everyone takes a bit here and a bit there, however what piazo did was cash in on the nature of the edtion war by placing there own monetary want over the best intrest of the game... then ON TOP of that I get to listen to years of "piazo is the real d&d" or 'spiritual successor' it's amazing how a smaller company with smaller budgets took something a much larger company made and just made house rules for it (some good some bad) and then pretended it was a whole new game.... and don't be fooled by the "back wards compatable" people because it was just the same enough to not fix the biggest issues, and just different enough to make you buy a new book.
Then on top of that the fans of that had the gull to say wotc was making a money grab... then spit in the current (well then current) edition by repeatedly coming to forms for that edition to tell people how evil wotc was and how great piazo was...
What should Paizo have done then?
In early 2008 there was no GSL yet and Paizo didn't have access to the 4e rules. Only one Paizo staff member had seen 4e and wasn't impressed. They literally could not switch their APs over to 4e or start working on converting.
What real alternative was there? Decide to throw support behind a system they really hadn't seen, the staff didn't like, and their fans were wary of? Just lay off everyone, close up shop, and move onto other projects? Just stop working for six months and hope WotC released the licence? (Meanwhile, during those 6 months, the staff have no job or source of income, the company could pay the rent, and subscribers who had pre-paid for content wouldn't receive anything.)
Pathfinder wasn't a money grab, it was a Hail Mary gamble because they needed to release *something* and couldn't wait. They couldn't keep releasing product for a rule set that didn't exist and you couldn't buy in stores. The OGL had killed most fantasy competition and there wasn't really licences for other RPGs, so Paizo either had to adapt D&D or make their own game from scratch. But making a game takes 2+ years and they had a quarter of that.
That's what separates 4e and WotC from Pathfinder and Paizo. WotC had a choice and
chose to release 3.5e and 4e. Paizo didn't really have a choice. WotC kept taking their choice away when they didn't renew the magazines, ended the edition suddenly, and didn't release licence details or share the game.
IF Paizo had access to 4e and the GSL then chose to instead release Pathfinder and become their own game, then that would have been a money grab. Or closer to a money grab.
If Paizo was the kind of company that wants a money grab, we'd likely have seen a Pathfinder Revised already.
Pathfinder also didn't really split the edition. Not at first. The people who stuck with Pathfinder would not have updated anyway. They'd have stuck with 3e and the books they had (like so many others did during the 1e to 2e change over). And if the fans hadn't gone with Pathfinder they would have found another revision of 3e to gravitate towards. Or a dozen smaller RPGs. It would likely have spread out the audience among several smaller subsystems and variant rulesets like E6, Castles & Crusades, and the like.
As for Paizo's reputation.... well, they do have a
lot of fanboys. But they earned that reputation. When Paizo started the stuff in
Dragon was kinda sorta official but it wasn't legal in Living Greyhawk and would never be referenced in official books. It was official in name only. They basically became a 3rd Party Publisher handing semi-official content. And they started in 2004 after the 3PP glut when everyone was wary of 3PP and the stores had been burned by the 3.0 to 3.5 changeover.
And yet Paizo built up a reputation and fanbase. Slowly with each product and product line. They earned a reputation for adventures and their Adventure Paths. They earned a reputation for listening to their fans. And they earned a reputation for producing quality product.
When they lost the magazine licences, the company *should* have gone under. Most companies would have. They'd taken people's money for subscriptions and could no longer deliver. Refunds would wipe them out. But because of their reputation they managed to convert the subscribers over to their AP line.
As for WotC's reputation, they earned that as well. WotC started as the great saviour of D&D. They released the well appreciated 3rd Edition and gave people as many planned 2e books as they could. And they defied expectations by not turning D&D into a collectible card game. The books looked great, the production values were excellent, and the OGL made them loved by many. WotC was very well respected. (Compared to T$R it was hard not to look good.) Since then this has changed dramatically. And WotC only has themselves to blame. While not all the hate is warranted, a fair amount is, and WotC has made their share of blunders.
You know what, if there had been no OGL we as a community would be better off... all those people who wrote d20 stuff could have come up with there own games and we would have more diversity, and no pathfinder to compete with D&D and no one ever again getting in my face to tell me how 'great piazo is and how horrable wotc is'
Maybe.
The OGL did great things for D&D in the early days. It allowed some great talent to make their mark and produce some content. Instead of generating competing content, for a time everyone was making products that funnelled sales and attention towards D&D.
If not for the OGL, 3e might have attracted less attention and the talent pool interested in D&D would have instead been focused on making competing games and products.
After all, Mike Mearls, Jeremy Crawford, and Robert J. Schwab all owe their careers in part to the OGL.
