D100-system charter

[peterb]

Originally Posted by AikiGhost

Doesn't your browser render smileys?

Oh. Sorry, I misinterpreted your smiley...

[DirkD]

I don't think that the world is waiting for a license from a bunch of forum-users. Why would anyone buy or make a product that is approved by some unknown people?

The d20-logo is a success, because 3rd-party-producers can benefit from the marketing-machine and market-share of a big company. I seriously doubt that anyone would use it, if a couple of kids from ilovednd.com would have made it.

It would be a good thing, if chaosium creates something similar, though. It would give the logo some meaning.

[Dredj]

I may have skimmed through the initial post too fast, but I'm not seeing what the point of this is. Is this just to ensure that games that say that they are compatible with BRP truly are? Or is this to just put a legal stranglehold on a game system convention? If it's the latter, then good luck, because I have a number of D% games and none would work 100% with each other. They don't even pretend they are compatible. Though they aren't exactly all that different, either.

My next favorite game system to BRP is Blood!. And that's entirely D100 system.
RPGNow.com - Postmortem Studios - Blood!

The company that made that game also made a conversion for Runequest called Bloodquest RPGNow.com - Postmortem Studios - BloodQuest

The two systems aren't very compatible. Bloodquest is mainly to import rules from Blood! into Runequest and CoC, to turn them into slasher horror style games.

[Trifletraxor]

Originally Posted by peterb

Originally Posted by peterb

Most members of this board probably understands what is meant with the term “d100-system”, a system of rules designed to facilitate role-playing, which is class less, level less, has no arbitrary limits on what a character can do and which resolves in-game tasks by rolling a d100 under a threshold value.

...

I therefore propose that we create:

a) a d100 charter, a document that spells out the minimal characteristics that a role-playing game, labelling it self as “a d100-system” or “Compatible with the d100-system” must have.
b) a d100-system logo.
c) a d100-system logo license (we assume that the logo is copyright protected).

The purpose would be to establish a market standard and assign a symbol to that standard and allow, anyone, who is willing to follow the standard the right to use the logo free of charge.

Comments are most welcome...

/Peter Brink

I like both the idea and the logo suggestion you have. Defining what qualifies for a rpg to be labeled a d100 system would be hard though.
(by the way, would we need a license? Would it need to be protected? I don't think anyone not aiming their product at the d100-market would want to use it)

I should point out that Chaosium is actively seeking licensees for BRP at this time and (in my opinion) an official "BRP-compatible" sort of logo might be preferable to one solely focusing on d100 (as many games use d%, and not all in the same way).

Do you know if they have any plans of making the license terms public?

SGL.

[Jason Durall]

Originally Posted by Trifletraxor

Do you know if they have any plans of making the license terms public?

Send Dustin an email at dustin@chaosium.com and he'll fire you a copy of the contract. It's not a big secret what the terms are.

I'm just not a Chaosium employee, and don't want to be in a situation where people are asking me to negotiate or explain their licensing terms.

I can say that the terms are (in my opinion) extraordinarily generous.

[Trifletraxor]

Originally Posted by Jason Durall

Send Dustin an email at dustin@chaosium.com and he'll fire you a copy of the contract. It's not a big secret what the terms are.

Done.

SGL.

[RosenMcStern]

Me too. Let's see what happens.

Now the big question is: as there is a lot of independent stuff already out for MRQ, will publishers be allowed to make their products multi-compatible?

[soltakss]

I can't see the major D100 companies backing a logo that includes their competitors' products.

So, why should Mongoose and Chaosium put the D100 logo on their products when doing so would help market each other's supplements?

But, having said that, it would be great for fanzines, websites and smaller companies. So, for instance, Seraphim Guard could include the D100 logo on their RQM and BRP products to indicate that they are broadly compatible with all D100 systems without actually referring to the competitor system. I doubt whether Mongoose or Chaosium could complain about that as the D100 Logo is not tied to a particular company or system.

I am all in favour of having a wider D100 family of games and systems that are broadly compatible, so I would definitely support the D100 Logo. I'm just not sure that Chaosium or Mongoose would. I doubt if they would oppose it, though.

[soltakss]

Originally Posted by peterb

I therefore propose that we create:

a) a d100 charter, a document that spells out the minimal characteristics that a role-playing game, labelling it self as “a d100-system” or “Compatible with the d100-system” must have.
b) a d100-system logo.
c) a d100-system logo license (we assume that the logo is copyright protected).

The purpose would be to establish a market standard and assign a symbol to that standard and allow, anyone, who is willing to follow the standard the right to use the logo free of charge.

The minimal characteristics would have to include both Mongoose RQ and BRP. They would probablty have to include systems such as Blood, GORE and SimpleQuest. Clearly the charter couldn't refer to those games explicitly, but the wording would have to be so that those games are not excluded.

So, you would have to have, at the very minimum:

• D100 being the prime die when resolving situations
• Characteristics being based on a Dice Roll but not solely random
• Human characteristics typically in the 3-18 range
• Hit Points being derived from Characteristics
• Damage being weapon + personal - armour
• Previous Experience being Background/Profession based rather than Class Based
• No Character/Race Classes
• No Experience Levels
• Percentage based skills
• Incremental experience
• Skills resolved by rolling below a skill target on a D100

[frogspawner]

Originally Posted by soltakss

• Skills resolved by rolling lowest on a D100

Oh, not including Mongoose after all, then?