Any word on the GSL?

Ydars · Jan 25, 2009

The irony of all this for me is that a liberal and open GSL would have probably mitigated the problems that 4E is now experiencing (at least with respect to this community). More than one vision of the D&D world, using the same mechanics, is and always was a good idea. I think WoTC is particularly bad at producing adventures and that this is a real deficiency. There is also no-where near enough material, in terms of expansions, to fill the demand, and the 3PPs could have helped with this.

Now, I suspect, other companies will be seeing the money of people who have decided 4E is not for them.

But then that is often what you get when you try to be too controlling. I am not saying GSL should have been as open as OGL; I don't think WoTC needed to have allowed other companies to produce whole new game systems. I just think they should have allowed them to produce expansions, adventures, settings and other things that make the D&D world richer.

After all, most of what Hasbro calls "their IP" in fact started life in the head of a fan. So it is a bit rich to start getting shirty with us when we feel some ownership of D&D.

They needed to crack down on abuse not on use of 4E D&D; a pity that they seem to have gone too far, at least on the first try.

xechnao · Jan 25, 2009

Ydars said:
Whilst many business' may think this about themselves, I think the truth is that this is rarely the case (Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, etc are some recent examples of how good business is at convincing itself that their business plan fits some kind of scientific model, when in fact it is based on greed and sometimes, fear).

Hasbro is no different to any other large company; it is run by people, and people are capable of emotional and irrational decisions. As indeed are their customers!

It doesn't matter if C&C etc posed a credible threat to D&D; what matters is what the guys running Hasbro felt about it. I suspect they saw all the combined 3PP sales and starting saying to themselves, "Hey, that's money we should have had".

I am not saying they want to KILL 3PPs, but the GSL is certainly not designed to spread goodwill and love either.

Hasbro is different. The business of those other companies is the structure of economic competition (financial sector). Without proper control they would eventually do bad things.
Hasbro is about entertainment. Without control they could screw people over by using cheap toxic matterials in their toys if they could gain a profit for example.
And as I said above I do not believe GSL is directly about sales competition. It is rather about securing as much as possible the consumer's trust or confidence to the brands of the 800lb gorilla or leader capitalist of the market.

I do believe that D&D needs an rpg market of various different products and I am sure it helps it but this market should rather be with products and brands different than D&D so the market can maintain itself and D&D can maintain the power and value of its identity.

I think that the guys behind the GSL were very reasonable about what they were doing. It was not irrational.

Varianor Abroad · Jan 25, 2009

Umbran said:
I would credit this, if I'd ever seen evidence suggesting that the sale of those games ever posed any credible competition to D&D. "On high" has shown decades worth of decent business sense, and I don't see them having a knee-jerk protectionist reaction if none were called for.

I think it is correct that there was a directive from on high to make 4E different, but it wasn't connected heavily to the reasoning behind the GSL.

Mark · Jan 25, 2009

Umbran said:
I would credit this, if I'd ever seen evidence suggesting that the sale of those games ever posed any credible competition to D&D. "On high" has shown decades worth of decent business sense, and I don't see them having a knee-jerk protectionist reaction if none were called for.

There have been decades of changes to the people who make the decisions regarding the destiny of the IP known as D&D, some have made good decisions and others have made decisions that were less than stellar. Time will tell if leaving the OGL behind, the foot dragging toward the new licensing and subsequent community reaction to the GSL has been better for the brand than some alternative approach. As a gamer since pre-D&D days and fan of the game through these days, I can tell you that I think this has been a poor series of decisions for a number of reasons, some of which other people might discount because of my last 7 years as a occasional publisher of supportive material for the game but also because I have always been a fan of the game and I see it moving forward less strongly than it has been in recent memory. I find that to be a shame.

xechnao · Jan 25, 2009

Mark said:
There have been decades of changes to the people who make the decisions regarding the destiny of the IP known as D&D, some have made good decisions and others have made decisions that were less than stellar. Time will tell if leaving the OGL behind, the foot dragging toward the new licensing and subsequent community reaction to the GSL has been better for the brand than some alternative approach. As a gamer since pre-D&D days and fan of the game through these days, I can tell you that I think this has been a poor series of decisions for a number of reasons, some of which other people might discount because of my last 7 years as a occasional publisher of supportive material for the game but also because I have always been a fan of the game and I see it moving forward less strongly than it has been in recent memory. I find that to be a shame.

I doubt time will tell. The destiny of the IP does not solely depend on the existance of OGL or not. There are many factors, some more important than others. Inferior product, the effect of new phenomena like MtG 10 years ago, investments gone bad...

Mark · Jan 25, 2009

Time will tell if leaving the OGL behind, the foot dragging toward the new licensing and subsequent community reaction to the GSL has been better for the brand than some alternative approach.

xechnao said:
I doubt time will tell. The destiny of the IP does not solely depend on the existance of OGL or not. There are many factors, some more important than others. Inferior product, the effect of new phenomena like MtG 10 years ago, investments gone bad...

Years ago I might be inclined to agree but with the interconnectivity that exists in today's world, I feel I will be able to make a determination in regard to my statement above. In my mind, if enough people (and I admit this is a sliding scale that I will not have a handle on until sometime has gone by) claim that they are not moving on with the new edition, and if I am of the belief that they have not done so because they either outright reject the new edition because they are content with the previous edition or dislike not having OGL support or even if they feel the new edition is not to their liking rules-wise (but perhaps might have been with some OGL support that could inlcude some alternate rules to fix those problems), then I'll feel as if I can make such a determination. Mind you it doesn't seem scientific and there are a great many variables I have mentioned (and their are more than that to consider, as well, I am sure), but I am only making this determination to satisfy my own concerns one way or another, not as part of a job as an executive tasked with protecting the IP of D&D. Of course, I am but one longtime D&D fan and gamer who has many more options than I did 35+ years ago and even less time to take advantage of those options, but I also have the ability to spend a great deal more annually than I did in the past, so perhaps my opinions and concerns mean a bit more now than they did years ago.

Umbran · Jan 26, 2009

Mark said:
As a gamer since pre-D&D days and fan of the game through these days, I can tell you that I think this has been a poor series of decisions for a number of reasons

That's fair. I don't claim to know if it were an explicit decision from "on high", or if it was a good or bad choice. I just find little evidence supporting the idea that it was specifically done to squash competition. That's ascribing to malice that which can be easily be explained otherwise.

Mark · Jan 26, 2009

Umbran said:
I just find little evidence supporting the idea that it was specifically done to squash competition. That's ascribing to malice that which can be easily be explained otherwise.

I do not believe that a corporate directive to employees, should one exist, suggesting they do what they legally can to try to remove or curtail competition would necessarily be a matter of malice by any in particular or all involved in such a corporate policy. It would certainly be much less communally inclusive of other corporations and companies that otherwise split, if ever so little, the available market share than what has existed over the past eight years.

Also of note, when someone is doing something in one circumstance that could be taken as a matter of survival, in another set of circumstances it could be viewed less charitably. Victor Hugo has schooled us all well on that. I am as apt to believe that someone can make a bad decision, if it is indeed their decision to make in the first place, with good or bad intentions, and can even believe that someone can choose to make no decision with similar intentions.

In any event, and without ascribing any actual, particular plan or motives, I believe it is best to simply look at the actions of those involved, and consequences that come from the actions (or inaction), and deal with things in the manner best serving the situation.

francisca · Jan 28, 2009

joethelawyer said:
Off the piracy topic and back to the GSL/OGL:

I feel that since I was the first person on the Internet to propose a form of the OGL, back in 1995 during the Usenet Wars, and that post obviously resulted in the OGL and the whole RPG market developing into what it is today, if anyone made any money off the OGL, I demand 10% of all profits.

Retroactively of course, going back to the OGL's inception.

Proof:
Nasty letters exchanged with T over Intellectual Property - rec.games.frp.dnd | Google Groups

Only cash accepted.

Thx.