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Message: <blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 6075469" data-attributes="member: 463">I do wonder what would have happened though if WoTC had stuck close to 3e in the design of 4e but had still had the GSL SNAFU that drove the third-party publishers away from supporting WoTC's game. If Paizo still had to develop their own D&D variant to stay in business. I guess the likeliest thing would have been people treating the two games as interchangeable, and buying Paizo APs to use with the WOTC system, which would still have been a win-win for both companies. But I can see a possibility that Paizo might still have eclipsed WoTC. Paizo's big strength is in mood & feel, tone, fluff, not crunch - even their original crunch books like the Advanced Players Guide I think are well received more because the (eg) Alchemist is well presented, imaginative and seems a lot of fun, not because of any technical skill in systems design. I just don't know whether Paizo's large and extremely enthusiastic market are really driven by Stare Decisis, the desire to stick close to 3e's precedents in terms of mechanics, or if it's more about the presentation/mood/feel, with crunch an afterthought.</blockquote>