When geek meets geek

[just__al]

A buddy of mine is joining our saturday game after being out of D&D since about 1992. I was explaining why 3rd edition is so cool and the biggest selling point is the Open Gaming License which has enabled so many fine publishers to make suppliments that wizards doesn't have the time or inclination to crank out and if they did would probably go the way of TSR.

Since we are both HUGE computer geeks I said that WoTC "open sourced" the rules

 

[diaglo]

pwnd

 

[Henry]

Well, that was Ryan Dancey's goal, and his inspiration...

 

[drothgery]

I've always maintained that's a bad analogy. WotC is an explicitly for-profit corporation that sells D&D rulebooks (and a few other d20 games; from here on out there's an implicit "and other WotC d20 games" whenever I write D&D in this post). The d20 license isn't really about letting third parties modify D&D; it's about letting third parties build on top of D&D (with settings and supplements and adventures).

It's true that the OGL has let some companies build d20-derived games, but it wasn't really WotC's goal. And saying that WotC wanted the D&D to be the Windows of RPGs (which was what Dancey really wanted) instead of the IBM mainframe of RPGs would have sounded a lot less cool...

 

[diaglo]

but WotC's d02 is the windows of rpgs.

2000ed
and 3.11ed for Workgroups as examples.

 

[just__al]

I've always maintained that's a bad analogy. WotC is an explicitly for-profit corporation that sells D&D rulebooks (and a few other d20 games; from here on out there's an implicit "and other WotC d20 games" whenever I write D&D in this post). The d20 license isn't really about letting third parties modify D&D; it's about letting third parties build on top of D&D (with settings and supplements and adventures).

It's true that the OGL has let some companies build d20-derived games, but it wasn't really WotC's goal. And saying that WotC wanted the D&D to be the Windows of RPGs (which was what Dancey really wanted) instead of the IBM mainframe of RPGs would have sounded a lot less cool...

Ok, fair enough, but it's the OGL that makes 3rd edition cool. It's all the adventures and suppliments that make it cool. Want a pirate campaign with special pirate feats and classes and settings? Somebody out there wrote it, WoTC probably wouldn't have wrote it.

I'm actually running the world's largest dungeon for the game my buddy is playing in, something that wouldn't have existed without the OGL

 

[Len]

It's true that the [GPL] has let some companies build [Linux]-derived [software], but it wasn't really [Linus Torvald]'s goal.

Is that what you meant, drothgery?

 

[drothgery]

Ok, fair enough, but it's the OGL that makes 3rd edition cool. It's all the adventures and suppliments that make it cool. Want a pirate campaign with special pirate feats and classes and settings? Somebody out there wrote it, WoTC probably wouldn't have wrote it.

I'm actually running the world's largest dungeon for the game my buddy is playing in, something that wouldn't have existed without the OGL

I should add that I'm completely supportive of WotC doing things the way they are doing them with d20/OGL (for the most part). I just think the "Open Source" references are little more than spin (which is a Good Thing, IMO).