Hasbro have made fools of themselves with their attempt to explain away the OGL1.1, and I tell you the best way to punish them here.
But a lot of people are cheering the new OpenRPG / #ORC license, and I'm here to tell you there's a good chance it's hiding a trap.
#opendnd #OSR #OGL #WotC

Hardly anyone will see this coming. And many will support it because, of course.

Two of my players have reported that over on other fora Pathfinder is being pushed hard.

I'm in wait and see mode for the ORC license.

I know the features of the license I want to use so others can produce commercial content for my system (I'm a rising tide raises all boats sorta guy... people making good third party content will drive interest in my core system and everyone wins*).

If ORC is released before my system is ready to launch and it provides those features without any poison pills it might be what I choose to do so.

If it doesn't or has a poison pill (a woke** "morality" clause given the Christian morality of my setting would probably be such a pill), then I'll be paying a lawyer friend of mine to write up the "Free Systems License" for me (and others will be welcome to use).

* I don't find the CC-licenses particularly useful for my purposes as they're much more about pure copyleft and less about building a mutually profitable relationship with third parties.

** The best description of woke/cultural Marxist ideology is "a religion with many paths to damnation, but none to redemption." Thus, they engage in a holy war against all opposing religions and moral systems.

Certainly if ORC has a morality clause, it won't be an open licence.

Details always matter.

Quote from: S'mon on January 15, 2023, 03:09:50 AM
Certainly if ORC has a morality clause, it won't be an open licence.

Indeed. It would also require some officer determined by the license to judge infractions, which would in turn require a reporting structure and pretty soon it's not a license... it's the rpg equivalent of the Comics Code Authority.

The primary reason I am hopeful that ORC will be essentially a 1.0b (i.e. 1.0a with irrevocable and "not deauthorizable" added) is that it's in Paizo's best interests to do it that way.

A woke clause gets them some short term virtue points from the wokies, but others will see through it and build their own licenses or use none at all.

An OGL1.0b style ORC though cements them as the "moral paragon" counter to WotC and allows them to set the standard as the leading voice on any shared SRD that develops... essentially gaining the network effect that WotC previously enjoyed... and through that a much larger audience to ply with their woke ideologies than if they just virtue signaled with the ORC directly.

Quote from: S'mon on January 15, 2023, 03:09:50 AM
Certainly if ORC has a morality clause, it won't be an open licence.

Have I misunderstood what the license is meant to do?

I'd assume it may have a morality clause, so that the licensor is allowed to inhibit production by the licensee.

Thus in Chris24601's case, he releases a system under ORC that allow others to use it, but as he's the licensor he can decide whether his Christian setting is reasonable or not. If someone else uses his system to create something he considers blasphemous then he can invoke that clause to stop that person from using his system!?

Chris24601 wrote:
"* I don't find the CC-licenses particularly useful for my purposes as they're much more about pure copyleft and less about building a mutually profitable relationship with third parties."

Could you expand on this. I am thinking about licensing as I scrub OGL content from my stuff. If you put a statement in the licensing section that says,"All proper nouns, names, story lines, art, and trade dress are copyright My Name 2023. All game mechanic text is CC 4.0 BY AT"

Does this not have the same effect as separating content into Open Content and Product Identity? If not how so?

Quote from: ponta1010 on January 15, 2023, 04:58:56 AM

Quote from: S'mon on January 15, 2023, 03:09:50 AM
Certainly if ORC has a morality clause, it won't be an open licence.

Have I misunderstood what the license is meant to do?

I'd assume it may have a morality clause, so that the licensor is allowed to inhibit production by the licensee.

Thus in Chris24601's case, he releases a system under ORC that allow others to use it, but as he's the licensor he can decide whether his Christian setting is reasonable or not. If someone else uses his system to create something he considers blasphemous then he can invoke that clause to stop that person from using his system!?

Actually, I DON'T want a morality clause. My concern is that Christian values are generally antithetical to Woke "morality" and therefore the arbiters of ORC could cancel my use of their license.

As for my own system, if people want to make some blasphemous tome they won't be able to use my logos and, with the license I want, the proper names (basically trademarkable items) of places and people in my books, nor the artwork. There's no danger to me of someone confusing their work with mine unless they're infringing on things none of these licenses cover anyway.

That said too, if any content creator reaches out to me because they share my vision for a superversive game setting, I'm looking for partners and my licensing terms for use of my logos, trademarks and trade dress are non-monetary (but also not open and 100% separate from the open license I want).

Quote from: Jam The MF on January 15, 2023, 03:25:24 AM
Details always matter.

In an investigation they certainly do Mr. Reacher.

I mean, I don't think anyone doesn't realize it could be a trap, but at the moment it still sounds good, so people are willing to give basically anyone that isn't WotC a chance to do the right thing.

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 15, 2023, 03:05:30 AM* I don't find the CC-licenses particularly useful for my purposes as they're much more about pure copyleft and less about building a mutually profitable relationship with third parties.

Yeah... In my experience, the CC licenses only barely/kinda/not really work for a lot of the stuff they're used for already. There's actually a lot of stuff either published under a CC license or using CC-licensed content that really don't do it right, but often times people just kind of ignore it.

Quote from: Bruwulf on January 15, 2023, 08:45:46 AM
I mean, I don't think anyone doesn't realize it could be a trap, but at the moment it still sounds good, so people are willing to give basically anyone that isn't WotC a chance to do the right thing.

WOTC could pull the license for whatever reason by issuing a DMCA strike against the creator thereby forcing them to destroy a product.

AFAIK WOTC has only pulled the license once and that was for Fast Forward Entertainment.

Making the ORC license as language neutral as possible is the key to worldwide acceptability.  Letting the individual publisher make their own Virtue Signaling or Flag Burning statements and the market will sort out the rest.

The whole purpose of an open license is to insure people that they won't be sued if they create 3rd party content for a game. But the only company that has a history of being sue-happy is WotC.

Any Open Gaming License that doesn't use Hasbro owned property is pointless as it is protecting people from an outcome that was never going to happen.

Quote from: Bruwulf on January 15, 2023, 08:50:42 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 15, 2023, 03:05:30 AM* I don't find the CC-licenses particularly useful for my purposes as they're much more about pure copyleft and less about building a mutually profitable relationship with third parties.

Yeah... In my experience, the CC licenses only barely/kinda/not really work for a lot of the stuff they're used for already. There's actually a lot of stuff either published under a CC license or using CC-licensed content that really don't do it right, but often times people just kind of ignore it.

The big one for me is the CC's are "non-sublicensable" meaning if a third party came up with, say, a "Boiling Sea" setting and wanted to allow others to make adventures for it, they can't include any of my material in their own license grant... adding an extra layer of complexity (they have to also include my license in addition to the Boiling Sea license) and possible unintended copyright infringement for someone who just wanted to make a cool adventure for the "Boiling Sea" setting.

I'll admit I also don't particularly mind the "cannot indicate compatibility" clause of the OGL1.0a... or at least a variation on it (particularly in association with a secondary license). In my aforementioned example of someone wanting to publish some blasphemous tome using my system, having a clause restricting compatibility notices to say, 12pt plain text, makes me more comfortable and, as stated, my terms for using the actual logo to indicate compatibility are easy and non-monetary (don't crap on my setting/values, basically).

While I know you don't have to use the Share-Alike version, I wonder how many of those I see pushing it here understand how detrimental it is to building the sort of mutually profitable ecosystem the OGL fostered? Specifically, if I released under SA, then anyone who used my material would have to release anything they created as SA... basically meaning they have to let anyone take the work they produced and use it without compensation if they used my SA work as a part of it.

That's uncomfortably close to WotC's "all your content belongs to us, but you can keep using it" portion of the OGL1.1 and requires a much greater understanding of potential pitfalls than most people have, making it more of a cooling effect on those motivated enough to try and make some money off their creative efforts.

A bespoke license or at least one tailored to the specifics and peculiarities of the industry you're using it in seems far better than just grabbing a license from CC and saying "it's good enough if you squint."