Nottingham based RPG publisher 6d6 Fireball have announced their plans to release the 6d6 RPG system under Creative Commons license. This means other publishers will be able to use the system without cost. They can even publish rules variants along as they credit 6d6 Fireball as the original authors.
There is a twist though. Chris Tregenza has said they have launched a trademark application for “6d6”. I wonder how that will work. I’m sure there are many commercial RPGs that make very heavy use of the phrase “6d6”.
How will 6d6 Fireball make money? They will still be selling adventures and sourcebooks for the game. In fact, the standard Creative Commons argument is that if the wider use of the rules by more than one publisher creates a greater demand for the game then 6d6 Fireball will sell even more of these supplements than they would otherwise.
The secret money making plan 6d6 Fireball have is what they call “6d6:OLT” – their 6d6 Online Tools. That will be a significant challenge. I hope they’ve come up with something that works in Air or Sliverlight – or, better yet, a Chrome Extension or HTML5.
6d6 Fireball’s first book will be Mince Pies & Murder.
Your thoughts? Join the banter below or start us off with an insightful observation?
Thanks for covering this. Just to answer a couple of your questions. The trademark on 6d6 doesn’t effect people using the phrase “roll 6d6” or similar as trademarks are based on the visual elements. The only thing the trademark will prevent is people using the black sixes with red ‘d’ format you can see in my icon. This is primarily a device to stop people passing compatible products off as an official 6d6 product. The online tools will be pure web based technologies. At the moment it is all very basic HTML / CSS with a PHP back end. Any… Read more »
Hiya,
Thanks for taking the time out to leave a comment and clear things up. It sounds like Camil Store from a crack team of Google engineers might just be the sort of thing to make 6d6:OLT like systems more common.
Perhaps we could lure you back for an interview or something similar to see how well both the Creative Commons and the online tool set works out?