Green Ronin not signing GSL (Forked Thread: Doing the GSL. Who?)

[yogipsu]

And one should always make what's best for the bottom line rather than what one is passionate about, right?

WotC taught you well.

This line of thinking is terribly misguided.

Generally speaking, in order to remain in business and produce what you're passionate about, you need to remain profitable.

 

[The Little Raven]

I couldn't think of many print books that had too much overlap in each of those areas, at least without being years apart.

The worst glut, to me, was the Drow glut...

Complete Drow
Sheoleth - City of the Drow
The Quintessential Drow
Encyclopaedia Arcane: Drow Magic
The Tome of Drow Lore
Drow Wars
Dezzavold: Fortress of the Drow
Advanced Race Codex: Drow
Plot & Poison: A Guidebook to Drow

 

[xechnao]

How many people have said they would switch if Green Ronin or Paizo was on board? You'd have respected companies not only releasing products for their system, you'd also not have so much negative press generated through threads like this. That's a win win in my book.

As I said above I do not believe this plan would not make a difference to Wotc's selling power for now. They outsold current 4e print runs.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Just make sure you are keeping the issues separate. There is issue #1: "Publishers had to pay to see the GSL", which I was trying to point out was never the case. And issue #2: "Original poison pill understanding made public by Clark was company by company, not product line by product line".

I had a great response, but EnWorld ate it. Let me try again.

Since you were there, and I was not, I am going to take your word for it. However, I will point out that it was probably legal who drafted the press release, and it was probably customer rep/pr that spoke to you. And, if so, what legal drafted definitely says "OGL is part of kit, for which you pay $5 grand", and it seemed definite enough that someone asked about it specifically, as the #2 question. It was then, in all probability, someone who did not draft the release statement who answered question #2 in a way that made more sense from a business/customer service standpoint.

The person who answered question #2 effectively put WotC on the hook to produce the OGL in time to allow for early adoption, and WotC didn't do it.

This still (IMHO) points to the press release being accurate, and the un-followed-up-on "clarification" being an error on the part of the rep. Otherwise, why didn't WotC produce the OGL/GSL? Why wait so long to reveal it at all?

I suppose I have an easier time believing in WotC planning in a way that benefits them (but not necessarily us), more than I do that WotC is really that incompetent.

But I could be wrong.

And personally, concerning issue #2, from what people said during and after the situation, and my opinions of those people, I personally believe that it was a misunderstanding among WotC internal staff over the not 100% final GSL.

Me too. I believe that the guy who answered question #2 failed to grasp properly what the legal team had written, and may well have been raked over the coals for the answer he gave. That might well be why "Rouse even said he was simply not going to comment until he had the final approved by everyone document in black & white in front of him to avoid any miscommunication and misunderstanding."

But, as you say, this is all speculation.

Either way, the GSL we have, is the GSL we have.

True. And I think it is a stinker.


RC

 

[Wicht]

The fact that what was released a few days later was so different from what he described.

"A few days" is not quite how I remember it happening.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Except that for the warehouse argument it is not a physical warehouse sale to clear up warehouse space but a pdf sale in which they anounced they will discontinue selling pdfs of this product line in the future.

And its also a physical sale too. Check their website. Just as the d20 license expiration says. Stuff in their warehouse cannot be sold, stuff in the product chain is considered sold. PDFs is just them trying to sell as much as they possibly can before the d20 date expires.

Now if they're trying to do a large print run of something, that might motivate them to sell off some stock quicker by having the sale now as opposed to Nov-Dec.

 

[Scribble]

You seem to be making the assumption that a company might not want to go back if 5e is even farther from the root assumptions of D&D. Or if, say, 6e has a fee you must pay WotC for every product you produce. Or if, say, 7e is an OGL game. Or if you want to produce a version for C&C or True20.

I'm not making any assumptions. Please stop assuming I am.

You said:

The GSL has far more serious restrictions if you are an established company with strong IP. If you are a fly-by-nighter who doesn't care about your IP, the GSL has no real restrictions to you whatsoever.

My responce was that your IP is only limited with regard to the OGL.

I, for one, view the limitation that you can never again use that IP in an OGL game as an extremely limiting. It links your ship very closely to WotC. And, since WotC can change the terms without warning, you might discover one day that use of your IP is far more limited than you bargained for.RC

I'm only pointing out that the GSL limits your use of IP in the OGL. It's up to each company to decide how important the OGL is to their business.

There are a number of Companies out there that do not design for the OGL, and they have valuble IP as well. Inability to use the OGL doesn't nessesarily equal bad license.

If it does for you, awesome, don't use it.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

If anything, I would think the GSL will encourage producers to BE Fly-By-Night. Get something out fast and dirty ...

Nobody is going to want to produce attractive hardbound books with valuable content because if those books don't sell out of the first printing basically immediately, they're a ticking time bomb on the pallet. It's hard to recoup investment on product that isn't moving quickly, but impossible to recoup investment on product you're legally obligated to destroy.

Bingo.

I may be misunderstanding the GSL, but as far as I can see, really the best thing TO produce under the GSL is heaps of unmitigated blah.

... in PDF format.

 

[Voadam]

But yeah, there was a crapload of monster books. Nice work compiling that list, I might need to save it for my shopping list (if I can weed out the junk from the good). Oh, and don't forget the Bestiary of Loerem. I gotta plug it since I had a couple critters in there.

Gah, and I own BoL and like it as well (great source of wierd non magical fantasy beasties). I wish they would put it out in pdf again (they originally had it available when it was just on DTRPG but I haven't seen it there since the merger years ago and did not grab it before it dissapeared). I think I forgot the Krynn Bestiary one as well. And Dangerous Denizens of Tellene by Kenzer.

Oh well, I did say the list was off the top of my head.

Which ones did you write?

 

[Jack99]

I'm all for the American Dream and small garage companies (like mine) being able to release d20 products and try to compete in the gaming industry, but if Wizards intended the GSL to help reduce the glut, don't you think they would have tried to alienate smaller garage publishers as opposed to the likes of Paizo and Green Ronin?

Paizo and Green Ronin both had their focus on other games, quite a bit before the GSL came out. I doubt WotC saw them as the "must have with us to 4e", if WotC saw any 3PP that way at all. While both companies produce great material on a regular basis, I think we can agree that any foray those two companies had made into 4e, had the GSL been much more acceptable, would probably have been half-hearted, considering they have their own line of games.

Cheers