5e announced!

[Ken of Ghastria]

Yeah, Drinnik beat me to it. If you're still using the downloaded program, you haven't been getting any of the updates since (I believe) the Essentials books came out. Sure, you could subscribe for just one month, create 20 characters in that time, print them out or save them as PDFs, and never return. But you'd be the outlier in WotC's business data. Most DDI users, especially those who (like me) are DMs as well as players, keep the subscription going in order to read the latest articles & modules, as well as generate customized monsters and characters on the fly.

[alhoon]

Darn...

So, it's a "pay to use" now... oh well, they propably understood how much money they were losing by having all the books stacked in there.

I have my old one from 2 years ago and it works fine. It has all the books I need so far. A pity that I won't be able to pay 10$ to get a permanent cyclopedia of 4E, but so be it. Let's hope they will keep it around (the 4E part) once 5E comes out and it won't vanish.

Will they give us the last non-online parts of the CBuilder updates for free? Those that are 1 years old now? Mine is 2 years old. Up to when the Psionics were beta.

[Drinnik Shoehorn]

To be fair, I think a lot of people were doing what you were, Al, and WotC cottoned on quite quickly. I know that most of my group used the downloaded version by getting those of us who paid for it to download it for them. It meant that for the two of us who had subscriptions, six people had the CB.

[alhoon]

Well, I wasn't doing that, but I was using CB as a quick reference for feats and powers from all the books.
Truth be told there are so many books and feats and items in the 2 years old version of CBuilder that I've not checked all of them. It's not like I play 4E often.

[ewancummins]

Darn...

So, it's a "pay to use" now... oh well, they propably understood how much money they were losing by having all the books stacked in there.

I have my old one from 2 years ago and it works fine. It has all the books I need so far. A pity that I won't be able to pay 10$ to get a permanent cyclopedia of 4E, but so be it. Let's hope they will keep it around (the 4E part) once 5E comes out and it won't vanish.

Will they give us the last non-online parts of the CBuilder updates for free? Those that are 1 years old now? Mine is 2 years old. Up to when the Psionics were beta.

My guess is that 4E will be taken offline and off the new book shelves rather quickly, so that it won't compete with 5E. I expect that Habro will simply cancel all 4E DDI content and end all new 4E sales. There will be no 4E retroclones, because, unlike previous editions, 4E is not covered in the OGL.

None of this will prevent you from continuing to enjoy 4E, of course! You just won't see any new official content.

I could be wrong, of course. The new model may turn out to be very different from previous practice.

[alhoon]

Considering that most of my content of 4E was in fact, from the CBuilder, if they take it off the plug I lose access to most of what I could use, since I don't have many of the books but I use the feats and rituals etc from the CBuilder.

Also, I don't know if it's even legal to take away the magazines and all. Assume I payed the subscription and I want to read an article from a ezine I payed for that's 2 years old. Why shouldn't I be allowed to see it?
Still, just in case I'll renew my subscription near the end of the edition and download the whole bunch of the ezines. Do they have them in yearly formats for easy download or I have to download them one by one?

[Ken of Ghastria]

Still, just in case I'll renew my subscription near the end of the edition and download the whole bunch of the ezines. Do they have them in yearly formats for easy download or I have to download them one by one?

Based on what I've seen, it looks like they DO eventually collect the individual articles for Dragon or Dungeon into one big download for that month's issue.

[ewancummins]

Considering that most of my content of 4E was in fact, from the CBuilder, if they take it off the plug I lose access to most of what I could use, since I don't have many of the books but I use the feats and rituals etc from the CBuilder.

Also, I don't know if it's even legal to take away the magazines and all. Assume I payed the subscription and I want to read an article from a ezine I payed for that's 2 years old. Why shouldn't I be allowed to see it?
Still, just in case I'll renew my subscription near the end of the edition and download the whole bunch of the ezines. Do they have them in yearly formats for easy download or I have to download them one by one?

I don't know the particulars of DDI, or of the agreement you signed to join it. There is precedent for cancelling access.

All the customers who bought old edition PDFs through Paizo and DriveThru RPG lost the ability to download/access those after Hasbro pulled the plug on PDF sales. Now, if you were obsesssive like me, and kept a couple of backups- no big deal. Anyone who lost his files due to computer failure or physical loss of the storage media was just S.O.L.

[alhoon]

Pfft. I emailed those backups to myself and I keep them in one hard drive and 2 different computers.

Still, just in case I'll renew my subscription near the end of the edition and download the whole bunch of the ezines. Do they have them in yearly formats for easy download or I have to download them one by one?

Based on what I've seen, it looks like they DO eventually collect the individual articles for Dragon or Dungeon into one big download for that month's issue.

Month's issue?
But there are like 36-48 months! x2 for 2 magazines!
Aren't there any yearlies?

[ewancummins]

Sounds like a certain illithilich has more downloading to do.

Get 'em while you still can.

[MichaelTumey]

I'm supposed to be getting a licensed copy of Hero Labs for development purposes for Rite Publishing product development through Rite Publishing, though I'm not the coder to upload custom data sets - though it can be done. One of Rite's patrons is uploading spells right now, so I know it's possible. I know at $40 for the base package, plus additional purchases for additional data sets, like Pathfinder Core and Advanced Players Guide are different data sets, so it can get expensive. At least I'm not supposed to have to pay for my copy, a share license with Rite Publishing - nice perks for being a game developer!

There'a a Mac Beta version for Hero Labs, so at least it's cross compatible. I think it has a 4e dataset as well. (For those of us who don't want to use DDi.)

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

There will be no 4E retroclones, because, unlike previous editions, 4E is not covered in the OGL.

But, OD&D, 1e, & 2e are not covered by the OGL either, and there are retro-clones of them. Frankly, I'm not sure how that's legal (lawyer!HMB?), but if they exist, a 4E retroclone probably could too, eventually. I know you can't copyright game mechanics, only the text that describes them. You can patent mechanics, but it's rarely done, probably due to expense and lack of enforce-ability.

[HuManBing]

"Retro-clones" (derivative works) of the prior editions occupy a grey area. There is no written piece of paper endorsed by Wizards that specifically says "It's okay, here's the clear limitations of what anybody in the world may or may not use freely without fear of legal troubles". That's effectively what the OGL did for 3rd ed., and it removed much of the uncertainty over what Wizards would and would not prosecute in third-party use.

As Ron points out, rules and mechanics are covered by patents, not by copyrights (and patents only last 20 years anyway, so the earliest editions of DnD would be public domain by now - if they were ever patented in the first place, which is very rare for games). Most creative works for games are filed under copyright laws.

Copyrights last 95 years from publication (for a corporate creator) and 75 years after death (for a human creator). They extend to creative works, primarily characters, events, and storylines - and they DO cover "derivative works" (so my fan fic about Vlad Drakov is every bit as actionable as actually reprinting word for word the official text out of the Black Box). Most such fan fics and fan ports to other rulesets are so trivial, commercially speaking, that a creator has little to gain by taking legal action. And most creators are happy to encourage fan adaptations of their works - J. K. Rowling and H. P. Lovecraft are examples of authors who have encouraged the public to make their own adaptations because it generates a great amount of good will.

The other extreme might be the RIFTS setting, where the publishers and authors have historically taken a strict stance against adaptations by fans, requiring them to remove such materials from websites and forums. All this is within their rights as the copyright holder. Technically, any author who doesn't enforce them so strictly is "being nice to you".

Rules can't be copyrighted, only characters and storylines etc., but the distinction can be quite fine indeed. If a disagreement comes up, you may end up in court, which is a costly process for everybody involved.

The OGL for 3rd ed. removes much of the doubt about what is protected and what is public domain. So you can publish a book showing how to create variant elves for use with the d20 system, but you may not do the same for mind flayer variants (because the "mind flayer" concept is claimed by Wizards as a character design they created, and they have not relinquished those rights).

As 4th ed. lacks a clear statement of OGL, we're back into the murky grey areas about "what is a rule and what is a copyrightable setting, plot, character, or story?" Uncertainty is the enemy of investment, so a rational third party publisher would likely be less willing to put time and money into producing a work for 4th ed. than they were for 3rd ed., when all the limits were clearly stated.

[ewancummins]

There will be no 4E retroclones, because, unlike previous editions, 4E is not covered in the OGL.

But, OD&D, 1e, & 2e are not covered by the OGL either, and there are retro-clones of them. Frankly, I'm not sure how that's legal (lawyer!HMB?), but if they exist, a 4E retroclone probably could too, eventually. I know you can't copyright game mechanics, only the text that describes them. You can patent mechanics, but it's rarely done, probably due to expense and lack of enforce-ability.

OSRIC, at least, makes some use of the OGL-

http://index.rpg.net/display-generalinf ... alue=OSRIC

[Bluebomber4evr]

Okay, here's some real info on the new edition so far, thanks to Saracenus on the Canonfire! forums:

D&D 5th edition: What we know about "D&D Next"

D&D XP Seminars:
Day 1: Charting the Course: An Edition for all Editions
Day 2: Class Design: From Assassins to Wizards

I have to say, many of my fears have already been allayed. I like what I'm hearing so far.