D&D Insider - Pay tomorrow for what you get today for free?

[Belen]

One day wotc will be producing the only dungeons and dragons related material and small portion of die hard anti-hasbros are not going to stop the profit margin their hoping to make. And WOTC won't care who takes their ball and go home.

Unless that go back to the bad days of TSR, then this will not happen. They will never be able to control people from making their own stuff. Hell, most of my "D&D" material outside the core books comes from me already.

Just because fans may not be able to profit from D&D any longer does not mean that they will not go back to creating free material.

 

[DonTadow]

Unless that go back to the bad days of TSR, then this will not happen. They will never be able to control people from making their own stuff. Hell, most of my "D&D" material outside the core books comes from me already.

Just because fans may not be able to profit from D&D any longer does not mean that they will not go back to creating free material.

What they will be able to do is stop you from distributing it. Most people don't have time to make their own material. Most people's home stuff is usually broken anyway. Heck, a ton of stuff I review is broken. Thats why Wotc produced material is so appealing to me. I know it fits into their system.

 

[SkidAce]

I don't believe they will be able to stop me from distributing d20 material, IANAL.

 

[Dykstrav]

What they will be able to do is stop you from distributing it.

Maybe in the official on-the-bookshelf at your FLGS sense. But with the internet and the ease of desktop publishing, there's now way you could ever stop someone from making material for D&D or anything else and distributing it. All you could do is make it very difficult for them to make any money at it.

You can trademark brand names like "Dungeons & Dragons." What you can't do is trademark content like, "roll 1d6+1," "the character has an ability of 15," or "elf wizard and dwarf fighter." It'd be comparatively easy to strip out the protected elements and leave useable material.

Ever seen the complete guide to unlawful carnal knowledge for fantasy role-playing games? http://www.vipecommerce.com/~gnba/books/olik/NetBooks_Guides.html

It never once says "D&D," but if you check it out there's no mistaking what game system it's designed for.

If WotC did ever crack down on unofficial content, the same thing would happen to them that happened to T$R. They were doing this ten years ago. The player base would splinter and fragment, negative word-of-mouth would slow sales, and the "official" material would decline in both quality and sales.

 

[MojoGM]

Since I am not a person who pays money for web resourses, I'll pass.

Now this I think is the problem. Not you specifically, but this attitude in general. People who stick to this "if it in on the Web it should be free" mentality stifles advances.

If things on the web remain free, then we will only reach a certain level of quality and no more. I'm willing to pay for content, how it is delivered is not important. In fact, I'd prefer to see more content delivered electronically (newspapers and magazine for example) but don't expect them to be free.

Once these little devices become more advanced:

www.sony.com/reader

Then maybe we can do away with paper altogether...

But back on topic, I'm willing to subscribe if I see value in what they are offering, so I think this is a great idea.

 

[Vigilance]

Color me bored. They would have to really offer something special for this to grab my attention.

Instead, I will just start buying stuff from Phil Reed that I will use rather than pay a fee to WOTC for a chance to see if I could use some of what they offer.

In other words, you're willing to pay, it just has to be good.

I said that. I included the caveat "assuming it's all high quality" in every one of my posts.

But assuming it IS of the same quality or better as the adventures that have been on the wotc site for free in the past, or as good as the 3rd party stuff at RPGNow, then I have no problem with them charging for it.

That's all I said.

Chuck

 

[Vigilance]

Wizards is scuttling YEARS of development effort just so they can add a shiny bit to their web subscription. That is not a good move for we the consumers. I consider it a foolish move.

I think it would be more accurate to say that they are doing this to increase the bottom line, the amount of black ink on the balance sheet.

That's very different than a new shiny web bit.

 

[sjmiller]

Now this I think is the problem. Not you specifically, but this attitude in general. People who stick to this "if it in on the Web it should be free" mentality stifles advances.

To refute that statement I refer you to the extremely creative folks at boingboing.net and other similar websites. These folks are all extremely creative, and believe in the Creative Commons Copyright, which allows for great advances to be given free.

Once these little devices become more advanced:

www.sony.com/reader

Then maybe we can do away with paper altogether...

No, you can't do away with paper altogether, because there will always be people like myself who get a headache from reading too much online, and those who just prefer to have paper books to electronic files. I fit that category too.

Free online material does not mean it is creatively limited or capped in any way. Those sorts of limits are only supplied by the creators themselves.

 

[Qualidar]

Add in a character generator and virtual gaming table and it sounds like a great idea (assuming the price is in the $20 per month range- and assuming everything offered- the character generator, the gaming materials and the virtual game table are all high quality).

Was this a mistake? Do you actually think $20/month to be a reasonable number?

~Qualidar~

 

[Kapture]

Er, none of this has anything to do with what I said.

MMORPGs have to charge for bandwidth and servers (unless they're not-really-MMORPGs like Guild Wars, which is just Diablo II in a nice suit, but that's another thread). The comparison with WotC charging for "hey, here's a preview of Cityscape and hey, you can store 10 characters online" when D&D works just dandy without the Internet -- or even a computer -- doesn't work at all.

Some of it does. I haven't seen you say that this would make wizards bad people, but you've been saying it's a bad idea, based on the idea that the free content is part of what makes DND a sucess.

It's true, people love free content. But plenty of people are also saying they don't like the wizards.com free content. Many people also pay for content in the form of books or magazine.

You've also said that the quality of the wizards.com site in the past is an absolute predictor of the quality of their stuff in the future. That seems like an odd assertation, given that I assume that wotc doesn't put that much effort or money into their site. Why would they start a new business (a pay site), and not sink money into writers and developers? I mean, they might not... but why wouldn't they?

So, let's assume that all this new content is of better quality. I imagine (key word) that an online game table, for which they would need bandwidth, and servers, to run, could be as popular as MMPORG's. People like to chat, right? More and more people do that on line, in chat rooms, in online communities, with IM's, on newsgroups, in MMPORG's. People like to play DND, or other role playing games, in chat rooms, in online communities, with IM's, on newsgroups, in MMPORG's.

On-line table top could be very interesting to people who are bored with grind MMPORG's, who don't have local groups, who have friends who game in other cities. If the interface adds something, and there's no reason it couldn't, it would be even more interesting to them, I would think.