My mostly-senseless* personal vendetta against D&D 4th Edition continues…
They (Wizards, that is) finally released the system license last night. It was supposed to be done when the books were released, on June 6th, but it turns out that this delay is the least of their problems.
You might remember that in a previous rant I described the Open Gaming License as a “fantastic idea”. This license allowed third parties to publish a vast array of material for use with the d20 system. It also allowed other third parties to make use of that material; as with Open Source software, once under the OGL, always under the OGL. The license was progressive, and popular, and led to several of my favorite products, including PCGen, the Hypertext d20 SRD, and the Mongoose Pocket Guides. Many, many third parties published 3rd Edition adventures as well as sourcebooks.
(A short aside: there has been at least one jackass on the forums whinging about how the only thing the OGL and the SRD for 3rd Edition did was to allow people to play without paying Wizards of the Coast. First of all, lots of people do that; I doubt that every player in every game you’ve ever played in had their own, personal copy of each of the books being used. Second, the original core rulebooks are nice enough, but not necessarily convenient, especially when it comes to finding specific rules. Everyone I know, including myself, uses sites like d20srd.org in order to look up rules and stats quickly, even though we own the actual books.)
Obviously feeling left out of the deluge of content that this license allowed others to create, the 4th Edition license is nothing like open. At least they changed the name to Game System License; they aren’t even pretending to continue their original system.
One of the best features of an open-style license is the fact that, once something is released under the terms of such a license, it is impossible to retract, retroactively change, or otherwise screw with that content. You might release new material under a different license, but whatever has already been released under the OGL remains under the OGL, and nothing can change that.
Witness the first idiocy of the 4th Ed GSL - section 6.
Upon the first publication date of a Conversion, Licensee will cease all manufacturing and publication of the corresponding Converted OGL Product and all other OGL Products which are part of the same product line as the Converted OGL Product, as reasonably determined by Wizards (”Converted OGL Product Line”). Licensee explicitly agrees that it will not thereafter manufacture or publish any portion of the Converted OGL Product Line, or any products that would be considered part of a Converted OGL Product Line (as reasonably determined by Wizards) pursuant to the OGL.
If you are a publisher of OGL material, and you want to update that material to 4th Edition, you are required to cease publishing that material under the OGL. Let me state that again. If you publish a book under the 4th Ed GSL, you are legally obligated to discontinue producing any similar material under the 3rd Ed OGL. These assholes can’t retract the OGL, so they’ve decided to attempt to force publishers into giving up their OGL rights a different way. Note that the 4th Ed GSL also forbids you from taking an original 4th Edition item you have created and releasing it under the 3rd Ed OGL in the future.
Speaking of retracting licenses, in further direct opposition to the benefits of an open license, the 4th Ed GSL section 2 specifies that not only may Wizards retract the GSL at any time, they can change the terms at any time, and in order to continue publishing your own material, you must accept the new terms.
Updates or Revisions to License. Wizards may update or revise the License at any time in its sole discretion by posting the updated License on its website… Licensee’s continued use of any Licensed Materials … including without limitation any publication or distribution of Licensed Products … confirms Licensee’s acceptance of any changes to the License.
Don’t like the new terms? Your only option is to stop publishing completely. In fact, section 11.3 provides the actual terms of terminating your license: destruction of all inventory created utilizing the license.
Upon termination, Licensee will immediately cease all use of the Licensed Materials and will destroy all inventory and marketing materials in Licensee’s possession bearing the Compatibility Logo.
Yes, Virginia, if your license is terminated by you, or by them, you are legally obligated to destroy all of your 4th Ed GSL materials.
So, you’re a 3rd party publisher and you still think it would be a good idea to publish material under the 4th Ed GSL? Well, good luck with that. Here’s a nice kick in the balls from Wizards:
Reprinting. Licensee will not publish or reprint (a) … or (b) definitions of any 4E References, whether or not similar to those listed in any product published by Wizards.
You are not allowed to reprint any material from the Wizards books. No problem, you say, that seems reasonable. Good, now lets look at your adventure module. Wow, that kobold wizard looks like a nasty customer. Lots of feats, spells, magic items, all that good stuff. What do they all do? Well, under the 3rd Edition OGL, you could print at least a summary of the effect of each feat and spell. Now, you get to refer the already overworked DM back to the Monster’s Manual and the Player’s Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Guide. I know I look forward to having to look up every detail of a creature each time my players run into it. Two types of undead in that crypt? Congratulations, that’s two times the page flipping! Want to look it up online? Oh, you can’t, because there is no longer a real SRD.
But why stop there… Whats that you say, section 5.5?
no Licensed Product will (a) include web sites, interactive products, miniatures, or character creators
That’s not just a little love-tap to the mean bean machine, either - that’s a full-on, steel-toed, premeditated scrotum smashing. In order to protect their beloved (and belated, and, oh, by the way, $15 a month) Dungeons and Dragons Insider (which will provide, someday, all of these prohibited items), they have banned them entirely from third party production. History will show that Wizards doesn’t have the most sterling record of software production, as they were last seen outsourcing production to a third party to fix their bugs. And let’s not forget that D&D Insider itself, long promoted to be available when the books were first published, is now several months behind schedule. You can’t make your own character generator, at least not for distribution, and you can’t use theirs either! Awesome!
I guess all this just boils down to the following opinions: Wizards has backtracked on their previous commitment to the gaming community; third-party publications related to 4th Edition won’t be nearly as useful or as prevalent as they were for 3rd Edition; third-party software tools for 4th Edition will be non-existent.
Ah well. The best news from this whole colossal fuck-up is that they can’t revoke the OGL.
*I seem to have a compulsion to write all of this down, and make it public, even though most people who will be reading this either already agree with me, or don’t care. At least I have thus far avoided wading into the flame wars on the forums, which would almost certainly lead to self-inflicted bodily harm to my person.
admin | 
11 21st, 2008| 
