D&D 4th Edition Game System License Announced

Wizards of the Coast has announced plans for a brand-new system license for the fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons . As with the d20 STL for Third Edition, this is a royalty-free license that will allow third parties to publish products using the rules developed by WotC. The new system reference document will be made available early in June (just after the release of the new edition). That license only covers fantasy gaming, but a second license (the d20 GSL) will be released allowing for any type of gaming product to be developed. For analysis and follow-up on the announcement, the ENWorld boards have full details.

Game Rules

One point that is often forgotten when discussing the OGL and D20 license is that game rules cannot be copyrighted. You are free to create a new game using essentially a ripoff of the d20 rules. What you are not allowed to do is use their particular expression of the rules. That means you can't copy and paste text, you can't use names, settings, unique creative elements, and so forth.

My understanding is that the WOTC gaming licenses give you some extra rights (for instance, you could use their skill and magic descriptions verbatim), but takes away others (you are given certain restrictions, such as requiring use of the D20 logo). I'm not criticizing WOTC, just saying that using their licenses are not the only way to write compatible rules and expansions.

Re:Game Rules

Could we just check with the U.S. Copyright Office [copyright.gov] instead?

Re:Game Rules

Just like I could go out and start a new football league and FIFA couldn't do a thing about it

fix'd.

The 'improvements' of D&D 4

In my humble opinion, the 'useless' skills they are taking out in D&D 4.0 aren't half as useless as people make them out to be. Of course, that all depends on the DM. Our DM runs more free-form games than the standard lead by the nose dungeon dive. And it's awesome. Decipher script isnt such a useless school when the DM regularly throws encrypted documents into the game as quest hooks and whatnot.

Re:The 'improvements' of D&D 4

My DM had even harder challenges in the past... The most complicated one involved a lock controlled by four rotating discs, where I had to mathematically proof to him that there is no solution to his puzzle before he let us pass :)

Re:The 'improvements' of D&D 4

Yeah? Well my DM made me walk uphill to my games. Both ways. In the snow. So there.

Re:The 'improvements' of D&D 4

Wow, what classes were present in your party? Can I guess? A mathematician, a different kind of mathematician and a statistician perhaps?

Re:Oh, no! No Decipher Script? D&D is ruined!

Use Rope doesn't merit having its own individual skill, though. It's pretty much the exemplar of wasted skill ranks after 3.5 got rid of Intuit Direction and Innuendo. You can do what with it -- secure a grappling hook, tie someone up, or splice two ropes together? Yawn.

Why isn't using a grappling hook under Climb? Why not fold tying someone up under getting out of it (i.e. Escape Artist)? Who finds drama or challenge in trying to splice rope together? (For that matter, Profession (Sailor) doesn't include any of this?)

It's a senselessly fine-grained skill definition that wastes precious resources (i.e. skill points) that could be spent on things like Survival or Move Silently or Climb -- you know, skills people would actually *use* every adventure.

4e's philosophy on skills is that skills will generally be broad and cover common adventuring challenges. Their system is designed so that party members aren't excluded from the fun when a rare type of challenge is needed, like the party that won't use horses because only one player has the Ride skill. Lastly, their system is designed with versatility in mind, encouraging players to find creative uses of their skills to defeat challenges, like using History to escape pursuers by remembering an entrance into the ancient catacombs under the city.

If deciphering documents is essential to your game, then there's no reason you couldn't let someone make an Arcane, History, or Thievery check for it, representing their experience with tomes of cryptic lore, translating dead languages, or espionage, respectively. Having a largely one-trick skill is limiting and either forces the DM to find contrived ways to make it relevant or leaves the player with wasted skill points. 4e gets rid of that.

Memories...

Fantastic, I can brush off those old wizard outfits, dust off the pointy hat, and break out into a fresh era of uber-geekiness all over - but only if I make my save roll vs RL Self-Respect

Does a 21 save?

> Fantastic, I can brush off those old wizard outfits, dust off the pointy hat, and break out into a fresh era of uber-geekiness all over - but only if I make my save roll vs RL Self-Respect

I put on my robe and wizard hat...

Re:Does a 21 save?

This needs to be modded higher.

For mods that don't get the joke [bash.org]

Re:Does a 21 save?

>> Fantastic, I can brush off those old wizard outfits, dust off the pointy hat, and break out into >> a fresh era of uber-geekiness all over - but only if I make my save roll vs RL Self-Respect

> I put on my robe and wizard hat...

Oh, I like to play dress up.

Open source the Magic CCG system?

I'd like to see them follow this up by "open sourcing" some of their proprietary IP regarding their card games. For instance, in order to make a Card game where cards are "tapped", you currently have to pay royalties to Wizards of the Coast. Ditto for many other mechanics that form the foundations of most CCGs. I wonder why they chose to "open" the D&D system but left their CCG systems closed? Is it that they make more money with one versus the other? Does anyone have any insight into this?

Re:Open source the Magic CCG system?

It's because in Magic, the cards are the product, and selling them is where the profit lies. Additionally, Magic is a game in the competitive sense, and maintaining a balanced environment is key to overall player interest in the product. Wizards doesn't trust third parties to maintain that balance, because escalating power level is a good way to increase short-term sales while damaging the long-term viability of the product. Also, much of what drives the appeal of new Magic sets is novel mechanics. Letting other companies chew up potential design space would eat into what Wizards itself could then sell.

In RPGs, by contrast, core books outsell supplements, even from the first party publisher, by an order of magnitude, yet the amount of work to produce a book is roughly the same for both. Supplements make the core books more attractive to potential players, yet are much less profitable to produce. So, in a stroke of generosity, WotC enables other companies to tie into their product, thereby increasing the salability and appeal of the D&D brand without having to invest in supplements no one will buy.

Re:Open source the Magic CCG system?

I wonder why they chose to "open" the D&D system but left their CCG systems closed?

1: Because D&D's patentable innovations were created twenty years before WotC bought TSR.

2: Because Ryan Dancy convinced them that it's save tabletop gaming as a whole, and D&D's bottom line in particular, to let smaller companies support D&D.

one question

As with the d20 STL for Third Edition, this is a royalty-free license that will allow third parties to publish products using the rules developed by WotC

Does this free license apply only to pen-and-paper games or could you build a [non-commercial] computer RPG based on the WoTC rules?

Does this license...

... finally allow girls to play?

I love me some D&D and I can't imagine much better than girls playing.

Perhaps my wish should be filed along with "Year of Linux on the desktop" and Duke Nukem Forever...

Re:Sharing the Wealth

We basement dwellers ARE basement dwellers because we know buying these games/modules is NOT disposable income.

Re:Sharing the Wealth

I haven't read the details of this new license, but if it's anything like the license for D20, then it's not free at all, it only looks like it's free. Let me explain.

A project I was working on some months back was game-related, and we figured we'd use the D20 system because if someone is going to know how to make a compelling game engine, it's going to be the makers of Dungeons & Dragons.

So we researched the license for D20, were really excited for a while, but eventually found a sentence or two buried deeply in the license which brought us to a screeching halt.

D20 allows you to use the game rules defined by the D20 engine for pretty much any purpose you want, royalty free; I think with some attribution clauses or the like. You never have to pay WotC a dime.

However that one little clause deep in the license basically grants WotC the right to choose to seize the exclusive rights to anything you produced surrounding the D20 system. It grants them full and unrestricted access to all source materials, and it grants them the right to resell and distribute the goods produced from it. Further, it grants them the right to revoke the license from you, barring you from further use.

Essentially the system is open and free for as long as you don't turn into a juicy target for WotC, who reserves the right to take whatever you produced away from you and sell it themselves, and keep you from selling or even using it any longer.

When you have a litigatious-happy company like WotC offering an olive branch, you must watch out for any poison-tipped thorns contained in it, and at least for D20, there is one, and it is deadly.

Re:Sharing the Wealth

However that one little clause deep in the license basically grants WotC the right to choose to seize the exclusive rights to anything you produced surrounding the D20 system. It grants them full and unrestricted access to all source materials, and it grants them the right to resell and distribute the goods produced from it. Further, it grants them the right to revoke the license from you, barring you from further use.

Buried? The clause is about as buried as the word "caffeine" is buried in the ingredients for Mountain Dew. The license is only two pages long, and in a 12-point font. Also, nowhere does it state that they can "sieze" anything, only that you cease marketing your product and destroy all copies if you breach the license.

Re:Sharing the Wealth

However that one little clause deep in the license basically grants WotC the right to choose to seize the exclusive rights to anything you produced surrounding the D20 system. It grants them full and unrestricted access to all source materials, and it grants them the right to resell and distribute the goods produced from it. Further, it grants them the right to revoke the license from you, barring you from further use.

1. You seem to have confused the d20 license with the OGL. To use the d20 game mechanics, you only need to obey the OGL. The d20 license is only to use the d20 logo and TM.
2. What clause are you talking about? There's nothing in the OGL which allows WotC to seize material that you haven't released under the OGL, even if it's in the same book as OGL stuff.

Re:Sharing the Wealth

They can't seize it in the sense of use it and deny you from printing your own books - but they and every other publisher has the right under the OGL to use the game mechanics created by any other publisher under the OGL. This has rarely been capitalized on but it has happened - Mongoose publishing put out a series of collection books on spells, feats and the like regardless of who originally published them.

That is true to the give and take nature of the OGL. You get the right to use materials designated as open under the license - such as Wizard's System Reference Document (which is an open clone of the D&D core rulebooks). You give up the right to close off your unique game mechanics from all other parties to the OGL.

This really isn't any different in principle from the Gnu Public License (No accident - the GPL inspired the OGL) - you get the right to use code from any program released under the license, but you give up the right to keep your derived code closed off from everyone else.

Re:I for one do not welcome the new 4th ed overlor

While I was never a fan of Drizzit (sorry emo/angsty/goth kids)

I fail to see what being a fan of Drizzt has to do with being a moody kid. Considering that about half of them have made the NYT bestseller list, R.A. Salvatore's fan base is likely considerably larger than you think it is.

I also find it amusing that you point out stereotypically whiny kids groups and then spend the next five paragraphs complaining about how everything used to be better "back in the day". Fourth edition D&D is all about stripping out rules that shouldn't matter, because it gets in the way of telling a good story. After playing a few of the public play tests, I have to say that I haven't been this excited about D&D since my uncle described my first dungeon, back in '85. Combat is tactically interesting and flows quickly. In all of the earlier editions of D&D encounters ate up most of the play time, because it took so damn long to get through big fights. In fourth edition, instead of spending 10 minutes on plot and 2 hours on combat, most games will be able to split their time more or less evenly between the two.

Also, the reason why Eberron got so much more love than Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance in the past few years is because Eberron's new. There's an entire universe of things that people don't know about it. On the other hand, between the 100+ novels and sourcebooks, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance are pretty well defined. It's really hard to fill a sourcebook with new information. They could retread the old material, but that's boring for everyone except new players and people that are really rabid about their campaign setting.

Re:I for one do not welcome the new 4th ed overlor

Indeed.

As someone who used to play a bard that ended up being the smart ass of the group, I can safely say that more people fell out of their chairs during combat than most other times while we gamed.

For example...

Standing watch by myself late at night.
DM: A lone goblin approaches.
Me: I reach into my pocket, pull out a marshmallow, and toss it to the goblin.
*everyone looks at me*
DM: The goblin pokes it with his spear then picks it up and eats it
Me: I cast Enlarge on the marshmallow.
*several players choke on their drinks*

Then there was the rather large group of monsters coming at us down the stairs while we were still on the floor below.
Me: I cast cantrip to create a banana peel in the middle of the monsters.
*saving throws. A monster fails*
DM: The monster slips, taking half of his comrades with him
Me: Okay, guys. I've done my share. The rest are yours... *grin*

Re:I for one do not welcome the new 4th ed overlor

Let me paste in the words of "Bod", who this about Dragonlance in alt.peeves eleven years ago:

God. Jesus. No. For fuck's sake, no, no, no. I've read a lot of shit in
my time (I was, for a while, the copy-editor on the "New Adventures of
Doctor Who" novels), but I can say without a single unmitigated shadow
of a doubt that I have never, ever, ever, ever, ever read a pile of shit
so huge, so mouldering and steaming, so slime-encrusted and maggot-
ridden, so bereft of ideas, characterisation, characters, plot,
background, setting, tone, atmosphere, themes, motifs, sense or words
strung together in an even vaguely readable order as the first
Dragonlance book. It is awful. No, it is beyond awful. It is an affront
to literacy, history and humanity. If Gutenberg had been shown a copy of
this book, he would have placed his head in his printing press and
instructed his apprentices to squash it until the brains were running
out of his ears and they heard his skull crack. It should be taken out
and burnt. Everyone associated with its production should be fucked and
burnt. The Nazi pogroms and book-burnings should be reinstated, together
with the Spanish inquisition, purely to erase all traces and records of
this book from our planet's history.

I was once stuck on a train for six hours with nothing to read except a
copy of this book. After sixty pages I decided that spending the
remaining five and a half hours sitting very still and meditating on the
five screaming children in the seat opposite and their appallingly
stupid parents was preferable to having to read one more word of the
drivel before me.

It even has fucking SONGS in it.

The only good thing associated with Dragonlance is Margaret Weis's
daughter, who is a fox.