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D&D 4th Ed vs. Open Gaming
from the something-to-think-about dept.
mxyzplk writes "Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast shocked the role-playing game industry today by announcing that anyone wanting to publish material for the new Fourth Edition of D&D, expected out in June of this year, must forgo open licensing entirely as part of their new Game System License.
With the launch of the third edition of the popular game eight years ago, Wizards had sponsored an open licensing scheme. This license, called the Open Gaming License, or OGL, was a kind of open source license designed for game publishers. The result was an explosion of third party game companies supporting D&D and establishing their own game lines. Many of these companies became quite large and successful, notably Paizo Publishing, Green Ronin Publishing, and others.
Now, however, Wizards has stated that any company hoping to publish products for their new edition must agree to discontinue any currently open licensed products and produce no further open products at all — Dungeons & Dragons related or not. A number of companies had leveraged the OGL for their independent games, for example the pulp game Spirit of the Century.
In response to questions about this policy, Scott Rouse, D&D Brand Manager for Wizards of the Coast, says that "We have invested multiple 7 figures in the development of 4e so can you tell me why we would want publishers to support a system that we have moved away from?"
It seems to me that this is the equivalent of Microsoft telling people "If you want to make and sell software for Windows Vista, you can't make and sell any Linux/open source software!" Since this is a small niche market without the visibility of a Microsoft, this play to muscle out competition by making them choose "between us and open licensing" will probably succeed. Some other game companies are rebelling; Paizo Publishing, for example, has declared their intent to move forward with the open-licensed previous version, essentially 'forking' the Dungeons & Dragons code base. But small gaming companies are small indeed, and Wizards of the Coast is owned by Hasbro (a recent development likely not unrelated to this change of heart)."
Is this even legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is this even legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this different from:
"If you want to work here, you can't compete with us."
or
"If you want the free Pepsi soda fountains, you can't sell Coke products."
They obviously want to sell 4e products and encourage the transition. This may be an overly ambitious plan and somewhat of a strongarming tactic (hard to say for a product that's not even remotely monopolistic), but it's certainly legal.
Scott Rouse (The Rouse) commented on their motivation recently:
This is not spite, malice or some evil scorched earth policy. Yes, we want people to make 4e books and stop making 3.x. Does that surprise you?
Parent
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From everything I've read about 4th edition, I think that money has been ill-spent, and to take that wasted money, and compound your crime by not allowing people to release their mods and make a few bucks off of them is obscene.
Re:Is this even legal? (Score:5, Informative)
1. Monsters no longer must have class levels.
2. Racial abilities that improve with level are basedon feats, instead of Level Adjustments which were a bookkeeping mess.
3. Hit points are fixed per class and level, plus ability modifier, instead of the luck of the dice. (There are already luck in dice for combat. Adding luck in die rolls for hit points can really screw PCs. )
4. Spells are unlimited use, per encounter, or per day - a big improvement over memorization/preparation/whatever.
5. No confirmation rolls on critical hits (a roll of 20) or different tables for critical hit damage multipliers. Instead a critical hit just does maximum damage.
6. Spell levels correspond with caster level, so a 12th level Wizard can cast a 12th level spell, instead of having 12th level Wizards casting 6th level spells.
7. No feats or experience point expenditure is required to make magical items.
8. No spells require experience point expediture to cast. The Wish spell is also gone.
9. No level drain from undead or spells.
10. Fewer magical items can be worn, to reduce that complexity.
11. Fewer buff (temporary improvement) spells, and fewer buff spells that overlap, so your group doesn't spend 10 minutes in spell preparation before each combat.
12. Save or die spells are replaced with spells that do large amounts of hit point damage, so trick instant kills become less common.
13. Full attacks are removed.
14. The rules for attacks of opportunity are (supposedly) simplified and clarified.
15. Monsters can be scaled down for lower level encounters.
16. Other class abilities get moved to the same once per day, once per encounter, or unlimited use mechanic as spells.
17. Characters get healing surges, which let them recover from damage outside of combat more quickly without requiring a caster with healing magic. This mitigates the need to have a priest healer in every gaming party.
18. The skill system is dramatically simplified. PCs have trained skills and other skills, and no individual skill ranks in (potentially) dozens of different skills. The skill list is also condensed.
19. Defenses and saving throws follow a simpler progression than the various charts in previous editions.
That's just a decent helping of the changes we know about, and I'd say a lot of it makes good sense. I'm far from uniformly excited about all of the changes, but there's definitely some good with the bad.
Parent
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Some of the other stuff is just making up for stupid DMs, and that irritates me. Monsters can be scaled down? So? A good DM should be able to come up with an easy or hard encounter with any sort of monster anyway, and relying on the "book difficulty" with monsters me
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The entire rule set has been reworked, period. It's a new ruleset. Any discussion of 4E as a list of changes, or of how any 4E rule doesn't work in a 3E context is beyond pointless. Perhaps an illustration will help:
You know the castling rule in chess, how it says you can't do it if your king has moved? That's totally stupid, becaus
Re:Is this even legal? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you wanted to say 4E was really a whole new game and calling it D&D was just a marketing ploy, I'd say it was both an excellent marketing ploy and an obvious one and WotC obviously wouldn't pass it up. I certainly wouldn't assume that WotC would always put what made sense ahead of marketing, to put it mildly.
Or one could say that 4E maintains the essential character of D&D, and therefore deserves the name, even though practically all of the details are different. You're still charachters in a fantasy setting doing a fair amount of fighting, and conducting that fighting via rounds during which you roll polyhedral dice and track hitpoints, etc, etc.
In any case, I have seen the rules and will tell you: it is not an incremental change, it's a rewrite. Whether it's worthy of the name or a cheap marketing trick you'll have to decide for yourself; I'm just encouraging you to judge it in totality, not as individual rules fragments that can be expected to make any sense jammed into the context of a different ruleset.
Parent
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IANAL, either, but don't anti-trust laws only apply to monopolies? The gaming industry is too fragmented, IMO, to support such a charge. Sure, WotC are a de facto leader in the industry (not necessarily based on the best games, but likely just in revenue), but owning 40%, 50%, or even 70%, of a market doesn't make you a monopoly.
Microsoft, however, has been convicted of illegal monopoly behaviour, which, among other things, legally proved that they were a monopoly to begin with. That's the difference.
O
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Actually, that's precisely why WotC/Hasborg did this - they had a falling out with Paizo, said "Fuck you we're pulling Dragon/Dungeon", got greedy over the idea of $14/month for people to play on their shitty as hell (I've been in beta) "insider" online playboards.
End result? D&D 4e is a pile of steaming crap that doesn't deserve to have the D&D name on it. Every gameplay change has been made not to make a better game,
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Secondly, this is all dones through legal weaselese. In this case:
1) I've licensed D&D 3e to you under the OGL. That license states that it is non-revokable, and therefore there is NO WAY I can stop you from releasing all you want under it. However...
2) I can offer you the opportunity to license D&D 4e from me under a new license. I can put any clause into that license I want. I
This sounds familiar (Score:5, Informative)
It's worse than that (Score:3, Insightful)
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No, that's incorrect. The OGL *license* was originally made by WOTC. But there are now many products that are completely unique games published under that license. In some cases they have zero to do with any of the WOTC brands or products.
Say you created a brand-new piece of software and released it under the Sun Public License (or something). Later, Sun
Viva la Revolution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Viva la Revolution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Conversely, every review I've read by people who've actually played it, and everything I've heard from the people I know who are playtesting it right now, has been overwhelmingly positive, to the point where I have no question in my mind about wanting to switch over to 4e as soon as is possible.
Go figure.
Parent
Re:Viva la Revolution? (Score:5, Insightful)
1: The people who wrote it.
2: People who went to a convention just to play it.
3: Folks who have NDAs, that limit what they can say.
What part of this audience makes you think it's a fair metric for how good the game actually is?
Parent
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What part of this audience makes you think it's a fair metric for how good the game actually is?
The people under NDAs haven't given me any specific information (i.e. 'I love the way Level 12 Wizards can cast Dispel Undergarments at-will!'); it's only been generic information ('I'll never go back to 3.5; 4th edition makes everything so much simpler and more fun, by taking out all the useless and overly complicated junk that shouldn't have been in there in the first place').
My fiancée and I created 15th level characters the other day for a group we're joining, and it was all manner of messy.
Re:Viva la Revolution? (Score:4, Insightful)
That simple... because the geek community has a very major issue with fanboyismm, and those that go to geek conventions are demonstrating a particularly strong fanboy streak in general. It doesn't really take coercion to get it, but I still wouldn't trust their opinions in this matter.
Parent
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wiki rpg (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a resource for various projects
http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Major_Projects [rpg.net]
http://www.kirith.com/shapeshifter/Main_Page [kirith.com]
Also, from what I have read about the net, you can not copyright rules. With that in mind, some bright fellows have put all the old school rules into a pdf and called is OSRIC.
http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/osric/ [knights-n-knaves.com]
Summary blatantly misstates the facts. (Score:5, Informative)
Instead, a publisher posted on one of the www.enworld.org forums that he had had a conversation with someone at WotC and that this was his understanding of what the new license does. The individuals at WotC who responded did make comments that suggest that such a policy may be part of their new GSL, however there have also been indications that they are backing away from that position. Of course, since no one has actually seen the new license, no one knows precisely what is permitted and prohibited.
An announcement is expected today, which should clarify the issue.
--AC
No fair! (Score:3, Funny)
Jerk.
4e is a piece of crap... (Score:3, Interesting)
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I'm not sure what you mean by "so-called" class; the classes still seem very distinct to me *even though* each one is designed to fill one of four tactical roles in a combat situation.
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"Aggro" in 4E (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
What do people mean by "WoW-ish?" (Score:3, Insightful)
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Class abilities seem to work more along the lines of WoW talent trees than 3rd edition you always get X ability at level Y.
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I wasn't suggesting that it was a bad thing. I'm actually pretty optimistic about 4E.
I like what they've done regarding giving all classes "powers" and making sure everyone always has something to contribute. Rangers have always been one of my favorite classes role-playing wise, but mechanically they're as boring as watching paint dry, and wizards are ultimate death machines at high level, but they might as well sit on the bench if you have more than one fight without resting at 1st or 2nd level.
Liar. (Score:5, Informative)
[...]
there is now aggro
If you had been playing, you know that there are no aggro rules in 4e. They briefly considered them early in the development of the product but put aside an aggro system in favor of the new marking system which forces a monster to either attack a Defender or take a penalty. AFAIK, the aggro system never saw the light of day outside of WotC offices.
The ultimate choice between the two options is still up to the DM. Players do not get to take control of monsters by inciting them.
The whole "D&D is now WoW" argument is common from people who *haven't* seen enough of the game. You've probably just read a few things on-line and decided to try to boost your credibility by claiming to be an insider. Too bad you tipped your hand by making an obvious and outrageous lie. Also, if true, you would've just publicly stated that your friend violated their NDA.
Parent
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not that I think it's a bad thing. I had a bit of a hard time explaining it to my players, when I ran "Raiders of Oakhurst" - the first 4E session we had. And honestly, when I explained it, what I said sounded similar to Aggro...
One other important difference. (Score:3, Interesting)
Thus, 4e does not suffer from the problem of over-zealous healing or nuking causing enemies to blindly charge at the Cleric or Wizard. Enemies will only do so because it's a sensible choice and not because some numeric threshold h
Re:4e is a piece of crap... (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok how about the Rogue? Well they won't fall on their ass because of the heavy armor and they get trapfinding.....so while the swashbuckler or duelist is dancing around attacking, they can look for traps in the brassieres of the wenches.
Basically if you wanted to play a class different than how WotC thinks you should min/max it, you are screwed in essence, getting junk you don't need (heavy armor or trapfinding as examples above)...
In 3rd edition you would have run into similar problems with the fighter...but not so with the rogue.
4e is just making the matters worse with the Roles, which basically tweak characters to min/max one way.
Parent
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You want a Ranger; it is (or can be) exactly what you're describing.
"4e is just making the matters worse with the Roles, which basically tweak characters to min/max one way."
If Roles do anything besides group classes for ease of table-of-contents ordering, I haven't seen it.
I find it interesting how many people declare how horrible 4E is in such specific terms, when they clearly haven't played it. If you think 3E is t
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And Prestige Classes was basically WotC's way of developing a list of several thousand Approved Character Concepts. And if you didn't like the way they'd statted your concep
Jumping to conclusion based on one interpretation (Score:4, Informative)
The announcement mentioned "mutual exclusivity", which some are reading as "one product can not be licensed under both OGL and GSL", but one publisher said on ENworld that they think it's a per-company not per-product. We haven't heard any confirmation either way.
It could be that this is bad, but right now it's just FUD until we have clarification.
Cheers,
=Blue(23)
Re:Jumping to conclusion based on one interpretati (Score:2)
The announcement mentioned "mutual exclusivity", which some are reading as "one product can not be licensed under both OGL and GSL", but one publisher said on ENworld that they think it's a per-company not per-product. We haven't heard any confirmation either way.
They've been very specific with the license regarding individual products' mutual exclusivity. Personally, I think that the per company thing is a little ridiculous and probably not correct, especially since they have been very specific about individual products. WotC probably just doesn't want to rush to dispel that guy's illusions as they fit perfectly with their druthers.
Not 100% Clear (Score:5, Informative)
- WOTC spokespeople have made conflicting and contradictory statements and backtracking on their plans since last November. First there was to be a revised OGL, then a GSL with publisher buy-in of $5,000, then no GSL, now GSL with no buy-in, etc.
- WOTC hasn't officially confirmed the "poison pill" clause yet (publishing for 4E prohibits you from any more Open Game License publishing). This was related second-hand by Clark Peterson, the well-regarded head of Necromancer Games (and a lawyer), as being delivered to him by WOTC staff members. Two WOTC spokespeople have been posting in the same thread over the weekend, but have ambiguously neither directly confirmed nor denied that statement.
- No one's seen the actual new license yet. WOTC has been saying all year long that it was within a week of being released. Clearly the GSL is intended to be far more restrictive than the OGL (one thing they've been consistent on is that it must directly support the Dungeons & Dragons brand, that it restricts product types, has a community standards clause, is revocable by WOTC, etc., none of which existed in the OGL). But once again after all the riot with the new announcement last week, the speaking Brand Manager for WOTC revealed Saturday that he *still* hadn't received the actual text of the license!
- Physical D&D 4E books are at the printers, to be released in June. A true conspiracist would think that the ongoing confusion might be WOTC FUD to delay third-party publisher business plans until 4E has already been purchased widely by the customer base. (But I think that's a low-probability bet.)
So what's coming out of WOTC is pretty messed up. My observation is that it's been clear since January that WOTC was going to take some shot at attacking the Open Game community. I'm guessing it's at least 80% likely that this company-wide "poison pill" restriction is in fact present in the new GSL. But everything that's come out of WOTC so far this year on the issue has turned out to be incorrect and later retracted. So we'll see about this latest one.
The standard solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Dear WotC, if this is true then DIAF (Score:2)
I've seen too many good gaming systems and worlds die because the publisher lost interest. Many of them were from TSR. The way I saw it, D20 OGL guaranteed that even if WotC decided to kill the game (which in the case of CoC D20 they did), there would still be the option of community and independent support, and I'd be able to use the SRD to get new players up and running.
So if this rumor turns out to
Better games? (Score:3, Informative)
Have any other people here moved on past D&D and found other P&P RPGs more to their liking? What are they? What are some of the things you enjoy about them that's superior to what D&D offers?
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Unfortunately, it's
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What have I played?
Exalted is probably the big one. It's got the fantasy feel of D&D, but with a fresh and interesting setting that combines some aspects of Asian myth & pop culture (Celestial bureaucracy, Shinto-esque animism, oversized swords and mecha) with the tropes of Western & Mesopotamian classical epics. World-striding heroes, wars between the Titans and the Gods, and curses th
Easy solution (Score:2)
Phase 1: Spin off company to handle 4ed-based games, while the original company continues working on 3ed-based games.
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Profit!
The future of Third Edition? (Score:2)
Summary is WRONG (Score:4, Interesting)
To quote Scott Rouse [enworld.org] further:
Not quite (Score:3, Insightful)
More like "If you want to make and sell software for Windows Vista, you can't sell any software that functions on any previous version of Windows."
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Of course they are. Sure, it's a commercial organisation, but that doesn't give them the right to do what they want. Cinemas are commercial organisations, but they can't tell disabled people not to come in because they can't be bothered making things work for them.
It's the same with anything that becomes a part of society: once some people have and enjoy it, the rest are entitled to participate to. That applies to