Cobwebbed Dragon wrote:
I imagine a lot of the stuff that would get published under an open licence will be a plethora of new professions and alternative settings, over which I think creative control should be maintained.
It seems to me that the notion of creative control is an oxymoron. More to the point, it seems counter-productive if one wants to allow for the development of a vibrant gaming community. I don't see how the most creative people will be drawn to a rigid, strangulating development scene. Not when they can work with nearly complete freedom within the OSR. Neither do I understand how the DW community is strengthened by keeping such people away.
I'm sure that opening the game up could lead to the creation of mediocre to poor quality DW-compatible products. But so what? We're not forced to buy them, nor to treat them as "official" for whatever that means. I'm also sure that the current scheme prohibits the creation of products that could provide us with great, inspiring new adventures and content that we'd never see through "official" channels, and draw more attention and players towards DW.
As with anything else in life, 80% of what's produced will be average at best, but the other 20% will be exceptional. I'd rather open things up and get more exceptional material produced (most of which will naturally rise in prominence over time) rather than keep things tight just to minimize the amount of filler.
I'm starting out with DW in actual play with my gaming group for the first time this Sunday. As much as I like DW's ruleset on the surface, the reason I'm starting this campaign isn't for the system or even for Legend. It's because I feel empowered by Sleeping Gods and some of the other adventures and supplements. Naturally, I hope the campaign goes great. At whatever point this campaign ends, I'd be sad if a dearth of additional content for DW led me to abandon the game. Unfortunately, I suspect that that is probably a common path for Dragon Warriors players to take.