D&D 5E So, 5e OGL

[GMforPowergamers]

What should Paizo have done then?

well they could have kept going with 3e. they could come up with there own game. they could wait for 4e stuff. they could fan the flames of the edition war then pretend to be the innocent victim... I mean there was some choice...

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.

sure they could, it would have slowed them down a bit... but they could have finished there 3.5 one then moved the next to 4e.

Pathfinder wasn't a money grab, it was a Hail Mary gamble because they needed to release *something* and couldn't wait.

yup here it comes... poor piazo horrable wotc took there stuff...

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.

the funny part is you quote part of my argument...

The OGL had killed most fantasy competition

yup... live by the sword die by the sword that was a BIG flaw in the OGL.

That's what separates 4e and WotC from Pathfinder and Paizo. WotC had a choice and chose to release 3.5e and 4e.

yup they chose to improve the game instead of keeping it the same...

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.

yea, look at how wotc took away... wait what? my problem is wotc didn't take anything away...

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.

I don't see the diffrence

If Paizo was the kind of company that wants a money grab, we'd likely have seen a Pathfinder Revised already.

why they already are putting out books to put 3e wotc to shame... you know that tactic people called a money grab...

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.

sigh... ok I'll do this again...

there are innovator, early adaptors, follower, something else something else... basicly 5 stages of moveing on to new things the important ones are stages 2 and 3 being the biggest. Pathfinder did something no D&D had done before, by fanning the edition wars it broke the cycle.

[QUOTE]
As for Paizo's reputation.... well, they do have a [I]lot[/I] of fanboys. But they earned that reputation. [/QUOTE]
yea, the most rabid fan boys I have seen outside of football... did I ever tell you about the guy who made my friend ross want to cry because at Gen con we had the wrong book in our hands.... yea not a great moment in gameing history...

[QUOTE]When Paizo started the stuff in [I]Dragon[/I] 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.[/QUOTE]
yup I had some left on my subscription back then, but I was in the process of switching to getting it through my flgs (and comic shop)...

[QUOTE]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.[/QUOTE]
except I just don't see it... they are the same people who worked for D&D years earlier... why is it when bob works for wotc "He is a mony grabing non gamer who doesn't listen" but if he gets laid off and goes to pathfinder "He is a great designer who listens to fans" it is insane how quick the reteric gets spun...

[QUOTE]

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. [/QUOTE] maybe you were not around in 2000, or 2001 but wotc got a bad rep then too..

[QUOTE]
The books looked great, the production values were excellent, and the OGL made them loved by many. [/QUOTE]
yea, and the 'evil corporate greed' was talked about even then...
[QUOTE]
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.[/QUOTE]

yea, see this is where I call BS... I heard someone else put it best... "Piazo could sell you air and be told they were great, wotc could put $100 bills in the $45 box set and people would complain about it being too large a bill"


[QUOTE]Maybe.
The OGL did great things for D&D in the early days.[/QUOTE] yup in early day (maybe first 3-4 years) it did help D&D but at the cost of other systems...

even as early as 2003 you could see so many fewer new systems coming out as everyone did D20/

[QUOTE]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. [/QUOTE]
and in that compatiotn we might have gotten the next rifts, or shadowrun, or gurps...instead we got D20 stargate, and D20 Mutants and masterminds (the farther it gets from it's d20 roots the more I love that system)

[QUOTE]
After all, Mike Mearls, Jeremy Crawford, and Robert J. Schwab all owe their careers in part to the OGL.[/QUOTE] oh would that be the people that I hear are evil corporate shills all the time....

 

[jmucchiello]

GM4PG: Tell me, please. What is the functional difference between being a Paizo fanboy and anti-Paizo fanboy? Your tilting at windmills decrying the evils of the pathfinder beast is just the flipside rhetoric of the Paizo defenders. Can you admit you might be a bit biased here in the same way the so-called fanboys who annoy are also biased?

The OGL did not kill your puppies, I hope. I fail to see how anyone can be so vehemently against something that did so much good. The greed glut/bust of d20 products was probably more the fault of the d20 STL than of the OGL and the release of 3.5 far too soon in the life of 3.0.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Pathfinder books. And I never played a single session of 4e D&D. I don't have horse in that "edition war". I want an open license for 5e so I can maybe release a PDF or two. If it happens, it happens. No big deal to me either way.

 

[sidonunspa]

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...

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'

WoTC almost pulled a switch-a-ro on players... we saw the SAGA system for starwars (which is the BEST version of the d20 rules so far) and expected that to be an image of things to come, instead we got 4e.

Say what you want, but what else did you expect when WoTC alienated a huge chuck of their player-base? Most of my friends would have left D&D completely if it was not for pathfinder... now they are moving back to 5e...

(And as an aside… Pathfinder’s adventure paths spank the hell out of the current D&D super-adventures. Kingmaker alone, and Rise of the Rune Lords if it was produced by WoTC you would declare it an instant classic)

And no "all those people who wrote d20 stuff could have come up with their own games and we would have more diversity"

Heck no, many people found a voice in the gaming industry BECAUSE of d20... I know... My company was one of them. Many players simply did not want to have to learn a new system, you would tell them you were d20 and they would sit down and give your game a chance, tell them you had a new system... They walked on.

Hell, it happened to us when we had Arcanis d20 and Witch Hunter (which used our own system)... Players would look at witch hunter and ask if it was d20... we would say no... And they would put it down and walk on.

A unified rules set allowed and encouraged many players to branch out, and in the end it grew the gaming community by leaps and bounds. A statement backed up sales data.

(btw I don't play pathfinder.. I find it too crunchy)

 

[Parmandur]

The point of the OGL was partly to kill alternate systems, yes. Pretty effective, at that.

Never played Pathfinder; no plans to. But the OGL has provided some of the predicted benefits (killing competing systems, getting people used to playing Dungeons & Dragons, familiar with writing for it, etc).

 

[Shasarak]

The point of the OGL was partly to kill alternate systems, yes. Pretty effective, at that.

Never played Pathfinder; no plans to. But the OGL has provided some of the predicted benefits (killing competing systems, getting people used to playing Dungeons & Dragons, familiar with writing for it, etc).

As well as making sure that one company could not kill DnD.

 

[Jester David]

well they could have kept going with 3e. they could come up with there own game. they could wait for 4e stuff. they could fan the flames of the edition war then pretend to be the innocent victim... I mean there was some choice...

Well, they pretty much did keep going with 3e. They just reprinted the books with a coat of paint so newcomers could buy the rules being used. So anyone who wanted to a join a group wouldn't have to trawl eBay or used bookstores for a copy of the rules.

Waiting for 4e simply wasn't an option. Not unless they wanted to stop making content and lay people off. Ditto making their own game; Paizo was in hard financial shape at that point and likely couldn't afford to sideline half their staff to make a brand new game.

sure they could, it would have slowed them down a bit... but they could have finished there 3.5 one then moved the next to 4e.

They didn't really see the rules until everyone else. June of 2008. And we didn't end up seeing the GSL until July of that year. They were likely already planning their next AP and working on the first book. The seven months between the release of the OGL and the release of Legacy of Fire wouldn't have been much time to learn the nuances of an entire new edition.
Which would mean having a full year of 3e content before they could switch to 4e.

Plus, there was a strong push from the fans not to update. So switching from 3e to 4e would have cost them subscribers. And that would have hurt.

yup here it comes... poor piazo horrable wotc took there stuff...

Um... no. WotC was actually super classy about taking the licence away and let Paizo finish their APs. But it still hurt the company.
Not sharing the rules was a little uncool though, as was not releasing the GSL early as promised. Has Paizo been given access to the rules they would have likely taken the safe route and gone with 4e. But I imagine that was beyond the control the D&D team.

yup they chose to improve the game instead of keeping it the same...

That's subjective. Paizo made a lot of improvements.

And, arguably, 4e didn't really change much in the game beyond the classes. The base rules were pretty darn identical. The 4e team didn't so much make their own ruleset as change how the classes in the game worked and the player math. Ditto 5e really. It's not like they really designed a brand new game with a unique core mechanic from scratch. But this doesn't diminish the accomplishment or skill required.

there are innovator, early adaptors, follower, something else something else... basicly 5 stages of moveing on to new things the important ones are stages 2 and 3 being the biggest. Pathfinder did something no D&D had done before, by fanning the edition wars it broke the cycle.

And yet there were edition wars between 1e and 2e, and between 2e and 3e. And the edition war was pretty damn bad in 2008 before Pathfinder had really been released. The real fuel for the edition war fire was how different 4e was and the changes to the rules and lore. Pathfinder didn't help, but if 4e had been less controversial Pathfinder would have been ignored.

except I just don't see it... they are the same people who worked for D&D years earlier... why is it when bob works for wotc "He is a mony grabing non gamer who doesn't listen" but if he gets laid off and goes to pathfinder "He is a great designer who listens to fans" it is insane how quick the reteric gets spun...

But how common knowledge is that? It's not like the beginning of every issue started with a list of the designers' past credits. This is something we know now, that it was the same magazine department with a different name. Back then it was just a new company getting the licence.

maybe you were not around in 2000, or 2001 but wotc got a bad rep then too..

But not as bad as during the last few years. 3.5, 4e, the DDI failures, the community problems, the C+Ds, and more have really damaged the company's reputation.

yea, see this is where I call BS... I heard someone else put it best... "Piazo could sell you air and be told they were great, wotc could put $100 bills in the $45 box set and people would complain about it being too large a bill"

Back when Paizo was the underdog, yes. When Pathfinder became the more popular system people started to get more critical. And Paizo is getting a lot more heat these days.
It's hard for Paizo. They were such a small indie company that really focused on connecting to the fans and fostering a community, and now they're this big company with lots of strange faces in the office and too many disparate fans to really connect with.

Still, it's all about presentation and reputation. Apple and Microsoft are both faceless, heartless corporations dedicated to the bottom line. One has a rabid fanbase and the other is despised.

oh would that be the people that I hear are evil corporate shills all the time....

Who put out what is being hailed as one of the best versions of D&D ever?

I love the D&D team at WotC. It's a great team and great bunch of folk. WotC in generally though makes me wary. Two very different things.

 

[Nellisir]

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

Except...that wasn't what was happening. I was online and active pre-WoTC. People weren't coming up "with there [sic] own games." They were house-ruling 2e, expanding the point-buy system from Skills & Powers, and worrying about fan-use policies and C&D orders from TSR.

Was the OGL perfect? No. The d20 boom and rise in amateur publishing that accompanied it, particularly post-BoEM, saw a major shift from a free exchange paradigm to a monetary one. Or in other words, less free stuff. More stuff overall, but if you had a large quantity of material, you made it a pdf and sold it. I have single-author netbooks from 2e that number in the hundreds of pages; that sort of material became a lot less common after 3e. (It bumped back up with the advent of 4e, fueled, IMO, in parts by Paizo's attitude towards OGC; the OSR overall, which has a history of free stuff; the GSL; and a simple desire to "give back". It's still going pretty well.)

On the flip side, there was more material overall. WotC produced fewer settings, but I still have Rokugan d20, Thieves World d20, and a bunch of others that are pretty cool. I knew it would take at least a few years for the OGL to really saturate the TTRPG idea economy; I expect 4-5 but it was probably double that. Now people are better informed about the OGL and copyright in general, which is awesome, and we have choices. So I'm very happy about it. OGL was and is the best thing single thing in RPGs since the original D&D.

 

[aramis erak]

As an side... GMforPowergamers...

you do realize that many of the mechanics used in 5e where developed by 3rd party d20 designers... for example C&C had attributes as saves before anyone else.. Inspiration, not a original idea (as it has been called fate, action points, or luck points) and so on.

heck backgrounds look a lot like the background mechanic in a system I worked on as well as warhammer fantasy back in the day

guess the 5e crew did there own bit of thieving hu

C&C was not the first to use attributes as saves. That predates 3E by well over a decade. It was in Tunnels and Trolls, kind of, in 1975 - but only if that save was versus the Luck attribute. Some of the adventures had saving rolls versus other attributes, and by 1979, all attributes were allowed saving rolls.

The Arcanum, which also predates d20 by more than a decade, having been published in 1984, also uses attributes as saving rolls. From page 49 thereof:

[qoute="The Arcanum, page 49"]In the Atlantean System all saving throws (or saves) are made by rolling a D20. For individuals or creatures of any kind , all saves are rolled vs an attribute; i .e. , a save vs Dexterity is used whenever an individual or creature is attempting to dodge or elude, a save vs. Will is used for any attempt at resisting magical influence, and so on. In all cases where a save o f any type is req u i red , a roll of 11 + means that the save is successful. Thus, the average individual or creature has a 50/50 chance of maki ng any saving th row. This simple rule makes it easy for the Game Judge to determine saving throws for any NPCs or monsters that need to be added to an adventure on the spur of the moment.[/quote]

I've only seen ONE truly new mechanic in the last 15 years: the use of symbolic dice in WFRP3, EOTE, AOR, and F&D. Everything else points back to before 3E.

I've seen a lot of new combinations - as in, take mechanic A from game X, mechanic B from game Y, mechanic C from game Z, etc...
I've seen a lot of incremental improvements of extant mechanics - such as 3E using costs for various skills by class, which is Rolemaster's big mechanic, but 3E made it much more playable - and simpler.

And backgrounds? yeah, they go back a long way, too. I recall them in several early 90's small press designs.

 

[delericho]

If WotC (or anyone else) gets a judgement that its OGL 1.0a is invalid, there won't be a PF 2.0, because it would be a derivative work, and require permission of the original work's author/publisher to be published.

That would depend on the exact details of the judgement. However, given that the license has been in force and they have clearly been acting with permission, it's unlikely that all the IP associated with Pathfinder would simply be stripped from Paizo.

But that's a big rabbit hole to be going down for something that won't ever happen. If WotC wanted rid of Pathfinder, there's a far easier, cheaper, and more certain way to do so: buy Paizo.

 

[Zardnaar]

The reality is if 4E was that good people would have flocked to it. They did not and it died early with a recent Jeremy Crawford interview revealing they were talking about 5E in a serious way as early as 2010 and design work started 2011.

Paizo built up a good enough reputation to convince about 2/3rds of the Dragon/Dungeon subscribers to support further 3.5 material in the face of an imminent 4E launch. I no longer buy Paizo stuff and have not since 2012 but in 2007 I was mad at WoTC for killing of Dragon and Dungeon. If they had kept them in print that is one thing but they outright killed them off and I had DDI for 3 years and the DDI ones were a very bad joke.