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Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

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Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#51

Post by CuriouslyC »

rkangel wrote: post #48
miiiiiike wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] game mechanics and rules are NOT copyrightable. We never needed OGL to publish material compatible with D&D (or any other system) in the first place. This is something that I've been seen written over and over again. While the mechanisms themselves are not subject to copyright, the rules , as authored by Wizards of the Coast, are. That is the specific implementation of those mechanisms (e.g. the definition of…

> When I pick up a book and see dex/str/con/wis/int/cha my eyes glass over. I want D&D to fade, I want publishers to create new, entirely novel, systems, and I don't care what it means the status quo The conclusion I've drawn from this is that the system doesn't really matter. The game rules are incredibly secondary to the concept of role-playing - the universe, the people, the motivations, the personalities etc. We'…

The D&D combat system is high variance (single d20 rolls), and fundamentally flawed. DMs routinely have to fudge rolls and engage in divine intervention to prevent the night from ending early because the pack of gnolls that were supposed to be a filler encounter turned deadly with a streak of high rolls.

Wargame systems where combat is the focus and fudging is cheating tend to use more small dice so you end up closer to a normal distribution of values, rather than a uniform distribution. That avoids stuff that doesn't make sense like a shepherd rolling repeated natural 20s while a dragon rolls 1s - if the dragon is rolling 5 dice for an attack the floor of that is still above the shepherd's ability to defend.

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#52

Post by shagie »

BerislavLopac wrote: post #17

While I understand the desire to define things legally - both by those who want the games to be open and by those who want to control them - game mechanics and rules are NOT copyrightable. We never needed OGL to publish material compatible with D&D (or any other system) in the first place [0]. [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/01/beware-gifts-dragons-h...

> game mechanics and rules are NOT copyrightable.

Correct. This is where patents come into place.

For example https://patents.google.com/patent/US7264242 and https://generalpatent.com/professor-s-company-wins-1-6-milli...

https://patents.google.com/patent/US3208754A/en is another fun one.

But lore and wording gets into trouble. Is "Magic Missile" copyrighted? How about Halfling ( https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/116283 )?

> A missile of magical energy darts forth from your fingertip and strikes its target, dealing 1d4+1 points of force damage.

> You create three glowing darts of magical force. Each dart hits a creature of your choice that you can see within range. A dart deals 1d4 + 1 force damage to its target. The darts all strike simultaneously, and you can direct them to hit one creature or several.

Without looking which one is D&D and which one is Pathfinder?

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/m/magic-missile/

https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Magic%20Missile#content

Would the pathfinder version be considered a derivative work of the D&D version (well, not that D&D version since that was 5e... still).

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#53

Post by Jack_Hacker »

bhickey wrote: post #39

It's unclear to me why CC-BY isn't sufficient for SRD material. I'm glad that Paizo is throwing off the yoke of Hasbro altogether, but I don't have a good understanding for what a new license will do that CC doesn't.

IANAL, but my understanding is that WotC is getting ready to revoke the old OGL on the basis that "perpetual" doesn't mean "irrevocable," and the main impetus for a new license is explicitly closing that loophole. The perpetual/irrevocable thing seems absurd to me as an outsider, but this article makes me worry that a court could disagree: https://gamerant.com/dungeons-dragons-wizards-of-the-coast-f...

>According to several lawyers who have weighed in on the situation, if a document does not specifically say it is “irrevocable,” it can be revoked. While the old OGL uses the term “perpetual,” it does not use the word “irrevocable” in writing, and Dancey’s use of the word in interviews and emails may not be sufficient for the courts.

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#54

Post by rkangel »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #51
rkangel wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I pick up a book and see dex/str/con/wis/int/cha my eyes glass over. I want D&D to fade, I want publishers to create new, entirely novel, systems, and I don't care what it means the status quo The conclusion I've drawn from this is that the system doesn't really matter. The game rules are incredibly secondary to the concept of role-playing - the universe, the people, the motivations, the personalities etc. We'…

The D&D combat system is high variance (single d20 rolls), and fundamentally flawed. DMs routinely have to fudge rolls and engage in divine intervention to prevent the night from ending early because the pack of gnolls that were supposed to be a filler encounter turned deadly with a streak of high rolls. Wargame systems where combat is the focus and fudging is cheating tend to use more small dice so you end up closer…

I'm never sure whether this is a bug or a feature. When DMing, while I do very occasionally fudge things I try hard not to. The unpredictable aspect of the universe is a good thing and adds to the drama of an encounter. I do do some other things to make this work - I don't have a huge number of random encounters (also for game pace) and have some mechanism that softens player death a little. E.g. an NPC that can do a resurrection that they can earn, or an in-universe character re-roll.

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#55

Post by miiiiiike »

rkangel wrote: post #48
miiiiiike wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] game mechanics and rules are NOT copyrightable. We never needed OGL to publish material compatible with D&D (or any other system) in the first place. This is something that I've been seen written over and over again. While the mechanisms themselves are not subject to copyright, the rules , as authored by Wizards of the Coast, are. That is the specific implementation of those mechanisms (e.g. the definition of…

> When I pick up a book and see dex/str/con/wis/int/cha my eyes glass over. I want D&D to fade, I want publishers to create new, entirely novel, systems, and I don't care what it means the status quo The conclusion I've drawn from this is that the system doesn't really matter. The game rules are incredibly secondary to the concept of role-playing - the universe, the people, the motivations, the personalities etc. We'…

> Does the different stat and mechanics system really bleed through and affect how you experience the world.

Play "Warhammer Fantasy Role Play" and get back to me. How many fingers did your players have by the end?

Or Dungeon Crawl Classics.. How many level-0s made it through the meat grinder?

The randomness in other system leads to some interesting developments that you don't see in D&D. There's also the culture of the games. In modern D&D there's almost a contract between the players and DM that the players aren't to interfere with the DM's world building and the DM will not interfere with the grand destinies of the characters.

It's completely uninteresting to me. I want to play and play with as many different characters as possible so I can see different parts of the system and worlds. Playing the same characters from level 1 to godhood is dull. Character death should be frequent and glorious.

I also like Blood Bowl so.. I have a pretty high tolerance for nonsensical, dice driven, narratives. There are so many good story hooks if you just go with it.

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#56

Post by mcv »

sswezey wrote: post #36
mcv wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you're certain you'd win a lawsuit, you'd still have to be able to afford that lawsuit. As we saw in the Google vs Amazon case of the Java API, such lawsuits can be long and complex, and most RPG publishers are tiny. WotC is probably bigger than the entire rest of the industry put together. Even if technically game mechanics are fair use, where exactly to draw that line has never been tested in court, and in…

I think you mean Google vs Oracle for the Java API copyright lawsuit.

I do indeed. I knew I mistyped that in a couple of places. No idea why. Oracle seems to have vanished from my brain.

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#57

Post by mcv »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #41
sswezey wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you mean Google vs Oracle for the Java API copyright lawsuit.

No, if precedent wasn’t a thing, then I’d be for Oracle vs Google. Google wanted to free-ride without contributing. If they could have they’d have made their own language from the beginning. Even then, they didn’t really support real Java but it’s evil twin brother Dalvik. When you are Google-scale you should pay. Noblesse oblige.

I think Google should have bought Sun when they could. But whatever your opinion on that case is, my point is that copyright is complex and has big grey areas, and having to fight this out in court is going to be way too expensive and risky for most parties involved.

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#58

Post by mhd »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #49
mhd wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We never needed OGL to publish material compatible with D&D And we never needed Apple's permission to have overlapping windows. Alas… There was a long history of C&D letters and outright lawsuits. Heck, up until recently one of the head honchos of WotC was working at one of the companies being targeted by TSR in the 90s for their "Role Aids". A detente where you didn't have to worry about that as a small time publi…

Magic missile by itself is questionable since that language never gets used outside of D&D references, but it is also suitably generic. If you also used Strength, Intelligence, Constitution, Charisma and Wisdom as stats, and had hit dice, and so on, that would be problematic. If you chose new names for everything but the rules were otherwise identical that would be completely safe. Part of the problem is this is a gr…

> If you chose new names for everything but the rules were otherwise identical that would be completely safe

Reminds me of the Judges Guild "Universal System" where they had a lot of weird stats in their books, often with some made-up rules, just to avoid any issues with D&D at the time (late 70s/early 80s, I think).

Event went so far as to have three-digit stats, stating that the first two are the regular ones (to correspond on the D&D 3-18 range) and the last is "how often you can use it without having to roll for a stress test".

If you're going that unusable, you might as well write for your own or a non-litigious system and let the people convert it themselves. It's a lot of homework anyways…

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#59

Post by BerislavLopac »

shagie wrote: post #52
BerislavLopac wrote: post #17

While I understand the desire to define things legally - both by those who want the games to be open and by those who want to control them - game mechanics and rules are NOT copyrightable. We never needed OGL to publish material compatible with D&D (or any other system) in the first place [0]. [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/01/beware-gifts-dragons-h...

> game mechanics and rules are NOT copyrightable. Correct. This is where patents come into place. For example https://patents.google.com/patent/US7264242 and https://generalpatent.com/professor-s-company-wins-1-6-milli... https://patents.google.com/patent/US3208754A/en is another fun one. But lore and wording gets into trouble. Is "Magic Missile" copyrighted? How about Halfling ( https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questio…

This question is basically what the article linked in my comment above is all about.

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#60

Post by kmeisthax »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #46
kmeisthax wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, no. Hard no. Literally any legal principle in which Google has to pay for 20 lines of API declarations (which is the thing that Oracle was able to claim copyright over in court) means pretty much the end of software freedom, since reimplementation is how FOSS was bootstrapped . This means that Microsoft could sue Valve for offering Proton on the Steam Deck. GNU and BSD become legally radioactive. Ruffle survives…

> if precedent wasn’t a thing It's the size of Google that I feel makes it lose rights. When you are a giant you should lose to compensate for all the power you have as a consequence to the natural accumulation of power. So that Google should pay, doesn't follow that a small start-up should. Unfortunately, the laws are not written that way.

If we're going to throw out the overly-literal interpretation of "equality under the law" that means "exact same rules regardless of socioeconomic status or other context", then why only do this for the very narrow case of API reimplementation? Why not just break up Google for the crime of being a threat to the sovereignty of its host government and people? If Google is powerful enough that we need to start "taking away rights" in order to create a level playing field, then we should start talking about killing Google, if only to minimize how many rights need to be taken away and for how long.

Furthermore, the underlying reason why we're making Google pay is still total bullshit. Remember: we're not arguing for "start-ups should get a pass on copyright infringement but Google should pay billions". We're arguing over 20 function signatures. Nobody should have to pay for that, and any copyright law that covers function signatures is unfit for purpose, even if it's a bill of attainder[0] that only applies to Google.

[0] A law that specifically prescribes a punishment to be applied to one person and one person alone. For example, if Congress were to pass a bill saying "Larry Page is guilty of copyright infringement for scraping the Internet and has no civil rights", that is a bill of attainder.

This is such an easily abusable process that the Constitution, unamended, forbids it.

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