Besides the buzz about D&D Next possibly being OGL, there’s other news in game licensing land.
First of all, the GUMSHOE system used by Pelgrane Publishing in many of their games is released under both OGL and Creative Commons! You can download the SRD in Word format there. Very cool.
Second, Numenera has a license and it’s not quite open. One product has been released so far though, Celestial Wisdom. But here’s why this concerns me.
Numenera is an innovative game in a very weird setting. A setting that could benefit a LOT from third party material. It’s going to be intimidating to some people to actually run, because of the weird nature of the setting and adventures. The more the better, and any bars there limit it somewhat.
In conjunction with that, the Monte Cook brigade are now off on their second Kickstarter for a similary ambitious game called The Strange. This does not give me a lot of confidence that Numenera is going to see lots of support from Monte Cook Games itself. Given the worry that they’re just going to be happily Kickstarting one neat new idea after another and then moving to the next without focusing their effort on sustaining each one, does it make sense from any perspective to put limitations on people that do want to?
13th Age has, on the other hand, released under the OGL with their SRD located here on the Pelgrane site. That makes me a little more hopeful about ongoing support.
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