D&D 4E Interesting Article on OGL and 4E

[tomBitonti]

...

I simply cannot fathom how they can believe that abandoning the concept of Open Gaming is going to make their situation any better for them. All that's going to happen is that the market is going to fracture.

...

--Steve

My guess is that the change is partly an attempt to force DDI subscriptions. I may be confusing the issue, but I'm imagining that there will be an online SRD-like document, but it will be restricted, both in terms of how it can be used, and in terms of how it can be accessed. (That is, access only through the DDI area of the website.)

 

[Firevalkyrie]

To be totally honest, I admire what they tried to do, but I don't particularly like very many of the OGL 3.x variant games. If I want to play a game that's not D&D, and I do, I want it to have a system built from the ground up to support its style of play.

 

[Firevalkyrie]

My guess is that the change is partly an attempt to force DDI subscriptions. I may be confusing the issue, but I'm imagining that there will be an online SRD-like document, but it will be restricted, both in terms of how it can be used, and in terms of how it can be accessed. (That is, access only through the DDI area of the website.)

From my understanding, DDI and the SRD are completely different things - the SRD is intended for publishers to use, DDI is intended for players and DMs to use.

 

[tomBitonti]

...

I would say its more of a sign that WOTC is tired of d20 publishers piggybacking on their design and development to go ahead and make products that directly compete. Take Scarred Lands. It came out the second 3e hit the shelves. It actually had a monster book out BEFORE the 3e Monster Manual. That's not helping WOTC at all.

...

My response is that WotC ought to be able to whip the socks off of competitors. They can farm ideas out of the marketplace, have in-house design and development, have established supply chains, and have cash reserves to invest in new products and to even out their cash flow.

I'm thinking, too, that if new restrictions are to protect WotC against competition, that will lead to the market receiving lesser value products, and that is bad for consumers in the short term, and, I would argue, bad for both WotC and for consumers in the medium to long term.

 

[tomBitonti]

From my understanding, DDI and the SRD are completely different things - the SRD is intended for publishers to use, DDI is intended for players and DMs to use.

SRD is a resource that I do use as a Dungeon Master. I've found the online SRD (for example, at d20srd.org) to be very valuable when creating content as a Dungeon Master. When I'm designing monsters and NPC's, the online reference is very useful.

I'm thinking that there will be similar reference material, but only available on the DDI area of the web site.

I don't know how that all relates to the license. If online reference material is not really related to the new license, then my posting is on a tangential point. (In which case my apologies for thread hijacking!)

(I'm still thinking about how PDF's factor into all of this.)

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

I've been pretty geeked about 4E recently, but the thought of 4E not being OGL does put a damper on things.

Has anyone looked at Mongoose's RuneQuest system? I understand that it is OGL like 3E was. Is it a suitable alternate system for SpyCraft and Conan and Mutants and Masterminds to migrate to? I'm a big Glorantha fan... maybe I'll give it a look.

Ken

 

[Relique du Madde]

I'm thinking that if you just looked at the "Nature" skill and did a rewrite while looking at the original text, that that would count as derivative.

Not really considering that there is at least one OGL game that was produced which had a "Knowledge's: Nature" skill. If you think about it, a "nature" skill is really a derivative of that skill meshed with the Survival skill.

 

[Sir Brennen]

I'm thinking that there will be similar reference material, but only available on the DDI area of the web site.

If the books are being provided in electronic format, I don't know if an additional reference source will be created. My understanding is that these docs will be available (for a small fee) without requiring a DDI subscription.

 

[SteveC]

My guess is that the change is partly an attempt to force DDI subscriptions. I may be confusing the issue, but I'm imagining that there will be an online SRD-like document, but it will be restricted, both in terms of how it can be used, and in terms of how it can be accessed. (That is, access only through the DDI area of the website.)

If there is no real official SRD available, and the one available through the DDI is not accessable offline, I suspect there will be large numbers of unofficial such products cropping up in gaming groups around the country quite soon. This is another inexplicable change, frankly.

Having a freely available SRD for the core rules made countless sales for WotC, both in core products (I know many DMs who use online resources but bring their books to game) and in expansion products (I know many players who don't own the core books, but buy supplemental material). I think many of these decisions, as they appear now, are being made by people who don't understand their market.

As I've said before, there may be an attempt to market 4E to an entirely new group, but I certainly haven't seen it yet. It will doubtless be interesting to see how that progresses.

--Steve

 

[xechnao]

Perhaps their problem will be online sites regarding open or free official 4e gaming content that could absorb substantial online traffic from DDI. They certainly want to invest on building an online community as strong as possible so that they gain as much momentum as possible regarding DDI.
For example, once DDI takes off they would not want other sites' traffic to absorb from DDI potential membership. If this be the case online traffic competition is a major issue to them.