Is there still hope for Open D6?

Open D6 logo A long time ago Eric Gibson, current owner of West End Games, announced that he plans to turn the D6 System into an open system. I believe he made that statement in his first video update on the official site (which he posted in December 2008). While a lot has happened in the background this is still the latest news on the WEG site.

On GenCon this year, Bill Coffin’s Septimus made its debut as the first OpenD6 game and although this book is not listed on the WEG site, you can buy it through RPGNow and probably at other places as well. From what I’ve seen so far, Septimus seems to be a nice game, but I am pretty sure that most gamers are totally oblivious of its existence.

In the meantime a fan helped Eric to add the OGL to a couple of d6 System books that are now freely available:

But if you don’t follow the discussions on the WEG Fan Forums you might get the impression that WEG and the OpenD6 project are dead. Several people including me tried to convice Eric Gibson to at least update the WEG site or setup a temporary site for Opend6.com, but alas to no avail.

Around GenCon, the OpenD6 web developer announced that the beta test should start any minute now. But as far as I know this beta test hasn’t started yet. The project still seems to be in limbo. The last thing I heard was that they still have trouble getting the servers up and running…

And if you ask me the whole project is much to ambitious for a one-man show like WEG. If Eric Gibson just released a D6 System SRD and a proper OpenD6 trademark license on a simple website, a lot of people would’ve already jumped on the bandwagon. Now only the few hardcore fans are still waiting for something that may or may not materialize. The rest probably already forgot about West End Games… which is sad.

What do you think? Is there still hope? Do you understand why Eric Gibson avoids making updates to the WEG site? As always I am very interested in your thoughts.