D&D 4E What to do with 4th Edition

[Jer]

What hornet's nest? You got three responses, one of which was a request for clarification, and the other two of which were not directly disagreeing with you. (I don't parse Jer's reply as being a direct disagreement, at any rate.)

To clarify - I was worried that there was something in there that was a problem when it came to the OGL or something - I didn't even think about the length being an issue.

 

[eyeheartawk]

To clarify - I was worried that there was something in there that was a problem when it came to the OGL or something - I didn't even think about the length being an issue.

I didn't get it at first either. I was like, who cares if it's 1, 3 or 10 pages it's at the back of the book and nobody reads it anyway. But I guess, the more works and companies that are referenced the more likely it is that somebody at sometime might have an issue down the line, despite how clear the OGL is on stuff like this.

I don't really know that I'd call that a eminent concern. I don't even know that is bears mentioning as a risk.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Can you though?

Under what license would you publish it?

I don't think you can just make a new adventure under the OGL and say "It's for the 4th edition of the world's most popular roleplaying game". I think the GSL makes that real precarious.

I wasn't talking about "publishing" per se. Agreed, you would need the OGL comptabile retro clone.

I was just talking about an active user community on Foundry with tools to easily inport officially purchsed PDFs, particularly all the monster tokens like PF2e can do and characters from the offline character builder. And free user generated content (new monster tokens and maps basically). Still a risk I guess but seems like WotC might leave us alone...

 

[Jacob Lewis]

What hornet's nest? You got three responses, one of which was a request for clarification, and the other two of which were not directly disagreeing with you. (I don't parse Jer's reply as being a direct disagreement, at any rate.)

You know what? I started writing my response a few hours ago (yes, it can take that long for me to write a post sometimes) after those three responses came in pretty quick. I thought more would be flooding in while I was writing. I'll be happy if the topic ends there.

(For what it's worth I agree that a three-page-long Section 15 in an OGL is overlong for a ruleset that might be intended (in part) as a kernel or baseline for third-party extension.)

That was essentially my point. Some days I'm a little more verbose about what I want to say, and others I can cut right to the point. Today, I think my point was too quick and I just went fully in the other direction. Split the difference?

 

[Jacob Lewis]

I didn't get it at first either. I was like, who cares if it's 1, 3 or 10 pages it's at the back of the book and nobody reads it anyway. But I guess, the more works and companies that are referenced the more likely it is that somebody at sometime might have an issue down the line, despite how clear the OGL is on stuff like this.

I don't really know that I'd call that a eminent concern. I don't even know that is bears mentioning as a risk.

I have a concern, so I mentioned the risk.

More important to me, however, is what it says about the author and the OGL. This is not an efficient product if its borrowing from every possible source it can find. That's all well and go for the specific game they want to create, but not for an all-purpose OGL, which I believe is what we're discussing here. (Aren't we? Everyone seems to keep glossing over that little distinction.)

 

[Garthanos]

I have a concern, so I mentioned the risk.

More important to me, however, is what it says about the author and the OGL. This is not an efficient product if its borrowing from every possible source it can find. That's all well and go for the specific game they want to create, but not for an all-purpose OGL,

I would say they want to have a heritage for a 4e element within OGL to make sure it all could be covered.
All Purpose I thought the purpose was to find ALL 4e elements existing in the OGL in some form.

which I believe is what we're discussing here. (Aren't we? Everyone seems to keep glossing over that little distinction.)

Not sure I under stand the distinction

 

[Jacob Lewis]

I would say they want to have a heritage for a 4e element within OGL to make sure it all could be covered.
All Purpose I thought the purpose was to find ALL 4e elements existing in the OGL in some form.

Not sure I under stand the distinction

I'll try to explain how I see it. And to be fair, I could be wrong about this. Here goes.

I think we're all in agreement that 4e needs an OGL that everyone can use to make whatever 4e-like game they want. An OGL for the community, if you will.

I look at the OGL for Orcus and see an OGL specifically for Orcus. Cool, but I'm not interested in Orcus for reasons that aren't important.

The OGL for Orcus and the OGL for the community are different things. Orcus is not the community. It may be a specific subset of it, in which case it only serves that section of the community.

Now. As I have mentioned at some point, I'm not the expert on OGLs and copyright stuff. I certainly don't pretend to be. So what am I missing about the Orcus OGL that makes it a candidate for the whole community to start adapting?

More specifically, why do we need to create OGLs within OGLs within OGLs to make a system usable?? It seems like a lot of redundancy. Can we not just go to the source (some suggested using 3e or 5e) and create a base for what is needed, then branch out from there? I guess I see Orcus as a branch of an OGL and not close enough to the root.

 

[glass]

More specifically, why do we need to create OGLs within OGLs within OGLs to make a system usable?

We don't, there is literally exacly one OGL (1.0A) that everything has to use. EDIT: Which is why your posts on the matter to date have been rather difficult to follow. EDIT2: Sorry, that was a tad dismissive. I will try to come up with better response.

_
glass.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

ORCUS is probably the closest for a 4E baseline to start from... then folks can publish 'OGL alternates' incorporating their 'fixes'... but at least it creates a central hub similar to OSRIC

I've taken a look but can't easily wrap my head around it. It doesn't look like a "reproduce 4e exactly 1-1 but change the names when needed" retroclone but I could be wrong? But maybe the work has been done in terms of creating entirely new games based on 4e but not as good for tweaking original 4e or creating new content for original 4e that is OGL compatible?

Can anyone verify or correct me if I'm wrong with this take?

 

[Garthanos]

More specifically, why do we need to create OGLs within OGLs within OGLs to make a system usable?? It seems like a lot of redundancy.

The references of various other OGLs are to justify "recreation" of 4e ---> as opposed to just claiming this is content that happens to look like 4e which has a nasty license

It is an act of self defense

 

[kenada]

More important to me, however, is what it says about the author and the OGL. This is not an efficient product if its borrowing from every possible source it can find. That's all well and go for the specific game they want to create, but not for an all-purpose OGL, which I believe is what we're discussing here. (Aren't we? Everyone seems to keep glossing over that little distinction.)

What does it say, exactly? This reads like insinuation that hobbyists can’t be trusted to follow the terms of the OGL. In that case, how can they be trusted to do a full restatement on their own without the risk of its being declared a derivative work? What you want then is effectively impossible.

 

[glass]

OK, (hopefully) slightly better response, as promised:

So what am I missing about the Orcus OGL that makes it a candidate for the whole community to start adapting?

That it is probably the only option.

By far the safest way to do a retroclone is to find open-content precedents for the distinctive mechanics and terminology, and by definition those precedents are going to be scattered around (because if they were all in one convenient place then that system would already be the 4e clone we are looking for). Anyone else undertaking the same project is going to end up with an s.15 of similar length (and similar if not identical contents), because that is how you protect yourself.

Possibly, not all the references are strictly necessary, but nobody except possibly an extremely expensive lawyer (the kind WotC can afford and you cannot, for almost all values of "you") can tell you which ones - and maybe not even one of those. So in they all go.

The only way a 4e SRD that does not have an s.15 that looks like that is going to happen, is if WotC released one directly. Which would be nice, but lets not hold our collective breath.

EDIT: Or, what @Garthanos said.

_
glass.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Possibly, not all the references are strictly necessary, but nobody except possibly an extremely expensive lawyer (the kind WotC can afford and you cannot, for almost all values of "you") - and maybe not even one of those. So in they all go.

This was my thinking too. I don't think that having stuff in there that you, in your retroclone, technically didn't use is going to hurt you at all?

 

[kenada]

This was my thinking too. I don't think that having stuff in there that you, in your retroclone, technically didn't use is going to hurt you at all?

It will apparently make people not want to use your system as a base for their work. To be honest, I find some of the things listed a bit questionable. Why are so many different games (including e.g., Level Up: Advanced 5e, which was just released), random adventures, wikis that no longer exist, and SRD republishing websites listed?

 

[Cadence]

It will apparently make people not want to use your system as a base for their work. To be honest, I find some of the things listed a bit questionable. Why are so many different games (including e.g., Level Up: Advanced 5e, which was just released), random adventures, wikis that no longer exist, and SRD republishing websites listed?

Are they supposed to list everything on the license page of the book they are quoting from, or just the particular book they are quoting?

 

[kenada]

Are they supposed to list everything on the license page of the book they are quoting from, or just the particular book they are quoting?

As I understand it, you have to include the section 15 copyright declarations for everything you use along with adding your own to the list.

Notice of License Copyright: You must update the COPYRIGHT NOTICE portion of this License to include the exact text of the COPYRIGHT NOTICE of any Open Game Content You are copying, modifying or distributing, and You must add the title, the copyright date, and the copyright holder’s name to the COPYRIGHT NOTICE of any original Open Game Content you Distribute.

 

[Cadence]

You have to include the section 15 copyright declarations for everything you use along with adding your own to the list.

That's what I thought, but A5E includes the Pathfinder Core in it's list, but not The Book of Experimental Might that my copy of Pathfinder Core includes. Similarly, the Bestiary includes Tome of Horrors III for one of its monsters (but it lists which monster) but A5E doesn't list it.

@Morrus has done this a lot and so I'd guess you and I are misreading it?

 

[kenada]

That's what I thought, but A5E includes the Pathfinder Core in it's list, but not The Book of Experimental Might that my copy of Pathfinder Core includes. Similarly, the Bestiary includes Tome of Horrors III for one of its monsters (but it lists which monster) but A5E doesn't list it.

@Morrus has done this a lot and so I'd guess you and I are misreading it?

All I’ve got is having read many years ago that section 15 declarations were one of the things publishers would get wrong. It was on the Paizo forum, but I can’t remember where I read it. I did find this thread which suggests there is some nuance to it, but the safest approach is to recursively list everything (edit: also this thread).

Edit 2: Owen K C Stephens has a pretty good explanation why one might see varying section 15 declarations across a publisher’s products. Not saying whether or not that applies in this scenario, but it explains some of the questions people had regarding monsters from bestiaries.

 

[Cadence]

All I’ve got is having read many years ago that section 15 declarations were one of the things publishers would get wrong. It was on the Paizo forum, but I can’t remember where I read it. I did find this thread which suggests there is some nuance to it, but the safest approach is to recursively list everything (edit: also this thread).

I know for the one project I kind of did I put in everything. It was really long!

 

[Garthanos]

The references of various other OGLs are to justify "recreation" of 4e ---> as opposed to just claiming this is content that happens to look like 4e which has a nasty license

It is an act of self defense

Note the self defense is not 100 percent required... one could make a from the ground up and simply give it an OGL license Call encounter powers Scene Powers and Dailies - Climactic Powers. etc etc etc. If you avoid copyright and trademark you should be good to go.