6d6 Online Tools – sell other GMs ideas for money?

6d6 Firefall is a new discovery for me. It was their decision to release the core 6d6 mechanics under Creative Commons license (ie, for free and re-use) that caught my attention. Their first product for the system, Mince Pies and Murder, looked interesting so I blogged the story.

At the time there was a mention of “6d6 Online Tools” or 6d6:OLT and the promise it was be key to the company’s financial efforts. It’s just a day later and we’ve more details.

I don’t think the headline “sell other GMSs idea for money?” is incorrect. It’s just one spin of what I think is actually a good idea. Here’s the graphic by Chris Tregenza, 6d6 Fireball’s supermo, that explains better than words can.

The system starts off with the wiki. GMs enter their notes, material and ideas there – keeping them locked before their group has had a goal and unlocking them afterwards. The locking is pretty intelligent too. GMs can lock whole projects or pages. They can unlock to friends, whole groups of collaborators or, I assume, let anyone and everyone in.

Aware that not everyone can (or likes to) game with a laptop and an internet connection, Tregenza’s smart move is to put an intelligent PDF builder in as the next layer. GMs select which pages they want turned into a PDF and then they’ve that sourcebook built for them. The sourcebook automatically includes a table of contents and we’re told an index system is inthe works too.

If you want you could even sell that PDF sourcebook. The one you’ve just composed from a hybrid of your own and other GMs ideas. Interested? You can read more and queue for lifetime membership (this costs money) over at 6d6’s big picture page.

I’m interested to see how this works. If 6d6 get into gear and build a strong community of GMs then my gut feeling tells me that this will work very well.

I have questions and concerns though. Can 6d6 build that community? It’s very hard making your site a go-to web address for the gaming community. Many have tried. Many have failed.

Also, why would any GM contribute to the wiki? It’s easy enough creating your own. Is the PDF builder (a little more tricky to do by yourself) really that much of an incentive? Perhaps the PDF builder creates the documents in such a way that you’re given a credit and you can use 6d6:OLT as a way to build your reptution as a fantastic game designer, thought leader and thinking. If Tregenza and co can pull that little marketing stunt off then we’ll be hearing a lot more about the Fireball in the future.