Compatibility is marketing nonsense intended to segment the market. You can mix dice pools with D20 systems with percentiles, and in fact I have in the past. One of my favorite mecha campaigns used a homebrewed roll over D100 system for the mecha and Savage Worlds for the pilots. If your game distinguishes between attack rolls and saving throws, your game has more internal compatibility issues than it does with a completely different system.

I'm sorry, I needed to vent.

If I were RPG King for a Day, I would say that all RPGs should have a set boiler-plate OGL.

• Acknowledgements of Inspirations and OGL components used from other games.
• Don't Touch Content: The original OGL called this Product Identity, but I would prefer to call it Retained Content.
• List of Explicitly OGL-ified Content
• How to contact the designer to make a proposal to go outside of the OGL.

I can see valid reasons for designers wanting to withhold content rather than opening it all up in a Creative Commons, and it goes well beyond just claiming a name. I am quite apprehensive about letting homebrewers and hackers run wild with my own system's Reaction subsystem (every action can be taken as a reaction) because I know it's a tempting thing to hack, but also requires a much tighter action economy balance than vanilla D&D or Pathfinder. A beginner designer wanting to release a hack of it is more likely to butcher their own project than make a good product because if you obey the player inclination and open up the action economy...it breaks in several ways at once. Players will lose the ability to keep track of all their actions and action queue stacks will balloon out of control at the same time. A copyright law manual override exists if you rename and rephrase everything, and hackers should be reminded of that if they want to shoulder all the risk of doing it wrong. But fundamentally I don't want inexperienced designers flipping switches in this part of the system because it will break. At least not without consulting me because I know how this part of the system breaks.

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 16, 2023, 03:39:34 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 16, 2023, 01:53:45 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 16, 2023, 12:25:23 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 15, 2023, 08:15:59 PM

Quote from: Daddy Warpig on January 15, 2023, 08:08:50 PM
Maybe a clause requiring that if they choose to indicate compatibility, they must ALSO indicate, in no less a prominent fashion, that they are not affiliated with or endorsed by said system or the company who made it?

Fair is fair. They get to indicate compatibility without insinuating endorsement or approval.

I like this.

Except this proves my point as we've now stepped away from an open license into one that imposes restrictions on the licensee that are not a part of any CC license.

Then it's just a matter of which non-open license term is better for both parties in regards to resolving Freedom of Association; must the Licensee get permission from the Licenser if they wish to indicate association or are they compelled to make public declarations of non-affiliation in addition to declarations of compatibility?

Personally, I think the former is less onerous and fosters better relationships between parties. If the blanket rule is cannot indicate compatibility nor use logos, etc. then all third-party creations are on a level field by default and to indicate compatibility you must form some type of relationship with the Licenser to change that... a voluntary association.

By contrast, the second option requires no relationship with the licenser, just a decision of whether or not indicating non-affiliation is worth the benefit of indicating compatibility. In essence, each licensee remains an island who needs no contact with other parties.

Again, this is just me, but I would definitely prefer the one that fosters personal relationships because those relationships with people of similar mindset enables the prospect of collaborative work that could be greater than the sum of its parts, while each atomized livenser and licensee of the second need never even meet nor understand what the others might bring to the table if working together.

Maybe I'm hopelessly naïve about all that... maybe it's better for content creators in a hobby that's all about coming together to create things to remain independent islands... but I tend to doubt it.

I might be wrong but I think the CC By SA already has such a clause, where you can't write stuff that would make others think you're affiliated or stuff with the original creator. I'm perfectly fine with that.

The closest I found was section 2a6 (which is also in CC by A)

No endorsement. Nothing in this Public License constitutes or may be construed as permission to assert or imply that You are, or that Your use of the Licensed Material is, connected with, or sponsored, endorsed, or granted official status by, the Licensor or others designated to receive attribution as provided in Section 3(a)(1)(A)(i).

Actually, "cannot assert or imply connection with" sounds an awful lot like the "can't indicate compatibility with" that the OGL1.0a used and has long been claimed as an undue restriction upon the OGL license users.

The alternative interpretation; that noting compatibility is not the same indicating a connection with the Licensor; by contrast is very problematic as it doesn't disallow the Licensee saying nothing about connection while leaving it to the layman to wrongly interpret things and thereby harming the reputation of the Licensor.

i.e. our worst case Licensee releases "the pedo's guide to grooming" with "compatible with [your game here]" in two inch high letters on the cover. Under the latter interpretation you have no recourse and must explain to layman that notice of compatibility doesn't indicate an actual connection while the malicious Licensee laughs at the harm they have done to your reputation while you can do nothing to them.

If it's the former interpretation then the OGL1.0a's section 7 provision was actually nowhere near as onerous as many have claimed it was and people should start accepting the inability to claim compatibility with other material without the use of another license (the OGL1.0a merely required written permission; a very light mini-license within the license vs. requiring a second entire license) as the norm and not some onerous provision tacked onto what would otherwise be an open license.

If it's the latter interpretation, then the CC licenses lack sufficient Licensor protections for my comfort as the only other protections would be 5b which holds you not legally liable for actions taken by the Licensee using your material, but offers no protection of reputation because the difference between "compatible" and "connected with" is not something laypersons will readily distinguish in the same way so many had confused "perpetual" with "irrevocable."

ETA: from the CC wiki, it appears CC holds the second interpretation as true or at least it's fuzzy enough I'd want more clarification before being comfortable with its use;

In plain English, this means the user is not allowed to use attribution to make it appear that you in any way support or approve of their uses or adaptations of your work.

By strict reading, an indication of compatibility is NOT claiming or asserting you support or approve of the work... but they are not required to actually say "while compatible, we are not connected with" in order to clarify matters for a layman who thinks "perpetual" is the same as "irrevocable."

If there is something which clarifies that indicating compatibility IS a violation of the "no endorsement" clause then that particular objection I have is obviated. If it is confirmed that the intention is indicating compatibility doesn't violate "no endorsements" then I'll never be comfortable with using a CC license.

Lets assume you publish your game "Fantasy Heartbreaker 2,128,653" without an open license, lets assume you create your own "open" license with such provisions that you think will protect your reputation (up to forcing the licensee to put as the cover : "Not affiliated, connected nor sponsored by XYZ" in huge font and nothing else) I don't see how the fuck does that prevent John Doe down the street from creating the module you say and puitting on the cover it's compatible with your game. I mean the law already allows for that.

You're creating a boogie man that only exists without morality clauses and or other stuff on the license, when, BY LAW, such things are already possible without your permission.

The only difference I see is that without a license most people wouldn't use your stuff to create modules.

But, here's an easy fix for you:

Publish your game WITHOUT an open license of any kind, THEN create an SRD (that doesn't share the name of your game) and put THAT under an open license WITHOUT such clauses.

Lets say your engine is called the d20+, so the SRD is the d20+ Engine SRD, compatibility would be to the SRD and games based on it.

Here's the bad news: That still doesn't prevent any schmuck from creating something YOU don't want associated with your game in any shape or form and indicating compatibility in the cover to your game, like Dredd would say: "IT'S THE LAW!"

Quote from: Fheredin on January 16, 2023, 11:17:43 AM
Compatibility is marketing nonsense intended to segment the market. You can mix dice pools with D20 systems with percentiles, and in fact I have in the past. One of my favorite mecha campaigns used a homebrewed roll over D100 system for the mecha and Savage Worlds for the pilots. If your game distinguishes between attack rolls and saving throws, your game has more internal compatibility issues than it does with a completely different system.

That's... so overly simplistic it hurts.

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 16, 2023, 10:40:17 AM

Quote from: jhkim on January 16, 2023, 10:04:19 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 16, 2023, 03:39:34 AM
i.e. our worst case Licensee releases "the pedo's guide to grooming" with "compatible with [your game here]" in two inch high letters on the cover. Under the latter interpretation you have no recourse and must explain to layman that notice of compatibility doesn't indicate an actual connection while the malicious Licensee laughs at the harm they have done to your reputation while you can do nothing to them.

If it's the former interpretation then the OGL1.0a's section 7 provision was actually nowhere near as onerous as many have claimed it was and people should start accepting the inability to claim compatibility with other material without the use of another license (the OGL1.0a merely required written permission; a very light mini-license within the license vs. requiring a second entire license) as the norm and not some onerous provision tacked onto what would otherwise be an open license.

It is already part of trademark law that you can't use other people's trademarks in such a way that it implies they are responsible for your product. That's the entire point of trademark law.

However, trademark law does allow for indicating compatibility - as long as you make clear that you're not part of or endorsed by the trademark user.

I never said "use the trademark." I said plastered "a compatible supplement for [Your game here]" in two inch high letters on the cover... how many everyday consumers are going to really distinguish between the actual trademarked logo and say, the name of a company in Times New Roman at 144pt size with the words "a compatible supplement for" also in Times New Roman?

So unless there are specific rules related to how you can indicate compatibility in plain text, you're looking at a malicious user being able to harm your reputation without recourse (unless they're doing it without a license in which case Libel is an option).

I can do it right now without a license of any kind, I could write the most "incel, shitlord, alt-right, notzee (by the woke standards)" suplement and put on the cover it's compatible with D&D 5e, there's NO LAW preventing me from it. Furthermore, IF Hasbro/WotC tried to stop me it now becomes a first amendment case if I'm not mistaken. Hell I could do it for every edition of their game and they can do jack shit about it, beyond lawfare.

Quote from: Fheredin on January 16, 2023, 11:17:43 AM
Compatibility is marketing nonsense intended to segment the market. You can mix dice pools with D20 systems with percentiles, and in fact I have in the past. One of my favorite mecha campaigns used a homebrewed roll over D100 system for the mecha and Savage Worlds for the pilots. If your game distinguishes between attack rolls and saving throws, your game has more internal compatibility issues than it does with a completely different system.

I'm sorry, I needed to vent.

If I were RPG King for a Day, I would say that all RPGs should have a set boiler-plate OGL.

• Acknowledgements of Inspirations and OGL components used from other games.
• Don't Touch Content: The original OGL called this Product Identity, but I would prefer to call it Retained Content.
• List of Explicitly OGL-ified Content
• How to contact the designer to make a proposal to go outside of the OGL.

I can see valid reasons for designers wanting to withhold content rather than opening it all up in a Creative Commons, and it goes well beyond just claiming a name. I am quite apprehensive about letting homebrewers and hackers run wild with my own system's Reaction subsystem (every action can be taken as a reaction) because I know it's a tempting thing to hack, but also requires a much tighter action economy balance than vanilla D&D or Pathfinder. A beginner designer wanting to release a hack of it is more likely to butcher their own project than make a good product because if you obey the player inclination and open up the action economy...it breaks in several ways at once. Players will lose the ability to keep track of all their actions and action queue stacks will balloon out of control at the same time. A copyright law manual override exists if you rename and rephrase everything, and hackers should be reminded of that if they want to shoulder all the risk of doing it wrong. But fundamentally I don't want inexperienced designers flipping switches in this part of the system because it will break. At least not without consulting me because I know how this part of the system breaks.

You lost me when you went all authoritarian, your way means the rights of the developer, publisher have been violated by YOU forcing them to put their shit as Open Content.

Geeky, that particular thread was getting really long and nested so I'm starting fresh with this post just for sanity and readability.

The primary distinction I see is that, without license protection the content creator COULD go after a third party under libel laws if their claims of compatibility are so prominent that a layperson would assume association and thereby harm your reputation.

Trademark also isn't just a specific logo... the phrase "Dungeons & Dragons" itself trademarked. Similarly, you can't put out a book titled "The Adventures of Clark Kent" regardless of the font used (even if you could use the name Clark Kent inside the book) because Clark Kent is a registered trademark of DC Comics.

There is a solid case that plastering "compatible with [trademarked title]" even in plain text prominently in promotional material or prominently on a cover is trademark violation as you're attempting to use the trademarked term to promote your material via its prominence on your cover/promotions rather than just indicating compatibility, which could be done via a notice in a normal sized font inside the book.

If the use was also connected to a product that could be perceived as harmful to the reputation of the trademark holder an additional charge of libel I would think could be attached as you are using their registered trademark in a more prominent than required fashion to imply a connection to laypersons that is harmful to the trademark holder's reputation.

The problem as I see it currently is many of you deriding any license restrictions are operating on the assumption that everyone is going to approaching these licenses in good faith. You've never dealt with exploitive and malicious opportunists before in a legal sense (I have and it was both painful and costly).

You don't need a license for those operating in good faith. You need it to protect yourself (to the degree its possible) from those NOT acting in good faith.

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 16, 2023, 11:51:00 AM
Geeky, that particular thread was getting really long and nested so I'm starting fresh with this post just for sanity and readability.

The primary distinction I see is that, without license protection the content creator COULD go after a third party under libel laws if their claims of compatibility are so prominent that a layperson would assume association and thereby harm your reputation.

Trademark also isn't just a specific logo... the phrase "Dungeons & Dragons" itself trademarked. Similarly, you can't put out a book titled "The Adventures of Clark Kent" regardless of the font used (even if you could use the name Clark Kent inside the book) because Clark Kent is a registered trademark of DC Comics.

There is a solid case that plastering "compatible with [trademarked title]" even in plain text prominently in promotional material or prominently on a cover is trademark violation as you're attempting to use the trademarked term to promote your material via its prominence on your cover/promotions rather than just indicating compatibility, which could be done via a notice in a normal sized font inside the book.

If the use was also connected to a product that could be perceived as harmful to the reputation of the trademark holder an additional charge of libel I would think could be attached as you are using their registered trademark in a more prominent than required fashion to imply a connection to laypersons that is harmful to the trademark holder's reputation.

The problem as I see it currently is many of you deriding any license restrictions are operating on the assumption that everyone is going to approaching these licenses in good faith. You've never dealt with exploitive and malicious opportunists before in a legal sense (I have and it was both painful and costly).

You don't need a license for those operating in good faith. You need it to protect yourself (to the degree its possible) from those NOT acting in good faith.

I'm not sure you understand trademark law.

Indicating compatibility in the cover is how it used to be done BEFORE the OGL, even using the logo or other trademarks is allowed. What's not legal is to do it in such a way it indicates you're sponsored or tied in any other way to the trademark holder.

By simply stating "Compatible with D&D" in the cover it doesn't indicate anything of the sort. Furthermore I could put in the first page a legend saying imnot in any way shape or form tied to the trademark holder thus shielding me from the law (not lawfare but that's thanks to the fucked up American justice system).

You're thinking like the woke, guilt by association. Where compatibility means sponsorship or agreement with the supplement. It doesn't.

WITHOUT a license, right now, I could write a supplement compatible with D&D and, IF lawfare wasn't a thing they could do jack shit, the same goes for smaller publishers since they lack the deep pockets Hasbro has.

Any license doesn't:
Supercede law
Restrict those who don't use the license
Ergo morality clauses and other restrictions make zero sense, because:

Those operating in good faith will do so license or no license
Those operating in bad faith will do so without using the license
Unless you have multimillion deep pockets you can't win a case in court, and if you do have those multimillion you won't win, you'll just make the other party quit.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 16, 2023, 11:26:45 AM
I can do it right now without a license of any kind, I could write the most "incel, shitlord, alt-right, notzee (by the woke standards)" suplement and put on the cover it's compatible with D&D 5e, there's NO LAW preventing me from it. Furthermore, IF Hasbro/WotC tried to stop me it now becomes a first amendment case if I'm not mistaken. Hell I could do it for every edition of their game and they can do jack shit about it, beyond lawfare.

Shorter version of what I said above; as the phrase "D&D" is a registered trademark they actually COULD slam you for trademark infringement if your announcement of compatibility was prominent enough to be construed as an attempt to use their trademark to promote your product.

You could probably successfully claim it was simply a "notice of compatibility" if it was say, 12pt plain text at the bottom of the cover or advertisement for your product. Somewhere between there and 144pt bold text on your cover and your claim evaporates as it's clear you are using the trademarked term to promote your product.

And if said product is also something that would be harmful to the trademark holder's reputation, they could slam you for Libel on top as your use of their trademark to promote your product also caused harm to the trademark holder's reputation.

All this "the laws don't mean a thing and can't stop you from doing whatever you want" is how a lot of people end up losing a lot of money because they never bothered to understand what the laws actually say. "screw the Man" great right up until you're filing for bankruptcy over having to cover their legal fees.

That's where something like the OGL is actually much better for lay users than the CC licenses; they took the legalese of the "No Endorsements" clause and the practical matter of trademark infringement (i.e. trademarks include plaintext of a product name and fair use notice of compatibility; which is already covered via the license; only extends so far) and simplified it down to the layman comprehensible "can't indicate compatibility with product without written permission."

i.e. it's basically a notice of how not to get sued under regular trademark laws while using the material offered.

Meanwhile, even if it's 90% just mechanics... copyright on expression does exist; meaning you do have to rewrite those mechanics in your own words... unless you have a license saying it's okay to cut and paste that particular expression into your material; saving you a lot of time and worry over whether you've differentiated your expression of the mechanics enough to avoid legal problems. That's of real value to a Licensee who doesn't want to deal with the hassle of rewriting mechanical expressions and would rather just get on to the cool idea they had which made them want to create a supplement in the first place.

A shorter version yet; a lot of these arguments for totally open licenses seem to be based on idealized and platonic ideals of human interaction and not how things actually work in practice. It's basically a variation of how Communism is always the perfect system on paper while Capitalism in the worst system in real life excepting every other system that's been tried.

I applaud your idealism, but I want a prsctical license that will actually work for my purposes and those of third parties who use it.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 16, 2023, 12:24:14 PM
Unless you have multimillion deep pockets you can't win a case in court, and if you do have those multimillion you won't win, you'll just make the other party quit.

Those are the same thing.

Quote from: Bruwulf on January 16, 2023, 12:28:46 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 16, 2023, 12:24:14 PM
Unless you have multimillion deep pockets you can't win a case in court, and if you do have those multimillion you won't win, you'll just make the other party quit.

Those are the same thing.

Practically speaking yes, but you didn't win the case because it wasn't decided by the judge or jury.

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 16, 2023, 12:27:38 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 16, 2023, 11:26:45 AM
I can do it right now without a license of any kind, I could write the most "incel, shitlord, alt-right, notzee (by the woke standards)" suplement and put on the cover it's compatible with D&D 5e, there's NO LAW preventing me from it. Furthermore, IF Hasbro/WotC tried to stop me it now becomes a first amendment case if I'm not mistaken. Hell I could do it for every edition of their game and they can do jack shit about it, beyond lawfare.

Shorter version of what I said above; as the phrase "D&D" is a registered trademark they actually COULD slam you for trademark infringement if your announcement of compatibility was prominent enough to be construed as an attempt to use their trademark to promote your product.

You could probably successfully claim it was simply a "notice of compatibility" if it was say, 12pt plain text at the bottom of the cover or advertisement for your product. Somewhere between there and 144pt bold text on your cover and your claim evaporates as it's clear you are using the trademarked term to promote your product.

And if said product is also something that would be harmful to the trademark holder's reputation, they could slam you for Libel on top as your use of their trademark to promote your product also caused harm to the trademark holder's reputation.

All this "the laws don't mean a thing and can't stop you from doing whatever you want" is how a lot of people end up losing a lot of money because they never bothered to understand what the laws actually say. "screw the Man" great right up until you're filing for bankruptcy over having to cover their legal fees.

That's where something like the OGL is actually much better for lay users than the CC licenses; they took the legalese of the "No Endorsements" clause and the practical matter of trademark infringement (i.e. trademarks include plaintext of a product name and fair use notice of compatibility; which is already covered via the license; only extends so far) and simplified it down to the layman comprehensible "can't indicate compatibility with product without written permission."

i.e. it's basically a notice of how not to get sued under regular trademark laws while using the material offered.

Meanwhile, even if it's 90% just mechanics... copyright on expression does exist; meaning you do have to rewrite those mechanics in your own words... unless you have a license saying it's okay to cut and paste that particular expression into your material; saving you a lot of time and worry over whether you've differentiated your expression of the mechanics enough to avoid legal problems. That's of real value to a Licensee who doesn't want to deal with the hassle of rewriting mechanical expressions and would rather just get on to the cool idea they had which made them want to create a supplement in the first place.

A shorter version yet; a lot of these arguments for totally open licenses seem to be based on idealized and platonic ideals of human interaction and not how things actually work in practice. It's basically a variation of how Communism is always the perfect system on paper while Capitalism in the worst system in real life excepting every other system that's been tried.

I applaud your idealism, but I want a prsctical license that will actually work for my purposes and those of third parties who use it.

Hasbro can fuck you over using a d20 in your game if they so want. Because they have the money to do so, it's called lawfare.

But we're not speaking about them, we're speaking of us tiny fish, So lets think it through:

UNLESS I put your trademark in such a way and position as to make others think it is YOUR product I'm safe. I don't have the time to search it but find the Lost Worlds supplement for Champions/Hero, it says it's compatible with in the bottom of the cover, IIRC it even uses the logo, and it's older than the OGL IIRC.

So my cover says supplement XYZ, published by NOT YOU, and it also includes a big enough font as to be seen without holding the book on your hands a declaration of compatibility with YOUR game up to and including using YOUR logo.

There's exactly jack shit you could do, because you will lose in court. Even if it's the most "bigoted" supplement ever.

More so if I include (as it's normal) a notice in the first page that I'm in no way shape or form affiliated, sponsored, etc by YOU.

And your license can't stop me because I would need to use it to be constrained by it and I'm acting in bad faith so I don't. Since your license can't supercede law you're fucked anyway.

The optimal license would be a Trademark license, as that's ultimately the only thing you're giving rights to, because third party publishers:

• already have a right to reference, copy, and remix your Mechanics.
• already have a right to claim their product is Compatible with yours.
• can (and likely will) remix your work to the point it's no longer covered by your Copyright.

The ONLY thing they cannot do is use your Trademarks. In other words all the elements which make your game setting unique. Everything else is moot. This is why the OGL permitted you to use named elements declared as Open Game Content, and even that's moot if those elements couldn't be protected as Trademarks in the first place.

Because unlike other media RPGs aren't just discreet works of art, but a set of processes and practices designed to generate unique content in connection to other content. They have more in common with software than the written word here, but named entities are not considered Trademarks in the former, which is why Copyright licensing while not ideal has been sufficient.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig on January 15, 2023, 08:08:50 PM
Maybe a clause requiring that if they choose to indicate compatibility, they must ALSO indicate, in no less a prominent fashion, that they are not affiliated with or endorsed by said system or the company who made it?

Fair is fair. They get to indicate compatibility without insinuating endorsement or approval.

The law already requires you to not insinuate endorsement or approval when making claims of compatibility. That's literally the metric they use when deciding if you violated Trademark rights when doing so.

The more I look into these matters, the more it becomes apparent that these open source licenses are completely toothless.

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 16, 2023, 03:39:34 AM
The closest I found was section 2a6 (which is also in CC by A)

No endorsement. Nothing in this Public License constitutes or may be construed as permission to assert or imply that You are, or that Your use of the Licensed Material is, connected with, or sponsored, endorsed, or granted official status by, the Licensor or others designated to receive attribution as provided in Section 3(a)(1)(A)(i).

Actually, "cannot assert or imply connection with" sounds an awful lot like the "can't indicate compatibility with" that the OGL1.0a used and has long been claimed as an undue restriction upon the OGL license users.

Yeah I'm a bit uncomfortable with that ambiguity too, but given it's a Copyright license the concept of 'compatibility' or 'interoperable' really don't apply. Again the thing RPGs need to license are concepts, not specific documents or images. And just because someone gives you the Copyrights to a specific work doesn't mean they give you the Trademark rights to the entities referenced in that work.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 16, 2023, 11:29:02 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on January 16, 2023, 11:17:43 AM
Compatibility is marketing nonsense intended to segment the market. You can mix dice pools with D20 systems with percentiles, and in fact I have in the past. One of my favorite mecha campaigns used a homebrewed roll over D100 system for the mecha and Savage Worlds for the pilots. If your game distinguishes between attack rolls and saving throws, your game has more internal compatibility issues than it does with a completely different system.

I'm sorry, I needed to vent.

If I were RPG King for a Day, I would say that all RPGs should have a set boiler-plate OGL.

• Acknowledgements of Inspirations and OGL components used from other games.
• Don't Touch Content: The original OGL called this Product Identity, but I would prefer to call it Retained Content.
• List of Explicitly OGL-ified Content
• How to contact the designer to make a proposal to go outside of the OGL.

I can see valid reasons for designers wanting to withhold content rather than opening it all up in a Creative Commons, and it goes well beyond just claiming a name. I am quite apprehensive about letting homebrewers and hackers run wild with my own system's Reaction subsystem (every action can be taken as a reaction) because I know it's a tempting thing to hack, but also requires a much tighter action economy balance than vanilla D&D or Pathfinder. A beginner designer wanting to release a hack of it is more likely to butcher their own project than make a good product because if you obey the player inclination and open up the action economy...it breaks in several ways at once. Players will lose the ability to keep track of all their actions and action queue stacks will balloon out of control at the same time. A copyright law manual override exists if you rename and rephrase everything, and hackers should be reminded of that if they want to shoulder all the risk of doing it wrong. But fundamentally I don't want inexperienced designers flipping switches in this part of the system because it will break. At least not without consulting me because I know how this part of the system breaks.

You lost me when you went all authoritarian, your way means the rights of the developer, publisher have been violated by YOU forcing them to put their shit as Open Content.

Uhhh...no. You can just state the entire work is Don't Touch Content. The only requirement I would say should be enforced is Acknowledgements. If you can't put a Works Cited in your RPG, you really shouldn't be writing an RPG. The point is that this would be a standard format everyone could follow which would enable content creators to retain all rights, release all rights, or put the peg anywhere between, and hackers would know exactly where to look to find the terms of the OGL.

Geeky, don't get in a huff while putting straw man arguments in other people's mouths. That's SJW nonsense.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on January 16, 2023, 01:39:34 PM
The optimal license would be a Trademark license, as that's ultimately the only thing you're giving rights to, because third party publishers:

• already have a right to reference, copy, and remix your Mechanics.
• already have a right to claim their product is Compatible with yours.
• can (and likely will) remix your work to the point it's no longer covered by your Copyright.

The ONLY thing they cannot do is use your Trademarks. In other words all the elements which make your game setting unique. Everything else is moot. This is why the OGL permitted you to use named elements declared as Open Game Content, and even that's moot if those elements couldn't be protected as Trademarks in the first place.

Because unlike other media RPGs aren't just discreet works of art, but a set of processes and practices designed to generate unique content in connection to other content. They have more in common with software than the written word here, but named entities are not considered Trademarks in the former, which is why Copyright licensing while not ideal has been sufficient.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig on January 15, 2023, 08:08:50 PM
Maybe a clause requiring that if they choose to indicate compatibility, they must ALSO indicate, in no less a prominent fashion, that they are not affiliated with or endorsed by said system or the company who made it?

Fair is fair. They get to indicate compatibility without insinuating endorsement or approval.

The law already requires you to not insinuate endorsement or approval when making claims of compatibility. That's literally the metric they use when deciding if you violated Trademark rights when doing so.

The more I look into these matters, the more it becomes apparent that these open source licenses are completely toothless.

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 16, 2023, 03:39:34 AM
The closest I found was section 2a6 (which is also in CC by A)

No endorsement. Nothing in this Public License constitutes or may be construed as permission to assert or imply that You are, or that Your use of the Licensed Material is, connected with, or sponsored, endorsed, or granted official status by, the Licensor or others designated to receive attribution as provided in Section 3(a)(1)(A)(i).

Actually, "cannot assert or imply connection with" sounds an awful lot like the "can't indicate compatibility with" that the OGL1.0a used and has long been claimed as an undue restriction upon the OGL license users.

Yeah I'm a bit uncomfortable with that ambiguity too, but given it's a Copyright license the concept of 'compatibility' or 'interoperable' really don't apply. Again the thing RPGs need to license are concepts, not specific documents or images. And just because someone gives you the Copyrights to a specific work doesn't mean they give you the Trademark rights to the entities referenced in that work.

Assuming you trademarked EVERYTHING that makes your game unique, at $1,000+ US a pop that's a lot of money.

I already can use one type of trademark, namely brand or logo to indicate compatibility.

Yes, you CAN remix my stuff until it's no longer covered by copyright, and you could do the same for trademark, but at that point it's no longer recognizable as the same as mine.

An Open License serves the purpose of allowing you to NOT remix/reword/etc my stuff and use it without worries even if it's ONLY covered by copyright.

With the added benefit that if enough people create stuff that's compatible with yours then a network effect starts to take place, you sell their shit without even trying and they sell yours.