Why not a CC license?

[Yaarel]

That would IMO only apply to CC licenses that include SA (share alike), e.g. CC-BY-SA. If you license your content as CC-BY (credit source), then there is no need to open up your own content as well.
Still, it would require a bit of extra work since you need to extract the shared content and make sure you don't accidentally share things you consider product identity.

But if your own content modifies the CC Open Content, it must also be Open Content too.

For example, say, you create a brand new game from scratch. You write up an SRD for your game and give it to the CC license for others to use.

That CC actually discourages other creators from creating products for your game. Because while they modify aspects of your game, they can make money from their modifying products − but cannot protect their own intellectual property, since it would necessarily become CC Open Content.

 

[Morrus]

Wait, you can access the SRD via git? Point me at the repository! Forks and pull requests ahoy!

/s

Edit: Actually, doing a search on github, I find this repo — GitHub - Zireael07/awesome-tabletop-rpgs: Awesome list of free and/or open source tabletop RPGs — which lists tons of freely licensed game systems, quite a lot of which are released under a CC license.

Weird autocorrect. OGL.

 

[schneeland]

But if your own content modifies the CC Open Content, it must also be Open Content too.

I don't think that is true (unless using "share alike"). If it helps, I can try to break my understanding of CC licenses down a bit tomorrow (and how it would apply to the case you describe).

For the moment: I do agree that the OGL provides a more convenient solution. I just think that you can achieve anything it does also with CC licenses.

 

[Yaarel]

I don't think that is true (unless using "share alike"). If it helps, I can try to break my understanding of CC licenses down a bit tomorrow (and how it would apply to the case you describe).

Please do. Details matter.

For the moment: I do agree that the OGL provides a more convenient solution. I just think that you can achieve anything it does also with CC licenses.

The philosophical concept of the CC licenses is: what is mine is yours and what is yours is mine.

The OGL 1.0a does something different. It says, a business can protect its own intellectual property, even if it partly borrows from the shared pool of Open Gaming Content. The open content is a resource that anyone can make use of. At the same time, a business can still make calculated strategic decisions about what to give to the Open Gaming Content, and what to keep out of it.

 

[Rainynights]

But can't I get the same effect by declaring what is under CC? With the OGL I also needed to declare what in my Book will be put under OGL and what is not covered by it (a lot just put the whole Book under OGL).

The 5e SRD specifies that rights to use content from it are exclusively granted by the OGL, meaning you may be able to say your content is compatible with 5e (so long as you can find a way to do so that sneaks past the weird clause in the ogl saying you cant do so if not using it since the wording there seems highly specific and open to loopholes, just gotta find them), but unless you use the ogl for at least part of your product then you would have to create something completely original with no ties to either the srd or the main rulebooks wotc has released

 

[trancejeremy]

I'll be honest - I've found the CC licensing to be confusing, while the OGL is surprisingly clear. And there is six difference licenses and different versions of the license and different ways of attributing works you've cited

Creative Commons license - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I mean, it's got charts. And symbols

The OGL is one license. Simple to use. Simple to attribute (just copy the produce you are using's Section 15, though to be fair, a lot of people get this wrong. No weird symbols.

 

[MoonSong]

I'll be honest - I've found the CC licensing to be confusing, while the OGL is surprisingly clear. And there is six difference licenses and different versions of the license and different ways of attributing works you've cited

Creative Commons license - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I mean, it's got charts. And symbols

The OGL is one license. Simple to use. Simple to attribute (just copy the produce you are using's Section 15, though to be fair, a lot of people get this wrong. No weird symbols.

This, I mean it isn't as hard, you just have three or so choices: BY (attribution required or not), C/NC (Not commercial or commercial), and SA (share-alike) It is pretty straightforward when it comes to whole works. It is also straightforward if you are the originator and want to reserve some stuff. It gets complicated if you want to reuse from one or more sources and you still want -or need- to reserve some stuff.

Edit: Ok, there is also ND, but there is little point to it for our purposes.

 

[see]

Fundamentally, the OGL and CC BY-SA are pretty similar, sure. By my understanding, the key issues are:

1. The OGL actively facilitates designating part but not all of your document "Open Game Content". In theory, you might be able to do your own ad-hoc designation of part but not all of a book/file as a "work" under CC BY-SA and the rest unreleased (or released under another), but it's likely to confuse people and result in unlicensed material being used under the assumption that it's all CC BY-SA.
2. The number of CC licenses, and the multiple versions thereof, often confuses people and results in misuse of content released under one license under the terms of another one.
3. The amount of content under the OGL for D&D-adjacent gaming is larger than that under CC BY-SA

The first may or may not be a bigger deal than confusion around what's Open Game Content and what's not under the OGL 1.0a, but I tend to think it is, and ORC can copy the OGL there.

The second is avoided by having just one ORC license.

The third, well, it's not clear ORC would have an advantage over CC BY-SA, but at the moment, many of the big 3PPs are talking ORC, not CC BY-SA.

 

[schneeland]

Please do. Details matter.

Ok, I'll try.

My understanding of CC licenses is that while they generally promote sharing, they are actually more of a toolbox that allows non-lawyers to specify how content they created can be re-used in derived works in a legally sound way.
The building blocks are:

• BY = attribute/credit the author
• SA = "share alike" - derived work has to use the same "licensing" terms
• ND = no derivates - can only be used "as is"
• NC = no commercial use

From these blocks, CC built four licenses: CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-NC-SA, CC-BY-NC-ND.

Comparing it to the OGL 1.0(a), you can IMO achieve a similar licensing effect, if you remove all things you consider product identity from your SRD and share the remaining document under CC-BY license (which neither imposes sharing under the same conditions nor forbids commercial use). You might then also share what exactly you consider product identity in a separate document, but I don't think you have to. The important part is, of course, that you have to make sure that you really do not accidentally provide product identity parts in your SRD. Which is, of course, a less convenient than the OGL where you can simply declare the parts as product identity.

 

[Charlaquin]

I don't think that is true (unless using "share alike"). If it helps, I can try to break my understanding of CC licenses down a bit tomorrow (and how it would apply to the case you describe).

For the moment: I do agree that the OGL provides a more convenient solution. I just think that you can achieve anything it does also with CC licenses.

So, I do think you’re correct that the OGL doesn’t do anything you couldn’t achieve with a CC license of some sort. But keep in mind that the OGL predates CC.

As for why create ORC to mimic OGL instead of a CC license… I mean frankly, for publicity. Announcing that they were going to make their own OGL (“with blackjack! and hookers!”) at the peak of the OGL 1.1 furor was a brilliant move on Paizo’s part, because they get to come out looking like the heroes of the day, and a lot of people mad at WotC will likely switch to Pathfinder because of it, even before any real details about ORC emerge. Secondarily, there’s a degree of familiarity. Being able to say “The ORC will work just like the OGL, but actually irrevocable” is going to be much easier for a lot of folks to grok than CC with its various license types. Lastly, it provides a single banner for all the 3rd party publishers to rally under.

So, short answer? ORC is just sexier.