WotC puts a stop to online sales of PDFs

[jdrakeh]

I kept reading here and there that some believe that Paizo (and other pdf sellers) may have known for awhile about WotC's decision to pull the pdfs and that it's Paizo's (and others) fault for not letting their customers know sooner than one day notice. Well..., I did not believe this for an instant, so I emailed Lisa Steven, CEO of Paizo and she graciously responded. Here is what she said:

Thanks for confirming that with somebody. I personally caught some serious flak elsewhere for suggesting that vendors received less than 24 hours notice.

 

[El Mahdi]

Don't forget to go download all the existing 3.X material (and the bit of 2E material) still available on the WotC website while it's still there!

I've stayed pretty much up to date on that front. I really don't think there's anything other than items I don't want anyways, that I haven't already gotten off the site. But that's definitely good advice for everyone else if they've made the same decisions to boycott WotC.

I tell you, I'm almost convinced to get rid of the 4E books I've bought (just kidding) , delete my purchased 4E pdf's (definitely just kidding) , and even delete all of my pirated ... other ... pdf's (maybe kidding?).

Speaking of other material, I wonder what WotC is planning to do to protect their Dungeon and Dragon pdf's? And I wonder why those weren't pulled also? I find it hard to believe that the Dungeon and Dragon pdf's aren't pirated just as much, or more than, the out of print books are (were).

Goodman Games's 4E Dungeon Crawl Classics line uses 4E mechanics and is published under the OGL (I'm not sure if the newest adventures still do this, but the first few certainly did), so the groundwork for something like that is already laid.

Yeah, I think it's cool they did that also, and I think still possible, just probably not as necessary now that the GSL is satisfactory to most publishers.

But, I was wondering if a 4E clone or similiar system (like True20 for 3E, etc.) could be done using the OGL? I know I'm adding some 4E-like elements into my own 3E houserules (that if I ever get finished, I'll save as a pdf and put up somewhere for downloading), such as a "power"-esque type thing I'll call "combat maneuvers" for non-spellcasting classes.

But, nobody really needs to answer this as it's mostly just a rhetorical question and I don't want to derail the thread.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Could it be that in a case like this, (a corporation vrs a private individual) you need to show that the action was harmfull enough to cause damage, and therefore to do so you need to show that you've taken action to prevent it from happening in the future?

Well, copyright infringement involves its own statutes, and I'm not familiar with them. (My only IP experience at all comes from a series of seminars in law school.) But I'd be seriously shocked if, in order to prevent (via the justice system) the unlawful acts of others, you had to cease your own completely lawful acts.

It simply makes zero sense, and (contrary to popular opinion) the underlying rationale of common law and statutes usually makes sense.

Let's say you've written a best-selling book, and somebody has taken a copy of it, scanned it, and started printing their own physical copies to sell. There's just no conceivable way that, in order to stop anyone from ever ripping off your book and printing their own copies, you'd have to stop selling your completely legitimate copies. (Among other things, it simply wouldn't work, for hopefully obvious reasons.)

So no, this really isn't a possibility. Nor is joethelawyers similar suggestion about mitigating damages, for similar reasons.

I'm glad you mentioned it, though, because I have a feeling this is what people have it mind when they keep talking about the PDFs being pulling due to "something to do with the case." While it's vaguely possible, through some mechanism I can't figure out, that pulling the PDFs for reasons related to the lawsuits makes sense, your suggestion (and joethelawyers) aren't the reason.

I personally suspect it has more to do, as has been suggested, with wanting to install different anti-pirating measures, and that the timing issue is just a symptom of near-complete boneheadedness.

We like to think of the Adkinson/Dancey era as the golden age, but there were quite a few massive blunders in it. (Fallen Empires, anyone?)

To be fair, Fallen Empires was, itself, a response to two sets which were blunders in the other -- way too powerful -- direction. (Legends and The Dark.) Fallen Empires was a massive over-reaction, but, still, a reaction was needed. (Besides, I liked my Thrulls and Saprolings!)

 

[jmucchiello]

Well that certainly wasn't a reaction WotC probably thought was coming. That kind of analysys by someone as big name as Ryan Dancey can't be good PR.

I don't think the PR effect is that meaningful. Ryan is well known in RPG Industry circles and among OGL fanatics (not fans, fanatics). But the average D&D player probably never heard of him.

 

[MerricB]

To be fair, Fallen Empires was, itself, a response to two sets which were blunders in the other -- way too powerful -- direction. (Legends and The Dark.) Fallen Empires was a massive over-reaction, but, still, a reaction was needed. (Besides, I liked my Thrulls and Saprolings!)

Actually, I wasn't talking about power levels, but rather the amount of Fallen Empires produced.

Up until Fallen Empires, Wizards based their production of Magic purely on distributor pre-orders, which meant that when it became successful, Legends was massively underproduced and Fallen Empires was massively overproduced!

The latter is more of a problem for Wizards than the former, of course.

After Fallen Empires, Wizards realised that they needed to be more careful with the amount of product produced. (Didn't help them with Pokemon, when it failed, though...)

Cheers!

 

[jmucchiello]

But, I was wondering if a 4E clone or similiar system (like True20 for 3E, etc.) could be done using the OGL? I know I'm adding some 4E-like elements into my own 3E houserules (that if I ever get finished, I'll save as a pdf and put up somewhere for downloading), such as a "power"-esque type thing I'll call "combat maneuvers" for non-spellcasting classes.

But, nobody really needs to answer this as it's mostly just a rhetorical question and I don't want to derail the thread.

The short answer is "yes" it is possible. The devil is in the details. There would be a lot of terms that you could not import directly without giving them some kind of alias, meaning official 4e material or the clone material would need translation before you could use it. An annoyance for some but a deal-breaker for others.

(Sorry, I'll hit the switchback and get the thread back on track.)

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Actually, I wasn't talking about power levels, but rather the amount of Fallen Empires produced.

Oh, okay. But they are related. If Fallen Empires had been a set on a power level equivalent to The Dark (or, God help us, Legends) it's very, very likely that you wouldn't be observing that WotC'd put out too much of it, because it would have sold like mad!

Instead, Fallen Empires was the weakest set ever -- a record it might still hold? I gave up Magic after Alliances -- and once Magic players figured that out, it sat on shelves until it could be had for $8 a case.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

Regarding Ryan's Death Spiral

Hybridization is great, and I'd love to see it. But I'm not convinced it's necessary to the survival of the hobby. People are still making money publishing poetry books, for goodness' sake. Video didn't kill the radio star. Horses are still around. CRPGs have been around forever (that is, for the entire lifetime of many people currently playing RPGs) and yet people still play RPGs.

And well they should. Tabletop is awesome, tons of fun, and very different from online.

Will the tabletop rpg hobby change? I'm sure it will. It has in the last 35 years. It could get serious and grow up literarily, the way science fiction did in the mid-20th century. It could go hybrid, maybe with miniatures having chips in them that communicate with other miniatures to make sounds, give rule tips, scream when the Huge mini comes near, who knows what.

But I don't think the industry is in a death spiral any more than anything else is. Change and adaptation are always necessary.

 

[MerricB]

Oh, okay. But they are related. If Fallen Empires had been a set on a power level equivalent to The Dark (or, God help us, Legends) it's very, very likely that you wouldn't be observing that WotC'd put out too much of it, because it would have sold like mad!

Instead, Fallen Empires was the weakest set ever -- a record it might still hold? I gave up Magic after Alliances -- and once Magic players figured that out, it sat on shelves until it could be had for $8 a case.

Mercadian Masques might come close... and that was after a couple of sets that overall were actually more powerful than Legends. (Urza block in particular).

Cheers!

 

[Korgoth]

I dunno. Maybe this is all a tragically ineffectual response to online piracy... but I can't help but think that perhaps WOTC has realized that a lot of people consider 4E inferior to the legacy products. And they're tired of competing with those golden games... so out they go.

Perhaps my suspicion is informed by my confirmed grognardishness (though I suspect that many who play legacy D&D play 3E rather than Old School). But I really did give 4E an honest try, and I really did want to like it, and it really was (to me) about as fun as visiting the proctologist.