Eek, I happened to look at my blog dashboard from work and saw the hits spiking through the room and thought “WTF?” until I checked the referrers and saw it was Slashdot. Hi all, and welcome! I feel like I should say “fight the power!” or something.
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I had previously covered the problems Gen Con LLC was having in the wake of Lucasfilm lawsuits and all. Now, a shocker on ENWorld indicating Gen Con Indy 2008 may be in jeopardy:
There’s a snazzy little super-simplified version of d20 fantasy rules called Microlite20. It’s pretty sweet – in a couple pages, it captures 80% of what you ever really want to use from D&D. This is done largely by taking all the extraneous crap out that has been shoved into D&D to make a DM’s discretion useless. As a result, the core rules are 2 pages long. How does this work? Check after the jump…
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If one thing’s clear from the discussion about the new Wizards license for D&D Fourth Edition, it’s that people like to spout off on the subject without knowing what the heck the OGL says, what the difference is between the OGL and d20 STL, and what an “open” license is in the first place. So here’s a convenient summary if you want to know what all of this means. Read and understand – personally, I don’t mind differing opinions, but I do mind ignorant opinions.
Open Gaming License (OGL): A license written by Wizards of the Coast to be a generic “open” license suitable for RPGs. WotC released most of the core 3e and then 3.5e D&D rules under the OGL. Many other gaming companies have published OGL games – some partly based on D&D OGL content, some completely original and unrelated to the D&D rules.
The official OGL v1.0a: http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/OGLv1.0a.rtf
Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast shocked the role-playing game industry today with the revelation that anyone wanting to publish material for the new Fourth Edition of D&D, expected out in June of this year, must forgo open licensing entirely as part of their new Game System License.
With the launch of the third edition of the game years ago, Wizards had sponsored an open licensing scheme. This license, called the Open Gaming License, or OGL, was a kind of open source license designed for game publishers. The result was an explosion of third party game companies supporting D&D and also establishing their own separate game lines. Many of these companies became quite large and successful, notably Paizo Publishing, Green Ronin Publishing, and others. There are open gaming products covering every genre under the sun – science fiction, horror, wild west, and anything else you can think of.
Now, however, Wizards has stated that any company hoping to publish products for their new edition must agree to discontinue any current open licensed products and produce no further open products at all – Dungeons & Dragons related or not. In a phone conversation about 4e licensing with Clark Petersen, president of Necromancer Games, a company representative explained this policy and was adamant that it was not going to change. A number of companies are leveraging the OGL for their independent games, for example the pulp game Spirit of the Century; the gaming community adopted the OGL on good faith and more than 90% of the openly licensed games in existence are using it. This “poison pill” clause means that in exchange for any further involvement with the Dungeons & Dragons game line, a company must abandon any past OGL products and vow not to produce any more.
In response to questions about this policy, Scott Rouse, D&D Brand Manager for Wizards of the Coast, says that “We have invested multiple 7 figures in the development of 4e so can you tell me why we would want publishers to support a system that we have moved away from?” Linae Foster, Licensing Manager, also notes “We understand the impacts this license will have on the 3pps, fans, community and industry in general. We respect that companies will need to make the decision that is right for them and their supporters.”
It seems to me that this is the equivalent of Microsoft telling people “if you want to make and sell software for Windows, you can’t make any Linux/open source software either!” Though this move might be legally shaky, especially in the EU, side players in the small RPG industry are often only a couple people strong, and Wizards is owned by Hasbro, making any challenge to these terms doomed from the start. (The buyout of Wizards by Hasbro is likely the source of this change of heart away from open licensing; events like the Scrabble/Scrabulous lawsuit have Hasbro trying to define and expand their scope of IP control.) Some of the more well-established game companies are rebelling anyway – Paizo Publishing, which used to publish Dungeon and Dragon magazines under license from Wizards, had already declared their intent to stay with the open prior version and develop it moving forward instead, effectively “forking” the D&D code base. But even they admit this is effectively a niche play.
This also appears not to be limited to publishing companies, but also to individuals wanting to put content on their Web site or other venue. When asked about individual licensors, Scott Rouse replied that yes, individuals would need to fill out a GSL license agreement and send it in to WotC to participate. Some ten or so years ago, TSR (the original company, which was bought by Wizards and then Wizards by Hasbro in turn) liked to send out “cease and desist” legal threats to people posting D&D-related content on their Web sites. Will we see a return to that? By the letter of the law as much as it’s been revealed to us, some guy on their Web site putting up 3.5e related content and 4e related content at the same time is subject to the same limitations…
So guess what. As of yesterday, the new GSL was sounding fun. But now the other shoe drops. You aren’t allowed to publish a product both under the new GSL and the old OGL. Which means that anything you do for D&D compatibility can’t be made truly open. Implications include, that if a publisher updates a product to 4e, they’re not allowed to sell the 3.5 version. It is also Wizards throwing their weight around specifically at Pathfinder – telling companies “you can make a product for them, or for us, but not both.” Oh, in fact, it looks worse than that – it’s not by product, it’s by company. If you sign up to put stuff out under the GSL, you can’t put *anything* out under the OGL. Nice. No dual stat publishing. No “Free PDF download of 3.5e stats for this adventure.” In fact, as this is portrayed, even a free Web site can’t have 4e and 3e items both on it.
In fact, it’s unclear whether this is restricted by game line. So if, for example, Green Ronin wants to publish any GSL’ed 4e products – does it mean they have to choose between that and their OGL (but not 3e SRD derived) Mutants & Masterminds and True20 properties?
I’m on the warpath to find out!
Green Ronin has unveiled their licensing scheme for True20, their own variant system. It’s OGL-based, yay!
Man, check out the long ol’ list of OGC sources in their Section 15! That’s pretty cool actually. That’s open gaming at work!
After much hullabaloo, the open licensing for D&D Fourth Edition (4e) has been unveiled – kinda.
D&D 4th Edition Game System License
Wizards of the Coast is pleased to announce that third-party publishers will be allowed to publish products compatible with the Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition game system under the new Dungeons & Dragons 4E Game System License (D&D 4E GSL). This royalty-free license will replace the former d20 System Trademark License (STL), and will have a System Reference Document (SRD) available for referencing permissible content.
There’s a hilarious open letter “from a gnome and a half-orc” airing their grievances about D&D 4e! Read it here.
Since we RPGers are desperate for the validation of “cool” people who play D&D, here’s the ultimate! Britney Spears has coded messages about D&D and Gary Gygax’ passing in her new single, “Piece of Me!” Read all about it.
Well, to be fair and balanced, now I’ll vent some bile at some non-D&D games. I own literally thousands of RPG products and will play nearly anything, but there are three pretty major games/game systems that I’ve avoided like the plague. And the reason why boils down to the general player base for those games. Some games have better or worse mechanics etc. – FUDGE dice are the worst idea ever – but that doesn’t spur active avoidance in me. I’ll go as crunchy as GURPS or as light as a pure storytelling game. But here are the three big problems for me…
World of Darkness. I am happy there’s a game for out there for goths experimenting with their bisexuality but that’s not me. I don’t want to hear a cute little story about how your cat Crowley was trying to drink from the chalice while you were trying to get your pre-game blessing done (true story). I avoid life situations that would tend to get you in jail/in trouble and the average WoD group rings all kinds of alarm bells for me. (I’m sure many WoD players don’t fit this mold, but the crowd of black-and-hat-wearing teens choking the sidewalks outside every con I’ve ever been to do. And why always outside the con out on the street? Not enough allowance for actual admission? Clove cigarette smoking not allowed inside? What?)
Paizo Publishing decided that they shouldn’t trademark the term “Adventure Path” and instead let it be a common-use term. And also they have enough claim to it that they can almost certainly prevent anyone else from trademarking it. Look, you don’t have to be a proprietary ass to be a game company! They explain on their forums in this thread. Good job guys!
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