This interesting blog entry I saw just today brought to mind to me an issue that I've been seeing growing steadily worse in DTPRG as the main printer of RPGs.

People are gaming the system to try to make more money off it. Fox, for example as detailed in the blog entry, has designated his product "OSR Community Content" and now 20 OUT OF 20 of the Top OSR Community Content Products are from his game, a warhammer rip-off, and not OSR. Nor are they talked about or played in the OSR; I'm guessing they're made by Fox, friends (or sockpuppets) of his, and a few other fans.

Which brings up another issue, I've heard from some people involved in DTRPG publishing the allegation that the reason Fox's game products are always huge huge bestsellers even though no one seems to play them is because on DTRPG you can issue yourself a massive publisher discount, and then buy a huge number of copies, essentially spending what might be a few hundred dollars in advertising money to shoot up the bestseller rankings.

I've heard other things, from people involved with DTRPG, including accusations of people making products that have like 40 blank pages to increase the listed pagecount, people cutting/pasting stuff or writing gibberish, making what amounts to spam product, etc.

It seems to me that any online printer of book material is likely to get spammers who will make absolute trash product to try to swindle a few customers though. That's to be expected even if DTRPG should take care to supervise that better. What's more serious is a dude co-opting an entire category of game to sell his game which is NOT part of that category, and the allegations that you can manipulate the rankings by buying your own books, L. Ron Hubbard style.  Wouldn't surprise me with that guy...

So, anyone have more info on this? Any insiders want to whistleblow the whole thing wide open, either on here or in DMs to me?

When 5e came out there were alot of fake "5e product!" on sale very quickly. One I got suckered into buying was Southlands Heroes bu Kobold press. 5e on the cover. Got to the end and... 3e SRD boilerplate. Their v2 STILL uses the 3e OGL boilerplate from 2000.

Having authored that post, I am more concerned about keeping the OSR associated with sharing open content than debating what systems the OSR should be associated with. Related to this I do NOT want Onebookshelf to be in the business of deciding to gets to use the OSR tag as that would be one step away from having an official gatekeeper.

The only thing I (and others) have asked OBS to do is to make sure that the brand specific tags like Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, OSRIC,  are accurately used. Figuring whether a product is supporting a specific published system or not is far easier than the more general OSR.

As for Daniel Fox, he sent me the link to his discord channel and I talked with him and several of the other Zweihander publishers. So we learned a few things from each other. He was not aware of how bad the no derivatives clause was of the OBS boilerplate license used for nearly all of the CC programs. I learned that in the agreement publisher sign when setting up these program that it is the publisher's responsibility to police for IP violations. That Daniel doesn't care if Zweihander publish material elsewhere for another systems. Or that they bring in existing material and adapt it for Zweihander. Something I was able to confirm quickly. The implication of this that publishers are not at the mercy of OBS and bear responsibility for the rights they require of people in order to participate. It also means a publisher can be more permissive than the legalese of the license. However the legalese mean the publisher at any time can chose to exert their rights. So it is best if the legalese actually states what the publisher intends.

Hopefully Daniel gets around to changing the legalese which he seems open to do. I will be checking in a few months.

As for the issue of OSR Community Content programs, Daniel, Zweihander publishers, and I talked about that. I pointed out that it highly unlikely that any of the bigger OSR publishers will setup a CCP due to the extensive use of the Open Game License. Unless there is a setting involved. So for now Daniel and Zweihander are getting a free marketing ride.

However as long Daniel changes the license for Zweihander in a few months to reflect what he actually does than I have no further complaints.

As for Zweihander, and Dan's approach to open content, I will tell everybody here what I told Daniel. I will grumble about what people do in the OSR in regards to open content but in the absence of other concerns like OBS CCP license, my reply will be to release more open content. In this case, if somebody doesn't like Daniel's approach with Zweihander then I recommend taking the time to write and release something that is open content and better.

Besides Zweihander, some OSR game systems do have their own walled gardens.  Kevin Crawford's stuff for instance, like Stars Without Number or Spears of the Dawn. Or Goblinoid Games's Starships & Spacemen 2nd Edition.  SWN and S&S do actually have third party products, but presumably that's from some other license, not publicly/freely available.

Some years ago a designer summed up the negative view many have of the OSR.
OSR -Only Steal Real (games).

The Hall of Champions has similar provisions to the Genesys Foundry where you can use your IP for other games (like a M&M game, etc.).

Quote from: trechriron;1119038The Hall of Champions has similar provisions to the Genesys Foundry where you can use your IP for other games (like a M&M game, etc.).

Hero Games are in the same boat as Zweihander. The CEO doesn't care if participants use their work outside of the programs as long as no Hero System IP is used however the legalese hasn't been updated. I talked to Jason their CEO and they are working on it.

As someone who has contributed to the Zweihander Grim & Perilous Library, I can only offer my observations.

Only a week or so after uploading my adventure module - The Tears of Calista, I was both surprised and a little shocked to find it selling at a much reduced price! After a bit of poking around I discovered it had become part of the community bundle. Then it appeared in an adventure bundle and this pushed the sales past the 50 mark to earn it the Copper Medal. Now its back at its normal price and selling no better or worse than it was before.

I'm not so sure that I tagged it as OSR or if this was added after the fact. If I added the OSR tag, its because that's the tag all the other products in the library had and I was just following form. In addition, the order of the text beneath preview was modified. Not that that was any big deal. All I can gather from my own observations is that Zweihander is actively perusing a marking strategy. I don't no if there is any gaming of the system going on, if there was, I would expect my adventure would have had a few reviews by now.

Publishing my adventure for the community content programme was an experiment. I wanted to use it to see what was required to publish something on Drivethru before opening my own publishing account and going it alone.

Its worth noting that I did strip quite a bit out of my adventure after reading the licence as I wasn't prepared to give it away, which is what the wording of the licence suggested.

Quote from: Winterblight;1119055As someone who has contributed to the Zweihander Grim & Perilous Library, I can only offer my observations.

Only a week or so after uploading my adventure module - The Tears of Calista, I was both surprised and a little shocked to find it selling at a much reduced price! After a bit of poking around I discovered it had become part of the community bundle. Then it appeared in an adventure bundle and this pushed the sales past the 50 mark to earn it the Copper Medal. Now its back at its normal price and selling no better or worse than it was before.

This was one of my problems with them back when it was RPGNow. James deliberately called on other people to design game art and supplements similar to what I  was already offering, and then placed that prominently in the sales pages instead of my contributions. I just publish on my own website(s) now, and will no longer share marketing space/ ad space with any other company,

Quote from: Winterblight;1119055Only a week or so after uploading my adventure module - The Tears of Calista, I was both surprised and a little shocked to find it selling at a much reduced price! After a bit of poking around I discovered it had become part of the community bundle. Then it appeared in an adventure bundle and this pushed the sales past the 50 mark to earn it the Copper Medal. Now its back at its normal price and selling no better or worse than it was before.

They do not allow you to set your own price?

Quote from: Lynn;1119077They do not allow you to set your own price?

They do. However, the fine print allows them to put it into bundles and/or be part of offers or promotions - which is exactly what happened. So while you can set the price, if it goes into a 50% off bundle, there's not much you can do about it. I'm not against it as such, I just wasn't expecting it so soon and  I've no idea if I'm better or worse for it.

Quote from: JeremyR;1119033Besides Zweihander, some OSR game systems do have their own walled gardens.  Kevin Crawford's stuff for instance, like Stars Without Number or Spears of the Dawn. Or Goblinoid Games's Starships & Spacemen 2nd Edition.  SWN and S&S do actually have third party products, but presumably that's from some other license, not publicly/freely available.

To be clear, those third-party SWN products aren't licensed because they don't need a license. Anyone can reproduce any SWN mechanics simply by using their own wording, and they have every right to plainly say that the result is SWN-compatible, provided they don't try to represent themselves as an "official" product. They can't include my actual IP in terms of setting or unique creative products, but making your own setting and writing content for it with SWN rules that you reference implicitly is something I don't need to be paid for or consulted about.

I've considered making a Sine Nomine Games Vault-type-thing on DTRPG, particularly with Worlds Without Number coming out eventually, but the sole benefit to that arrangement would be the ability to explicitly use my IP and verbatim content without arranging it personally with me, aside from having a clear marketing repository for attracting an interested audience.

Quote from: Winterblight;1119086They do. However, the fine print allows them to put it into bundles and/or be part of offers or promotions - which is exactly what happened. So while you can set the price, if it goes into a 50% off bundle, there's not much you can do about it. I'm not against it as such, I just wasn't expecting it so soon and  I've no idea if I'm better or worse for it.

Right, but putting it into bundles doesn't mean they are paying you your X% of full price, right? Otherwise, they are setting your prices for you, and that's never a good thing.

Bundles can be quite good for marketing and building a user base, but you should always be able to decide if you are going to participate in them or not. What is good for a brokerage company is not necessarily to the benefit of the individual suppliers. Ill give you a parallel example. I have licensed digital goods since the early 00s. Some brokerages go only for the 'easy money' and then deeply discount very quickly, because they have a fat pipe of content coming. Actual marketing isn't something they are interested in doing because that is real work. Once the initial heat comes off from a fresh release, they don't think about long term sales and 'bargain bin' your product. I had products from the early 00s that brokerages told me were 'through' within six months. Yet 10-15 years later, I can still generate revenue from them as new customers as well as new products drive the market. Those same products have been fixed, updated and remarketed, and the effort is rewarded with new sales.

Zweihander is OSR as it's a Warhammer clone, so I can't fault Zwei from being in the OSR category, no more than someone declaring mini-D6 being OSR. It's not a bad thing to expand OSR beyond "Based on TSR era D&D".

That said, if anyone is manipulating or gaming the DTRPG system, then DTRPG better clamp down on that shit before customers lose confidence in being able to buy quality. If publishers are stealing content, including blank pages, or otherwise "stuffing the ballot", then they need to be smacked.

Unfortunately, I have seen lots of 3e stuff being recycled, both as OSR and 5e products and while I hope the publishers did their due diligence and altered their products appropriately, I've heard too many people complaining many 3e publishers are just rehashing without concern for true system updates.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1119107That said, if anyone is manipulating or gaming the DTRPG system, then DTRPG better clamp down on that shit before customers lose confidence in being able to buy quality.

It's far, far too late for that.