I agree with you. I think that 3.x is the beginning and the end of the "golden age" of open gaming; I'd be very surprised if, in my lifetime, we ever experience anything else like it.
NOTE: i'm specifically referring to the openness of a commercial, corporate-owned, widely recognized game/ruleset. I'm not saying everything about the 3.x era was good, nor should this be taken as a knock to other games/rulesets.
I'm hopeful that paizo's pathfinder RPG gains enough traction to satisfy their company and their fans/customers.
I'm also hopeful that green ronin's mutants & masterminds stays around for many years to come, even though I haven't gotten into it yet.
Ditto on similar games like conan 2E, spycraft 2.0, true20, etc...
Truly, the OGL was like fire from prometheus for gamers, IMO; companies just need to continue to use it.
May the fire never go out; long live prometheus!
Oh, and I don't think that wotc is "bad" or "evil" for closing the two sites mentioned; it seems clear to me they were using wotc's IP without permission in a NOT-personal use way [distribution]. It sucks they closed though.
I thought about this a few days ago in a different way:
What if I owned the rights and stuff to the monopoly board game. What if it didn't come with little property cards, but instead I had put the relevant information in the rules manual, with the clear permission "hey kids! write the property rules down on index cards [for personal use only]! It makes the game easier to play!", and people did that? Cool; makes the game easier to play, IMO.
Then, what if people started distributing these homemade cards? How would I feel about this? My customers still need to buy the game to play, but others are copying word for word from my instruction manual to make these cards. I may ask them nicely to stop; I would try to find hard numbers to see if it positively affected my sales both ways [letting this continue VS. having them stop] before I did anything, though. I'd probably allow it to continue for, oh...maybe six months or so while I continue to collect data to determine the most profitable course of action.
Finally, what if I, the owner of monopoly, started marketing "property cards" for use with monopoly? Now, how would I feel about people copying word for word from my instruction manual [even though they're giving the cards away for free]? At this point, I would be willing to do more than just politely ask to stop. I'd be okay with "blank property cards" though. Just don't copy out of my copyrighten [copyrighted?] instruction manual. I'd also kick myself in the butt for not marketing the cards sooner, and hire some more people for R&D to look into what other stuff I could make as accessories for my game; themed boards, special play pieces, add on "chance" cards, etc. I may even get some of the people who made good quality free cards on my payroll to put their constructive energies to use on making me more money. They obviously enjoy my game, and saw something I didn't. Better they work for me than a competitor.
That is what i'd do if I was trying to sell a game and it's accessories; YMMV, etc.
