Are we fair to WotC?

[Remus Lupin]

WotC is lucky they created the OGL or folks would have drifted much further from D&D than just next door to Pathfinder. If anything, the OGL essentially kept those not enamored with 4E in the neighborhood where WotC might have a chance to invite them over for 5E and maybe get them to stick around. If they had used the OGL with 4E, they might even have more folks playing some version of it, even if it is one that is highly modified, in-house or by third party publishers. But as to folks who didn't like 4E playing 4E if the OGL had never existed? Naw. There are simply too many alternatives and communication with the Internet puts them all right in front of you. I doubt there are enough folks who would play a game they dislike often enough and long enough to significantly change the bottom line of 4E's level of success.

The two major factors that led to my abandonment of D&D 4th edition were the dumping of the OGL and the major changes made to the core race/class structure (ostensibly in order to avoide being subject to the OGL). It had very detrimental knock on effects throughout the product line (including really blowing up the cosmology of the Forgotten Realms).

I'm unlikely to switch back to 5e though, simply because nothing I've seen so far has tempted me to return to the fold, and I'm quite happy with Pathfinder. That said, you're certainly right that I'm much more likely to return to the folk from Pathfinder than I might be from a radically different system.

 

[Greg K]

OGL was great probably should have put a 10 year limit on it as the early success they did have I think was influenced by the OGL.

That would have defeated one of the main purposes of the OGL- ensuring that the d20 version of D&D continued in some form and people could publish material for it without the fear of being sued should the company fall or owners of the trademark mothball the game.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

WotC is lucky they created the OGL or folks would have drifted much further from D&D than just next door to Pathfinder. If anything, the OGL essentially kept those not enamored with 4E in the neighborhood where WotC might have a chance to invite them over for 5E and maybe get them to stick around. If they had used the OGL with 4E, they might even have more folks playing some version of it, even if it is one that is highly modified, in-house or by third party publishers. But as to folks who didn't like 4E playing 4E if the OGL had never existed? Naw. There are simply too many alternatives and communication with the Internet puts them all right in front of you. I doubt there are enough folks who would play a game they dislike often enough and long enough to significantly change the bottom line of 4E's level of success.

I think you're discounting points that make your assertions much less certain.

Would the communities of sites like ENWorld found different games? Certainly. Then there are the casual gamers that make up about half of the people I've gamed with regularly (IME, I know it doesn't necessarily translate to the full gamer population) who won't play anything but D&D. Without the OGL some surely would have moved on to 4E despite not liking it as much as 3E. With the OGL they were able to stay with 3E and be supported (very important for casual gamers). Even amongst the savvier gamers of this and other sires, without a supported version of the previous edition to fall back on they may have played 4E because it was "good enough."

I'm not saying you're wrong and I'm right, but we wouldn't know unless we could take a peak into the alternate universe where the OGL was never created. And since it has and can't be rescinded, I think they need to find a business model that embraces it fully and turns it into an advantage.

 

[Mark CMG]

I think you're discounting points that make your assertions much less certain.

Would the communities of sites like ENWorld found different games? Certainly. Then there are the casual gamers that make up about half of the people I've gamed with regularly (IME, I know it doesn't necessarily translate to the full gamer population) who won't play anything but D&D. Without the OGL some surely would have moved on to 4E despite not liking it as much as 3E. With the OGL they were able to stay with 3E and be supported (very important for casual gamers). Even amongst the savvier gamers of this and other sires, without a supported version of the previous edition to fall back on they may have played 4E because it was "good enough."

I'm not saying you're wrong and I'm right, but we wouldn't know unless we could take a peak into the alternate universe where the OGL was never created. And since it has and can't be rescinded, I think they need to find a business model that embraces it fully and turns it into an advantage.

Except we know that the actual universe saw a huge rise in a well-supported Savage Worlds and others not using the OGL and that the alternate universe would have still seen the ranks of former WotC employees working on something. Certainly Paizo and Green Ronin would have come up with non-OGL systems that would have been well-supported. And those examples are really just the tip of the iceberg.

See, in my own estimation, and I'm not saying your wrong or that I am necessarily right, an alternate universe that didn't have OGL products would have also needed to not be populated by the legions of designers and developers that WotC's business model regularly culled (and still does) from their employee ranks, OGL or no. It's long been my contention that it isn't the OGL that has made business difficult WotC over the last decade, but rather their policy of regularly seeding their competition with the very talent they have developed over the years.

In that way, the OGL has helped WotC despite their seeming aversion to it, in that by those former employees keeping closer to the design philosophies that suggest a close-to-D&D product probably sells better than a whole new design, those who look for and easily find a non-D&D alternative at least often find a close-to-D&D alternative and are easier pickings to bring back to D&D if 5E actually does what WotC hopes it will.

 

[GravyFingerz]

I used to be against WotC when they stopped publishing 3rd edition books and started 4th edition stuff. I said some things that were over the line and inexcusable, all because of a game. Well, now that I'm here, I realize that I was wrong. Whether I like what they are making right now or not, the people working at WotC do not deserve that, and they don't deserve some of the rabid vitriol thrown their way. For all the work they do making games that people love, they take lots of flak and suffer a lot of attacks. We should appreciate them, even if they make products we like or do not like.