Pretty big announcement from WotC, as covered by ENWorld, about the future of the licensing agreement formerly known as the d20 License. Most of it won’t matter to the casual D&D player. But here’s some tidbits that might be important (and keep in mind, everything is subject to change, this is all interpretation):
- Until 2009, only the bigger third party publishers will be releasing products for 4th edition. (And not all the big third parties will sign up, either.) Expect way fewer third party products, at least this year.
- Instead of there being a d20 logo, there will be text that says “4th Edition Compatible” or something similar.
- Stuff like Spycraft and Mutants & Masterminds won’t come out of this new agreement, since it’s must more strict in the “you need the PHB to use supplements.” They do hint that a new d20 Modern license will be released in 2009, which may open the door to those types of games.
- The system reference document will not have as much information. Indications are that the SRD will only contain a rough index to areas in the PHB. This may be the end of the online rules reference.
These announcements certainly leave me with mixed feelings. Really, only time will tell if this is good for players or bad. I know in my current game I only allow official WotC products, so the compatibility parts don’t have a big impact, but I will be very sad if this means that we won’t see anything new along the lines of Iron Heroes or Arcana Unearthed.
One lingering question is how this will affect those of us who want to publish our own materials online. I’m not sure how WotC is defining “publishing”, but it’s very possible that we won’t be able to post house rules online for 4e until 2009.
Let’s wait and see before running in the streets with a torch…
Reading the official Release, it seems to me that they charge serious companies to get access to the game pre-release from January to June 2008.
In June 2008 everyone gets the OGL.
The d20 licence disapears, true, but Paizo,s been doing admirably with the ‘compatible with the World’s most…’ line
I’m not worried, either online or for an imprint project I’m thinking about. We just won’t be able to use the d20 brand…
No biggie I feel.. I don,t currently use it on my blog and I’ve published OGL compliant material.
Yes, it’s definitely a “wait and see” about many things. But the depth of changes is far more than I was expecting.
And everyone does get the OGL in June, BUT are not allowed to publish anything with it until January 2009.
I was going to add that I missed that… yes…
So about publishing stuff online in the mean time….
Well I’ve always said getting a Cease and Desist letter from WotC was one of the unoffical goals of my Web career.
I think they’re trying to prevent the 1st d20 glut where horrible horrible stuff appeared and they want to slow down the PDF market…
Interesting…
🙂
For point 3, I suspect that what is actually mean is that 3rd-party books won’t be able to reprint WotC’s mechanics.
If I was to publish a book like Spycraft, and I wanted to use 4e’s combat rules, I would state “Combat Rules: see the 4e PHB” or something.
But if I was to use different classes, I could just say “We use different classes, here they are”.
But any different mechanics are your intellectual property, and you will always be free to print those, OGL or not.
As far as house rules go, those have never fallen under OGL. If you’re printing mechanics that you created, you’re free to do so. Only reprinting WotC’s SRD material has ever needed the OGL.
Unless you want to make your own created mechanics as open content… I guess….
no?
Graham- you could be right, but those two were specifically called out on the conference call as being problematic. And I seem to recall Spycraft, in the first edition, did exactly as you describe.
::dusts off his torch::
The 4e SRD will be a “reference document” for publishers working under the 4e OGL to know what content can be used in their own products. It will reference sections and passages from 4e D&D books and will also contain table/formating guidelines like the monster stat block to allow for consistency among products.
It will not be a stripped down core rulebook (PHB) that largely allows you to play D&D.
Sadness…
Are they seriously concerned that people will buy something like Spycraft and use it to ninja-play D&D from?
Thing is…. will the changes to 4e be significant enough to warrant a cascade of new editions from established d20 based games? I mean M&M already has had 2 editions and seems to be well supported and have a loyal following.
It can continue to exist (and maybe be updated) as an independent product.
I’m really curious to see where this will go (and how the people will react).
M&M is so distant from D&D anyway I don’t see why they’d need to upgrade (and the 3.5 OGL CANNOT go away.)
New products in a similar vein, however… at the very least, they’re making damn sure that you need to buy a PHB to use them. WotC has really just made the OGL into the d20 License.
Dave, you are right, they were mentioned as being problematic, but there are loopholes and ways around everything.
I have thought of something.
If the SRD is “this is what you can include in your project” with references and indexes to that material, how long do you think it’ll be before someone types out the informtion, compiles it online, and releases it for free under the OGL?
We’d have our online rules reference back, we’d just have to do it ourselves.
That might work…. especially since game rules can’t be copyrighted… look at OSRIC.
I think that’s very likely. How WotC takes to that, and what they do about it, are another question.
Regardless, I think it’s a move that will drive more people to piracy, as often happens with non-Open Source models.