Open Gaming Should Mean Open

[Reynard]

Your position overall seems to be most summed up in this paragraph, where you conflate "open gaming" with "virality of rules."

They aren't the same. There's little doubt that the CC is more open than ORC. It isn't as viral, unless the SA subset.
But not being viral doesn't mean something isn't open.

Ok. I'm not sure that changes my argument though.

 

[bloodtide]

I love open content. I like the idea that people can just share and make everyone happy. A creator can share what they want for free and does not have to worry about being taken down.

Though you get to the money problem. Some creators can use the open content to make some money...and some times a good amount of money

But then the IP owner that got the open content started.....gets sad. They want all that money. And they look at their own poor selling items or just their lack of items and get more sad.

And they head down the bad road of greed.......

I wish it could be so much better.

As a creator....I would not even ask for much from a massive multi billion dollar company: My name as the 'created by', a copy of the book, and a bit of money for a rough 'week' of work...so like $1000(or if they must do like 12 cents a letter). Really 'nothing' to a big company. And I'm more then happy to write an introduction or 'behind the pages' notes, for just a tiny bit of money....to them. Hasbro won't even notice $500, but that is my car payment/insurance.

 

[mamba]

One of the defining features of ORC is that it demands whatever (mechanics) you publish under it are Open

I know, makes no difference to me. Whether you release under CC, OGL or ORC, you release into the open whatever you include in the SRD

In a way CC is more open because it comes with less strings attached for someone to be able to use it, the downside being that it does not force the result to also be open.

It seems that Paizo has managed to figure out how to be very successful while still "giving it away for free."

sure, does that somehow mean everyone else now also has to?

Anything released into the open is first and foremost a voluntary gift. I am not rejecting a $80 gift because someone else bought a $100 one, nor do I blame the person for not spending more

 

[bedir than]

Ok. I'm not sure that changes my argument though.

As a professional writer your demands that my content be available to everyone for free means I can no longer be a professional. Virality doesn't necessarily mean it's good for the people who labor.

 

[KYRON45]

I gave examples in the OP. For some OGL developers, they designated everything "Product Identity." Of 5E companies publishing under the 5.1 SRD released into CC, few are releasing their work into CC as well (to be clear, there is no legal requirement that they do so). Under ORC literally all mechanics in whatever you put under the license are Open. So companies like Kobold are releasing SRDs of their own, trimmed of whatever they want reserved, instead of releasing the actual game books under ORC as Paizo did (and I believe Chaosium did with the new BRP edition).

When someone says "I don't understand your post." and you then refer them back to the original post....clarifies nothing.
I will accept that this high minded debate about things that probably don't concern a lot of people is not for me and bow out. Good luck changing minds or whatever it is you are trying to do.

 

[mamba]

My position is that if you choose to benefit from it, you should feel obligated to give back to it.

they just released an open SRD you know..

 

[mamba]

How do we know they aren't giving back?

they are giving back, he wants them to give back more / every subclass instead of one per class, etc

 

[Jadeite]

Generous Open Content makes games more inclusive. Allowing people access your rules for free makes the games far more open and welcoming than changing the color of your logo a few times a year and declaring "* is for everyone". Money is an enormous gatekeeper, after all.
It also improves the game and its third party support. Instead of reinventing the wheel over and over again because some subclasses (or classes like artificer) are closed content, publishers can built upon the set pieces and support them. It also lets the main publisher support his own content more freely. Outside some domains, 5e books didn't reference any other books aside the core three. And in 3.5, stuff like Pact Magic and Incarnum got some support, but not much. In Pathfinder, on the other hand, Paizo can easily add new options for additional classes since even if someone doesn't own the book in question, the content is available freely at the Archives of Nethys (admittedly, they are currently struggling with the Remaster, but they should catch up in a few weeks). And Paizo doesn't seem to take a huge loss due to it, my bookshelf says otherwise.

 

[Reynard]

When someone says "I don't understand your post." and you then refer them back to the original post....clarifies nothing.
I will accept that this high minded debate about things that probably don't concern a lot of people is not for me and bow out. Good luck changing minds or whatever it is you are trying to do.

Except I did clarify, in the very post you actively quoted here.

 

[Morrus]

Generous Open Content makes games more inclusive. Allowing people access your rules for free makes the games far more open and welcoming than changing the color of your logo a few times a year and declaring "* is for everyone".

Sure.

But that's not what an SRD is for.

A free starter ruleset is awesome. Putting the whole rules for free on a website like we do for A5E is awesome. But neither of those things are what an SRD is for.

An SRD is a developer tool. It helps third parties create new compatible content. A developer doesn't need all the subclasses to wrote a new subclass, just one to show how they work.

So while we at ENP put most everything in our SRD, we don't expect players to use the SRD in their games. I mean, they can, and they're welcome to, but the SRD is a developer tool, and we have an awesome player facing tool in the form of the A5E.tools website (which is NOT the SRD and which is waaaay better for running/player games from than the SRD is).

I think folks mix up two concepts here. SRD = developer tool. Free rules document = awesome. They are not the same thing, and they have different functions.