Not at all. I think you are mostly right. You're
probably aware of my take on "crippled" OGC--I dont
buy in to all the claims, and I think that most people
are just trying to do stuff the best way they knew
how, but I know for sure that there were some
publishers who were trying to hoard content.
Much as I love Monte Cook's work, and I really think he single-handed
launched the PDF side into respectability and the public eye, I kind of wish
he hadn't been the first big success story... people saw his OGC
designations and just copied them without really knowing what they were
doing... which isn't necessarily a bad thing, except if you read Monte's OGC
designations in the "first published draft" of the Book of Eldritch Might
and compare to the designations in the "current 3.5 version," they're much
different... which tells me that Monte didn't get things "right" (by which I
mean, legally reflecting the way he wanted to open his work) the first time
- a mistake I think all of the earliest jumpers-in probably made. The
problem is that everyone else just copied his early OGC designations and
didn't learn about the OGL and update their designations as he did.
I blame the proliferation of "crippled OGC" declarations on the fact that
most publishers that got into the game after the release of the Book of
Eldritch Might seem to have used that early as their model and never
bothered to look at the OGL again... in other words, it's a "lazy" problem,
compounded by the fact that they happened to copy an OGC designation that
wasn't great to begin with (not through any fault of Monte's other than the
very forgivable sin of not being perfect the very first time - and Monte
isn't part of the "lazy" problem). Once all these new publishers jumped in
and followed that example, the designation became the standard because
almost everyone was using it (with the exceptions of those publishers who
had been on the scene prior to the BoEM - Bastion Press, SSS, and Mystic Eye
spring to mind).
That WotC never felt it worth their while (rightly so, probably - I can't
imagine their lawyers are cheap and most companies aren't turning profits so
that they could pay for the cost of WotC's lawyers, much less any damages)
to "crack down" on sloppy OGL compliance doesn't help... people could afford
to stay lazy with their designations (the argument of "Clear Designation"
compliance that has been beaten to death on this list).
But you forgot another reason:
4. A lot of the third party stuff wasnt that good.
Natch. In my defense, I was trying to address the issue of why "the good
stuff" wasn't pooled and turned into the "de facto standard" and so I
ignored this point on the theory that it didn't address "the good stuff."
On the other hand, I suppose the volume of stuff out there made it hard to
find the good - was it Dancey that said, "90% of everything is crap?" - and
thus made it tougher to find the standout content in the first place.
And another reason:
5. There was too much of it. There was no good way to
track who was making what to even rationally discuss
what should be adopted as the standard. It was hard to
sort through the noise of d20.
Plus, there was no interest in actually selecting a
standard. Heck, you had GR compiling everyone elses
spells. You had Monte doing his "best of d20." That is
as close as anyone came. And neither of those are good
solutions. Simply compiling stuff isnt selecting what
is good, it is just putting it all in a pile. And
Monte deciding what is good, while I respect Monte, is
hardly the voice of the whole community selecting the
best content which is what you need for a "standard."
This is true, too. It's hard enough to get two people to agree what
toppings to put on a pizza - let alone get an entire community to agree on
what is "the best OGL/d20 material."
You are right. I cant imagine anything about 4E that
would make the above problem any better. "Enlightened
self interest" is a nice dream. "Greedy begrudgingly
minimal compliance" is the reality in many cases.
The only thing I can imagine about 4E that would make the above problem
better would be a much-revised OGL (and in fact, it would probably have to
be a different license altogether to avoid the problem of people using the
current hole-filled OGL instead). The license would have to have more
"bite" than the current OGL does, especially with relation to what must be
designated as OGC (or the functional equivalent thereof under a new
license)... something that would basically be, "if you touch any part of
your product with this license, your whole product must be open (with the
exception of registered trademarks, which would presumably be the means of
holding on to your brand)." I'm not a lawyer, of course, so that's probably
not in perfect legalese, but I think it gets my point across - basically,
your company brand name is protected, everything else - text especially -
must be open; unless 4e comes with an OGL 2.0 with requirements
substantially to that effect, I don't see much change coming from publishers
(basically, they won't change unless they're forced to).
Of course, opening requirements that broad might cut down the number of
people willing to work under the license... and we've NEVER seen an interest
from WotC in doing much of anything with the OGL itself since it was
initially released, so I'm not holding my breath.
Now, there are lots of exceptions. I like to think
Tome of Horrors is an example of great sharing of open
content. But even that product, as great as I (rather
biased, I admit) think it is, wasnt exactly reused
that widely. And I even put instructions in the thing
on how to reuse the content.
Of all the "big boy" publishers, I think you and Green Ronin have been the
best about making your content easily re-usable (from the "goodie license"
in Relics & Rituals to the Tome of Horrors)... I wasn't calling out every
company individually, just noting some systemic trends. FWIW, I happen to
love the Tome of Horrors both as a consumer (fun monsters!) and as a
publisher (easy-to-use OGC!).
The bottom line truth is that there was very little
significant reuse of OGC.
Bingo. There were, as you mentioned, compilations, but very little that
"built" on the foundation of existing OGC (i.e., taking what was out there
and expanding on it, not just compiling it). I'm not sure how much of that
was due to legal issues and how much was personal "ego" issues (you know,
the "hey, that's not exactly how I would have done it, so I'll just start
from scratch and do it my way").
The other "non-legal" issue I noted was the general attitude in the
publishing and reviewing communities towards those who re-used content... in
general, unless you were (a) doing a compilation or (b) cherry-picking a
tiny bit here and there, but only using "re-used" stuff as a tiny fraction
of your content, there was kind of an attitude of "looking down their nose"
at you. That is to say, anyone who re-used significant sections of
another's work kind of got ostracized by the publishing and reviewing
community as more of a "plaigarizer" and a "copy/paste but no brains" person
- someone who was really not "all that worthy" as a publisher (I don't know
how else to put it). Of course, it doesn't help that most of the people who
did use substantial portions of others' OGC intially WERE the "copy/paste"
variety and weren't trying to build on the foundation laid by others, but
instead trying to pass off others' work as their own - or at least piggyback
some dollars.
Even with a legitimate "building on a foundation" though, I can, of course,
see where that would be frustrating from a consumer/reviewer sense (I
already have Product X; if Product Y has a significant portion of material
from Product X, I have quite a bit of redundant material and I'm by and
large wasting a significant chunk of the money I spent on Product Y that
gets material I already have). I'm not sure I know how to solve that
problem.
--The Sigil
P.S. As to a coalition of publishers handling a 4E SRD, there are several
problems with that. The most obvious is that it's a time sink from which no
profit is derived. From a business standpoint, that makes no sense to do.
The other reason? See my "pizza" metaphor above for why building a
consensus would be nigh unto impossible. One of the "problems" in this
industry is that every single person thinks their way of doing things is the
One True Way Of Gaming (I put problem in quotes because it means everyone
publishes their own ruleset and then no matter what, you can find one that
almost jives with the True One True Way Of Gaming - the way you and your
group plays - and just pick that one up and make the necessary house rules
that are so painfully obvious that the publisher should have caught them -
is the slight irony about how the One True Way affects us coming across
yet?)... as Matthew said, we couldn't even get publishers to agree on an
"OGL" logo. A logo! How many ways can you "logo-ize" the letters O-G-L
anyway? Even if you put all the candidates up and take a vote, someone is
going to say, "well, mine was better than the one they picked, so I'll just
use mine instead" - which defeats the purpose of having a common logo
anyway. Ditto with rules ("well, I don't like the way they picked to handle
this rule, it's not the One True Way Of Gaming so I'll use this other rule
that is"). Gamers are creative and stubborn, and that leads to lack of
consensus.
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