I had a weird idea recently while working on my Dicey Fate Project. My first Dicey Fate game in development, Wild Hunt, uses an original setting that is inspired by RWBY but has elements of Dark Souls, S-Cry-Ed, Dune, and such. It is also very LGBTQA+. It's not a good setting, but it is a setting and there is some narrative fiction included. On it's own, it's my common problem of not having enough follow-through to really flesh one out.

However, Peter Watts, author of Blindsight, put all of his novels on Creative Commons, non-commercial, attribution. He credits this to his success and ability to avoid irrelevance as the spread of his novel grew his appeal.

Thus, it makes me wonder if I did something that I have personally never heard of before: a creative commons RPG setting. It would be commercial, attribution, sharealike. I'd give up my ownership of Wild Hunt and give it to the community. People would be free to make their own commercial products in the setting with the caveat that I had to be credit AND their writing also must be creative commons, attribution, sharealike. In theory, this could (if anyone cared) create a naturally web of things growing as those who like the game can freely and commercially make their own additions -- whether game supplements or otherwise -- with the caveat that they also have to contribute to the growing web of this setting.

It could be seen as exploitative as it would be using the community to grow the game in a way that benefits me. But, since I allow you to sell your own stuff, you do make your own money and it's not like I own your stuff, everyone does.

What do y'all think about that?


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @covok's post:

I'm always onboard for more non-noncommercial (I hate that pointless chasm through the community) worlds. As far as I can tell, in the role-playing world, that's usually limited to one-off adventures or the sketchiest overviews of the world, so there's probably plenty of room for a full world.

To be fair, I'm not sure how detailed you'd call my worldbuilding. I'm awful at it. But, it would have a defined history and I do plan to have the final version to have two ages: The Age of Kingdoms and The Age of Great Schools. Some region descriptions. Some sample characters. Big Bads. It'd be more than usual for sure, but I suck at world building. It would also have some innarrative fiction.