Are we fair to WotC?

[N'raac]

The failure of companies to follow a sound plan does not prove the plan would not be sound. Pathfinder is in its 4th year and still going pretty strong and there is a solid core of 3pp who are making a living off of supporting it. (and by "a living" I mean there are more than 1 where being a 3pp for Pathfinder is their day job.)

I have seen a few providers of 3^rd party content, but I’m not sure which ones provide such content as a full-time job. I’d expect that would mean more than an AP every year or two.

I would also suggest that printing a 2nd edition rulebook is not analogous to reinventing your game. Call of Cthulhu has done a pretty good job of sticking with a core set of rules (a ruleset which is flexible enough to support other systems) and of producing support material for the core system, while at the same time branching out. Of the companies following the current WotC model (Games Workshop follows a similar path) I notice growing dissatisfaction and eventual migration to other steadier systems.

The extent of rule changes is a good point. I remember reading 3e and thinking it was a good game, but not the same game it purported to the a 3rd edition of. 4e and 5e deviate as much, if not more, from their own predecessors. But how much change makes it “a new edition” is a tenuous line to draw. There are still BECMI and 1e supporters out there, but I would suggest 1e/2e were the same game, different editions.

As for the OGL, it was adopted by another company (more than one actually) and they are the current leader in roleplaying games. In point of fact, the OGL was even adopted by other companies to support other rule's systems than d20.

Can you explain further what you mean here? Citations would help

I suspect the big one is Pathfinder, but I can’t count Pathfinder, or any company whose work is based on the OGL, as they did not get a choice. That said, Pathfinder has made a lot of its additional rules open source as well. I’m unclear as to where they draw the line in that regard. It is not lost on me, however, that had there been no OGL, there would be no Pathfinder to outsell 4e.

 

[Warbringer]

Now I have nothing but love for the campaign model (that's what I've always done), but I wonder if a version of D&D that made the characters the focus of development, rather than the narrative of the campaign, might be better for more casual players. Sort of a D&D meets Skylanders.

Oh, I agree.. Nothing worse than a friend who shows interest asking "so, how long do you play a character...", and then fumbling with an answer that is it " for the rest of your life" .... Mwahaha...

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Plus, production of too many units of each campaign product without a clear idea how many would actually sell, production of box sets that were more expensive to make than the selling price, etc.

I've been wondering if a company the size of WotC could focus on digital distribution and leverage print on demand to service those who want a physical book. This would see to at least save them the sunk costs if they overestimate an offering's popularity.

I suspect the big one is Pathfinder, but I can’t count Pathfinder, or any company whose work is based on the OGL, as they did not get a choice. That said, Pathfinder has made a lot of its additional rules open source as well. I’m unclear as to where they draw the line in that regard. It is not lost on me, however, that had there been no OGL, there would be no Pathfinder to outsell 4e.

I was thinking he was referring to FUDGE and FATE.

 

[Wicht]

Can you explain further what you mean here? Citations would help

Paizo embraced the OGL. Pathfinder is currently (and has been for a while) the leading RPG in the United States. If one is to contend that the OGL spells doom for those that embrace it, they must explain how Paizo manages to make it work so well. My opinion (though I like to think its an informed opinion) is that the OGL model has better sustainability than the "create a new game every few years" model.

As to other game systems using the license than just d20, there is FATE, Fudge, and Traveller to name just three.

Anyway, it is not correct or fair to say that companies uniformly flee the OGL. The current leading RPG company in the US (Paizo) uses it and other companies do as well, and the games produced can have quite a following (such as FATE), though not, of course in the Pathfinder numbers.

 

[N'raac]

It's fine to note Pathfinder is still in its 1st edition, but it was released in 2009. 4e was released in 2008, and we don't have 5e D&D yet. Will Pathfinder never have a new edition? Will Pathfinder 1e last longer than 4E D&D? 3e was released in 2000, and lasted 3 years without revision (the Pathfinder rules have had minor fixes, but not to the 3e/3.5 level, IMO) and 8 to the next edition., so Pathfinder 2nd Ed needs to be later than 2017 to match that!

 

[Ahnehnois]

Releasing something for free does not prevent people from buying it. Certainly reduces the likelihood somewhat, but at the moment the entire entertainment industry basically depends on people buying things that they could get for free. Buying an rpg when there's a free SRD online is little different than buying a song that is freely (and legally, in many cases) downloadable.

And that's pretty much what Paizo is counting on.

 

[Wicht]

I have seen a few providers of 3^rd party content, but I’m not sure which ones provide such content as a full-time job. I’d expect that would mean more than an AP every year or two.

Off the top of my head, I know Owen Stephens of Super Genius and Steve Russel of Rite both do it as day jobs. There are a few others though I believe.

The extent of rule changes is a good point. I remember reading 3e and thinking it was a good game, but not the same game it purported to the a 3rd edition of. 4e and 5e deviate as much, if not more, from their own predecessors. But how much change makes it “a new edition” is a tenuous line to draw. There are still BECMI and 1e supporters out there, but I would suggest 1e/2e were the same game, different editions.

i actually think the change from 2e to 3e was a good one because the ruleset was more robust and more flexible. It was a better platform for a core game than the original. Along with the rules being changed, they kept the world the same. 4e trashed both rules and world and while a game might survive one or the other (in a pinch I would say changing world is the bigger deal actually), changing both seems to me a bad idea. I notice with all the changes to their rules over time, one thing Games Workshop has never messed with much is their world, except to expand it.

 

[N'raac]

Off the top of my head, I know Owen Stephens of Super Genius and Steve Russel of Rite both do it as day jobs. There are a few others though I believe.

The former appears to license several other systems. The latter looks to be only Pathfinder and FATE which, I believe, are OGL, so that's one at least.

i actually think the change from 2e to 3e was a good one because the ruleset was more robust and more flexible. It was a better platform for a core game than the original. Along with the rules being changed, they kept the world the same. 4e trashed both rules and world and while a game might survive one or the other (in a pinch I would say changing world is the bigger deal actually), changing both seems to me a bad idea. I notice with all the changes to their rules over time, one thing Games Workshop has never messed with much is their world, except to expand it.

I wasn't assessing which was the better game, just that they were not the same game.

 

[Wicht]

I suspect the big one is Pathfinder, but I can’t count Pathfinder, or any company whose work is based on the OGL, as they did not get a choice. That said, Pathfinder has made a lot of its additional rules open source as well. I’m unclear as to where they draw the line in that regard. It is not lost on me, however, that had there been no OGL, there would be no Pathfinder to outsell 4e.

I separated out this part of the post because it just screams for attention. To say that you cannot count the leading RPG company and their practices because they use the OGL and therefore are not a good indicator of the usefulness of the OGL seems more than passing strange. Paizo had a choice. They chose the OGL. They did not have to do that. There were at least two other choices open to them at the time. They picked a path and have made a wild success out of it. It is possible, if not probable, that the success is due in some small part as to the nature of the choice they made and the choices they have made since. Paizo has a different model than WotC and it has shown itself to be more successful than the model WotC is using.

As for how much of Pathfinder is OGL, the answer is all of it: every rule, including all the rules and monsters they have published since 2009.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I wasn't assessing which was the better game, just that they were not the same game.

Having started with 2e myself, I never understood that sentiment. The d20 system was exactly what we were awkwardly converting THAC0 into in our heads anyway. NWPs were fun, but skills and feats were a perfectly logical replacement; it never made any sense that you couldn't take ranks in Obscure Knowledge. The 2e saving throws were ridiculously bizarre, while the three new categories made perfect sense. Standardizing the levels so that every level comes at the same time and adding level-by-level multiclassing were so much easier and more intuitive. And the classes were very similar across editions; the most tangible difference is that clerics/druids got 9 levels of spells.

To me, 2e-3e was not much bigger of a deal than 3.0-3.5. Very intuitive, very easy to learn, played the same way. A few details and idiosyncrasies lost, a lot of clarity and consistency gained. I'm not sure on what level it was a different game.