Why I only buy open content

Warlord Ralts said:
(....A bunch of inflammatory crap...)

First of all, it's hard enough to have a reasonable discussion about this topic without having to deal with people coming in and being purposefully insulting. "Grow up," indeed.

Second, I'll give you a more likely scenario:

Gamer "A" finds OGC Wiki project, which contains gigabytes of Open Material culled from hundreds of products, and decides that since it's free, he doesn't need to buy any of the material that it's sourced from. Tons of smaller-margin producers go out of business as a result, since their work, which was made Open for the purpose of helping out other publishers who might want to use it, was made available for free on a public website.

I find it interesting that the majority of authors and publishers who support this idea are ones who don't make a living from this business anyway. Kinda tells you something, doesn't it.....
 

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Nellisir said:
Wikis open buy I content free restrictions.

-THAT- thread is the one where they want to steal all your hard work and give it away.

-THIS- thread is where we won't buy your stuff if you have OGC declarations like "The zeitgeist of OGC herein and within this manuscript of gamewielding shall be inscribed to be deciphered on the Blue Area of the Moon, not including Chapter Six. And anything from the SRD is Open Content."

Toggle?
Nell.
Can I get a translation on that?


Look, if the stuff is a d20 Mechanic, it's OGC. You can rename it.

Camel Breath's Blasting Spells
Metamagic
Your horrid breath adds additional lethality to your spell casting
Benifit: When casting a spell, all opponents within 5' of you must make a Fortitude Check (DC: 10+Con Bonus+Number of bowls of rat stew eaten in 24 hours) or be nauesated until incense is lit or you close that rancid fly pit in your face. In addition, all spell with the "stink" or "wind" descriptor do an additional 1d4 points of damage.
Special: This feat imparts a -4 modifier to diplomacy, but a +4 bonus to Inditimate.

OK, now, I declare that thing Closed Content.

So you rewrite is.

Bad Breath Casting
Metamagic
Your horrid breath makes your spells more lethal.
Benifit: When casting a spell with the "stink" or "wind" descriptor you do an additional 1d4 points of damage, and all opponents within 5' of you must make a Fortitude Check (DC: 10+Con Bonus+Number of bowls of rat stew eaten in 24 hours) or be nauesated until incense is lit or you close that rancid fly pit in your face. .
Special: This feat imparts a -4 modifier to diplomacy, and provides a +4 bonus to Inditimate

POOF! Instant OGC version.

How hard was that.

Now, it's considered as impolite as farting during Church Mass to do such a thing, but that's what happens to a lot of closed content.

A LOT of author's provide two listings for named spells. One with the name in it that they want to keep thier own property, one without.

Clueless's Blasting Dancer
Level: 6
yadda yadda yadda, you ge thte point.

Is listed as: "Blasting Dancer" for OGC purposes.

Like Drawmidget's Instant Court Summoms becomes Instant Summons in the SRD, IRRC.

You don't have to ask, but if you print a book using someone's closed content or IP, then you can expect repercussions, and I'll point and mock you when you cry about it.
 

GMSkarka said:
First of all, it's hard enough to have a reasonable discussion about this topic without having to deal with people coming in and being purposefully insulting. "Grow up," indeed.
Waaah. Then avoid inflamatory threads.

That was the nice version, and not very inflamatory at all to me.

What's wrong, hit a little close to home?

Second, I'll give you a more likely scenario:

Gamer "A" finds OGC Wiki project, which contains gigabytes of Open Material culled from hundreds of products, and decides that since it's free, he doesn't need to buy any of the material that it's sourced from. Tons of smaller-margin producers go out of business as a result, since their work, which was made Open for the purpose of helping out other publishers who might want to use it, was made available for free on a public website.
And the sky falls, and dogs mate with cats, and your CD's will be overwritten with ABBA tunes.

Jeez. This is the same type of crap people were claiming about the SRD. And about the revised STL. And about this that or the other thing.

If they take ONE feat from you, I doubt they'll really hurt your budget anyway. And yeah, I notice EACH sale. There will be people like that, just like there's poeple who boot up file sharing programs and grab the latest release instead of buying it.

More than likely, people will a good feat or mechanic, and since most d20 purchasers have at least the brains god gave a retarded chimp, they know that the bare bones OGC feats and mechanics are not the entire book, they might, just might, be interested enough to purchase a book that they otherwise wouldn't have known about.


I find it interesting that the majority of authors and publishers who support this idea are ones who don't make a living from this business anyway. Kinda tells you something, doesn't it.....
Nice passive aggressive stance. First you harp on me about inflammatory remarks, then post something like this. Oh dear, the insult has striken me to my mortal core! I will now burn all of my gaming material, delete my hard drives, and join a monestary.

Yeah, we're publishers too, and would love to make our living off of it, but would rather not live in a cardboard box and panhandle for change. Like Monte was nice enough to tell me when I started this: "Don't quit your day job, buddy." VERY few people make a living off of this, and like it was said by someone else: "Most d20 publisher probably qualify for food stamps." Just because you aren't sleeping on a pile of money surrounded by supermodels doesn't make your opinion less valid. Nice elitist attitude. If ENWorld only allowed people who make thier living to post on it, there's be about 12 people looking around going: "This is boring."

I support the idea, in a big way. It used to be the d20 Community, not a bunch of Daffy Duck clones running around screaming "MINE!" at the top of thier lungs and cradling thier ideas to thier chests like injured puppies.
 

WotC FAQ said:
Q: Does this mean that someone could take Open Game Content I wrote and distributed for free, and then put it in a product and sell that product to someone else?

A: Yes.

Q: To be clear: Does this mean that Wizards of the Coast could take Open Game Content I wrote and distributed for free, put it into a Dungeons & Dragons product and make money off it?

A: Yes.

Q: And they wouldn't have to ask my permission or pay me a royalty?

A: No, they would not.

Q: Isn't that pretty unfair?

A: If you don't like the terms of the Open Game License, don't publish Open Game Content. Since the terms of the License are public knowledge, and they apply to everyone equally, including commercial publishers like Wizards of the Coast, your decision to use the Open Game License means that you consent to abide by its terms freely and without coercion. That's about as fair as anything ever gets.

Now, I just looked through the d20 SRD site, the liscenses, and everything, and I have to ask...

What is being considered Closed Content that everyone is complaining about/protecting?

The closest I can find is PI, but I may be mistaken.

As far as I can tell, any mechanic made, unless you are WotC or have special permissions from the aforementioned corporation, you can't do Closed Content. If I'm wrong, please give me a link to the relevant, WotC/Hasbro correction.
 

GMSkarka said:
I find it interesting that the majority of authors and publishers who support this idea are ones who don't make a living from this business anyway. Kinda tells you something, doesn't it.....
Actually, I think the opposite angle is more telling. The majority of authors and publishers opposed to this idea are the ones who do make a living from this business. It's a completely understandable reaction - one must protect one's livelihood, after all. But, it's also very likely that the majority of negative response to this idea is fuel by a rational (or otherwise) fear of losing an important source of income. There is very little evidence that a database of open gaming content will result in bankruptcy for small-house publishers. I'd like to point something out: the d20 System Reference Document is available for free on the WotC website, as well as on other websites. Yet, Creative Mountain Games' PDF compilation of the SRD is an RPGNow Electrum bestseller (that's 1000+ units sold, if I recall correctly). Seems weird that a product whose entire mechanical content is available for free elsewhere should sell so well.

Also, I would like to bestow upon Gareth the title he continually foists upon me: that of "Internet Crusader." Gareth's conviction that an OGC database would lead to financial ruin demonstrates his tireless struggling for his fellows against a shadowy, half-imagined menace. Congradulations!

In all honesty, if you think I'm an "internet crusader" for this same type of behaviour, then I think you've earned yourself the title.
 
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Roudi said:
is an RPGNow Electrum bestseller (that's 1000+ units sold, if I recall correctly).
Based on my sales:
Copper: 50-99 sales
Electrum: 100-249
Gold: 250+ (I speculate 499)
Platinum: (Probably 500+)

And the reason someone would by a PDF of the SRD is that the example PDF is heavily bookmarked and hyperlinked. They are paying for the value-added linking.
 

I agree with eveything Tensen said.

If we're going to talk about ethics of creativity, and ethics of OGC declaration, why not the ethics of OGC use? If someone who makes more of his content open than is required is morally superior, I'll argue that so is someone that asks, or even informs, a publisher that they're using their content. (I'm being a bit facetious here--I actually have a LOT of problems with assigning true moral judgements based on something so trivial.)

It's not required, but it's darn nice and there's NO COST TO DO IT. There's no reason not to. You might even develop a relationship with the original content provider and work with them on a project. Or, as Tensen said, they might even give you more exposure, or permission to use PI (we've done both). Or you might just take one tiny step toward keeping the industry a friendly place.
 

What Eridanis just said. The last few posts have gone over the line. Dial it back or stop posting, please. That especially goes for Warlord Ralts.
 

I'm not going to bother to address your out-of-context rant about me on your blog, Roudi...it's outside the scope of this thread (which I am trying to participate in without getting into insults), and would most likely result in further mod action.

On to what you actually said:

Roudi said:
The majority of authors and publishers opposed to this idea are the ones who do make a living from this business. It's a completely understandable reaction - one must protect one's livelihood, after all.

Exactly. It's a reasonable point, which is why it's so frustrating to see people criticizing publishers for having that opinion.

Roudi said:
But, it's also very likely that the majority of negative response to this idea is fuel by a rational (or otherwise) fear of losing an important source of income. There is very little evidence that a database of open gaming content will result in bankruptcy for small-house publishers.

There is little evidence simply because it hasn't been done yet. There's no direct evidence that I would die if I decided to drive at 90 mph on the highway, steering with my feet and blindfolded, either....but that doesn't make it a good idea for me to try it.


Roudi said:
I'd like to point something out: the d20 System Reference Document is available for free on the WotC website, as well as on other websites. Yet, Creative Mountain Games' PDF compilation of the SRD is an RPGNow Electrum bestseller (that's 1000+ units sold, if I recall correctly). Seems weird that a product whose entire mechanical content is available for free elsewhere should sell so well.

It sells due to the added value of hyperlinks. It's more than just a copy of the SRD. (If it were just a package of Open Content, RPGNow wouldn't sell it. One of RPGNow's standards bars products which are nothing more than collections of other people's Open Content with nothing new added.)
 

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