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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jsaving" data-source="post: 5907783" data-attributes="member: 16726">I think having an OGL is absolutely critical, but not for the reasons people most commonly give.When Ryan Dancey used to talk about the OGL for 3rd edition, he listed two primary benefits.  One is that the OGL fosters the development of third-party content like adventures that drive sales of the core books and thereby boosts WotC's profit.  In essence, making part of the ruleset freely available and usable by others makes the D&D marketplace healthier than it would otherwise be, which benefits us as consumers and also happens to give more $$ to WotC.The second thing Ryan used to mention is that the OGL places needed pressure on WotC to ensure that future edition(s) will be stronger than what came before.  Because the OGL would enable 3e to survive and perhaps even thrive in the presence of a less-than-perfect future edition, designers would have to step up their game to provide a truly better product instead of just counting on "the herd" to adopt whatever changes WotC decided to make in a new edition.  And because consumers knew this, the 3e OGL would act as a "quality guarantee" of sorts and encourage wavering skeptics to buy the initial 4e books.  Of course, this wouldn't by itself guarantee that 4e sales would stay strong regardless of its quality, but it would help drive initial sales at least to some degree.I think he was absolutely right on both counts.  I'd go further and say the lack of an OGL has harmed 4th edition, not necessarily because of a loss of "good will" (though this may be part of it) but because it's just harder for third-party ideas to drive D&D forward the way they could in a 3e OGL environment.  Some might say that 3e/Pathfinder's surprising strength proves the OGL was a bad idea, because without it, people would have been compelled to use 4e whether they liked its changes or not.  But I think it's hard to have much sympathy for this line of argument either.  Even my 4e gaming group agrees that "forcing" people to "upgrade" isn't the way to improve people's gaming experiences.  They wonder in retrospect whether 4e went too far with some of its changes, particularly with respect to flavor and history (not so much for mechanics), and wonder whether WotC's apparent goal of "making 4e incompatible with past editions" inadvertently fractured rather than united the player base.  It may be true that the OGL gave people who disliked these changes a somewhat stronger position, but blaming the OGL for this dissatisfaction is just shooting the messenger -- in my view at least.To sum up, I think 5e absolutely does need an OGL, not because of the "good will" it engenders (though that's a useful side effect) but because an OGL helps consumers and WotC alike.</blockquote>

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