From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Justin Bacon
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2000 9:02 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [Open_Gaming] Product Identification
<< The lack of a means to identify your product as an OGL product greatly
undermines the usefulness of the OGL. It remains a legitimately useful
tool for largely skipping the need to design a new system -- but with no
way to communicate the fact that you have used the D20 system to your
customer base, the commercial applications of the OGL become highly
questionable.
Now if WotC is unwilling to provide such a trademark at this time (and
they apparently are), I say we step in at this early juncture and do so
ourselves (developing a market standard). Any thoughts on what could be
used to easily identify OGL product to the marketplace? (Once a
trademark was developed, someone would need to register it and then
place it under an open license.) >>
Justin, old buddy... I respectfully suggest that you have confused "OGL"
with "D20" (and implicitly with "D&D"). I know the terms are NOT being
distinguished well enough, so this confusion is natural; but the last thing
we want is for OGL to become some sort of synonym for
"D20-without-the-D20STL-restrictions".
OGL is about explicit permission for other people to derive from your rules
work (IF derivative ever applies to rules, which would require some real new
interpretations from the courts or new legislation) AND from any other IP
you choose to render as Open Content. It could be used for ANY sort of game.
It's just that D20 Open Content happens to have a lot of presence and thus
both commercial and non-commercial interest. "OGL" itself has pretty much
zero interest to the consumer, I believe. "D20" is what they'll look for.
As an example of OGL's non-D20 flexibility, I have a number of sort of
"protogames" that have hung in the back of my head for years, but which have
never really been developed or playtested. They're not even RPGs, so my
group ain't interested. Well, as soon as we have an official OGL, I plan to
type up and release to the world a couple of these: "Tilez" and "Take", most
likely. As much as I defend the rights of OG creators who want to protect
their closed IP, I think it will be a fascinating experiment to see where
the OG community can take these protogames once I expose them and let others
grow them. Neither idea is very complex; but like "Magic: The Gathering",
each allows a VERY wide range of customization rules. Nothing would tickle
my fancy more than to see OGL allow these to blossom into the full-blown
games I can only imagine right now.
Not that I'm disparaging your idea. It might be good to create a "brand
identity" for games which share a common rules base, but are not D20 games.
I don't know either way. But I DON'T think that brand is OGL.
Martin L. Shoemaker
Emerald Software, Inc. -- Custom Software and UML Training
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.EmeraldSoftwareInc.com
www.UMLBootCamp.com
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