A few months ago, I read that D&D 4th Edition wouldn’t be licensed under an open gaming license. The largest company in the market, Wizards of the Coast, were turning their backs on the open gaming principle they implemented for for the 3.0 and 3.5 edition of D&D in the form of the Open Gaming License and the Standard Reference Document and the Modern Standard Reference Document.
The Open Gaming License under which the SRD and the MSRD were published allowed dozens of companies to publish campaign settings, rules’ variants and accessories based on a single rule set. They didn’t have to create a complete system. All they had to do, if needed, was tweak it. In gamer’s parlance, they could focus on the fluff and leave the crunch as it was. The benefits for gamers were obvious. They had an amazing wealth of materials to choose from for their games. The materials were also mechanically compatible. Once a player had become familiar with the core rules, switching between campaign settings was as simple question of figuring out the differences rather than relearning a new body of rules.
A few weeks ago, I started posting on Paizo’s messageboards in the Alpha 2 open playtest forums and I’m having a brilliant time analysing the 3.5 based Pathfinder rules and tweaking them. I don’t know how successful Pathfinder is going to be. I don’t know if the concept of open gaming, which I understand as releasing under a free and perpetual license the mechanics of a role-playing game will survive the arrival of D&D 4th Edition. I think it should survive and I hope it will be adopted by most publishers.
If you care about open gaming, there are three things you can do:
- Support companies and initiatives involved in Open Gaming.
- Take part in the open design processes, such as the Pathfinder Alphas and in the Beta.
- Publish under an open gaming licenses your house rules, tweaks, rejigs on forums, on blogs, on wikis and in all other possible forms.
The purpose of this blog and of the associated sites and publications is to do all of the above. Wish me and my team luck and stay tuned.