Clark,
Sorry to rub you the wrong way with my theorizing, but I fear you may be
reading too much into what I wrote. I think there is a lot of valuable
criticism and discussion to be had in these matters, however, so I'm
probably going to spend too much time discussing it here. ;)
> You guys and your evil conspiracy theories.
"Evil"? "Conspiracy"? I was explicating what looked to me like one valid
business strategy, as opposed to "Those White Wolf guys didn't understand
what 'product identity' meant or that the point of Open Gaming is not to
require people to get your written permission to do stuff." -- which is what
it looks like to a lot of folks.
If what you're saying is that White Wolf wants everyone who refers to one of
their monsters by name to get a note of approval or licensing agreement
signed by Steve Wieck beforehand, and that was their explicit intention all
along, well, I'll have to believe you for now. Presumably you have your
finger on the pulse of White Wolf, though at other times you've indicated
that you don't really speak for them.
If what you say is White Wolf's intention, then my description needs to be
modified: White Wolf wants to CONTROL where and how (and IF) people refer to
the monsters. Before you get defensive -- That's not an evil conspiracy
either! It's a business strategy, a means to set up a group of loyal
customers, and maintain control over products that might be of the most
interest to those customers -- a business strategy whose whose value will be
tested in the market.
Talking about this is not to attack White Wolf! It may be to criticize
(hopefully that's OK), in a constructive manner. It's definitely to analyze
and learn from business choices -- choices that all of us here are
presumably facing as we develop and publish our own OGL materials. Such
analysis is part of the purpose for this mailing list to exist.
And even if White Wolf is thinking something else, or decides to stick all
the monster names under the OGL too, what I've described is still a strategy
that someone else might want to use, since the expansive structure of
"Product Identity" looms large in the OGL v.1.0.
In fact, I think it may loom a little too large -- and I think that the
community of developers should apply positive peer pressure to encourage
people to take a more limited view of "Product Identity" whenever possible.
My belief, as I stated, is that doing so should benefit the individual
developers who follow the more-open path as well as the rest of the
developers given free access to build on their work -- and in fact, I think
that the lack of central control and approval is the essence of Open Gaming.
> I'm pretty sure that Steve is intending to post to the
> list saying that it will be real easy to get
> permission to use CC monster names for any products
> you might be considering making.
I look forward to seeing him do that, since I am certain it will be good for
open gaming. However, it would have been a lot better if names and
statistics were all OGC, and only world-specific "flavor text" had been
restricted. That would protect those IP concerns (if you want to control
stories and unique characters on which movies or something could be based),
while not creating administrative licensing hassles for other OGL
developers -- and for yourself. Alternately, a license could have been
included, comparable to the D20STL, to describe exactly how the monster
names could be used in other OGL products without special permission.
(You're a lawyer; couldn't you have drawn up such a license for them?)
> Remember, the CC went to press before there was even a
> requirment of dividing PI and OGC. That is a recent
> addition to the d20 license.
Uh...then why are people talking about its License specifying "Product
Identity"? Three Days to Kill doesn't use product identity because it
wasn't in the draft of the OGL available at the time; Thieves in the Forest,
now at the printer, does use OGL 1.0 but doesn't label anything as Product
Identity -- it just uses the 3D2K method: if it's on a gray box, it's open
content, proper names and all.
> Again, this isnt the goal of SSS. You are presuming
> that SSS doesnt want people to refer to the monsters.
> That is not correct. Remember, just because something
> isnt open (by being PI or whatever) just means you
> have to get permission to use it.
Uh-huh. That's true of ANYTHING. Dungeons & Dragons, the trademark, has
the same status -- "you just have to get permission to use it." It's just
that WotC isn't handing out that permission left and right. And if the
intention were to hand out permission left and right, why not include it
under the OGL, or provide a D20 license type document? Lacking such
mechanisms, the presumption "that SSS doesnt want people to refer to the
monsters" seems perfectly reasonable.
> "Of course I don't know what WW is thinking, but this
> is an alternative to the "they just don't get the
> philosophy of open gaming" hypothesis. After all, they
> may get it, and not like it, but see this as a way to
> profit from it anyhow."
>
> Wait a minute? You arent actually claiming that the
> first company to put out a hard-backed 200+ page book
> full of open content monsters doesnt get Open Gaming,
> are you? That is absurd. The CC IS open gaming.
I sure don't THINK I'm claiming that in the passage you quote, even as I
re-read it a couple of times!
> There are IP issues that you have to make sure you
> dont just piss away.
Right. So why not do something, like a D20STL-like trademark license, for
all the product identity monster names, to take care of those IP issues
while embracing Open Gaming more fully? Or why not be creative in the
design of the book and the monsters, to create a space for accessible Open
Game Content right along side vital proprietary content, in a way that is
easily used by other developers? You're a lawyer, Clark, and you and the
White Wolf crew are plenty creative -- was this too big a task, too
insignificant, or did you just not have enough time to think it through and
still beat the Monster Manual to market? I have to give you the benefit of
the doubt and suppose that (a) you all COULD have done something to make the
book better from an OGL standpoint, but (b) you CHOSE not to. You're all
too smart and conscientious to hack together a slipshod product, on the
legal side or the creative side. Thus the "conspiracy" of intention behind
the choices made.
> And with the d20 license still
> emerging the wisest choice is a conservative approach.
Exactly. Conservative approach = maintain maximum control. Which is, I
assert, contrary to the essence of Open Gaming. But THAT'S FINE -- it's a
business strategy. Not "evil."
> That doesnt mean people can't use the monsters. Talk
> to Steve!
"If you want to use the monsters, you have to talk to Steve first." That
isn't Open Gaming. It's just the same state of affairs as we've always had.
If I wanted to publish a Vampire adventure in 1991, I had to talk to White
Wolf (Stewart, at the time) first.
> "It's an interesting business choice, and it's one
> that makes considerable sense if you are one of the
> largest game companies and have built in advantage in
> terms of marketing and familiarity -- you can grab
> what a larger company, WotC, is giving away, without
> really having to pay it forward to other publishers
> (who are your competitors)."
>
> Again, faulty premise.
I must disagree. I think there is a very coherent argument that can be made
that proceeds from one of two assumptions (a) the Theory of Network
Externalities is invalid, or (b) the Theory of Network Externalities only
benefits one player, the one at the center of it all -- i.e., WotC. For
anyone other than WotC, I would hold that either premise is functionally the
same.
WotC is sharing its property with smaller companies because they believe it
will drive sales of their high-margin core products. (The difference
between (a) and (b) is whether or not this belief is correct; if you're not
WotC, though, it doesn't matter.) If you are not WotC, and not in a
position to benefit from those sales, should you seek more openness or less?
That could depend on your market position.
If you are a small company, you need to weigh the value of holding tight
your properties, versus the benefit of having access to the properties of
those above you by working to assure greater openness. You are likely to
lean toward greater openness in Open Gaming, because it would allow you to
plug in your products to those with greater market share already, published
by larger companies, without having to make any arrangements with those
companies. Plugging in to those products gives you a sales angle to get
better distribution. "This is a perfect module to be set in the Shattered
Lands," you might say, "using familiar monsters from the Creature
Collection, and you book chains know how well those books have been
selling!"
Of course, if you're one of the larger companies, you may want to control or
prohibit other companies from pulling themselves up by YOUR bootstraps. If
someone reproduces a monster from your book, for example, you may see that
as simply reducing the sales potential of your monster book, since there's
one less monster only to be found there. Given limitations on shelf space
in retailers (especially big chains with centralized buying), you may want
to make it more difficult for anyone else to grab space that might go to
your products. You want to take advantage of the market that WotC is giving
you -- but, lacking WotC's core-book-sales incentive, you don't want to
share a similar advantage of your sub-market with smaller competitors.
I can't say this is what White Wolf is thinking. But I think it's a
rational argument, and one I've heard variations on. (Typically the
companies do not want to publish OGC because they see it as simply helping
WotC, not smaller competitors, but that was prior to the introduction of
"Product Identity" which allows a lot more constraint on future use of your
OGC.)
> "In the end, the market will decide. I'd like to think
> that more-open products will be more rewarded, in the
> long run, by the practice of network externalities;
> and that developers and gamers who might want to share
> their materials under the OGL will turn away from
> over-product-identitied branches of the D20 tree,
> while other more fertile branches flourish."
>
> The market wont give a sh*t about more or less open
> products since we as producers are the tiniest
> fragment of the market. No one will "turn away" from a
> product beacuse it has too much PI. No one will even
> know what the hell that is. The market will reward
> quality products.
So, from a business standpoint, it would be better to have no open content
at all -- since the market doesn't care about open content -- and the
closest you can get to that under the OGL is to play Product Identity to the
hilt, just as the CC does. Take content from others as it is useful;
restrict the use of your content by others as much as possible, because you
can only endanger your own IP while gaining no advantage in the market.
Exactly the strategy I've elucidated as possibly being behind White Wolf's
choices. Now how is it that I'm all off base, given what you've written
here?
As far as our approach -- you're right that comparing 3D2K to the CC is
apples and oranges, even without considering that we didn't have the latest
draft of the OGL. The story and setting of 3D2K is proprietary (and the
place names are likely to be changed by a GM setting the module in her game
world, besides). However, the modular parts, such as characters and
monsters, are made open and are easily portable to other works, and I plan
to continue that approach. For that matter, the maps are all on our website
as Campaign Cartographer 2 files, for GMs to easily download, modify, adapt,
and insert them into their own game worlds. They are not open game content,
but they also don't need to be since they don't really have much use outside
the adventure itself.
You'll have to wait and see how we do our books of magic items, spells,
monsters, etc., for a better comparison. (Meantime, when we get
PenumbraD20.com up and running, I hope to put the Open Game Content from
3D2K and Thieves in the Forest up there for free access to gamers and other
developers. And the names of things won't be Product Identity.) I stand by
my contention that it is not difficult to build and preserve IP while having
a lot more content openness, as I'm sure you and White Wolf know -- you
willingly chose a different path.
> For example, Necromancer's Crucible of Freya, has two
> new magic items (open), monsters (open), two new
> deities (open) and NPCs (open). A few of the names,
> such as the NPC Shendril, were designated as PI
> because her name is also in the title (which I though
> created an interesting issue). But even though that is
> a lot of open content, it isnt anywhere near the open
> content in CC.
Glad to hear about the Crucible, but as for the CC -- the nature of it is
that MOST ought to be open, I would think, if it's a book of monsters (which
by nature are modular elements easily transported to different contexts).
> And in reading Three Days to Kill
> I notice that the town names and all the settings and
> locations in Three Days arent open content. Why should
> you claim the similar setting stuff in the CC should
> be open?
Separate the setting stuff. Mark it as not-open. I don't think monster
names or basic descriptions should be setting stuff. You just have to be
thinking about it when you're writing and developing the book.
> "Unless, say, someone OCRs all the stats, gives them
> new names, and publishes them or gives them away for
> free on the web...which could happen now, of course,
> and wouldn't do a lot of good for WW, but would be a
> huge boon to all the OGL developers looking
> for new critters.)"
>
> By the same arguement, someone could OCR Three Days to
> Kill and post it on the web.
The gray-box parts -- sure, of course! No problem. OCRing the non-open
parts would be a copyright infringement. (Of course, that happens too -- I
once found the entire text of Ars Magica 4th Edition on a web site -- but
that has nothing to do with OGL, just old fashioned piracy.)
> I think all d20
> publishers have to be against this practice.
I think all d20 publishers should have it in mind when they are structuring
their d20 works, since they are agreeing to it by using the OGL! Assume
that your open content will be on the web, and structure your books to
embrace that fact and still have value as items in the store. Get with the
new paradigm, don't fight it.
In fact, the risk of people taking Open Content-less-product-identity and
publishing it for free can be a market mechanism to discourage excessive
Product Identity. Trying to assert too much control may backfire.
If I publish all the Open Content in the CC on the web, for free, with new
names and whatever other modifications are necessary to avoid PI problems, I
have actually created something MORE USEFUL to a lot of gamers (Look! With
this book you can just refer folks to this URL and summarize the stats with
the name, rather than having to re-present the whole stats and description,
with a new name, because people won't otherwise know what you're talking
about! No special permission needed!), something that could drain sales
from the CC in hard copy. If the CC had more fully embraced Open Gaming, it
would not have created its own nemesis -- players and developers would want
to buy the great use-as-it-is-for-whatever-I-want hardcover for a very
reasonable $25, even if there were a web version of the open content for
free. (The web version wouldn't add value, in that case, except if you want
it for cutting-and-pasting or electronic searching...it's still worth the
$25 to have the book in hand.)
As it happens, I doubt someone will bother to make a
website-version-more-open-CC (maybe a fan will be motivated at some point,
though). You may as well just make a new monster book, and do it right from
the ground up. But by doing it right, you do have a competitive edge...and
you don't have to worry about someone adding value by doing it more open on
the web (or in another book). And I think doing things RIGHT, actually, is
the best contribution a company can make to the OGL right now. ;)
> And it
> would not be a huge boon to OGL developers because
> people would stop making d20 products.
Not if d20 publishers approach the issue with careful forethought.
> From my point of view, SSS is absolutely committed to
> OGC. I can understand bickering about whether the
> names should have been open too, but that was a
> conservative business decision in an uncertain
> licensing situation. Even if you disagree with the
> name issue, I dont see how you can say CC/SSS isnt
> dedicated to open gaming...
I think it's in the bit where you say that openness or lack thereof is
immaterial to the market. In the end, it's probably just different ideas of
what "open gaming" is.
In any case, I hope you don't take any of this discussion personally. I
think these are important issues to debate.
-John Nephew
President, Atlas Games
-------------
For more information, please link to www.opengamingfoundation.org
