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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 7549274" data-attributes="member: 158">If you want an example of a world without an open gaming license, look back historically to TSR (owner of D&D prior to Wizards of the Coast) and their positions on D&D compatible content in the early and mid-1990s -- it was an environment where they insisted that anything that included even terminology now common in the genre (such as phrases like "hit points" or "armor class") became property of TSR as a derivative work. If you made a game that included these terms (admittedly coined by Original Dungeons and Dragons, but whose use was coined by many other sources long before trademark was insisted upon) then at the time they insisted that such works could be owned by them and frequently sued in order to maintain such.An example of their language from the period may be found archived at various locations, such as:<a href="http://d7.pipemaze.com/tsr-vs-the-internet/hahn1.html" target="_blank">http://d7.pipemaze.com/tsr-vs-the-internet/hahn1.html</a><a href="http://d7.pipemaze.com/tsr-vs-the-internet/tm1.html" target="_blank">http://d7.pipemaze.com/tsr-vs-the-internet/tm1.html</a>The open gaming license was first to prevent against the concept of the tabletop game D&D being lost in future legal disputes, but also to prevent future assertions that the very terms that became the Lingua Franca of gaming in general were not lost in countless minor legal disputes. Sure, trademarks expire, but companies and copyright trolls alike can bog down their use, to the point of the destruction of the platform itself. If someone tried to sue on the basis of trademarks or copyright for a new RPG that was released properly under the OGL, the defenses' legal fees would be almost nonexistent thanks to the very existence of the OGL. Without a license, you are in much trickier waters, whether you're in the right or not, and for very small companies, it provides a safe harbor to work within.My biggest disappointment for the OGL has been its lack of use by companies to truly mix ideas from multiple sources and make a better game - too often people try to reinvent the wheel instead of improve what already exists and reintroduce the improved version to the community, a la open source software. The three action system for Pathfinder 2? Spycraft was doing something similar in 2002.</blockquote>

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