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Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

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Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#191

Post by Karrot_Kream »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #180
ksplicer wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Videogames are expensive when you are young. It might be more expensive than chess, but it quickly becomes one of the cheapest hobbies of most adults. It's sure cheaper than going out drinking an extra night each week.

Fair enough about the cost, but the thing is, chess isn't under any company's control and it has history and traditions going back for centuries. There is a sense of grandeur when you move a pawn even as the lowliest patzer, that no amount of GPU-enhanced videogame graphics can replicate. You almost feel the blood of Lasker and Capablanca running through your veins. One of my favorite movies is a biodoc about a Sovie…

There's plenty of reasons not to like abstract games.

Abstract games are highly, highly dependent on memorization and repetition. In lower tiers a Go or Chess player that's played more games or memorized more positions will handily beat a player who hasn't. The sheer hours needed to get to high level chess play, where memorization doesn't matter as much anymore, is insane. There's a reason most great chess players start out young.

Abstracts are also perfect information games. I like games that simulate aspects of real life, and anything with perfect information immediately breaks my immersion.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#192

Post by ctroein89 »

godelski wrote: post #109
vaylian wrote: post #48

A bit more context: * Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has been tasked by Hasbro (which owns WoTC) to drastically increase profits over a few years. * WoTC has been aggressively increasing prices on Magic the Gathering (MTG) and drastically increased the diversity of products. This overwhelmed even people who follow and produce MTG news. Wallet fatique is rampant and people are disgruntled. * WoTC releases the 30th aniver…

> The real problem is the managers at WoTC that don't really care about the games. They only care about money. I expect more bad things in the future. The same seems to be true with Games Workshop and I've never understood this. The products from both companies have huge markups (painted cards and pieces of plastic) and I'd assume that they could actually have a far larger market and profit by concentrating on scale…

For all their faults, Games Workshop is really a miniatures company that has a ruleset, rather than games company that sells plastic models. I recall seeing a statistic that the majority of their customers don’t regularly play, and a shocking number have never played a game. Those customers are buying models because they think the models are neat, and are deriving fun from the act of assembling and painting.

From that perspective, the business is as sustainable as Star Wars or Marvel: as long as this Thor offers a better fantasy than generic Thors, the brand will last (and accumulate the advantages of a deep, lasting history), and therefore will outlast competitors.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#193

Post by parrellel »

roblabla wrote: post #86
dragonwriter wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least the SRD5 is now irrevocably in the creative commons. They changed the underlying law of licenses that makes gratuitous licenses revocable at will independent of the content of the license? How?

IANAL, but from TFA: > By simply publishing it, we place it under an irrevocable Creative Commons license. I'd be very surprised if they still had their rights to revoke the license after explicitly saying otherwise.

Well, this whole thing started with them playing silly games to revoke an irrevocable license.

So... well, I'm not going to be buying anything new from WotC any time soon. I'd say anything from Hasbro, but that's such a big umbrella I'm not sure I could consistently figure out all the subsidiaries.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#194

Post by dragonwriter »

wolverine876 wrote: post #161
Macha wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we look at other contemporary licenses reviewed by professional legal advice, like the GPLv2, Creative Commons v1-3, MIT, Apache v1, they all have the same omission of irrevocable, and it was about another ten years before they released newer iterations with that magic language (or didn't, in the case of MIT). It's also not speculation that that was the intent of the original author, they're on record from both th…

> It's also not speculation that that was the intent of the original author, they're on record Yes, a corporate executive is on record making a claim like that. Do you take it a face value? This person is a sophisticated actor in a company that runs on IP. It doesn't matter what FOSS licenses said, and I don't have time to look into that. If Wizards wanted "irrevocable", it would say that. Did you see Wizards' attemp…

> Wizards wanted "irrevocable", it would say that

It does, that's why when, when they wanted to revoke it without also. casting doubt on their next “irrevocable” license, they relied on the “any authorized version” language, and moved to deauthorize the original version.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#195

Post by godelski »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #191
throwaway81523 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough about the cost, but the thing is, chess isn't under any company's control and it has history and traditions going back for centuries. There is a sense of grandeur when you move a pawn even as the lowliest patzer, that no amount of GPU-enhanced videogame graphics can replicate. You almost feel the blood of Lasker and Capablanca running through your veins. One of my favorite movies is a biodoc about a Sovie…

There's plenty of reasons not to like abstract games. Abstract games are highly, highly dependent on memorization and repetition. In lower tiers a Go or Chess player that's played more games or memorized more positions will handily beat a player who hasn't. The sheer hours needed to get to high level chess play, where memorization doesn't matter as much anymore, is insane. There's a reason most great chess players st…

Exactly this. As an avid board game player this is one of the things that has always frustrated me about chess. Those that like to play have been playing for a long time and there is a steep learning curve. Even the parent was throwing off vernacular. This is not just intimidating to many newcomers but will likely put them off because it is difficult to see yourself make progress. On the other hand, most board games have luck elements in them and have a wide range of luck-skill balances. You'll find that how people are introduced to board games (and videogames) depends on what game they try first. If that game requires a high skill level (or worse, high skill and high dependence on opening actions, like Catan (unfortunately is a common "intro game")) then people tend to not like "board games" in a general sense. But once people are comfortable with the space and patterns (there's only so many concepts in gaming) then they are far more open to more complex rule sets and more skill based games. Chess and Go's killer problem is that it is difficult to get started. Ironically we're on a form of mostly programmers and this is analogous to the "Python before C++" argument, but with less benefits to the C++ side.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#196

Post by parrellel »

tonfreed wrote: post #29
teach wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is oversimplified but hopefully close enough. A couple of versions ago, Wizards of the Coast released a subset of the D&D rules for free with a pretty open license. That free subset was called the SRD and the license was the OGL 1.0a. It allowed third-parties to publish D&D-compatible adventures and such without royalties. And, crucially, the OGL had a clause that seemed to make it irrevocable in the future. Ess…

It wasn't even a released draft. It was a leak of what was essentially a shakedown that WoTC tried to bully independents into signing earlier in January. That they even now keep referring to it as a draft is pretty indicative that they're not acting in good faith

Wow, I missed that they were still going with the "Draft" lie on first read. Welp, ship had already sailed, but I'm just going to guess the horror-show will be back in 6 to 12 months.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#197

Post by notpushkin »

wolverine876 wrote: post #134
crayboff wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, they did a huge thing that can't be backed out of, they released SRD 5.1 under creative commons. Yeah they did some not great stuff, but let's celebrate the successes when we get them!

What about material not in the SRD? Read analyses by IP attorneys. OGL 1.0a restricts rights; people have more rights if they just ignore it and don't use it. Here's one from the EFF: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/01/beware-gifts-dragons-h...

> Copyright grants an author a limited monopoly over their creative expression. It doesn’t cover bare facts, mere ideas, systems, or methods.

Does this mean most software is uncopyrightable?

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#198

Post by HWR_14 »

chongli wrote: post #90
vaylian wrote: post #48

A bit more context: * Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has been tasked by Hasbro (which owns WoTC) to drastically increase profits over a few years. * WoTC has been aggressively increasing prices on Magic the Gathering (MTG) and drastically increased the diversity of products. This overwhelmed even people who follow and produce MTG news. Wallet fatique is rampant and people are disgruntled. * WoTC releases the 30th aniver…

I’d say the real problem is that WoTC is a lifestyle business that should not be owned by Hasbro.

WoTC is a fairly stable evergreen business. So are most of Hasbros. In fact, WOTC tends to be one of their more dependable units (prior to this fiasco).

Hasbro itself is just a stable stead business. It shouldn't be trying to get hockey stick growth on games.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#199

Post by HWR_14 »

hinkley wrote: post #124
vaylian wrote: post #48

A bit more context: * Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has been tasked by Hasbro (which owns WoTC) to drastically increase profits over a few years. * WoTC has been aggressively increasing prices on Magic the Gathering (MTG) and drastically increased the diversity of products. This overwhelmed even people who follow and produce MTG news. Wallet fatique is rampant and people are disgruntled. * WoTC releases the 30th aniver…

Just turn the tap until blood comes out. > Don't mess with Dungeon Masters who know how to call together a group of people Don't mess with Dungeon Masters who have converted their campaign into 2 seasons on Amazon Prime. Just sit back and collect the checks for the free advertising.

I actually think the attempted changes were because WoTC didn't get a cut of the Amazon money.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#200

Post by HWR_14 »

roenxi wrote: post #66
boomboomsubban wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>WoTC releases the 30th aniversary edition for MTG, which is 60 random cards for 1000 $ which are officially marked as non-tournament legal. The MTG community is furious and for once people from all corners of the community come together to boycott this product. The rage is great and enduring. Yet somehow the product completely sold out in under an hour. I really don't understand the outrage on that decision, would y…

Also - why are people upset over a product (that doesn't affect the game) being sold to people others? I feel like important context is missing here over why anyone would be upset by this.

You don't understand why people who own what was supposed to be a limited edition collectible/in game power up got upset when more were released? Cards that they bought for large amounts on the secondary market because WOTC promised they would never be reprinted.
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