Conversation earlier today has me thinking a bit about the distinction between open and open source in RPGs (setting aside the topic of not-really-open RPGs).
There are plenty of open systems (that is, systems you can legitimately take and do whatever the heck you want with them) but a much smaller set of open source systems ( @malin keeps a nice list of them here - https://ttrpgs.com/post/foss_list - if you’re curious.)
@rdonoghue I think @genesisoflegend 's Spark System should be added to @malin 's list as it's been released into the Public Domain. Not a concept that all countries respect
Maybe it should be Dual licensed as CC0 too to address that limitation Jason?
To unpack it a little bit, I am comfortable describing, say, Fate as an open system. It's available under Creative Commons (and OGL, though that's an aside) and you can pretty much use it as you see fit.
It is not, however, open source. Specifically, because it does not have a a single source which could potentially be contributed to. maintained and referenced.
And to get ahead of it, I don't think this is good or bad. But I do think it's interesting.
Now, before anything else, it's important to note that open source software has been a big influence on the philosophy behind opening up many other things, including RPGs. Software has wrestled with how to mange openness for decades, and without the lessons learned from that, we'd be in a much worse place than we are.
So, mad props to the giants whose shoulders we stand on.
So, with that in mind, I find myself turning over the question of whether something like Fate should be open source.
To imagine what that would look like, imaging that the Fate SRD - https://fate-srd.com - was kept someplace where anyone who was interested could write up a magic system or correct some typos or rewrite a section for clarity, and then submit that improvement, where it might then be incorporated into the “official" version.
The most obvious advantage of a model like this is that many brains are smarter than few. it could potentially leverage the creativity of an audience of any size to constantly improve the underlying product.
That's the theory at least. In practice, it gets a little bit messier. A lot of open source work is less about the marketplace of ideas and more about exploiting the free labor of the passionate.
(Of course, it's not like that's uncommon in RPG-land)
@rdonoghue I think the way open gaming works, as opposed to open source software, is well-suited to iteration of game mechanics in a way it wouldn't be for software. Most people need one word processor, so it's Word, or OpenOffice, or LibreOffice, or... you scramble for market share and hope to win, or potentially die on the vine. On the other hand, with games, there's room on my shelf and yours for Apocalypse World, and Monster of the Week, and Blades in the Dark, and Band of Blades, and...
@MrF It reminds me that one of the arguments put forward when the OGL was rolled out (and for all it's faults with age, that was a HUGE deal at the time) it was that a rising tide lifts all boats.
Part of that was cynicism: any growth of the hobby benefitted D&D, so that was good for them. But it also spoke to the truth that this remains a small enough hobby that we aren't really meaningfully competing with each other, so much as all competing against obscurity.
Now, it's worth noting that this model works very well for software for two reasons:
There is a really solid infrastructure to support this kind fo contribution model, and the skills required for using it overlap with programming skills well enough to keep it from being an extra burden.
Software is testable in a way that something like an RPG is not. That is, if a contribution breaks the code, you don't really need to hem and haw much over its suitability.
I feel like those two points become burdens when applied to RPGs.
There is nothing in RPG design which really relies on you learning how to use github, or one of the other tools that form a de facto standard for this kind of practice. I love github, but adding that requirement definitely increases burden and restricts participation.
In the absence of testability, RPGs are potentially infinitely additive. That is, with any given ruleset, you can always just write more. Bloat is a problem for RPGs under traditional models, and it seems it would be a real danger to any contribution model.
And, yes, there are ways to say 'no' to contributions, but without even the vestiges of testable criteria, it's pretty clear what an emotional minefield that would become.
To be clear: While I raise those points as objections, I don't think they're insurmountable. One absolutely could run a project and find ways to mitigate both with work or cleverness.
They are not arguments against open sourcing an RPG so much as reasons why open sourcing is not automatically the right call for an RPG.
Those are also a little negative, so I want to pivot to a positive side as well.
One of the things that got me thinking about this was realizing that when I thought about what it would require for Fate to be open in this sense, I realized that it would require a canonical version.
And upon realizing that, in the words of Murderbot, I had a Feeling.
Perhaps it is a function of coming through an age of scarcity, but the pattern I expect from open content is that you grab it and make your own, and that the thing you make is something different, which you will hopefully also contribute to the chain.
I want an explosion. I want people to steal what they like, toss what they don’t, and cobble together new wonders. Because that's what I want to do.
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