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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.)

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.

Halzebier wrote: _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.

greyorm wrote: 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.

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.

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?

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~

GreatWolf wrote: 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

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

greyorm wrote: 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.

daMoose_Neo wrote: 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~

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.

daMoose_Neo wrote: 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~

daMoose_Neo wrote: 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?

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:

Tav_Behemoth wrote: 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”

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

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.

Man, this was the thread I was BORN for, being a snobbish hipster wannabe and all. So...

Actually, I'm afraid that the analogy isn't perfect. (What, an imperfect metaphor? Impossible!) You mention DJing being a major aspect of recontextualizing a given material, and I can see that in the more innovative D20 works (Spycraft, ffrex), but I really feel like there's a lot less collaboration in the D20 world than in the DJ world. IMHO, indie rpgs aren't just indie rock, but everything else - indie rock, screamo, hardcore noise, albums filled with static, contemporary classical, and more - as was said before, I feel DJ'd music and D20/D&D play are both diverse, but for different reasons (the former from many degrees of novel recontexualization; the latter from fundamental open-endedness of RPG play, and the diversity of playgroups).

However, your metaphors are cool, in that (a) music is cool, and RPGs should look cool too, but more importantly (b) business model? Although I'm not sure *HOW* to put out something like our own "Sub Pop", we have some diverse community resources coming together, such as the meandering Forge Booth(s), the upcoming NPA anthology, the theoretical Iron Game Chef anthology, P.O.D. markets (Lulu, et al.), and some outsourcing of editing/layout work (as seen at Politically Incorrect Games, although they took down that info page for now).

As for the "RPG mix tape" (or more likely, a sort of "RPG mix-zine"), that sounds like a fundamentally good idea, and not necessarily just for D20/OGL stuff. If we had a reliable stream of those Finite RPGs we were talking about elsewhere, we could have a regular publication of those... (I'll post more about that thouht on request and/or in the near future.)