D&D 5E So, 5e OGL

[Wicht]

Which is kinda interesting. There's all this pressure on WotC to make their game open, when of the top 5 other game systems, two are based on already open licences and have to be open (FATE and Pathfinder), one is open to the fans (Savage Worlds), and two are closed (AGE, World of Darkness).
Shouldn't there be equal pressure on Green Ronin and Pramas?

Why does FATE "have to be open?"

The only requirement that Savage World has for producers is that their goods be of suitable quality; if you can afford to do a nice book, Savage Worlds is, for all practical purposes, open.

And while your point is taken, I would mention that your list of the Top 5 is out of date. WoD hasn't been in the top 5 in about 5 years, and AGE hasn't been there since about 2012 I think.

Fantasy Flight has really been about #3 for most of the last three years with their various offerings, including Warhammer and Star Wars. FATE has bounced around at 4 or 5, alternating with whatever is popular, and Shadowrun has also made a pretty good run for holding that 4th or 5th spot.

As for Pressure on WotC, it comes from two things... One, they more or less said they were going to. And Two, many of us think it would help them hold on to their #1 or #2 spot for an extended period of time. Notice that the non-OGL offerings don't seem to have a whole lot of staying power; FFG for instance does not do good support of their material and it drops in popularity pretty quickly. Catalyst would, I think, also solidify their rank with Shadowrun if they would make it OGL and open it up to some good, extended design work.

 

[I'm A Banana]

True, but 90% of D&D players don't care.

The 10% of D&D players that do care are likely orders of magnitude more numerous than the audience of AGE. And AGE probably has a pretty healthy audience.

But WotC doesn't need to care because popularity. They should care because of some of the aforementioned reasons that it would benefit them, and they should care because they're the biggest name in gaming, and they should care because brand trumps medium at this point for them and they should care because there's history there and they should care for a lot of reasons.

But "proportion of the audience asking for it" is a silly thing to base an OGL-or-not decision on. I mean, no one was really asking for it in 1999, and yet...

 

[Morrus]

The 10% of D&D players that do care are likely orders of magnitude more numerous than the audience of AGE. And AGE probably has a pretty healthy audience.

It's not 10%. It's not 1%. It's not 0.01%. It's not even 0.01% of the people on EN World, let alone D&D players. It's a few hundred people online.

 

[Jester David]

Why does FATE "have to be open?"

FATE is based on the Fudge system, and operates under a similar licence as Pathfinder.
I'm not very familiar with that licence, so it might be able to be closed, but lacking firm info it is safe to assume it works like they OGL.

And I was referring to the hot games by way of the ENworld chart not ICv2, which is always a couple months behind. AGE won't be on there for months.

 

[Henry]

I'll admit, here and now, I was vastly wrong about WotC needing an OGL. They've done very well without it. But what does irritate me just a little is that people DON'T care more about what an open license has brought the industry. A lot of people who don't care are playing Pathfinder, 13th age, a variety of OSR games, Savage Worlds (which was a reaction to d20, according to Shane Hensley himself), fantasy AGE & Mutants & Masterminds (created by Green Ronin), and even D&D 5 itself (both lead designers got their prominence working on OGL products, and Open Design and GR Exist because of the OGL.) i'm not claiming it's the sole source of 21st century gaming or something silly, but its existance massively shaped 4 of the 5 most popular tabletop RPGs being played today.

 

[Wicht]

FATE is based on the Fudge system, and operates under a similar licence as Pathfinder.

You are right, I had forgotten that Fate was derived from Fudge. Though actually the Fudge OGL is the d20 OGL, so its not similar so much as identical.

 

[prosfilaes]

It's not 10%. It's not 1%. It's not 0.01%. It's not even 0.01% of the people on EN World, let alone D&D players. It's a few hundred people online.

0.01% is one part in ten thousand. There's at least a couple dozen people who have posted on this thread; are there really a quarter million people on EN World? If it's a few hundred people online, then there are few tens of millions of D&D players out there, which seems a bit high for current D&D players, and in which case I am extremely skeptical that only a few hundred people care. You think that a mere 0.01% of any community has thought about commercializing their skills, about making a product they could be proud of and show off to their friends?

 

[Morrus]

You are right, I had forgotten that Fate was derived from Fudge. Though actually the Fudge OGL is the d20 OGL, so its not similar so much as identical.

There isn't a Fudge OGL and a d20 OGL. There's just the OGL. It makes no mention of game systems. Hell, I'm using it for WOIN.

 

[Wicht]

There isn't a Fudge OGL and a d20 OGL. There's just the OGL. It makes no mention of game systems. Hell, I'm using it for WOIN.

Which is why its identical.

 

[Ovinomancer]

0.01% is one part in ten thousand. There's at least a couple dozen people who have posted on this thread; are there really a quarter million people on EN World? If it's a few hundred people online, then there are few tens of millions of D&D players out there, which seems a bit high for current D&D players, and in which case I am extremely skeptical that only a few hundred people care. You think that a mere 0.01% of any community has thought about commercializing their skills, about making a product they could be proud of and show off to their friends?

A few dozen of the most likely to care because they're part of the tiny fraction of players that even post online? Yeah, I'd say Morrus has the right of it.