Community ORC?

[g33k]

Hi... uhh... @SombodyAtChaosium...  Maybe that's Jason?  Or Nick?  I dunno.
If I don't get a reply in a few days, I may just @spam everyone there who might be relevant ...  😉 

First off -- congratulations again to Jason, and to Chaosium more broadly, for getting this new edition out (and doing it so swiftly)!

Onward then to my question: is there any thought that the new ORC version of BRP might support a "Community Content" program?  It seems self-evident that ORC products are designed NOT to require such a thing.  I expect full games (such as Toxandria) will be released entirely-independently (albeit with appropriate branding/logos & ORCish notices up-front).

But it looks to me as if smaller-scale products -- on the level of the old "Monograph" line -- would really benefit from having a "Community Content" program supporting them, collecting them for people to find, etc ...

Edited April 12, 2023 by g33k
mis-edit

[soltakss]

On 4/13/2023 at 12:37 AM, g33k said:

Onward then to my question: is there any thought that the new ORC version of BRP might support a "Community Content" program?  It seems self-evident that ORC products are designed NOT to require such a thing.  I expect full games (such as Toxandria) will be released entirely-independently (albeit with appropriate branding/logos & ORCish notices up-front).

It would be great to see this.

On 4/13/2023 at 12:37 AM, g33k said:

But it looks to me as if smaller-scale products -- on the level of the old "Monograph" line -- would really benefit from having a "Community Content" program supporting them, collecting them for people to find, etc ...

Looking at much of the content from the Jonstown Compendium, the quality is much better than the few monographs that I saw. So, I would expect the same from a BRP Community Content scheme.

 

[Brian Duguid]

On 4/13/2023 at 12:37 AM, g33k said:

First off -- congratulations again to Jason, and to Chaosium more broadly, for getting this new edition out (and doing it so swiftly)!

You're remembering they are all off at a convention right now, yes? 🙂

On 4/13/2023 at 12:37 AM, g33k said:

Onward then to my question: is there any thought that the new ORC version of BRP might support a "Community Content" program?  It seems self-evident that ORC products are designed NOT to require such a thing.  I expect full games (such as Toxandria) will be released entirely-independently (albeit with appropriate branding/logos & ORCish notices up-front).

But it looks to me as if smaller-scale products -- on the level of the old "Monograph" line -- would really benefit from having a "Community Content" program supporting them, collecting them for people to find, etc ...

I don't see what you're looking for. We often see "Community Content" like Jonstown Compendium or Miskatonic Repository as if it is some kind of shop window that helps us easily find the content we want. But it's first and foremost an IP licensing scheme. JC and MR creators pay Chaosium a royalty on all our products to use their IP, within the broad set of guidelines issued for the specific CC programme. That's on top of a royalty we pay to DriveThruRPG to act as the actual shop window. Added together, it is a 50% cut of all sales. Chaosium police (with a pretty light touch) how the content is used so that JC creators don't duplicate what is in the copyright products, or detract from it, but complement it in a way that hopefully drives sales for the entire product line.

Importantly, Chaosium are the publisher of this Community Content. It carries their branding and they will undoubtedly take something down that they feel is detrimental to their image.

With BRP UGE, there is nothing to license and no royalties to pay, unless you wanted to try and cross-license some other Chaosium IP as well, and then they'll ultimately treat you exactly the same as any other licensee, like the French publisher of RQG. They'll be very selective, as this is more closely related to their valuable core IP and the associated branding.

Sure, there are advantages to the support with publishing that the CC programs provide, and the shop window aspect, but with the ORC licensed systems you're out of the playground and into the wilderness. You don't need to ask, you just create, and sell. Plenty of people already do this on DTRPG, ORC just lets them adapt an existing rules system if they prefer to do so, or to sell add-ons to it.

Maybe you could articulate more clearly exactly what you'd want from a BRP CC program that would justify the loss of freedom that BRP UGE under ORC has already provided? 

[NickMiddleton]

20 hours ago, Brian Duguid said:

We often see "Community Content" like Jonstown Compendium or Miskatonic Repository as if it is some kind of shop window that helps us easily find the content we want. But it's first and foremost an IP licensing scheme.

On the contrary, CCPs happen to be IP licensing schemes (and that is why they appeal to IP owners), but their appeal to the customer base is in fact primarily as a community shop window for purchasers - that's why they have worked so well for IP owners like Chaosium, WotC, Free League etc. The people buying from the DMs Guild, Free League Workshop, JC or MR? They largely don't care about the licensing niceties, they just want MORE content for the Forgotten Realms / D&D 5e, Coriolis / the Year Zero Engine, Call of Cthulhu or Glorantha; and the sheer volume of material published through CCPs these days makes it pretty clear that the overwhelming majority of fan-publishers have weighed up the overheads and are happy with them.

CCP's are legitimised fan fiction. They let fans indulge their desire to riff on the thing they are fan of with a gloss of legitimacy, but in a way that lets the IP owner retain control of their IP, and without the attendant risks to their IP that unrelated fan fic brings. And they give a game crowd-sourced support at a fraction of the cost that the same volume of support from the game publisher would require.

Now, absolutely, BRP has far less to offer in a CCP to potential fan publishers than games which are built around specific settings / extensive IPs. But the BRP monograph program, for all its many flaws, demonstrated there was some interest in creating material specifically for BRP, not just Chaosium's own settings, that could be released with that "gloss of legitimacy", and a desire and willingness to purchase such material. Is the actual revenue Chaosium would raise enough to justify / cover the overhead of such a scheme? That's Chaosium's call: but a CCP for BRP would be "exposing" far less Chaosium IP than any of its other CCPs, and the fact that the monograph program (with all its flaws and lack of effort / resources from then Chaosium management) wasn't a huge commercial success is a poor guide to how a better conceived / executed BRP CCP program might do.

20 hours ago, Brian Duguid said:

Sure, there are advantages to the support with publishing that the CC programs provide, and the shop window aspect, but with the ORC licensed systems you're out of the playground and into the wilderness. You don't need to ask, you just create, and sell. Plenty of people already do this on DTRPG, ORC just lets them adapt an existing rules system if they prefer to do so, or to sell add-ons to it.

Yes - but bluntly people could ALREADY do exactly that BEFORE this release - so what was the point of this? Yes, we now get to put the "Powered By BRP" logo on something if we use this... But there are multiple alternative D100 open games one could adapt and use, and other non D100 systems that one could work with as well, most of which have more support and backing from their originators BRP-UGE has currently.

The folk who would be happy to be "...into the wilderness"? They are ALREADY out there and BRP under ORC will barely register with them - they have a plethora of "open" licensed D100 rule sets already to work with and are doing so. They HAVE been doing so for well over a decade. If this is nothing but yet another attempt to put that genie back in the bottle somehow it is laughably too late (and already long failed); if it is just a quick cash in on WotC's spectacular PR fumble at the start of this year with no follow through behind it, it will garner some modest interest and then fade away: and, purely personally as first and foremost not an RQ or CoC but a BRP fan, that would be a shame.

20 hours ago, Brian Duguid said:

Maybe you could articulate more clearly exactly what you'd want from a BRP CC program that would justify the loss of freedom that BRP UGE under ORC has already provided?

A BRP CCP would provide a platform for BRP fans (we exist, and we don't all regard RQ / CoC as the be all and end all of BRP...) to indulge our desire to support the game we are a fan of with greater reach and recognition than simply hurling ORC based publications in to the open void of the internet.  A CCP program could make available some basic layout templates / guidelines, some useful graphic components (where does one get a print ready file of the "Powered by Basic Roleplaying" logo exactly?) to help get fans started, and would help promote the new core book and provide a ready eco-system of potential support for other more substantial BRP - ORC based projects.

[soltakss]

On 4/15/2023 at 1:07 PM, NickMiddleton said:

A BRP CCP would provide a platform for BRP fans (we exist, and we don't all regard RQ / CoC as the be all and end all of BRP...) to indulge our desire to support the game we are a fan of with greater reach and recognition than simply hurling ORC based publications in to the open void of the internet.  A CCP program could make available some basic layout templates / guidelines, some useful graphic components (where does one get a print ready file of the "Powered by Basic Roleplaying" logo exactly?) to help get fans started, and would help promote the new core book and provide a ready eco-system of potential support for other more substantial BRP - ORC based projects.

I agree, having a specific place for BRP content can only be a good thing.