Postmortem Studios, a gaming company, has a couple interesting bits of info on their analysis of Wizards’ new D&D 4e Game System License (GSL) and what it means to a company like theirs.
They have a bunch of different bits, all posted on their blog, including a good summary of the GSL, broken down into “What I must do,” “What I can do,” and “What I can’t do” lists and an entertaining cartoon comparing the OGL, d20 STL, and new GSL in terms we can all understand (NSFW).
It’s an interesting read, because you can see how most of a company’s game lines can run afoul of one clause or another in the new GSL, making it impossible or very undesirable to move them to the new edition. In Postmortem’s case, many of their products either a) redefine classes/mechanics from 3e, which is forbidden by GSL, b) run afoul of the decency clause, c) have good ongoing OGL sales, or d) are things like settings which once GSL licensed are “poisoned” from ever going OGL. Good work Wizards, your new license is as harmful as you had hoped.
Geek Related 