Do you think the OGL was a good idea?

[GMforPowergamers]

I don't see how. The retroclones are of stuff that wasn't covered by the OGL in the first place, so it doesn't apply. They instead depend on the fact that copyright covers specific expressions, but not underlying logic of a system.

I didn't want to restart this so I used general terms... I mean PATHFINDER

 

[JeffB]

Bad for WOTC and D&D proper, in the long run.

Great for the gaming community at large.

For me personally, OSR, 13th Age, DCCRPG, and d20 adventures (paizo standalones, froggie/necro, old Kalamar stuffz) are where its at. I loved a great deal about 4e, but in practice it was alot of work converting adventures, and most of the published 4e stuff (DDI, or print) was abysmal, IME.

 

[The Black Ranger]

in the very short term it was ok, in the few years after it was good, in the long term bad... if it had an expiration date it would stop retro clones from feeding the edition wars.

I know it is an unpopular opionon, and I expect it to be less the 10% of the votes, but I would rathered they not do open source for ever,

Bad for whom in the long run?

 

[The Human Target]

I don't think its possible to know for a fact whether it was good or bad.

Was it good for gaming companies overall? Yes, a bunch sprang up during that period, and some still exist.

Was it good for games themselves? Eh, we got a whole ton of new games across genres, which is good. But a lot of them kind of cram themselves into a d20 straightjo that doesn't quite fit. Which is bad, and boring.

Was it good for the DnD brand and WotC as a company? It sure seems that it was at first. But now its caused the player base to split even more, and a lot of companies have made money off of their successful design.

 

[Morrus]

I don't think the OGL would have bitten WotC on the ass had the environment been different. T was a perfect storm of timing - a bunch if their lung-term, highly competent staff had moved to Paizo, they whipped the magazine rug from under Paizo's feet and left them floundering, and they failed to adequately support 4E with a decent license. Had those three things not happened, the extremely unlikely case of them creating their own biggest competitor would not have happened. Heck, a 4E supported by the OGL could have been backed by Paizo's adventure paths and magazines.

So while I agree that the OGL proved WotC's undoing in the long run, it wasn't the nature if the OGL itself that did that. It was the result of a series of other decisions, and the OGL just ended up being the tool used to highlight that.

I plan to use the OGL for my own game. I do not believe what happened to WotC will happen to me because that required a very special set of circumstances and decisions.

 

[DaveMage]

If WotC had embraced the OGL like Paizo has, there would likely be no Pathfinder.

Once the OGL creators and proponents were gone, WotC didn't have a clue how to leverage the OGL, and instead ran from it. Now, they're developing their 5th set of core rules in only 14 years.

Sad, really.

 

[Elf Witch]

I didn't want to restart this so I used general terms... I mean PATHFINDER

What you are assuming is that if it was not for Pathfinder the people who didn't like 4E would have just sucked it up and switched. I think you are wrong they either would have kept playing 3E or switched to another system.

I see this argument a lot that Pazio split the fanbase but I think the fact that many players didn't like 4E was more the problem.

Also as others have said WOTC decsions forced pazio into doing Pathfinder to stay in business.

 

[Mark CMG]

Once the OGL creators and proponents were gone, WotC didn't have a clue how to leverage the OGL, and instead ran from it.

AFAIK, few individuals are responsible for more OGC than Mike Mearls.

 

[Morrus]

AFAIK, few individuals are responsible for more OGC than Mike Mearls.

Really? I mean, I think I am and I'm small fry.

 

[Ahnehnois]

What you are assuming is that if it was not for Pathfinder the people who didn't like 4E would have just sucked it up and switched. I think you are wrong they either would have kept playing 3E or switched to another system.

True as that may be, without the OGL and its subsequent abandonment, there probably wouldn't be a 4e as we know it, because there would have been no need to so strongly differentiate it from the existing game. When we think 4e now, we think of powers and roles and standard modifiers and such, but a 4e without those things might not have alienated people in the same way. There's no telling what creative direction the game would have taken absent the business imperative to make it totally different from 3e and to dilute the content as much as possible to sell DDI.