D&D 5E A 5e OGL isn't going to cause another Pathfinder scenario and here's why

Alzrius · Nov 11, 2014

Jester Canuck said:
One of the stipulations of the GSL was that you could not use it and the OGL at the same time. So you could not have two versions of one product. You had to go OGL or GSL, 3e or 4e.

That was in the GSL's initial release, but I thought that that was one of the sections they scrapped (along with the rest of the "poison pill" clause) after the third-party community made it clear just how untenable those provisions were to them.

Morrus · Nov 11, 2014

Jester Canuck said:
One of the stipulations of the GSL was that you could not use it and the OGL at the same time. So you could not have two versions of one product. You had to go OGL or GSL, 3e or 4e.

Sure you can. We do that all the time with ZEITGEIST, etc.

Jester David · Nov 11, 2014

sidonunspa said:
except $$ wize they would make much more off a printed hard cover bestary.... a PDF conversion guide is a pain the but for GMs to flip back and forth... a book on the other hand..

Hard copy books have a high minimum number of copies to be sold to be viable.
I imagine if 5e does well Paizo might be able to free up some staff to do a conversion Bestiary of their Best-Of monsters. Which would allow them to release conversion PDFs referring to pages in the Bestiary.
But releasing two hardcopy versions of, say, an AP volume would be a bad idea. The economics of printing make that unprofitable. Now that I think about it, even releasing two fully laid out PDF versions would hurt profits. So conversions would likely always be a secondary document advising what monsters to swap out, numbers, DCs, etc.

sidonunspa said:
we will see... wotc did say OGL.. which by it's nature does not proclude producing both...

the GSL scared a LOT of people away... I don't think they will make the same mistake again

They said OGL, but that could just be a branding thing. They're calling the new "GSL" the "OGL". And while I doubt the D&D team wants to make the same mistake again, the rest of WotC might be harder to convince the GSL was a mistake. We'll see what the final product looks like.

Jester David · Nov 11, 2014

Morrus said:
Sure you can. We do that all the time with ZEITGEIST, etc.

As @Alzrius says, that might be something I'm remembering from the initial draft that was changed after the 3PP balked, and I had not noticed.
Checking now...

--edit--
I don't see anything and cannot find a copy of the original pre-Feb 2009 GSL. But the FAQ refers to something as "Section 6" that caused problems:

Q: Why was Section 6 removed from the license?
A: The decision was made after listening to the concerns of the industry and community. Many publishers were concerned about adopting the GSL because of Section 6. We want
publishers to create products under the GSL, not go around it, so we removed Section 6 to make the GSL easier to adopt.

From: http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/4E_GSL_FAQ.pdf

I remember the section causing problems. Looking quickly, I found this.
So I apparently missed the revision.

sidonunspa · Nov 11, 2014

Jester Canuck said:
Hard copy books have a high minimum number of copies to be sold to be viable.

I'm one of the paradigm concepts guys (Arcanis, Witch Hunter, Rotted Capes... I'm one of the rules designer and developer, lead developer on Rotted Capes and was one of the head developers on Arcanis) and I can tell you... printing is not that expensive, and we do all our printing in the US, Paizo prints in China.

I know the volume of Paizo sales at GenCon, at conventions we gaming companies get to sell our product at full cover value.

They can pay off the printing of any book, though con sales alone by Saturday night of GenCon.

(btw we have a new kickstarter up https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1418216834/cthulhu-strange-aeons-role-playing-game sameless plug)

Alzrius · Nov 11, 2014

sidonunspa said:
I'm one of the paradigm concepts guys (Arcanis, Witch Hunter, Rotted Capes... I'm one of the rules designer and developer, lead developer on Rotted Capes and was one of the head developers on Arcanis)

Then perhaps you can tell me when we'll finally see The Fires of Insurrection, the third part of the original Canceri trilogy of adventures (after Spear of the Lohgin and Blood Reign of Nishanpur)?

aramis erak · Nov 11, 2014

Jester Canuck said:
Hard copy books have a high minimum number of copies to be sold to be viable.
I imagine if 5e does well Paizo might be able to free up some staff to do a conversion Bestiary of their Best-Of monsters. Which would allow them to release conversion PDFs referring to pages in the Bestiary.
But releasing two hardcopy versions of, say, an AP volume would be a bad idea. The economics of printing make that unprofitable. Now that I think about it, even releasing two fully laid out PDF versions would hurt profits. So conversions would likely always be a secondary document advising what monsters to swap out, numbers, DCs, etc.

They said OGL, but that could just be a branding thing. They're calling the new "GSL" the "OGL". And while I doubt the D&D team wants to make the same mistake again, the rest of WotC might be harder to convince the GSL was a mistake. We'll see what the final product looks like.

Printing isn't all that high a minimum; above about 5000 copies the price per copy doesn't drop nearly much as run size increases. The thing is, aside from the top few, 5000 copies is likely to be the enitre first year and half of the second.

The problem with hardcopy and multi-versioning is multi-fold, tho'.
1: inventory management
2: standards of the book sales industry (see below)
3: judging demand for the various versions before printing

Any time you have a physical product, you have inventory management issues. Much of the cost at POS is in fact inventory management and shipping cost.

The real problem is the standards of the book sales industry... which WotC, Paizo, FFG, and Mongoose all have to deal with. They want relatively standard sizes, to be able to return unsold inventory after some specified time, to not be charged for unsalable inventory that isn't accepted back. (It's what killed GDW. If there'd been Kickstarter, GDW would still exist.) They want on time delivery, too. And, generally, they don't want people being able to confuse one product for another, because that pisses off the customers.

Part of the reason for no print version of magazines now is that "return the covers and destroy the product locally to get a refund" mode that is standard for paperbacks and magazines. The publisher assumes almost all the risk, in exchange for a relatively thin profit margin. If circulation is high enough, the price per copy to the publisher for a magazine can be under $2... but that magazine, at retail, is at least $6, probably $8.

And judging the demand is always tricky.

sidonunspa · Nov 11, 2014

Alzrius said:
Then perhaps you can tell me when we'll finally see The Fires of Insurrection, the third part of the original Canceri trilogy of adventures (after Spear of the Lohgin and Blood Reign of Nishanpur)?

Ohh the comidy of errors with that last adventure... /facepalm

we ended up telling the last part of the story in our living campaign

Alzrius · Nov 11, 2014

sidonunspa said:
Ohh the comidy of errors with that last adventure... /facepalm

we ended up telling the last part of the story in our living campaign

So it's not going to be published? Last I'd heard, it was still set to be published at some point.

Jester David · Nov 11, 2014

aramis erak said:
Printing isn't all that high a minimum; above about 5000 copies the price per copy doesn't drop nearly much as run size increases. The thing is, aside from the top few, 5000 copies is likely to be the enitre first year and half of the second.

The problem with hardcopy and multi-versioning is multi-fold, tho'.
1: inventory management
2: standards of the book sales industry (see below)
3: judging demand for the various versions before printing

Any time you have a physical product, you have inventory management issues. Much of the cost at POS is in fact inventory management and shipping cost.

The real problem is the standards of the book sales industry... which WotC, Paizo, FFG, and Mongoose all have to deal with. They want relatively standard sizes, to be able to return unsold inventory after some specified time, to not be charged for unsalable inventory that isn't accepted back. (It's what killed GDW. If there'd been Kickstarter, GDW would still exist.) They want on time delivery, too. And, generally, they don't want people being able to confuse one product for another, because that pisses off the customers.

Part of the reason for no print version of magazines now is that "return the covers and destroy the product locally to get a refund" mode that is standard for paperbacks and magazines. The publisher assumes almost all the risk, in exchange for a relatively thin profit margin. If circulation is high enough, the price per copy to the publisher for a magazine can be under $2... but that magazine, at retail, is at least $6, probably $8.

And judging the demand is always tricky.

I was thinking of the production cost side of things.

It takes time and manpower to make a book: writing the content, editing the content, laying out the content, etc. Doing two compatible games means having one author fluent in both (hard) or more likely having two authors which increases costs. The same thing applies with the editors and developers, the on-staff team who needs to learn a second ruleset well enough not to confuse very like minded terms.
And suddenly you need to layout the book twice, as monsters take up different space and the rules text takes different lengths.
That gets pricey.

When you sell a book, the initial few hundred sales (at least) all go to paying off the production costs. After that is profit. If you increase the production costs, suddenly you need to sell *more* copies to turn a profit. Just selling the same number is no longer enough. So Paizo has to be certain that selling their products as 5e conversions will attract more sales and mostly new sakes, because anyone who doesn't buy the PF version and instead buys the 5e version means less profit.
So it's much easier to do conversions as bare bones affairs with less layout and art to worry about.

Now, this doesn't apply to entirely new books. Like a potential 5e Bestiary or 5e version of the Advanced Class Guide. And Paizo could totally recycle art making the books relatively cheap to produce. But, again, the trick is finding people to write the books that know the new rules. Which means branching away from their usual batch of freelancers.