Off the Shelf: Legend

The original Legend game by Miongoose Publishing is still in print and worth keeping. This OGL game made all its test content open under the OGL and restates the RQ2 ruleset many loved.

Yes, I get that Mythras has replaced this under a better license. But this is original source data, like an original Unix distribution, much like the first Cepheus SRD, and it forms a pillar of our hobby. And yes, Mythras is a great game (albeit with a tiny font), but Legend is a small-book game that captures my imagination more than the massive hardcovers do.

The only thing that comes close is OpenQuest, another great fork of the original RQ-style rules. Cepheus, OpenQuest, and all the other fan efforts will keep these systems playable and open long after the rights pass to someone else, and things get locked away behind website portals, subscription services, and closed gardens. These will be the last games we can truly own and share.

When companies buy up the last available IP and move to smaller IPs, it will all be locked away, and you will be forced to pay for it through a subscription model. This is already happening in Hollywood, as the franchise series we loved are being merged and bought with the goal of making us rent our happiness and memories.

Even the defunct OGL is a path out of this corporate hellhole we all face.

If you are playing a closed-garden game, you are on the side of the media-powerhouse merger and rental model. They'll sell D&D like this for billions; prices will rise, legal threats will go out, and customers will be shoved into a portal for a monthly fee. Sorry. This is the road we are all looking at ahead of us. And once D&D is sold, other recognizable IPs and similar ones will be sold. Properties will be snatched up. There will come a time when Wall Street comes in and buys everything up like private homes, turning it all into rental properties. Some markets are so hot you probably can't find private homes anymore. 

We haven't gotten there yet in gaming, though in AAA gaming you can see the warning signs. You don't own your games. Physical media is being dropped. There will be no second-hand market anymore. They can wipe your games if you stop playing for a while or say the wrong thing online.

Again, we are a few years out from this, but you can see the warning signs in D&D with digital-only DLC and releases. Once the website shuts down, all that digital content goes poof. Gone forever. Like it never existed, and they can sell it to you again in the next edition.

The line is drawn now, at least for me.

And if you support closed-source games, you're honestly contributing to this mess and what is coming. All the closed-license games get sold. I start talking about them less and less. They're all dead ends, with no future, and really not worth my time. All of them will end up on AI and walled gardens. All of them will be state-enforced rental schemes.

I still have the open community editions of these games. I can still play them in 10 years. I can still create derivative works and self-publish.

In 10 years?

I doubt most people will even have what we have today.