How would providing game details for a setting like say, Terry Brooks, "muck" it up?
One of the things I love about RPGs based on published settings is that they often make great reference works with solid timelines.
And of course seeing how the monsters/magic of that particular setting are translatted over. Lord knows I used Cthulhu and Melnbonean mythos from the old Deities and Demigods all the way through 2nd edition.
"Muck around in", not muck it up.
I think WotC should be able to to their own and focus on that rather than spend money on other properties, and allow those other properties to create their own D&D supplements and such as they wish.
Also note the legality issues with those Deities and Demigods sections that were removed, cutting the book finally down from 144 pages to 128.
Also you would have to wonder what kind of license WotC would be able to get or not considering there own licenses for using their products. Someone may not want WotC to ever try in the future to leverage that they have more rights than they do, and WotC currently doesn't try to carry other people's work, but buys things outright for WotC to be the sole owners.
Also you have to figure how popular they would be and how close people thought it came in the world of D&D to the original. Many people quibble and fight over canonicity (is that a word? it is now!).
So will this licensed property be able to fight, and will enough people be happy with it, and how many units can you sell for the amount of work?
Right now, I think WotC needs to focus on self. Get their own house in order and a few years down the road, look for other properties to work on if there is a need, and let the market dictate or help with what people see from WotC as to whether they want WotC to work with their properties, and if it will make them money from WotC and bolster their own property without negative effects on how people view their own properties if licensed and used by WotC for D&D.
Some older stagnant properties that someone may want to make some money off of may jump on it, but more recent things are likely to be held off on.
Example: In light of recent events, I doubt you will see the WotC Harry Potter 4th edition D&D write-ups.
This would be a big thing in terms of a sort of modern D&D that may work well with 4th edition, but unlikely that they can acquire the license to use it in any cost effective manner, IF they were even given the chance before or after recent events.
Those same recent events may also have people thinking about their control over their own properties, just as probably has WotC(Scott Rouse + lawyers) thinking about the GSL.
So right now is probably not a good time for many reasons to try to diverge from wholly self-owned/created properties.
:twocents:
