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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.
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.
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.
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
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> 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...
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.
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.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
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.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
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.
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...
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.