Why the thought of D&D 5e makes me sad...

[Ron]

In regard to the eventual loss of customers with a new edition, I don't think WotC is too much worried about it. In every single transition, there were a loss, especially when the editions were significantly different, such as from 2nd to 3rd and from 3rd to 4th. As such, WotC is expecting that many 4th edition fans will refuse to make the jump to 5th edition, fragmenting the market even more.

However, this may not be the main market WotC is looking for. Ryan Dancey clearly stated that among all books sold from the AD&D line, the Players Handbook was the most successful, perhaps the only profitable one -- although I dispute this later idea because of the sales synergy of the remaining of the line, not to include the need of taking shell space at stores to help the sales of their best selling product.

I strongly suspect the reason why the PHB sold so well was the flux of new customers to the hobby. If my own experience is common, most people would try out D&D for a few sessions and then give up the experience. Only a few would turn into aficionados. If this is right, it is quite possible the PHB sales were driven not only from gamers but also from people that flirted with the hobby and then left. As much as it is controversial about the degree of complexity of AD&D, it is clear that to a newcomer it is very easy to create a character and play the game without any knowledge of the rules, as long as he or she is being tutored by an experienced DM. The same cannot be said about newer editions as the number of options during character generation and actual playing are quite difficult to an unexperienced player.

Considering this, I don't think WotC is trying to get back the old customers by offering a complexity dial. I believe they are trying to make D&D accessible to newcomers. By offering simpler character generation and straightforward gameplay, 5th edition could emulate the easiness of play of former editions whereas the more complex options could attract veteran players.

Fans of older editions, for most part, will probably keep playing their stuff but I guess WotC is more interested in bringing more people to the hobby. During the 80s, D&D and AD&D was great introductory games, something that was lost during 3rd edition. Although many people claim 3rd edition brought new blood to the game, my personal experience was very different. I noticed a lot of gamers moved from their games back to D&D, but hardly any new gamer joined the ranks through 3rd edition. If anything, it seemed that WotC, with 3rd and 4th edition, aimed at the sophisticated players that enjoyed very complex games, such as GURPS, and forgot that this is a niche market. Hopefully, by making 5th edition an accessible game, many more people will try out roleplaying games and we will see a few more new faces around.

 

[Hussar]

Usual disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc.



Not at all. 4E contains a ton of mechanics from 3E. The d20 mechanic, the way ability score modifiers are calculated, attack rolls and armor class, hit points, opportunity attacks, move action/standard action, cyclical initiative, abilities defined by a class/race combination, XP for kills, experience levels... et cetera, et cetera.

But, you'll notice that there are some very important verbiage changes. There aren't attacks of opportunity, for example, there are Opportunity Attacks. None of those other things are copyrightable as you rightly point out.

The thing about the OGL is that it is giving you permission to use the specific language and presentation of the game mechanics. The mechanics themselves are not copyrightable. According to this article, which matches other writing I've seen on the subject from legal types, it would be legal to clone an existing game down to the last detail, change the names and the wording on everything, and publish.

The value of the OGL is primarily to people who can't pay a lawyer to vet every word of their products and make sure it doesn't cross the line into infringement. That "change the names and the wording on everything" part is critically important. If you screw it up, you can leave yourself open. Furthermore, even if you don't screw up, you could have a big court battle to prove you didn't screw up, and because the US does not follow the "loser pays" model for civil cases, having an ironclad case doesn't mean you won't go broke fighting it.

If you followed the OGL, you have a much better shot at getting the whole thing dismissed quickly, because you have what is essentially a contract spelling out that you are allowed to do certain things. You don't have to prove those rights under copyright law, which is notoriously vague and squirrelly; you can just point to the contract.

Back to 4E and 5E. The question is, if 4E were put under the OGL, what would it mean for 5E? The answer, as I understand it (again, IANAL), is "very little." Wizards isn't going to sue itself for infringement. Anybody who tries to republish 5E and claim their work is protected by 4E's OGL status is still going to be subject to a big court battle to prove it, and they'll still have to get a lawyer to go over their rules with a fine-toothed comb and make sure they didn't stray into using 5E language anywhere. It's basically the same as if they just knocked off 5E and changed the words. You could do it. If you did it right and could afford the litigation, the courts would probably back you up. But how confident are you in your ability to do it right, and can you afford the litigation?

That's not to say they would ever OGL-ify 4E. It seems like a quintessentially un-Hasbro thing to do. But I don't think there are substantial legal obstacles.

You're missing the problem. If 4e goes OGL, then I can make a Character Builder and put it on the internet, for whatever I want to charge, including free. This happened almost immedietely after 4e was released with that Italian website (Emma's? IIRC). It got taken down very quickly because 4e isn't OGL.

Now, imagine they allow 4e to be OGL, and then borrow heavily from 4e to make 5e. Particularly if the mechanics are close enough that the game is backward compatible.

Now I can make a free character generator for 4e that works for 5e and directly competes with WOTC's subscription model.

Maybe I can't have the exact classes for a 5e CB, but, I can make it close enough.

This is why you will never see an OGL 4e. Not if 5e has any hope of being backwards compatible. And, this is IMO, the reason 4e is not backward compatible with 3e. If 4e had been Pathfinder (3.75), then the DDI would have to compete with things like the Online Hypertext SRD and PCGen.

Paizo can do it because it's major source of income is the modules. WOTC is hanging its hopes on core rules though. That means that they have to protect the core rules.

 

[Hussar]

/snip
The VTT? I was unaware that this was finally completed and functioning. May I try out this VTT? Tell me about what it does for me as a 4E user versus me as an any-other-edition user, please.

I believe they are in open Beta. I honestly don't know. I was going by what was stated earlier in the thread that WOTC is claiming that can be used by users of any edition. I'm not involved in the beta testing, so, I can't answer that.

There is a nice collection of stuff that new GMs would find helpful, I'll give you that. I am often surprised that those PDFs are still available for a game they won't sell to me in in the same format or otherwise.

Sigh. We've been through this so many times. It's not available because it's not profitable to make it available. For whatever reason, be it that they don't want to compete with themselves, or they don't want to devote resources to turning other works into pdf, or they don't want to devote resources into suing yet more people for piracy (whatever happened with that piracy suing thing anyway?). I don't know.

All I do know is that if it was profitable, they'd be doing it. They aren't doing it, so they have deemed it not profitable.

OTOH, leaving up the 3e material costs them nothing (or close enough to nothing) and still drives lots of eyeballs to the WOTC site. Anyone doing any sort of websearch for things 3e is going to get links to the WOTC site. It's worth it to leave that material up for that, if nothing else.

Look I understand that people are pissed that WOTC got rid of the pdf's. I get that. But what I don't understand is the tinfoil hat conspiracy theories as to why they did it. They did it because they thought it would cost more money than it was worth. How they arrived at that determination I don't know, but, why assign other motives when simple greed and business sense makes a pretty decent argument?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

They did it because they thought it would cost more money than it was worth. How they arrived at that determination I don't know, but, why assign other motives when simple greed and business sense makes a pretty decent argument?

Agreed...but instead of "greed", how about we use the non-pejorative term you'd find in Economics/Business texts: "profit motive."

(And for the record, my personal assessment of profitability differs from WotC's, esp. given the way DDI works.)

 

[Mark CMG]

Sigh. We've been through this so many times.

Oh, I know, and people like yourself keep giving misinformation, as with the OGL difficutlies you have above. So, I'll try this again.

It's not available because it's not profitable to make it available.

Wrong. They aren't available, according to WotC, because of piracy at the time of their current edition PDFs. I understand that you feel it makes your argument stronger if you give different reasons than WotC has given but, one, that's not their stance, and, two, all signs point to it being profitable.

 

[Umbran]

This is why you will never see an OGL 4e. Not if 5e has any hope of being backwards compatible.

Ah. Note how earlier you were saying the couldn't use *any* rules from 4e. But it seems that your real concern is about whether they can re-use the vast majority of the rules, so it can be backwards-compatible. Is that correct?

Well, still, they could. You note there's a business-issue there, and are perhaps right about that, but it isn't a "cannot" it is more a "might not be smart to".

But, I wouldn't expect them to care about backwards-compatibility, to be honest, so I don't see that as a barrier. Releasing 4e under something like the OGL would be a strategy I'd expect them to use specifically if they *aren't* going for B-C, so that folks who really like 4e don't feel so shafted, and don't get so angry they won't even try the new game.

 

[Walking Dad]

No, the quote is not from that article. It's from an article that, you know, Monte Cook wrote

Ivory Tower Game Design

This is the text I wanted to link. Mis-copied it from my link library.
But he is speaking about 'Timmy' cards, so my link gives context.

 

[prosfilaes]

If 4e had been Pathfinder (3.75), then the DDI would have to compete with things like the Online Hypertext SRD and PCGen.

Was PCGen ever a serious option for most 3.5 players? I would think trying to use it in an heavily WotC supplement-friendly environment would be an exercise in futility.

Paizo can do it because it's major source of income is the modules. WOTC is hanging its hopes on core rules though. That means that they have to protect the core rules.

They did it in 3.*; what'll be new in a non-OGL 5E? Even if 4E is similar to 5E, are they really worried about people who use 4E versions to make 5E characters? One of the frustrations we had with a not long-lasting person who played with us was his continual referencing of 3E material in a 3.5E game.

The mechanics themselves are not copyrightable. According to this article, which matches other writing I've seen on the subject from legal types, it would be legal to clone an existing game down to the last detail, change the names and the wording on everything, and publish.

I've always wondered about that in RPG context. Copyright law provides for certain, not clear, protection for characters and fictional elements. If you cloned the stat block for a mind flayer completely, a lawyer could claim that these qualities, from the mind blast to the tentacles down to the AC 15 (+2 Dex, +3 natural) and Speed 30 ft, amount to copying of the literary construct. You could defend yourself against it, but the problem is what you really wanted was that mind flayer; there's not a whole lot of value in a collection of stats. So, you say, we'll pass over the mind flayer (and without the OGL, a bunch of other creatures; can D&D's distinctive color-coded dragons be so protected?) Spells are probably not copyrightable, right? No more than recipes, surely. But like a recipe, an original collection of them is probably copyrightable; take the fireball, take the magic missile sure, but take them all and you're looking at copyright infringement.

From a practical perspective, once you've renamed the spells and the skills and the attributes and other stuff, what's the point in trying to maintain 100% compatibility; you've already lost compatibility in the major sense. So you can go ahead and create The Fantasy Trip or Palladium Fantasy or a fantasy heartbreaker; that's nothing new.

More interesting then copying the whole thing is making something compatible. That still has problems; mind flayers are still copyrighted, and color-coded dragons are still up for question. But you can probably get away with a lot more; WotC has no literary protection in the idea of a couple halflings, a dwarf, an elf, and a human going into a dungeon.

 

[prosfilaes]

No, the quote is not from that article. It's from an article that, you know, Monte Cook wrote

Ivory Tower Game Design

I got to say, Toughness rubs me the wrong way, especially the way it's included in the Elf Wizard starting package at the end of the Wizard class in the PHB. Unlike what he said, they actually did provide advice on what to put in a character, and it was bad advice.

 

[JamesonCourage]

This is the text I wanted to link. Mis-copied it from my link library.
But he is speaking about 'Timmy' cards, so my link gives context.

His take on D&D and Timmy cards:

Magic also has a concept of "Timmy cards." These are cards that look cool, but aren't actually that great in the game. The purpose of such cards is to reward people for really mastering the game, and making players feel smart when they've figured out that one card is better than the other. While D&D doesn't exactly do that, it is true that certain game choices are deliberately better than others.

He then goes on to talk about how some feats are better than others depending on the game. In a one-shot dungeon with level one characters, taking Toughness might be feasible, while taking Quicken Spell really isn't. He regretted not giving enough guidance. He is specifically saying they didn't purposefully build "trap" options, unlike magic.

I got to say, Toughness rubs me the wrong way, especially the way it's included in the Elf Wizard starting package at the end of the Wizard class in the PHB. Unlike what he said, they actually did provide advice on what to put in a character, and it was bad advice.

If the starting packages are meant for long term games, I agree. It's very bad advice. People should keep in mind that when the game was released, there wasn't this plethora of feats to choose from that can super-power your character. However, with just core alone, it wasn't a good option for a long term game. For a level one Wizard? Like he said, potentially good for a one-shot. This is where he regrets not giving more advice, as he indicated explicitly in the article.