[sorry if i'm doing in worm-can-reopening. i'm clearing out my Out mailbox, deleting, or finishing and sending, some old unfinished posts.]
> > woodelf >> >> either i'm missing your point, or you're missing mine. what i meant >> to say is that you [generic you] can't complain that other ogls are >> less useful *because* there's less material available via them, and >> that you *therefore* won't release your material with one of them. > >Of course you can, and that *is* my point. You seem to be claiming that the >licenses can be evaluated independently from the material they represent. I >concede that this is possible but that the product of such evaluation is far >overshadowed by the value of the content they represent. > >I am saying that the licenses themselves are not important. At best they >are ivory-tower intellectual concepts, at worst they are vehicles for the >enlightened self-interest of content creators. GNU would not exist without >a desire for programmers to play in the UNIX pond, and the OGL would not >exist without a desire for gamers to play in the WotC pond. At no time are >the licenses intrinsically valuable in and of themselves, so debating their >merits cannot be particularly valuable either. Beyond certain very basic >elements I don't care about the licenses, I only care about what I can do >WITH them. That means they must have a significant body of work behind them >before they can interest me. > >The situation might be different if I where an established game publisher >with an established fan base and was facing the issues that WotC faced when >they green-lighted the SRD. But since I'm not and it's my opinion we're >talking about, I don't have to worry about it. fair enough. but it wasn't clear from earlier posts that you were speaking only from your point of view, not trying to look at the broader situation. and whoever it is to whom i originally responded was the one who seemed to be saying there was no point in putting material under a license that nobody has put material under. > > someone has to be the first to put useful content under a given >> license, in order for there to be useful content to attract others to >> use that license. in the case of the WotC OGL, of course, it >> was/will be the D20SRD, giving it a huge jumpstart. > >No, not a jumpstart. The body of work represented by the SRD is the entire >reason the OGL exists, not the other way around. It exists because fans >want access to that material. In fact, they want it so badly that they are >willing to create new look-alike games to compete with WotC. These >look-alikes have the potential to weaken the copyright claims and the value >of the IP owned by WotC, so they looked for a way to protect their >interests. Open gaming was a good way to nip that in the bud (for the >majority of users), and ensure that third-parties who use that material >cannot complete effectively against WotC, while at the same time CAN serve >the desires and needs of the d20 System gaming community as a whole. > >You are kidding yourself if you believe the OGL was ever about the free >exchange of ideas. That part was just a lucky side-effect. > >> no, i mean the D20STL. currently, you have to have at least 5% OGC >> content, as defined by the WotC OGL (meaning you have to place the >> work under that ogl). > >That is technically correct but moot point. The d20STL is a brand label >that indicates compatibility with other products bearing that label. If you >choose to make products compatible with those brands and you DON'T use the >SRD, one must ask why you bothered with the brand identification in the >first place. it could very easily be a D20 product, compatible with the D20SRD and D&D3E, as consumers expect, and still not have any rules from, or derived from, the D20SRD. frex, the upcoming D20 Traveller. their ship-construction rules are wholly-original (well, probably derivative of the older Traveller ship-construction systems, but not derivative of anything under the WotC OGL, so same thing in this case). so if they were releasing those in a separate product, within which those were the only rules, there would be no need to release that product under the WotC OGL. except that if they want the D20 label on it, it has to have 5% OGC, as defined by the WotC OGL. if that were broadened to 5% open content, as defined by any license the the OGF recognizes, they could instead release the whole supplement under, say, the GNU FDL, and still slap a D20 label on it. for the consumer, no change--same content, same level of mechanical compatibility. for other producers, the change is that now, to use that material, they have to use some other ogl, rather than the WotC OGL. is this an improvement? probably not, since they're likely to want to also use some stuff from the D20SRD. >I suppose there is some cross-marketing potential for >tangential ancillary products, (d20-brand dice comes to mind) but everything >that would involve an open gaming license would either involve braving >uncharted legal waters (trying to create a compatible work that was not >derivative) or using the SRD (and the OGL). That doesn't leave much use for >commercial ventures with both the d20 logo and other open gaming licenses. >Why am I stuck on commercial ventures when we're talking about open gaming? >Because brand names and market identification don't really matter anywhere >else. example two: the Slayer's Guide series from Mongoose publishing. i only have one of them (gnolls), but from what i've seen of the others the following holds true for all of them. within the 32p book, there is about half a page of stuff on gnolls as PCs, which is definitely derivative of the D20SRD. there are two pages of stats for typical examples of gnolls in different jobs within the pack, which is definitely derivative of the D20SRD. but the latter is completely unnecessary--it's just doing the grunt work of applying a couple character levels to the gnoll stats as found in the MM. so, there is less than half a page in the whole work that comes from the D20SRD. conceivably, the page on gnolls as PCs could be dropped without hurting the book (i wasn't looking for it, so i wouldn't have noticed if it wasn't included). it probably could have been expressed in a way (say, narratively) that conveyed the info usefully, but wasn't based on D20 mechanics, too. either way, two minimal changes to the book would turn it into a still-very-useful supplement (only the PC info would be at all hard to work around, or really impact the value), without any need, OGC-wise, to be tied to the WotC OGL. example three: i'm currently working on an Arcane Space setting. it is likely that there will not be a single game mechanic in the entire work. i would therefore prefer to release it under the OOGL, requiring any subsequent re-users to likewise make their work open. however, it will likely have a few proper nouns that i can only legally access via the D20SRD, thus forcing me to us the WotC OGL. in short, there is plenty of room for commercial ventures designed for D20 compatibility, but with no derived content (from the D20SRD, or otherwise) in them. for these works, releasing them under a differet ogl *might* be desirable, depending on the creators' motives and goals. -- woodelf <*> [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://webpages.charter.net/woodelph/ If any religion is right, maybe they all have to be right. Maybe God doesn't care how you say your prayers, just as long as you say them. --Sinclair _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
