Hmmm. That doesn't quite jive with this announcement though, at least how I read it.
Wizards of the Coast is pleased to announce that third-party publishers will be allowed to publish products compatible with the Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition game system under the new Dungeons & Dragons 4E Game System License (D&D 4E GSL). This royalty-free license will replace the former d20 System Trademark License (STL), and will have a System Reference Document (SRD) available for referencing permissible content.
Could be they're ducking the issue for now, but the royalty-free licensing bit says to me that they're not looking to approve each product or get paid for non-4E logoed product. That said, I can see this next part working as you speculate:
The D&D 4E GSL will allow third-party publishers to create roleplaying game products in fantasy settings with the D&D 4th Edition rules, and publishers who register with WotC will be granted the right to use a version of the D&D logo that denotes the product as compatible with the D&D 4th Edition Roleplaying Game, in accordance with WotC’s terms and conditions.
A lot of the speculation I heard on podcasts and such was that Wizards is wary of another d20-brand implosion. A huge amount of crap was published with the d20 logo, so much that it completely devalued the logo. Instead of a sign of compatibility, it became a scarlet letter.
This time around I'd expect them to put tighter controls on the licensing of that logo - requiring a print copy could easily be one of those restrictions, as could paying a licensing fee to get the logo (I notice nothing in the announcement says that the logo licensing itself is royalty free).
But I guess we'll all know what's happening come June.
Fri, 04/18/2008 - 7:56am
Hmmm. That doesn't quite jive with this announcement though, at least how I read it.
Could be they're ducking the issue for now, but the royalty-free licensing bit says to me that they're not looking to approve each product or get paid for non-4E logoed product. That said, I can see this next part working as you speculate:
A lot of the speculation I heard on podcasts and such was that Wizards is wary of another d20-brand implosion. A huge amount of crap was published with the d20 logo, so much that it completely devalued the logo. Instead of a sign of compatibility, it became a scarlet letter.
This time around I'd expect them to put tighter controls on the licensing of that logo - requiring a print copy could easily be one of those restrictions, as could paying a licensing fee to get the logo (I notice nothing in the announcement says that the logo licensing itself is royalty free).
But I guess we'll all know what's happening come June.
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