<<There is a reasonable expectation that anything that is "clear" is also simple or concise. >>
> I disagree. I think that something can be very clear, but be somewhat specific in it's provisions, and therefore lengthy. I could have a designation that was wholly unambiguous but a bit lengthy. I think it would be hard to argue that such a description could not be clear simply because it was long. >Perhaps I'm biased as an academic, but I've read some exceedingly long treatises that are very clear and have exact indications about what kinds of information they do and do not cover and why. I therefore don't assume that "clear" = "concise". > I've already seen 3-4 OGC declarations this week when I was browsing that were less than sentences long and were clear as mud. I agree with you here. There is a differnce between listing every PI noun, which can be very lengthy, and saying "anything that isn't OGC is PI" (or vise versa) which is short, but cloudy as milk. The OGC/PI declaration in Spycraft is prob. a gray area. One can figure it out, but exception stuff in both the Designation of PI and Designation of OGC starts to cloud it. On an aside, I prefer graphical defferentiation of OGC from PI, such as the Bluffside method. Hard to say that it is NOT clear, and doesn't degrade the presentation of the product. Getting that to work with concepts might be a bit tricky, however. <<This does not work unless the other words in the paragraph are allowed to be PI. Only proper nouns, themes and plots are allowed to be PI. You cannot declare the How to Use This Book section of your book as PI unless you are claiming that such a section is a plot or theme. >> > PI designations for "language" and "concepts" seem pretty broad. Even bigger (and "bigger" is, I realize, a relative term in the OGL community) seem to be declaring as PI, things that definitely aren't plots or themes; or in other cases, they are merely NOT declaring them as OGC and are excluding them from their OGC declaration. > The two methods, of course, have distinct effects under the OGL, but it seems that some vendors are interpreting their ability to close off content, via one method or another, fairly broadly. Of course there are a number of companies who aren't very good about handling the OGL, so perhaps I might concur with you, in part, at least, that just because I can identify other lemmings doesn't mean I should join the parade. > But I still don't read the OGC is allowing you to exclude only fictional plots, themes, and proper nouns as PI. The list seems a bit broader to me than that. You can exclude anything that you created that doesn't rely on a OGC concept. Just cause I create a new system for a game, that doesn't use any of the OGC concepts, doesn't mean I have to open up any of it. I can make it all PI. Now, if I start incorporating other OGL concepts, I need to open up at least those areas, though it would def. be nicer for everyone IMO if the whole concept were opened. For example, if I created a new Telepathic ability tree, and defined all sorts of new stuff for it (no recycling), and what it could do etc, and then used XP cost for the balancing, I would at least have to open up the XP cost, since XP is OGC. I could close off the rest, so long as I didn't refer to any other OGC in it. Oathbound's Prestige Races are a good example. As I understand it, he didn't have to open up any of it but references to different spells/abilities and the XP cost associated with each. The fact that he opened it up is a boon to the OGL community, however, and will get his product listed in many more products than if he hadn't. Now, if I'm wrong there, someone clue me in. That's about as clear as my lawyer described it. He didn't have any examples to use, though, since he's not a RPG fan. I'd rather find out in a friendly manner than go to court over a misinterpretation from counsel. Andrew McDougall a.k.a. Tir Gwaith _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
