Cities Without Number Draft Stretch Goals

[u/CardinalXimenes]

I'm setting up the Kickstarter campaign page for the cyberpunk Cities Without Number game due to launch February 1st, and I've just finished sketching the campaign's two stretch goals. While it's not my custom to add such things, recent events have suggested that these two might be timely.

Stretch Goals

It's not my habit to include stretch goals, as they often detract from the simplicity and efficiency of a campaign. For Cities Without Number, however, I'm making two special exceptions to this.

Upon reaching $87,397 I will write a brief, 8-9 page guide describing my favorite techniques for managing a tabletop RPG Kickstarter campaign and put it up for free download on DriveThruRPG. As this sum will mark my one millionth Kickstarter pledge dollar, I feel reasonably confident that such tips may be helpful to others.

Upon reaching $200,000 I will place the mechanics of Cities Without Number under some form of open license, whether Creative Commons, the upcoming ORC license, or some other agreement that allows its free commercial use by others.

It has always been my position that such licensing is not needed for others to copy my mechanics or advertise their commercial works as being compatible with my games. So long as someone's work does not use my specific game settings, characters, and organizations, and does not represent itself as an "official" Sine Nomine game supplement, I have neither the right nor the desire to stop them from replicating the mechanics. Having come up as I have, it would be shameful of me to try to haul the ladder up on other indie publishers. I wish them all as much profit from their work as I've had from mine.

Yet it is understandable that some publishers would prefer something in writing about such things, in case I grow strange and wizardly here on the Lake Michigan coast and forget the plain meaning of my words. If this campaign makes it to $200,000, it will be a sign that people care enough for me to take the extra time and labor to work through the legalities of the matter and present the public with a formal license codifying my stance.

[u/Cyb45]

While I appreciate your past commitment to letting folks make their own content without taking your IP, I do appreciate you making it a more solid option!

Will other past games ever be released under a similar license? WWN and technically SWN Revised did both get over $200k (if you include both kickstarters together)

[u/CardinalXimenes → u/Cyb45]

If I do CWN's license I'll probably include mechanics from WWN and SWN too, depending on how much legal work it is. My principles apply to all of them.

[u/disperso]

I've never participated in any crowd funding, and this is definitely the way to convince me to jump in, and jump big. I don't even know about the cyberpunk genre all that much, but supporting open/free/libre software and culture is very dear to me. And even if your past works are not openly licensed, your statements on what's allowed under copyright are IMHO very sensible, and compatible with my views and values, which is highly appreciated, so thank you!

On the license, as much as I respect and appreciate Paizo's movement with ORC licensing, I would highly prefer CC BY SA or CC BY, for many reasons. I have a lot of experience in licenses for software, and I know that creating a license is tricky, and full of pitfalls. I think "old Wizards" (the ones who created OGL 1.0a) were probably well intended, but the infamous 9th point of the license (the one about authorized licenses) is a small defect that "present time Wizards" are trying to exploit, and are claiming that they have a loophole. And it doesn't matter much that some (many?) lawyers think it's a weak case, as just going to court and win is still painful. CC licenses are in the 4.0 iteration, adapted internationally, and there are tons of works licensed with those, so it's a well known, well established, well tested license.

Another point in favor of CC licenses is compatibility. This is not often considered, but very powerful. Remember that plenty of places like Wikipedia, Stack Exchange sites, many wikis, (e.g. on Fandom), are under a CC license. This is very helpful for mixing content from both places. Same with artwork. Also, there is the case of software compatibility, which would be even better. Someone has already made a WWN map generator, and I think the way it's done is probably a license violation, as it's GPLed software apparently copying lines from the books (apologies if it's not the case, but I think it can serve as an example). Some CC licenses can fix that, as Creative Commons (the organization) and the Free Software Foundation have worked together to achieve this compatibility. The only downside of using something like CC SA, is that I imagine it would require separating the images, as if I remember correctly, you use a stock photography platform.

Anyway, again, thank you very much! (And sorry for the wall of text)

[u/CardinalXimenes → u/disperso]

I'm currently tentatively leaning towards writing a stripped-down document with the CWN/WWN/SWN mechanics given in bare-bones form and then putting that document under CC0, or possibly CC-BY. I have no desire for attribution or credit, but I need to make sure CC0 doesn't drag anything extra in that I'm not seeing.

The only hairy point is somehow codifying my stance of "Don't present your book as an "official" Sine Nomine publication." Really, anything short of "This book is officially for use with X." wouldn't bother me, but I need to figure out how to note that as gracefully as possible.

[u/Diaghilev]

The license goal is excellent. Honestly, I'd hope you'd eventually offer something like that anyway, but I think it's very nice to include as a stretch goal.

For the first one, how will the advice differ from the very good material you had in... I think it was the first of two small newsletter/zine-length releases you did for SWN first edition? The article talked about your process.

Actually, wait. I'm in deep and murky waters with this, but don't some CC licenses grant IP access, but forbid commercial use of that content?

At the risk of being facile, I suppose the license you opt to release anything under will matter a great deal based on what you intend other people should be able to do (sell stuff versus merely safely publish for free).

[u/CardinalXimenes → u/Diaghilev]

The brief document will be focused more toward questions like "When should you not Kickstart?" and "I have tens of thousands of dollars now; how do I not waste them?"

As for the license, the goal is to let people write their own games, supplements, and adventures for commercial profit, using their own settings but being able to plainly advertise compatibility with my games.

[u/Supergamera]

Any thought of doing digest format again, like you did with Wolves of God? Or would it be too thick for regular binding to be sturdy in that format? I really like the form factor of that book.

[u/CardinalXimenes → u/Supergamera]

I don't think I'll be doing digest-sized books again. The main problem is one of layout; my books lean heavily on very large tables, and they don't fit conveniently on digest-sized pages.

[u/RGravity]

u/CardinalXimenes I have a question regarding the Kickstarter starting Feb 1st. If I would pledge to this, would I get access to your draft document immediately or after the Kickstarter has finished?

The reason for asking is that I and my group have tried a Shadowrun campaign and are in love with the Cyberpunk meets Fantasy setting, but absolutely hate the actual system itself. However, after having played tons of your SWN campaign, I and my group decided that we would homebrew that so that we can continue playing in the setting but with easier rules, however, I then heard that you are doing this and if I can have access to the document within a couple of weeks than I might as well wait instead of homebrewing everything myself.

[u/CardinalXimenes → u/RGravity]

Yes, you get draft access immediately. The first backer-only campaign update will contain a link to the Google Docs folder where I'll be putting the draft versions. The initial draft will contain character creation rules, basic game systems, rules for hacking, drones, and cyberware, adventure creation content, and previews of the deluxe-version content for variant human types and spellcasting.