I remember they said they'd release it with the same license as 5E when they had time. Then they fired a bunch of people and I never heard anything about it again. Did they change their mind or are they just silent on the matter hoping we all forget or what?
Also, if they did release 3.5 as CC what does that do to everything downstream? I would think they could would have the option to also go CC (if) they had no other content from other sources that had not gone CC, otherwise they'd have to stay with the OGL. Of course most other products have probably moved on and wouldn't bother to update a 3.5 product.
wotc and promises are like like snake oil salesmen and cure-alls.
Any congruency with the truth is purely accidental.
Quote from: Ruprecht on March 04, 2025, 07:43:14 PMI remember they said they'd release it with the same license as 5E when they had time. Then they fired a bunch of people and I never heard anything about it again. Did they change their mind or are they just silent on the matter hoping we all forget or what?
Also, if they did release 3.5 as CC what does that do to everything downstream? I would think they could would have the option to also go CC (if) they had no other content from other sources that had not gone CC, otherwise they'd have to stay with the OGL. Of course most other products have probably moved on and wouldn't bother to update a 3.5 product.
I want to say that they claimed they would release all prior editions eventually but obviously 5.5e would be the priority and they explicitly said that would come out a few weeks after the MM 2025 edition. That still hasn't happened either and I'm guessing that would be on the top of their list as the active license that might actually benefit them indirectly. To be honest, I expect them to draw out the other edition CC releases ad infinitum now that the hubbub of the OGL debacle has mostly blown over and the permanent damage is done.
Quote from: Ruprecht on March 04, 2025, 07:43:14 PMDid they change their mind or are they just silent on the matter hoping we all forget or what?
My money's on: 'or what?'...
Given all the recent turnover at the top of WotC, they have likely have completely forgotten about it themselves.
Hasbro and wotc are notorious for forgetting they actually own a whole library of games and have in the past let several slip through their butter fingers.
Pathfinder 1E actually does have all the core text freely available. I don't think WOTC ever full reconciled that whole license revoke incident. They just let it die once they realized they had no idea what they were doing.
WotC said that they would be releasing the OGL once the three books were out. The monster manual is out for like a week or two now? So it's probably too early to assume that they forgot about this- we'd expect the text to be released, under creative commons, sometime in the next 1-4 months. After that they would be pretty delinquent with their own statements.
When Hasbro stepped away from trying to burn the industry down by claiming the OGL was able to be updated with a neutered form of itself, they never actually issued an updated OGL that could be upgraded to and that was not revocable by them, nor did they ever release everything under creative commons (only the 5ed SRD stuff). This means that older SRD stuff, which were used as a reason to assume you could print a spell named magic missile without worries, is still covered by a license that Hasbro believes can be revoked at any time.
This is why there's been a flurry of OSR products renaming core stats and concepts to silly names, most of which aren't ever explicitly entered into public domain or creative commons. The most open response, the ORC, replaces a lot of what everyone thought the OGL was supposed to be up to all this time.
Now obviously Hasbro's reckless claims were never proven in court; but their behavior still has a bunch of lasting negative consequences even if they release the SRD containing the core 5.5 rules into creative commons.
I MISREAD OP
I thought it was about the promise to release the 5.5 stuff into creative commons (that window has just opened). Instead, he's referring to a non-existent promise to release the OLDER stuff into creative commons (such as the 3.5 SRD, the main one that needs to happen).
But here's the release:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1717-2024-core-rulebooks-to-expand-the-srd
And here's the quote from WotC:
QuoteWhat about the SRDs for previous editions?
Because we still need to complete reviews on those materials before they're released into Creative Commons, we made the decision to wait until after the 2024 rules revisions were released to begin reviews of those documents.]
THEY NEVER EVEN PROMISED ITThey could simply say tomorrow "we reviewed the documents and determined releasing them would be problematic", no promises broken.
On the other hand, the point I made above- that they are just entering the window to release the 5.5 documents (the "2024 rules revisions" aren't released into creative commons yet)- also means that since their implied timeline was to not even START reviewing older stuff until the 5.5 game's SRD is under creative commons, they are definitely not in any manner of window of violation of even an implied promise.
Quote from: Omega on March 05, 2025, 02:01:39 AMHasbro and wotc are notorious for forgetting they actually own a whole library of games and have in the past let several slip through their butter fingers.
They never lost the copyrights to anything they own. Trademarks, sure, but those trademarks are worthless without the copyrighted IPs. The only people who get hurt are the lingering fans.
Hasbro owns multiple scifi IPs, most notably the detailed
Star Frontiers and
Star*Drive settings. When they wanted to make their own
Mass Effect ripoff, they hired Ohlen out of retirement and let him make his original setting
Exodus instead of hiring someone to adapt their old scifi settings. SD is perfect for a
Mass Effect competitor without feeling like a ripoff, but sure, let's just make another new IP that Hasbro will most likely kill off in short order like they do most of their IPs.
These settings are abandonware and it makes no economic sense for Hasbro to keep them under lock and key until the copyright expires a century after publication.
It's important to note that without trademarked names and image copyrights, there's very little (apart from flavor text) that is copyrightable at all concerning D&D in the first place. Recipes and game rules are explicitly not copyrightable, though the flavor text potentially can be. One of the more interesting cases showcasing this is Hasbro putting up half the Stranger Things box set for free in PDF due to their own policy of always making their tabletop game rules freely available.
https://instructions.hasbro.com/en-us/instruction/stranger-things-dungeons-and-dragons-roleplaying-game-starter-set
Quote from: D-ko on March 05, 2025, 02:47:58 PMIt's important to note that without trademarked names and image copyrights, there's very little (apart from flavor text) that is copyrightable at all concerning D&D in the first place.
^THIS^
Read the OGL - the list of proper names under copyright is quite short...
That is why D&D relies on its market position and overwhelming network effect to maintain its dominance.
I don't think the OGL was ever a gift; It was a Trojan horse of sorts.
Quote from: D-ko on March 05, 2025, 02:47:58 PMIt's important to note that without trademarked names and image copyrights, there's very little (apart from flavor text) that is copyrightable at all concerning D&D in the first place. Recipes and game rules are explicitly not copyrightable, though the flavor text potentially can be. One of the more interesting cases showcasing this is Hasbro putting up half the Stranger Things box set for free in PDF due to their own policy of always making their tabletop game rules freely available.
True but it has been helpful for a number of games to copy/paste the spell text (for example) instead of rewriting everything. It would be nice to have that text free of any claims of misdeeds. A game would certainly be better if the writer re-wrote everything and gave it their own flavor but still, some stuff is so painfully boring to rewrite I understand why folks dont' want to bother.
Quote from: Jaeger on March 05, 2025, 03:39:19 PMQuote from: D-ko on March 05, 2025, 02:47:58 PMIt's important to note that without trademarked names and image copyrights, there's very little (apart from flavor text) that is copyrightable at all concerning D&D in the first place.
^THIS^
Read the OGL - the list of proper names under copyright is quite short...
That is why D&D relies on its market position and overwhelming network effect to maintain its dominance.
I wish more people realized this regarding all genres and all popular IPs.
So, there's two words being discussed here.
There's the world at the end of a long and expensive legal struggle, where some group that is the equivalent of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, supported by some big companies that are the equivalent of IBM, have won what was, in the end, a straightforward battle with Hasbro, who threw the most egregious curveball claims. And in that world, everyone is happy to call their armor class, "armor class", and abbreviate it "AC", and they are willing to call a first level spell that never misses and does light damage, "magic missile", and so forth. In other words, all the things that are already true, such as "you can't copyright rules", have been proven specifically about D&D. This has nothing to do with the OGL, of course- it's true about ALL versions of D&D. The flavor text, the proper nouns, the creative world described or referenced- those would, it is understood, be excluded.
But while that world COULD be real, it isn't. Not yet, and unlike in the software world where you would have groups like the EFF and companies like IBM pushing hard against copyright overreach, there's no equivalents of those for tabletop roleplaying games, no group willing to do the fight to bring us to that world.
So in THIS world, Paizo was freaked out by the possibility of being sued over the phrasing of things, so they renamed many of them. Many of these renames are to avoid even the possibility of being in trouble, even to have the claim that the original pieces were from the OGL.
https://github.com/foundryvtt/pf2e/wiki/Remaster-Changes
Macris' ACKS game has a ton of renamed elements, and I'm fairly certain it was for similar fears (no not this one (https://x.com/archon/status/1887275977832878268) ).
So as long as these elements aren't truly open in a fully reliable way- as long as we are on the left side of "a court finally reaches the correct conclusion" on the timeline- many creators will continue to act with this as a serious, top tier concern.
Even if, legally, you can't copyright game rules. Which you can't, but why leave yourself as a target for WotC? Especially if you might be targeted as the #2 competitor (Paizo's concern) or as part of a political campaign (many others' concerns, possibly including Macris).
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on March 06, 2025, 10:48:23 AMQuote from: Jaeger on March 05, 2025, 03:39:19 PMQuote from: D-ko on March 05, 2025, 02:47:58 PMIt's important to note that without trademarked names and image copyrights, there's very little (apart from flavor text) that is copyrightable at all concerning D&D in the first place.
Read the OGL - the list of proper names under copyright is quite short...
That is why D&D relies on its market position and overwhelming network effect to maintain its dominance.
I wish more people realized this regarding all genres and all popular IPs.
How copyrightable RPGs are has yet to be tested in court, so I think it remains murky.
The current Supreme Court has generally sided with stronger copyright protection, like in Warhol v. Goldsmith. That was visual art rather than text, but it suggests they might be amenable to less leeway in derivative works in general.
EDITED TO ADD: Cross-posted with Venka, who describes in more detail. The question of copyrighting RPG rules is tricky, because while you can't copyright a procedure, game rules can also have creative expression - like a game race including its stat block, or a spell including its effects. Its been established for a while that software code is copyrightable.
Yeah, and that's strangling our creative output. Corpos have been steadily destroying all IPs, leaving pop culture nothing to work with. Where are the alternatives to Call of Cthulhu and World of Darkness? Or whatever other IP I could name?
There's nothing. Creators are afraid to compete for fear of being sued. Furthermore, I question how many of them can even produce worthwhile products.
Tabletop gamers aren't loyal to genres, they're loyal to IPs. So when an IP dies, nobody else cares to make a replacement to fill the market void. The OSR movement is a unique fluke that hasn't been replicated with other genres.
Not all genres are evergreen.
Urban Fantasy needed that post-Cold War peace dividend, crime drop, and lack of existential conflicts to make empathy with the allegorical monster a sustainable genre. Real economic hardship, rampant crime, and the threat of World War 3 makes that feel stupid.
Instead you've got a few successful monster HUNTER games and some PBtA storygames based of trashy romance and young adult novels... because that's what the genre has become.
If we can get some world peace and get our economy and crime situation under control, the sort of urban fantasy you lament being lost might return in some fashion. Until then we wanna punch monsters not be them.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 06, 2025, 04:00:36 PMNot all genres are evergreen.
Urban Fantasy needed that post-Cold War peace dividend, crime drop, and lack of existential conflicts to make empathy with the allegorical monster a sustainable genre. Real economic hardship, rampant crime, and the threat of World War 3 makes that feel stupid.
Instead you've got a few successful monster HUNTER games and some PBtA storygames based of trashy romance and young adult novels... because that's what the genre has become.
If we can get some world peace and get our economy and crime situation under control, the sort of urban fantasy you lament being lost might return in some fashion. Until then we wanna punch monsters not be them.
Not all urban fantasy is about playing literal monsters. Urban fantasy includes stuff like Urban Arcana, which is about D&D races and monsters showing up on Earth. Harry Dresden isn't a monster who eats people either. It includes something like Touched by an Angel.
Urban fantasy, or more accurately contemporary fantasy, is just fantasy takes place on contemporary Earth. Otherwise, it's a huge broad genre. It's just not a popular subject of ttrpgs for whatever reason.
You could totally make an urban fantasy game about playing angels who fight crime and help the helpless.
Quote from: jhkim on March 06, 2025, 11:43:35 AMIts been established for a while that software code is copyrightable.
This is due to legislation specifically adding code to the list of copyrightable items. It isn't something the courts did on their own.
Murky grey areas. (https://www.godsmonsters.com/News/can-i-legally-use-gary-gygaxs-name-my-son/)
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on March 06, 2025, 06:59:59 PMNot all urban fantasy is about playing literal monsters. Urban fantasy includes stuff like Urban Arcana, which is about D&D races and monsters showing up on Earth. Harry Dresden isn't a monster who eats people either. It includes something like Touched by an Angel.
Urban fantasy, or more accurately contemporary fantasy, is just fantasy takes place on contemporary Earth. Otherwise, it's a huge broad genre. It's just not a popular subject of ttrpgs for whatever reason.
I know I explained this already in another thread, but I think I need to repeat myself because your viewpoint leans towards myopia on the subject...
Urban fantasy as a setting to run in is still plenty popular... but because 95% of it just the modern world with whatever changes you make that is your particular expression of the supernatural you can use pretty much ANY modern setting RPG to run the genre.
Savage Worlds, Mutants & Masterminds, FATE (which already has a Harry Dresdan specific book) all have urban fantasy bits available in their core rules. Heck, the d20Modern SRD complete with the Urban Arcana material is still available with an internet search (https://www.spellbooksoftware.com/d20mrsd/srdhome.html) that took seconds.
You keep asking "Where are the alternatives to World of Darkness and Call of Cthulhu?" That's them! Right there!
You're just so focused on finding some title exclusively saying "urban fantasy" on the cover you've missed that what you want is already out there. And if its already out there and currently supported, why SHOULD someone go and write some bespoke book for a single setting?
Honestly? Its not the other gamers who are caught up supporting first movers and won't create anything else, its YOU who is so caught up on specific IP titles and wanting alternatives formatted to your specific demands and so has missed completely that the holes you say exist are already completely filled.
They just don't say "WOD-KILLER: The Urban Fantasy RPG" or "Off-Brand Star*Drive" on the cover like you want them to, so you ignore them and continue to bitch about there being no alternatives to WOD and Star*Drive and so forth.
Go grab the SWADE, FATE or M&M core rulebook... everything you'd want to do with Urban Fantasy or Sci-Fi is 100% doable with, at most, an optional rule or two.
I've got everything I wanted for "Hunters of the Damned" in Mutants & Masterminds 3e (including all the cybernetics and bio-modding for the cyberpunk elements already built for me) with nothing more than a setting document.
Why should I spend months or more on building a bespoke system that wouldn't have rules for half the ancillary stuff that M&M gives me for free?
That's why you don't see anything... because you refuse to look in the right place.
"You can use these random universal(?) rpgs from decades(?) ago to make your own game!"
Why would I do that when Urban Shadows 2e just released?
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on March 07, 2025, 08:05:32 AM"You can use these random universal(?) rpgs from decades(?) ago to make your own game!"
"This is why there hasn't been much released for a genre that is 90% the modern world."
Why would I do that when Urban Shadows 2e just released?
(https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XxI1hBl8el0/TMqRttSocdI/AAAAAAAAAg0/qeCTnkfDzAM/s1600/Headdesk.jpg)
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 07, 2025, 08:51:43 AMQuote from: BoxCrayonTales on March 07, 2025, 08:05:32 AM"You can use these random universal(?) rpgs from decades(?) ago to make your own game!"
"This is why there hasn't been much released for a genre that is 90% the modern world."
Why would I do that when Urban Shadows 2e just released?
(https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XxI1hBl8el0/TMqRttSocdI/AAAAAAAAAg0/qeCTnkfDzAM/s1600/Headdesk.jpg)
I know Urban Shadows exists, but thus far I haven't been able to really get into it. The rules are pretty good, probably a lot better than WoD. Maybe it could fill the void left by Paradox quietly canceling WoD as they seem to be doing. (You can check out the schedule yourself. Only one vampire book is scheduled for 2025.)
World Of Darkness peaked in the late '90s. Popular culture such as Buffy and Scooby-Doo overused the tropes and sorta bled it dry, but it was a lot of fun while it lasted. Those full-room Vampire The Masquerade conventions were something else, even into the early 2010s. I remember being like 20 and a 30 year-old lady trying to 'drain' my brain.
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/R3eqIqslrbs/hq720.jpg)
Btw, I'm trying to make a spiritual successor to Star*Drive. The setting, not the rules. It's a hugely detailed setting that easily rivals Star Trek, Star Wars and 40k in its complexity. It's hard af to write a substitute because I have to tiptoe around effing copyright. If somebody didn't already make a comparable setting (and believe me, I've spent years looking), then I get the impression that even trying would be casting pearls.
But of course the suits at Hasbro decided to ignore it and make yet another doomed scifi IP in Exodus. Copyright law is effing stupid. It's a fascist suppression of free speech.
Quote from: D-ko on March 07, 2025, 02:02:36 PMWorld Of Darkness peaked in the late '90s. Popular culture such as Buffy and Scooby-Doo overused the tropes and sorta bled it dry, but it was a lot of fun while it lasted. Those full-room Vampire The Masquerade conventions were something else, even into the early 2010s. I remember being like 20 and a 30 year-old lady trying to 'drain' my brain.
It's really silly how the IP has been bought and sold twice by new owners trying desperately to mine it for video games, only to fail every time. It's a very generic IP that you could emulate easily by writing your own IP. I don't understand why people keep fixating on it instead of moving on. It's dead, make something new! I feel like modern gamers have lost creativity and drive compared to 20-30 years ago.