Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="GM Dave" data-source="post: 5875334" data-attributes="member: 6687992">The point of a good OGL is to make sure your new product is well supported from launch.I was just looking at a Penny Arcade today that pointed to a major product for the Vita system that was shipped a week ahead of the Vita.  The character was all set to play as soon as he could get his Vita system.To make sure of that product available at launch, you need outside designers with enough lead time to hold on to some of the material and play with it.  It is also a good source of playtesters as they often have seen other products and are familiar with your design goals.Modules are never the same audience or print run that the main RPG books are and trying to bare all that in house (4e did much of that) reduces what is produced and eats up resources that could go to other things.There is a danger with 3rd party materials becoming splat sensations but they are often a good source of ideas.  It was 3rd party developers in 3e that really latched onto Prestige Classes in the beginning and created things like the Quinisential Line of books.Paizo has left Psionics to 3rd party development as it is something that only a sub-set of their market really wants in the game at this time.Going with a module style of design and character themes the 3rd party developers could be given space to design modern, pirate theme, or undead/monster hunter style (samples of many other ideas) of materials which have audiences but are not part of the core DnD market.These options can bring in money (apple does it all the time and gets 30% of sales through their store).  Developers though need to have time to commit their resources to develop the materials.Another good point of this approach is to remember that talent is going to produce and creativity is going to write.The 3rd party people are going to make something in the next 18 months (they have bills to pay too).  You can either harness their energies with an OGL aimed at your product or leave them free to develop products for another product line that will consume your audience's dollars.I work for a company that does a certain amount of free work.  We do free work (customer doesn't pay a dime while the company still pays employees and overhead) because the company knows that if it doesn't do that work then those people will pay money to a competitor.  It also provides a nice tag line to say we did so much work for free.</blockquote>

Verification