Chris Goodwin

4 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

On 1/21/2023 at 7:02 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

What I have seen is people come to the Hero boards and ask where the free SRD is so they can play the game without paying one red cent to its developers. That is just as entitled and selfish as any unethical businessperson.

Also agreed.  Though that wierd xooyright loophole about mechanics versus flavor makes it a legitimate question.  I don't like it, personally, but it is legitimate.  Still, it doesnt mean that HERO- or anyone else- should have to provide one.  Buy the books and dig it out yourself.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what state is Hero Games in right now?  

It's hard to argue that WotC did anything but benefit immensely from the OGL.  It did so in two eras: the D&D 3.0/3.5 era and the D&D 5e era.  In the D&D 4e era it tanked; in the D&D 4e era it had the onerous "Game System License" which, among other things, said that if you published anything under the GSL you could never, ever publish anything under the OGL.  

Look what happened to D&D 4e.  

Someone is inevitably going to say something about D&D 4e's rules.  I'm going to call that a red herring right now.  Every new edition of every game will have someone saying something about its rules.  People were saying how bad D&D 3's rules were when it first came out.  People were saying how bad D&D 5's rules were when it first came out.  (People were saying how bad Champions 4e's rules were when it came out!)  

4e died on the vine because it wasn't able to attract 3pp support, and WotC wouldn't or couldn't provide it with the level of support on its own that an entire ecosystem sprung up to provide for 3e.  Now WotC are repeating the mistake with D&D 6e.  Doing the same thing, expecting a different result?  

Anyone remember "T$R" and "They Sue Regularly"?  At least two companies went under directly as a result of TSR suing them over providing third party support for AD&D 1e.  I believe I've recently read that Game Designers Workshop went under not as a result of being sued, but as a result of the potential that they might be sued, over Gary Gygax's Dangerous Journeys game.  (When one is sued, and one has to provide discovery, one has to pay staff to go through one's documents...)  

I've seen -- not here, that I can recall, but definitely elsewhere -- the idea that "lol u can just re-rite theyre roolz in youre own wurdz lol" and -- really?  Has anyone ever tried that?  I have.  It sucks.  Never going to again, until the next time.  Yes, copyright law allows you to do that -- but it doesn't say that the litigious large corporation can't sue you anyway for doing it, or for any other reason they want, and bankrupt you anyway.  "They Sue Regularly", remember?  

The thing about the OGL (did I post this here?  I can't remember if I did, and I've been talking about this in more than one place...) is that it was a promise of a "safe harbor": that they wouldn't sue you over things they couldn't sue you over, in exchange for doing this, that, and the other thing.  Respecting rights to certain things, voluntarily choosing not to exercise rights that you might otherwise be permitted to...  That right there is, honestly, what built WotC into the billion dollar corporation it is now.  

Sure, corporations are not your friend.  They can pretend all they want, and it's not people's fault for believing them.  It's not people's fault for believing them.  

It's not people's fault for believing them.

People liked D&D, and a lot of people build up an identity around things they like.  There's nothing wrong with that; we all do it.  Our house is a Honda household; others are Toyota households, or Ford households, or Chevy households.  I'm a Champions and Hero player from 1985.  

Regardless of the motivations, WotC did something that really upset a lot of people.  They took away that safe harbor.  (Honestly, I'm kinda pissed over that, because I wrote some OGL stuff, and "published" it in forum posts here and there and occasionally on my Google drive.  Nothing to do with any WotC intellectual property directly, but I'm not sure of its status now.)

It might not actually be legal for them to have done so, in fact, but until and unless that's tested in court any given person's opinions on that depends on what lawyer they're listening to.  

Anyway, WotC will either succeed or fail, and the ORC license coalition will either succeed or fail, and the world will go on turning...

I'm aware Hero Games will likely never release any part of the HERO System under any kind of open license, and I'm okay with that.  But, is there any way Hero Games could support the effort by Paizo, Kobold Press, and others, with the ORC?  

Fuzion is owned by R. Talsorian Games.  From the DOJ FAQ page:

Q: What about the Fuzion rules? What's going to happen to them?

A: DOJ has no rights to Fuzion, and so will not publish products using it.

Linked from the Defending the OGL Discord server: 

He appears to be a business data analyst.  The immediate next message in the thread is eye opening: 

Quote

As a company Wizards of the Coast did over a billion dollars in revenue last year. 

 

After one week of brand damage millions of dollars have been shaved off this revenue and it appears to be getting worse day by day. It will likely evolve into double-digit percentages.

1 hour ago, Steve said:

I’d really like Hero to join the ORC alliance. They’ve been around a long time, a senior member of the gaming community, and I don’t see how it could hurt the brand to become part of the Rebel Alliance now forming.

I think this would be awesome if they would at least support the venture.  I've asked Jason before about open-licensing HERO in some way, and he's made it clear that there's no way he can, given that the two main assets were the system and the Champions universe, and now they only own the system.  I still think they could do it though, and that's always been my "lottery dream". 

I've harped on adventures for Hero in the past.  Not just adventures, but content: spells, monsters, and so on.

D&D 3.x had the OGL, and an explosion of third party content, meaning adventures, spells, monsters, and so on.  D&D 4e had a restrictive license, and no third party content.  D&D 5E had the OGL again, and again an explosion of content.  We're watching the slow motion trainwreck of D&D 6E happening in internet time. 

It's not that Hero has any kind of restrictive licensing terms at all, but you still have to contact Jason Walters and ask. And Jason is eminently approachable and one of the nicest guys in gaming and will in all likelihood say yes, but... however small a barrier asking for permission is, it's still a barrier.

19 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Well, I thank you again, but at this point, I am goinf to need a lawyer to explain to me how that entitles wizards to ownership of Traveller or Cephus.

 

 

It doesn't, but as people have taken great pains to point out, the new OGL (now called OGL 2.0) isn't finished yet.  And no one trusts Wizards further than we can throw them.  They could certainly put a clause into 2.0 that says, anything you've ever published belongs to us now.  

Also, signing onto OGL 2.0 means you're giving up the right to publish anything under OGL 1.0a.  So if Mongoose wanted to publish anything for the next version of D&D under OGL 2.0, they're no longer allowed to publish anything that's under 1.0a.  Which means, any OGL content from their web site, or any Traveller 1e material that's still under OGL 1.0, or any other.  "No longer authorized," and the text of the OGL is copyright to Wizards of the Coast. In order to distribute any Open Content, you have to include the text of OGL 1.0a, and if Wizards tells you that you can't distribute that any longer, you're SOL.  

I'm sure that what Wizards thought they were doing was telling people that anything they wanted to use to play D&D with using D&D Beyond (the virtual tabletop software they're trying to lock everyone into) would have to be submitted in a certain format, and would then belong to Wizards of the Coast.  They seem to have botched that pretty badly though.  

Copyright law doesn't protect game rules, procedures for play, or a large number of other things that appear in a roleplaying game manual, but as WotC and now Hasbro were the 800 pound gorilla in the space, no one wanted to risk being sued for making products that were compatible with their stuff.  The OGL gave people peace of mind that they wouldn't be.  People built businesses and made livelihoods based on that, and with one announcement Wizards pulled that peace of mind out from under them.  That peace of mind is what built the 5e ecosystem, and inarguably made D&D 5e the biggest RPG of its time.  

(Apparently the reason GDW went under was not because they were being sued by anyone, but the possibility that they could be, and what they'd have to do to comply with discovery in the event the might be, was what did it.)  

42 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Ah.

 

I have ten times as many quesrions now.

 

Did Mongoose just copy Wizard's OGL and say "we have one, too, in reference to what we created,"  or were they somehow claiming that wizard's own DnD related OGL applied to modernized Classic Traveller?

They included Wizards' OGL and released it under that.  Anyone can (or could, until tomorrow, when the OGL supposedly becomes "deauthorized"), release anything they wanted to by including the text of the OGL and following its rules.  Respecting Product Identity, noting what is Open Content, and so on.  

Mongoose released a system reference document for their Traveller 1e as open content under the OGL.  Cepheus took that, added bits from T20, d20 Modern, and d20 Future, as well as some of their own writing, to turn it into a full RPG.  So it would potentially be affected.

That's partly what makes this such a big mess.  They're not the only ones who have done things like that.

What happens to executives who cost the company a ton of money, tank their stock price, and expose them to legal liability?  Asking for a friend.

1 hour ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

I didn't hear his reasoning, but at the Gencon where D&D 3.0 and the whole OGL phenomenon began, Villains & Vigilantes developer Jeff Dee was strongly opposed to it. I don't recall his reasoning, but my guess was that involved the efforts by WOTC at the time to turn as many companies/publishers as possible into promotion sources for D&D.

 

It may have turned out that way, but only to a limited extent. They certainly did not expect M&M to build its own engine on the core of D20, and when they launched 4e they never in a million years expected their magazine contractor would turn around and release Pathfinder (aka D&D 3.75) and build it into a juggernaut.

 

I'm surprised this didn't happen in 2009.

Every third party product, whether it was for D&D or not, helped D&D 3.0, 3.5, and 5e become the successes they were.  Especially 5e.  

WotC are wrecking everyone who spent 23 years relying on the OGL and statements from Wizards that they wouldn't and couldn't do what they're trying to do with it.

Additionally, while Wizards are currently saying that OneD&D will be backward compatible, their word is worthless.  Assume that everything will be changed just enough to require everyone to purchase all new materials be annoying, and that everyone who wants to GM a game using their fancy online tools will have to provide their own materials.  Which thanks to the OGL 1.1, are given to Wizards free of charge, so that they can turn around and sell them to everyone, and the creator gets zero.  How long will that last before GMs say no?

51 minutes ago, mallet said:

All this "noise" of people complaining online about it is, honestly, almost nothing to the size of D&D. I know it sucks for the people making a living off of D&D and OLG, but that is a really small % of people who play D&D.

Really?  Your hot take on this is that it sucks to be someone who makes a living off of this stuff but can't any longer, because... it's such a small percentage?

The OGL ecosystem made D&D 5e as popular as it was.  D&D 4e died because it didn't have that.  WotC hasnt created very much material in house for 5e.  How is OneD&D or D&D 6e or whatever they end up calling it going to go anywhere without people willing to create material for it?  

And it's not just D&D third party publishers who will suffer.  Lots of games not based on WotC material at all have released their stuff under OGL 1.0a.  People are making a living off of those, too.   Those people have been given a week to adapt or die, and adapting means accepting untenable terms.  

I'm certainly not going to recommend D&D, any edition, to anyone I know; in fact I'm going to recommend against it.  I'm not going to look in on Reddit and answer people's questions.  

This story has made it onto MSN and Forbes.  Twitch streamers and YouTube creators have already heard about it, and are hedging their options.  

8 hours ago, Old Man said:

Honestly I’m kind of excited. Aside from new players possibly finding Hero, this will inspire all kinds of new systems with new and interesting mechanics. I just feel bad for people who made their living under the OGL and are now looking at having their work straight up stolen by WotC. 

Worse, there's no way now WotC can say "Oops, we messed up, here, have the OGL 1.0a back!"  Their name is mud, and their reputation is 💩.  There's no way anyone would believe them.  

3 hours ago, Opal said:

 Just how Open Source is Fuzion?

It's not, at all.  

The Action! System from Gold Rush Games is... released under the OGL 1.0(a).  

If you have Clairsentience with a Targeting Sense, and you're using it to scan a location... you should be able to teleport to it.  

To answer the OP's question: the rules don't allow for Clairsentience to automatically scan Fixed or Floating locations, but I'd 100% allow it.  I'm all for expanding the kinds of things those can do.

DI is very much a game for lower powered, normal guys with guns.  Back in the day my group used it for a lot of games that weren't mentioned in the book: various sci-fi games, at least two of which were original to our group (one hard SF called "Near Earth Orbit" and one wacky far future game in which we were convicts sent out to explore the universe) and one that was a conversion of the Chaosium licensed Ringworld RPG; a number of Battletech conversions; a western campaign.  We didn't get the Bureau 13 game off the ground though.

Traveller would have fit right in.  I'm not sure why we didn't do it; I would have bet money that the other members of the group were Traveller players.

12 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Yeah; I know that _now_, but I le w rned it 20 or so years too late to do me any real good....

There's no expiration date stamped on the book...

I ran a session of it as written, warts and all, at GameStorm in 2019.  "Global Task Force Omega vs. the World Terror Front".  😁  I get it if there's nothing in the book that speaks to you, but I still want to run a Psi Hero game out of it.  I wish I'd done that back in the day!

One of the coolest things about DI was that it wasn't just spy stuff.  It was also police, military, investigators, and even crossed over into aliens, horror, sci-fi, and post-apocalyptic.  It gave suggestions for using Champions powers and Fantasy Hero spell effects with DI, along with the many times reprinted "Gadgets" section. 

It does lean into the spy stuff, yes. Would it help you look past it if you made a brown paper bag cover for the book?  😂

According to RPGGeek there was indeed a boxed set.  It doesn't say what the contents were though. 

My players enjoyed the first session of the Star Wars game, as did I.  I had an R6 astromech go off and do its own thing briefly, and also had an NPC wookiee pick up one stormtrooper and use him as a club on the one next to him.  The Grey Jedi player used Telekinesis on an unconscious trooper to shoot another one with his blaster.  And I had a couple of Star Wars sound board pages open, and had the R6 unit have a conversation with his owner, where I'd click a sound first, then say in English what the droid was saying.    Plus occasional blaster shots and TIE fighter overflights.

By RAW, taking really good care of yourself when wounded, regularly visiting the doctor, and so on, can double your BODY recovery, while not resting and continuing to fight can halve it, and living in poor conditions (including unsanitary conditions) can also halve it.  One could assume that the latter reduction is a result of infection.  

It is for me. 

Tomorrow I'm running my first Star Wars Hero session, taking place about a month after the destruction of the second Death Star.  This will be session zero with potentially a combat scene also.  Hopefully it goes well. 

The Watchman

The X-Man

The Avenger

The Finger of Dr. T

12 hours ago, Cloppy Clip said:

This is all a bit above my paygrade, but would there be a better book to look into learning the game from than the core rules for 6e? I went for that since, from what I gathered, it seemed the most recent and comprehensive, and I can follow along well enough reading it for the most part. Would anybody suggest a different edition to start with, or is it more a matter of familiarity with whatever you learnt the game on?

I myself started with 3rd edition,. though a lot of people started with 4th.  It's really more a matter of familiarity.

I'd recommend starting with Champions Complete.  It includes the full HERO System rules in a cut-down version with a lot less verbiage; lots of us (including me) use the full 6th edition core books in PDF for reference.  And while Champions Complete is complete, it's worth it in my opinion to add the Champions genre book, or Star Hero or Fantasy Hero if you're interested in sci-fi or fantasy gaming. 

12 hours ago, Cloppy Clip said:

I hope it's not an imposition to ask these sorts of questions: coming into a game with as much history as this one leaves me a bit boggled, but in a good way. I feel like there's so much to learn, and I want to try and take it all in as fast as I can, even if that might not be the most sensible approach!

Not at all!  We love answering questions around here, and many people have told us that we're one of the friendliest gaming forums on the web.  😁  And to be fair, the HERO System is like a big room full of LEGO bricks: there's a lot of pieces that can fit together in a lot of ways.  Don't be afraid to ask for help!

Edit to add:  I also recommend Hero Designer, the character creation software.  It runs on Java, so any modern PC can run it. Output formats are created by the community, and they are plentiful!