#127: What You Give For Free

Thomas Manuel

More like No-GL, amirite

I. Dear Reader

On his newsletter, Sean McCoy talks about why he thinks “adventures beat systems”. What he means is that if you’re trying to be a successful publishing business, systems are “loss leaders”. You publish them so you can attract players. You make your money through adventures. He doesn’t mention it but it’s 100% advice directed at a certain tradition of games, mostly the OSR.

This isn’t particularly new advice. (Most popular trad games follow their core book with a dwindling trail of splatbooks …like a trail of crumbs left behind by your dog as they run away with a piece of christmas cake.) But it is good advice. It slots into a larger category of business strategy that goes something like, “Give something for free. Charge for everything else.” And this more general maxim might be more useful to non-OSR designers.

Kevin Crawford of Stars Without Number fame is a great example of someone who consistently publishes a free digital version of all his games, charging only for the “deluxe version”. Shawn Tomkin also did this with Ironsworn, where the digital version of the game is free, you only paid if you wanted it in print. Evil Hat also does this for the entire Fate line. Of course, those are just the big names. A tonne of indie designers give away digital copies of their games.

This question of “what you give for free and what you charge for” is on my mind also because of the 5e-sized elephant of the room. It seems nobody can talk about anything else this week (which sucks). As someone far away from the world of D&D, I have no great insight into these events. But here are the facts as I have understood them:

  • A new version of the Open Game License was leaked last week. It seemed to suggest that WOTC were going to revoke the old OGL and slowly start sticking their fingers in the pies of third-party developers.

    • The biggest change was that everyone had to register their third-party content with WOTC, start paying royalties if they earned more than 750,000$, and WOTC could potentially have some claims over any published OGL content.

  • If you don’t know what the OGL is, that’s fine. If you do want to know, you can read about it from the the Alexandrian, Electronic Freedom Foundation, or Cory Doctorow.

  • After the leak, people started cancelling their D&D Beyond subscriptions. WOTC cancelled a stream where they were purportedly about to announce the new OGL.

  • Kobold Press and MCDM, two large third-party D&D developers, announced that they would make their own house systems. Kobold Press’ game is tentatively titled Black Flag. MCDM also cancelled their 5e magazine, Arcadia, as they rejigged their patreon.

    • Every publisher who already had a house system took the opportunity to remind people of that fact.

  • Paizo announced that they would fund the creation of an alternate open license, the Open RPG Creative License or ORC. Other developers like Kobold Press and Green Ronin were apparently onboard.

    • Why draft a new open license when the Creative Commons licenses have become an internet standard? Not really sure. Maybe because its acronym isn’t a pun.

  • Finally, WOTC responded, mostly with annoying PR speak. “We rolled a 1”, etc. No clear sense of what is going to happen.

While I’m not happy about WOTC elbowing their way into my newsletter, it’s good that everyone was reminded that corporations do not want to give anything away for free. Even if they’re the ones that can actually afford to. Even if it’s “good business”.

Support indie designers.

Yours openly,

Thomas

II. City23: Immoria

Lots of fun additions last week! We have a bakery that changes its name with the seasons, a mushroom market, and some very hearty meals. They’re all on the site here.

One of them is The Gong from reader Scott made me chuckle: 

The inventors of Brasspool are notorious for neglecting good habits in pursuit of their clockwork dreams. So, a health conscious inventor created the gong, a brass obelisk that when struck would send out ultrasonic waves reminding all it was time to eat. Unfortunately this works no matter how recently you have eaten, so it quickly became open to abuse by nefarious restauranteurs and muffin-wives. The watch have had to post a guard to keep troublemakers at bay and the vomitoria from over-use.

We’ll stick with the theme of FOOD for one more week! Now that we have landmarks, you can also submit people attached to those landmarks. For a person, we need the landmark they’re attached to, a name, description and a true name. Maybe we can meet Sally Forth, the proprietor of the inn with the same name.

III. Media of the Week

  • Shadow of the Demon Lord is what the cool kids are playing, according to Dave Thaumavore.

  • On Plus One Exp, a chat answering some basic questions of what to do after you’re finished designing a game.

  • If you’re looking for a Kickstarter alternative, Crowdfundr is looking good and is actually accessible for folks in the Global South. Here is a short video about it and here is a much longer video about it.

IV. Links of the Week

V. Small Ads

All links in the newsletter are completely based on my own interest. But to help support my work, this section contains sponsored links and advertisements. If you’d like your products to appear here, read the submission form.

  • Cloud Empress is an expansive, Nausicaa-inspired setting for the Mothership RPG. Cloud Empress imagines a far-off future ruled by giant psychic cicadas. Back on Kickstarter

This newsletter is currently sponsored by the Bundle of Holding.

  • There’s a bundle of Non-OGL Fantasy games featuring Mythras, The Dark Eye, Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2E, Worlds Without Number Deluxe, and more.

  • Also, a bundle of the QAGS and a Dungeons on Demand adventures for 5e

Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. If you’d like to support this newsletter, share it with a friend or buy one of my games from my itch store. If you’d like to say something to me, you can reply to this email or click below!

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