D&D 5E Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition OGL?

[Kalontas]

This means that probably the OGL is irrelevant for the success of 5e.

No, it only means the pre-orders are irrelevant as an argument towards the summarised success in the end - as 3E didn't have an equal competitor.

 

[xechnao]

No, it only means the pre-orders are irrelevant as an argument towards the summarised success in the end - as 3E didn't have an equal competitor.

Huh? It means that fans want to buy the game no matter if it is OGL or not (4e was not an OGL game). Now, of course, as you say, fans will stay with the game only if it is good enough, especially if there is some competitor around.
But this is a different matter. To put it another way: it does not mean that if 5e is OGL, that 5e will be a good game.

 

[xechnao]

This ignore several important factors. First, that preorders are not the only measure of (financial) success. I would place more importance on the number of customers who actually knew what they were buying, later on.

It does not ignore any factor. My point was not that pre-orders are important for financial success. My point was that the OGL is not an important thing for financial success as fans do not think it makes the product more valuable for them, since they are equally willing to buy the product if they know that the product is not under OGL. Simply put, the fans do not care whether the product is under OGL or not.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

When WotC went to a 'new edition' they decided to aggressively combat the existing game, openly deride its adherents, and radically redefine the design goals. If WotC had stayed OGL and instead revised 3.5e or created a new ruleset based on 3e, they might have maintained their market share. While not without its critics, the 3.0 to 3.5 transition resulted in most people converting to the latter, even though 3.0 was still available. There's no reason to think the same thing couldn't have happened again if handled right.

I'm not going to argue how they launched 4E. But if there was no major competitor to the new edition your choices would be 1) switch; 2) continue playing an unsupported game; or 3) quit. IME most gamers have a big problem with option #3 and the majority dislike playing an unsupported game enough to have probably made the switch. There would, of course, have been those who did choose options 2 or 3, but not as many that continued playing a supported version of 3E because of the OGL.

Would they have been able to satisfy critics of 3e, or attract new business while doing so? That's harder to say. But it's hard for me to see the OGL has a hindrance; its more like a check on the power of the company.

That's what I'm trying to say. WotC put a check on its own power. Ask most companies if that's good for business and my guess is that you'd get a big NO. Is the power check good for gamers? It seems to be so far, but time will tell.

 

[KidSnide]

The third party licensing structure for 5e is an interesting question, but it is closely connected to whether third parties will have access to DDI.

So long as 5e maintains the principal of "all the rules you need are on the character sheet", it will be very difficult for third parties to create player supplements without the ability to add their classes, races, powers and items to DDI. Similarly, whether the success of the VTT is tied (both ways, I think) to whether third parties can publish maps and monsters in a way that DMs don't have to upload everything by hand.

I don't know if there would be enough third party material to justify WotC building an "app store" revenue stream from DDI, but I think that should be the goal of WotC's third party program. The objective should be to give third parties the freedom to explore niches in the game that WotC can't address, providing the third parties with the motivation to evangelize the game, and establishing an infrastructure to allow third parties to take advantage of WotC's dominant on-line tools in return for letting WotC capture part of the third party revenue stream.

Yes, third parties also need access to a fair and reasonable licensing regime, but that's only part of the solution.

-KS

 

[Glade Riven]

Third Party support isn't needed at launch - it is needed to keep sales going even longer. Opening something up makes lawyers and excutives nervous, because it means giving up a certain amount of control.

For those who may argue that they cannot make money off of free, isn't the Eberron MMO free to play, and has made more money for WotC after they took on the free-to-play model? Arguably, this is equivolent to having a free SRD along side your books.

 

[Kalontas]

Huh? It means that fans want to buy the game no matter if it is OGL or not (4e was not an OGL game). Now, of course, as you say, fans will stay with the game only if it is good enough, especially if there is some competitor around.
But this is a different matter. To put it another way: it does not mean that if 5e is OGL, that 5e will be a good game.

If pre-orders are a measure of anything, they're a measure of success of the previous edition of a game. Because people haven't seen the new edition yet, they don't know whether it's good or bad - but if the previous edition was successfull, they will buy the next edition, in hopes of continued quality.

And that's what happened with 4E. Guess what did not happen - it did not hold the market share. A very prominent reason for that was GSL - undeniable fall of the number of 3PP materials meant far less material, meant far less players holding on to the game. Also, the GSL directly caused Pathfinder - as repeated numerous times in this thread, Paizo was ready to work for 4E, but GSL shut them so much, they profited more from their own retro clone. And how!

Also, I do not argue anything about 5E, as I have no information about it. I know literally nothing, including whether it's something more than a nagging feeling of need of change in minds of developers of D&D. As such, I can't say if it will be good with an OGL - but it certainly will start falling into further decline without it.

 

[Mark CMG]

The third party licensing structure for 5e is an interesting question, but it is closely connected to whether third parties will have access to DDI.

I think that is one of the more important points made in this entire thread. Wish I brought it up myself.

 

[Henry]

What would 5E rules released under the OGL bring to WotC? In my opinion:

1)Good Will from the Gamer-proselytizers. Those folks who used the OGL to create and publish whatever variant of 5E suited their creative little fancies, allowed them to create the adventure content to share that they wanted, and in general work out issues they have with the game system with no repercussions. With the GSL, there was a feeling of "we don't want you anymore" to the community of tinkerers, who, in my perception of it, where usually those same grass-roots proselytizers.

2) Feeding game design innovations back into 5E. People forget that many of 4E's innovations can be traced to Mearls, and Mearls was an OGL Master before he was a WotC Developer. Who knows who the next Mearls is waiting to be tapped for a future D&D?

Everyone who dislikes the OGL can feel free to tell me how wrong I am and how unnecessary it is.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

What would 5E rules released under the OGL bring to WotC? In my opinion:

1)Good Will from the Gamer-proselytizers. Those folks who used the OGL to create and publish whatever variant of 5E suited their creative little fancies, allowed them to create the adventure content to share that they wanted, and in general work out issues they have with the game system with no repercussions. With the GSL, there was a feeling of "we don't want you anymore" to the community of tinkerers, who, in my perception of it, where usually those same grass-roots proselytizers.

2) Feeding game design innovations back into 5E. People forget that many of 4E's innovations can be traced to Mearls, and Mearls was an OGL Master before he was a WotC Developer. Who knows who the next Mearls is waiting to be tapped for a future D&D?

Everyone who dislikes the OGL can feel free to tell me how wrong I am and how unnecessary it is.

If i was a wizard Exec my question how does this make money for Wizards?
TSR never had an OGL and as far as I know never had a problem recruiting talent. So I would not be convinced by 2.
If the gamer proselytizers are folk that publish games that use WoTC work to produce stuff that does not require anyone to buy WoTC stuff to play their games benifit WOTC.

Now I know many of the arguments that have been trotted out to show the value of the OGL to WoTC but that argument has been lost at senior management level at Wizards. If 5e is to be OGL something really convincing needs to be demonstrated to Wizards maangement otherwise it is not really a flyer.