Forking D&D?

[InaVegt]

With all the people disliking the 4th edition of dungeons and dragons (myself included) I was wondering if people were up to forking dungeons and dragons 3.5 edition.

For those who don't know what forking is, It's quite easily explained, I think. When you have an open source program, and you have come to the conclusion the program needs features the original programmers aren't going to give, or if they're taking the program away from what the original state was, and you do not think that to be a good idea, you take the sourcecode at the moment you're interested in, and modify it to fit with your ideas. I believe we are in the second situation.

I know it will be a lot of work to make something new out of 3.5, but I think it's worth the effort, and was wondering if there were other people thinking the same.

((To the mods, I was not sure if this needed to be placed in homebrew or gaming, I decided gaming would be better because we're not in the homebrewing stage yet, and most of the edition discussion is taking place here.))

[kamikasei]

A few people are talking about making a "3.75" homebrew edition compiling extensive "fixes" of broken parts of 3.5 with variant rules incorporating the best innovations of 4e and other games. I believe Renegade Paladin was trying to herd some of those efforts together on these very boards, if you do a search (and yeah, homebrew's where it'd be).

[Theli]

Sadly, DnD is not technically open source.

Yeah, you have the d20 license. But that has limitations.

Such as quality standards:

The nature of all material You use or distribute that incorporates the Licensed Articles must comply with all applicable laws and regulations, as well as community standards of decency, as further described in the d20 System Guide. You must use Your best efforts to preserve the high standard and goodwill of the Licensed Trademarks. In order to assure the foregoing standard and quality requirements, Wizards of the Coast shall have the right, upon notice to You, to review and inspect all material released by You that uses the Licensed Articles. You shall fully cooperate with Wizards of the Coast to facilitate such review and inspection, including timely provision of copies of all such materials to Wizards of the Coast. Wizards of the Coast may terminate this License immediately upon attempted notice to you if it deems, in its sole discretion, that your use of the Licensed Articles does not meet the above standards.

And hey, they can change the license whenever they want to:

Wizards of the Coast may issue updates and/or revisions to this License without prior notice. You will conform in all respects to the updated or revised terms of this License. Subsequent versions of this License will bear a different version number.

I wouldn't put it past WotC to sue a fansite if a "fork" ever really takes off. They are a business, and this is one of their main products after all.

Sure, they may be dissuaded from doing so due to possible fan enmity. But it just makes the task all the more difficult.

It's a long hard road, but good luck. Although maybe a completely different version would be better? There's nothing special about 3rd edition, besides how much money you might have dropped on it. Maybe a combination of all the editions would make a better game.

[Valairn]

There are a couple of different efforts going on for "forking" DnD. I am working on one myself, I'm currently alone on the project. I know there are four or so other groups working on different products. I'm sure we'll see which one is "best" after a while.

[InaVegt]

Sadly, DnD is not technically open source.

Yeah, you have the d20 license. But that has limitations.

Such as quality standards:


And hey, they can change the license whenever they want to:


I wouldn't put it past WotC to sue a fansite if a "fork" ever really takes off. They are a business, and this is one of their main products after all.

Sure, they may be dissuaded from doing so due to possible fan enmity. But it just makes the task all the more difficult.

It's a long hard road, but good luck. Although maybe a completely different version would be better? There's nothing special about 3rd edition, besides how much money you might have dropped on it. Maybe a combination of all the editions would make a better game.

There's also the OGL, which does allow forking, and does not require you to use the latest version, instead it allows you to use any version you like.

I point you at the points 1.g and 5, making it you can create derative works of D&D (as it is described in the SRD) for no charge, as long as you want.

This would include a fork of dungeons and dragons.

[Theli]

Ah right. Didn't check that. For some reason I thought they were one and the same.

Although I still wonder about the language of the OGL. 1.g, that you pointed out, is actually just a definition. And 5 just dictates that you have to make the claim that anything you contribute is your own original content.

But the biggest concern is perhaps 7. You can't even indicate that whatever you create is compatible with "Product Identity", unless you have another license. This kinda suggests that you can't even make homebrew suggestions to published WotC works under OGL... It kinda looks like you can only reference content that has already been released as OGC, which is severely limited...

*shrugs* But yeah, I am not a lawyer.

[InaVegt]

Ah right. Didn't check that. For some reason I thought they were one and the same.

Although I still wonder about the language of the OGL. 1.g, that you pointed out, is actually just a definition. And 5 just dictates that you have to make the claim that anything you contribute is your own original content.

But the biggest concern is perhaps 7. You can't even indicate that whatever you create is compatible with "Product Identity", unless you have another license. This kinda suggests that you can't even make homebrew suggestions to published WotC works under OGL... It kinda looks like you can only reference content that has already been released as OGC, which is severely limited...

*shrugs* But yeah, I am not a lawyer.

Sorry, meant 4, not 5.

4 gives you the right to "use" the open game content.

And product identity is basically all non open game content in the book, if the people at d20srd.org made no mistakes, there is no product identity in there.

Thus, you can use all content of d20srd.org for a fork of D&D.

You just can't call it a d20 system (which would require using the license), nor call it D&D (as that's a trademark).

[Theli]

Or adapt/fix content from 3rd and 3.5 edition books, which is perhaps why the OP wanted to fork DnD in the first place. *shrugs*

Or maybe I'm reading too much into his/her intentions. I don't know.

[InaVegt]

Or adapt/fix content from 3rd and 3.5 edition books, which is perhaps why the OP wanted to fork DnD in the first place. *shrugs*

Or maybe I'm reading too much into his/her intentions. I don't know.

Yes, the content which is open game content, which is already inside the SRD and can be freely modified, it misses the fluff, and most of the stuff needed for chargen, but it's not like that hasn't changed over editions, so we can create our own.

And, I am the OP.

[horseboy]

Sorry, meant 4, not 5.

4 gives you the right to "use" the open game content.

And product identity is basically all non open game content in the book, if the people at d20srd.org made no mistakes, there is no product identity in there.

Thus, you can use all content of d20srd.org for a fork of D&D.

You just can't call it a d20 system (which would require using the license), nor call it D&D (as that's a trademark).

Like they do with 1st & 2nd editions. If you want, power to ya!

[Theli]

Doh! Sorry.

[Renegade Paladin]

http://3eupgrade.akashicrecord.org/

Feel free to come on over; there's room to host several simultaneous projects. I'm assured by my host that their server capacity is still 98% or so free, so there's no danger of the site getting too large, I think.

[valadil]

If I didn't like 4th ed I was planning on sticking with 3.5 and adding homebrew rules where needed, kind of like I do right now. I never really saw the need to publish anything, but it still seems like a really cool effort. If only there were a good way to integrate non open published material, maybe through a restricted or non-free branch (if you want to keep up the open source comparison).

[Talya]

The problem comes with agreeing on what should be changed.

For instance, it's in vogue to remove half the decent wizard spells in core. I don't play a wizard, and yet despite that I'm loathe to remove something so cool as "Shapechange" from the game, as i'm of the opinion that casting 9th level spells are supposed to be momentous events, and that the level of magic required to use them should generally be approaching the cosmic in scope. (I tend to play melee characters, before anyone accuses me of not wanting my overpowered self to get nerfed.)

At the same time, i want to see Two Weapon Fighting made to be ... actually USEFUL. Why should it take three feats to do something that is mechanically inferior to just weilding a big 2h sword?

I do not think it should do more damage than a 2h sword, that's silly. Fighting with two weapons was generally about extra defense, and a bit of opportunism to take better advantage of momentary openings in the opponent's defense. I do not at all think it would be imbalanaced to roll all four levels of Two Weapon Fighting and Two Weapon Defense (7 feats, 1 of them epic) into a single feat, though. (off hand iterative attacks granted with BAB rather than by feats.)

[Premier]

It seems to me that this "forking" is essentially just another word for "making up an extensive set of houserules and putting them online".

As long as nobody tries to make any money off of it, I just don't see Wizards suing or even sending a Cease and Desist. Sure, they technically COULD do it, but if that project is widely known enough for the whole thing to become a (real or just perceived) issue, then it's also widely known enough for these actions to cause a huge negative backlash against WotC. Much, much more loss than gain.