4E and the OGL

[Remathilis]

I'm sure 90% of their changes were to "improve" the game, but I do think 10% of the was to defend OP, promote sales of DDM, and establish a firm hierarchy of product (with WotC on top and 3rd parties a tier below). That's, at least, my theory on why most of the common "cool" monsters (drow, demons, warforged, beholders, ithilids) were removed from the GSL Monster Manual list. No competing books/modules on the monsters they know will move product...

 

[Cadfan]

I don't think the OGL was a major effect.

4e had to be a big change. Edition changes are BIG DEALS within the gaming community. If you're going to do one, you'd better grab that bull by the horns, you know? A meek edition change would be worse than pathetic, and it probably wouldn't sell either.

As for the [adjective] + [noun] naming structure, the idea that it was done with an eye towards copyrightabilty is just silly. In 4e's monster design paradigm, there are lots of different types of each monster. When you have a [NOUN], and you want to describe several different types of [NOUN], the format [ADJECTIVE] + [NOUN] is the one endorsed by english grammar.

And the icons are useful.

In general, when a change serves a logical game design goal, it doesn't make sense to use that change as evidence of change for the sake of copyrightability. Even if that change also mildly affects copyright law. And I say "mildly" on purpose- lets say that there's a 3e OGL monster called a Glumph, and 4e doesn't have a regular Glumph, it just has the Shadowy Glumph and the Darklord Glumph (a paragon tier version of the regular Glumph). And lets say that "Glumph" isn't copyrightable on its own, because its either a real word, or its in 3e's OGL. The absolute worst thing this does to a company who wishes to appropriate the Glumph for their own third party adventure is this: they'll be forced to create an "Umbral Glumph" instead of just using the Shadowy Glumph stats.

Who. Cares. This does little to nothing for WOTC, and inflicts little to no penalty on the third party. Which makes me think it wasn't set up this way to punk them.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

In my opinion, they came to the (rather logical) conclusion that 3E had fundamental flaws that required tearing down and rebuilding the system. Even with this consideration, they had the choice to keep things close to how they were before or to break new ground. I think the OGL had at least something to do with the decision to break new ground.

I think it has more to do with branding and brand control -- what is "D&D!", what D&D means, what D&D looks like. They didn't want the confusion.

I think this was the core issue. What D&D meant and what it looks like became very difficult to define because of both the OGL and the nature of 3.5E itself, and was largely beyond the control of WotC. While I think the OGL did some good for the brand, it didn't do what Ryan Dancy promised it would, and I don't think the actual benefits of the OGL for WotC justified the loss of brand identity and control.

Personally, I think that's a Super Mega Ultra LAME reason to ignore one of the best things to happen to gaming since the d20, even if I can understand the reason. But I have been known to be something of an idealist, and I'm not sure WotC has that luxury. Which kind of makes me sad that WotC is part of a corporate behemoth now and not smaller, more agile, and more prone to do things daring and idealistic than to play it safe and do it by the numbers.

I don't think small and agile is the right tack for WotC. They aren't catering to individual gamers, D&D is a game for the masses. OGL/indie companies can make individualisic games catering towards individual tastes and be successful. D&D is too big to cater to individual tastes, and trying to please everyone waters down the mass appeal of the industry leader. While I wouldn't call 2008 WotC idealistic(the OGL I would call idealistic), I don't see how you can call 4E playing it safe. When you scrap the most popular RPG on the market and make the next edition an almost entirely new game, that is not what I would call playing it safe.

Personally I think the OGL did as much harm as it did good. It flooded the market with D&D clones of varying quality, and tended to weaken the presence of non-D&D games that weren't based off of the OGL. The sense of entitlement I see from OGL fans and the religious fervor over it rubs me the wrong way, and I'm not a WotC worshipper. I am as much a White Wolf fan as I am a D&D fan, have played more Vampire: the Masquerade in my lifetime than I have played any edition of D&D, and have very fond memories of Rolemaster(or at least my revision of it).

 

[I'm A Banana]

While I think the OGL did some good for the brand, it didn't do what Ryan Dancy promised it would, and I don't think the actual benefits of the OGL for WotC justified the loss of brand identity and control.

This is part of why I cautioned that I was an idealist up above.

I think D&D has to blame its success on playing fast and loose with public domain and knock-off trademarks. The "halfling/hobit" issue comes to my mind most prominently, but D&D is chock full o' things inspired from and ripped from and ripped off of Conan and Cthulu and Greek myth and 101 other fantasy sources.

D&D never had much of a brand identity, other than being "that game with the dice where your Legolas uses excalibur to slay the minotaur or whatever."

I don't think 4e has much of a stronger identity than any other edition, mostly because it's hard to get a unique identity when you're trying to remain flexible enough to adapt to 100 million or so individual DMs who all have their own opinions on what makes fantasy roleplay fun.

This "brand identity" is a pie-in-the-sky delusion. The ability to be trademarked and have proprietary IP is stodgy thinking. D&D is at its best when it is broad, adaptable, and half-blatantly culled from other works.

The OGL gave back, in a big way. It recognized D&D's rip-off origins and was keen to embrace them.

WotC didn't get behind the OGL very much in 3e, but that didn't matter so much. Once it was out there, the rest of the world took it and ran with it and produced some of the best gaming products ever seen.

Whatever was "lost" from WotC's brand identity was small potatoes, a raindrop in an ocean, when measured against what was gained for the hobby in general.

I don't think small and agile is the right tack for WotC. They aren't catering to individual gamers, D&D is a game for the masses.

The PnPRPG crowd is a niche if I've ever seen one.

But small and agile would allow better catering to the masses, because it would allow them to continue to do daring and innovative things (like the OGL) rather than putting their heads in the sand and paying attention to nebulous non-entities like brand identity for a game that shamelessly bastardizes every popular fantasy novel of the last 30 years and loves it.

All small and agile means is that they're not big enough to care that much about things that aren't really problems except for guys in suits and ties, and that certainly aren't problems for "the masses."

The OGL was WONDERFUL for the masses.

It flooded the market with D&D clones of varying quality, and tended to weaken the presence of non-D&D games that weren't based off of the OGL. The sense of entitlement I see from OGL fans and the religious fervor over it rubs me the wrong way, and I'm not a WotC worshipper.

By the end of 3e, the free market had largely sorted a lot of the problems of quality and non-D&D games out. You had a few contenders for d20 (Paizo, Necromancer, a few others, some PDF publishers like ENPublishing), and you had a few contenders for other games (Mongoose's licensed products for instance), and you had amazing quality (War of the Burning Sky? Savage Tide AP?).

The OGL is an inspiring thing. It's daring and unique. I don't think WotC had any real, valid reason to stop participating in it, other than that they were being told to by guys with law degrees who worked for Hasbro because the OGL is so unusual that it freaked them out. I mean, they TRIED to participate in it -- the GSL is an attempt to recreate the OGL but with the goals of brand identity in place. But the GSL largely fails because of those goals, and because of a few other draconian measures.

"Loosing Brand Identity" is like the boogeyman to a 4e OGL, but when your core product's appeal is "Hey, like Lord of the rings? Conan? Fairy tales and myth? Want to CONTROL it?!" your brand identity isn't really based on your IP to begin with. Pretending it is works against the strengths of your actual product, and, especially when another way was shown, to reject it out of be-suited paranoia is, in my mind, dumb on a colossally corporate level. WotC usually dodges that bullet (I don't think most of the things that people complain about are very high up the totem pole at all), so it was extra disappointing for me.

I mean, it's fair to not really care about the OGL if you like D&D and don't care about playing anything else, but it hardly does you any harm, in that case. I get that not everybody's involved idealistically like I am. But I have real trouble buying that 4e needed stronger brand identity than 3e, since the game is based on public domain and knock-off IP to begin with.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Whatever was "lost" from WotC's brand identity was small potatoes, a raindrop in an ocean, when measured against what was gained for the hobby in general.

Oh so beautifully put.


RC

 

[avin]

They used so much lame cartoon art they are afraid of people comparing other books to that horrible DMG illustrations

 

[Remathilis]

D&D never had much of a brand identity, other than being "that game with the dice where your Legolas uses excalibur to slay the minotaur or whatever."

I mean, it's fair to not really care about the OGL if you like D&D and don't care about playing anything else, but it hardly does you any harm, in that case. I get that not everybody's involved idealistically like I am. But I have real trouble buying that 4e needed stronger brand identity than 3e, since the game is based on public domain and knock-off IP to begin with.

I'd caution going too far with this; D&D has PLENTY of its own personal IP that it needed to watch. While D&D to the uninitiated is that weird game you play an elf in (a description that makes it fall in line with hundreds of IP-blurring games) WotC knows it has a finer line to tread.

To start, WotC wants to protect its novel IP: Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and the stuff included in it. That includes how D&D defines it dark elves, draconians, kender, etc. It has good reason to want to; things based on these IP sell money. (well, with the exception of the DL movie). Even lesser known settings like Ravenloft generate revenue (witness Arhaus's decent success with the RL IP and WotC Expedition to Castle RL).

Also, WotC wants some control over how it defines its world. This is why the GSL had a "no definitions" clause. They saw countless books that changed various elements of its own IP to suit different (and competing) tastes. Drow and Demons were classic examples. I recall a poll long ago more people owned Tome of Horrors than they did Monster Manual 3. While the choice of how things like that are good for consumers, it creates a glut of material on things WotC would like to exploit: Drow of the Underdark (3.5) sold relatively poorly because by that point the market for dark elf material was pretty saturated with 3PP.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

1. Thematically in regards to source, D&D being loose and adaptable was a good thing, and despite a tighter focus I don't see this as being lost. Where it wasn't good during the 3.5E/OGL days was being loose in the GNS spectrum. Trying to fullfill all facets of game philosophy made for a conflicting game that was often at odds with itself.

2. I'm not a believer in the OGL. I've never had any real use for it. D&D, even when I was at the height of my frustration with 3.5E, was always enough for me. When I wanted to play something that wasn't D&D, I wanted something truly different. Something like Rolemaster, Champions, Exalted, or Vampire. D&D-like OGL games hold no interest to me whatsoever, and IMO hurt games that were more truly different.

3. I disagree that OGL was great for the masses. It marginalized systems that weren't based off the d20, and mostly catered to what I would call niches within the RPG niche.

4. I am finding that the OGL actually does me harm. It harms my desire for true alternatives to D&D's system, and I find it creates an attitude that D&D owes it to the RPG community to cover all territory and be everything to everybody, instead of being the beer and popcorn action-adventure game for the casual gamer.

 

[malraux]

That's, at least, my theory on why most of the common "cool" monsters (drow, demons, warforged, beholders, ithilids) were removed from the GSL Monster Manual list. No competing books/modules on the monsters they know will move product...

How is that different from the OGL, only with a slightly different list of unique monsters? There's no warforged, beholders, mind flayers, and several other monsters unique to DnD pulled from the OGL.

 

[Voadam]

4E was a major departure from 3E and previous editions in general. Personally, I wonder how much this departure had to do with the OGL. We've heard murmurs that WotC wasn't really happy with the OGL. It is certainly reasonable to assert that one of the reasons 4E was made as different as it is was to move it beyond the reach of the OGL, and to separate mainstream D&D from the OGL. What would people's opinions be on this hypothetical assertion?

I'd bet they saw it more as a beneficial result of redesigning from the ground up rather than as significant reason to make 4e different from 3e as a design goal.

I'd expect their primary motivation was to make a new edition of D&D from the ground up addressing perceived problems of 3e so as to start up the cycle of edition products again.