Quote from: thornad on January 31, 2023, 12:09:57 AM
If a team of designers were to draft an SRD that sifted through the decades of D&D rules and distilled all the game mechanics out, the non-copyrightable stuff, wrote it up cleanly and succinctly, and made that publicly available through a CC commons license so that anyone can copy and paste from it then we'd have something.

Something like that with various optional rules and variant rules would be amazing, but, every table would have their own set of rules before long. Would that be a good thing?

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 31, 2023, 08:01:58 AM

Quote from: thornad on January 31, 2023, 12:09:57 AM
If a team of designers were to draft an SRD that sifted through the decades of D&D rules and distilled all the game mechanics out, the non-copyrightable stuff, wrote it up cleanly and succinctly, and made that publicly available through a CC commons license so that anyone can copy and paste from it then we'd have something.

Something like that with various optional rules and variant rules would be amazing, but, every table would have their own set of rules before long. Would that be a good thing?

Too many optional rules and you end up with 2nd edition D&D. Yuck.

I like the idea of having "optional rules" or "modular rules" but trying to do this in any context-less way you are quickly run into issues because game rulesets (should) serve some specific purpose.

You could make a game that's all about spies and espionage, and design a really excellent stealth system. But it's not going to matter much if the game is a kick-down-the-door brawler. An amazing miniatures combat system doesn't add much if your game is supposed to be about political intrigue.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on January 30, 2023, 09:39:59 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit on January 25, 2023, 10:54:16 PM
Eric Mona first agreed in a thread with me (after I convinced him) that they can't have a morality clause. The Paizo account later confirmed that the ORCLicense itself wouldn't have a morality clause.

That's... not how things went down, as I can assure you the ORC was never going to have a morality clause.

And I can assure you that the thread I'm talking about was the first time Mona or anyone else in a position of authority in the ORC ever said anything of the sort. In fact, in the thread Mona suggested that he could NOT guarantee that it wouldn't.

So its seems there were definitely people on the inside who wanted it to. It was my pushing that forced Mona to PUBLICLY agree that the ORC would be "DOA" if it took on a morality clause.

Optional rules in the SRD does not mean those rules are optional when transferred over to games. It just means those building their own games have more choices to pick & choose from.

Prediction. When ORC ships and everyone is making a big deal about it WotC counters by re-issuing the OGL with a new clause saying it cannot be revoked, ever, thus stealing ORC thunder and giving people a bit more of what they were demanding as we get closer to the movie premier.

Quote from: RPGPundit on February 01, 2023, 02:38:04 AM

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on January 30, 2023, 09:39:59 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit on January 25, 2023, 10:54:16 PM
Eric Mona first agreed in a thread with me (after I convinced him) that they can't have a morality clause. The Paizo account later confirmed that the ORCLicense itself wouldn't have a morality clause.

That's... not how things went down, as I can assure you the ORC was never going to have a morality clause.

And I can assure you that the thread I'm talking about was the first time Mona or anyone else in a position of authority in the ORC ever said anything of the sort. In fact, in the thread Mona suggested that he could NOT guarantee that it wouldn't.

So its seems there were definitely people on the inside who wanted it to. It was my pushing that forced Mona to PUBLICLY agree that the ORC would be "DOA" if it took on a morality clause.

I have to seriously question Mona's common sense if you had to convince him that a morality clause is a bad idea. How could he possibly not know that a morality clause could be weaponized against anyone for any manufactured reason whatsoever, and thus.....become useless to publishers? If a so-called "open" license has a morality clause, then publishers will simply avoid it.....and use a different license instead.

Quote from: Ruprecht on February 01, 2023, 10:38:56 AM
Prediction. When ORC ships and everyone is making a big deal about it WotC counters by re-issuing the OGL with a new clause saying it cannot be revoked, ever, thus stealing ORC thunder and giving people a bit more of what they were demanding as we get closer to the movie premier.

That would be an uncharacteristically smart thing for Hasbro to do. When ORC arrives, we'll see what Hasbro does.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on January 30, 2023, 09:39:59 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit on January 25, 2023, 10:54:16 PM
Eric Mona first agreed in a thread with me (after I convinced him) that they can't have a morality clause. The Paizo account later confirmed that the ORCLicense itself wouldn't have a morality clause.

That's... not how things went down, as I can assure you the ORC was never going to have a morality clause.

Anon - sounds like you also saw the thread that Pundit is talking about. If it is publicly available, can you give a link to it? If not, can you describe more about it?

Quote from: Thor's Nads on January 31, 2023, 01:50:18 PM

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 31, 2023, 08:01:58 AM

Quote from: thornad on January 31, 2023, 12:09:57 AM
If a team of designers were to draft an SRD that sifted through the decades of D&D rules and distilled all the game mechanics out, the non-copyrightable stuff, wrote it up cleanly and succinctly, and made that publicly available through a CC commons license so that anyone can copy and paste from it then we'd have something.

Something like that with various optional rules and variant rules would be amazing, but, every table would have their own set of rules before long. Would that be a good thing?

Too many optional rules and you end up with 2nd edition D&D. Yuck.

I believe you mean "best D&D".

Quote from: RPGPundit on February 01, 2023, 02:38:04 AM

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on January 30, 2023, 09:39:59 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit on January 25, 2023, 10:54:16 PM
Eric Mona first agreed in a thread with me (after I convinced him) that they can't have a morality clause. The Paizo account later confirmed that the ORCLicense itself wouldn't have a morality clause.

That's... not how things went down, as I can assure you the ORC was never going to have a morality clause.

And I can assure you that the thread I'm talking about was the first time Mona or anyone else in a position of authority in the ORC ever said anything of the sort. In fact, in the thread Mona suggested that he could NOT guarantee that it wouldn't.

Source?

Quote from: jhkim on February 01, 2023, 04:26:58 PM
Anon - sounds like you also saw the thread that Pundit is talking about. If it is publicly available, can you give a link to it? If not, can you describe more about it?

I saw the #Tweet. As in singular. And I was going to ask @RPGPundit the exact same thing.

Quote from: Ruprecht on February 01, 2023, 10:38:56 AM
Prediction. When ORC ships and everyone is making a big deal about it WotC counters by re-issuing the OGL with a new clause saying it cannot be revoked, ever, thus stealing ORC thunder and giving people a bit more of what they were demanding as we get closer to the movie premier.

I think they've accepted the inevitable losses already, and they're not going to do anything more which distracts from promoting the movie until its release.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 30, 2023, 11:24:46 AM

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on January 30, 2023, 09:39:59 AM
No less open than the OGL, which was specifically designed to enable companies to license their brand and rules separately. Those brand licenses will absolutely have such clauses, as they should, because at that point you're representing their brand. And given how many Community Content Agreements already operate under these restrictions I'm really curious as to how many times content has actually been pulled for violating such clauses.

Those are two sepparate things, even under CC0 you can preserve your brand AND have a separate license to allow others to use it, if someone inserts a morality clause on their branding license it doesn't reflect/affect the oppenes of CC0.

CC0 does not prevent others from using your Trademarks to imply compatibility.

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 30, 2023, 09:14:49 PM
I've heard that before but never understood the logic. Why would a company not want folks to claim compatibility.

Because it enabled them to control their brand while simultaneously establishing a lingua franca of RPGs.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 30, 2023, 09:44:22 PM
Because then they can sell you a license to do what the law already allows you to do without paying them shit.

The #D20STL license was free, and (eventually) had a morality clause.

Quote from: Thor's Nads on January 30, 2023, 10:00:18 PM
ORC, Black Flag, or anything that doesn't use the lingua franca of Roleplaying Games is not likely to ever get widespread adoption.

The lingua franca being, of course, Dungeons and Dragons.

if ORC uses the D&D rules then it has a chance to succeed. But then what is the point?

I actually think the tower of Babel has been toppled, and unlike with 4e the fall of 5e will lead to multiple slightly different and sorta compatible versions, until #WotC rebuilds it with 6e. Because having a universal standard is more important to the majority of players, and none of these clones offer anything innovative or compelling enough to choose otherwise.

Quote from: Bruwulf on February 01, 2023, 04:47:21 PM

Quote from: Thor's Nads on January 31, 2023, 01:50:18 PM
Too many optional rules and you end up with 2nd edition D&D. Yuck.

I believe you mean "best D&D".

Hah, ok I have some nuance here. I hated 2e when it came out, was deeply disappointed by how it didn't go far enough in fixing a lot of the problems with D&D. The 2e DMG was just an insult to DMs. Then I recently won a lot on eBay and it happened to have some of the revised 2e books. After reading them I concluded 2e was a lot better than I remembered.

The reason we do not see the obsession with 2e D&D retro-clones the way we do with every other edition is that it never built a cohesive player base. Because it had too many optional rules, no two groups played the game similarly.

Who knows, maybe now that Wizbro backtracked, someone will come along and make a great retro-clone of 2e. I would advocated for a comprehensive SRD be released into OpenRPG, ORC, or better yet the Public Domain that anyone could copy and paste from without fear of retribution. I could see that SRD looking a lot like 2e in many ways.

  2e was the people's happy constellation of private tables, wholly separate places to visit without having to switch out systems, dice, and core reference books. Granted, with the 90s we did a lot of that too anyway... It was the best of times, it was the best of times... Peak humanity 1970s-1990s. 

2e's options and variability between (and even within) groups was one of the things that made it great, IMO.  YYMV, of course.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on February 01, 2023, 10:01:31 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 30, 2023, 11:24:46 AM

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on January 30, 2023, 09:39:59 AM
No less open than the OGL, which was specifically designed to enable companies to license their brand and rules separately. Those brand licenses will absolutely have such clauses, as they should, because at that point you're representing their brand. And given how many Community Content Agreements already operate under these restrictions I'm really curious as to how many times content has actually been pulled for violating such clauses.

Those are two sepparate things, even under CC0 you can preserve your brand AND have a separate license to allow others to use it, if someone inserts a morality clause on their branding license it doesn't reflect/affect the oppenes of CC0.

CC0 does not prevent others from using your Trademarks to imply compatibility.

When did I say otherwise? Thew law allows you to DECLARE compatibility. But declaring compatibility isn't the same as usurping your brand, because that's trademark law and then Wotzi could/would sue you to oblivion

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on February 01, 2023, 10:01:31 PM

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 30, 2023, 09:14:49 PM
I've heard that before but never understood the logic. Why would a company not want folks to claim compatibility.

Because it enabled them to control their brand while simultaneously establishing a lingua franca of RPGs.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 30, 2023, 09:44:22 PM
Because then they can sell you a license to do what the law already allows you to do without paying them shit.

The #D20STL license was free, and (eventually) had a morality clause.

WAS, past tense. Until a few days ago they wanted you to sign to the DM's Guild (which is free) and publish there to say your stuff was compatible with their shit. Which costs you a % of your sales and gives them rights over your stuff (IIRC that last part).

Which is the same shit they trid to pull with their OGL1.1

Effectively charging you for the privilege of doing what the law ALREADY allows you to do (declare compatibility).

Care to try again so you can prove you don't understand what I wrote this time either?

Quote from: deganawida on February 02, 2023, 11:31:57 AM
2e's options and variability between (and even within) groups was one of the things that made it great, IMO.  YYMV, of course.

I think you meant YMMV. And yes, my mileage does vary. I've come to despise optional rules. They are laziness and indecisiveness on the part of the designers. It is their job to play test and design the hell out of their game and make every part the best they can. Optional rules are whiffling and passing that burden on to the players.

I speak with experience and have learned my lesson.


Note: there are no absolutes here, occasionally there may be a very good reason for an optional rules. Those are the exception, whereas in 2e they were the rule.