Working on "Six Sided" Fantasy Wiki

[sycarion]

I started a D6 Fanatasy wiki, but ran into some issues. Basically, I took a text dump from the D6 Fantasy PDF. Works great, no art to worry about.

I realize that the issues I have may be related to preference. I used to write technical documentation, so I understand that I can be hyper-sensitive to some things.

The issues I found were:


It is formatted like a book. The cross-references are easy to resolve in a wiki, but there are issues that are not as easy to convert.

The TOC was organized pretty badly.


The first one requires a bit more thought and effort. No big deal, just takes time. This is things like integrating call-out boxes.

The second one, however, requires a re-think before I can even post it. The best example of the second issue is Disadvantages, Advantages, and Special Abilities. It is listed in chapter one, but the text in chapter one is only a reference to the details in Chapter Two. The Skill list is not in the TOC. There's a few others.

So, my question is this: do folks want the original version or a differently organized version?

One important note: since the STL hasn't been worked out for D6 and OpenD6, I use the term "SixSided" to avoid trademark issues until the STL is written. When the differently organized version is finished, I will send it in. I'm being nit-picky in regards to trademark, I know, but I'd rather be safe.

[Alucard]

Umm I dont think you can do this. I could be wrong, but just renaming it something else wont work, especially if you are using copyrighted material. The D6 system is free to use, but not to be renamed and published for all to see as "Six sided".... would be like Burger King taking the Big Mac and making it calling it "Large Bro" or something.

this is just what I think and no way connects to what WEG or D6 Open would say.

[hellsreach]

The other question is why would you want to do this? Making a wiki of the existing material is defeating the purpose of having OpenD6.com -- all the open D6 material located in an easy centralized location. Having it fractured will 1) either damage the "spirit" and purpose of this experiment, or 2) people will continue to go to OpenD6.com and your time in the making of the wiki will be wasted.

[sycarion]

The other question is why would you want to do this? Making a wiki of the existing material is defeating the purpose of having OpenD6.com -- all the open D6 material located in an easy centralized location. Having it fractured will 1) either damage the "spirit" and purpose of this experiment, or 2) people will continue to go to OpenD6.com and your time in the making of the wiki will be wasted.

Because it is not available today.

It doesn't fracture the spirit of this experiment as the increased value of openD6.com when available, will be completely superior to my wiki site. I don't see why it would be 'fractured'. I wondered, considering the number of folks wanting access now, if folks would like the text "as is", or not.

The value to me, as someone that is interested in material development, is having online access now, not later. If, in one week, opend6.com is up and running, then it's still no loss to me.

If comstar games got the text dump, then, I'll go help them. Otherwise, I'll keep going until opend6.com is up and running.

[Alucard]

The other question is why would you want to do this? Making a wiki of the existing material is defeating the purpose of having OpenD6.com -- all the open D6 material located in an easy centralized location. Having it fractured will 1) either damage the "spirit" and purpose of this experiment, or 2) people will continue to go to OpenD6.com and your time in the making of the wiki will be wasted.

Well besides that, isnt as of right now, D6 system still copyrighted material that is free to use with your approval until the OGL is up?

[hellsreach]

Well besides that, isnt as of right now, D6 system still copyrighted material that is free to use with your approval until the OGL is up?

Technically, yes. For it to be "totally" legal, I have to physically attach the OGl to the text in question. Still, for all intents and purposes, it is fully covered by the OGL right now.

[Grimace]

So, technically speaking, no one can use the text yet... is what you're saying?

This is the main reason why I think so many are waiting for the finalization of OpenD6, including the SRD, before they do anything with it. There's still too much grey area and legalese that's out there hanging in the air.

Sorry if this comes off as beating a dead horse, but considering there's this much confusion about something as simple as trying to get the D6 Fantasy information out for everyone to see and use (which is what it seems like sycarion is trying to do) really indicates that there needs to be some further progress before people will progress as a whole.

[hellsreach]

So, technically speaking, no one can use the text yet... is what you're saying?

This is the main reason why I think so many are waiting for the finalization of OpenD6, including the SRD, before they do anything with it. There's still too much grey area and legalese that's out there hanging in the air.

Sorry if this comes off as beating a dead horse, but considering there's this much confusion about something as simple as trying to get the D6 Fantasy information out for everyone to see and use (which is what it seems like sycarion is trying to do) really indicates that there needs to be some further progress before people will progress as a whole.

That is part of my point. Sycarion, rather than putting up the text in a wiki, could instead send it to me in whatever cleaned up format he would like to present, and I can put it up on the website and immediate attach the OGL to it. It seems rather time consuming to format it for a wiki for what would otherwise be a temporary solution.

If people want to clear up the "grey areas," simply send me the text in a cleaned up fashion and I can put it up on the website and it will be immediately covered by the OGL.

Why don't I simply take if by the file text? Because my system crashed about two years ago, and I'm not certain if i have the source files backed up anywhere. If I did, all this would be done already.

[sycarion]

Umm I dont think you can do this. I could be wrong, but just renaming it something else wont work, especially if you are using copyrighted material. The D6 system is free to use, but not to be renamed and published for all to see as "Six sided".... would be like Burger King taking the Big Mac and making it calling it "Large Bro" or something.

this is just what I think and no way connects to what WEG or D6 Open would say.

In your example, Big Mac is a registered trademark of McDonalds. Owning the trademark doesn't prevent them from offering a similar sandwich or even comparing it to a Big Mac. The ingredients are not copyrighted. The test for violation of a trademark, as I understand it, is would "a moron in a hurry" confuse the two. Considering the presence of an OGL and the OGL mentioning West End Games, there shouldn't be any confusion.

Actually, the text being released under OGL means that the text itself can be used under the OGL license. When it was stated that the text was released OGL and that "I cannot take it back even if I wanted", that let me know the usage under the OGL was okay.

What cannot be used is the trademark, D6(R) and OpenD6(R). Under trademark law, anyone using them without permission is breaking the law. Eric will eventually have an STL to cover it and he has stated as much. Still, there is not an *actual* STL for the usage of those registered trademarks of West End Games. If a moron in a hurry (it's a legal definition, not name calling) confuses the two, then I need to come up with something different.

The copy of the OGL itself needs to make reference to West End Games, especially in areas of PI and Trademarks.

I cannot look at the books at work. However, I can surf the web as much as I want. I can navigate a wiki better than a pdf, so I wanted to have a resource available that I could use.

I don't have all the OGL for D6(R) and I don't have the funds to buy them yet. (The only source for me is to buy the PDFs as the text is not currently available anywhere else. Half Price Books had some of the books, but not all the ones that are covered.) As such, I am very interested in opend6.com when it is available.

Still, it seems that there is pressure to channel everything through opend6.com and that nothing starts until it is available. That is regrettable, but I can understand why.

As such, I'll take down the wiki and wait.

[hellsreach]

In your example, Big Mac is a registered trademark of McDonalds. Owning the trademark doesn't prevent them from offering a similar sandwich or even comparing it to a Big Mac. The ingredients are not copyrighted. The test for violation of a trademark, as I understand it, is would "a moron in a hurry" confuse the two. Considering the presence of an OGL and the OGL mentioning West End Games, there shouldn't be any confusion.

Actually, the text being released under OGL means that the text itself can be used under the OGL license. When it was stated that the text was released OGL and that "I cannot take it back even if I wanted", that let me know the usage under the OGL was okay.

What cannot be used is the trademark, D6(R) and OpenD6(R). Under trademark law, anyone using them without permission is breaking the law. Eric will eventually have an STL to cover it and he has stated as much. Still, there is not an *actual* STL for the usage of those registered trademarks of West End Games. If a moron in a hurry (it's a legal definition, not name calling) confuses the two, then I need to come up with something different.

The copy of the OGL itself needs to make reference to West End Games, especially in areas of PI and Trademarks.

I cannot look at the books at work. However, I can surf the web as much as I want. I can navigate a wiki better than a pdf, so I wanted to have a resource available that I could use.

I don't have all the OGL for D6(R) and I don't have the funds to buy them yet. (The only source for me is to buy the PDFs as the text is not currently available anywhere else. Half Price Books had some of the books, but not all the ones that are covered.) As such, I am very interested in opend6.com when it is available.

Still, it seems that there is pressure to channel everything through opend6.com and that nothing starts until it is available. That is regrettable, but I can understand why.

As such, I'll take down the wiki and wait.

You don't have to, and you shouldn't take down the wiki, if YOU feel it is providing a service to the fanbase. I'm simply interested in protecting my investment. To be perfectly frank, I've invested a LOT of time and money to make OpenD6 a powerful and useful utility. I don't relish the though of having "competition" for traffic before I can even manage to get a working copy up, but that is my problem, not yours.

That said, I found a layout copy of the D6 Space book and have started to compile basic text file with all the contents of that book -- it's a start. It's ugly as I've been dropping sidebar contents in the text flow, but it'll be useful to cut and paste from and will satisfy the OGL requirements to release that material.

[sycarion]

You don't have to, and you shouldn't take down the wiki, if YOU feel it is providing a service to the fanbase. I'm simply interested in protecting my investment. To be perfectly frank, I've invested a LOT of time and money to make OpenD6 a powerful and useful utility. I don't relish the though of having "competition" for traffic before I can even manage to get a working copy up, but that is my problem, not yours.

I understand that you have put a lot of time and effort into it. You have to pay bills and this is an experiment to expand the fanbase (and other things.) On a side note, a lot of folks want that kind of software you are developing for opend6. It would come in handy on the Grand OGL wiki and Microlite20, just to name two.

As I said, opend6.com will be a powerful utility and will quickly overshadow whatever I may do. It is a superior product. When free is part of the business model, that's the only way to compete (by making superior products.) I have an hour plus a modded copy of dokuwiki - you have custom software that serves a great purpose. You could probably sell local copies of it to offset some of your expense. I'd buy it, anyway.

Personally, I want to be helpful. I never intended to be competition. There's a great game and a great set of rules out there for free. I'm new to it, but I've heard nothing but positives about the game, especially the commercial titles Torg and Star Wars.

The issue is, no one can get those rules without buying them. (Or in the case of the Cookbook, not available at all.)


That said, I found a layout copy of the D6 Space book and have started to compile basic text file with all the contents of that book -- it's a start. It's ugly as I've been dropping sidebar contents in the text flow, but it'll be useful to cut and paste from and will satisfy the OGL requirements to release that material.

I appreciate that. Thank you very much. I really don't want to sidetrack you. As I said, I'd like to help. With so many requests for a text dump, I thought it would be helpful to provide at least one. Sure it will be ugly, but while opend6 is being developed, new people like me can play the game.

At this point, I'd rather defer. You seem to have something in mind and I don't want to be some griefer that messes it up. Once opend6 is up, I'll share my ideas and see what happens. There a lot of potential, and I really hope that it will be successful.

All the best!

[sycarion]

That is part of my point. Sycarion, rather than putting up the text in a wiki, could instead send it to me in whatever cleaned up format he would like to present, and I can put it up on the website and immediate attach the OGL to it. It seems rather time consuming to format it for a wiki for what would otherwise be a temporary solution.

I appreciate that, but this seems to go against the idea of open. Still, I'll be happy to do this.


If people want to clear up the "grey areas," simply send me the text in a cleaned up fashion and I can put it up on the website and it will be immediately covered by the OGL.

I'd be happy to do this, so I'll send you something when I'm done. Personally, I like the d20srd.org site, but this way is fine, too.


Why don't I simply take if by the file text? Because my system crashed about two years ago, and I'm not certain if i have the source files backed up anywhere. If I did, all this would be done already.

That explains a lot. I work with computers. Sorry for the crash, that is the worst thing that can happen. I'll see what I can do about cleaning up D6 Fantasy and send it along. I said in another post that I'd wait, but that's what I get for reading in backwards order. Oops.

Let me know if there is anything else I can do to help.

[hellsreach]

You know Sycarion, the OpenD6 developer read this thread and made some great points. He and I both agree that your desire to put up a wiki is firmly rooted your desire to help everyone have access to the Open material. This is absolutely great. I mean that. It would be a total shame to not use your desire to help. He suggested that if you still wanted to put up a wiki, you and he can work together to put the wiki up on the OpenD6 site while the main system is being worked on. The work you would do to dissect the system up into useful snippets (for the wiki itself) would be quite useful when fully ready in start populating the OpenD6 database.

I really mean it when I say that you should do what YOU feel would best suit the D6 community, but I was wondering if you would like to lend a hand creating the OpenD6.com wiki -- a placeholder for more to come? It would be very appreciated. Of course, as we get the ball rolling, other people will, I'm sure, through their hand into the ring and build it up as well.

[sycarion]

Up to chapter 6. Originally tried to do something like the d20 srd, but decided to make each chapter an RTF file. All the text will remain the same. Only change is that the sidebars are placed in the text in at what I hope is a reasonable place.

Now that I've done 5 chapters, it doesn't take as long as I thought. Got sick over the weekend, otherwise, I'd be finished.

Once I get them done, it will be off to Eric.

As a side note, I found that the last few pages of Fanatasy Creatures has a conversion guide between D6 Fantasy, D6 Space, and D6 Adventure. I also plan on including an RTF of just that info. Then I'll start on the Fantasy Creatures.

Here's to the success of OpenD6!

[Whill]

Once I get them done, it will be off to Eric.

As a side note, I found that the last few pages of Fanatasy Creatures has a conversion guide between D6 Fantasy, D6 Space, and D6 Adventure. I also plan on including an RTF of just that info. Then I'll start on the Fantasy Creatures.

Here's to the success of OpenD6!

As a member of the WEG fan community, thank you for all your assistance with this process, sycarion!

[nairobie]

As a member of the WEG fan community, thank you for all your assistance with this process, sycarion!

what he said

[sycarion]

Working on Chapter 11 today.

The process goes something like this, in order to give folks a sense of time remaining:

Creating a draft copy:

Transcribe from PDF
Paste Text into text editor
Cleanup all the page breaks
Paste callout box text into the chapter somewhere...
Set the heading text to match the level seen in the Table of Contents
Spellcheck.


This is what I have done for chapters 1 - 10 already.

Moving to Final:

Search and Replace to make sure all skills, advantages, disadvantages and special powers are italicized.
Make changes based on the published errata


This will be the last process before sending to Eric. It shouldn't take that long per file, especially the shorter chapters. I am estimating the time to be sometime this weekend for completion. I won't post more updates after this one.

I appreciate the thanks, I just hope this will prove useful to Eric and to others.

[sycarion]

Got everything transcribed and in rtf files. However, they do not look the same in Open Office, and AbiWord cannot open them at all.

I used Word 2007 because of some of the search and replaces I needed. (Should have used perl/awk/sed.)

Sent an example to Eric. If they don't look good, I'll redo them.

[sycarion]

Got everything transcribed and in rtf files. However, they do not look the same in Open Office, and AbiWord cannot open them at all.

I used Word 2007 because of some of the search and replaces I needed. (Should have used perl/awk/sed.)

Sent an example to Eric. If they don't look good, I'll redo them.

Everything has been sent to Eric.

Just so you know, this is the text with no deletions. If it says reference page number xx, it's there. If it is bold or italic, it's there as far as I could tell. Some of the tables may have the word "table" added.

Otherwise, it's as faithful to the text as I could make it. Any suggestions for changes once they are up is most welcome - be as nit-picky as you want to be.

Now to try my hand at a QuickStart and/or reordering...

[The Game Guy]

Everything has been sent to Eric.

Just so you know, this is the text with no deletions. If it says reference page number xx, it's there. If it is bold or italic, it's there as far as I could tell. Some of the tables may have the word "table" added.

Otherwise, it's as faithful to the text as I could make it. Any suggestions for changes once they are up is most welcome - be as nit-picky as you want to be.

Now to try my hand at a QuickStart and/or reordering...

Good job. Now if the others who are working on the SRD document can get their part done then it will be good. I know there are people who are waiting to do anything until the SRD Document has been released.

[mbentley]

Any news on this?

[asmkm22]

This thread, though a little old, raises a good question:

How will fan versions of the OpenD6 sites be handled? One of the big changes with Wizards 4E was the elimination of sites such as d20srd.org. Do you plan on restricting 3rd party sites providing that information?

[mbentley]

From everything I have read it is not using the 4E model, but the 3E model. So fan sites should not be a problem.

[hellsreach]

This thread, though a little old, raises a good question:

How will fan versions of the OpenD6 sites be handled? One of the big changes with Wizards 4E was the elimination of sites such as d20srd.org. Do you plan on restricting 3rd party sites providing that information?

There will be no restrictions, but OpenD6 is being designed to be a full scale "fan site" for OpenD6, thus making additional fans sites a little redundant.

[asmkm22]

There will be no restrictions, but OpenD6 is being designed to be a full scale "fan site" for OpenD6, thus making additional fans sites a little redundant.

as long as the open d6 site is simple to use and of high quality, this is true.

[hellsreach]

A haven't spend a few thousand dollars on the site's design for it NOT to be, so figures crossed.

[The87]

OpenD6 is being designed as a community - not just a website/rules bank.

Ultimately, the community that drives OpenD6 will be far more important than the rules contained there.

Also, ease of use has been a primary goal during the entire development and post-launch, it will continue to be of the utmost priority. In other words, feedback will be welcomed and utilized.

[asmkm22]

The87:

In response to the following question in your last blog,


But what else would you (the future users of OpenD6) like to see as part of the portal? News feeds? Media players? Videos? Recent comments for OpenD6 publications? Some sort of Twitter feed? A calender?

Less is more. Do you want this to be a true web portal that people set as a home page for all their information, or do you want it to be reliable and easy to use database of rules and compilations?

Media players and videos really don't seem to have a real purpose on the site, beyond soaking up bandwidth. I figure let the site do what it does best, and let youtube do what it does best.

News should be related to D6 only, and probably would end up being either publication announcements or particularly well-written reviews on community made products or settings. RSS feeds, in particular, can be an easy way to get a michael jackson headline mixed into your site...

A calender probably wouldn't be very useful unless you have steady release dates for stuff. Even then, a 3 month block list of upcoming releases would probably be better.

*****

I'd focus on making sure the UI is attractive, responsive, and informative. Create a basic layout, with sample data, and release test accounts to a handful of individuals to start giving feedback. A good month of this "beta" phase, and you'll have a very clear idea of what people like, use, hate, or want.

[The87]

I agree. The blog post was more fishing for ideas - in case anyone had anything that they really thought would be helpful.

Ultimately, the site will end up as a portal but it will be highly customizable. In other words, any users that wish to have some RSS feeds in their sidebar will be able to add them - nothing of that sort will be forced on the users. That said, OpenD6 may suggest a feed or two from an RPG-related site but again, nothing that users cannot choose to remove.

OpenD6 will always have the goal of "Core functionality first" ... which certainly includes ease of use.