RE: (TFT) Your game, more thoughts.

["Brad Thompson" <bthomps@petrodatasource.com>]

> Michael Taylor
>
> Keep in mind that in addition to some philosophically shaky underpinnings
> keep in mind that the Open Gaming license is disingenuous in some other
> ways as well.
>
> For Open Gaming to work you have to allow other companies to sell your
> product for your. They write adventures, but all the adventures require
> your rules. You can't let another company publish character creation rules
> - or you risk them putting you out of business with your *own* open gaming
> license!

That is a bit of disinformation, because you are combining two difference
licenses and selecting one particular method of protecting one's private IP.

If you opt out of WotC's d20 marketing program, you are under no prohibition
to create character creation/advancement rules.  I have a set I've created
and am giving away free to anyone who wants them.  That particular set of
rules works well for WotC, but it I think it is poorly suited to the general
case.

The best way to protect your own open game is to use the OGL as it was
intended - as a vehicle for sharing RULES.  Open your basic mechanic (or one
that your borrowed from someone else), but keep your story, art, and setting
as closed concepts.  Build on your creativity and leave the rules (which are
likely to get borrowed in any event) for others to use.  By drawing a
distinction between what you feel you can defend and what you feel isn't
worth defending, you tell the world what you don't mind if they borrow.  It
also builds a contract between you and the borrower that makes it easier for
you to win if they take things you think they aren't entitled to take.

> The problem is enforcement. Unless you are as large as WOTC, then you'll
> risk severe financial burden in pursuing liscence violations!

This is misleading.  Right now small companies are under this same burden.
A single suit can cost more than the entire annual budget of most small
gaming companies.  Just because the OGL doesn't solve this problem doesn't
mean it isn't worthwhile.  The OGL does soften the problem slightly.
Copyright law is arcane and very expensive to litigate, but contract law is
much more universally understood.  The OGL combines aspects of both, so that
a carefully drafted game release can turn virtually all of the easily
defensible material into purely contract law.  If you release a work under
the OGL and you define a portion of your work as PI another OGL work based
on yours cannot use that material EVEN IF they might have otherwise been
entitled to do so, because they agreed no to under the terms of the OGL.

Once it becomes black-letter law you are much more likely to never have to
go to court.  So in some ways the OGL improves the odds for the small guy.

-Brad
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