Darren wrote:
> I'm sort of curious what I am to you. All I am is a person with a little
bit of
> free time, developing some rules that I think will make the D20 SRD
stronger and
> more flexible, contributing to the community that made it possible for me
to do
> so.
>
> Is your only intention to take what I have done and sell it? Without any
> exchange, no contribution at all? Am I nothing to you but a person you can
> exploit?
Let me pose a hypothetical:
Suppose we publish a new Atlas Games "Penumbra" adventure. Some new,
flexible rules mechanic that you published online, say, would fit into it
really well. Suppose that our adventure, while it has a (closed) original
storyline and so forth, doesn't really add a whole bunch of new stuff to D20
as such...maybe it only has non-monster characters, for instance, but it
would REALLY benefit from your Medieval Stock Market rules set. Should we
(a) go without your superb web-published rules set, because it would be
unethical to take and not give in return, and either gloss over it or paste
together our own rules; or (b) include your rules set, since by putting it
in our adventure we'll expose it to a lot of people who might not ever have
found it on the web, and when they *do* find your page they might remember
"Oh yeah, that was used in Adventure X and I saw this guy's name on the
copyright page" -- and because your finely honed, long-tested rules would
genuinely improve the quality of our module?
I'm genuinely curious as to the answer, since I could see it going either
way. And, as a publisher, we could take either direction: We could focus on
staying relatively close to D&D and other published games, plus original
material of our own; or we could make an effort to use (and properly credit)
ideas from the OG community online. It seems that the latter is more in the
spirit of Open Gaming, but if it results in a widespread fan attitude that
commercial publishers are "leeches," we're better off not even reading OGC
on the web, so as to avoid accusations of leech-hood.
------------------------------------------------------
John Nephew voice (651) 638-0077 fax (651) 638-0084
President, Atlas Games www.atlas-games.com
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For more information, please link to www.opengamingfoundation.org
