From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Rogers
Cadenhead
Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2000 5:07 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [Open_Gaming] Consolidated Remarks
<< This spaghetti open/closed stuff
still sounds like an effort to derive value from the open work of others
without
risking anything valuable of your own. I hope publishers will feel compelled
to
contribute as much to the community as they take out. >>
While I respect your right to this opinion, I am very sorry you feel this
way. I believe this is a simplistic statement of the situation that
overlooks the efforts and investments of those making mixed content. I see
the open/closed mix as the only reason I would ever build anything under D20
at all. I am willing to open any new rules I create, but not my setting and
characters.
And suppose I should derive from OGC, offer no new OGC at all, and otherwise
close my work. Even in this case, I can still contribute to the gaming
community, though in less direct fashions:
1. By using the D20 rules (or another existing open rules set, but D20 is
what interests me), I can develop my closed work in significantly less time
and with significantly less effort, because I do not need to develop and
playtest huge chunks of rule mechanics. I can devote my entire effort to the
new materials I am creating, trusting that the OGC contributor has done a
vast amount of the necessary work far better than I have time and resources
to accomplish. (I have enough ego to believe that, given time and resources,
I could do just as good a job. Since that will never happen, I'll never have
to prove my bravado.) In fact, that difference in time and effort may be the
only thing that allows me to entertain the thought of building professional
game materials: my regular job keeps me far too busy as it is. So without
the existing OGC, no one would have access to my work. Assuming my work has
value to my customers, the OGL allows me to deliver that value to them.
2. By using the D20 rules and referencing the PHB rather than including the
rules in my work, I can keep my page count way down, thus keeping the cost
to my customers down. Assuming my work has value to my customers, the
customer receives that value for less cost, and thus the customers benefit.
3. By using the D20 rules as closely as is reasonably possible within my
setting, I am producing a product that is far easier for the average
customer to learn than would be my own proprietary rules. Maybe my ideas are
FAR superior to D20; but the fact is, learning curve has a cost, sometimes
an insurmountable cost. Thus, the effort and time the customers must invest
is lowered; and thus, they get more time to play and enjoy. Assuming my work
has value to my customers, the customers receive that value with far less
personal investment, and thus the customers benefit.
4. By using the D20 rules as closely as is reasonably possible within my
setting, I make it far easier for a GM to adapt my product to his own
setting or campaign. Since most GMs do this sort of thing anyway -- and
since no personal use like this can possibly be a violation of the OGL or of
my own intellectual property rights -- there is no cost to me or to anyone
else under the OGL, and significant time savings and attendant benefit to
the individual GMs (assuming my work has value to my customers, of course).
Now you and I may very well disagree on whether this is the degree of
contribution we feel is appropriate. But it is undeniable that these are
beneficial contributions to the gaming community, as measured by a
fundamental economic measure: how much money is willingly paid by how many
customers? Throwing out some RIDICULOUS numbers I have NO reason to expect:
if 10,000 customers each purchase a copy of my work at $25 apiece, then my
contributions to the gaming community have been judged by the market to have
contributed a quarter-million dollars in value. How does that compare in
value to an entirely OGC Web release that is downloaded by 100,000 people?
Who can tell? How many barrels of fresh apples does it take to make a gallon
of orange juice? We're on different value scales entirely. The 100,000
people who downloaded the Web product include some unknown number of curious
people who will never use it. Net value to them is close to NEGATIVE, since
downloading consumes some of their time. (But you don't get 100,000
downloads JUST from the curious: you obviously got good buzz, and people
liked your stuff.) Meanwhile, my product will have close to zero curiosity
buyers, since $25 is beyond the curiosity threshhold for most gamers.
There's no good comparable value measure. Total number of gamer-hours of
enjoyment would be a nice comparable value measure; but that's effectively
impossible to measure in either case, save by statistical methods.
And as far as "without risking anything valuable of your own": again, I must
respectfully submit that you and I are measuring "risk" and "value" in
different fashions. Like all of us, my most valuable currency is TIME, and I
am certainly risking that. While I have no doubt that some non-profit,
totally open OGC creators will create some very high quality labors of love
with man-years invested (well, maybe not man-YEARS...), a commercial OGC
creator MUST put forth significant extra effort on quality and finish or
fail utterly. Were I to spend that time and effort on my regular job, there
is a certain predictable amount of income I could expect to derive from it.
Thus, I am risking that loss of income (or maybe loss of fencing time, or
loss of time with my wife, or loss of sleep, or...) on the hope of
reclaiming some small measure of income (I have no delusions of getting rich
doing this) and some small measure of ego boost in knowing that I have
served a lot of happy customers.
I do not mean to criticize. But I wanted you to see that the quality
commercial producers are not simply trying to get something for nothing when
they (we, I hope to say some day) want reasonable protection for our closed
works.
Martin
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