Will the Traveller System Reference Document be updated?

[Prime_Evil]

I know Matt was talking about doing this at one point, but it was a resource-intensive task and it kind of fell off the radar. We haven't heard anything for ages and I was wondering whether an SRD update is still on the agenda?

I get the feeling that maintaining a "living" System Reference Document involves a lot of ongoing work and may be impractical for a small company like Mongoose. It may be difficult to justify diverting resources away from commercial activities for the length of time required.

Would it perhaps be a better solution to follow a model similar to that which Mongoose has developed for Legend? Certain material could be released as Open Game Content as new books are released while setting-related material remains product identity. This would permit third-party publishers to reference new rules elements in their own works while protecting licensed intellectual property such as the Third Imperium setting or the various 2000AD settings.

I also like the model that Paizo adopted with Pathfinder where the model where each new book releases the game mechanics as Open Game Content but reserves all "trademarks, registered trademarks, proper names (characters, deities, etc.), dialogue, plots, storylines, locations, characters, artwork, and trade dress" as product identity. However, additional restrictions in the Pathfinder Compatibility License ensure that third-party publishers can't use this material in unacceptable ways if they want to brand their releases as "Pathfinder-compatible".

Perhaps something like this could be if Mongoose does do a reprint or second edition of the Core Rulebook and other key releases for Traveller? With PDF releases it might be possible to simply update the files with a new OGL statement.

The reason that I ask about this is that I've been reading a number of releases from third-party publishers and have been impressed by the quality of them. I personally think it would be awesome to let third-party developers play with things like the vehicle creation system, the cybernetics rules, and the robot design system. But is this desirable and is it reasonable to ask Mongoose whether it might be accommodated at some point in the future? What do people think?

 

[Wil Mireu]

Now that I look, my PDFs of the MGT Traveller corebook, Mercenary, and High Guard books all say this at the front:

This game product contains no Open Game Content. No portion of this work may be reproduced in any form without written permission. To learn more about the Open Game License, please go to http://www.mongoosepublishing.com.

The Traveller Corebook certainly does contain OGL material (you can't have an SRD without that) so that bolded statement's clearly incorrect isn't it? Is this some obtuse legal difference between "stuff written in a rulebook" and "stuff in an online document that is identical to the stuff from the rulebook but is still declared to be Open Content"?

Obviously these books DO contain OGL material because they're in the SRD, so WTF is going on here?

 

[Prime_Evil]

I think the idea was that to avoid confusion the books themselves wouldn't contain any Open Game Content but that material would be extracted from them into the System Reference Document - which would serve as a central OGC repository. The SRD originally only contained material from the Core rulebook, but was updated after Mercenary and High Guard came out. The original plan was that it would continue to be updated as subsequent books were released, but this proved unworkable and it began to fall behind the publishing schedule until it became too difficult and time consuming to catch up. About a year or so ago, Matt indicated that Mongoose would address this issue eventually but there was little progress for a variety of reasons and eventually it dropped off the radar. There was a sticky thread pinned at the top of the forum for a long time that discussed the SRD, but it was unstickied a while back (presumably due to lack of activity).

Since that time, a number of things have happened:

• A large number of new Mongoose Traveller books have been released and significant new rule subsystems have been published.
• The number of third-party publishers producing Traveller-compatible material has grown.
• Mongoose has experimented with an alternative method of distributing Open Game Content with the Legend product line, eliminating the administrative overhead associated with maintaining a System Reference Document. This appears to be attracting an ecosystem of developers to the system, although it is still to early to say what the long-term consequences will be. It does appear to be more successful than the MRQ I System Reference Document though and the closed development model adopted for MRQ II.

 

[Wil Mireu]

I think the idea was that to avoid confusion the books themselves wouldn't contain any Open Game Content but that material would be extracted from them into the System Reference Document - which would serve as a central OGC repository.

That seems really strange to me. I notice that the D&D 3e books say the same thing though (even with material that we know is was released as Open Content).

So how is anyone expected to know what is or isn't Open Content in a book unless the publisher updates their SRD? And why are third party publishers bothering to declare what is or isn't OGC in their products? Are they doing it wrong?

 

[Prime_Evil]

That seems really strange to me. I notice that the D&D 3e books say the same thing though (even with material that we know is was released as Open Content).

The model developed by Wizards of the Coast back in the early days of the Open Game License was to declare everything in their published books as closed content and release a subset of that material as OGC via the d20 System Reference Document. Mongoose took the same approach with Traveller and MRQ I as it was the dominant model at the time, releasing System Reference Documents for these games but declaring the content of published books as product identity.

Since that time, a number of companies have taken a different approach by having an Open Game Content declaration at the front of their books to release some or all of the content as OGC. Gold Rush Games pioneered this approach with their excellent (but ill-fated) Action System, followed by Guardians of Order and then Green Ronin with Mutants and Masterminds. More significantly, Paizo adopted this approach for Pathfinder around the same time as Wizards of the Coast was moving towards the more restrictive Game System Licence (GSL) - a gamble that paid off spectacularly for them because it helped to distinguish their company from that of their main competitor.

When Mongoose converted MRQ II into Legend, they decided not to produce a distinct SRD for the new system but rather to release the content from the "...of Legend" product line as OGC in their entirety. Setting-related books such as the Deus Vult books and the recent Sheoloth book remain closed product identity though. Obviously an approach like this won't work for Traveller since some of the content in the rulebooks is Mark Miller's intellectual property licenced to Mongoose.

So how is anyone expected to know what is or isn't Open Content in a book unless the publisher updates their SRD?

By default, all material in each rulebook is closed content unless the publisher explicitly declares it as OGC. This can be done either through an SRD update or an OGC declaration.

And why are third party publishers bothering to declare what is or isn't OGC in their products? Are they doing it wrong?

Any publisher who produces a derivative work based upon Open Game Content must comply with the terms of the Open Game Licence. One of the requirements of the licence is that third-party publishers must include a copy of the OGL and must declare what portions of their work are Open Game Content and what portions are Product Identity. Section 8 of the license states that "If you distribute Open Game Content, you must clearly indicate which portions of the work that you are distributing are Open Game Content". And because all third-party Traveller products use OGC from the System Reference Document they are legally required to include an OGC Declaration - even if they aren't contributing any new Open Game Content to the body of shared open material.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Two quick notes here.

In answer to the first question, the quick answer is that we have every intention of updating the SRD - but we really are flat out at the moment, and simply do not have the time.

As for OGL declarations, no printed Traveller book (from us) contains Open Content. Only the SRD does. Yes, some text is shared, but what we are saying is use the SRD, _not_ the rulebook!

 

[dmccoy1693]

Before I begin, let me just state that this is a mix of known facts, educated guesses and personal opinion.

When Mongoose first released Traveller, the gold standard for releasing your game into the OGL-osphere was to put out a document saying, "this is what you can use." While I do not know for certain, I would assume that Mongoose's license for Traveller allows them to follow that method only with core Traveller books. Also, updating the SRD probably required more manpower than Mongoose possesses.

Pathfinder has all their books OGL for 1 simple reason: they have no other choice. Paizo never owned the rules they wanted to use so they had to make every book OGL. Even books that were completely new, like the advanced player's guide, had to have an OGL in them and release certain parts as open because that is what the OGL required of them. Unless Paizo is willing to rewrite every single word in the core rulebook/bestiary and rename a bunch of stuff in the rest of their their books that is use nowhere else except in OGL material (which, frankly, I'd completely believe they would do for Pathfinder 2.0), they are stuck with this method forever.

Legend is a different matter. Mongoose owned the RQII system and choose to not release it as OGL back when they had the license because they simply did not have the manpower to put out a document of what other people could or could not use. So when they lost the RQII license and their two main RQII developers, its not a hard business decision to simply reedit the system, removing any RQ specific material and just stick an OGL in the back, hoping someone would use it. This method also saved extra work of releasing material to developers. The difference between Legend and Pathfinder is one of choice.

If Mongoose did ever lose the Traveller license, I would assume they would follow the Legend model. But until that time, I am fine with what I have for one simple reason: not having the material as OGL has yet to stop me from not using it. Take "armor piercing" which was introduced in the CSC, if I remember correctly. The CSC presented armor piercing weapons as "AP" "UAP" and so on that said just how much armor it ignored. Well, armor piercing as a concept is not owned by traveller. So for Mech Squadrons, I simply said, "armor piercing 3" or "armor piercing 5" to say how much armor it ignored. So I was able to get around the Traveller specific presentation while still being right there with Mongoose in what is used in Traveller.

Robots are similar. I haven't published any yet, but if I were to do so, I would create the system using the robot creation system. Then I would present the robot in a fashion that is inline with the Traveller Main Book. Not having the robot rules as OGL is not stopping me from doing exactly that. So, I am fine with what we have right now.

 

[Wil Mireu]

Robots are similar. I haven't published any yet, but if I were to do so, I would create the system using the robot creation system. Then I would present the robot in a fashion that is inline with the Traveller Main Book. Not having the robot rules as OGL is not stopping me from doing exactly that.

Doesn't it? T20 had a specific statement allowing people to can use some of the systems in the book to create things (e.g. the world generation system wasn't OGC, but UWPs were), but Mongoose doesn't have that.

My impression was that unless it's released as OGL or in the SRD, third parties can't use it. You could make your OWN robot generation system (and even make it OGC) and present its results in your own way with stats that are compatible with the OGC, but (unless I'm misunderstanding you ) I don't think you're allowed to just use Mongoose's system and publish results that look like Mongoose's Robot stats.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Robots are similar. I haven't published any yet, but if I were to do so, I would create the system using the robot creation system. Then I would present the robot in a fashion that is inline with the Traveller Main Book. Not having the robot rules as OGL is not stopping me from doing exactly that.

Doesn't it? T20 had a specific statement allowing people to can use some of the systems in the book to create things (e.g. the world generation system wasn't OGC, but UWPs were), but Mongoose doesn't have that.

My impression was that unless it's released as OGL or in the SRD, third parties can't use it. You could make your OWN robot generation system (and even make it OGC) and present its results in your own way with stats that are compatible with the OGC, but (unless I'm misunderstanding you ) I don't think you're allowed to just use Mongoose's system and publish results that look like Mongoose's Robot stats.

Basically, its a trick that you can do when you know absolutely sure what you're doing what you're doing and how close you can get to the legal line without actually crossing it. Like flying a plane through the eiffel tower to escape a Nazi pilot. Easy for an ace; no one else should try it.

 

[Wil Mireu]

Basically, its a trick that you can do when you know absolutely sure what you're doing what you're doing and how close you can get to the legal line without actually crossing it.

I'm skeptical. If someone uses non-OGL rules to create things with stats listed in the same way as the rules they're taking them from, I think they're on pretty shaky ground. I think that would definitely be going against the spirit of "OGC" (and copyright, for that matter), if not the letter of it.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Back in my early days as a writer, I remember someone at Paizo talking about this. Basically, the person wanted to use the frogmen from D&D 3.5 in their adventure. Well WotC's frogmen are not OGC. But the idea of a frogman is not owned by Wizards. So they created their own frog man that ended up having similar abilities as the Wizards version. Is it because the author worked from the same basic ideas as the author of the Wizards' frogmen or because the author had the book open and made something similar but not similar enough to get caught? We'll never know. Only the author knows for sure.

Same idea holds true here. The Traveller Main Rulebook (and the SRD) has a robot that hovers and fires a gun and little else. Now if I made a robot that hovers and fires two guns, I am doing nothing but writing a new robot. Now if the price just happens to be in line with the robot book, then all is good with the world.

Now that is not to say that there are not lines that should not be crossed. Take slots for example. The robot book has x slots for frame type and size. If I did make my robot using the robot system, then publishing aspects of it are crossing the line.

If the robot generation system were added to the SRD, there would be one major thing I could do with it now that I can't do this moment: reprint the rules as is. I have no interest in reprinting the rules so I am fine with them not in open content.

-------------------------

This is getting much further into specific minutia than I really wanted. What I wanted to say (and I think got lost by my error) is that the Traveller book and SRD goes alot further than many people give it credit for.

Take star color as a better example. Do I have to list the specific classification or can I just say it is a brown dwarf or a red giant and let the reader look up the specific classification from there?

The CSC had lots of power armor in there. Not having them in the SRD is stopping me from making my own. They were in the SRD afterall.

The capital ship system can be easily adapted to make space stations.

If there was one thing I wish was added to the SRD it would be Psion. There was so much specific there that cannot be alluded to. But frankly, after working in d20 where all there was was the classes from the Player's Handbook, I can make due with the material in the SRD.

 

[Wil Mireu]

Back in my early days as a writer, I remember someone at Paizo talking about this. Basically, the person wanted to use the frogmen from D&D 3.5 in their adventure. Well WotC's frogmen are not OGC. But the idea of a frogman is not owned by Wizards. So they created their own frog man that ended up having similar abilities as the Wizards version. Is it because the author worked from the same basic ideas as the author of the Wizards' frogmen or because the author had the book open and made something similar but not similar enough to get caught? We'll never know. Only the author knows for sure.

Same idea holds true here. The Traveller Main Rulebook (and the SRD) has a robot that hovers and fires a gun and little else. Now if I made a robot that hovers and fires two guns, I am doing nothing but writing a new robot. Now if the price just happens to be in line with the robot book, then all is good with the world.

True, but the point is that you cannot use the same rules if they're not in the SRD. General concepts are fine - as you say, nobody has the monopoly on generic frogmen, or combat robots, or red giant stars. It's how you create those things that matters though - if you used the robot rules from the Robots book, then you're crossing the line. If you made a robot arbitrarily, or made your own rules to create them and presented that using stats of your own devising or that were generic enough (e.g. speed in km/h) then that's OK.

Take star color as a better example. Do I have to list the specific classification or can I just say it is a brown dwarf or a red giant and let the reader look up the specific classification from there?

Stars aren't copyrighted material, so you can use them however you like. A specific star unique to a specific setting (e.g. a system in the OTU) on the other hand would be out of bounds.

The CSC had lots of power armor in there. Not having them in the SRD is stopping me from making my own. They were in the SRD afterall.

I don't see how - there's nothing stopping you from making your own rules and use those to make power armor. You just can't use the ones specified in the CSC.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Basically, its a trick that you can do when you know absolutely sure what you're doing what you're doing and how close you can get to the legal line without actually crossing it. Like flying a plane through the eiffel tower to escape a Nazi pilot. Easy for an ace; no one else should try it.

I'm skeptical. If someone uses non-OGL rules to create things with stats listed in the same way as the rules they're taking them from, I think they're on pretty shaky ground. I think that would definitely be going against the spirit of "OGC" (and copyright, for that matter), if not the letter of it.

You are both right. It can certainly be shaky ground but, if you know what you are doing, there are ways forward. Tread with care

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I had a similar issue in a product that I wrote (and sold). Specifically, I was detailing a merchant crew for a Free Trader.

Book 7: Merchant Prince had just come out.

I wanted to stat the crew as a Small Company. I used the rules in Merchant Prince to create their corporate sheet.

I then published it, with no explanation of what any of the terms or numbers meant. I then referred any readers to Merchant Prince for explanations and details.

The results of using the rules are not IP, but the explanation of the rules ARE IP. For example, you can give a character Pflugh-3 skill, but since Plfugh is IP, you cannot explain what it is or how to use it. You have to reference the reader back to the IP material.

 

[dmccoy1693]

the spirit of "OGC"

I always have a little chuckle when someone says this. The real spirit of the OGL, initially speaking, was to save Wizards of the Coast legal fees and to make more money off the Forgotten Realms. TSR sued companies to keep them from making material compatible with D&D 2e and lost just about all of them. Infact they established case law that game rules cannot be a copyright. Their presentation, sure, but not the rule itself. Wizards was smart enough to recognize that everything they owned could be divided into three categories: rules (which they cannot be copywritten [not sure if that is an actual word, oh well]), stuff straight out of legends and myths (which cannot be copywritten [yes, I'm using that possibly made up word again]), and stuff they made up (which they own without any doubt at all).

They choose to release most of categories 1 and 2 under the OGL. Most. Not even all of it. But the real question was, why did they do it? Did they honestly believe that, as Ryan Dancey claimed, that they an open game was the best thing for the gaming community? I'd suspect that that was merely how they decided to market it (and gain public support) when the corporate suits really just wanted to have some way that a) allowed other companies to make material for D&D that didn't require Wizards to try to sue every last one of them while still retaining full control over their property (which in this case was the specific wording of the rules and the stuff out of myth and legend) and b) helped to keep other companies out of the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk and their other settings.

The OGL did that by saying, "Here are the word documents of all the stuff that you can use. It contains nothing you cannot use. If you stick to these, you are not in legal hot water with us," (hence why, like I said above, the gold standard for releasing a game as OGL was as a separate word doc). So Wizards didn't have to sue anyone that followed those rules. This also created a natural barrier as it prevented companies from releasing anything for the Forgotten Realms. Nothing from FR was in those documents so Wizards had nothing to fear. So Wizards made more money off the FR.

That was the real driving force behind the OGL. Saving money and making money. True the OGL has many, many side benefits (customer good will, additional options for GMs/players that you do not have the time/resources to develop, additional promotion for your own material, just to name a few), but none of them were the driving force behind its creation. Call it the New Jersey cynic in me if you will.

 

[rust]

My impression was that unless it's released as OGL or in the SRD, third parties can't use it.

This also depends on the national legal system. For example, the German
law only protects material with a certain creative depth / originality, every-
thing else cannot be protected. Write a story about a water world named
Ocean which is inhabited by sentient dolphins, and the court will almost cer-
tainly tell you that this is not creative / original enough to be protected.

 

[dmccoy1693]

This also depends on the national legal system. For example, the German
law only protects material with a certain creative depth / originality, every-
thing else cannot be protected. Write a story about a water world named
Ocean which is inhabited by sentient dolphins, and the court will almost cer-
tainly tell you that this is not creative / original enough to be protected.

Courts in America are going to basically say the same thing. They may call it something different, use different justifications for it, but they will arrive at the same ruling.

To bring this example around to the OGL, basically Wizards released the mechanics for swimming and the race stats for the sentient dolphin as OGC. The only thing they kept for themselves is ocean world, but it was named something that the courts would hold up as theirs.

 

[Wil Mireu]

That was the real driving force behind the OGL. Saving money and making money. True the OGL has many, many side benefits (customer good will, additional options for GMs/players that you do not have the time/resources to develop, additional promotion for your own material, just to name a few), but none of them were the driving force behind its creation. Call it the New Jersey cynic in me if you will.

I don't really care about any of that (if that's even remotely what their real motivation was) - if WoTC or Mongoose or whoever save money then that's great for them but completely irrelevant to me.

What matters to me is that people use the material that they're allowed to use, and that people don't push the 'legal envelope' so much that it ruins it for everyone else.

 

[dmccoy1693]

What matters to me is that people use the material that they're allowed to use, and that people don't push the 'legal envelope' so much that it ruins it for everyone else.

Fair enough.

When I started writing for Traveller, I sent Matt an email about creating planets that had the same UWP as planets in the 3I setting that were named something else and had a different flavor than the 3I setting equivalent. Mostly I did that because I wanted to create planets and I didn't want to have to search the 3I book to see if any specific UWP I was using was in there. He was fine with that. (bunny trail: those planets ended up getting published in Signs and Portents so it didn't matter anyways)

When I copied the open content rules for the Exploration and Kingdom Building rules for Pathfinder so they were available to players and not just GMs, I made a rough draft with all of Paizo's setting material removed, sent it off to Paizo and asked them if they had any problem with me moving forward with that project. I even offered to kill the project if they were merely uncomfortable with it. Paizo wrote back a few days later and said they were fine.

We publishers talk to each other, especially if we're going to try something a little cavalier. We don't want to get ourselves sued, and we don't want to cause future problems for ourselves and other publishers. If a publisher finds out that someone crossed a line, we send them an email to say, "hey, fix that before you get yourself sued." We take care of each other in that respect. Because no one wants to get the courts involved. Lawyers make enough as is.

 

[Jacqual]

I cannot even find the download link to get a copy of it. I used to have it before the website changed and my old PC died. I am curious as to if anything from the Cybernetics book will be put in the SRD, I know it isn't now.