Starting 2023 with a Firestorm
By now, if you’re in the RPG space, you’ve heard about the intended update of the Open Gaming License from version 1.0a to a new version 1.1. Mostly from this Gizmodo article.
My post here isn’t to rehash that, or offer my own read. As has been typed so many times by many folks about this, “I am not a lawyer.”
However, I am, as a publisher in this space, almost required to be a bit narcissistic about what it means for my business. There’s good news and “hold your breath” news.
The Good News
For a while now, most of my work has centered around The Fantasy Trip and the Dungeon Fantasy RPG, both under license from Steve Jackson Games. Those are the very opposite of “open” licenses, and my publishing in those spaces is undeterred and unmolested. So nothing bad to see here, and much to the good, both above and below the waterline.
In fact, I have some fairly substantial plans in both spaces this year, hopefully including a Delvers to Grow Companion, and the long-rumored Mission X Roleplaying Game, Powered by GURPS.
In the TFT space, David Pulver and I have signed contracts for three books, with a fourth only not signed as a nod to the realities of life and schedule. I also am looking at bringing some of my extensive Nordlond material to TFT this year, but with a massively re-worked cosmology (no gods in Cidri, after all!) and a different take on the setting geography.
So none of that changes. In fact, I sincerely hope that folks put off by potential shake-up in the OGL space take a fresh look at other systems.
The Not So Good News
Dragon Heresy, being a Fifth Edition release under OGL 1.0a, and my OSE Solo adventures, supporting Gavin’s Old-School Essentials slice of the OSR, are both impacted to one degree or another. And even if all of my old releases are “safe,” it’s the new revenue that feeds me. So this is a key part of my 2023 strategy.
I had plans to work on more OSE product immediately in 2023. My Old-School Solo Adventures Kickstarter was the most successful project I’ve ever launched in more ways than one. By most ways, in fact. The 800 backers was awesome-sauce, as it were, and that also had several hidden features that as a publisher make me sit up and take notice. This includes that 75% of those 800 backers were completely new to Gaming Ballistic. Just the NEW customers would put the OSE solos in my “one of my best projects ever” list. Also, something like an additional 1100 folks followed but didn’t back the project. Maybe they don’t play solos. Maybe I’m just too new to the OSR space for them to throw in on a four-book project. In any case, though, they were in my orbit for a while. That’s looking at almost 2,000 people. That’s a LOT of potential there.
Dragon Heresy was done in the same manner, but Fifth Edition is going to blend into OneD&D and such; while technically they’re both in the same boat, I suspect that the old-school stuff is even safer than the new, but if one is safe, they both are.
The short version is that all of my efforts in this space are briefly in a kerfuffle unless/until I can find a vector to get where I want to get without using the OGL. I have a few thoughts on that, from “systemless” to tying my recent efforts to one of the non-OGL games out there. I was recently given two links to such things, as well as Kevin Crawford’s “without number” products, which don’t use the OGL. That doesn’t mean I can just go do stuff without more investigation, though.
Walking into Mordor
I still want to serve this space. So I’m going to proceed with caution, but I’m going to proceed. More on that later, and likely soon since I wanted to launch something in just under three weeks.
The “…oh, no” moment would be if a crowdfunding platform says “Sorry, Doug, I can’t let you do that” to isolate themselves from any prospective fallout from what is gearing up to be a potentially chaotic and litigious year.
