Games Without Frontiers

Corporate overreach into Copyright and Fair Usage precedents is over this season
So the power play is  done. Of course, it's just "for now," I mean come on. The thought of including the OGL in my works started officially for me like six weeks ago for me. Four weeks ago, WOTC got all weird very publicly-- mind you the true fans of D&D were getting worried since last August. What somebody has been trying to do with a hobby, to put it into an accurate metaphor, which has always included people not employed by them making money, has been like someone trying to monopolize soup recipes.

Besides starting to write scenarios compatible for friends that are all into D&D style play, I really shouldn't have cared. But I did... .

It's the fucking principle
For some background, let's go personal. When I moved my published RPG rule conventions in my products one step away from official T&T with the Red Bat system, it was because I didn't want friction with the folks that taking over to produce new official material. This was as the folks that I had agreements went on to do other things like die or take up an Instagram career. Even when interlopers into OUR GAME's domain like Webbed Sphere arrogantly asked me to remove Tunnels and Trolls from titles of works, Peryton decided for me, let's just get along. No one, though, buying a whole lot of my and others particular PeryPubber works will not think that that stuff is compatible with T&T.  It's called FAIR USE. When a brand is created from ideas that are based on parts that are already indigenous within the market it is targeted, the owners of said brand, are entitled to ownership of the name, not the elements therein. 

When I heard that WOTC was demanding that every GM that had published self-created material in their company-owned virtual table top, Dung and Dung for your CPU, would be owned by them not the creators I was not too offended. Then as something about an OGL Alpha needing to be revised, and the, let's call them, Contractees would need to agree that their stuff out in the for sale domain was owned by that company, I started getting worried. That is like someone agreeing that water from their own property should be placed into plastic containers that they themselves must pay for for before pouring into a glass, whether drinkable or not.
This "Drinkable or Not" thing is going to come up later

This was a fight not just interesting to me. It's my life out here in the turnip fields of RPGdom while you, Captains of Cottage Industry, have been strip mining for copper from OGL Kickstarter mountains. It's okay though, it's all ideas. As long as your 19th level Beholder isn't in an fight with an Illithid in the 4th expansion of Ravenloft, NO ONE OWES anything, except, maybe, to the IRS, if, even so.

The WOTC water holders versus D&D
Business minded folks, think on this course of points. Not to be too broad, but Creatives compliment RPG manufacturers. RPG manufacturers manufacture RPGs. Artificial Intelligence and phone apps are trappings that either help creatives or plagiarize them. The folks at WOTC should have already known this, instead they chose to take directives from their ownership and mishandle things as a heavy-handed, exclusive-minded derivative brand. The product thereafter will be making money marginally for about a year at best.

When asked "Can you deal with the real market?", the leaders at WOTC demanded tithes and overreaches into their fandom's creative nature. I am no Doctor of Money-Making, but that strikes me as the wrong response in such a marginal field of sales. The underlying excuse was something about being inclusive and wanting to do good. How long does it take you to ask them, who exactly is being excluded and wanting to do harm WITHIN the purview of the company?
The answer of course being NOBODY.
Now the question is begged, there is no call to do anything.
There is no rational answer for what has occurred. Whoever at WOTC that has sought to continue an argument from 2014 with whomever needs to be fired, AND SOON.

Zardoz Takes Place in 2293

 Despite a meme going around , the plot of the movie Zardoz takes place in the year 2293. Folks that have watched the flick and like it should know that. This meme was either posted by someone that needs to watch the movie or couldn't be bothered to think of a better reason to start giving their viewing audience some awesome fashion advice but to lie.

You'll take my thigh-highs from my cold dead knees!

 Lying seems to be the coin of the realm these days. By realm I mean the roleplaying hobby and by lying, I am sure you know what I alluding to. This is causing some of the weirdest reactions in the cottage of our hobby industry.

What is Paizo is on about?
The games like Pathfinder/Starfinder have been distinct enough from WOTC prroducts for years not to need bother label them OGL. I am pretty sure the stuff was included to just remind folks that if they like D&D, they'll like these as well.
Now that WOTC is working against the OGL from 2000/2003/ beyond, Paizo announced it was doing what WOTC wanted, which was remove themselves a step further from being D&D-ish.
This O.R.C. thing does what, exactly? They are joined, at least in typing, by other companies that have made butter from the OGL as well as Chaosium which didn't. I mean it's good that the "smaller" companies in the RPG field decided to come up with a name to get their name around, but the licensing thing with its eternal foundation would be a waste of money if it ever takes place as announced. Hiring a few lawyers as sort of shield in case folks in Seattle decide to go to court to revoke U.S. copyright law just doesn't make sense. Hasbro does not want 200,000$ from Paizo, Green Ronin, Kobald Press, et al for each of the millions each of their products make. They want WOTC to shore up the D&D brand. The Open RPG movement is capitulation not defiance.
Good on them too. There is no reason for them to fight the fight of making the RPG cottage industry into "the D&D club." It'll be nice to see some well-funded material that isn't our dads' D&D.

It's the OSR that WOTC is targeting
With WOTC's management long standing strategy of working against folks that wrote for 5th edition D&D, Hasbro is looking to seize the cultural movement that can only be called, "You guys wanna play some D&D?". Its outlet, the WOTC, wanted to "lease for free" all material covered by their OGL (whatever form it took) as material for its reference base for AI material producers. Failing that they'll settle for declaring this or that third party D&D contributor unworthy of being such for reasons of their personal beliefs and artistic styles.
I doubt though, that Hasbro really wants to enable its WOTC managers, who can't help but fumble when it comes to dealing people half-way read up on things like Fair Use and copyright law, to really start challenging the Nazis and bigots that are seen in every corner in their minds. I am betting the OGL-dependent don't need to start going on hunger strikes just yet. 

It's a good year not to quit drinking
This is definitely the year to drop the OGL from any product that third party authors write for their D&D compatible publications. Maybe all the grognards will start to admit that they are roleplaying with a lot of war gaming, instead of explaining to everyone what the spirit of Gary Gygax told them when they went Mount Lake Geneva and came down with their particular rules on stone tablets. As for all the competing clubs, groups under this or that license, we'll see how that looks in two years.

"The Designer Formerly Known as Gygax"

TOG refers to The Other Game

 

So, you might've noticed a new logo on the SantaCrawl release a couple of weeks ago. It looked something like the image above. As I said before, I was really starting to look forward to making scenarios with a brand attached and really no sweat as to whom I attributed as the system and where exactly it should be used. Indeed the three sub-brands enshrined are at odds with each other to the point that anybody running the scenario under the cover would recognize, outside of a recognizable format the rules had to be interpreted by the GM.

That hasn't exactly changed. Circumstances have shifted though. 

All I can say is that these works will be compatible with rules that the Designer Formerly Known as Gygax and other folks that would not have liked to be described as "Old School" anything would recognize. With totally unconventional phrases like Charm, IQ, and Hits, the player is invited to immerse themselves in a hobby of adventure gaming. They can even roleplay if they, and the GM ,want to, without owing anybody any money. Warm up your 30-sided die because when we say polyhedral, I mean it.

Everytime At the Table: 8 Jan 23

 And so it was the finale of season two of Spacers: the W&J Clusters. Peryton, Iron Curtis, and Just Ben were taking bets as whether I'd show up, it was Bowie Day Eve after all. Well, I had my fun drinking too much and writing bad material, then I took a nap to burn off the drunk. About fifteen minutes before show time, I showed up with only a slight headache and being very thirsty.

Alezander B Captain of the Arcadia, Nextremi 37, and Gal Qixtar of the Gyyko Clan of the Devvah species finally made planetfall on Galileo. The Crig passengers aboard were so happy to be home. The moving city of Spost-Spost sprawled out before them. Of course with cargo having not paid their full fare, the crew of the transport ship decided to give the prodigal returnees a ride home to Crig Brood 146,034, known as Wise Key 27 as named by its human discoverers a few centuries ago.
They all then met the Prince-breed Crigs that were genetically designed to be the intelligentsia and managers of Crig broods. While no one was offering to pay the bill, things moved into the Back Chambers where they met Arodda, or Queen 146,034. For a human-like insect she had kept her figure despite being the mother of about two million Crig-- they have test-tubes and incubators these days, thank you very much.

Nextremi and Alezander had to get used to be talked about while they were in the room, because the Crig autocrat did not consider them truly sentient, much like the million plus off-spring of her own. Humans just aren't known for their planned breeding so in her mind the humans there were probably "Jo-Shmo"s meaning not-quite idiots but really dumb. Instead she couldn't help but speak only to Gal Qixtar despite his frequent glancing towards his partners. It became clear that she considered the humans as his pets. As this sunk in, another bomb dropped, she had plenty of money to spend because she was providing ground forces for the Panni United Kingdom as they invaded planet Earth.
Arodda then asked how much did she owe. At this point Gal Qixtar looked at the Captain, trying to make it clear that the humans were his PARTNERS. Seeing that the feral human did not lie to her, the brood engineer lightened up. She already knew, from the returned Crig, how much was agreed upon, she was their Mom after all. She dropped her racist act and let all three of her guests know that they had a friend.

Don't let this write up fool you. This session was mostly smoking and joking. Hilarious moments include me giving a long speech to everyone looking so interested for like 10 minutes. My screen had frozen. So much for that exposition.

One of the things that I worked out with this W&J Cluster session was the interstellar drive and a time dilation convention. While FLAT-Drive is done in instantaneous objective time, those "jumps" require at least five light years of somewhat clear space to function without the landings be in the middle of a gravity mass. There is a lot of time spent in "Near Travel" which is roughly .8 Light. So Alezander has been traveling abroad The Arcadia for about nine years of his life, but he's been gone from Earth for 50 years. There is currently in this Spacers setting no such thing as a Faster-Than-Light communication beyond the ships and their personnel exchanging information.

Iron Curtis also remembered that he had two sex-slaves, err ship's crew aboard Aracdia. Doctor Orlando and Bloom. We decided that these two clones, bought at Cassini Station (back in April 2022 in play days), wear tank-tops with their names pasted on them for ease of reference. Yeah, we need to start keeping better notes while boozing through our adventures.

TOG and then 'The Hell?

 As the astute reader already knows, Peryton Publishing has been challenged by some business entity that might or might not be invested in the role-playing community for its Tunnels and Trolls titles. Which I didn't really care about, having published the content that I wanted to WITH PERMISSION well before 2015. Still I have to worry about the T&T/Monsters! Monsters! authors that started showing up at the Press's doorstep since 2021 with the implied consent of no one actually producing anything for the brand at the time. Still it was not that big of a deal. I mean, we have M!M!'s permission in writing to rock on. I still wanted to try sales venues that didn't cause me publisher strife for publications for a HOBBY industry. So I swallowed my pride and said, I'd do D&D. What with its OGL, I'd not only be increasing my sales base. I'd not be bothered by this or that flea-market vendor that was laying claim to the brand of FRPG that I was working with, but have that big D&D light flashing over my OGL-labeled product.

So the latest SantaLands was deliberately OGL.

Well then WOTC decided that D&D was under monetized.So while moving on from a skirmish with would be T&T corporate think, I am now involved in a market where a douche bag skimpflation tactic on getting more money from the big twigs is the next big event. You see, OGL 2023 (OGL 1.1) suddenly wants all sort of sorts of things, mostly ID of who considers themselves to sell D&D products. They plan to take the free license from like two decades ago (the OGL) and see that it is negated according to their worldview. Damn dudes all I wanted to throw an OGL page or 36 disclaimer into some ten-page products to market them for about a dozen more sales. I never wanted to be a serf.

Typically enough, the squabble is only as defined as the promised release of the new OGL. So while I am getting hail storms and black holes on my information feed, I'm not getting much information. Hats off to all the lawyer D&D fans though. They're coming out of Nowhere Creek to say nothing, and not represent anyone, but to be officious responding to rumors from this or that pencil neck with news from a "trusted" source. If a flying saucer landed in their backyard yesterday, I'm sure they'd be the first to let us know. That is in like about 20 years, or so; really you are important to them.

Back to being a serf or deciding not to be, things are being argued. In this Corporation restructuring of fair use concepts in RPG material age, it's up to the invested.  Really I don't actually have a dog in this fight. When asked to remove Tunnels & Trolls, we went Monsters! Monsters! and because of that permission I will continue to provide, with real talent helping me out, product for that brand.

Even if I weren't a fan of brands, I'd have plenty of my stuff to work on. Still, you know, I cannot help but step into the fray. Look FRPG authors, regardless of whatever game system you are using, it's only a "tell" to mention the brand name while using it. While the "Open Game License" provided to you the rights to rewrite Ravenloft for Toddlers at a profit from some guy that worked for WOTC back in 944 BC, all it really did was flag market expectations for Big Systems later on, namely 2025. Go free, or pay. Just stop getting free legal advice from those that confuse creative sorts in the hobby.