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Justin_Bacon
2008-06-19, 01:36 AM
I just posted this on my blog (http://www.thealexandrian.net), but I feel like sharing.


Re: GSL

As some of you may already know, Wizards of the Coast has decided to stop supporting the Open Gaming License (OGL) with the release of 4th Edition. Instead, for many months now, they have been promising to unveil the Game System License (GSL). They were originally planning to roll the GSL out early this year and charge early adopters who wanted to release products in time for GenCon $5,000.

This was a marked contrast to WotC's approach in 2000, when they eagerly sought out companies like Atlas Game and Green Ronin to have products available at GenCon when the 3rd Edition Player's Handbook was first released. Those products -- Three Days to Kill and Death in Freeport -- created huge amounts of buzz for the new edition.

Ultimately, the $5,000 money grab proved irrelevant because WotC couldn't get their ducks in a row. As a result, when the GSL was finally released to the public this week, everyone was given the same starting date: October 1st, 2008.

We have known for a long time now that the GSL was going to be deliberately more restrictive than the OGL. WotC considers the OGL to be a failure. With 4th Edition, the only material they want produced is supplemental material which feeds directly back into the sales of their core rulebooks.

The announcement of 4th Edition put a freeze on the development of my own personal company, Dream Machine Productions (http://www.thealexandrian.net/dreammachine/index.html). Until it became clearer what 4th Edition was going to be, it was difficult to make any meaningful decisions. And, since my company was young, I had the luxury of simply waiting until I could make an informed decision.

My trepidation over the 4th Edition rules have grown over the past several months, but -- in the end -- I had come to the decision that I would playtest Keep on the Shadowfell and make a final decision pending that experience. Honestly, I thought it quite likely that -- if nothing else -- I would be publishing The Slave Lords as a 4th Edition adventure path.

However, the GSL (http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/GSL_20080617.pdf) has now been released and those plans are shifting once again. This license is, frankly, completely unacceptable. The most problematic sections are these:


6.1 OGL Product Conversion. If Licensee has entered into the “Open Gaming License version 1.0” with Wizards (“OGL”), and Licensee has previously published a product under the OGL (each an “OGL Product”), Licensee may publish a Licensed Product subject to this License that features the same or similar title, product line trademark, or contents as such OGL Product (each such OGL Product, a “Converted OGL Product”, and each such Licensed Product, a “Conversion”). Upon the first publication date of a Conversion, Licensee will cease all manufacturing and publication of the corresponding Converted OGL Product and all other OGL Products which are part of the same product line as the Converted OGL Product, as reasonably determined by Wizards (“Converted OGL Product Line”). Licensee explicitly agrees that it will not thereafter manufacture or publish any portion of the Converted OGL Product Line, or any products that would be considered part of a Converted OGL Product Line (as reasonably determined by Wizards) pursuant to the OGL. Licensee may continue to distribute and sell-off all remaining physical inventory of a Converted OGL Product Line after the corresponding Conversion is published, but will, as of such date, cease all publication, distribution and sale (and ensure that third party affiliates of Licensee cease their publication, distribution and sale) of any element of a Converted OGL Product Line in any electronic downloadable format. For the avoidance of doubt, (a) any OGL Product that is not part of a Converted OGL Product Line may continue to be manufactured, published, sold and distributed pursuant to the OGL; and (b) this Section 6.1 will survive termination of this Agreement.

That's a thick bundle of legalese, but what it boils down to is that, if you publish a product under the GSL, you cannot publish (or continue to publish) the same product under the OGL. Nor can any other product in the same product line be published (or continue to be published) under the OGL.

This, in itself, would be okay. The problem is that WotC sets itself up as the sole arbitrator of what constitutes a "similar title" or "similar product line". This means, ultimately, that once you publish anything under the GSL, you have explicitly given WotC the legal authority to prevent you from publishing any OGL product.


11.1 Termination. This License and the rights granted hereunder will terminate automatically upon written notice to Licensee or upon posting on its website of a termination of the GSL as applied to all licensees.

[...]

11.3 Effect of Termination. Upon termination, Licensee will immediately cease all use of the Licensed Materials and will destroy all inventory and marketing materials in Licensee’s possession bearing the Compatibility Logo. Licensee will remove the Compatibility Logo from all advertising, web sites, and other materials. Licensee will solely bear all costs related to carrying out this provision (in addition to any other provision) of the License. Wizards may, in its sole discretion and upon written agreement between Wizards and Licensee, extend this License for those Licensed Products that otherwise comply with the terms of this License.

And then there are these clauses, which are fairly straight-forward: WotC can terminate the GSL at their whim. And, when they do so, you are legally required to immediately destroy all of your GSL products.

However, and this is important, section 6.1 survives the termination of the license.

This means that, once you accept the GSL, you have given WotC the ability to immediately shut down your OGL and GSL product lines in their entirety. The entire license is a giant poison pill -- just as many people (including myself) were predicting months ago.

The counter-argument can be made -- and will be made -- that WotC are all a bunch of really swell guys and they would never use their powers for evil. In fact, this counter-argument has already been made many times over in many different places across the internet.

But it doesn't really matter whether they're currently planning to use their "if you accept this license we can immediately order you stop publishing all OGL and GSL products at our whim" powers in a malicious fashion. The point is that, by accepting the license, you're giving them those powers. And if you're actually in this business -- i.e., you've got money on the line -- then you can't afford to just ignore that. You have to take it into meaningful consideration and make an informed choice.

And if you're making that decision based on your belief that the guys down at WotC are a swell bunch of guys who would never screw you over... Well, frankly, you're a fool. Because even if those guys are all swell, they could all be fired tomorrow.

If you're making this decision, then there's really only one question you need to ask: If WotC decided, at any time, to terminate my ability to publish all OGL and GSL products, would I be OK with that?

If you're OK with that, then you're golden. If you're not, then you shouldn't be using the GSL.

Personally, there's no way that I could ever do business in that environment. I will not be developing under the GSL. I will not swallow the poison pill.

So what lies ahead for Dream Machine Productions? A good question.

For right now, I can tell you that the City Supplements (http://www.thealexandrian.net/dreammachine/roleplaying/city-supplements.html) will be continuing, although I will probably be moving them in a more systems-neutral direction. (They were not particularly stat-heavy to begin with, and I don't see any reason not to make them as appealing as possible for fans of both editions.)

I am also currently waiting for an artist to return a signed contract. As soon as I've got that in hand, I'll be making a major announcement. All I can say of that for right now is:


3RD EDITION LIVES!(TM)

Solo
2008-06-19, 01:45 AM
I just posted this on my blog (http://www.thealexandrian.net), but I feel like sharing.

Four times.

Eldritch_Ent
2008-06-19, 02:07 AM
Basically, this clause says to me-

"We can make people stop publishing DnD books under this license"... And I don't really see what's innately BAD about that.

It's the part where you immediately have to burn all your books and such that strikes me as a bit... Extreme.

Nebo_
2008-06-19, 02:08 AM
To be fair, I only count three.

Charity
2008-06-19, 02:12 AM
I guess Solo was counting your thread along with the others... I dunno if I'd stand for that.:smallwink:

Neithan
2008-06-19, 02:14 AM
I'm no professional, but I did contract law for some semesters. And unless I am mistaken, this license allows Wizards to terminate your whole company in most cases:

- You may not publish any OGL material.
- You may not publish any GSL material.
- You may not sell any GSL material.
- You have to destroy all your stock, with no compensation.

Unless you're a big company that has many other product lines, you're most likely out of buisiness. If you have any contractors, you still have to pay them and have to pay penalties for not fullfilling your contracts. If you were careful, you set up your company so that only your company is taken away from you so that your contractors can be paid. If you did not, you have to pay with your own private money. Which means: They could take your house.

Add §21: "This contract has to be signed in blood."

Emperor Tippy
2008-06-19, 03:00 AM
There are a few ways to get around the license but they are a pain and cost money (lawyer fees mostly). You basically start a second company and transfer ownership of all OGL products to said company, not just license them but transfer all copyrights and trademarks. You then have the first company create a conversion book and license the copyrights and trademarks from the OGL products to said first company. This company agrees to abide by the GSL and does all 4e publishing for your "company".

WotC can revoke the first companies GSL on a whim but they can't touch the OGL works as they are owned by another company which never agreed to abide by the GSL. Once WotC revokes the first companies license you start up a third company and have the first company sell all of its intellectual property to the third company, which then promptly releases the same book again.

If you do the above I recommend PDF publishing as it would save you a lot of money.

/The above is not to be construed as legal advice in any way, talk to your lawyer if you want legal advice.

kamikasei
2008-06-19, 05:18 AM
Basically, this clause says to me-

"We can make people stop publishing DnD books under this license"... And I don't really see what's innately BAD about that.

Consider: "After we have agreed with someone to let them publish something with our rubber-stamp, we can revoke that rubber-stamp at any time. If we do so they are obliged to destroy all their stock and can never publish that material without our rubber-stamp, so we can destroy all their work on a whim. Also, we can declare anything else they create, rubber-stamped or not, to be 'similar' (and we are the judges of that similarity), so once you have gotten our rubber-stamp on any single product we can shut down any other you make, utterly, and irrevocably."

Does that sound innately bad?

Dan_Hemmens
2008-06-19, 05:45 AM
While all of the "destroy all material" bumph is scary-looking, it's worth bearing in mind that all that this *really* boils down to is your ability to - as another poster points out - put their rubber stamp on stuff.

Basically what it comes down to by my reading is: "If you want to be part of our brand, you can be, but you can't directly compete with that brand, and if we want to kick you out we can."

It's not actually *unreasonable*. They have a brand, if people want to buy into it they can, but they have to accept that they're playing in somebody else's ballpark. If it doesn't seem like a good deal to you, don't take the deal.

Emperor Tippy
2008-06-19, 05:59 AM
While all of the "destroy all material" bumph is scary-looking, it's worth bearing in mind that all that this *really* boils down to is your ability to - as another poster points out - put their rubber stamp on stuff.

Basically what it comes down to by my reading is: "If you want to be part of our brand, you can be, but you can't directly compete with that brand, and if we want to kick you out we can."

It's not actually *unreasonable*. They have a brand, if people want to buy into it they can, but they have to accept that they're playing in somebody else's ballpark. If it doesn't seem like a good deal to you, don't take the deal.

It is quite unreasonable. Requiring the destruction of all products in inventory is quite unreasonable in most cases, it can bankrupt most of the smaller companies. The similarity clause is likewise unreasonable as WotC can declare anything with Wizards, Fighters, and Dragons that is published under the OGL to be similar.

Whether or not the license would hold up in court is debatable but it probably would. Especially when few people have the money to fight WotC.

If I was a company that sold 3rd party D&D supplements I wouldn't touch 4e with a 10 foot pole. Since game rules can't be copyrighted they are better off pretty much grabbing the 4e rules system, altering all of the flavor, removing all the trademarked content, and publishing it as a 3.75 D&D product.

kamikasei
2008-06-19, 06:04 AM
While all of the "destroy all material" bumph is scary-looking, it's worth bearing in mind that all that this *really* boils down to is your ability to - as another poster points out - put their rubber stamp on stuff.

Basically what it comes down to by my reading is: "If you want to be part of our brand, you can be, but you can't directly compete with that brand, and if we want to kick you out we can."

It's not actually *unreasonable*. They have a brand, if people want to buy into it they can, but they have to accept that they're playing in somebody else's ballpark. If it doesn't seem like a good deal to you, don't take the deal.

Problems with this interpretation:

- They can declare pretty much anything they like that you make to be competing with the brand.
- Even if they deny you the use of the brand, unilaterally, after they've agreed to it in the first place, you are still not allowed to compete.

Basically if you want to make a product you have the option of, a: making it OGL and not being allowed to claim compatibility or approval, but being able to make anything you like under OGL, pretty much.. Or, b: making it GSL and being able to claim compatibility and approval for as long as it suits WotC, with the threat at all times hanging over your head that they can shut down any other of your other product lines, or withdraw their approval and then your product and any other products they want will be gone along with all the work you sank in to them.

nagora
2008-06-19, 06:08 AM
Basically if you want to make a product you have the option of, a: making it OGL and not being allowed to claim compatibility or approval, but being able to make anything you like under OGL, pretty much..
Why can't you claim compatibility?

Dan_Hemmens
2008-06-19, 06:11 AM
It is quite unreasonable. Requiring the destruction of all products in inventory is quite unreasonable in most cases, it can bankrupt most of the smaller companies. The similarity clause is likewise unreasonable as WotC can declare anything with Wizards, Fighters, and Dragons that is published under the OGL to be similar.

Whether or not the license would hold up in court is debatable but it probably would. Especially when few people have the money to fight WotC.

You're confusing "WotC could brute force it through the courts" with "it is legally binding".

WotC doesn't just get to arbitrarily declare anything they want to be "similar" they have to prove in court that it's reasonably similar. They might be able to brute force something through because they have more money than most small gaming companies, but they could do that anyway. If they wanted to, they could sue any RPG company out there for *any reason whatsoever* and *probably* make it too expensive to be worth fighting them.


If I was a company that sold 3rd party D&D supplements I wouldn't touch 4e with a 10 foot pole. Since game rules can't be copyrighted they are better off pretty much grabbing the 4e rules system, altering all of the flavor, removing all the trademarked content, and publishing it as a 3.75 D&D product.

And they could sue you for that as well. Which is sort of my point. A big, rich company can make unreasonable demands of a small, poor company and back it up with expensive lawyers. The GSL isn't here or there.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-06-19, 06:15 AM
Problems with this interpretation:

- They can declare pretty much anything they like that you make to be competing with the brand.

Yes. Just like they can declare that *pretty much anything they like* is a violation of their IP right now.


- Even if they deny you the use of the brand, unilaterally, after they've agreed to it in the first place, you are still not allowed to compete.

It's their bus. They get to decide who's on it.


Basically if you want to make a product you have the option of, a: making it OGL and not being allowed to claim compatibility or approval, but being able to make anything you like under OGL, pretty much.. Or, b: making it GSL and being able to claim compatibility and approval for as long as it suits WotC, with the threat at all times hanging over your head that they can shut down any other of your other product lines, or withdraw their approval and then your product and any other products they want will be gone along with all the work you sank in to them.

Exactly. It's a *business decision*. You decide whether the "Official" stamp is worth the hassle. Whether you will make *more money* from it than if you don't get the stamp.

And they can't get rid of your *product*, they can only take their stamp off of it.

Premier
2008-06-19, 06:55 AM
Yeah, I've heard about these parts of the new license before, but frankly, I don't understand the big fuss.

This GSL? This is what the OGL was meant to be. This is the kind of licensing arrangement WotC had in mind for 3E, only they dropped the ball on it by not thinking it through and making it "too unrestrictive" - from their point of view.

Remember how the OGL was, and I guess still is, hailed as a brave step in liberating creativity by allowing everyone to bring their own RPG ideas out into the public commercial arena by utilising the single most widely known system, etc. etc.? Well, excuse the langauge, but that was bull. WotC never wanted to do that, it was just an unexpected side effect.

They never wanted Castles & Crusades, they never wanted Mutants & Masterminds, they never wanted the Conan RPG by Mongoose, they never wanted any of that. Why would they have? These products gain a lot from building on WotC's system, but WotC doesn't gain anything from them in return - people playing C&C, M&M et al won't buy WotC's splatbooks for them, since those books cannot be used with these products. WotC has, for all intents and purposes, brought about the creation of products and entities competing with it. While gamers might cherish this turn of events, from WotC's corporate viewpoint this was a fiasco, and a bad one. They didn't want competitors, they wanted people bringing them extra indirect revenue with no effort on WotC's part.

The GSL is just the correction - it's what they wanted the OGL to be all along. And lots of people have been saying this for quite a while now, so I don't understand why people start acting surprised right now.

kamikasei
2008-06-19, 06:56 AM
Exactly. It's a *business decision*. You decide whether the "Official" stamp is worth the hassle. Whether you will make *more money* from it than if you don't get the stamp.

And they can't get rid of your *product*, they can only take their stamp off of it.

That's not my understanding. If once you get their stamp on a product (GSL), then they can not only take that stamp off but prevent you from rereleasing the product without it (under the OGL).

If it was a simple matter of "you sign this so that you can stick 'WotC approved!' on your products. We can revoke that approval if we want", I don't think anyone would be so put out by it.

nagora
2008-06-19, 07:07 AM
Remember how the OGL was, and I guess still is, hailed as a brave step in liberating creativity by allowing everyone to bring their own RPG ideas out into the public commercial arena by utilising the single most widely known system, etc. etc.? Well, excuse the langauge, but that was bull. WotC never wanted to do that, it was just an unexpected side effect.
I think you're confusing Hasbro and WotC as it was. WotC fully intended the OGL to work the way it does, Hasbro have decided that it was a bad idea. They're wrong. It hardly matters now, though. If they'd come up with a good system then perhaps they could have gotten away with the landgrab that the GSL represents, but with 3ed out there, 4ed offering nothing except the chance to re-buy all your splatbooks over again, and now the idea that Hasbro will become judge, jury, and executioner if you are foolish enough to try to work with them, I think very few people will bother to try.

There's a huge 3ed/d20 market out there and a small 4ed one. I suspect it will remain that way.

kamikasei
2008-06-19, 07:14 AM
Why can't you claim compatibility?

I may be abusing terms here; I am thinking of the "d20 compatible" or whatever logo. There's probably some overlap between that and approval, and I'm sure you can make statements along the lines of "this text is intended to work with the rules in X" if you're careful about what you claim.

nagora
2008-06-19, 07:26 AM
I may be abusing terms here; I am thinking of the "d20 compatible" or whatever logo. There's probably some overlap between that and approval, and I'm sure you can make statements along the lines of "this text is intended to work with the rules in X" if you're careful about what you claim.
Oh, yeah, using logos is a no-no. I agree there.

Emperor Tippy
2008-06-19, 07:49 AM
The GSL is just the correction - it's what they wanted the OGL to be all along. And lots of people have been saying this for quite a while now, so I don't understand why people start acting surprised right now.

Surprised? No. I doubt anyone is surprised with the GSL. Annoyed? Sure. Find is utterly stupid? Sure. But surprised? No.

If WotC wanted to profit from the other RPG's made under the OGL and GSL they should have just said "we take 1% of all revenue", or some other percent that they saw as reasonable. Perhaps add in a clause saying that any products made to work with D&D (unlike M&M for example) don't have to pay the fee.

But I will be very surprised if very many companies release stuff under the GSL. The license isn't worth the hassle, especially when they can make use of the OGL instead.

Vikazc
2008-06-19, 07:56 AM
I don't really understand how people are managing to get this upset over the new license.

The general consensus is "Oh no, WotC are not going to let us do anything we want with their intellectual property, how can those cruel bastards not let me make money off their investment??"

As was pointed out several times, this is their system. They have an interest in, and a right to protect their investment in it. Even if this was some malicious plan to revoke every ones OGL rights, which I doubt, that is their decision to make if they feel that things got out of hand with the first license.

I rather doubt that is the case though, because I would be utterly amazed if they did not already have a legal method of completely obliterating the OGL if they truly wanted to. The D&D property is not public domain, and it is not the special heart fairy, friend of all gamers that brings money and grants wishes. WotC does not owe you anything for free, and to be upset because they don't want you to make money off them is absurd.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-06-19, 08:02 AM
That's not my understanding. If once you get their stamp on a product (GSL), then they can not only take that stamp off but prevent you from rereleasing the product without it (under the OGL).


Wizards, for sensible reasons, want to prevent people from supporting both 3.X *and* 4E at the same time - for them to do otherwise would be bad business.

Given this, there *has* to be a clause in the contract that prevents people from converting to 4E, then converting back again. Otherwise there'd be no reason to have the prohibitions against doing both in the first place.

It's like the way most computer DVD players can switch regions, but only once or twice. That way it allows you to move to another country, but not to just play whatever DVDs you want.

Emperor Tippy
2008-06-19, 08:07 AM
I don't really understand how people are managing to get this upset over the new license.

The general consensus is "Oh no, WotC are not going to let us do anything we want with their intellectual property, how can those cruel bastards not let me make money off their investment??"

As was pointed out several times, this is their system. They have an interest in, and a right to protect their investment in it. Even if this was some malicious plan to revoke every ones OGL rights, which I doubt, that is their decision to make if they feel that things got out of hand with the first license.

I rather doubt that is the case though, because I would be utterly amazed if they did not already have a legal method of completely obliterating the OGL if they truly wanted to. The D&D property is not public domain, and it is not the special heart fairy, friend of all gamers that brings money and grants wishes. WotC does not owe you anything for free, and to be upset because they don't want you to make money off them is absurd.

No, my complaint has nothing to do with a restrictive license. My complaint, and most peoples, is with the termination, effects of termination, and product conversion subsections. What they mean, effectively, is that WotC can bankrupt any company that ever publishes anything under the GSL.

Hell WotC could start up a second company, order 50,000 copies of a product, wait for them to finish the print run, and then revoke the GSL for the company. Since the products can't be delivered the company will end up having to pay penalties on top of eating the printing costs for those books they had to destroy.

That is perfectly legal. Shady as hell but technically legal.

I would have supported WotC if they had required prior approval before any GSL product was marketed or sold. I.e. before the expense of printing is incurred.

tumble check
2008-06-19, 08:26 AM
Justin, please post a detailed review once you've finished your playtest, and be sure to make it visible here on the board.

I respect your opinion more than most on this board.

Vikazc
2008-06-19, 08:33 AM
Well there is really only two options for them. They can set up a board to look at applications for usage of their license, have a review system. That would lead to a charge associated with the license, to compensate for WotCs cost in supporting this committee of people.

So they went the other route, and made it free and easy for people to use the license, but reserved the right to revoke it whenever necessary. If they didn't allow themselves to do that, they would have to worry about people putting out terrible material that makes them look bad under their license, and that could cost them money as well. WotC and Hasbro are taking the safest route possible for their business. They arn't generating a lot of goodwill, but they are making sure they can't get screwed, and I can understand that.

Indon
2008-06-19, 08:46 AM
This is way more than just "Wizards can destroy you on a whim" - at least, the way I read it.


-If you make www.4ed-gsl.org, we will shut it down.

-If you make a 4th edition-based game that is clearly better than 4th edition, we will shut it down.

-We will do anything in our power to destroy the free gaming environment we once fostered.

-We will come to your warehouses and make you burn your books when we release 5th edition. You're next, consumers.

Yeah, all those threads on the internet where people were all, "Yeah, it's not like WotC can come to your home and burn your books or anything, lol!" I guess some of the Wizards brass decided to get to work on that.


WotC does not owe you anything for free, and to be upset because they don't want you to make money off them is absurd.

By that same token, nobody not under WotC payroll is obliged to be nice to them, or to pussyfoot around talking about their business strategy.

And if its' a business strategy that we, as their consumers, do not like, then we can damn well bitch about it until Wizards goes out of business (well - if it's really considered that bad). The free market does not take well to obvious retrograde (as opposed to progressive) business strategies.

Emperor Tippy
2008-06-19, 08:55 AM
Well there is really only two options for them. They can set up a board to look at applications for usage of their license, have a review system. That would lead to a charge associated with the license, to compensate for WotCs cost in supporting this committee of people.

So they went the other route, and made it free and easy for people to use the license, but reserved the right to revoke it whenever necessary. If they didn't allow themselves to do that, they would have to worry about people putting out terrible material that makes them look bad under their license, and that could cost them money as well. WotC and Hasbro are taking the safest route possible for their business. They arn't generating a lot of goodwill, but they are making sure they can't get screwed, and I can understand that.

Did the OGL ever make WotC look bad? Not to my knowledge.

WotC could have easily said "All products sold under this license must be approved by WotC at the creators expense and before printing." Sold being the key word, anyone could release anything for free under the GSL with no problem but if they wanted to charge so much as a cent for it then they have to pay the cost or approavel.

They could have also added in a "we take 1% of all revenues" clause.

In all honesty I don't see the GSL doing anything to help WotC. I almost guarentee that none of the current companies publishing for 3.5 or under the OGL will publish anything under the GSL, the risk is just to great.

What does that mean? That 3.5 will continue to receive new supplements.

nagora
2008-06-19, 09:38 AM
Hell WotC could start up a second company, order 50,000 copies of a product, wait for them to finish the print run, and then revoke the GSL for the company. Since the products can't be delivered the company will end up having to pay penalties on top of eating the printing costs for those books they had to destroy.

That is perfectly legal. Shady as hell but technically legal.
I don't think it would be legal, actually. Of course Hasbro's lawyers would claim it's legal, but then finding a lawyer that will say you have a case is like finding a prostitute who will say you're a sexy hunk.

The license can claim anything it likes, and if you sign it you certainly give it more credence than it deserves but it doesn't make everything Hasbro might do legal. A court will decide that.

Person_Man
2008-06-19, 10:39 AM
It seems as if its written to discourage competition. That makes sense, in a way. Perhaps D&D has enough market penetration that they don't need independent publishers.

But if that's the case, why even have such a license? Why not be open handed about it?

"3.0 and 3.5 were great, and we really appreciate all the independent firms out there who published supplements for it. But we've run the numbers, and think that the sales they took away from our books were greater then the gains to our customer base that they helped build. So if you want to publish D&D material and make money from it, we suggest you apply for a job at WotC. Sorry. But that's just the way it is."

My guess is that they know half of their fan base dreams of being an independent publisher, so that their ideas can see print, and that they would be financially rewarded for it in some way. They also know that their independent publisher and wannabe publisher fans are very vocal on the internet. So to avoid a PR disaster, they created a compromise license that would let independent companies publish 4E material, but only if they promised to drink the Kool-Aid and never publish 3.5 again, and accept that WotC could destroy them at any moment if they became too popular.

So here's a simple question - Does anyone have an example of an independent publisher using this license to publish a 4E product?

I don't.

Justin_Bacon
2008-06-19, 11:58 AM
Four times.

Yeah, sorry 'bout that. The forums were having some problems last night when I was trying to post it.


And they can't get rid of your *product*, they can only take their stamp off of it.

Uh, yes. They can. They have huge amounts of language in this license giving them the legal right to do exactly that if you agree to it.


This GSL? This is what the OGL was meant to be. This is the kind of licensing arrangement WotC had in mind for 3E, only they dropped the ball on it by not thinking it through and making it "too unrestrictive" - from their point of view.

Remember how the OGL was, and I guess still is, hailed as a brave step in liberating creativity by allowing everyone to bring their own RPG ideas out into the public commercial arena by utilising the single most widely known system, etc. etc.? Well, excuse the langauge, but that was bull. WotC never wanted to do that, it was just an unexpected side effect.

I'm sorry, but this is just revisionist history of the most blatant variety.

First, there's the fact that Ryan Dancey was championing the OGL for "liberating creativity" and "allowing everyone to bring their own RPG ideas out into the public commercial arena" for months before 3rd Edition was even released. Unless Dancey owns a time machine, there's no way that was a post facto excuse. It was exactly what WotC wanted, and the management at the time had very good reasons for believing it was a good idea. (And I still believe they were right.)

WotC's current management disagrees. But that doesn't mean that WotC, in 2000, didn't want the OGL. They did.

Second, when 3rd Edition came out, WotC had not yet finalized the SRD. The early OGL adopters were working under a provisional version of the SRD and a gentleman's agreement that the material in the provision version of the SRD could be yanked. (Which in fact some material -- like the mind flayer -- was.) It was actually several months before the official version of the SRD was actually released.

If WotC had been suffering from buyer's remorse at that point, they could have simply chosen not to release the official version of the SRD and strangled the OGL in its crib. They didn't.


They never wanted Castles & Crusades, they never wanted Mutants & Masterminds, they never wanted the Conan RPG by Mongoose, they never wanted any of that. Why would they have? These products gain a lot from building on WotC's system, but WotC doesn't gain anything from them in return - people playing C&C, M&M et al won't buy WotC's splatbooks for them, since those books cannot be used with these products.

Actually, this was something else Dancey talked about prior to the release of 3rd Edition. And he welcomed it.

The idea behind the OGL was to drive the sales of core rulebooks. And the well-supported theory is that those games, in the long run, do end up contributing to the sales of WotC core rulebooks. Why? Because WotC is the market leader and the research Dancey was using showed that a rising tide lifts all ships.... but the market leader moreso than anybody else.

Here's the simple truth of it: How many people playing C&C, M&M, or Conan don't own and will never own a D&D PHB? Only a ridiculously small fraction of them.

And even that small fraction is still likely to indirectly contribute to PHB sales in the long run. Why? Because they will most likely end up creating new gamers. And those new gamers, because WotC is the market leader, are likely to end up playing D&D at some point.

The problem Dancey had was that the core rulebooks he produced never took off. For various reasons, books like the Epic Level Handbook and the Psionics Handbook were flops. (Their biggest problem, IMO, was that they were very badly designed.)

It's pretty clear, at this point, that this was the point at which WotC's corporate philosophy began to shift. I am fairly convinced that this is what prompted 3.5 more than anything else: The core rulebook strategy had failed (because the secondary core rulebooks had sucked), and the 3.0 supplements WotC had produced were now being completely out-produced by the 3rd party OGL designers. 3.5 was a way for them to dip into the PHB/DMG/MM cash cow again, but it was also a way for them to reboot their splatbook lines -- redesigning them as full-color hardcovers that could compete with the products the OGL companies were pushing out.

Ironically, with 4th Edition, I feel like their model of annual PHB/DMG/MM releases gives them a sustainable core rulebook model that would be well-wedded to Dancey's original vision. Unfortunately, their draconian clamp-down on the open gaming movement is only guaranteeing a market fork.

Anyway, that's a big long digression.

Hey, here's one thing I haven't seen much discussion about: The GSL has no open component to it at all. If I publish something, other people using the GSL have no ability to use it. All cross-company synergy is non-existent under the GSL.

If there was any chance in hell that I would be using the GSL, that would be another huge stumbling block for me.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-06-19, 12:44 PM
Uh, yes. They can. They have huge amounts of language in this license giving them the legal right to do exactly that if you agree to it.


They have huge amounts of language in the license giving them the right to stop people publishing OGL and GSL products in parallel with each other. They have a bunch of other language which nixes the obvious workarounds (like publishing something under one license, then waiting for the print run to finish, then printing under the other).

Dan_Hemmens
2008-06-19, 12:52 PM
Did the OGL ever make WotC look bad? Not to my knowledge.

Actually, when it came out pretty much everybody I knew saw it as Wizards of the Coast (who were the big bad corporation long before Hasbro was the Big Bad Corporation) trying to sabotage the gaming industry by making it economically non-viable to publish a game that wasn't compatible with D&D.

Sure enough, however many years later, 70% of all the games in the local game store are D20 releases.

Indon
2008-06-19, 02:24 PM
Actually, when it came out pretty much everybody I knew saw it as Wizards of the Coast (who were the big bad corporation long before Hasbro was the Big Bad Corporation) trying to sabotage the gaming industry by making it economically non-viable to publish a game that wasn't compatible with D&D.

Sure enough, however many years later, 70% of all the games in the local game store are D20 releases.

Is that because the OGL worked by destroying the gaming industry, or is that because the OGL worked by tripling (a ballpark figure in accordance with your 70%) the number of games made availible by making it so much easier to produce games?

Tsotha-lanti
2008-06-19, 03:29 PM
Is that because the OGL worked by destroying the gaming industry, or is that because the OGL worked by tripling (a ballpark figure in accordance with your 70%) the number of games made availible by making it so much easier to produce games?

Are there studies about this sort of thing? I don't imagine the tabletop RPG industry is anywhere near big enough for independent studies about market shares to be common or even very necessary.

I do know my local game store added shelves, rather than replacing things on existing shelves (except for the then out-of-print AD&D books), to accommodate all those d20 books.

Sebastian
2008-06-20, 09:08 AM
I don't know if somebodyalready mentioned it, but a thing that bother me is the leverage this license would give to WotC over publisher that adhere to it, for example suppose that the next tome of treasures (to say a random title) is not selling too well when it come out, wotc could call their publishers and say something like you know it would be really nice in your next products would put some references to the material in the ToT. No pressure, of course, but you have put out some nice books for 4e it would be a shame if you license was revoked for some reason"

Maybe I'm paranoid but If I was a publisher I would not touch the GSL with the proverbial 10 feet pole (I wonder if that is why they didn't put it in the PHB :D )

AKA_Bait
2008-06-20, 10:36 AM
I don't know if somebodyalready mentioned it, but a thing that bother me is the leverage this license would give to WotC over publisher that adhere to it, for example suppose that the next tome of treasures (to say a random title) is not selling too well when it come out, wotc could call their publishers and say something like you know it would be really nice in your next products would put some references to the material in the ToT. No pressure, of course, but you have put out some nice books for 4e it would be a shame if you license was revoked for some reason"


Here's one of the things though, under the GSL a 3rd party publisher can only reference the CORE books. It would require an additional agreement bettween WotC and the publisher for them to reference anything in ToT for example.

Sebastian
2008-06-20, 10:45 AM
Here's one of the things though, under the GSL a 3rd party publisher can only reference the CORE books. It would require an additional agreement bettween WotC and the publisher for them to reference anything in ToT for example.

Don't they only need to add the material to the SRD for that?