>*grin*
>I think what you're attempting to grapple with is the fact that the
>OGL, D20STL, and the lot of them are liscences for Game rules. I
>would have done it exactly the same way.
>
>When it comes down to it, the original idea for Open Gaming as it
>was presented to me was that by sharing ideas things like little
>isolated house rules that made the game run smoother would be
>introduced into the gaming community and make the state of the game
>better.
which has always been my problem with it, and why i prefer the OOGL
and such: my reading of copyright law [IANAL, but i've talked to an
IP lawyer well-versed in RPGs and the RPG industry who agreed with
me] says that game rules aren't copyrightable in the first place, so
there's nothing to stop you from sharing house rules, etc. the only
"need" for an open license is to make it practical to share
setting-type stuff--stuff that can be copyrighted.
>The Scarred Lands Gazetteer is a setting. It describes a creative
>work that Necromancer has worked hard to make and they want to hold
>on to it. It's their world, their baby.
the above said, i can fully appreciate this. i have several projects
in various stages of completion and various degrees of current time
devoted. of these, a couple i've already decided will be open
content--rules, setting, artwork, the works. a couple i wouldn't
give away if Disney came knocking on my door with a million dollars
[if someone i trusted not to "betray my vision" came knocking, i'd
have to think about it. ;-) ]. several i haven't decided yet, and
they might even end up mixed open/closed.
personally, i'm of two minds about the way that the WOGL has been
used to date--making very little more than is required Open. on teh
one hand, i'm disappointed, because i think it undermines the
synergetic growthi and development that is the whole point of the
Open Content development model. on the other hand, i'm taking a
small amount of perverse glee in seeing WotC get bit by the WOGL (the
glee comes from my reflexive dislike of market leaders, and my
dislike of the WOGL, which i see, with it's PI protections, as a
co-opting of the idea of open content to benefit Big Business--so if
that very set of protections is what undermines it, i feel a sense of
vindication).
you see, IMHO, the setting stuff is the valuable stuff [one of the
reasons i don't like the new MM--it strips out pretty much all of the
non-rules-mechanics bits from the monsters, the stuff that was
introduced with the MC, and the reason i thought it was a
quantum-leap advancement over the 1st ed monster books when it came
out]. so by releasing the rules, WotC has made it easy for others to
tweak them to fit new settings, and thus made new settings much
easier. and these settings can be almost entirely closed (if the
creators are cagey enough about it), meaning that WotC gets none
ofthe direct benefits--they can't reuse cool bits. they get only the
indirect benefit of potentical PH/DMG sales, and i'm skeptical that
there are many that would specifically buy a D&D PH to use a
mechanic-less setting book. i suspect that most of the customers for
Scarred Lands, Diomin, Kingdoms of Kalamar, etc., are people who'd be
playing D&D whether or not those settings existed. while D20
supplements theoretically drive sales of the core D&D books, in
practice they seem to piggy back on already-existing sales. and
within the players of D&D, sales of the core books are going to be
pretty inelastic--pretty much one DMG per DM, and something like 8
PHs for every 10 players (based on the groups i've known). so they're
either buying more non-WotC stuff on top of the WotC stuff or, and i
think this is the more likely story, buying more non-WotC stuff at
the expense of WotC stuff. IME most people only run one D&D setting,
at least at a time. so if they're playing Scarred Lands, they're not
playing Forgotten Realms. and while we all mix and match across
settings and even game systems, you're more likely to pick of the
latest supplement for a setting you're currently playing than for
one you aren't. so some percentage of sales of non-WotC supplements
almost assuredly come at the expense of WotC setting stuff.
[personally, i also believe that these other settings pretty much
*have* to be better than FR, which should also contribute to their
sales detracting from FR sales. but i've been saying that since i
bought the original FR boxed set, and the market obviously doesn't
agree with me. nonetheless, Diomin seems like a far more interesting
setting than FR, and what i've gleaned of Scarred Lands from the
monster and magic books seems even more interesting than either of
them.]
to be clear: i have little-to-no beef with the utilizers (like S&SS)
of the WOGL and D20STL, since they are just playing with the toys
that were given with them. (i'd love to see them make the whole
thing Open, but i can't fault them for choosing not to.) my
complaints are directed at WotC/OGF for the design of the WOGL, and
for WotC's choices of what they're defining/trying to define as
copyrgihted/trademarked/game mechanics.
woodelf <*>
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A fanatic is a man that does what he thinks th' Lord would do if He only
knew th' facts in th' case. --Finley Peter Dunne
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