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Anyone can try to interpret all these things as "maybe they're not bad..." But the common sense interpretation is that yeah - they're bad.
Wow, pretty broad brush there. Anyone who disagrees with you is just trying to disagree with you, while anyone who agrees with you is using common sense. Pull the other one.
__________________ Iain Fyffe
Original member of the Rouseketeers!
I have played 4E. And just like all other editions of D&D, it is awesome!
no one quotes me in sigs - Crothian
For some reason, this doesn't fill me with rage. I must be interwebbing wrong. - Cadfan
I just got back from a conversation with my FLGS owner about 4E, and I thought they had a interesting point about sales and the GSL.
It started when I asked them about sales of 4E, and they told me that core book sales had been good, but all of the supplements were moving only in modest levels. I asked if the 4E sales had been comparable to 3E and they said heavens no!
From a FLGS perspective, 4E sales have been terrible in comparison to 3E because they look at the whole line, including third party support, not simply that of products from WotC. The D20 license and OGL brought with it well over 100 books by this time in the line in the 3E and 3.5 days. Think about that in FLGS terms: you're selling maybe a dozen titles for 4E when you had dozens and dozens of books earlier.
As I thought about it, I think that's a key reason people say 4E hasn't sold as well as 3E: because of the lack of third party support. For better or for worse, I had spent a lot more on 3X by this point than I have for 4E.
Does that affect WotC in a negative way? I don't know. My FLGS owner thought that it did because the D20/OGL movement created a buzz of interest for all D&D products that just doesn't exist in our area now.
Just annecdotes, but something to think about (hopefully).
--Steve
__________________ Be a rebel...order your coffee in one of these three radical sizes: small, medium or large.
"Sure as I know anything, I know this. I aim to misbehave."
--Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity
I play 4E, and it's every bit as much Dungeons and Dragons as any other edition, including the one(s) you play. No more, and no less.
Dude, are you really serious? Wait, you're right, a couple of the many 3p companies have put out one or two GSL products, companies which otherwise generate a quite large number of new products a month. Sounds like love.
I round 98% to "totally." YMMV.
We're talking about companies that published most of their products under OGL in 3e-times. That's large scale rejection of the new GSL. It is of course technically not undeniable, you are free to deny it, it's just not reasonable. I'm sure that statement makes you sad, but it seems like that's par for the course with ya so sorry.
Eh, I think the ship has sailed on having a usable GSL.
And it ended up like the Titanic. I don't see it something very major for them to worry about right now no matter how much Scott and us people may want to fight for it. WotC has its sights only on Digital D&D and Digital Magic the Gathering.
Not like people really need it anyway, as I myself and going to look into OSRIC and throw away the powers I created for 4th edition to remain as house-rule junk until I stop playing 4th.
So WotC can keep the GSL for all it matters from me.
I just got back from a conversation with my FLGS owner about 4E, and I thought they had a interesting point about sales and the GSL.
It started when I asked them about sales of 4E, and they told me that core book sales had been good, but all of the supplements were moving only in modest levels. I asked if the 4E sales had been comparable to 3E and they said heavens no!
From a FLGS perspective, 4E sales have been terrible in comparison to 3E because they look at the whole line, including third party support, not simply that of products from WotC. The D20 license and OGL brought with it well over 100 books by this time in the line in the 3E and 3.5 days. Think about that in FLGS terms: you're selling maybe a dozen titles for 4E when you had dozens and dozens of books earlier.
As I thought about it, I think that's a key reason people say 4E hasn't sold as well as 3E: because of the lack of third party support. For better or for worse, I had spent a lot more on 3X by this point than I have for 4E.
Does that affect WotC in a negative way? I don't know. My FLGS owner thought that it did because the D20/OGL movement created a buzz of interest for all D&D products that just doesn't exist in our area now.
Just annecdotes, but something to think about (hopefully).
--Steve
I have to think that the internet would have had a bigger impact on the 4e sales at the brick and mortar stores. I've bought and will continue to buy my 4e stuff through Amazon; I kind of feel guilty when I game over at Pegasus, but I doubt I would be able to buy as much as I do now at full cover price (I doubt my fiancee would have approved in that case).
__________________ Veronica: Where's your brother?
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But the common sense interpretation is that yeah - they're bad.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mxyzplk
It is of course technically not undeniable, you are free to deny it, it's just not reasonable.
I am going to have to ask you to please stop speaking like it is not possible to be reasonable and yet not agree with you. That you have a lock on all reason... simply isn't a reasonable assertion. It comes off as rather condescending, and is starting to annoy some folks. Thanks.
Last edited by Umbran; 4th December 2008 at 05:04 AM..
I have to think that the internet would have had a bigger impact on the 4e sales at the brick and mortar stores. I've bought and will continue to buy my 4e stuff through Amazon; I kind of feel guilty when I game over at Pegasus, but I doubt I would be able to buy as much as I do now at full cover price (I doubt my fiancee would have approved in that case).
I agree with you here. It's starting to get a little tangental, but I think that the price increases for books have pushed a lot of people just past their comfort zone where they'll pick up a book as an impulse buy. I bought a PHB from Pegasus, but also picked up the core rulebooks in the boxed set from Amazon. It was silly not to do so. When I had all the books, I ended up giving away the extra PHB as a gift, and I still saved money over just buying the books retail. I've spoken with the folks at Pegasus about this (both Shroomy and I are Madisonians, and we have a very good store in Pegasus Games) and they've seen it a lot. I still end up buying a lot of product from them, but it's different stuff (boardgames mostly).
Frankly, if there were a lot of GSL based books out there, I'd likely be buying more locally, since those books have a lower price point than what WotC is making these days.
--Steve
__________________ Be a rebel...order your coffee in one of these three radical sizes: small, medium or large.
"Sure as I know anything, I know this. I aim to misbehave."
--Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity
I play 4E, and it's every bit as much Dungeons and Dragons as any other edition, including the one(s) you play. No more, and no less.
Dude, are you really serious? Wait, you're right, a couple of the many 3p companies have put out one or two GSL products, companies which otherwise generate a quite large number of new products a month. Sounds like love.
I round 98% to "totally." YMMV.
We're talking about companies that published most of their products under OGL in 3e-times. That's large scale rejection of the new GSL. It is of course technically not undeniable, you are free to deny it, it's just not reasonable. I'm sure that statement makes you sad, but it seems like that's par for the course with ya so sorry.
It seems like your assertions are based more on the gaming business climate of 2002-2005 or so - nearly all these companies you keep listing as not jumping on the GSL bandwagon had already fallen by the wayside months before 4E was even announced.
Green Ronin, Necromancer, Mongoose, Fiery Dragon, Malhavoc, Kenzer, and Goodman were about the only "big" viable d20 publishers left at the time of the 4E announcement, and of those, only Goodman was releasing anything with a volume approaching that of the days before the d20 bubble burst.
You can certainly trot out a long list of publishers big and small that haven't produced GSL product, but its ultimately meaningless - they're not producting OGL stuff either.
Its easy to forget that the D&D-related games market in 2006-2007 was dwindling away...
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It seems like your assertions are based more on the gaming business climate of 2002-2005 or so - nearly all these companies you keep listing as not jumping on the GSL bandwagon had already fallen by the wayside months before 4E was even announced.
Green Ronin, Necromancer, Mongoose, Fiery Dragon, Malhavoc, Kenzer, and Goodman were about the only "big" viable d20 publishers left at the time of the 4E announcement, and of those, only Goodman was releasing anything with a volume approaching that of the days before the d20 bubble burst.
You can certainly trot out a long list of publishers big and small that haven't produced GSL product, but its ultimately meaningless - they're not producting OGL stuff either.
Its easy to forget that the D&D-related games market in 2006-2007 was dwindling away...
It had reduced along with the overall RPG sector's sales, but I don't think "dwindling away" is fair. In fact, those companies *are* still producing OGL games. They were producing d20-branded games too, but Wizards revoking that license means they have to burn their stock on Dec 31 of this year, so I don't think that can be held against them. Since a lot of that d20 stuff was OGL it is of course putting the hurt on them and some are turning to new lines that don't depend on the OGL, but they are indeed still publishing OGL stuff to this day.
Let's take my list - "Ronin, Paizo, Necromancer, Troll Lord, Kenzer, Postmortem, Wolfgang Baur, Monte Cook, Sean K. Reynolds, Deep7, Highmoon."
Green Ronin's stuff is mostly OGL. Mutants & Masterminds and True20 are and those are in active release.
Paizo's stuff is all OGL, even Pathfinder.
Necromancer was still publishing stuff till the GSL confusion hit - Rappan Athuk Reloaded, heck City of Brass just came out in September. They're still trying to figure out if/how to go 4e, but only ramped back after the announcement.
Troll Lord - Castles and Crusades is OGL and they're still publishing it.
Kenzer was all d20 but was publishing up until the news hit - now, sadly, you go to their HackMaster Core page and see the notice "Our license agreement with Wizards of the Coast has ended. This means that certain rulebooks using material from TSR/WotC products, or the D&D logo, are now unavailable from our web store." They're working on a new HackMaster version now.
Monte and Wolfgang are doing their own OGL things.
Mongoose has whole OGL lines, like Conan, they are actively publishing.
We can discuss what "in volume" means, but all these companies were, and still are, producing OGL games and supplements. Some smaller publishers had fallen by the wayside but not these guys - at least, they were still in business doing exactly that. There was a bit of a d20 glut and bust but there were plenty of companies like these still playing mainly in the OGL space and being successful up till the announcement, and a surprising percentage of those (mainly those that didn't depend entirely on the d20 license) are doing so up to this day.
That's why they won't touch the GSL - it's more like the d20 license than the OGL really. As these companies sell all their books for $2 on paizo.com and look around at the crates of stock they'll have to burn at the end of the year - I think we can see why.
In fact - I think the definition of "in volume" should be compared to Wizards' 4e schedule. If you don't count dungeon tiles and dice and novels and suchlike, they are only clearing about 2 new RPG products a month, one accessory and one adventure. Third party publishers can't be expected to keep up with the behemoth. Or can they? Paizo is outpacing that still with 3.5e/OGL releases, with one large adventure (Adventure Path), a batch of smaller modules, one or two accessories per month - and it's not early-Mongoose shovelware, it's high quality and production value stuff.
All those companies were still releasing product - most not at 2/month but any 2 or 3 of them taken together were. Again, I agree not like 2002 where just Mongoose would toss out six a month, but I think if you're generating product at a rate close to comparable to the clear market frontrunner, you're still in there.
Majority of these guys won at least one ENNie this year too. Paizo, Ronin, Malhavoc, Goodman, Kenzer...
I'm still amused by the support of the OGL when I distinctly remember pre-3E when the "consensus" was that WOTC was trying to kill off other RPG companies....
I'm still amused by the support of the OGL when I distinctly remember pre-3E when the "consensus" was that WOTC was trying to kill off other RPG companies....
At the time, on r.g.f.d and on eric's 3e page, a large number of people believed that the OGL was like the Borg and that it would swallow up a lot of the other companies/systems.
In a way they WERE right. Pre 3e, when I went to my gamestore, there were vastly more systems on the shelf. In terms of system design, pre 3E was a high point of the hobby IMO.
Once 3e came, it pretty much swallowed up many of the other systems from the shelves....
In fact - I think the definition of "in volume" should be compared to Wizards' 4e schedule. If you don't count dungeon tiles and dice and novels and suchlike, they are only clearing about 2 new RPG products a month, one accessory and one adventure. Third party publishers can't be expected to keep up with the behemoth. Or can they? Paizo is outpacing that still with 3.5e/OGL releases, with one large adventure (Adventure Path), a batch of smaller modules, one or two accessories per month - and it's not early-Mongoose shovelware, it's high quality and production value stuff.
All those companies were still releasing product - most not at 2/month but any 2 or 3 of them taken together were. Again, I agree not like 2002 where just Mongoose would toss out six a month, but I think if you're generating product at a rate close to comparable to the clear market frontrunner, you're still in there.
Majority of these guys won at least one ENNie this year too. Paizo, Ronin, Malhavoc, Goodman, Kenzer...
D&D blows Paizo away when you include Insider and RPGA. Dungeon Magazine provides one large adventure path and two large adventures per month, and the RPGA is producing a lot more.
In a way they WERE right. Pre 3e, when I went to my gamestore, there were vastly more systems on the shelf. In terms of system design, pre 3E was a high point of the hobby IMO.
In fact I agree with these people. IMO D20 saw a proliferation and support -in expense of other systems- it was not worth it. This burnt out hobbyists, I think.
In fact I agree with these people. IMO D20 saw a proliferation and support -in expense of other systems- it was not worth it. This burnt out hobbyists, I think.
I agree wholeheartedly with this, especially the not worth it part. In addition, as somebody who enjoyed playing non D20 games when I wasn't playing D&D, I've developed a dislike of the OGL movement because of how it marginalized non-D20 games.
In fact I agree with these people. IMO D20 saw a proliferation and support -in expense of other systems- it was not worth it. This burnt out hobbyists, I think.
There's truth to that. As it happens d20 is my favourite system - but not everything needs to be d20.
__________________ Iain Fyffe
Original member of the Rouseketeers!
I have played 4E. And just like all other editions of D&D, it is awesome!
no one quotes me in sigs - Crothian
For some reason, this doesn't fill me with rage. I must be interwebbing wrong. - Cadfan
In fact I agree with these people. IMO D20 saw a proliferation and support -in expense of other systems- it was not worth it. This burnt out hobbyists, I think.
In the way that the d20 system was twisted and turned to make it work for some settings, I agree we lost some stuff along the way....
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