D&D 5E So, 5e OGL

[Jester David]

Everything has a price. If WotC offered a cheque with enough zeroes on it, a deal would be done.

I don't think WotC would go down that route, and indeed for the same reason I don't think they'd go to court to try to end the OGL - I don't think they're particularly concerned about Pathfinder anyway. But if they were absolutely determined that Pathfinder must go, then the really big cheque is the way I'd expect them to choose - as I said, it's easier and more certain. I can't be certain about it being cheaper, right enough, but that seems likely given that they'd be fighting to end a license that was specifically designed to be permanent.

There's the added wrinkle that Lisa Stevens did this once already. She was part of WotC during the Hasbro acquisition and personally got one of those cheques. She didn't need to work another day in her life. Probably still doesn't. Paizo is essentially her hobby so she doesn't get bored with retirement.
So the cheque would have to be pretty big. Even then, she might just go off and start another company.

 

[delericho]

There's the added wrinkle that Lisa Stevens did this once already. She was part of WotC during the Hasbro acquisition and personally got one of those cheques. She didn't need to work another day in her life. Probably still doesn't. Paizo is essentially her hobby so she doesn't get bored with retirement.

That's all true.

Even then, she might just go off and start another company.

I don't think that matters, though. Pathfinder came about because of a specific combination of circumstances, only one of which was the OGL. In particular, the database of former Dragon/Dungeon subscribers was a huge starting point. Without that, nobody could replicate what Paizo did - including the exact same people.

And that's assuming the deal didn't include a non-compete clause, which would be surprising.

 

[SkidAce]

...

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]

XP for The Arcanum....still a great resource to this day.

 

[Mistwell]

I'm sorry to disappoint but the future is open source.... younger start-ups are finding amazing success though open source.. it works in software and the growth of 3d printing so will design...

you may want familiarize yourself with the OGL, it can never, ever, be revoked.... as in ever.

and the OGL is successfully being used to produce 5e products as we type..

welcome to the new world.. you don't like it, STBU.... your kind of stuck with it.

Here is how the OGL could be scrapped. Please note, this is all silly and theoretical, and will never happen. It's the comic-book What If? type scenario only.

Step 1) WOTC entirely tables all D&D for several years and indicate they have no intention of reviving it any time soon;

Step 2) WOTC seeks and gets declarative relief stating that there is no longer any more consideration left in the OGL and therefore future licenses cannot be made (more on this below);

Step 3) After the declarative relief, old OGL products can still be sold (because they were first produced when there was still consideration) but all new products will lack consideration and therefore there can be no new products under the OGL.

This is the method some software companies are working on to get out of their open source agreements. So far it has not worked, but so far nobody has done step 1 first - mothball everything they could possibly gain from the open source agreement first. That appears to be the missing step.

As to consideration, ALL contracts (and a license is a type of contract) MUST have consideration to be valid. There is no choice - it's a required element of a binding agreement in the United States. Consideration means both sides must get SOMETHING of value out of the agreement. So, while WOTC clearly gets something of value now, if they can set up a situation where they literally get nothing beneficial any more out of someone else using the OGL for a new product, there will be no consideration, and therefore the OGL will no longer be valid for that new product.

Again, this is the route the open source software community is pursuing in court these days. But none have been truly willing to totally mothball a product AND pay to have such a lawsuit (which makes sense - if the product really isn't something you make money on anymore, why would you pay for a lawsuit over it?).

But, in theory, that is one way it could be done. But again, this is silly What If? stuff. WOTC is never going to do this.

 

[Mark CMG]

I don't think that matters, though. Pathfinder came about because of a specific combination of circumstances, only one of which was the OGL. In particular, the database of former Dragon/Dungeon subscribers was a huge starting point. Without that, nobody could replicate what Paizo did - including the exact same people.

And let's not discount the people as being a huge factor. Paizo is largely made up of people WotC could not afford to keep by virtue of their bottom line business model. Some folks were even promoted by WotC not long before they became victims of budget cuts. One wonders if they might have done well enough with their staff creating a different RPG without the OGL but still in possession of that mailing list from the mags.

 

[delericho]

And let's not discount the people as being a huge factor... One wonders if they might have done well enough with their staff creating a different RPG without the OGL but still in possession of that mailing list from the mags.

My best guess is that it would have done about as well as "Arcana Unearthed/Evolved" - that is, it would have done well enough for a while but wouldn't have been any sort of a meaningful competitor to D&D.

(That's the closest comparison I could think of, because Monte Cook is the best example I could think of of an equivalent 'name' who had gone on to do his own game.)

 

[delericho]

Step 1) WOTC entirely tables all D&D for several years and indicate they have no intention of reviving it any time soon;

Step 2) WOTC seeks and gets declarative relief stating that there is no longer any more consideration left in the OGL and therefore future licenses cannot be made (more on this below);

Step 3) After the declarative relief, old OGL products can still be sold (because they were first produced when there was still consideration) but all new products will lack consideration and therefore there can be no new products under the OGL.

Interesting. One question, though: does step #2 end the license, or does it simply prevent people from using it?

The reason I ask is that presumably there's a step #4:

4) After a time, bring D&D out of mothballs and produce new materials.

At which point there presumably would once again be consideration in the license. So if it still stands but couldn't be used, then it could once again be used. But if the ruling in #2 goes further and ends the license, then it would be gone permanently.

(And I appreciate it's very much a theoretical. I had actually promised myself not to chase down this path any further. But, as I said, I find this theoretical quite interesting.)

 

[I'm A Banana]

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'

Another plausible hypothetical: if there had been no OGL, the people who now play Pathfinder would've just left tabletop gaming entirely (going to videogames or whatnot), and when 4e's sales began to slump they would look around and see no major competitors and the bean-counters would determine that tabletop gaming is a relic of the '80's that nobody really does anymore and instead of 5e D&D, we'd be looking at the tabletop game being shelved entirely and the brand simply limping along as a valuable IP for computer games and books and maybe movies someday.

The very fact that we can play a 5e D&D with our friends around a table may be due to the fact that even as 4e slumped, the bean-counters could look around and see a healthy tabletop ecosystem that they could still make some bank in as part of a broader strategy. If we're gonna talk hypotheticals, the OGL, plausibly, saved tabletop gaming.

Instead of some aggressive Paizo fan gettin' up in your grill, you might've instead had to face a sea of emptiness, where no one under the age of 40 remained, where nothing new was released, where people just didn't play this kind of game anymore.

I'd take the former.

 

[Mark CMG]

My best guess is that it would have done about as well as "Arcana Unearthed/Evolved" - that is, it would have done well enough for a while but wouldn't have been any sort of a meaningful competitor to D&D.

(That's the closest comparison I could think of, because Monte Cook is the best example I could think of of an equivalent 'name' who had gone on to do his own game.)

That's a pretty good comparison though I think with the larger team at Paizo support could have been stronger and sustained longer while the database would have made the reach longer/deeper. Even with access to an identical database, a smaller team couldn't exploit it as extensively. At the time, I'm guessing Paizo wouldn't have hit the same heights with a new RPG without all factors in place but they might pull it off at this stage. I wouldn't be surprised to find out they have something in the works already that moves away from PF but allows for decent compatibility with their older setting material.

 

[Mark CMG]

Another plausible hypothetical: if there had been no OGL, the people who now play Pathfinder would've just left tabletop gaming entirely (going to videogames or whatnot), and when 4e's sales began to slump they would look around and see no major competitors and the bean-counters would determine that tabletop gaming is a relic of the '80's that nobody really does anymore and instead of 5e D&D, we'd be looking at the tabletop game being shelved entirely and the brand simply limping along as a valuable IP for computer games and books and maybe movies someday.

That's a tremendous sentence.