3rd Party Opportunity

[Dannyalcatraz]

Given the current storm over the announcement of 4Ed's imminent arrival, it occurs to me that, much like Kenzerco sort of keeps 1Ed/2Ed alive in its Hackmaster game, a 3rd party publisher (or group of them acting individually or in concert) could do the same for 3.X if they so chose. They could either continue producing 3.X material, or if WotC/Hasbro objects, a consortium could produce a game that is compatible with the 3.X style of play.

If so, who do you think the major players would be? I'm thinking Paizo & Green Ronin could be major contenders in such a regime...but might not if they feel the need to do more 4Ed stuff (for whatever reason).

Thoughts?

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

It is possible. I think there will be many factors, like the new SRD and this talk of licensing, how well 4e does, how different it will be from 3.5 etc. Green Ronin might, but I doubt Paizo will. I think they'll want to drink from the 4e trough if it does well. If the changes are easy enough to deal with, I could forsee a period where 3rd party materials contain information for both 3.5 and 4e versions of the game.

 

[Bacris]

Honestly, with the fact that the SRD is open content under the currently existing Open Game License, even if WotC pulled down their own hosted SRD, it's still out there, so 3rd party publishers can continue to expand the 3.x market indefinitely. They might not be able to use the d20 logo, but they can still reference & reuse already-open content. (at least, that's my understanding from the reading of the OGL)

Given that I'm expecting it will be at least one calendar year from now before we even get a hint at a 4.0 psionics system, I'm thinking my market is ok

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Mongoose will almost certainly do this. In a way, they already are.

1. The largest regular OGL publisher by a significant margin. IIRC, they're now estimated to be the third-largest RPG publisher overall, behind only WotC and White Wolf, and with by far the highest growth rate.

2. The only OGL publisher that produces close-to-D&D core rulebooks under the OGL. The OGL x books and the Pocket Player's and GM's Guides already fill those roll.

3. The publisher of another OGL system (RuneQuest) soon to add another (Traveler). Mongoose is both committed to the OGL movement and apparently profiting immensely off it, and they certainly aren't afraid of older systems.

I wouldn't be surprised to see them rerelease their Pocket guides (and probably add a Monster Manual, perhaps even expanded with d20 versions of some RuneQuest monsters) around the time WotC takes the 3.5 PHB, DMG and MM1 off the market.

 

[Hjorimir]

Given the current storm over the announcement of 4Ed's imminent arrival, it occurs to me that, much like Kenzerco sort of keeps 1Ed/2Ed alive in its Hackmaster game, a 3rd party publisher (or group of them acting individually or in concert) could do the same for 3.X if they so chose. They could either continue producing 3.X material, or if WotC/Hasbro objects, a consortium could produce a game that is compatible with the 3.X style of play.

If so, who do you think the major players would be? I'm thinking Paizo & Green Ronin could be major contenders in such a regime...but might not if they feel the need to do more 4Ed stuff (for whatever reason).

Thoughts?

I think Green Ronin will continue on with True20 as their flagship game unless they see a real advantage to designing material under the 4E SRD. For now, they're working on their Fire & Ice game, which will be a new system.

Paizo will stick with 3.5 for now, but once 4E is out I'm sure they will consider moving over to that system based on what their customer base is doing.