CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing (He/They)
It took some digging around, but this is what I was talking about. It's a graph of the top five TTRPGs over the years, from 2004 to 2019. It shows D&D tied with Paizo in 1st place late around late 2010, when D&D Essentials was released. Pathfinder then drops to 2nd place for a few months, before rising to the #1 slot for more than 3 years.Not quite. The 4th Edition GSL did push Paizo into doing what they were already planning on doing, create their own Pathfinder game. And it was a very successful game. However, Pathfinder sales didn't eclipse D&D sales until AFTER 4th Edition stopped publication and WotC wasn't producing ANY D&D content for a while. As soon as they started up with 5th Edition, Pathfinder slipped back down to second place.
So, yep, that checks out: Wizards of the Coast stopped publishing 4E material in 2010, and Pathfinder rose to #1 immediately thereafter.
Here's the other one I was looking for, also with the Top Five games over the years, but with key events (such as release dates) marked.
It's interesting to look at for a couple of reasons.
One, Pathfinder jumped to 2nd Place immediately as it was released, meaning it already had a huge fan base ready to support it. A fan base at least as large and as active as the previous #2 slot (Warhammer 40K, which was considered at the time to be the "next-best-thing" to playing D&D.) I'd wager that those fans are still there, with plenty of reinforcements...especially if this ENWorld poll is to be believed.
Two, D&D shot up from 6th place all the way to 1st place in just three months after 5E was just announced, allowing it to debut in 2nd place behind Pathfinder. I had been genuinely worried for the D&D brand, and things had been going poorly for them for years-- it was a relief to see so many players and third-party publishers return to D&D after all that time. I wonder how much of that immediate resurrection was due to the less-restrictive OGL, and the influence of third-party publishers? And how much of that was from 4E's fans, rushing to buy up the last of the 4E books before they were gone forever?
Yup, I agree.Still, your point stands . . . WotC's open license shenanigans during the 4th Edition probably did have a lot to do with making Pathfinder the success it was. And their current shenanigans with the new "OGL" is already pushing publishers to create their own systems and new, truly open, licenses. The situation isn't identical, but history does seem to be repeating itself . . . .
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