Online Encyclopedia
Open gaming
Open gaming is the role-playing game movement, analogous to open source, where game-related content (rules, sourcebooks, etc.) are published under a copyleft or open content license imparting the freedom to modify, copy, and redistribute them. Open gaming can also be used to refer to a type of role-playing game event where players free to join at any time. This article deals primarily with the more common, former definition.
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History
Open gaming is synonymous with the popular d20 System, but games have been published under open content licenses for a considerable period of time prior to the d20 phenomena.
First published in 1995, the FUDGE role-playing game is probably one of the first systems to be published under an open content license. A legal notice accompanying the FUDGE rules permits redistribution and modification for non-commercial works. Other systems were published under various different terms which could all be considered "open", including the Dominion Rules fantasy role-playing system, whose license permitted supplementary material to be written for its rules, and the Circe role-playing system, published by the WorldForge project under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Open Gaming License
The official start of the open gaming movement began in 2000 when Wizards of the Coast (WotC) published their popular Dungeons & Dragons role-playing system as the d20 System under the Open Gaming License. Ryan Dancey , the driving force for the new policy at WotC, first used to term "open gaming" with respect to role-playing games and formed the Open Gaming Foundation to promote open gaming within the role-playing industry.
Because its heritage is intertwined with the most successful RPG, "open gaming" often refers to the d20 System, but other open systems and licenses have been developed as well.
The initiative for an open license on rules resulted from the many unique sets of rules used by RPGs. To ease the designer's development process and the player's learning process, major RPG developers created generic role-playing game systems, such as Steve Jackson Games' GURPS, for use in the design of their own games. Wizards of the Coast took the idea a step further by making the core rules system free (as in speech and beer) so that game designers could produce games under the d20 umbrella of rules and so that players need not make any purchases in order to learn the core rules. Among other things, game developers believe that this drive will make their games more accessible and that it could further channel the popularity of the RPG industry towards Dungeons & Dragons.
Other licenses
Despite the popularity of the OGL, it did receive criticism for not being as open as it could be and for being controlled by the RPG market leader Wizards of the Coast. In response, some of these critics sought alternative licenses or wrote their own open licenses.
Lately, drafting new open gaming licenses has waned slightly as it becomes apparent that numerous copyleft-style licenses that could be applied to game rules already exist, such as the GNU Free Documentation License.
Examples of other open licenses that have been written in response to the OGL include:
- EABA Open Supplement License .
- The Swedish role-playing company Rävsvans have introduced the T10 system that is licensed according to an open license.
October Open Gaming License
The October Open Game License (OOGL) was a copyleft license published by Brandon Blackmoor of the RPG Library http://www.rpglibrary.org/ for game documents, especially those found in role-playing games.
The OOGL was published in order to rectify perceived problems with the OGL so that it would be more free and open. The Open Gaming Foundation considered the OOGL to be compatible with its own OGL, but the reverse might not necessarily be true.
The text of the October Open Game License was very similar to the GNU Free Documentation License. On May 5, 2002, Richard Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation, requested that the RPG Library cease publication of the OOGL believing that it was an unauthorized modification of the GFDL. The RPG Library disagreed, responding that the October Open Game License was only modeled after the GFDL and contained signficant differences (such as the handling of trademarks). It is not known if this had any impact on the license or its popularity, but it did raise the question regarding the legality of the text itself.
The October Open Game License was officially deprecated by the RPG Library on 2003 June 13 in favor of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. The OOGL is no longer published by the RPG Library but, since it is non-revocable, games continue to be licensed under the OOGL, such as the Four Colors al'Fresco http://www.tiltingatwindmills.net/alfresco/ and Jazz role-playing games.
Impact
A number of mostly small game developers have since hopped on board the open gaming initiative mostly through the d20 System. Open gaming has been most successful with amateur-designed RPG and RPG supplements. Several licenses have been used to facilitate open gaming. Despite this, the concept has yet to make a significant impact on games outside of pen-and-paper RPGs and still most major RPG developers continue to use their own, non-open systems.
External links
- The Open Gaming Foundation http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/
- Wizads of the Coast's official d20 and Open Gaming License site http://www.wizards.com/D20/main.asp?x=welcome,3
- OpenRoleplaying.org: Open gaming and independent game developers http://www.openroleplaying.org/