Shadowrun could do an ogl as dnd. I don't know about how other groups played but when we played dnd we only used wizards products. even then we mainly stuck to the three core books because everything else seemed watered down or of a poorer quality. the only non wizards books that i liked were setting books. that was the best part about the ogl, you could play using the same rules in a different setting. the big problem was the rules.
if shadowrun was to go ogl i don't think you would have many 3rd party products for shadowrun. what i could see happening is the sr rules system being implimented for other games. like how they made a stargate d20 game. sr would have been a far better system to handle stargate than d20. same with many of the other games. Shadowrun could even make it so that books couldn't be published with the SR logo, but have some other marking to make it identifiable as the sr system. Personal if there was a third party cyberbook i wouldn't be using it in my sr games once augmentation had been relased. also, judging from how dnd feats are reprinted, if there was good pieces in other books sr could take the 'ware they like out of 3rd party books and placing it in their shadowrun books. that would keep the quality of sr at it's near perfect standards.
Full Version: Shadowrun and Open Source
Frank: ignoring the question of whether or not that makes using the term meaningful, your claim rejects the existence of Paranoia. You're going to have to weaken it to have a hope of it being true.
~J
~J
There have been third party products in the Shadowrun game history. Ka*ge magazine and Shadowland magazine, The Shadowrun Supplemental as well as adventures, settings and characters scattered through game publications. I have only seen a couple Ka*ges, but have heard the content was not that great. I have all the Shadowland mags and the content is erratic - some seems fine and may have even found its way into a later edition, but much of it is questionable, silly and/or unbalancing. TSS is nice, however even they would rely a bit too much on the contributor where the contributor made an honest mistake (such as a typo, or a math error.) Some of the gaming magazine efforts seemed to feature authors who made their NPC (such as a vampire or werewolf) which didn't really conform to the SR rules. Others exploited kinks in the rules.
All in all, you find about the same quality of material on related websites.
Another third party that has been pretty good is the Missions team. The more of them I go through, the more I have appreciated their quality.
All in all, you find about the same quality of material on related websites.
Another third party that has been pretty good is the Missions team. The more of them I go through, the more I have appreciated their quality.
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi) |
| Frank: ignoring the question of whether or not that makes using the term meaningful, your claim rejects the existence of Paranoia. You're going to have to weaken it to have a hope of it being true. ~J |
Paranoia is 23 years old and doesn't fall into any generalization I may make about "basically every game written in the last 20 years".
-Frank
| QUOTE (tisoz) |
| All in all, you find about the same quality of material on related websites. |
Hey!
I'd point out that there is some debate on whether D&D going open-source was actually helpful or harmful in the long run to the parent publisher.
I imagine, though, for a larger publisher, third party groups producing add-ons to their product might be more harmful than for a smaller publisher. There's a reason Microsoft privately hates open source with a passion.
As for "every game in the past 20 years has been open source", this is incorrect, and stems from an erroneous understanding about what makes something "open source".
Open Source refers to free and open public publishing and distribution of work, not merely private use and modification. You might have been able to house rule and modify and write for your AD&D game in the privacy of your own homes, but you could not, say, have it printed and distributed in game stores or whatever without potentially running afoul of the law and getting your ass sued off.
TSR back in the day used to be absolutely draconian about getting websites with closed D&D content shut down. It's one of the reasons they got the moniker "T$R".
Open Source is any published content that may be modified and publically redistributed by third parties without specific prior approval or review by the license owner. They set up a license that says, "Hey, as long as you follow these guidelines, you can make stuff based on our product for free and without having to contact us first."
I know this because I used to be a campaign coordinator for a WotC-run convention campaign containing large amounts of closed content. When WotC dropped the campaign from their support, we tried to go independent, and as a result got their lawyers breathing down our necks. We ended up having to strip all the closed content from the campaign and go strictly OGL.
Was an eye-opening experience, to be sure.
-karma
I imagine, though, for a larger publisher, third party groups producing add-ons to their product might be more harmful than for a smaller publisher. There's a reason Microsoft privately hates open source with a passion.
As for "every game in the past 20 years has been open source", this is incorrect, and stems from an erroneous understanding about what makes something "open source".
Open Source refers to free and open public publishing and distribution of work, not merely private use and modification. You might have been able to house rule and modify and write for your AD&D game in the privacy of your own homes, but you could not, say, have it printed and distributed in game stores or whatever without potentially running afoul of the law and getting your ass sued off.
TSR back in the day used to be absolutely draconian about getting websites with closed D&D content shut down. It's one of the reasons they got the moniker "T$R".
Open Source is any published content that may be modified and publically redistributed by third parties without specific prior approval or review by the license owner. They set up a license that says, "Hey, as long as you follow these guidelines, you can make stuff based on our product for free and without having to contact us first."
I know this because I used to be a campaign coordinator for a WotC-run convention campaign containing large amounts of closed content. When WotC dropped the campaign from their support, we tried to go independent, and as a result got their lawyers breathing down our necks. We ended up having to strip all the closed content from the campaign and go strictly OGL.
Was an eye-opening experience, to be sure.
-karma
EDIT : Oops, didn't see it has been discussed before. Anyway, I'll leave that here for those interested.
Shadowrun is already partly Open Source.
I mean, you can add and edit content of the game and distribute it freely. There's no game mechanism that you can't access, and the only thing that is kept closed (about released products at least) are plots issues.
You can send your modifications or new things to the main development team and they decide if it should be added to the official SR4 line. If you want to differ from the dev team, you can legally decide to create your own line based on the original SR products but modified by you (and other people) as is done with SR3R.
If you have Fanpro's permission you can even sell your own official Shadowrun books (as shown with local sourcebooks or local additions to books).
For me, that's already a lot of Open-sourceness.
The only big thing you can't get is the WIP of the new books. And I'm not sure it goes against Open-Source (I don't think you have to update the source-code after each modification you make).
Shadowrun is already partly Open Source.
I mean, you can add and edit content of the game and distribute it freely. There's no game mechanism that you can't access, and the only thing that is kept closed (about released products at least) are plots issues.
You can send your modifications or new things to the main development team and they decide if it should be added to the official SR4 line. If you want to differ from the dev team, you can legally decide to create your own line based on the original SR products but modified by you (and other people) as is done with SR3R.
If you have Fanpro's permission you can even sell your own official Shadowrun books (as shown with local sourcebooks or local additions to books).
For me, that's already a lot of Open-sourceness.
The only big thing you can't get is the WIP of the new books. And I'm not sure it goes against Open-Source (I don't think you have to update the source-code after each modification you make).
Er, no, not unless Wizkids/FanPro (Or whoever they are now, I can't keep track) changed their licensing somehow recently and I didn't notice.
| QUOTE |
| You can send your modifications or new things to the main development team and they decide if it should be added to the official SR4 line. |
This is the same as any other closed-content intellectual property.
| QUOTE |
| If you want to differ from the dev team, you can legally decide to create your own line based on the original SR products but modified by you (and other people) as is done with SR3R. |
This is not how intellectual property laws work.
You can make you own derivative material for your home game, as this generally falls under "fair use" statutes and is implicitly allowed by the nature of role-playing games.
You cannot legally publish that derivative material outside your private use. Technically this includes web publishing.
Now, a parent company may decide to overlook what you did and do nothing, but this does not alter the fact that the distribution is illegal - plenty of illegal stuff goes un-reported and un-acted upon.
The problem inherent with doing nothing about someone violating your intellectual property rights is that under current IP law in many countries (including the United States), if it can be proven that you knew about violations and did nothing to stop them, you can actually lose the rights to your property. It can be interpreted as willfully abandoning your property to the public domain.
There's a little wiggle room here - it must be shown that you knew about the property violation. Many publishers look the other way about stuff like small time web published fan material, as they can reasonably claim they did not know about it. What's the old term? "Plausible Deniability"?
Alternately, a publisher can look at a work, and simply say, "This is okay, these guys specifically have permission to produce this stuff, and we're not charging them anything." Essentially granting a limited-use license. I assume the content hosted on Dumpshock falls under this category.
| QUOTE |
| If you have Fanpro's permission you can even sell your own official Shadowrun books (as shown with local sourcebooks or local additions to books). |
Again, this is the Closed Content model working here. You can get a license to publish material. That's not open content at all, that's you going and getting a contract that gives you permission to sell the work.
Open and Closed content is all about whether you need to get specific prior permission to publish derivative work, in a nutshell.
It has nothing to do with anything you want to do in your private game sessions.
Honestly, there's not that much reason for FanPro to go to an Open Content system. If they want more third party folks to create content, they can just individually sub-license to third parties to produce that content.
-karma
| QUOTE (KarmaInferno) |
| There's a little wiggle room here - it must be shown that you knew about the property violation. Many publishers look the other way about stuff like small time web published fan material, as they can reasonably claim they did not know about it. What's the old term? "Plausible Deniability"? |
In FanPro's case there is explicit permission to produce supplementary material. They have a copy of the Shadowrun logo made available on their site and some boilerplate copyright information for you to put on your own work / site. I have done this with most of my supplementary material.
If I want to publish my own stuff to sell (and I would like to when all this transition stuff has died down), then I will have to get permission (no doubt a paid for licence) from FanPro / IMR / Wizkids.
-K.
| QUOTE (knasser @ May 7 2007, 03:46 PM) |
| In FanPro's case there is explicit permission to produce supplementary material. They have a copy of the Shadowrun logo made available on their site and some boilerplate copyright information for you to put on your own work / site. I have done this with most of my supplementary material. |
This is a limited-use open license then, I was not aware they made this available.
Essentially, I was trying to explain in my long-winded manner just what an open license was.
A Closed license is "You must come to us and get specific permission to publish work derived from our properties."
An Open license is "You can go ahead and publish derivative works without first contacting us to get specific permission, as long as you follow these guidelines."
Most Open licenses include legal text that states that the property owner can revoke the license in whole or in part for specific people, in the event that the guidelines are not followed. And/or restrictions in the guidelines on what forms of distribution are permissible, i.e. "Free web publishing is okay, but not selling the work."
As I said, an Open license isn't all that necessary for publishers with a limited pool of potential licensees. It's not that hard to just grant licenses on an individual basis.
Open licenses are really for works that have a large potential licensee pool. Instead of having to sit down with each and every potential one, you grant a blanket license to anybody, based on specific rules and guidelines.
-karma
Actually, according to The FanPro FAQ, this only apply for the logo. For the rest it's still more or less closed.
It's not possible to publish copyrighted material, but nothing prevents you from publishing your houserules which could be considered as derivative work (but doesn't need to publish any copyrighted material).
So you can have a webpage that says "replace the text p 63 with this" but not a webpage that says "replace 'copyrighted text' p63 with this". (Well, actually you might get away with that if the quoted part is short enough, but that's the general idea).
But I don't see much point in allowing players to publish copyrighted material and modified copyrighted material when modifications can be made without including copyrighted material.
It's not possible to publish copyrighted material, but nothing prevents you from publishing your houserules which could be considered as derivative work (but doesn't need to publish any copyrighted material).
So you can have a webpage that says "replace the text p 63 with this" but not a webpage that says "replace 'copyrighted text' p63 with this". (Well, actually you might get away with that if the quoted part is short enough, but that's the general idea).
But I don't see much point in allowing players to publish copyrighted material and modified copyrighted material when modifications can be made without including copyrighted material.
| QUOTE (Blade) |
| It's not possible to publish copyrighted material, but nothing prevents you from publishing your houserules which could be considered as derivative work (but doesn't need to publish any copyrighted material). |
Derivative work is actually a rather iffy grey area in IP law. Ask ten lawyers about it and they'll give you thirteen different answers.
The greyness does not help you, though, if a publisher decides to throw a lawsuit at you and shut you down through the sheer financial burden of the suit. Or if a publisher goes after your ISP or print house, whoever is enabling your distribution, and they cut ties with you to avoid a lawsuit themselves.
-karma
| QUOTE (Blade) |
| Actually, according to The FanPro FAQ, this only apply for the logo. For the rest it's still more or less closed. |
Sure. But I was addressing the question about publishers pretending they hadn't noticed fan material that had been put online and saying that this pretty much blows that out of the water in Fanpro's case.
It obviously doesn't cover re-printing large chunks of the actual material, but its an explicit permission for people to make their own fan material.
That's all I was saying.
| QUOTE |
| The problem inherent with doing nothing about someone violating your intellectual property rights is that under current IP law in many countries (including the United States), if it can be proven that you knew about violations and did nothing to stop them, you can actually lose the rights to your property. It can be interpreted as willfully abandoning your property to the public domain. |
This is, to the best of my knowledge -- I am not a lawyer -- only true of Trademarks and not Copyrights.
I'm still not a lawyer, but that's correct to my knowledge. IIRC having demonstrably not either filed suit or issued a license for known transgressions can reduce your chance of getting punitive damages, or reduce the quantity of those punitive damages awarded if they are, but in situations not involving trademarks it does not render your copyright unenforceable or void.
~J
~J
You are probably right. My intent of defining "Open Source" and why "virtually all RPGs in the past 20 years" are not, in fact, Open Source still stands, however.
-karma
-karma
Thing is, d20 works well with its version of open source because it is generic enough to easy adapt to any setting... if you can stand its crunchiness.
Shadowrun is specific to its setting and makes no compromise about how its rules fit its setting. Shadowrun would not work in an open source manner like d20. Many other systems can, such as Tristat, Heroes, Alternity, GURPS, and a good number of others. Shadowrun is a set world with its own direction. Shadowrun's charm is its quality over quantity.
Shadowrun is specific to its setting and makes no compromise about how its rules fit its setting. Shadowrun would not work in an open source manner like d20. Many other systems can, such as Tristat, Heroes, Alternity, GURPS, and a good number of others. Shadowrun is a set world with its own direction. Shadowrun's charm is its quality over quantity.
| QUOTE (knasser) | ||
Hey! |
Please note, I said some 3rd party stuff was pretty good. Some fansites have pretty good stuff, too.
Not endorsing or criticizing any particular fan website.
When it comes to open source in any industry we need to look at the business pros and cons.
PROS:
* It will increase the amount of SR product out there (more publishers = more content)
* It can generate more money for WizKids and FanPro in the terms of official licenced products (plus more content = more money)
* It will increase the size of the SR community (more content = more people that can play)
CONS:
* There most likely be a decrease in the quality of some products (non-Wizkids/FanPro publishers)
* WizKids/FanPro will lose some of their creative control over SR (but creative control does not equal content control, just the right on being the sole creative distributer)
* There may be a decrease in the SR community (the "sell out" factor = pissed off players)
In all I think it would be a good move if managed properly by WizKids/FanPro.
PROS:
* It will increase the amount of SR product out there (more publishers = more content)
* It can generate more money for WizKids and FanPro in the terms of official licenced products (plus more content = more money)
* It will increase the size of the SR community (more content = more people that can play)
CONS:
* There most likely be a decrease in the quality of some products (non-Wizkids/FanPro publishers)
* WizKids/FanPro will lose some of their creative control over SR (but creative control does not equal content control, just the right on being the sole creative distributer)
* There may be a decrease in the SR community (the "sell out" factor = pissed off players)
In all I think it would be a good move if managed properly by WizKids/FanPro.
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