now, that brand is something they can leverage to the benefit of this goal of quality control. Imagine of all of Dragon and Dungeon magazines were Official D&D Content that fans submitted (not too different from the role they have occasionally played). Imagine if WotC owned a storefront and allowed would-be publishers to submit stuff to it that would become Official D&D material, vetted by their own dev team, and published only one or two each month.

There's a lot of value added to that brand, to that organization, to that expertise. Value that could even be worth some money (magainze subscriptions, DDI membership, a cut of the sales on each Official Product). That would work quite well, I imagine.

But the key is that they don't get the idea that this is the only way that fans are "allowed" to make and sell D&D-compatible material. They can control that quality in areas they do create (within reason, given the quixotic goal of quality control in the first place), but they can't control the quality of every D&D-compatible PDF that floats around on the internet. They can absolutely play a vital role of curation, of promotion, of encouragement, but they cannot hope to play a role of gatekeeper. Because ultimately, functionally, they don't control this game. We fans are the ones paying Mearls's rent, because we value what they make for our games. If we find more value outside, we'll go outside. We'll do what we did with the GSL and take our money and our passion and our fandom and go support great works that aren't in their gates, pay somebody else's rent for a while, somebody who maybe doesn't imagine that they get to define what "elf" or what "quality" means for everybody.

 

[TerraDave]

The easiest thing would be a fan use policy and an invitation only license.

But they have surprised before, and quite recently in fact!

 

[tomBitonti]

The biggest one is probably that "quality" is immensely subjective. There is no one authority on what is "quality" and what isn't. If the Edition Wars have taught us anything, it should be that. If WotC tries to appoint some Quality Czar to police all the D&D-compatible things produced in 5e, they are introducing artificial controls on what is "quality" that people are going to disagree with. This rules out potentially amazing products, and enforces a particular kind of very limited scope of what "quality" is.

Quality is in part subjective, and in part objective: If you had me build you a wooden deck, in any normal amount of time, it would end up with poor quality. I just don't have skill with wood working. A decent carpenter / builder would do a much better job. The difference in quality would be quite objective and obvious.

Perhaps a better phrasing (although it seems clumsy) would be to remove shoddy work.

If an App Store model is used, I do think there are additional objectives besides quality: Content control; content gating; having a veto on product spaces of interest; having a preview of what the market will produce months ahead of time; having a pipeline of ideas to mine; having leverage over larger players in the market. Which kindof sucks if you are not running the App Store, and, I think, not something the market would like.

Thx!

TomB

 

[I'm A Banana]

Quality is in part subjective, and in part objective: If you had me build you a wooden deck, in any normal amount of time, it would end up with poor quality. I just don't have skill with wood working. A decent carpenter / builder would do a much better job. The difference in quality would be quite objective and obvious.

Perhaps a better phrasing (although it seems clumsy) would be to remove shoddy work.

Depends on your goals, right? A maccaroni sculpture made by a 3 year old isn't "quality" art to anyone but that kid's mother. If your mom really wanted you to build a wooden deck and it was more important to her that it was you building it than that it was a functional deck, it wouldn't matter how shoddy it was as a deck to her -- you did a work of quality.

The Juicy Salif is a horrible orange juicer, but the people who paid big bucks for it paid for a shoddy orange juicer because juicing oranges wasn't their goal.

WotC can't hope to imagine that it can determine what everyone's goals for a game of D&D should or could be.

If an App Store model is used, I do think there are additional objectives besides quality: Content control; content gating; having a veto on product spaces of interest; having a preview of what the market will produce months ahead of time; having a pipeline of ideas to mine; having leverage over larger players in the market. Which kindof sucks if you are not running the App Store, and, I think, not something the market would like.

I think this is slightly mitigated by making it a bit more binary. You can try to get into the WotC Exclusive Club, and if you do, you know what you have is good, but good stuff exists outside of that club, too, that doesn't meet the criteria for that club, and that's fine, as well. WotC in this serves as a curator of content produced more than a gatekeeper. Their work with Kobold Press is not a bad example of this: KP does good adventures, WotC realized that, hired them to do a WotC adventure. Clearly, good adventures also exist outside of those KP adventures.

 

[Umbran]

The OGL-curious will have something to OGLe a few months from now.

I don't think so. The key is this:

"When it comes to the mechanism by which we want to empower D&D fans to create their own material and make their mark on the many, exciting worlds of D&D, we're taking the same approach. While we are not ready to announce anything at this time, I do want to share with you some of our goals.

To start with, we want to ensure that the quality of anything D&D fans create is as high as possible...."

He's talking about fan-created content here. Third party commercial publishers are not so much as mentioned in the article.

While it is possible that they intend a broad OGL that covers both the commercial and fan publisher, that they only deal with one case here suggests that they'll be handling them separately.

 

[Umbran]

Anyone who wants to create 5E-compatible content under the existing OGL can certainly do so. If WotC decides to be dumb about it, and there's genuine demand, expect an OSRIC-style 5E-compatible product within a matter of months of a GSL-style turd being floated.

With OSRIC, folks were cloning a product that was out of print, that WotC had no solid plan or intent to make significant money from in the near future. It was not worth WotC's time or money to pursue it, so it was never challenged in court.

Cloning their currently active product line, however, is a different kettle of fish. Technically speaking, it can be done. Practically speaking, it is asking for a lengthy and expensive legal challenge from WotC. I don't know of any major company for whom it would be worth the risk to clone 5e. And minor companies probably don't have the resources to go through the legal challenge intact.

So, I disagree. Don't look for a 5e clone within months.

 

[Morrus]

With OSRIC, folks were cloning a product that was out of print, that WotC had no solid plan or intent to make significant money from in the near future. It was not worth WotC's time or money to pursue it, so it was never challenged in court.

Cloning their currently active product line, however, is a different kettle of fish. Technically speaking, it can be done. Practically speaking, it is asking for a lengthy and expensive legal challenge from WotC. I don't know of any major company for whom it would be worth the risk to clone 5e. And minor companies probably don't have the resources to go through the legal challenge intact.

So, I disagree. Don't look for a 5e clone within months.

Yeah, you'd have to really know exactly what you were doing and be prepared and able to defend yourself.

 

[ShadowDenizen]

He's talking about fan-created content here. Third party commercial publishers are not so much as mentioned in the article. While it is possible that they intend a broad OGL that covers both the commercial and fan publisher, that they only deal with one case here suggests that they'll be handling them separately.

That's the impression I got, too. He may have name-dropped "OGL", but I don't think he's referencing it in the same way that the audience is thinking of it.

I'm also hopeful they'll also reintroduce "Dungeon" and "Dragon" magazine. (I know a print-version is unlikely, but we can hope, right?)