I know it may be crazy early to be asking questions other than how the system might work for different genres but will FF be going the way of WotC, Paizo, and even White Wolf in allowing for community generated products through an Open Game Licence? With the ability to craft your own unique worlds and apply your own powers, talents, and such, it seems like the sort of system that would lend itself to this notion.

Give me...

Yes, please....

I mean if I have to have a set of dice + rule book, why not have the biggest possible choice in setting by using third party products...

Not sure it'll be OGL as much as FFG will be supportive of community projects.

Then again, who knows!?

While FFG seems to keep most their IP under lock and key, it makes me wonder if they can avoid having some type of open game / fair use policy to keep with the spirit of the game itself.

I'd love to see this be OGL.

One can hope.

I'm really hoping this system comes with SOME sort of licence. The SW:FFG system has been the bread and butter of my recent role playing life, and only one of the campaigns I'm in is actually set in the Star Wars universe, the rest are homebrew settings layered with house rules.

It's fun and all to have friends over and share the universes and settings I make, but I'd really like to move this to a published product. Something that I could put in a book and hold in my hands. I'd even be perfectly fine making it the type of splatbook that doesn't function independent of the Genesys core book, it would actually make it easier for me, logistically. All I'd need to do is supply the setting, fluff, equipment, and advanced rules. (Do I actually need an OGL to do this?)

However, I'm leery, since this is FFG after all, and I know they are tight on their IP. Another fear is that it could turn out like WotC and their Dungeon Master's Guild, which seems built to be so restrictive and cumbersome as to restrict anything beyond small projects like races and classes.

Either way, we'll have to wait and see.

On 6/30/2017 at 11:22 AM, dresdinseven said:

Another fear is that it could turn out like WotC and their Dungeon Master's Guild, which seems built to be so restrictive and cumbersome as to restrict anything beyond small projects like races and classes.

DMs Guild is specifically for products which make use of WotC IP: copyrighted monsters, settings, and those few bits of 5e which are not released under OGL. The rest of 5e is OGL, and you can produce all sorts of projects with it. That's why we have Kobold Guide to Monsters, 5e Adventures in Middle Earth, Ultramodern 5, etc.

That's true, but if you want to actually "publish" or make a few bucks off your work, it needs to go through the DMs Guild. And the DMsG feels a bit like a noose to prevent another Pathfinder from happening.

Although I don't think that will happen with this, since a generic version of a generic system is.. redundant haha.

On ‎6‎/‎28‎/‎2017 at 8:48 AM, DarthGM said:

Not sure it'll be OGL as much as FFG will be supportive of community projects.

Then again, who knows!?

I think it might depend on how much heavy support they're planning on giving Genesys.

If the primary intent is "core rulebook, a few theme books, and maybe an adventure or two," then an OGL would make sense as it puts the heavy lifting on the customer base, while opening up the chance for people to in turn publish their self-made theme books for sale on sites like DriveThruRPG and RPGNow.

If they're looking at long-term support, then OGL doesn't make as much financial sense for FFG, though they probably will be supportive of community projects. Lord knows they've been far more tolerant on that front than WotC had been during the time they held the license; I can't see something like OggDude's generator or that folks have been hosting compilations of the talent trees with the base effects of the talents listed lasting very long under WotC's stewardship of the license.

2 hours ago, dresdinseven said:

That's true, but if you want to actually "publish" or make a few bucks off your work, it needs to go through the DMs Guild. And the DMsG feels a bit like a noose to prevent another Pathfinder from happening.

This is false. If you want to use Wizards IP in a few specific categories, your work needs to go through the DMs Guild. Otherwise...

• Ultramodern 5
• Tome of Beasts for 5th Edition
• 5e Adventures in Middle Earth
• Primeval Thule 5e - PHB , GM Companion
• Legendary Games 5th Edition Storefront

...you can publish OGL stuff for 5e wherever you want, commercially or non-commercially. The license terms of DMs Guild prevent you from republishing your DMs Guild stuff elsewhere, but you've put it up there presumably to get access to things like Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, and the Monster Manual for use in your product, so you wouldn't be able to publish elsewhere anyway because of copyright law. If you don't need that stuff, you can publish just about anywhere.

Well check that out. Hard cover physical books, no less. That's really neat! I stand corrected.

I half forgot that there was an official OGL for 5e, it's 4e that didn't get one, right?

Well, I hope Genesys also gets an OGL or even a set of guidelines for third party source books and settings. I'd like to work on some projects that would be like the ones you posted, because a DMsG arrangement (and nothing else) would just be a no-go.

16 hours ago, dresdinseven said:

Well check that out. Hard cover physical books, no less. That's really neat! I stand corrected.

I half forgot that there was an official OGL for 5e, it's 4e that didn't get one, right?

Well, I hope Genesys also gets an OGL or even a set of guidelines for third party source books and settings. I'd like to work on some projects that would be like the ones you posted, because a DMsG arrangement (and nothing else) would just be a no-go.

Well you could certainly work on them "for fun". The question would be could it be a project you get paid for?

For that, we'll have to wait and see. My gut says "no", but it's been wrong before.

54 minutes ago, DarthGM said:

Well you could certainly work on them "for fun". The question would be could it be a project you get paid for?

For that, we'll have to wait and see. My gut says "no", but it's been wrong before.

If that's the case, there's an alternate dice engine that I'm developing, but it wouldn't be ideal. I'm already running my setting and variant rules with the FFG frame work, but it's not completely and irrevocably married to the dice engine.

You can always use the dice mechanics, call the symbols something else (and use different symbols) and not use any terms from the genesys system. Game mechanics cannot be copyrighted, although the explanation/wording of the rules can. If you use regular d8 for instance it would be easy to have 1=Nothing, 2=success, 3=success, 4=bonus, 5=bonus, 6=bonus+success, 7=2xbonus, 8=2xsuccess.

I think it would make sense for FFG to allow people to release RPGs "powered by Genesys" to spread the use of the system and the purchase of the core book.

Ogl makes sense. I have a feeling ffg will release genre books with more general ideas and new talent trees and items and optional changes to add to core mechanics.

OGL would be sweet.

I have quite the big project running with a few people.

First we created our own mechanics, similar to SW's, but when we heard from Genesys,

we entirely dropped ours and went to preparing for GN.

An OGL would help us to easier distribute our (in a year, or so) finished project.

13 hours ago, Hugh Salamando Filth said:

OGL would be sweet.

I have quite the big project running with a few people.

First we created our own mechanics, similar to SW's, but when we heard from Genesys,

we entirely dropped ours and went to preparing for GN.

An OGL would help us to easier distribute our (in a year, or so) finished project.

Same situation here. Have already prototyped dice and it's all nice. It would just be so much easier with an OGL system using FFGs dice. Easier for new game designers wanting something different than what regular dice can offer, and much better for the community as a whole. FFGs dice really can do everything and an OGL could make them as much a natural part of peoples collection as d20s

ok look at this from FFG's point of view if they make the system with an open gaming license, like was released in the d20 days, they loose an amount of control over what is associated with there system. a more likely version of events would be an open source document. this would allow anyone to use the system without fear of loosing there IP or asking to get shut down. but most open source agreements state that you can not make a profit off of the production of anything released as par of using the system. having said that if there was an open source license there would probably be some sort of licensing agreement that could be made relativity easy with ffg that you would be able to then sell your created product.

but this is just my opinion on the subject, and i am not a legal expert by any means. i may even be WAY off base on what the difference between the two licenses are.

If they don't go OGL, generic dice will be made and their concept used anyway. They might as well sell some dice and become the main distributor of multi axis NDS.

On 07/11/2017 at 11:52 AM, constructacon said:

ok look at this from FFG's point of view if they make the system with an open gaming license, like was released in the d20 days, they loose an amount of control over what is associated with there system. a more likely version of events would be an open source document. this would allow anyone to use the system without fear of loosing there IP or asking to get shut down. but most open source agreements state that you can not make a profit off of the production of anything released as par of using the system. having said that if there was an open source license there would probably be some sort of licensing agreement that could be made relativity easy with ffg that you would be able to then sell your created product.

but this is just my opinion on the subject, and i am not a legal expert by any means. i may even be WAY off base on what the difference between the two licenses are.

That's the point, though.

We don't care about making profit with our project.

We just want to properly distribute it and want to use the official terms.

And an OGL would dramatically support us.

I can see why they would fear to lose control, but if they would announce/release plenty of their own IPs (Android, Arkham, etc), I personally don't believe, they'd lose much.

In fact, an OGL would (*imo*) help spread the word of GNS.

Over on the big purple, someone reached out to FFG and their response was "no plans as this time".

4 hours ago, CitizenKeen said:

Over on the big purple, someone reached out to FFG and their response was "no plans as this time".

That sucks. The only reasonable response is to "copy" their system as law permits and release a small OGL system for everyone to use, so people can just put Powered By Genesisripoff on their books instead.

8 hours ago, CitizenKeen said:

Over on the big purple, someone reached out to FFG and their response was "no plans as this time".

Meh.