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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 9575050" data-attributes="member: 3400">Yeah, eyeheartawk is right. They figured that they'd still be selling the core rulebooks even if people were making heavy use of the 3pp material published under the OGL. And it's not that they didn't just count on Paizo building Pathfinder to be more direct competition, they didn't anticipate products like Mutants and Masterminds either. Or, really, any of the other OGL-based RPGs that wouldn't have used the 3e core rulebooks or deviated so substantially that they weren't really compatible anymore. I'm not entirely sure that was part of the original design intent. It's true that the OGL protected the d20/3e version of D&D from being inaccessible, but I don't think they necessarily intended it to be a defense against alternate design directions taken by an otherwise healthy company. Defense against said company jerking around with the licensing... yeah, maybe. I just don't think it was defense against 4e, per se, as much as against the shenanigans of the GSL.</blockquote>