Subterranea - Kickstarter & Greenlight Campaigns

If they had directly profited greatly from the OGL, I think 4th edition would have also been open licence. I do think, though, it is interesting that athe number of D&D computer games has been drastically reduced since the 4th edition, and most of the 4th edition computers games have drawn more from the setting than the new mechanics. So I'm not sure if this has to do with the open licence, the new game mechanics, or something else.


My understanding, based on rumor and hearsay rather than actual research, is that WotC put a clause in the D&D 4e open license stating that it can be revoked at any time. As opposed to the 3.5e open license, which has no revocation clause so has effectively been granted in perpetuity.

The rumor of that, plus the general dislike of D&D 4e found online, steered me toward 3.5e. It would have been disastrous for WotC to pull the rug on the 4e license any time close to the release of Subterranea!

If that's all accurate, I suspect we'll only see commercial licenses for D&D 5e onwards. Though I'm not aware of any of these in the works...

Edit: here's some info http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_System_License
 
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I've never heard the phrase "turn-based combat" sound so sexy. I think the girl who did the voiceover on your video sold me. I'm in. I'll back your Kickstarter...

...also, your game looks interesting. :)
 
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I've never heard the phrase "turn-based combat" sound so sexy. I think the girl who did the voiceover on your video sold me. I'm in. I'll back your Kickstarter…)
Haha, I've just replayed the video with volume up to hear this voice as I had it muted yesterday.
It was worth it! :D
 
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My understanding, based on rumor and hearsay rather than actual research, is that WotC put a clause in the D&D 4e open license stating that it can be revoked at any time. As opposed to the 3.5e open license, which has no revocation clause so has effectively been granted in perpetuity.

It's there all right:
10.1 Termination. Wizards may terminate this License and the rights granted hereunder automatically upon written notice to Licensee or upon posting on its website a termination of the GSL as applied to all licensees. Licensee may terminate its license hereunder for any reason (other than its own breach of the terms of this License) by either (a) ceasing all use of Licensed Materials, or (b) delivering to Wizards an executed “Termination Notice” as presented in the file “Termination.pdf” that is available for download at http://www.wizards.com/d20 (“Termination Notice”).

10.3 Effect of Termination. Upon termination for any reason other than a termination resulting from Licensee’s delivery of a valid Termination Notice, Licensee will immediately cease all use of the Licensed Materials and will destroy all inventory and marketing materials in Licensee’s possession bearing the Compatibility Logo.

No business in their right mind is going to use this "Open" license.
 
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I've never heard the phrase "turn-based combat" sound so sexy. I think the girl who did the voiceover on your video sold me. I'm in. I'll back your Kickstarter…

…also, your game looks interesting. :)

Full agreement on that. I know this game probably won't have the budget for voice acted dialogue but some male characters are grunting when they get hit in the trailer. JMab, if possible, you should definitely hire the narrator in your trailer to do the grunts, moans, groans, etc. for female characters. :)
 
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Hi all. I'll let the narrator know her work was appreciated - she will be highly embarrassed!

The male voice grunting in pain that happens when the Drow wizard gets whacked in the back of the head via a sneak attack from the player's Rogue, is a sound sample I licensed under an open license. There shouldn't be a need to for me to get unintelligible sounds like shouts, grunts, whistles, etc. voiced, as of all the asset types (2D art, 3D art, music, animation, sound, etc), sound is the easiest to find good open license content for. There are many great free sound repositories, with good quality samples.

I can confirm however that the narrator is currently voicing the different female parts in the game using a variety of accents!

I'm voicing most of the male parts currently, but as you will be able to hear from the Kickstarter pitch, I'm not sure if an Australian accent goes so well in a fantasy RPG themed game, notwithstanding Cate Blanchett's performance in the Lord of the Rings!

I'm not intending to pay for professional voice acting at the moment, as I've purposefully kept the budget tight and focused on the essentials, but it might be worth a higher stretch goal...
 
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It's there all right:



No business in their right mind is going to use this "Open" license.

That's even more restrictive than I thought - my interpretation was that WotC had just put a clause in that allow them to do a blanket termination of the 4e OGL that affected everybody, but as it says, they can target one PnP or CRPG creator and basically terminate their game by mailing them a PDF!

WotC are working on an OGL for 5e:

http://community.wizards.com/content/blog/3934556

I've only skimmed their blog post, but it looks like someone is campaigning for a move back to a more liberal approach… would be worth keeping an eye on, and considering a move to 5e for Subterranea 2! ;)
 
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Oh well, IMO 3.5e is great. I don't play PnP games anymore (unfortunately) so I'm basing this entirely on my experiences with ToEE and the NWN nights games, but I liked their rulesets and it fixed a lot of the problems I had with 2e.

I could see this being one of those KS where you'll end up getting around 10X your base funding goal, so you will definitely have to think about stretch goals. Pro voice acting would be a good one because it's not something that would seriously delay the game's release.
 
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Yes, 3.5e is great, it's very well-liked for a reason. From what I've seen of Pathfinder, it's even better, as Paizo has added a lot of sensible and entertaining improvements.

None of the KS stretch goals will affect the scheduled release date (I have a full timeline of the alpha, beta and release dates on the page). I know that's a trap for indie devs, to promise 20% more content as a stretch goal, which then pushes the release date out 3 months, annoying everybody.

The scope of the game will be delivered as originally envisaged, in terms of environment content, the stretch goals are generally about introducing more variety, and higher quality. There's a couple that will impact the dev schedule - if they are reached, I'll will just need to ensure they don't impact the dates, as keeping that trust in being able to deliver to release dates is paramount.
 
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Wallet in hand, waiting for an update..... :)
 
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Wallet in hand, waiting for an update….. :)
Don't worry I'll post when it goes live. The problem is I live half way across the world so the time zone is different. The site will say the 29th when I do the next news post.

Right now I'm on Central Time and it's 1:20 PM, and I'm typing this on my lunch break.;)

Update- News-bit on the front page now.
 
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