>From: Steven "Conan" Trustrum >>At 01:06 PM 4/11/2004 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] you wrote:
>>On the other hand if there are not any authors out there that *really* want to fight against crippled content then you won't see this subject on the mailing list again. >>I wait to be convinced that the people that dislike crippled content are actually prepared to *do something about it* instead of just moaning about it. >I think you'll find that most people don't have the means to do it, even if they were >all to team up and pool funds. You are right that they do have less money than big companies. But this doesn't mean that they can't do *something* small, does it? Lets look at a real thing that was done on the Internet that might have an influence (in a small way) on the customers of the OGL community. A while back someone (was it woodelf or did he just give us the link?) made a printable version of the SRD and put it online for people to download. Now I don't know if this was done as a protest against anything that WotC did (or didn't do) but the very existence of this alternative to the Players Handbook allows anyone annoyed at WotC to promote an alternative choice to buying another players handbook (personally I prefer to have real books than loose bits of paper in a ring binder but I would probably put it onto a laptop if I had one as search tools would make it more useful than the printed WotC version). I might be assigning a motive that isn't there (but it serves as a legal example of something the little guy can do that can be as powerful as what the big guy can do). There are other things these people could do with no budget. Assuming they go to roleplaying games (why would you write here if you didn't?): A Talk to the other people in your roleplaying group(s) and see if you can get them to boycott the products or companies (you believe[1]) are bad for the hobby. B When you find good quality products (you believe) are good for the hobby, tell other roleplayers you know about them. C Go to opinion websites and write reviews for good products (that comply with your ethical opinion). D Start your own website, and write your views (there are various free hosts out there and you will learn new skills that you can reuse). Try to get players (instead of publishers) interested in your opinions. Add links to "good products" to your website to drive extra traffic to their websites. E Write your own "Uncrippled" Open Game Content and stick it on the Internet. A and B allow you to amplify your purchasing power. If you actually run games you could only allow "Uncrippled Open Game Content" rules in your game. C and D are a (less moaning) way to use purchasing power to influence the publishers. People might say that one good review or one link to a website, won't change the industry but don't forget that there are some people out there that use search engines to look for things. While you can't *make* people buy good products (in large enough quantities to make publishers notice) you might be able to push your favourite RPG company up one place in search engine ranking. If 500 people think Action! System is the best thing since sliced bread and tell the world about it on their weblogs, reviews and webpages (quoting their official URL) then that is going to pump up their page ranking on Google and the other search engines. What is impossible for one person to do, *is* possible for a lot of like-minded people, even if they don't actively work together. E neither punishes the "bad guys" [1] or helps the "good guys" but it does increase the amount of OGC in the environment (so it is good for players even if it will not greatly influence publishers to your cause). These rules would obviously need to be well written, and before Steve reminds me, I am aware that not everyone has the talent to write RPG rules. But someone who does have the talent *could* sit down and write an "uncrippled" rule for "Gold Weapons", ending *forever* the problem of their not being an uncrippled rule for this. IMO, this would be a far easier (and quicker) thing to do than persuade the person who "owns" the word "gold" that they should not have the right to own it. As long as you don't refer to any of their OGC I can't see a reason why you need to obey their PI restriction as you have not got involved with their licence. Even people here that *do* PI things say there is no problem with another person writing their own rule with an identical name (just make sure you don't copy any of the OGC content of the "crippler" as you would be guilty of copyright infringement - the bad publicity that that would bring onto you would be counter-productive to your cause). None of these things cost any money and B, C and D are actually positive ways to influence the gaming industry (in a tiny way). Given that the number of retail outlets actually selling RPGs has drastically fallen in recent times (this *is* the case in the UK at least), word of mouth marketing could help keep one of the smaller "good guys" in business. In some ways I actually prefer these methods to the "giving away rules for free" approach, because if people start throwing a lot of OGC onto the Internet it could backfire and make OGC "cripplers" *more* convinced that they need to cripple thier content to protect themselves. Discussing these issues here is much less effective as you are mainly talking to the converted or to businessmen that are sure that their way is the right way. I've tried asking people why they do this. "We need to protect our stuff and wouldn't write OGC without PI" seems to be the only sort of answer you get out of people (as they seem to be fairly convinced that they would be out of business if people didn't need to rewrite the name of their rules to reuse them). However, if you openly question the motivation for PI'ing parts of rules, people just think you are attacking their character. This isn't helpful, as you don't get a useful response if you annoy people (and there is no point in annoying people just for the sake of it - roleplaying is a game after all and not worth of fighting over). Making non-PIed content more profitable than partially PIed content, on the other hand, would make these business people reconsider things as the bottom line (making more money) is more important than listening to one or two potential customers in the long run. And the positive things here B, C and D (and any other positive thing people can think of) might actually bring more people into the RPG hobby (people that don't care about this issue, but who's money will help keep product costs lower for the rest of us). Whatever *positive* thing people can do, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, it is a *lot* more likely to succeed than an attempt to persuade WotC (who believe that they are right) to remove PI from the OGL or an attempt to make publishers (who also believe that they are right) to not make use of the PI part of the licence. David Shepheard [1] Their view not mine. My view is that publishers don't *need* PI to protect thier products, but have been given the legal right to use it by WotC and naturally a percentage of them are going to exercise that right. If anyone is to blame for PI "misuse" it is WotC, but even complaining to them is as pointless as complaining to publishers. Customers that are unhappy with the concept of PI are free to use their purchasing power to support only products that don't use PI. _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
