Quote:
Originally Posted by Voadam  I wish the underlying goal of avoiding copy and paste publishing were eliminated and all the resulting limitations that resulted from trying to accomplish it. |
Indeed. It is telling that the 3.x
SRD was intended to increase what is essentially "cut & paste" publishing under the belief that this would actually increase
WotC's profits in the long term.
The most recent writer's digest actually has an article on how giving away materials for free can help a business increase its sales over the long term. This is one of the reasons that you get free electronic books and audio podcasts of novels.....the readers tend to want hardcopy books as well.
I know a lot of folks who have made use of the
SRD (including myself, both the
WotC version and the Hypertext
SRD). In each of these cases, the person also bought physical copies of the books.
While I am sure that the 3.5
SRD in particular cost
WotC money, I think that this is more because
WotC failed to convince a certain segment of the gaming population that either (1) they needed to convert, or (2) their 3.0 books didn't effectively function as hardcopy for 3.5, or (3) both.
IMHO, that Conan, Iron Heroes, or Arcana Unearthed uses largely the same "engine" as 3.x is a
good thing. It means that I can steal from those games to make my D&D game stronger. It means that I can buy & adapt D&D modules and run them in other systems. All roads lead to D&D, and it is the
quality of WotC products that largely determines which
WotC products I am willing to buy.
The absence of an
SRD/game crossover
hurts the value I receive from buying a
4e product.
If the official game is a game I want to play, there is no doubt that being "official" is going to boost that game to the top of the heap. If, OTOH,
WotC is losing significant money to "non-official" games, perhaps that is because those games are offering something
WotC is not? The same holds true for suppliments, etc. "Official" is automatically better unless there is an overwhelming reason why it is not, and if that overwhelming reason exists, then it would only be an asset to
WotC to find out what it is.
The genie is already out of the bottle, from
3e. The market is already fragmented. An
OGL 4e would ameliorate that fragmentation to the highest possible degree. Continuing down this road will only increase fragmentation over time.
IMHO, of course.
RC
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