D&D 5E Any word on the gaming license for Next?

[dd.stevenson]

Come up with a compelling argument that will convince WotC corporate, their corporate parents at Hasbro, Hasbro's shareholders, and the lawyers that the OGL (or something like it, tailored to 5th) is good for them.

Unless the final game sees major changes from what's currently in the playtest document, I suspect that 5E will be easy enough for a determined 3PP to reproduce under the OGL.

This being the case, it's in WotC's interest to offer an OGL-lite that's tempting enough to dissuade 3PPs from recreating 5E under the OGL proper.

(CAVEAT: I'm taking it for granted that all the groups you name [corporate, shareholders, lawyers, etc.] are already convinced that the OGL is Totally Bad News--not necessarily a proposition I agree with!)

 

[Mark CMG]

Come up with a compelling argument that will convince WotC corporate, their corporate parents at Hasbro, Hasbro's shareholders, and the lawyers that the OGL (or something like it, tailored to 5th) is good for them.

The popularity of 3.XE versus 4.XE seems to make the argument unless the OGL had nothing to do with anyone's success, then the point would be moot.

I think it's a pretty tricky task to do so, when anyone can look at D&D's primary competition and see that the system that the company is selling is one that WotC developed and then gave away under the OGL.

That suggests that dropping 3.XE for a new system might have been premature. On the other hand, if the edition that followed was released under the OGL then the company that became their primary competition would have been supporting the followup edition.

The last thing I expect that they want is for five to ten years down the line, when they're going through all of this again, to find themselves competing with a second system that they gave away. Especially if Pathfinder is still going strong.

This seems like an argument for making a system under the OGL and sticking with it for longer than they did the first time around.

 

[Grydan]

The counter argument to that is the lack of a true 4e OGL helped give Pathfinder legs. Paizo wouldn't have made Paizo if the 4e GSL didn't threaten to cut their business off at the knees. Pathfinder is first and foremost a child of necessity.

It's not much of a counter though.

Sure, the 4E GSL being unacceptable to Paizo gave them the impetus to launch an OGL-based rule set, but if the OGL wasn't there in the first place they wouldn't have had a rule set to use.

Repeating the GSL approach this time would not produce the same result, at least on the whole Paizo/Pathfinder front (though one would expect that the whole 3rd party support aspect would indeed play out much the same). There's no second Paizo waiting in the wings, the GSL is too limited to present the option. 5th won't launch beside an actively supported 4E-derivative.

Not issuing the OGL in the first place would have prevented Paizo as we know it from ever coming into being, which is a fairly compelling argument (from a corporate point of view) that repeating the OGL could have long term negative consequences.

It's easy to come up with arguments why you shouldn't get off the tiger once you get on. What's needed to convince WotC (corporate, not the creative staff) to re-embrace the OGL are arguments for getting back on the tiger once you've already gotten off, been mauled a bit, and now there's somebody else riding the tiger.

 

[Michael Morris]

It's not much of a counter though.

Sure, the 4E GSL being unacceptable to Paizo gave them the impetus to launch an OGL-based rule set, but if the OGL wasn't there in the first place they wouldn't have had a rule set to use.

You can't unscramble an egg. The OGL is irrevocable. All attempts to undermine it will fail because of how networks (in this case networks of people) work. Whoever has the largest user base wins any conflict between systems. 4e failed in large part because it had to compete with 3e in the form of Pathfinder - it had to compete because it was very foolishly designed to be incompatible. If 5e isn't OGL to carrot entice Paizo and others off the old systems, then on the old systems they will remain and 5e is already doomed before its ink has hit the page.

EDIT: Given the stubbornness and stupidity of Hasbro's legal team and executives my prediction is this: 5e will have no OGL, will be not meet Hasbro's utterly unrealistic expectations and they will either mothball the D&D trademarks for a decade or two or sell them off like they did with Atari, with the most likely buyer being Paizo. Frankly I don't envy the 5e team - their mission is Quixotic one at best, doomed to fail through no fault of their own.

 

[Mark CMG]

It's easy to come up with arguments why you shouldn't get off the tiger once you get on. What's needed to convince WotC (corporate, not the creative staff) to re-embrace the OGL are arguments for getting back on the tiger once you've already gotten off, been mauled a bit, and now there's somebody else riding the tiger.

That presupposes they can't come up with a new tiger, ride it (and stay on it), while others grab the tail again. The problem would be not having a new tiger and everyone who wants to grab a tail sticking with the other tiger.

 

[delericho]

If 5e isn't OGL to carrot entice Paizo and others off the old systems, then on the old systems they will remain and 5e is already doomed before its ink has hit the page.

Paizo would be insane to abandon Pathfinder in favour of 5e, even if 5e were OGL. In fact, even if WotC were to offer to pay Paizo for every 5e product they produced, they would still be insane to take that deal.

 

[dmccoy1693]

3PP material appeals to about 10% of gamers, regardless of system. Some are a little higher, some a little lower. Officially licensed material (Dungeon and Dragon magazine for Paizo, Kobold Quarterly for Open Design/Kobold Press) is higher, but unofficial compatible material is about 10%. That would mean that Paizo could lose about 1/2 of their customer base to 5e and would still be doing 5 times better than they would under 5e and they would have control over the direction of their game.

For them, sticking with their own game is a much smarter idea.

 

[Kinak]

The other motivation on Paizo's side is that they don't want to let someone else control their destinies again. Even if 5e was completely OGL and Paizo got the magazine licenses back, there's no way Wizards could guarantee 6e wouldn't be another drastic "course correction."

As for the general question of licensing for 5e, I'd guess we'll see something more like the GSL than the OGL. But I haven't seen anything resembling official word.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[I'm A Banana]

Come up with a compelling argument that will convince WotC corporate, their corporate parents at Hasbro, Hasbro's shareholders, and the lawyers that the OGL (or something like it, tailored to 5th) is good for them.

Grow The Hobby: "Free to play," and then selling books and adventures, helps expose your game to the widest possible audience.

Discourage Piracy: If the core rules are available for free, fewer people will download the books "just to check out the product."

Maintain Current Market Presence Without Creating Product: Let the upstarts work to advocate your product for you by making things that you never would, or generating products in slow periods. All the cost of developing new things you've effectively put on the shoulders of those willing to shoulder that cost.

Dissolve the Major Competitor's Advantage: Pathfinder's OGL game keeps them well-regarded, sympathetic, and agile. If you DON'T go OGL, you'll still have to compete with the OGL.

Make the Game Own-able: The biggest spenders on your game are the trufans who dedicate significant portions of their lives to it. Anything that can create a sense of ownership in the player base is to be encouraged, as that digs the brand deep withing the person's life, such that brand loyalty can dig deep. Allowing amateurs to publish their own works for others to get cements that loyalty like few other things.

Recognize the Reality of Your IP: D&D has always been a game built on the intellectual property of others. Without the proprietary works of creators like Tolkein, Howard, Leiber, et al, and the public domain that these authors in turn used, there would be no D&D. Additionally, as a game, many of D&D's innovations cannot be considered the property of their "creators" (more like "discoverers," but eh). The OGL recognizes this, and leverages it to advantage, rather than trying to erect a wall around it.

...is six reasons enough? I can probably do more.

 

[Dausuul]

It's an interesting question. Mike Mearls and company would probably like to go fully OGL, but I expect the Hasbro brass (to the extent that it knows or cares about D&D) is dead set against it. It's pretty easy to draw a direct line from the OGL to Pathfinder eating WotC's lunch. You can argue that if Wizards hadn't tried to abandon the OGL with 4E, Pathfinder never would have happened, and I'd agree. But if there had been no OGL in the first place, Pathfinder also would not have happened.

As Grydan says, it's easy to make a case for not trying to get off the tiger. It's much harder to convince someone who's gotten off to get back on. If I were a Hasbro suit, I'd be asking, "Let's say we go open like you want, and 5E takes off big. Sometime down the road we're going to want to make 6E. What assurance can you give me that some upstart won't create a 5E-Pathfinder and split our customer base down the middle again?"

There are counter-arguments to be made against that, but they rely to an uncomfortable degree on nebulous theories about network externalities, community goodwill, and such-like. Those theories will be a tough sell to a suspicious Hasbro executive whose primary concern is to avoid looking bad in front of the CEO. The executive's thinking is apt to be, "If I keep tight hold of the IP and 5E tanks, I can point to the history of 4E and say D&D was beyond saving. We'll mothball the brand and revisit it ten years from now. But if I take 5E open and we have another Pathfinder debacle, I'm history."

My guess: The 5E license will be designed to make it safe and easy for 3PPs to write 5E adventures and supplements, with an eye toward fostering a vibrant third-party community. Not only will that strengthen the game, it will also allow D&D to continue with minimal active support from Wizards, so they can keep a modest revenue stream from the core books even if Hasbro mothballs the brand. However, those core books will remain closed. You will not be allowed to reprint the 5E Player's Handbook minus a few spell names. That will be the price of getting the suits on board.