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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steel_Wind" data-source="post: 8888539" data-attributes="member: 20741">It's worth remembering the circumstances under which the OGL was made: the AD&D brand had failed. TSR became insolvent and the entire RPG business, such as it was, was caught up in the paralysis of that event. Retailers were affected for ~nearly a year due to the "printer problem". WotC ultimately bought TSR, and its new custodians embarked on a course to ensure that something like that would never happen again.  Nobody else in the business wanted it to happen again, either.The RPG business -- to describe it as an "industry" is even now a puffed up brag -- was not going to be caught staring motionless into the headlights again. The OGL was created so that would be avoided in the future, while at the same time, giving every other RPG company an opportunity to marshal their resources and contribute to a new D&D and D20 brand going forward. It was to be a big tent -- all would be able to find their space within it and have a chance to flourish, serving the same game. It is worth remembering that at the time in 2000, the opinion of WotC was that adventures for D&D were not profitable. That was an aspect of the business that WotC did not want to service. For the most part, WotC envisioned that adventures would be principally written by 3pp, not WotC. THAT was also very much the context in which the OGL was issued.AND IT WORKED.Yes, there were some rough spots; yes, most other RPG games ultimately retreated from a carte blanche D20 approach. But in the main? This approach worked. 3.xx was successful -- wildly so. We know what happened in 2008 and that did not go nearly as well. And it turned out that by 2010, Paizo had proven that adventures were profitable. That took some reassessment by WotC. It recalibrated and by late 2015, it was clear that 5e was successful. Over the past three years? It's clearly been a runaway hit. The salad days are back. No longer is WotC looking for others to serve core aspects of its RPG business. Now it wants to exclude others from participating in that business and so reap a richer harvest.What they may end up reaping instead, is a whirlwind. The OGL worked not only because it was commercially successful -- but it was commercially successful because it was legally binding. So much so that extricating itself from the OGL going forward, while still keeping a foot in the present state of the game, is both a legal and business problem that is FAR easier said than done.</blockquote>

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