From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2004 5:15 PM
> There's one big stumbling block in the way of all this: it costs
> time and money.
I mentioned small scale things individual could do in another reply. I think a bigger
stumbling block that the time and money a big scale attack on "crippled content" would
need is apathy and ignorance. I really don't think the average player cares about this
issue. I don't even think most of them know the difference between the OGL and the d20
System (and if you don't understand that it is impossible to care). With most end users
not even aware of the issue (let alone having an opinion on it) it means that the
people
that do object to "crippling" do not have sufficient public support. If WotC had
complaint
letters from 10 percent of the people that bought Players Handbooks, I think they
would be
more likely to look at changing the OGL. However, even that wouldn't stop the older
licences being used to "cripple" things.
> There are simpler ways to accomplish some of what you want: Green
> Ronin published a big book of OGC spells borrowed from other
> publisher's work. Some of those spells had PI names. Green Ronin came
> up with different names for those spells, and Opened those different
> names. Hence those specific examples of PI were now circumvented,
> and anyone who wants to use those spells with the new GR-created
> names can do so under the terms of the OGL without worrying about
> PI emcumbrances.
>
> But Green Ronin probably wouldn't have done that work for free as a
> gift to the anti-crippling movement. They did it as part of a book
> that they intended to sell for profit; it required them to put time
> and money to assemble, edit, and print the text, and they presumably
> wanted to get money back out of it.
>
> (I use the Green Ronin spell compilations as an example here because
> those are the ones I'm familiar with. There are others.)
This is something that individual people can do on a small scale on their own
websites. If
someone puts ten "uncrippled" rules on their website (or ten alternative OGC versions
of
rules that happen to have identical names to "crippled" rules) then they *have* made a
difference.
> There was a movement to release an alternative SRD that included
> things missing from the WotC SRD, such as character creation rules and
> the descriptions of the appearance of SRD monsters. That movement
> never came to fruition because it relied on volunteers to do all the
> work: time and money.
>
> A number of companies have released products under the OGL but not the
> D20STL in part so that they could include character creation and
> advancement rules. They likely wouldn't have done so for free: time
> and money.
You are right. Companies like Green Ronin, can't afford to do things (that cost them
time
and money) without the possibility of a return on their investment. Their shareholders
wouldn't be happy if they set up these alternative SRDs and didn't even publish them to
make money from them.
But this *is* where a little guy, that isn't a publisher or a author, but does have
some
talent, can afford to invest a bit of their spare time. Little people (that do care
about
this issue) *can* get access to free websites and *can* learn how to code HTML (or get
a
free program that does the work for them). They can then sit down and say to themselves
this "gold thing bugs me so I'm going to write an OGC gold weapon rule" and do that.
Unfortunately when little guys try to get together and do something big it seems to
often
fail, because there is no business model or full time staff to manage things. One
person
ends up doing most of the work and gets burnt out. Other people want to help but can
not
get past a bottleneck. I've heard that the Guttenberg project (a similar sort of
project
that actually has gotten off the ground) is now getting into problems because there
are a
lot more people scanning in things than editors.
You are right to say that these things require time and money but that doesn't stop
someone who is unhappy from unlocking *one* rule or creating *one* new piece of OGC
that
is missing from the SRD (and could later be put into the "alternative SRD" you brought
up). Surely a few people have already done this sort of thing. I know that there are a
lot
of websites dedicated to converting the abandoned TSR campaign settings into 3e and
3.5e
rules, so little things (that don't make a profit) *are* possible, and already do
happen.
Mind you these abandoned TSR settings are a lot easier for a gamer to understand than
the
idea of Open Game Content, so the people running those website must find it easier to
attract their audience.
I can't see an armature project to make an "alternative SRD" or uncripple all the
crippled
content working, by itself though (because as I mentioned earlier the average role
player
has not been made aware of the issue by the anti-cripplers [1]). This sort of thing
will
probably only happen if a publisher decides to print their own equivalents of the
Players
Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide and Monster Manual (and decides to use the OGL and the
"alternative SRD" to get other publishers to support their books as alternatives to the
WotC versions).
If a publisher was selling an OGC players book, gamesmasters book and a monster book
that
used a "d20 System" style brand logo [2] to gain product awareness from other
publishers
and making good money doing it, then perhaps they could justify putting the core parts
of
those books online as your alternative SRD [3].
If many people put out 45 or 65 percent of the content needed to make up the
"alternative
SRD", perhaps a company with a similar attitude to Green Ronin *could* justify
compiling
that material and adding in the missing bits and perhaps even publishing the OGC bits
online (a year or so after selling the printed version to bring in some money).
As for what useful bits of OGC an individual person can make for themself, surely our
fellow poster, woodelf, has the talent, time and motivation to write up an OGC
description
of...
..well...
..Wood Elves of course! Surely the section 15 credit ("wood elves copyright woodelf")
would be enough motivation for him!
LOL ;-)
David S
[1] As far as I know, there is no collective anti-crippling organisation, no
anti-crippler
with a website (including some sort of community/forum/mailing list for anti-cripplers
to
form a community around) and no online protest website (I've seen loads of these and
believe that they can be automated). If I am wrong then I apologise but haven't seen
anyone put the URL of one in here, so will assume I'm right until I'm told different.
[2] One that didn't add conditions like the d20stl does so that *every* publisher
would be
encouraged to use it as well as or instead of the d20 System logo. The sort of thing
I'm
talking about would be independent like the Prometheus logo but designed to be more
recognisable (no offence to Prometheus as it *is* a good idea - it just doesn't sing
d20
to me) as something to do with role playing games involving twenty sided dice and the
OGC/OGL -"OGC System" perhaps.
[3] I'm not saying that this is likely or even a good business idea - by the way. Just
saying that this is possibly the only way to make a profit from doing this. I'm fairly
convinced that WotC would pull the d20stl of anyone that did it so it would only be
worth
a publisher doing this if they had already lost that licence.
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