Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

paizo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 78 posts

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#61

Post by Pet_Ant »

kmeisthax wrote: post #60
Pet_Ant wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread”

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#62

Post by HelloNurse »

mhd wrote: post #58
CuriouslyC wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Come on, this kind of "made up rules" is meant to be ignored, not followed. Normal players would have dropped and ignored that extra stat digit, either because they recognized it as a plausible deniability tool whose usefulness is limited to written material or because preferring D&D-like stats is an obvious corrective "house rule".

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#63

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

HelloNurse wrote: post #62
mhd wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

Come on, this kind of "made up rules" is meant to be ignored, not followed. Normal players would have dropped and ignored that extra stat digit, either because they recognized it as a plausible deniability tool whose usefulness is limited to written material or because preferring D&D-like stats is an obvious corrective "house rule".

I think this is an easy conclusion to reach in this context of a licensing discussion but no player is going to, in the usual context, open a book they've never heard of and think all of the ridiculous rules were put there to avoid copyright issues.

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#64

Post by WorldMaker »

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.

To my understanding CC was a consultant on the earliest OGL 1.0 development cycles. There's a bunch of complex interplays of different IP protections in tabletop roleplaying and so CC recommended building something from scratch for the same reason CC tries to remind people that CC is not an open source code license and you should use open source code licenses for software code.

Some specific troubles:

- Most game mechanics cannot be copyrighted they can only be patented. I believe CC recommended the OGL contain a patent grant similar to the one in the (software license) Apache License 2.0, though one directly as such did not make the final OGL. (There is something of an implied grant, but no specific clause and definitely not as well spelled out as Apache License 2.0.)

- Many elements are more subject to trademark laws than copyright laws. Things like the names of spells or skills or things like that. A TTRPG has to explicitly define which "vocabulary" is subject to trademark enforcement in a way that doesn't turn the trademarks into generics that puts them at risk of loss in a court case.

- The very nature of splitting an SRD from other game materials is somewhat unique to this TTRPG model. A lot of the OGL is legally trying to explain what an SRD even is and how it differs from any other book in the "same" RPG (so that it can then limit the scope of most things back to "just the SRD is open").

That said, there's a unique community of CC licensed games on itch.io especially and it certainly seems to work well when the entire game is licensed that way. Most of those authors and companies don't have a lot of trademarks to defend.

I could still see a usefulness in that community for some sort of easy to apply patent-grant license, though. (I was debating the other day if a dual-license situation where you did something like CC-BY/Apache License 2.0 could work if you have some way to add the legal language equivalent of "where and as these systems/rules define algorithms, those algorithms are considered to be open source under the Apache License 2.0" to try to broadly apply a patent grant.) I'm curious to see what Paizo does with ORC as maybe that's something their lawyers might help them address in a reusable way even for small RPGs.

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#65

Post by WorldMaker »

danaris wrote: post #44
labster wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you understand the hobby at all. Every game master, without exception, is a content creator. Most of them want to try new systems just to see what they are like. If they decide to go to other systems, that’s it for D&D. They can make all of the movies and books they want, but that won’t make people DM it. It doesn’t matter if they succeed in court or not. People will stop writing right now (and write fo…

My interpretation of ninth_ant's comment is not that they believe those things about this being A Great Idea on WotC's part, but that that's what WotC believes. And I think they're absolutely right. WotC's (and, further up, Hasbro's) management has shown in several ways in recent years that they do not understand, respect, or like their core gaming customers. (In fact, there was another leak recently from someone pur…

They finally posted an official statement on the D&D Beyond website just an hour or so ago. (I'd link but corporate firewall means I can't find it right now.) They do think they are doing it with good intentions, including blocking NFT and web3 things trying to commercialize on D&D. It's skirted around in that post, but also implied that they want to make certain that OGL can't be used for film rights (because Hasbro has a growing film studio now) nor VTT rights (because D&D Beyond is a growing VTT). Both of those things to them add to their biased feeling that they are being the "good guys" in all of this and defending the OGL as a tool "just" for hobbyists and game players.

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#67

Post by danaris »

WorldMaker wrote: post #65
danaris wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My interpretation of ninth_ant's comment is not that they believe those things about this being A Great Idea on WotC's part, but that that's what WotC believes. And I think they're absolutely right. WotC's (and, further up, Hasbro's) management has shown in several ways in recent years that they do not understand, respect, or like their core gaming customers. (In fact, there was another leak recently from someone pur…

They finally posted an official statement on the D&D Beyond website just an hour or so ago. (I'd link but corporate firewall means I can't find it right now.) They do think they are doing it with good intentions, including blocking NFT and web3 things trying to commercialize on D&D. It's skirted around in that post, but also implied that they want to make certain that OGL can't be used for film rights (because Hasbro…

Yep, I saw that a couple hours ago, and it's now made it to the front page here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34370340).

I think WotC is starting to realize that they need their players waaaay more than we need them. If we want to just keep on playing with the same stuff we've got now, we can do that—if they want to make more money, they need to keep us happy one way or another.

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#69

Post by mhd »

HelloNurse wrote: post #62
mhd wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

Come on, this kind of "made up rules" is meant to be ignored, not followed. Normal players would have dropped and ignored that extra stat digit, either because they recognized it as a plausible deniability tool whose usefulness is limited to written material or because preferring D&D-like stats is an obvious corrective "house rule".

Yeah, that rule was clearly just there for show. Just like the second digit on levels ("number of professions you've mastered").

There were some rather elaborate rules for constructing armor that didn't really map to D&D's armor class, though. Probably even more of a curve ball.

The hit points – sorry "hits to kill", my mistake – were either what you'd expect from a D&D character with the same (first digit) level or the sum of (the first two digits) of Constitution and Strength.

Don't remember much more than this…

Re: Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License

#70

Post by buggy6257 »

lofaszvanitt wrote: post #68

Pathfinder is an even bigger, overly complex bloat than D&D. I don't get it why people don't make their own systems. It's not rocket science...

Would you mind linking to the RPG systems you've written lately? I would love to play some new ones with friends from someone who knows what they're doing.
Post reply on HN