I am am an amateur ttrpg developer. I love the idea of open licenses allowing people to make games based on other games easier. Yes, you cannot copyright mechanics but you can copyright expressions. If an engine is not subject to a license, you can make a game based on it but you'd have to make the entire game from scratch, which is a barrier to entry, and it comes with legal issues.

At the moment, I decided to go out and remake a game I love that has been out of print for 12 years. It's engine was turned into a generic game but due to a lot of corporate fuckery the engine is not available under any license. It was going to be put under one -- twice -- but fuckery stopped it. I got sick of it and I'm making a quick, no art remake reworded from scratch with new names for the mechanics and it's getting released under CC-BY-4.0 DEED Attribution 4.0 International.

When I asked around about it, I was surprised to see so many people on game design groups going "who cares?" and "game mechanics can't be copyrighted anyway so why bother" or even "I just assume all licenses are out there to hurt me so a license makes me worried about doing it more than you just saying it's cool." Now, no one was rude, for clarity. I intentionally reworded their words to be blunt for brevity.

I'm still going to do my project and release it as a SRD on itch and DTRPG for free with instructions to go out and make your own games with it. But, now I'm wondering: am I weird?

In my mind, if you have a license, you have the freedom to make things easier and that allows for experimentation on an engine and makes it seem "safer" to make stuff with mechanics from it since it makes it clear that the person won't take action. I don't like just "I promise not to do anything" stuff because it relies heavily on their word. Sure, Meg and Vincent Baker are trustworthy, but I don't trust everyone not to be weird about it. And, without a license or contract, such verbal agreements can be rescinded at any time for any reason at your expense because you have nothing that protects you enforceable from them doing so.

But, am I weird for caring so much? I still think doing this is a service for others who like this game, want to play it in the modern day after it being out of print for 12 years, and opens the floor to new versions. But, what does everyone else think?

I don't think it's weird at all to license your stuff. In theory you can make a game based on any ruleset, as long as you keep your expressions distinct! In practice, that's not how this works socially, and people can get super weird about it - and this doesn't even start to get into weird rights hangups if you're hacking an older or more "corporate"-origin game, like the situation you're describing. Putting a license on something is to me a signal that, without having to expressly ask, you have a way to do it (and what parameters are being asked, if any). I figure it's also more future-proof - if you have to ask someone for permission, well, nobody lives forever and I'd rather have something survive me without causing anyone heartburn over it, and this is a way to guarantee what the situation is in perpetuity.

Some of the CC's can be a little hard to parse, so I get that "all these licenses are trying to hurt me" argument to some degree (like someone not understanding CC BY SA might feel some kind of way if they make something and realized they have to relicense it in the same way). (Tangential thought: I blame the OGL for half of this line of thinking.) CC BY is dirt simple though, all you have to do is put an attribution statement in there (and you can give them a pre-written one to make it easy!) I also like less than formal licenses for things that are more "I'd prefer you not copy this text directly, but you can definitely make something based off of this" in nature.

licensing is very important, think of it like voting

licenses are stigmatized by corporations so that they are the only ones who have legal safety and control

in the software world Microsoft did this intentionally and blatantly for decades and to a large extent their campaign was successful in poisoning the well

vague, non-existent, and permissive licensing gives them plausible deniability and protection from you, while giving them free reign to exploit and attack

on the other hand, an explicitly free license does a lot to prove you have no profit motive and this reduces your potential liability if they do come after you - another reason they don't want you using those licenses