Just how official is the BoEF?

[tuesdayscoming]

Title pretty much says it all. I was always under the impression that BoEF was third party (that is, not at all official), but I've been seeing it used pretty frequently in more and more posts, and thought I'd might as well check in.

So in what way, if any, is BoEF actually tied to WotC?

[Eldan]

It's third party, but due to the subject matter one of the best known third party books. Also, one that gives you a bit more discussion material than most, where your options are "It's overpowered", "It's interesting" and "It's total crap."

[faceroll]

Metaphysical Spellshaper is the tits.

[LOTRfan]

I was under the impression it was actually a D&D book a first, but WotC revoked that and categorized it as third party, with someone new publishing it. I can be wrong, though.

[Thurbane]

I think some of the confusion about it's "official" status comes from the similarity in the acronyms BoEF and BoED.

AFAIK, it was never considered an official WotC product - this Wiki article briefly touches on the history of BoEF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D20_System

[GolemsVoice]

I guess it's as official as any third party book, that is, WotC probably has to authorize it, but it's not part of their official product line, and isn't considered as far as design goes.

[Thurbane]

If I understand correctly, no 3rd party book using only OGL material needs any sort of approval from WotC to be published using the d20 license.

I think a handful of books fall under the "officially endorsed" category: i.e. not published by WotC, but bearing their seal of approval. The Dragonlance Campaign Setting and the Dragon Magazine Compendium are the only two that come to mind.

[GolemsVoice]

Hmm, I figured they wanted to have some measure of control, but I really don't know.

[Darrin]

So in what way, if any, is BoEF actually tied to WotC?

One of the producers of the BoEF was Anthony Valtera, a former brand manager for WotC. He attempted to publish the BoEF under the D20STL (d20 System Trademark License), which prompted WotC to add a "quality standards" clause to the D20STL. The D20STL would have allowed Mr. Valtera to use the d20 trademarks/logos and market it as "Compatible with Dungeons & Dragons!" At the time, the "d20" logo was seen as more "legitimate" than OGL, and more likely to be accepted by consumers as an "official" game supplement. Early mock-ups of the BoEF cover actually had "Dungeons & Dragons" in much larger print than the title, making it appear to be an "official" WotC product. I believe WotC threatened to sue the Valar Project (Valtera's publishing company) to discourage them from publishing BoEF, but I'm not sure how that all went down. BoEF was published under the OGL, which has no "quality standards" clause, and was specifically designed to prevent lawsuits.

While it may not seem like a big deal, the incident had a huge impact on the legal framework of the D20STL and the development of 4E. It was one of the factors that soured WotC management's opinion against the whole "SRD/OGL experiment". I beleive management tried to isolate or distract Ryan Dancey, pretty much the Godfather of the SRD/OGL, with "special projects" or "spinoff initiatives", and then eventually released him.

When WotC updated the SRD/STL for 4E, it contained several features that many publishers initially balked at, most likely inspired by the whole BoEF incident:

1) A more explicit "quality standards" clause.

2) A 30-day "cure period" to fix any problems.

3) The "quality standards" became retroactively enforceable: *after* WotC had approved your publication, they could decide later that it no longer met their quality standards, and revoke your STL.

4) Even after the "cure period", even after you had *PRINTED* your publication, WotC could come along later, change their mind, and demand that you stop selling your product and destroy all copies. Yes, even those copies you'd already sold to distributors or retail stores.


And WotC wonders why so many people are still playing 3.x...

[Thurbane]

Wow, I knew WotC took a much tougher stance on the 4E "OGL", but I had no idea they were that draconian about it. Very disappointing. :smallfrown:

[Peregrine]

Darrin's covered the history pretty well. I'd just like to add a bit more general info on the d20STL and the OGL, to clear up some misconceptions that appeared before Darrin posted.

d20 System Trademark License
The d20STL is the licence that allowed you to use that little "d20 System" logo and say your product was compatible with D&D. In return, you had to say that your product required the D&D core rulebooks, at least 5% of your product had to also be under the OGL, and your product couldn't be or include certain things, like: it couldn't have rules for character creation or advancement; it couldn't be an "Interactive Game"; and after the Book of Erotic Fantasy incident, it couldn't have anything that contravened Wizards' "content standards".

If memory serves, you had to send in a "License Card" to Wizards in order to accept the d20STL and publish something under the licence. So, you could argue that anything published under the d20STL was kind of "semi-official"; it was still a third-party product, but Wizards hadn't refused the license, so that's kinda-sorta-almost like approving it. In any case, Wizards of the Coast no longer licenses new products under the d20STL; actually, I think that the licence was outright revoked, and while companies could sell off existing stock or something, they can't print more copies of formerly d20-licensed titles.

BoEF was, in theory, no more official than any other third-party d20 System product (when it was still intended to be published under the d20STL). In the end, its fame (infamy?), and the fact that several Wizards employees worked on it, lent it some notable weight in the community.

Open Game License
Anything under the OGL, which eventually included BoEF, is basically "not at all official". You can put anything you like in an OGL product -- content-wise, I mean*. You can't include others' trade marks -- unless they've separately licensed them to you, such as under the d20STL -- and their "Product Identity", which is anything that perhaps isn't a formal trade mark, but about which they've said, "This is only for our products" (like the names "beholder" and "illithid").

* Obviously you can't include flatly illegal things, like copyright violations and instructions on bomb making, but that's nothing to do with the OGL itself.

And while I'm here...
Game System License
It's worth noting that not only did the GSL do away with the wide-open freedom of the OGL (effectively rolling the d20STL and the OGL into one), Wizards actually took steps to stop people using the OGL. They couldn't revoke the OGL, but they could require that anyone publishing a 4e GSL product didn't publish anything similar under the OGL. (If you wanted to update a product to 4e, you had to stop selling the OGL version; and you couldn't create any new stuff in parallel 3e and 4e versions.)

Eventually, this bit (section 6) was removed, probably because Wizards realised it was pushing publishers to stick with 3e (including going to Pathfinder) instead of moving to 4e.

[Keld Denar]

How does that go? There are 3 things that make for good content. Balance, maturity, and origionality(?). BoEF only accomplishes 2 at any given time.

EDIT: Found it! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8948544&postcount=17)


BoEF's material comes in two flavors: stuff that is well-written and mature, and stuff that is actually useful in a game. There is no overlap between the two.

[Frozen_Feet]

If you ask me, the book's biggest flaw is that the most erotic picture is the cover. The art of it is... sub-par.

Otherwise, it's official enough for me to love it. Would've never thought of a Paladin / Scared Prostitute without it. :smallbiggrin:

[Keld Denar]

My favorite part of the book, someone has in their sig. Love life of an ooze: One ooze. Idiot hits ooze. Two oozes.

[Psyren]

What makes most books "official" around here is how well they are known and recommended. Hyperconscious isn't official in a publishing sense, but most people here still recommend it because of how useful it is.

[ideasmith]

BoEF's material comes in two flavors: stuff that is well-written and mature, and stuff that is actually useful in a game. There is no overlap between the two.



There look to to be a number of exceptions to this, including the spells calm weather, detect disease, ghost touch, limited telepathy, magic probe, magic status, miss, mass sanctuary, and true form.