Traveller Open Content - New Programme on the Way!

[dragon3r]

I know I'm not much 50 or so followers and my setting is something different: accurate star maps, near future, a little bit solarpunk and hard sf, some say it is optimistic, it's not dark. I'm pretty happy using the 1e srd, and CE, though I have also played it with M-Space, and Classic Traveller. Someone on Reddit said they are using Mothership. I dropped a piece of change buying six books and the ref screen for 2e; I mean I was a 1e player and ref from 2009 so it isn't that big of a change. Some pubs are interested in the new srd, and others happy with the old one.

 

[Prime_Evil]

I know I'm not much 50 or so followers and my setting is something different: accurate star maps, near future, a little bit solarpunk and hard sf, some say it is optimistic, it's not dark. I'm pretty happy using the 1e srd, and CE, though I have also played it with M-Space, and Classic Traveller. Someone on Reddit said they are using Mothership. I dropped a piece of change buying six books and the ref screen for 2e; I mean I was a 1e player and ref from 2009 so it isn't that big of a change. Some pubs are interested in the new srd, and others happy with the old one.

The problem with the old SRD is the threat that Wizards of the Coast has left hanging over the Open Gaming Licence (OGL). They claimed to have the right to issue an update to that license which invalidates / deauthorises it. Whether they have the legal power to do this is questionable, but that's not the point - by claiming this power they have made everything released under the license toxic. Most folks assume WoTC will make another attempt to terminate the license when the revision of D&D 5e is released in 2024.

In the case of the "old" Traveller SRD, the agreement between Mongoose and downstream publishers is independent of WoTC. But it happens to use the terms of the OGL. And the copyright in the license text is held by WoTC. Also, the terms of the license grant Wizards the unique ability to issue updates to the terms. Mongoose can't update the terms of the license, but WoTC can. And WoTC has interpreted this (rightly or wrongly) to mean that they can revoke the license at any time. They have been a bit evasive on this point - their current strategy seems to be to p*ss in the pool so nobody else can swim (to put it crudely).

Publishers outside of the D&D ecosystem might be able to push back against any move to invalidate the OGL. There is a legal argument based upon promissory estoppel and detrimental reliance that WoTC can't deauthorise the licence. Many people relied in good faith upon public statements by WoTC to make a business decision to use the OGL. This reliance was reasonable based upon the promise made by WoTC that the OGL was a universal license offered as a template for any company that wanted to use it. But that's not the point. Fighting back against Hasbro would cost several million dollars just to get to the hearing stage. And the entire market for Traveller and its spinoffs isn't worth that much.

 

[dragon3r]

The problem with the old SRD is the threat that Wizards of the Coast has left hanging over the Open Gaming Licence (OGL). They claimed to have the right to issue an update to that license which invalidates / deauthorises it. Whether they have the legal power to do this is questionable, but that's not the point - by claiming this power they have made everything released under the license toxic. Most folks assume WoTC will make another attempt to terminate the license when the revision of D&D 5e is released in 2024.

In the case of the "old" Traveller SRD, the agreement between Mongoose and downstream publishers is independent of WoTC. But it happens to use the terms of the OGL. And the copyright in the license text is held by WoTC. Also, the terms of the license grant Wizards the unique ability to issue updates to the terms. Mongoose can't update the terms of the license, but WoTC can. And WoTC has interpreted this (rightly or wrongly) to mean that they can revoke the license at any time. They have been a bit evasive on this point - their current strategy seems to be to p*ss in the pool so nobody else can swim (to put it crudely).

Publishers outside of the D&D ecosystem might be able to push back against any move to invalidate the OGL. There is a legal argument based upon promissory estoppel and detrimental reliance that WoTC can't deauthorise the licence. Many people relied in good faith upon public statements by WoTC to make a business decision to use the OGL. This reliance was reasonable based upon the promise made by WoTC that the OGL was a universal license offered as a template for any company that wanted to use it. But that's not the point. Fighting back against Hasbro would cost several million dollars just to get to the hearing stage. And the entire market for Traveller and its spinoffs isn't worth that much.

Indeed, and the simple solution would be for the old srd to be released under the orc or a cc license.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Indeed, and the simple solution would be for the old srd to be released under the orc or a cc license.

Simple, but perhaps not the right way to go. We are still in the process of getting ORC surrounded, and not yet in a position to say we are comfortable with it at this time.

 

[dragon3r]

Simple, but perhaps not the right way to go. We are still in the process of getting ORC surrounded, and not yet in a position to say we are comfortable with it at this time.

Yes, though one does not preclude the other, you can have both, and it would be a win win for everybody, precisely as it avoids any extra work.

 

[Prime_Evil]

Simple, but perhaps not the right way to go. We are still in the process of getting ORC surrounded, and not yet in a position to say we are comfortable with it at this time.

I thought the ORCs are supposed to surround you!

The orc license looks solid, but the way the split works between Licensed Content, Reserved Content, and Expressly Licensed Reserved Content is slightly different from the OGC / PI split in the OGL. It is more granular, but the viral nature of the way it treats game mechanics worries some publishers. But Chaosium seem happy with it - and they were never comfortable with the OGL...

 

[MongooseMatt]

Quick update on this.

Still looking to mov forward, but we want to be sure we know the ORC. Lawyers are getting involved. Which is always fun.

 

[Geir]

Lawyers are getting involved. Which is always fun.

I'd rather chew the fat with a K'kree Steppelord.
Wait, did I say something wrong?

 

[Dalton Calford]

Most of the things I would love to use the ORC license for, is to be able to expand upon MGT2 and share it with friends/community without having to deal with lawyers.
For example, I would love to recreate/rewrite the TNE character generation system to have careers based upon TL/Culture and that address the companion expanded attributes, CT based medals, as well as small changes in game mechanics that all are expansions, inclusions or alterations of Traveller from over the years.

For example, one thing that I have in my games is a different task resolution system. I always considered Travellers task/skill system to be broken.
I love the simple roll 8+ mechanic. But, I don't think that having a slightly higher than normal attribute, should be equivalent to 4 years training (+1 to skill roll).
So, if you change the target number for various skill difficulties, so that average still needs to roll 8+ on two dice, but takes into consideration skills, equipment, and attributes, you have found the holy grail of traveller mechanics.

I have done this by setting target numbers as follows

Difficulty	2d6+Attribute >=
Simple	0
Easy	5
Routine	10
Average	15
Difficult	20
Very Difficult	25
Formidable	30
Impossible	35

As attributes average to be 7, a roll of 8+ would succeed an average roll.
Skills reduce the target difficulty by a number of levels equal to their skill value. So a character with skill-2 trying a Difficult task, would actually be testing against a Routine task (Difficult -2 levels of difficulty = Routine).
Having no skill increases the difficulty by one level. JOAT gives a flat + to unskilled or level 0 skills without affecting difficulty, with no limit to JOAT skill levels.
Equipment can give flat +- modifiers based upon quality, or if they are smart, actually reduce the difficulty like a skill does.
While I don't claim it to be perfect, it does make attributes and damage to attributes far more important, while not making skills irrelevant and giving enough room that having personalized equipment does not break the game.

If I wanted to write this up fully, with all the MGT2 variations, I would be very limited. MGT2 is not currently OGL. So I can not use any of the current game text, so I have to rewrite everything (no SRD to work from). TAS states I can only publish it on Drivethru, so I can't put it up on a blog or put it into any other format. So, while I am not out to create a new game system, nor am I out to create a new universe, I would like to just be able to post up my group's game rules in a format that does not leave anything out and that would not get me into trouble if I shared them with friends.
FFE's fair use policy does make allowances for this, but nothing from Mongoose gives any such freedoms.

But, currently, between the licenses available to me, or lack of fair use statement from Mongoose, we are left in a legal void, when all we want to do is play and support our games.

So, all I ask is, if you are dealing with the demons from the 8th level of hell (lawyers) please take the above into consideration.

 

[Prime_Evil]

Would the ORC license provide a way for the community to contribute back to Mongoose too? In the past, the OGL was a one-way street. Licensees took material from an upstream licensor and used it to create derivative works. But ORC turns this into a two-way transaction, where Mongoose could take the best game mechanics from the community and build on them. The ORC license protects IP other than game mechanics against unauthorised use, but encourages open sharing of new rules. So if you want to produce material for the Third Imperium setting (for example), you still need a separate license from Mongoose / Far Future Enterprises (as is the case with the TAS program). If you look at the early commentary by Ryan Dancey, back in the D&D 3.0 days there was an intention to integrate the best community ideas back into D&D but it never quite worked out. But is it possible to create a virtuous circle here where the community supports each other to encourage the evolution of the game system?

Also, is Mongoose looking at using ORC exclusively or are they looking at dual-licensing the material? I note that some publishers have started offering content under both the OGL and ORC licenses so that both options are available (at least as long as the OGL lasts).

 

[MongooseMatt]

We would want to keep things as simple as possible, so if ORC (or something else) can do everything everyone needs, that would be the option to use.

 

[Studio Cat]

Quick update on this.

Still looking to mov forward, but we want to be sure we know the ORC. Lawyers are getting involved. Which is alwa

We would want to keep things as simple as possible, so if ORC (or something else) can do everything everyone needs, that would be the option to use.

Measure twice and cut once.

We are eager to hear news on this, but it is also a legacy decision, so please take as much time as you need.

 

[SCWatson_Art]

Jumping in here so I can track the thread. Have several things coming up that I'd like to publish via whatever OGL is decided upon, or via TAS, whichever makes the most sense for a Traveller 3rd party product.

 

[Prime_Evil]

Is there any update on this? Or have the lawyers reenlisted for another term? Let's hope they made their survival rolls!

 

[MongooseMatt]

The lawyers are indeed involved at the moment - we think we know what we are doing, just need to check everything out and make sure the language is right.

 

[gilthy]

Not a lawyer (only pretending to be one in an RPG ,but I came upon this opinion on the ORC in a discord I frequent:

Re: ORC License. It's bad. Do not use it.

It's not actively radioactive if you have IP you control and can put into a firewalled SRD containing nothing you don't want to be open content.

But as soon as you can't do that (because, for example, you're using licensed content from somebody else), the license is designed to prevent you from controlling what material you release under the license, and it does so by providing insanely vague definitions of what is and is not licensed content.

So it's a nightmare if you have IP you want to protect (since you can't). And the whole thing is designed to encourage lawsuits to argue about what does and does not qualify under its vague definitions, which completely negates the entire reason you have an open license in the first place.

So someone said, "Let's keep all the uncertainties of copyright law and how it applies to RPGs, but add contract law to it by baking those exact same uncertainties into our license!"

Absolute madness.

The people who created the license explicitly consider all of this to be a feature.

"Do I Need to Use the Open Gaming License?" @ TheAlexandrian.net

Imagine that Disney published a Star Wars RPG under the ORC.

Because ORC provides a definition of "licensed material" that is automatically licensed no matter what you do, if Disney included:

• a Jedi "class"
• a Tatooine character "background"
• "dialogue options" in an adventure module that talked about the Death Star

All of those things would be open under the ORC license.

OR WOULD THEY?!

Disney's ability to protect Jedi, Tatooine, and the Death Star would rely entirely on their ability to argue that, for example, the Tatooine character background is "not essential to, or can be varied without altering, the ideas or methods of operation of a game system." Which is basically the exact same thing undetermined under current copyright law: At what point does a "game mechanic" (not copyrighted) become "literary expression" (copyrighted) when you're talking about a Pernese dragon or a Rankor monster or a D&D drow elf?

Have fun in court trying to prove that.

But that's not all! If you're a third-party publisher releasing material for the Star Wars RPG under the ORC, you would have to guess whether Jedi, Tatooine, and the Death Star are licensed material or not!

While the ORC License does give Disney the ability to include a Reserved Material Notice, the license (a) does not require it, (b) explicitly states that it can't actually prevent licensed material from being licensed, and (c) explicitly states that even if something ISN'T listed as reserved material, it might still be reserved material under the definition of reserved material (i.e., that whole "not essential to, or can be varied without altering" thing).

Hope you guess right every single time! Otherwise Disney's lawyers are going to sue you!

Absolute nightmare.

(emphasis mine)

So, I'd suggest letting the lawyers take a good look at it.

I'm all for some form of open license, and some form of SRD so people can do "compatible" material with Traveller (or with whatever takes their fancy), and I'm fine with whatever option Mongoose (and Marc Miller / Far Future Enterprises) decide to use in the end, whether that should be the ORC or some other form of license. I think something like the current TAS or the DM's Guild (for D&D) is fine too.

 

[TrooperSJP]

I remember reading a bit of a debate about the ORC on one of the boards I frequent. It was very good. It was about the debate that matches this in computer programming considering freedom to remix and extend. I think the person called it a viral license. Also known as copyleft.

This fundamentally philosophical. And deals with how people see the intellectual property and the commons. People who place more value in protecting the commons are going to favor copyleft; those who place more value in more incompasing intellectual property are going to favor copyright. I think that there are people on both sides of this debate who are speaking from a consistent and thought through intellectual position. Indeed, I think most people are arguing from good faith.

I think the tricky thing right now is that a bunch of people really want to have a closed license but won't admit it to themselves. Or...more accurately, like Disney, they want the works of others to go into the public domain so they can make movies off of them without having to get permission or approval or pay (like them waiting until Alice in Wonderland went into the public domain before making their film so they didn't have to compensate Lewis), but then wanting to prevent their version of Alice in Wonderland from entering the public domain so no one else can do the same.

Does this mean ORC is good or that it is bad? I can't say. I know Evil Hat has been using Creative Commons. There are also companies that just have closed licenses. There are a lot of different models with different philosophies underlying them.

I guess...we'll just have to keep watching this space to find out what happens!

 

[Prime_Evil]

I think the tragedy of the OGL mess is that the approach to open licensing across the industry has fragmented into various incompatible models. For all its flaws, the Open Gaming Licence offered a common approach most companies agreed on. Some might argue this was the goal of WoTC in the first place. The claim they could use their update power to invalidate the license might be legally dubious. But nobody wants to test this in court - the legal system is pay-to-play.

 

[apastuszak]

I think the tragedy of the OGL mess is that the approach to open licensing across the industry has fragmented into various incompatible models. For all its flaws, the Open Gaming Licence offered a common approach most companies agreed on. Some might argue this was the goal of WoTC in the first place. The claim they could use their update power to invalidate the license might be legally dubious. But nobody wants to test this in court - the legal system is pay-to-play.

I agree. I think all we really needed was the OGL with the words perpetual and irrevocable added to it. Now we have a few different licenses which will probably be incompatible with each other. Roll of Law is now working on the ELF license, which sounds like it will be incompatible with ORC.

 

[Jeffrywith1e]

I thought you were joking. But I see that this is true. And maybe good!