Could the D20/OGL end up hurting WoTC?

One trend I've noticed is that there are more and more publishers putting out what could be considered competing products to the core D&D game. Castles and Crusades, Arcana Unearthed, Grim Tales, mentions of Tunnels and Trolls, and some others. These are OGL and/or D20 products built from the very license that was supposed to increase sales of the D&D books.

Now that sales of the D&D core rulebooks have probably flattened, WoTC is going to be looking at generating sales off their expansion lines, Eberron, splat books, etc. If people aren't playing D&D anymore, but some variant, they're not going to really have a need for these WoTC products if the campaign variant they're playing in either has a similar product, or doesn't support whatever WoTC's new release is.

Anyone else see this as ironic, or am I off base here?

I think the conclusions are slightly off, for the following reasons:

-There's a good bit of cross-pollination going on with WotC's campaign supplements. I've heard more than one individual taking Eberron and running it with everything from GURPS to White Wolf Storyteller! There are several people out there buying material more for flavor text than actual rules, and though they are dwarfed by the standard players using it as intended, there is enough to suggest that the markets between various games are glacial.

Second, the past two years have shown us the repeated concept that there's WotC, and then there's everybody else. WotC's sales almost stand alone from the d20 competing companies, because while groups experiment with other games for a few months, or a year or two, they keep coming back to D&D, the actual D&D line.

Do you by chance remember the threads last month concerning a Gencon SoCal seminar where a bunch of d20 and non-d20 industry professionals were saying that the RPG market is starting to die off again? Charles Ryan (D&D line manager) piped in and said that the D&D line is still going strong - now this is all D&D, miniatures included, but the point is that their sales even in the worst of times are still noticeably better than all other competitors.

Keep also in mind that OGL means that rules that are noticably better can be "stolen" and used by WotC in D&D! So even the mechanics cannot bar WotC from competing in sales. It comes down solely to ideas and packaging, and if WotC can't compete on those fronts, then it's doing something really wrong, because they have the biggest industry pool of talent working for them at any given time than that of any other game company.

In other words, WotC is STILL the 500 pound gorilla, and though other game companies may do great or poorly, it's almost like talking about two separate markets and player bases.

I had a nice long reply typed up, but then deleted it as I felt it was too rantish.

Personally, I see this as one of the major reasons to expect a D&D 4.0 within the next couple of years, but I want to stress that this is just my opinion.

It could, but that's a different thing from hurting the hobby. In a way, it gives the fans a certain protection by offering alternatives if the designer at WotC can't keep up, hasbro pulls the plug, whatever.

Henry said:

...there is enough to suggest that the markets between various games are glacial.

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Hey, Henry! Could you explain that last phrase there? I'm completely missing it. Does it mean the markets are very slow? cold? that they calve in the spring?

Henry said:

Do you by chance remember the threads last month concerning a Gencon SoCal seminar where a bunch of d20 and non-d20 industry professionals were saying that the RPG market is starting to die off again? Charles Ryan (D&D line manager) piped in and said that the D&D line is still going strong - now this is all D&D, miniatures included

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His post actually said that this has been the best year for D&D ever, and subsequently clarified that this was for the RPG line alone, not including miniatures, novels, computer game licenses, etc.

So arguing from this, the evidence suggests the OGL has helped, rather than hurt, WotC.

Whether it's been good for the hobby as a whole, or for other publishers who use the license, is a debate for a thread with a different title!

I'm sure WotC's D&D sales are doing just fine. Smaller d20 companies leaving the d20 industry doesn't really affect WotC in any significant way. Other "competing" d20-based games aren't really competition to WotC, either. The scale is just so different.

I don't know the sales numbers for Green Ronin or Sword & Sorcery (other than my own books published through Malhavoc Press, which go to print through S&S), but I would be very very very very surprised if their "core book" sales are a third of WotC's new-release sales. If that.

WotC bean-counters get upset when a non-core WotC D&D book sells "only" 30-50,000 copies. A typical d20 book from another publisher may sell ... 10,000 copies? And keep in mind that the 30-50k number is for a non-core book ... the PH, DMG, and MM have sold hundreds of thousands of copies (certainly at least 200,000 each). WotC _is_ the 800lb gorilla of the gaming industry, everyone else is just a little monkey. No offense to the little monkey (I'm one of them), but unless one of the comes up with the Next Big Thing, they don't make a dent in what WotC does.

seankreynolds said:

A typical d20 book from another publisher may sell ... 10,000 copies?

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I think you can knock that number down to 1,000-1,500.

I'd be shocked if WotC's business people paid any mind to what other RPG companies do. There's such a tremendous difference in scale between WotC and everyone else in this industry that the idea of competition is almost ludicrous.

On any given year, the best selling non-WotC product *might* sell as many copies as the worst selling WotC product.

My local gaming store posts their top 10 best sellers each month. Even when the new WOD and GURPS core books came out, they didn't sell as many copies as the D&D supplements that came out that same month. Even WotC books that are sales duds for them, like Races of Stone, still sell far more copies than non-WotC stuff. And keep in mind that this is a store that caters to a lot of fringe games - they keep niche stuff like Nobilis in stock.

I've never seen any evidence that RPG companies compete in any real way. RPGs are a pure luxury. If someone wants a game, they'll just buy it. There are some exceptions, generally if two companies release identical products, but outside of that there isn't much head-to-head jockeying for position.

Joshua Dyal said:

Hey, Henry! Could you explain that last phrase there?

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Sorry - first of all, I meant to say that it suggests that the market is NOT Glacial, meaning that each game system is one unbroken mass, but that the users I mentioned are quite free-flowing, incorporating one system into the next.

Tav Behemoth said:

His post actually said that this has been the best year for D&D ever, and subsequently clarified that this was for the RPG line alone,

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phil reed said:

I think you can knock that number down to 1,000-1,500.

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Which feeds into my point even more. If the OGL has done anything, it's not to hurt them. Plus, knowing that WotC sells 30,000 and up per title, and the average publisher considers 1500 a "good run", the markets are almost like two separate entities.