Would this be as inappropriate as I think?

[BSF]

Now see, that is an annoyance. True20 looks great! I can see a lot of applications for it that might be interesting. I appreciate that they want only the best material associated with it. But it does mean that they are dictating what gets published for True20. Right now, that means nothing is being published for it.

I don't know what the licensing will be like in terms of cost. But it is quite possible that something very specific would be a small enough niche that the license would be unreasonable.

In this case, I sit here and hope that it will all work out. But if it doesn't, that will be a real shame.

 

[mythusmage]

Phil,

First, thanks for the kudos, and for your consideration We always appreciate that.

I would absolutely recommend going to Patrick Kapera first - he's the man with the plan, and it'd be downright neighborly of you to inform him of your intentions about our baby. Kinda like an engagement, in a way I'm sure he can give you some feedback on how AEG/he would feel about the ____Craft naming scheme, and how it fits with his own plans for the line.

Morgenstern is correct that PbS is alive - just not currently overutilized. I would expect this to change with 2.0, however. 'Spycraft Family' is part of the PbS group, just at a different level. There are a grip of us Family members out here, working quietly away, so I can say for certain the Powered by Spycraft will be even bigger this time around.

I look forward to what Ronin Arts may have in store!

Correct me if I got this wrong.

"Powered by Spycraft" means that it uses the Spycraft engine, but it is not a Spycraft game.

"Spycraft Family" means it is a Spycraft game.

(And while I was typing the above this came into my head, "Strip-mined Arcana.")

 

[mythusmage]

Now see, that is an annoyance. True20 looks great! I can see a lot of applications for it that might be interesting. I appreciate that they want only the best material associated with it. But it does mean that they are dictating what gets published for True20. Right now, that means nothing is being published for it.

I don't know what the licensing will be like in terms of cost. But it is quite possible that something very specific would be a small enough niche that the license would be unreasonable.

In this case, I sit here and hope that it will all work out. But if it doesn't, that will be a real shame.

The purpose of a license fee is not to make money, it's to filter out those who are not serious. Contact Chris, make your pitch, and do a good job on your True20 licensed products.

Just recently on his blog Gareth-Michael Skarka had some uncomplimentary things to say about another publisher who wanted to do a colaboration with him. Fellow's work was not up to Gareth's standards and he refused to pass off on it. Have the courtesy to take Green Ronin's work seriously. Seriously enough to take great pains with your work. It'll make your life so much easier.

 

[philreed]

So you don't get a lot of OGC being used. Or they just stick with core srd material and don't experiement an awful lot like you would if one person used some OGC and improved it, then another guy takes that result and evolves it, etc. A lot of publishers talk a good game about community and such, but it doesn't seem to play out an awful lot in actuality. At least not yet.

I've been happy to see this attitude slowly (slowly) changing. But yeah, many times it looks like someone would rather reinvent the wheel than try to improve and existing wheel.

 

[mythusmage]

I've been happy to see this attitude slowly (slowly) changing. But yeah, many times it looks like someone would rather reinvent the wheel than try to improve and existing wheel.

Some people have to be original. For some reason using another's work gives them problems. Even when the work in question provides an elegant solution to a problem. So you wind up with duplication of effort and confusion.

It would be nice to see people taking a mechanic and working on it to see if they can make it work better, more elegantly. Remember, Thomas Edison didn't invent the telephone, he just improved it. Improved it to the point it became a viable communications device.

 

[PJ-Mason]

I just woke up, but i'll reply anyway. I'm sure i'll fumble this a bit, but i'll give it a shot.

Just recently on his blog Gareth-Michael Skarka had some uncomplimentary things to say about another publisher who wanted to do a colaboration with him. Fellow's work was not up to Gareth's standards and he refused to pass off on it. Have the courtesy to take Green Ronin's work seriously. Seriously enough to take great pains with your work. It'll make your life so much easier.

See, this is my point when i was talking about OGC usuage, or the shortage of it. Why use someone else's OGC when its darn near cripple-ware? Or its set-up so that its not friendly to use it? Sure you can use the OGC and not the trademark, but that is a kind of cripple-ware. You can use the True D20 OGC (from what i understand its made up of 2/3 of Unearthed Arcana OGC anyway, yes?), but if you can't reference the rule set/game book you got it from, its a lot less useful. Unless you put your OGL License and use of OGC on your front or back cover! hmm.

Frankly, i don't blame people for just using their own material. Avoid the headache, egos, or greed of others. Thats what i meant about game publishers talking a good game. For some its just talk and they aren't that great a community supporter. Using the OGL to create material that they then try to shield others from using isn't all that cool in my eyes. Or at least try to set it up so they can control how you use it. Sure doesn't seem like good faith to me.

Here is a slightly related question for those with real OGC experience. If you do use someone else's OGC, who had in turn used someone else's OGC....do you list everyone who has touched the game mechanic before you, or just the last person in the designer chain? Its not a big problem now, but i could see that getting fairly dysfunctional down the road. Assuming the industry ever really takes to using communal OGC beyond the SRDs. Which i think gets less likely with each new License that a D20/OGL publisher puts out designed to control their OGC, through trademark value if nothing else.

 

[philreed]

Here is a slightly related question for those with real OGC experience. If you do use someone else's OGC, who had in turn used someone else's OGC....do you list everyone who has touched the game mechanic before you, or just the last person in the designer chain?

From what I can tell after watching how others use the OGL and discussions with many, many people there are two schools of thought.

1. In your section 15 list only the title, copyright date, and publisher of each book that you referenced.

2. In your section 15 list the entire section 15 of each book that you reference.

These lead to very drastically different section 15s.

An examples:

I have seen some products list Unearthed Arcana in their section 15 -- but none of the other products the Unearthed Arcana book lists in its own section 15. I've also seen some products list Unearthed Arcana and the other books listed in Unearthed Arcana's section 15 in their own section 15.

More importantly, the products that list just Unearthed Arcana usually don't list the authors (even though the Unearthed Arcana section 15 lists them). Products that list all of the section 15 entries from Unearthed Arcana usually include the authors.

Ask a dozen different publishers and you're very likely to get both of the above viewpoints.

 

[HalWhitewyrm]

The section 15 thing, at least, has been made pretty clear in the past on various industry forums, and confirmed by both Ryan Dancey and Anthony Valterra when they had a say in it (unfortunately I cannot find links to show their words).
Namely, when you use OGC from a book, you transcribe faithfully that book's section 15, regardless of content or size. The only thing you are allowed to do is remove duplicate entries (and I think no one will complain if typos are fixed as well). Frankly, I find it a little bit annoying when I see products that haven't got this right after 5 years of dealing with the OGL.

This is what makes products that draw from a large number of sources, like (off the top of my head) Bastion Press' Arms & Armors, or Paradigm's Player's Guide to Arcanis near damn impossible to use as OGC sources; you'd practically need a whole short PDF for the section 15 alone!
Of course, this brings up associated problems, since you trust that your OGC sources did their section 15 entries correctly, which is not always the case.

As far as crippleware, I'm definitely against it, but I don't consider True20 crippleware in the strict sense of the word. GR simply wants to maintain control over what carries their trademarked logo only, not limit the spread of the game material. We are all free to use the OGC contained in True20, we just can't outright say it is compatible with True20 because that is GR's trademark, which in turn means that we would need to find a way to let customers know they can use these products for their True20-powered games, which then leads us into the whole indirect reference tactics we are discussing on this thread.

 

[philreed]

The section 15 thing, at least, has been made pretty clear in the past on various industry forums, and confirmed by both Ryan Dancey and Anthony Valterra when they had a say in it (unfortunately I cannot find links to show their words).
Namely, when you use OGC from a book, you transcribe faithfully that book's section 15, regardless of content or size. The only thing you are allowed to do is remove duplicate entries (and I think no one will complain if typos are fixed as well). Frankly, I find it a little bit annoying when I see products that haven't got this right after 5 years of dealing with the OGL.

That's the approach that I use but there are a number of publishers (of all sizes) that use the other method. And there's a growing number of new publishers that don't even use either of the previously mentioned methods -- hell, some of them don't even list the SRD in their section 15.

 

[HalWhitewyrm]

I've seen that too, and it irks me to no end. There's no reason why, 5 years into the use of the OGL, there are still people getting this wrong. It just shows carelessness when dealing with a legal document. That's just like people who are trying to PI terms that are just not subject to PI simply because they don't understand the whole PI/OGC terminology.

But that's another topic and for the Publishers forum.