Two Metaphors for Indie RPGs / d20

[Tav_Behemoth]

Metaphor #1: Pop Music

Now that the '90s are safely dead, we can say that there were two important movements in pop music that decade: indie rock and DJ culture. I suggest that these map very nicely onto the independent role-playing game and Open Gaming License (OGL; d20 is a limited subset of the OGL enterprise) movements.

Fugazi is the paragon of the indie RPG company: the artistic creators start their own means of production in order to control all aspects of their promotion, marketing, and career, and manage their business in ways that reinforce their ideals about the community they belong to (doing only all-ages shows, keeping prices low for concert tickets and recordings).

Creators/performers working within DJ culture are like those working within the framework of the OGL. The key similarity is sampling. In both DJ and OGL circles, you can find an appreciative audience for a product that contains no original content, just takes unmodified sections of pre-existing work and puts them together in an illuminating new context. And in both cases, if you do create new work, it automatically becomes community property. As soon as you put out a record any other DJ can put it into their own crate to sample or remix as they see fit.

Similarities between Indie Rock/RPGs and DJ/OGL Culture

Both are responses to a historical moment in which the dominant form of the art has lost its original revolutionary potential and become monolithic and repressive in the process of taking over the marketplace.

Both frequently take advantage of new business models and channels of distribution: for every indie band hand-labeling their own CDs to sell at shows, there is at least one bedroom DJ trying to get their mix mp3s listened to on the Web.

Both involve experimentation in the genre. By taking control of all aspects of what they do, indie artists are free to explore their own vision without external limits. By giving up all control over their releases, sampling-based artists participate in a radical experiment in the creative power of the community, an evolutionary process that is greater than the sum of its parts and whose outcome cannot be foreseen.

Both use existing public-domain materials; no one owns a guitar riff or a drum beat. Indie rock expects artists to reinterpret their materials and put everything into their own words; DJ culture lets creators drop their references into the mix whole, undigested, and with the serial numbers intact.

Differences between Indie Rock/RPGs and DJ/OGL Culture

Indie rock/RPGs are better at individual personal expression. Even the most derivative singer has only their own voice to work with. A DJ's tools and materials are more standardized and less organic, and thus require more skill to use in a way that leaves a unique signature on the work.

Individual performances within DJ/OGL culture are less centralized. The audience at an indie rock show dances (if they dance at all) while facing elevated stage where the artists are. Everyone in a DJ's audience dances facing one another, unless they're looking over the DJ's shoulder to see what will be next out of the crate.

There's less of a barrier to participation in DJ/OGL culture. It's hard to play a guitar even by punk standards of musicianship, but anyone can play a bunch of records.

DJ culture's attitude towards popularity and commercial success is on the whole less tormented than indie rock's. One of the many things that doomed Cobain was the conflict between his desire to be a rock star and his resistance to selling out. I'll bet that Fatboy Slim didn't have half as many stomachaches over his own top 10 hits; even if Mr. Slim's success (and its aftermath) eventually proves fatal, Norman Cook will still be around to reinvent himself again or just keep cashing the Fatboy's checks.

Metaphor #2: Novels and Magazines

Brian Eno made the analogy that a rock album is a novel, while an electronic album is a magazine.

Novels privilege authors; indie RPGs go further and expect auteurs to be in charge of every aspect. Magazines privilege editors; the pool of open gaming content is the magazine's slushpile (according to Sturgeon's law, 90% of either one is crap) and the best OGL products succeed in part by selecting the stuff that's fit to re-print.

Metaphor #2 Implications

Magazines/DJ culture are intrinsically more collaborative than novels/indie rock. On an indie compilation, there are gaps between tracks: each one is a dispatch from a separate place. A DJ's mixtape can seamlessly blend tracks (each of which may have a sample from one artist contextualized by a second and remixed by a third) since they all share the same beat.

Our society values the author's role much more highly than the editor's. All the unfortunates who pay more to buy the "unabridged" versions of Stephen King or Robert Heinlein novels clearly have no idea what an editor is good for.

[Tav_Behemoth]

Disclaimer: I'm posting this as a seperate message to emphasize that I hope people will think about & use the metaphors I've proposed, independent of the conclusions I draw from them. Here they are: YMMV.

My Prescriptions Based On These Analogies

What the indie RPG community needs most is its own Sub Pop. I'm glad now that I went the indie route for Masters and Minions, but I've been very lucky in finding the Behemoth3 team. Our culture expects every singer to be a songwriter and every indie designer to be a publisher. I think that these expectations deprive us of many great but focused talents who might enter the industry otherwise, and lead to the premature loss of many skilled creators whose careers fail because they are not equally skilled businesspeople and self-promoters. In order to grow, I think the indie movement needs a publisher of other people's work that publicly and demonstrably embraces the movement ideals-creator's rights, equitable sharing of profit and risk, sustainable long-term business models, etc. I'm not saying that self-publishing isn't the best way in principle to attain those ideals, merely that it shouldn't be the only way.

What the OGL community needs most is its own Harold Ross or Jann Weiner, someone who is not themselves a creator but can survey everything that's out there and put together a coherent package with a unique vision of what aspects of the community deserve attention. Or, to come at this from the other metaphor, the OGL movement needs a Nuggets or DJ Kicks series of compilations. Since open content is free, these compilations could be free too; the prestige of being selected would help drive business to the original source, especially if a strong citation system for open content is in place.

Disclosure of Interests

Musical. I cherish 13 Songs and Repeater as much as anyone, but for some time now nothing coming out of the rock tradition has excited me as much as Blazing Arrow, Under Construction, or Lost Horizons.

Business. I'm deeply grateful to the Forge community for providing the weapons beginners need to fight for their own independence in this "industry". I support every member of our family of weird, tiny, hairy publishers, and think that we may all be better suited to survive the evolutionary transition into the new millennium of electronic creation and distribution in a way that mainstream dinosaurs will not.

Historical. I think that future historians will see Dancey's contribution to roleplaying as being on a par with Gygax, Arneson, and Perren's.

Personal. Dungeons and Dragons was my first love as a gamer, and I'm glad that the Third Edition and the Open Gaming License have made it possible for me to love it again without reservation.

On Selling Out.  I enjoy hearing a song I like as the soundtrack to a commercial. It annoys me when original fans act betrayed if the object of their devotion manages to appeal to a larger audience. I think the fact that the OGL ruleset is the world's most popular roleplaying game (if you consider its famous trademarked and licensed versions to be subsets of the OGL, as I do) is a reason to support it rather than disparage it.

Intellectual. I'm intrigued by the formal experiments in systems design taking place in the Forge community, but I'm much more energized by the way that the OGL experiment directly engages the free culture, open source, and copyleft issues in the larger society, and I'm glad to be in a position to participate in those debates.

Actual Play. In my own roleplaying, I rely heavily on well-stocked crates of dusty soul classics from 1977-82. Few things have pleased me more than the slip of the tongue that led a player to call me the "DJ" instead of "DM". I find that my creativity flourishes in the space created between two records, and that the new-fangled beats get the kids dancing like never before.

Game Design. My own work as a designer on Masters and Minions is deeply influenced by the DJ culture model. The core monster in each horde book is the hook, the old-school sample that everyone recognizes. That forms the chassis on which the other monsters can roll along, leaving room for me to drop in other trainspotter's delights: obscure samples and in-jokes like the riff from Ed Greenwood's "Ecology of the Stirge". One of the flaws I see in the myth of authorship is its emphasis on novelty and breaking new ground. Sometimes it's better to dig deeper into what's already there and bring out unnoticed possibilities by putting an old gem into a new setting. I'm grateful that the Open Gaming License makes this possible.

[greyorm]

It strikes me that the analogy is flawed for the following reason: with music, you can choose from any style of music, with d20, you're stuck with just one style of music.

Sure, you can mix it and match it and riff it, but at the core, it's just the same thing again and again. It would be like DJing industrial music, sure, some of the bands have their own unique sound in the genre, but it's still identifiably industrial, and there's only so much you can do with the industrial style.

[Tav_Behemoth]

It strikes me that the analogy is flawed for the following reason: with music, you can choose from any style of music, with d20, you're stuck with just one style of music.

d20 is one style with restrictions that are at least as strict as industrial's. Material that's released under the Open Gaming License but not the d20 logo, however, is under hardly any restrictions at all. The overlap between D&D and d20 and OGL is strong, and a problematic issue for analysis (and for the field). My analogy will be most true for OGL works that don't fall under any other license or trademark, as their creative possibilities are most open.

Even looking at d20, I think that the range of styles from Nyambe to Spycraft is at least as wide as the range among all music made using an 808, for example. And some underlying similarity is a good thing from a DJ's perspective, since without it you can't beatmatch to create a seamlessly integrated piece of meta-music.

[Halzebier]

I don't share the many negative views of d20 expressed in this forum.

There are limits to what can be done with it, sure, but there is still plenty of room for innovation - and the beauty is that the results are easily accessible to those familiar with the underlying system.

_Grimm_ (the PCs are kids in a fairy tale world gone sour), _Midnight_ (classic high fantasy in a world where Evil has won the final battle), _Conan_ (swords & sorcery with a clear vision rather than high fantasy with less magic) and _Redhurst Academy of Magic_ (the PCs are students at a Hogwarts-inspired academy which teleports to a different location every week, campus and all) are good examples for innovative d20 games.

My short descriptions may sound as if the settings are the only innovations here, but this is not the case.

_Grimm_, for instance, explores issues of growing up (both with and without the help of explicit mechanics) and the _Redhurst_ book is presented in an unusally appropriate style and format, i.e. as a student's brochure (with handwritten annotations which provide 'inside' information).

[rant mode ON]

The options for mechanical innovation are somewhat limited, perhaps, but I get the impression that some detractors of d20 have little idea of what's on the market - they see there's a lot of d20 material and have the usual juvenile knee-jerk reaction of rejecting the mainstream.

This forum exhibits almost no D&D bashing (to demonstrate independent thought, personal enlightenment, proof that one has moved on etc., as is so often the case elsewhere), which is a relief.

Now if only we could get over D20 as well.

[rant mode OFF]

Regards,

Hal

[Halzebier]

My apologies for venting in this thread - it seems like an inappropriate place, as Tav's comments on d20 have been perceptive and fair (not to mention that he has drawn attention to the distinction between D&D, D20 and OGL material).

I had read Dav's post in the "Another Departure from GAMA" thread a minute earlier and was (a) overreacting and (b) doing so with considerable delay and in the wrong place.

Sorry,

Hal

(Edited to add a link to Dav's post.)

[greyorm]

Hal,

I play d20 all the time. I agree that you can do a number of things with it and it has a wide audience to cater to. I don't agree you can do everything you'd want with it.

That said, my own group is becoming more and more frustrated by the limitations and core mechanical assumptions of the d20 system. We've played a number of d20-based games, too, but that dissatisfaction remains.

My view is that you can put as much frosting on it as you want, but regardless of the decorations, the color, flavor, and thickness of the frosting, it's still a chocolate cake underneath. Even if it's a Barbie chocolate cake.

Now, the OGL is different, but there's a different problem with the OGL, which it also shares with the d20 license -- you're already allowed to. Mechanics cannot be copyrighted. You can write something to be "compatible with" a design without getting permission. This is fact in every other industry. The only thing d20/OGL is doing is eroding the existing legal freedoms in this area by setting up acceptance of the situation that it is required in order to practice freedoms you already have. This will change the law for the worse by removing a freedom we already have and replace it with a new set of rules and regulations.

So, ultimately, yes, you can do alot with d20. But you can't do Sorcerer. Or HeroQuest. Or The Pool. Or Otherkind. Or My Life With Master. System Does Matter.

[greyorm]

_Grimm_ (the PCs are kids in a fairy tale world gone sour), _Midnight_ (classic high fantasy in a world where Evil has won the final battle), _Conan_ (swords & sorcery with a clear vision rather than high fantasy with less magic) and _Redhurst Academy of Magic_ (the PCs are students at a Hogwarts-inspired academy which teleports to a different location every week, campus and all) are good examples for innovative d20 games.

How are they "innovative"...what about their actual design breaks the mold of d20? From what you've described

BTW, I have Midnight. I wouldn't call it "innovative" -- it's more of the same. Not that that's a bad thing, I like Midnight. I like the setting. But I wouldn't call it "innovative" -- "evocative," "interesting," yes -- innovative? No.

So, how are you using the word "innovative" here? And in reference to what?

[Halzebier]

That said, my own group is becoming more and more frustrated by the limitations and core mechanical assumptions of the d20 system. We've played a number of d20-based games, too, but that dissatisfaction remains.

D20 has its limits, no doubt. For instance, character effectiveness is largely tied to level (or hit dice) which prevents effective specialist characters (i.e., if you are a master artisan, you also have lots of hit points compared to a normal artisan). Also, the system has a very steep power curve.

So, ultimately, yes, you can do alot with d20. But you can't do Sorcerer. Or HeroQuest. Or The Pool. Or Otherkind. Or My Life With Master.

Sure. However, I think you could do Feng Shui reasonably well (not a perfect fit by a long shot, but then Feng Shui's system isn't, either) and aspects of TROS (spiritual attributes and - to some extent - sorcery, though certainly not combat).

It doesn't seem we're disagreeing here, but just haggling over words (i.e., what constitutes "a lot" or "innovative") and potentially some of our examples, so I consider the matter settled.

[Re: "Midnight" and innovation]

I think that Midnight's system of 'Heroic Paths' is an innovation.

Mechanically, this system constitues a parallel class system, which allows differentiation between a character's profession or '(prestige) class' (e.g., Legate, Druid, Wizard etc.) and his calling (e.g. Naturefriend, Seer).

In a class-less system, the free combination of such elements would be a given, but in a d20 game, this constitutes an innovation, not least because of its elegant implementation:

The path-system feels very much like D20 (e.g., there's a 20-level-progression scheme for each path), affords extra freedom, and still keeps the advantages of the class-approach intact (i.e., providing a list of ready-to-play packages which are both viable in terms of power and desirable in terms of the setting and niche protection).

Regards,

Hal

[GreatWolf]

Interesting....

Last Saturday, in the wee hours of the morning, I was discussing a similar issue with a couple of the members of my gaming group (Keith Sears and Ralph Mazza aka Valamir).  Based on Ron's metaphor of the gaming group as jazz band, we decided that a RPG game system is either a musical instrument or a CD.  This seems to fit very closely with the metaphor being expressed in this thread, although I would not limit "CDs"/DJs to OGL/d20.  I see a similar trend in (say) Savage Worlds, with their campaign books.

Now, to be clear, this is not a value judgment.  Quick, what is better: a guitar or the latest album from <fill in your favorite artist here>?  That's an apples vs. oranges question.  Speaking personally, I don't look down on someone who bought a CD because he is not "with it" enough to play his own music on his own instrument.

However, from a business perspective, there is a huge difference.  I haven't done the research (he said dryly), but I'm willing to bet that many more CDs are sold in a given year than musical instruments.  The musical instrument market is vastly different than the CD market.  In a way, even the mainstream market for (say) Taylor guitars is a niche, compared to the market for Britney Spears.  Therefore, one ramification of this, as we apply the metaphor to RPGs, is expectations of sales.  Sales of "CD-style" RPGs will probably be higher than sales of "instrument-style" RPGs.  No one should be surprised by this.

Another application of this is to design.  Somewhere on RPGnet (I don't have the time to dig up the thread), Mike Mearls made the comment that he did not think that people were designing for their audience.  Speaking in terms of the metaphor at hand, he believes that the industry wants to sell musical instruments to folks who really just want CDs.  (If I'm misrepresenting you here, Mearls, my apologies.)  I think that he is on to something here.

The wargame market seems to have this divide.  On the one hand, we have the "grognard" games (such as DBA).  On the other hand, we have Clix and Games Workshop.  Are grognard games superior wargames?  No doubt in my mind.  Which sells better?  Again, no doubt in my mind.  However, are Clix/GW worse games (not wargames), just because they are not "grognard" games?  That would be an unfair accusation.

I'm sure that there are better terms to use than "CD" vs "instrument".  But I think that it is a division that is worth considering.   Could it be that there are really two RPG markets, and that we have been confusing them?

[daMoose_Neo]

To my mind, the problem with the d20/Open GL is this: Name the first d20 game that springs to mind.
Odds are its going to be D&D or one of its campagin worlds.
Yea, its a nice game and has its uses. But d20 games still boil down to "D&D In Space", "D&D at Hogwarts", "D&D ".
I'm a stickler for creativity and originality. Even for the few short months I played D&D, we massacred the rules to make it what we wanted and it worked quite nicely. Almost a totally different system. When I was forced to sit down and play a game of canon D&D 3rd I hated it. Thats a personal issue there, but the point is when my group was playing way back when we *weren't* playing D&D. And it felt like it.
All d20 publishers are doing is proliferating the D&D franchise~
Forget music: software~ D&D/d20/Wizards/Hasbro is Microsoft while indie developers are just that- independant developers.
When developing professionally for the Windows platform, Microsoft is generating more and more hoops to jump through, as is the OGL and d20 lisences (I caught a glimpse of what people had to do with the release of 3.5 *shudders* I couldn't stand someone telling me I have to re-write my own creations like that).
As far as software goes, with Windows I'm where a lot of role players are with D&D: I'm accustomed to the big shots and won't change for the reason is I'm comfortable. And when that happens, creativity is stifled (I know, I'm a sheep in a different way).
D&D has been around forever. Everyone is comfortable with it. It changes periodically as they did with 3 and 3.5 but it is still D&D and a part of the conglomorate (quite literally with Hasbro buying WotC who bought TSR).
I do grant new takes on concepts, and I love it when something that was *originally* an offshoot becomes a standalone, but I really feel bad for people who produce something that is only frosting on someone elses cake. Like with the 3.5 release replacing all of 3rd edition, it just feels wrong to allow someone else that much control of my(your) ideas. Its your work, take a little pride in it to do it right, not adjust it to someone elses concepts~

[Tav_Behemoth]

Based on Ron's metaphor of the gaming group as jazz band, we decided that a RPG game system is either a musical instrument or a CD.  This seems to fit very closely with the metaphor being expressed in this thread

I hadn't read that essay of Ron's, but I'm not surprised to find he was here first! The most relevant aspect of the jazz band to my DJ metaphor is the accepted canon of pre-existing material. Re-interpreting old standards is important to the jazz tradition, and choosing to do so isn't seen as limiting to creativity. And having a common set of references aids improvisation; if the trumpeter quotes the melody from "Stormy Monday," the rest of the band recognizes it right away and can explore that direction together.

I would not limit "CDs"/DJs to OGL/d20.  I see a similar trend in (say) Savage Worlds, with their campaign books.

The CD metaphor is also interesting, although no gaming experience (even playing a computer "RPG") is truly as passive as listening to a CD. Apples and oranges, but I think we all come to gaming in order to be active collaborators instead of audience members.

To me, the exciting thing about DJing is that it shows how playing (and sampling and re-contextualizing) records can itself become an innovative artform. To make it work, the records have to be available to the DJ community. Because Savage Species isn't an open system, it limits the participation of DJs; you can do whatever you like with their discs on your own turntables, but it's harder to release a record of your own that samples theirs (although see below).

There's a different problem with the OGL, which it also shares with the d20 license -- you're already allowed to. Mechanics cannot be copyrighted. You can write something to be "compatible with" a design without getting permission. This is fact in every other industry. The only thing d20/OGL is doing is eroding the existing legal freedoms in this area by setting up acceptance of the situation that it is required in order to practice freedoms you already have. This will change the law for the worse by removing a freedom we already have and replace it with a new set of rules and regulations.

I agree that there are problems with the OGL; my advocacy of the OGL community runs in tandem with my efforts to reform & improve the license. Forgive me for assuming that most opposition to d20 wasn't based on consideration of such sophisticated legal issues!

You're quite right that participating in the OGL requires you to give up freedoms that you would otherwise have, since game rules are not copyrightable. However, if this is the only thing the OGL is doing, then how do you explain the following:

1)   Prior to the OGL, virtually everything that was advertised as "compatible with D&D" stuck very close to the medieval fantasy setting and core rules of D&D; after the OGL, a wide range of variations of rules, setting, and concepts are all understood to be compatible with the "world's most popular roleplaying game"
2)   The OGL has eliminated the previously-common practice of releasing games whose mechanics are essentially identical to D&D, but with renamed statistics etc. to "file off the serial numbers", and with no effort to imply or allow cross-over between other similar D&D-but-not-quite games

In practice, I'm not eager to go back to a situation where publishers had unlimited freedom in theory but were prevented from exercising it by community pressure / the threat of being sued by someone who could afford to lose cases just to drive you out of business. (Ask a policeman about the strategic value of an arrest on charges that won't stand up in court!)

It just feels wrong to allow someone else that much control of my(your) ideas. Its your work, take a little pride in it to do it right, not adjust it to someone elses concepts~

With all respect, I think it feels wrong to you because you're an indie rocker! :)
Giving up control is the wellspring of the power behind any community-driven experiment, whether it's the OGL, sampled music, open source software, etc. And to the extent that you won't adjust your ideas to anyone else's, you require them to give up their own concepts to accommodate you.

What I'm trying to do is not to say that System Doesn't Matter, but to outline what I see as the benefits of the OGL system. I think that, unlike any other game, it's the meta-system that matters here: the fact that the OGL makes it easy to directly incorporate prior materials and requires new work to be open to community use has unique benefits for its popularity, openness to collaboration, and the artistic depth that comes from re-interpreting shared sources.

[daMoose_Neo]

But herein lies my beef with the d20 OGL- its NOT a community driven experiment. Its a way Hasbro/WotC can use their properties to appear to be the good guys all the while using it as an advertising/marketing tool for THEIR properties. Brilliant from a marketing perspective, destructive when it reaches the point where that is all people see.
As I said, its D&D Super Heroes, its D&D In Space~
Take a look at like FUDGE or GURPS. Can't say for sure what the actual commercial lisence on those are, but those are excellent, well known easily modifiable and entertaining systems...FUDGE is free isn't it? Half awake at the moment, facts aren't 100% straight...
Or even if someone at the Forge here created a system, easily modifiable, easy to learn, fairly coherant in any setting, and allowed anyone to make worlds, supplements, alterations or what not on it. THAT would be a community driven experiment in creativity.
What we have now is several fans of old D&D and older role playing regurgitating what was printed already simply because they have the lisence to do so.

[John Kim]

But herein lies my beef with the d20 OGL- its NOT a community driven experiment. Its a way Hasbro/WotC can use their properties to appear to be the good guys all the while using it as an advertising/marketing tool for THEIR properties. Brilliant from a marketing perspective, destructive when it reaches the point where that is all people see.
As I said, its D&D Super Heroes, its D&D In Space~

I generally agree with you, and a while ago I wrote up my http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/copyright/opengaming.html">comments on "open" gaming.  The gist is that RPGs already were open source -- anyone could see the source of how a tabletop RPG worked, and they can and did borrow ideas from previous games for their own designs.  So to a large degree, the OGL is actually making sharing of ideas more difficult and lawyerly, whereas it was already pretty open.  For example, anyone could already make a D&D-like system, and many people did (i.e. the Arcanum, Palladium, RoleMaster, etc.).  People were even publishing D&D-compatible supplements, branded as "usable with any fantasy role-playing system".  

At the same time, there have been a number of standalone systems under the OGL including some fairly innovative ones such as Mutants & Masterminds -- and one completely non-d20 OGL system (GRG's Action! System).

Take a look at like FUDGE or GURPS. Can't say for sure what the actual commercial lisence on those are, but those are excellent, well known easily modifiable and entertaining systems...FUDGE is free isn't it?

Fudge is free, and one can make complete games based on Fudge for non-commercial use.  It is also fairly easy to make a commercial Fudge game but that isn't covered by the open license.  GURPS has a free preview (GURPS Lite) but has nothing resembling an open license.  SJG certainly tolerates fan sites, but making a GURPS game or supplement is done on SJG's terms.  

There are several other open licenses and RPGs under open licenses, but I think they are largely missing the point.  You don't need an open viral license to use other people's ideas, and focus on the licenses makes things largely commercial and murky.  I think that to make things more open, we should just make less of an issue over copyright.

[greyorm]

First, I think this thread is becoming far too metaphor heavy, and it's really clouding the discussion. So, I'm going to try to avoid metaphors, for the most part.

You asked two questions, and I'll do my best to answer:

Prior to the OGL, virtually everything that was advertised as "compatible with D&D" stuck very close to the medieval fantasy setting and core rules of D&D; after the OGL, a wide range of variations of rules, setting, and concepts are all understood to be compatible with the "world's most popular roleplaying game"

First, I take issue with your use of the word "compatible"...compatible, hell. Not even. But I'll get to that in a minute.

I think that the past dearth of alternate setting concepts, with the exception of Rifts, is mainly because D&D doesn't do anything except D&D well. You can tweak it all you want, but at the core, it's the same system. Professional designers understood this then as they do now, and thus to create new games about different setting-situations, they created new rule systems to provide the tools that would create the different (non-D&D) type of play they envisioned happening.

In some cases, they succeeded, in many others, they failed miserably. RPG design was really still in its infancy (and even now, I believe it is very much still a in a pre-adult stage). However, there were far more unique games than D&D clones produced in the past twenty-odd years of game publishing.

Today, you have people who grew up on D&D trying to cash into the gaming mainstream, producing d20 materials for "other genres" for the sole reason that they believe the games will sell better to their audience thanks to Dancey's marketing of the license. But what you end up getting is more "adventure to gain XP to increase level so you can adventure to gain XP to increase level."

I mean, is Redhurst really about Hogwarts-style wizardry students? Or is it D&D that happens to take place in a would-be wizard's academy? After all, how important is the Strength attribute or killing monsters for treasure and experience points to themes examined in Harry Potter, or to a game about wizard students trying to make the grade?

It's shoehorning concepts into an existing system when making an entirely new system would be far more appropriate, and work far better. It's like trying to get rock music by mixing tracks of country: you might get someting like rock, but mostly not very, and even the best is going to be nothing that you couldn't have done better by just playing rock to begin with.

It's inexperienced designers (or industry folks trying to make a buck riding the latest craze -- and who can blame them?) saying: "Let's make D&D...in SPACE!" and it ends up being nothing but Color and Setting variation. Which, honestly, is not that big in the innovation category. It ends up being dungeon-crawls...in SPACE! Or dungeon crawls...as TEENAGERS! Etc. Etc. Etc. The theme just doesn't change.

So we aren't talking about compatibility at all...we're talking about cosmetic change, so of course it's compatible. That's part of design however, unless the play style of two games match, they aren't going to be compatible anyways, and that's not a bad thing at all.

The OGL has eliminated the previously-common practice of releasing games whose mechanics are essentially identical to D&D, but with renamed statistics etc. to "file off the serial numbers", and with no effort to imply or allow cross-over between other similar D&D-but-not-quite games

I question your use of the word "common" here. I can only think of one widely successful (ie: popular) game that is a D&D clone: Rifts. I realize there are others, but they are in the main, largely off the radar of all but the most experienced or first-generation hobby gamers.

Secondly, I your statement that there was no effort to imply or allow cross-over for those systems that were produced is just plain false. All these games, and many listed "Compatible with AD&D" right there in the text or on the cover, until TSR's management became lawsuit happy (from what I can ssume is trying to "protect their IP" when their marketing and business model had sunk the company) and either sued those folks out of business, or forced them to change tactics and let consumers (rightly) assume compatibility based on the obvious similarities.

Even then, there's a far more important point about these games: most of the "essentially identical" games you refer to are Heartbreakers (reference our articles section for the essays) -- they are actual attempts to get away from D&D and its ruleset, to play something else, but they present such minor steps because of the authors' lack of wide experience with system, thus they are essentially D&D with the serial numbers filed off except for the purportedly "innovative" tweaks here and there.

The creators didn't want them to be compatible with D&D, or didn't care if they were, because they wrote their rules as a reaction to D&D, as a "we can make this way better" idea, but definitely not as a "we wish we were playing this under D&D, so here's our rip-off rules to let you play our game without getting into a legal tangle" design.

Just as designers jumped on the White Wolf bandwagon and created similar designs because that was all they had played and they liked it, except for this bit here, and this here, and maybe this piece here.

So I take issue when you suggest that the latter was the motivation in the design of these older games, when it was not.

Finally, the practice has in no way been eliminated. I've seen at least three D&D-derived designs pass through the Forge in just the last year; and there have been small market releases of D&D clones since the d20 license appeared. Things haven't changed in that respect at all.

Even regardless of all this: what does the license really get us?
Systems whose goals and styles don't match the goals and styles of their setting concept? Even if it allows some form of "mixing", that doesn't seem like a very great tradeoff.

In practice, I'm not eager to go back to a situation where publishers had unlimited freedom in theory but were prevented from exercising it by community pressure / the threat of being sued

I agree, but the licenses now make it even easier to sue someone over minor legal arcana.

Giving up control is the wellspring of the power behind any community-driven experiment, whether it's the OGL, sampled music, open source software, etc. And to the extent that you won't adjust your ideas to anyone else's, you require them to give up their own concepts to accommodate you.

Such is the death of good design, and the path to Incoherence. This really is a System Does Matter issue, at least when we're discussing the utility of using a common license for games based around a specific system.

What I see as the problem is not using someone else's ideas, or bits thereof, in a new expression of the whole, but, to return to your DJ metaphor: you know you can sample a wide variety of musical styles to get the effect you are going for.

The difference with d20 is that d20 says, "Hey, I can do it all! You don't need anything else!" which, if it were a musical style, you'd say "HAH!" and laugh yourself silly.

Gamers, however, don't realize this. They believe, truly, that d20 really can do it all, when it provably can not. This is a problem, perhaps the largest problem, with the d20 phenomenon. Beyond this key fact, and the legal issues I mentioned, I really have no problem with developing for d20, or seeing new and interesting products for it. I just don't believe any of the "positives" you mention for it as a concept are really all that wonderful.

The OGL concept, however, is a different beast.

What I'm trying to do is not to say that System Doesn't Matter, but to outline what I see as the benefits of the OGL system. I think that, unlike any other game, it's the meta-system that matters here: the fact that the OGL makes it easy to directly incorporate prior materials and requires new work to be open to community use has unique benefits for its popularity, openness to collaboration, and the artistic depth that comes from re-interpreting shared sources.

It seems to me you're sliding back and forth between the d20 and the OGL, speaking about one, then the other, as though they're the same thing. They definitely aren't.

The OGL is a good thing, or at least an interesting idea, and if it were more firmly divorced from the d20 license in the minds of gamers and designers, it might have something going for it. As it stands, it's sort of in the shadow of the former, and it still has the stigma of being unnecessarily developed and put forward as something necessary in order to utilize mechanics or ideas, when it isn't a necessary beast at all.

And when you get right down to it, that's bad. It needs to change itself to accomodate this, to say, "Hey, listen, you can do all this stuff already. It's legal. Publishers who want to include me are saying, 'Use our stuff as your own!' This is an agreement betwen you and the publisher that they can't frivolously sue you -- it's a leash on the lawyers and corporate types that may come after us. That is, it's a protection against another TSR."

That would be good.