On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, John Kim wrote:

> Hi,
>
>       There has been some vehement debate over the openness of
> various usages such as _Creature Collection_ and others.  In my
> mind, there is a simple test of openness for practical purposes.
> What OGC other than the SRD have people actually re-used in
> third-party products?  (i.e. re-use of Scarred Land by S&SS
> doesn't count, since they own the copyright anyway)
>
>       Can anyone answer this?  I think this is important.  If
> OGC is never actually used, then its theoretical openness is
> irrelevant.

Don't follow the logic of this claim.  It could be that the reason for not
re-using creatures from CC1 or 2 is that people just don't find the
creatures all that interesting or different from what's available in the
SRD.  Or that publishers think that players are more likely to own the MM
so it'd be better if modules contained creatures from MM rather than
either CC.  And so on.  There are a number of reason other than claimed
lack of openess which could result in OGC not being re-used.  And remember
the primary use of books like CC is by GMs in their home campaigns -
introducing creatures that players are less likely to be familiar with.

And we are probably just getting to the time when people are going to be
re-using third party OGC more widely.  With WotC everyone is ready to go
almost immediately upon release of content in draft form - because they've
taken a look a the non-OGL D&D books and guessed at what is going to be
open.  With other parties, everyone has to wait until the product is
actually out, purchase it, study it, take it apart for OGC and then decide
if they want to re-use any of the OGC.

alec

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