OC Project Guidelines

Project Guidelines
July 16th, 2023
Guiding Principles and Submission Guidelines
Tl;dr: If you think an RPG should be in our project, go ahead and either file an Issue, or make a Discussions post. It is recommended that you continue reading, so that you can avoid wasting your time and ours. Doing so will also help you be able to discern good open/libre RPGs from ones that in actuality are not free or open at all.

Don’t forget to check the list of RPGs itself, in case the game or system is already on it.

RPGs that Fit Our Criteria
As a kind of quickstart, any RPG that’s published under one of our approved licenses is most likely to be accepted. On the other hand, any game or system published under any variant of the Open Game License will be rejected. The OGL, regardless of version, has never been a real open license. You can post a game that’s under a license that’s not on our list, but it will have to be assessed on a case by case basis.

Guiding Principles
There are existing organizations who have held definitions for what is “free” or “open”. In the software world, the first and most well known is the Free Software Foundation, and their Four Freedoms. For general media, there’s the Free Culture definition. The one we’re primarily going to draw from is the Open Knowledge Foundation’s definition, since it has all the same principles as the other two, and is more comprehensive.

Use
The license must allow free use of the licensed work.

Redistribution
The license must allow redistribution of the licensed work, including sale, whether on its own or as part of a collection made from works from different sources.

Modification
The license must allow the creation of derivatives of the licensed work and allow the distribution of such derivatives under the same terms of the original licensed work.

Separation
The license must allow any part of the work to be freely used, distributed, or modified separately from any other part of the work or from any collection of works in which it was originally distributed. All parties who receive any distribution of any part of a work within the terms of the original license should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original work.

Compilation
The license must allow the licensed work to be distributed along with other distinct works without placing restrictions on these other works.

Non-discrimination
The license must not discriminate against any person or group.

Propagation
The rights attached to the work must apply to all to whom it is redistributed without the need to agree to any additional legal terms.

Application to Any Purpose
The license must allow use, redistribution, modification, and compilation for any purpose. The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the work in a specific field of endeavor.

No Charge
The license must not impose any fee arrangement, royalty, or other compensation or monetary remuneration as part of its conditions. (A note about that last principle – it does not mean you’re not allowed to sell an open work. If you publish a book under the CC BY license for example, you can sell it. What it means is that once the sale is made or the work is otherwise conveyed to a user, that user must be allowed all of the aforementioned rights without incurring additional charges).

In addition to these open definition principles, we’re adding additional requirements in light of the OGL 1.1 controversy as a safeguard.

Professional Licenses Only
The license must be written by an experienced professional in the field of intellectual property law, and maintained by such persons.

Rights Protecting Institutions
Only The license must be authored and maintained by a third party organization who 1. is not in a conflict of interest with a given work published. 2. has it as their stated mission to protect and preserve these same rights.