To me, The biggest turn-off for me to use Genesys for my own IP/campaign/universe is it does not have an Open-Licence.

For most people it wont matter (Im guessing).

But what if you spen a couple years crafting your awesome universe around this ruleset, making countless new talents, weapons, adversaries, etc.

And you realize, wait! I should sell this so everyone can enjoy iy and make some monetary compensation for all the hundreds of hours you put into it!

Then you come to the conclusion you cannot.

Thats why I think I might have to spend my time wisely and craft my RPG universe around something like Savage Worlds (or FATE or Apocalypse World Engine).

What do you all feel about this?

2 minutes ago, widomknight said:

But what if you spen a couple years crafting your awesome universe around this ruleset, making countless new talents, weapons, adversaries, etc.

And you realize, wait! I should sell this so everyone can enjoy iy and make some monetary compensation for all the hundreds of hours you put into it!

Then you come to the conclusion you cannot.

If you really think you're going to produce something that awesome after a couple years of play and development, then sure, plan ahead and go with a system that has an open license.

On the other hand, if your awesome universe relies on mechanical slavery to a particular system, then it won't be awesome. If it has drama, story, narrative, and interesting NPCs with motives, then it should be convertible into any system.

So I'd say you're putting the cart before the horse.

9 minutes ago, widomknight said:

What do you all feel about this?

With no offence intended towards anyone, I'm going to take a wild-eyed guess and say that 99% of the people on these boards won't be in the position of having an awesome universe ready for sale in any system, never mind this one.

Having an open system could encourage more 3rd party development, but there's plenty of that out there already. If the story is good you can easily cross systems or genres. I can't tell you how many fantasy plots I've incorporated into my SW games.

My opinion is that if your biggest reason for choosing your hobby is to make money, you're looking for disappointment. Financial success can come from a hobby, but its a very rare and unpredictable thing.

You should create and play because you find it fun to create and play. If money is your goal you should work on making your own product.

I agree with whafrog. The part that makes a setting or adventure awesome is certainly not the crunch part. Swap out the mechanics if you ever want to sell it. This won't take too much time compared to what the development of the whole thing will have taken. So not a big problem even from a return of investment point of view if you wanted to look at it that way.

33 minutes ago, widomknight said:

What do you all feel about this?

Isn't this the 2nd time you brought this up? To my knowledge FFG has never done an OGL so you should probably move on.

18 minutes ago, Doctor Xerox said:

My opinion is that if your biggest reason for choosing your hobby is to make money, you're looking for disappointment. Financial success can come from a hobby, but its a very rare and unpredictable thing.

You should create and play because you find it fun to create and play. If money is your goal you should work on making your own product.

In general I don't recall seeing episodes of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous featuring RPG designers......probably should aim for database admin or RN if you want to make money and have a nice portable occupation and leave RPGs as the hobby and not the bread winner.....

Do you know how to make a small fortune as a games designer, start with a large fortune and see it shrink.

Theoretically it is possible to make money from the gaming hobby it is by no means a sure thing or the key to infinite wealth.

wow, I must have hit a nerve somewhere along the line.

1 hour ago, 2P51 said:

Isn't this the 2nd time you brought this up? To my knowledge FFG has never done an OGL so you should probably move on.

In general I don't recall seeing episodes of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous featuring RPG designers......probably should aim for database admin or RN if you want to make money and have a nice portable occupation and leave RPGs as the hobby and not the bread winner.....

nope

1 hour ago, 2P51 said:

Isn't this the 2nd time you brought this up? To my knowledge FFG has never done an OGL so you should probably move on.

In general I don't recall seeing episodes of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous featuring RPG designers......probably should aim for database admin or RN if you want to make money and have a nice portable occupation and leave RPGs as the hobby and not the bread winner.....

and who ever mentinoned anything about wanted to be rich?

I thought forums were for discussion.

I guess I unless you love everything FFG makes and do not question FFG your good to post.

oh well, I was going to make quite a few custom charts, talents, super powers, monsters, setting stuff etc as I was excited about this new RPG and the community.

Ive been into and making RPGs for well over 30 years and I had some great stuff to contribute.

I guess I will rethink it, thanks for letting me know ahead of time.

Wow!!, that's an extreme reaction. I don't think any nerves were touched upon apart from possibly your own. People on the boards are generally some of the most helpful and friendly I have come across, though they don't always agree. You may find that, though an OGL does mean people can play at being a games designer a lot of gamers would probably find your questioning whether or not you should use a system purely on whether you could sell your work at a later point to be a little mercenary, given the vast majority of people here are passionate about their hobby. Don't take it personally, you asked peoples opinions so read them and move on with your life.

I have had a few posts on these boards where I asked a question about how people liked an idea for a conversation (mainly on the Age of Rebellion boards) where people really didn't like them, I read their comments and either adjusted my rules based on their thoughts or if I felt strongly enough I ignored them and introduced the rules into my game anyway. I don't take peoples criticism personally, they have a right to not like my ideas and I am not precious enough to think that after a similar amount of time gaming to yourself (approx 30 years) that people must agree with me.

A friend of mine had a game designer tell him once that gaming is an industry where you can literally make hundreds of dollars a year.

35 minutes ago, widomknight said:

wow, I must have hit a nerve somewhere along the line.

I think it's less that you hit a nerve, and more that you're the umpteenth person to complain about this.

Quote

I thought forums were for discussion. I guess I unless you love everything FFG makes and do not question FFG your good to post.

Sure, but like all forums, they tend to reward good discussion. There are many well-discussed threads here that are critical of FFG. If you feel you have something original to contribute, I'd welcome you to add it in the forum posts about Genesys OGL here . Or here . When you just throw up a new topic because you're not willing to put in the effort of using the search bar, it doesn't come across as "discussion", it comes across as "whining".

2 hours ago, widomknight said:

I thought forums were for discussion.

I guess I unless you love everything FFG makes and do not question FFG your good to post.

Let me help you on what appears to be a fundamental error in your logic:

DISCUSSION, noun

" the action or process of talking about something in order to reach a decision or to exchange ideas."

Coming in and saying you have an "awesome" (quoting you here) idea you can't monetise because of Genesys, and because of how integral another system (if it's d20 I will literally laugh out loud) is to your awesome idea.

Not withstanding the merits of the game you've built, the premise itself does not lead to discussion. You are seemingly not interested in talking to people, merely at or past them; your question assumes people take a binary view on your original premise, and that binary viewpoint is driven by assumptions.

You've already had the best response you will get, but it's still not enough to hang a discussion on. @whafrog said it best;

Quote

On the other hand, if your awesome universe relies on mechanical slavery to a particular system, then it won't be awesome. If it has drama, story, narrative, and interesting NPCs with motives, then it should be convertible into any system.

What actually happened here was you asked a question, framed it as a discussion, disregarded the answer you didn't want to hear, and got defensive. I'm unsure why your expectations were of a better outcome than you got.

All of this aside, @widomknight , you sound like you have an awesome idea for a Setting. If you are looking at maximising use, you can attempt to make your setting System-neutral. There are plenty of products out there that do. Then fans of your setting can adopt it to their own preferred system.

As for an OGL for GeneSys, I think you may be surprised what the future may hold. This type of activity takes time, and needs to be airtight so that FFG can protect their intellectual property namely their dice system and game structure.

And just because something hasn’t happen ever (till this point), doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future.

My suggestion is to wait a bit and be patient.

A game system doesn't have to use OGL to be friendly for people to create for it. Savage Worlds has a fan & third party license and Cypher System(Numenera) has a fan, limited and commercial license. The people behind both Savage and Cypher have both been very friendly towards content creators.

With FFG I'd say give them time to work everything out. I do know the company has been very generous in their policies towards IP being used by fans in systems like octgn.

As someone who has homebrewed....about half a dozen settings each in excess of fifty pages, it's not about monetizing this, it's about creating an interesting world for my players to engage with. Seeing THEM happy will always be more rewarding than any money I might make.

Just now, Cyvaris said:

As someone who has homebrewed....about half a dozen settings each in excess of fifty pages, it's not about monetizing this, it's about creating an interesting world for my players to engage with.

And I'd hazard because you enjoy doing it.

Just now, 2P51 said:

And I'd hazard because you enjoy doing it.

Well, I mean I do rather enjoy writing to excess...now if only a Literary Agent/publisher would take advantage of that.

There is a western setting on drivethru that I believe is Pay What You Want that is a wild west genre setting book that uses Edge of the Empire as its system. I can't remember the name of it, but the person who wrote it put it on the website and published it.

Nothing stops us from publishing anything, truth be told. Game mechanisms can't be copyrighted from what I understand, and an entire genre of OSR gaming came to be because some people decided to take the original edition of D&D and make remakes of it and THAT game system did not have any form of OGL when this first happened and yet it's become a major force in the rpg industry. The OSR has changed how to approach publishing. And Any game system can be OSR'd.

And frankly... FFG is the one losing potential sells of their game if they never at least come up with some kind of licensing that allows others to take advantage of Genesys. It doesn't have to be totally OGL, it could be a e-zine much like Pyramid for Gurps. It could be like how Savage Worlds is done. If they didn't have that license for Savage Worlds then SW would have never become as popular as it has been the last decade plus.

Having the option to someday sell our work is always a nice option to have. Sure it's all well and good to create your own worlds and have your own players enjoy them... but it's even cooler, better, nicer, and frankly awesome to have the potential of someday publishing your own works using a game engine you actually love.

8 minutes ago, Stacie_GmrGrl said:

Nothing stops us from publishing anything, truth be told. Game mechanisms can't be copyrighted from what I understand

This. There's nothing stopping you from publishing rules 100% compatible with GeneSys. You can't use their logos, or probably their dice symbols, unless they release some sort of license, and it will be a pain in the neck, but you can do it.

Yeah, it would be much more convenient for folks if they released an open license, but considering the amount of dreck that was produced in the early 00's for D&D, I can see why they wouldn't want to just issue a blanket pass like that.

You may be looking at seeking some solid legal advice before posting anything using proprietary material which you can potentially make a profit from.

How the person is doing it on DriveThru, and continues to do so is beyond me.

Saying that FFG can’t copyright a system is like saying authors can’t protect their work because you can’t copyright words.

43 minutes ago, GM Hooly said:

You may be looking at seeking some solid legal advice before posting anything using proprietary material which you can potentially make a profit from.

How the person is doing it on DriveThru, and continues to do so is beyond me.

Saying that FFG can’t copyright a system is like saying authors can’t protect their work because you can’t copyright words.

I would say FFG has rights over the game and system, you cannot publish a book of condensed rules.

But if your book entirely contains new content, with no repeat of original rules then it would seem to be a much more grey area. Of course that also means your world needs to be entirely original as does all the names and places etc.

How grey would be up to the courts if FFG decided to pursue you, something highly unlikely. Of course if they decided to release books that utilised rules similar to yours then things get very prickly.

Edit: all that being said I don’t think it’s right to choose your system based on a very distant and probably unlikely goal that’s bound to make you all of about $50.

2 hours ago, Stacie_GmrGrl said:

There is a western setting on drivethru that I believe is Pay What You Want that is a wild west genre setting book that uses Edge of the Empire as its system. I can't remember the name of it, but the person who wrote it put it on the website and published it.

Its called Edge of the Frontier and its a pay what you want offering. It has been up for quite a long time now.