Raiders of R'lyeh!

[Prime Evil]

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

Yes, the MRQ SRD expired upon the termination of Mongoose's rights to RuneQuest. You can't license things that you don't have the rights to in the first place. The OGL may have stated that it was "perpetual", but since Mongoose never had perpetual rights to RQ, the OGL was not perpetual and that OGL expired when their license did.

Wow. Does this mean that Issaries never approved the release of the MRQ SRD in the first place?

If so, that would imply that Mongoose was in breach of Section 5 of the OGL, since they never had sufficient rights to grant the rights conveyed by the licence.... 

At least it looks like downstream works based upon the MRQ SRD such as OpenQuest and Renaissance are protected from this mess since Section 12 states that even if Mongoose failed to abide by the terms of the OGL (causing their license to terminate automatically), all sublicenses survive the termination of the parent licence. Is this correct? 

 

[Jeff]

Issaries ok'ed Mongoose issuing a sub-license (which is all the OGL is), but once the license with Issaries was terminated, all the sub-licenses went away (the parent license was not amended to permit survival of sub-licenses). I suspect the perpetual clause is just a drafting error and should be read as "perpetual as long as the parent license endures."

And no, sub-licenses do not survive the termination of the parent license. 

[g33k]

I suspect that this licensing snafu (and consequent customer-confusion) is part of (or one example of a part of) what nuChaosium (& the GreatOldOnesReturned) found so problematic with the Mongoose era (in addition to the editorial liberties taken with the Gloranthan canon).  Because Mongoose wanted to OGL stuff (it was all the rage at the time) that they didn't own, and didn't have permission to OGL (which is usually taken to be an "in perpetuity" license).  The owners of RQ are forever thereafter cast as The Man trying to take away (from We the Gamers) the stuff we were given by Mongoose...

It's like if a video-card-maker licensed some (c)-Microsoft closed-source code into one of their drivers, and OGL'ed the whole driver:  no, they can't give away the rights to that proprietary code, no matter what license they slap onto it.  I've seen it done right, where the proprietary code is segregated into one (or a few) modules -- often precompiled blackboxes -- and NOT marked with the OGL, and also noting (within the OGL notice) the non-OGL-ness of "Modules Hi, Psi, and Omega, (c) by ..." .  I've seen it done wrong, too.

 

[lawrence.whitaker]

We've had a look at 'Raiders of R'lyeh' and, despite the OGL references and acknowledgements, the biggest influence very much appears to be RQ6/Mythras. Many of the mechanics and much of the structure is very clearly and identifiably based on Mythras (and the Firearms supplement) rather than Legend or OQ. The author has made sure there's no copyright infringement where text is concerned, so we don't have any particular issues in that regard, but we are a little disappointed that there's been no direct acknowledgement of The Design Mechanism's influence given how closely RoR hues to the our game's structure and a whole host of its mechanics.

Still, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and the Edwardian setting looks evocative, intriguing and a refreshing place for adventure. We wish them well with the game.

[g33k]

1 hour ago, lawrence.whitaker said:

We've had a look at 'Raiders of R'lyeh' and, despite the OGL references and acknowledgements, the biggest influence very much appears to be RQ6/Mythras. Many of the mechanics and much of the structure is very clearly and identifiably based on Mythras (and the Firearms supplement) rather than Legend or OQ.... We wish them well with the game.

"If you build it," (a really solid system) "they will come..."

You guys do good work!

[Mankcam]

Yeah when I first backed the project I thought it was going to be OQ with an Edwardian-Mythos setting

Then various changes were made, and it became more like Legend and RQ6, it even has many of the working parts retrapped -  combat maneuvers are called Fighting Method Bonuses, Luck is called Mettle, and Gifts are there in the form of Special Abilities. 

Given how much time has passed, it makes more sense for it to be a licencee for Design Mechanism, as it virtually is a retrapping of Mythras now. Otherwise it needs to be trimmed way back down to OQ level again, either works.

It just doesn't make sense to have too many BRP rulesets proliferated - but setting books for pre-existing core rulebooks work well. At the end of the day, fans will want to stick with one or two rule sets, and just adjust things for the setting. If I ever run this, I'll tell my players it's the Mythras BRP engine, otherwise they'll just be too confused.

Despite all the issues associated with this, the final pdf versions was just released to backers, and they look pretty good in content. I wonder when the hard copies will arrive

Edited September 24, 2017 by Mankcam

[Raleel]

it would be pretty cool if the author worked with TDM to make it an official Mythras thing. Mythic Pulp or something.

[Mankcam]

Yes and given that it has taken so long to be released, then it probably may benefit from one more delay and be released either as a Mythras or Mythras-compatible product. There is lots of great content in RoR, and making it part of thr Mythras family is probably the way to go now. 

Mythic Pulp is such a cool genre title; that needs to be a 'thing''!

Edited September 24, 2017 by Mankcam

[TrippyHippy]

Well, the model is there already with M-Space and Classic Fantasy for third parties working effectively with TDM to make genre based supplements. I wouldn't bother changing the name however - Raiders of R'lyeh sounds much cooler. 

I'm not really sure that Quentin is communicating much with many people at the moment though.

 

[g33k]

6 hours ago, Mankcam said:

Yes and given that it has taken so long to be released, then it probably may benefit from one more delay and be released either as a Mythras or Mythras-compatible product

Except that -- per the OP -- it already IS out, available for purchase.

And apparently rather big.

And speedy production doesn't seem to be the author's forte; so pulling it back to re-do under Mythras branding would seem ... counter-productive.

 

[Mankcam]

I was thinking of the big picture and where this book fits in regards to the proliferation of BRP games. It is definitely  a BRP game from the MD100 SRD stream, but it is much more Mythras than OQ, which is a little different from the original vision.

 It would  be nice to see a logo on the book identifying it as a ‘Mythras-Compatible’ or a ‘Mythras-Influenced’ product at the very least, given how much of Mythras has been used for this game. 

PDFs can be altered/updated, but printed books can not. But yeah, I doubt there will be any major changes this late in the project, and I expect it has been so challenging that the author just wants to complete it now.

The content and game structure is rather good, and Mythras GMs would probably like having this title in their collection 

Edited September 24, 2017 by Mankcam