SVG IS DEAD, LONG LIVE SVG

It’s a big day here for Silvervine Games. Over the past few years we’ve been contemplating and making many changes behind the scenes, but it all culminates into the major change that we are announcing today- releasing the rules system behind SVG as an open source product, freely available rules system.

For a while, our ability to work on Silvervine as a money making project has been stymied by life changes and physical distance between the core group. Though the desire to work and create something incredible within the context of Silvervine Games has been high, the ability to produce and work on material as a professional project has not gelled to the point where we could devote our time appropriately to it. After much discussion and many twists and turns, we came to the decision that Silvervine Games as a book publishing company and money making project just didn’t make sense, but Silvervine the gaming system was something with a lot of life in it.

To that end, we’ve dissolved the corporate entity that was Silvervine Games, INC and have released the SVG Core rules as an open source, CC 4.0 Attribution license. That doesn’t cover the art or the text pertaining to the Cyrus setting, but merely the SVG rules and rules text. That makes the gaming system open source and available for you to do whatever you want with.

The Future of SVG

Does that mean we are fading into the aether? Not really, but it does mean we are changing how we operate and what role we take in SVG development in the future. With the SVG rules system being open source, you are now free to do what you want with it, and we’re hoping to help you do that. John Arcadian will be maintaining the Silvervine Games website and development on a streamlined version of the SVG rules will continue with the whole team involved. These will be released under the same CC 4.0 license making them available to anyone to use and incorporate into their own works.

We’re hoping to work with the community to create and help foster cool things being made with SVG.

Particulars

Here are some things that might be helpful to you regarding the SVG open source change.

  • We are choosing to call the rules system SVG, meaning Scalable Versatile Gaming, reflecting the incredible and diverse options available in the system.
  • The SVG logo is being released open source under the CC 4.0 license as well, meaning you can use the logo in your own gaming supplements and materials.
  • We’ll be using this website (and the associated ones) to post materials that may be helpful to you in creating SVG compatible works, as well as showcasing and linking to any works created. So let us know about any SVG work you are making, and we’ll see if we can find a place for it in a directory.
  • The current book on Drive Thru RPG has the new text regarding the license, but we’ll be releasing a text only version to make it easier to incorporate information into your own works.
  • We’ve got some preliminary work on an SVG 2.0 or streamlined version, and we will be continuing work on that. For the meantime, you can check out the beta version of it. We’ll be producing it with an open beta, so playing and commenting on it will be well appreciated.

And that’s about it. Thanks for going on this incredible journey with us, and we are looking forward to going on the next incredible journey with you.  – The SVG Development team.

  • John Arcadian
  • Ryan Rawlings
  • Matt Solomon
  • Alec Stringer
  • Edward Yarrus

Files

Extracted Text Files

In order to help others in creating their own materials, we’ve extracted the open source text of the book and compiled it as text only versions. Since they are versions extracted from production files, formatting and layout issues are rampant throughout. Some of these have been corrected, but only the largest issues have been dealt with. These may help you create compatible works, but require much effort to clean up and make presentable.

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