From: "The Sigil" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 12:50 AM
>Surely if the Wizards of the Coast bring out a 4E D&D that is not
>compatible with the SRD it will just make it economically viable for
>people to add character creation rules to the SRD and sell their own 3e
>PHB/DMG/MM clones.
Game companies would also have an incentive to do their own SRD bug-fixes
and while certain companies might not want to be as co-operative as
others, enlightend self interest would push most publishers together.
*snorts with laughter*
Forgive me, David, but I just HAD to respond to this. Enlightened
self-interest would push most publishers together to adopt the same
bug-fixes?
It will NEVER happen. One of the "talking points" that had everyone
excited about the OGL was that we were likely to see a whole bunch of
rules and ideas, and the best ones would quickly be adopted and become
"the standard" among third-party publishers, and possibly among WotC/D&D
play as well. That never even came close to happening.
Hang on a second Sigil. I'm not talking about publishers creating new OGC in
a co-operative manner (I've already seen that while cooperation is probably
in the interest of publishers that want to stay in the business for the long
term, many publishers do *seem* to hoard their own content for various
reasons).
I'm talking about something different. I'm talking about publishers working
together to maintain the core rules (if WotC abandon them during the change
to 4e). This co-operation would be limited only to the concept of upgrading
the 3.5 SRD to a level where it would attract customers who want an
alternative to the 4e D&D books. It would only do the following:
1) Take over the procedure of fixing existing bugs in the SRD (after WotC
stop releasing erratas) and
2) Produce enough new core rules to catch up with 4e D&D (and do nothing
else).
This would be a minimum amount of cooperation and could probably be done if
just a few content creators agreed to do it.
Why not? Three factors.
First, the OGL's "viral Section 15 - but nowhere else - credit
requirement" made it impractical to do so without creating ever-bloating
Section 15's.
I'm sure there is a workaround for that. Suppose that the publishers that
helped with the project didn't actually publish erratas, bug fixes and 4e
upgrades under their own name. The section 15 could then be limited to the
joint name that they operated under.
Lets say for arguments sake WotC shut the door and that after that a rag tag
band of publishers decide that staying in the d20 System business is worth
the extra effort. Perhaps something like this could happen:
1) A few publishers, for example Monty Cook, Clark Peterson, Green Ronin and
Mongoose say "what the hell - lets give it a go and if it doesn't work out
we can move on anyway".
2) They get in touch with the Open Gaming Foundation and agree to all work
for the OGF so that there is one publisher and none of them get top billing
over the others.
3) They agree with Ryan that the following section 15 will be used on the
"alternate 4e SRD":
15. COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Open Game License v 1.0a Copyright 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
System Reference Document Copyright 2000-2003, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.;
Authors Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, Rich Baker, Andy Collins,
David Noonan, Rich Redman, Bruce R. Cordell, John D. Rateliff, Thomas Reid,
James Wyatt, based on original material by E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.
Forth Edition SRD Upgrade version 4.01 Copyright 2007, Open Gaming
Foundation; Authors Monty Cook, Clark Peterson, Green Ronin and Mongoose.
For more information about Forth Edition see www.opengamingfoundation.org
4) Ryan agrees to put links to every company/individual that helps out in
the continuity editions of the SRD. He also puts up some blurb that says how
"all of these publishers are working together with the OGF to keep the Forth
Edition alive" and suggests that "gamers that want to keep the SRD alive
should support the publishers so that they can continue to donate their
time".
5) Publishers who can't be bothered to contribute would be forced to print
the full copyright notice advertising exactly who was working on the Forth
Edition. Hence publishers that don't get involved advertise all the
companies working on the "Forth Edition SRD Upgrade" and are forced to
provide a website where RPG fans can find out more information about them
all.
6) Ryan would get a number of additional hits and click throughs and fans
that wanted to "support the people who support the SRD" would get a feeling
that buying a product from one or more of those publishers would be saving
the game industry.
7) RPG fans reading the copyright notice, who didn't know about the OGL, SRD
and surrounding issues, would get the impression that Monty, Clark, Green
Ronin and Mongoose were somehow "better" at looking after the SRD. Some
sales (no I don't know how much as we are so deep into theories that we are
bordering on science fiction) would be generated from click throughs as the
link would make all of their products seem to be "more official".
8) The more rabid RPG fans who *were* aware of the issues surrounding the
OGL, SRD and OGC would probably urge people to support publishers that "were
working on Forth Edition" and boycott the publishers who "were riding on
their backs". However, although the rabid fans make a lot of noise I don't
think they have a major influence.
9) Publishers who didn't initially help with the project may be tempted to
join in when they see a commercial benefit of being an "official Forth
Edition author" and further editions of the SRD Upgrade could feature an
updated copyright notice with the names of anyone who comes onboard.
10) Whenever a new publisher decided to come onboard Ryan could make a big
show of giving them a "big shout" out on the website. Instantly giving them
reward for coming onboard. RPG fans would start to wonder why publishers
were not involved, as without an understanding of the issues those
publishers would just look like they were "being killjoys". The more people
that join in the more "peer pressure" would be exerted on publishers that
were not involved. (Lets face it, if Clark used the names of the publishing
lines he is connected with, instead of his own name (as I showed here) the
project would get a "buy one - get one free deal" and instantly get White
Wolf and Arthaus as well as Sword and Sorcery Studios. So if he came onboard
he would look like 3 publishers even if it was only him writing!)
--------
If WotC *also* withdrew the d20 STL - which they probably would if they were
really trying to kill off the competition the above publishers and the Open
Gaming Foundation could also release their own replacement logo and licence
which could be less restrictive, and could also allow a level of
advertising/bibliography that their lawyers thought was in their mutual
interest.
The logo could even be the letters OGC in an icosahedron and could have the
URL "opengamingfoundation.org" to act as a method of viral marketing that
attracts people to the OGF website and sends some visitors on to publishers
that "donate their time to keep the Forth Edition alive".
And if the publishers had some sort of "moral" objection to working with
Ryan they could always buy "opengamecontent.org" (which strangely is unused)
or "ogc.org" (which would have to be bought from the mob that are using it
for a fake search engine that chucks dodgy pop ups at you) or
"opengamecontent.com" (which currently redirects to "alld20.com") or
"ogc.com" (which is owned by another fake search engine/directory service)
and use one of those URLs instead.
--------
So when I say "enlightened self interest" I'm not talking of charity. I'm
talking of publishers doing something (in the event of this hypothetical
"attack" on their business by WotC) that turns a closed content 4e D&D into
a chance for them to "take over" and become the "official SRD publishers" in
the eyes of the RPG buying community.
Second, publishers were very ambiguous with their OGC designations, making
picking out and reusing the OGC something of a legal liability minefield
that nobody wanted to brave. Why was this done? Occasionally out of
laziness, but I have to believe #3 below played a part as well...
I'm not talking about sourcing material from existing products, so bad OGC
definitions would not need to effect a new co-operative publication that was
similar to what I said above.
Third (and in my view most importantly), too much OGC came along as
"crippled" - publishers, by and large, closed more than they opened
(especially closing down names of spells, monsters, etc.), making re-use
near-impossible... there are a multitude of reasons why this happened, but
in my mind, it boils down to most publishers simply not wanting to
contribute any more than they had to with the attitude, "if there's any
money to be made on my writing, I'd darn well be the one making it."
The project would need to update the existing SRD to be compatible with (or
on an equal footing with) the 4e D&D. Most of the work would involve
examination of the SRD and changes to that. The OGC you are talking about
could mostly be ignored, as it isn't core stuff.
In other words, self-interest among many publishers killed the truly
sterling potential of the OGL to create a dynamic, legitimate alternative
to D&D. There was nothing "enlightened" about it. Forgive me if I don't
share your optimism that 4E will somehow cause a shift in attitude among
publishers of third-party material.
"Enlightened self interest" is not the same as plain old fashioned "self
interest". Enlightened self interest is a principle where you recognise that
it is in your own interest to make sure that other parties are looked after
in some way. I don't think that a hypothetical closed 4e D&D system would
magically cause all publishers to become "tree hugging hippies", but if a
few publishers that respected (not necessarily liked) each other decided
that they would "put up with each other" to try to retain the "d20 System
market share" they could turn a co-operative system (that stood up against
D&D) into something that was of more economic benefit than going alone.
Everyone was so busy obsessing over protecting the little kingdom of
"Intellectual Property" that they had created that they failed to realize
it's usually not much more than a pile of mud and sticks that they were
protecting (and not worth much more, either... realistically, I would
guess that there are probably between half a dozen and a dozen third-party
OGC/d20 publishers remaining whose Intellectual Property has a value that
is above four digits).
A co-operative SRD Upgrade controlled by a consortium of publishers might
even protect IP better than the current system. Imagine if the "Forth
Edition SRD Upgrade" had an appendix that said stuff like "Scarred Lands is
Product Identity of Sword and Sorcery Studios". Stuff like that would get
everybody (who piggybacked on the SRD Upgrade) to agree to not use Clark's
PI in one hit. The arguments about 3rd generation OGC would be rendered
irrelevant in one go.
That little rant is not likely to endear me to anyone in the RPG industry,
but there it is. The uglier the truth, the truer the friend that tells
it.
I like a good rant and don't see Lee around any more to rant at me.
*shrugs* Oh well. I hope at the end of the day it turns out that you are
right and I'm not just a cynic. But honestly, I saw little "enlightened
self-interest" the first go-round, why should the second go-round - with
mostly the same players - be any different?
Because at the moment WotC feed two carrots (the SRD and its erratas and the
d20 System Trademark) to publishers that make it worth doing things the WotC
way (i.e. taking a back seat and letting WotC call all the shots). In this
hypothetical situation the carrots would be removed and publishers would
either have to cooperate, maintain compatibility with a "dead 3.5 system" or
switch over to their own non d20 systems (and all fight to create their own
tiny markets).
There is a reason why publishers choose to comply with the OGL and d20 STL
and I suspect that reason is that they want a slice of the market share. If
a closed 4e edition happened something similar to what I said would be the
only way to be *seen* to be "staying in the existing market" but *also*
"upgrading to the 4th edition".
David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Webmaster
Virtual Eclipse Science Fiction Role Playing Club
http://virtualeclipse.aboho.com/
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/
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