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Why don’t more games use the OGL?

  • Thread starter Lilliput McHammersmith
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Lilliput McHammersmith

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It would save so much time for the developers. Think about how much better Pillars would be with OGL, same goes for Dragon Age Origins, and so many others.

D&D is basically the greatest ruleset of all time. I know we have WOTR, KOTC 2, Solasta, and Realms Beyond all coming out soon, so I’m hyped for all of those! Why only now, though? Why not use the best ruleset ever?
 

InD_ImaginE

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Because it is not the best ruleset in the world.

Before 5e OGL is pretty much D&D 3.5 which is very munchkin heavy ruleset. It is something niche for people familiar with D&D ruleset. A game made with this ruleset is set to be a niche one. Dragon Age for example will not be a multi-million franchises if it is set with OGL.

On the other now we have 5e OGL which is much more streamlined. With D&D getting popular in the mainstream due to various RPG podcast and shows I can see 5e OGL can be appealing to use for future CRPGs. Then again, with an actual computer, the concept of dice-rolls vs AC, Saving Throw etc can always be handled differently (and arguably better).

Underrail for example is an excellent game with good ruleset which is pretty original. Final Fantasy Tactics, albeit not CRPG, are fairly simple but entertaining "ruleset" as well. Neither would benefit from using OGL derived dice-based rules.

I would even so far say that DA:O ruleset is fine on its own. Its not muchkin muh complex ruleset but as a base it is functional and entertaining enough to play. With polish and other game design decision (namely reducing the prevalence of consumables) I would even say that it can be good.
 

Wunderbar

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It's always more interesting to create your own homebrew system rather than to try to adapt someone elses work.
 

Morpheus Kitami

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Isn't that under the kind of CC license that means they can't use it to make commercial games out of, or is my lack of interest in the OGL showing?
 

JarlFrank

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Weird time to post this thread now that there seem to be more OGL RPGs than ever (and remember the Pathfinder RPGs count as well).

But realistically, there can only be so many combat and character building-focused medieval fantasy RPGs. If you're making something that's a little different, you don't need the OGL.
 

Sykar

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D&D is basically the greatest ruleset of all time.

Wrong :M

(it's great for a pen and paper system but for PC, you can do way better)

I’m curious. What ruleset, in your opinion, is better for PC games than D&D?

World of Darkness was imho a lot better though we only really have Bloodlines as a faithful adaptation but went overall well. It is simple and functional. D&D tends to get bloated at higher levels.
 
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It kinda pisses me off that DnD is STILL the best ruleset for tactical RPGs, but it is. It's not even good in various ways:

1. Gygax or whoever designed the ruleset had a very limited understanding of historical medieval weapons/fighting.

Strength should NOT be the determining stat for melee combat, actual weapons are always fairly light, and any reasonably athletic man should be able to wield them without any issue. If anything, endurance fibers are more improtant in forearms and shoulders, for holding or swinging the weapons a lot, not strength. Power is generated by technique, movement, leverage, etc, never strength.

Conversely, strength SHOULD be the main stat for bows (especially the larger kind like longbows), and not dexterity, as it takes a tremendous amount of strength to pull a string back on a bow with lots of resistance. Longbows are something like 90-160 pounds of resistance, so imagine pulling 160 pounds with one arm/side of the back. Most historical longbowmen had deformed backs from this, we can see it in their skeletons.

Longswords are pretty much the same as bastard swords, just a different term, both were large swords hung at the hip and used with two hands, but could also be used with one hand if needed. Primarily, they were 2-handed though, unlike how it is in DnD.

Greatswords should not even be a thing for adventurers. They were massive battlefield weapons in Renaissance and later, specialized for battle roles, you would not want to haul those around with you while adventuring, and they would not work in dungeons/houses at all. Imagine trying to swing a 6 foot long sword around in a tight space.

2. CC, increased attacks per round, and late game spells are way too powerful.

It's just too easy to disable stuff to the point where it becomes trivial, and of course Time Stop, Wail of Banshee, etc, enough said. Also, once your martial classes get like 4 attacks per round, combat is just stupid.

But again, with all that said, it's by far better than all the other crap we've seen so far: Dragon Ass Origins, Ass Effect, Dimwinity: Original Dolt, Poopers of Eternity, etc.
 

Darkzone

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It would save so much time for the developers. Think about how much better Pillars would be with OGL, same goes for Dragon Age Origins, and so many others.
D&D is basically the greatest ruleset of all time. I know we have WOTR, KOTC 2, Solasta, and Realms Beyond all coming out soon, so I’m hyped for all of those! Why only now, though? Why not use the best ruleset ever?
Because of the rights and license issues.
I would restrain myself of calling it the best ruleset ever. The implication is that it handles everything better than other rulesets, but that is surely not the case. Each ruleset tries to handle many situations and character progression quite different than D&D 3.5 or 5E.
There are like JarlFrank wrote GURPS, Aftermath! and i would add also T&T (especially "Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes") to the list of interesting ruleset systems, but i would also restrain myself of calling them better than DnD.
One thing cannot be denied and that it that DnD system is the most widespread and fantasy RPGs are viewed and associated with DnD.
 

The Avatar

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I'm assuming my OGL, you mean 3.5 or pathfinder srd.
  1. The tabletop experience is difficult to translate well to a video game. In a video game, you are limited to what is put in it by the developer, while the tabletop rules are more designed to allow for different ways to overcome obstacles, only limited by the imagination of the players.
  2. It doesn't scale very well and is quite unbalanced as far as certain classes being better than others. There are just too many poorly made feats/class features/spells(traps). Its very easy to make a crap character, which is frustrating to new players.
  3. You have plan your character out in advance if you want to meet the prereqs to a certain prestige class or feat chain. Most video games would have something like a skill tree where you can see where you're going, but the free-form nature of tabletop games makes that impossible. It's more annoying that anything else that I have to take x worthless feats to meet the prereqs for a prestige class.
  4. Too difficult to present all available options in a UI. Temple of Elemental Evil has a unique radial menu which was interesting, but took some getting used to. It also required more time(clicks) to do the action you wanted to do compared to a simple action bar.
 

Mortmal

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It would save so much time for the developers. Think about how much better Pillars would be with OGL, same goes for Dragon Age Origins, and so many others.

D&D is basically the greatest ruleset of all time. I know we have WOTR, KOTC 2, Solasta, and Realms Beyond all coming out soon, so I’m hyped for all of those! Why only now, though? Why not use the best ruleset ever?

Cause its easier and more profitable to make a shooter or a phone game, when someone has the courage to work on a rpg there's some big ego getting in the way . Like for pillar, instead of using something known to work sawyer uses a system he made himself probably cause he think he's some genius, and ogl so beneath him, remember last interview he still dont understand why pillar 2 failed.
 

Daidre

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Too difficult to present all available options in a UI. Temple of Elemental Evil has a unique radial menu which was interesting, but took some getting used to. It also required more time(clicks) to do the action you wanted to do compared to a simple action bar.
I always thought that Troika shamelessly pilfered radial menus from NWN that was probably most popular DnD game at the time an even made them worse in ToEE, since in NWN you could at least move anything from radial menus to action bar.
 

JarlFrank

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It kinda pisses me off that DnD is STILL the best ruleset for tactical RPGs, but it is. It's not even good in various ways:

1. Gygax or whoever designed the ruleset had a very limited understanding of historical medieval weapons/fighting.

And you have a very limited knowledge of pen and paper (and PC) RPG systems :M

Plenty of better ones out there.

GURPS and Aftermath! as I already mentioned. And they'd work even better on PC than in pen and paper because the computer will take care of the dice rolls, remembering rules, calculations, etc. Tactically complex pen and paper RPGs often drag on in combat because you have to calculate a lot of stuff and keep large records. D&D only has hit points and spell slots so recordkeeping is very easy, when a game has things like wounds, morale, stamina etc it gets difficult to play in P&P (but it's a total non-issue on a computer).

In P&P RPGs we have other systems that are equally or more complex than D&D and have tactical combat that's just as satisfying: Shadowrun, The Dark Eye, Harnmaster, Hackmaster. Some are way more complex than D&D: the aforementioned GURPS and Aftermath!, but also Riddle of Steel/Blades of the Iron Throne, Burning Empires, Runequest.

In PC RPGs we have systems such as Jagged Alliance 2 (yes it's an RPG shut up), Silent Storm (it's an RPG too shut the FUCK up), Battle Brothers, Age of Decadence/Dungeon Rats.
 

CryptRat

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Isn't that under the kind of CC license that means they can't use it to make commercial games out of, or is my lack of interest in the OGL showing?
You can make commercial games, the only real restriction is you can't use many specific D&D names.

Then again, with an actual computer, the concept of dice-rolls vs AC, Saving Throw etc can always be handled differently (and arguably better).
They can but it's really not what I would choose as a single example because it's robust and very typically the thing devs will replace first because they didn't think enough about it and build their game around a fundamentally broken system instead, although if you'd argue it's also often linked with big numbers and that it's a bit of the two things rather than switching dice-rolls vs AC with something else alone I would not completely disagree.

I think the experience and upgrade system of Blackguards and other complex of point buy system which work are better examples of something typically not-D&D-ish which is cool to put into your game because computers. Also devs will, rightfully, often uses deterministic skill checks or something else which does not make stats quite irrelevant with save everywhere when needing to resolve one lonely specific skill check instead of basic roll + stat like in combat (in combat there are relevant because multiplication of uses, you won't reload each time a character hit or miss.

Better than adapting an existing ruleset is to make your own custom ruleset adjusted to the game you want to create.
Sure, the important thing is to make informed decisions, I have the intuition that for example at least some games would use dice-rolls vs AC and multiple attacks per round instead of their own broken dodge, damage reduction system if the devs thought about it.
 

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I think the OGL rules provide a solid base if you don't want to spend time designing your own system.

They also give you plenty of sources to ripoff be inspired by.

It also arguably makes encounter design easier as you can always borrow an encounter from a Pathfinder or D&D adventure if you are running short of ideas.
 
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Because pnp RPGs and cRPGs are fundamentally different and focus on different aspects. One of the most obvious drawbacks of basing a cRPG on a pnp RPG ruleset is that the latter was designed for humans sitting at a table, and many of the rules have been extremely simplified or streamlined for human consumption.
There are a handful of good pnp systems that make for a good basis for a cRPG's rule system -- games like Underrail are essentially distant descendants of GURPS.

I’m curious. What ruleset, in your opinion, is better for PC games than D&D?
Basic Roleplaying(Runequest), Rolemaster, GURPS
Notice the trend with good rulesets to adapt fo cRPGs are ones often considered to be too rules heavy for tabletop play.
 

Lilliput McHammersmith

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Because pnp RPGs and cRPGs are fundamentally different and focus on different aspects. One of the most obvious drawbacks of basing a cRPG on a pnp RPG ruleset is that the latter was designed for humans sitting at a table, and many of the rules have been extremely simplified or streamlined for human consumption.
There are a handful of good pnp systems that make for a good basis for a cRPG's rule system -- games like Underrail are essentially distant descendants of GURPS.

I’m curious. What ruleset, in your opinion, is better for PC games than D&D?
Basic Roleplaying(Runequest), Rolemaster, GURPS
Notice the trend with good rulesets to adapt fo cRPGs are ones often considered to be too rules heavy for tabletop play.
I suppose it depends on the type of game at hand. I would not want an OGL Fallout. GURPs was a way better basis for a game like Fallout. Similar for Underrail. I guess I'm more talking about stuff like Pillars where so many elements are obviously inspired by D&D, but they changed it so it wasn't exactly the same, ie Might = Strength, Minoletta's Bounding Missile = Magic Missile, or from Dragon Age where Stonefist = Bigby's Crushing Fist, etc.

I am not sure what the benefit is to making a ruleset that is heavily inspired by D&D, but then using your own thing and accomplishing the same effect, but in a named-slightly-differently way.
 
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Codex Year of the Donut
Might = Strength,
300px-Muscle-wizard.jpg
 

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