Green Ronin not signing GSL (Forked Thread: Doing the GSL. Who?)

[Vocenoctum]

Here you appear to counter your own argument. If the must successful OGL product is "only the tiniest blips on the WotC sales radar" then why do they care if a 3PP makes a product "that compete directly with WotC's Products"?

Because if there's a lot of such product, and they aren't selling well and the gamestore has money locked into them, it hurts the store and the market by restricting that flow.

I stopped going to my local gamestore, because they'd only get in 2-3 copies of the new WotC, then reorder as needed. I'm not going to race someone to buy a product, I'll just go elsewhere. That's not anyones fault but the store's, but it came about because of overordering of crap.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Because if there's a lot of such product, and they aren't selling well and the gamestore has money locked into them, it hurts the store and the market by restricting that flow.

I stopped going to my local gamestore, because they'd only get in 2-3 copies of the new WotC, then reorder as needed. I'm not going to race someone to buy a product, I'll just go elsewhere. That's not anyones fault but the store's, but it came about because of overordering of crap.

Sounds to me like your LGS is order like a customer and not a business. If they do not carry enough of what sells and to much of what does not, then that is a problem with them not running their business efficiently, not a problem of competing/complimenting products.

 

[Vocenoctum]

What holes? What timeframe are you talking about? I'd like to know what dates you're talking about and which D&D leader was in the market at that time (3e or 3.5).

Personally, I think the timeline went like this:
3e released, happy friendly, bring your 3rd party!
A ton of stuff followed, clogging shelves and selling, but then stopped when consumers learned that a lot of it was crap. As consumers became more educated and looked before they leaped, gamestores and distributors reacted slowly and were stuck with product.
Then, WotC decided to ramp up production of their own. Rather than a book here, a book there, they started making 1-2 books a month. Now the glut was even worse, as folks focused on the WotC products and prominent third party's went their own way.

D20 died, except for the pdf market.

I saw a market that included class/race splatbooks from Mongoose, from Green Ronin, from Fantasy Flight, and even Goodman Games, just to name the biggest few.

There was another guy with race books, but they were some oddball size and thus evil. I think he joined a cult and preaches about the end of days now, or something.

I can name you a dozen 3PP off the top of my head and cover the majority (90%? 95%?) of the entire d20 products ever offered. I'll concede that it was a glut, but it was generally speaking a high quality glut.

I'll disagree here, I think you're forgetting a lot of the early adventure folks and such. They may not have lasted forever, but their impact on game shops was a lot longer than their business lasted.

And no, I don't mean there were 100's, and I'm not talking about Mongoose's prolific space filling. There was a lot of real junk that is probably still on shelves.

This is not a difficult exercise. Name the top 3PP you can think of off the top of your head, and you'll very quickly ID most of the d20 product that made up the glut.

I think you're focusing a bit too much on the companies that became prolific and had quality products. These guys suffered as much, if not more, as WotC from the gameshops investing money & space into crap.

Another part of it was that very few of the companies "dabbled" in a product line. They went full blast into making little pamphlet adventures and cranked out 30 of them before someone said "hey, is anyone buying this on a retail level?".

The GSL is far more attractive to 3PPs who want to dabble-- get in, make some money, get out. They won't care one whit if they are building successful product lines and a sustainable publishing business on the back of a volatile, ephemeral, and one-sided license.

I really figured more of them would go the "imprint" way. Jade Ronin, Inc a subsidiary of GR, who cranks out high quality 4e stuff and can be cut from the tree as needed, with little to no effect on the main company.

Again, if it's worth the time/ money/ trouble for them to do so. I don't really see GR as being that big on D20 anymore anyway.

The stupidest slap to me was the GSL's "can't publish early" thing.

 

[SteveC]

You have it exactly backwards. The companies who are in the best position to offer quality product-- to use their business acumen to create high quality product and to grow it into successful brands-- are the ones least likely to accept a license that can cut the legs out from all their hard work.

The GSL is far more attractive to 3PPs who want to dabble-- get in, make some money, get out. They won't care one whit if they are building successful product lines and a sustainable publishing business on the back of a volatile, ephemeral, and one-sided license.

I think this is spot on. When I initially read the GSL, I couldn't imagine using it if I were a serious publisher where gaming products were my real full time job. The decisions by the bigger publishers have largely shown that I was right.

What the GSL does create, in my opinion, is a great climate for dabblers and startup companies who don't have a proven track record, and thus don't really have anything to lose. Isn't that exactly the situation WotC doesn't want?

It's the Law of Unintended Consequences.

--Steve

 

[Cadfan]

I may regret asking, but what do you suppose that might be?

A number of things. The inability to release the same product under multiple rulesets, for one. And the inability to reprint monster stats, for two. The inability to reprint monster stats basically ensures that 3rd party adventures either 1) are obnoxious to use in comparison to WOTC adventures, or 2) involve near-cognate versions of monsters already in the monster manual (not skeletons, elf skeletons!).

I think that the current business situation for many of the larger 3rd party publishers is that D&D license material is not their major revenue generator. Instead, its material that in some way is derived from d20, but now can stand alone. As such, releases of 4e material only make sense for them if they can multi-release the same product under a couple of rules systems, or if the product is releasable on the side like an adventure. Which of course they can't now, so they're looking at their options, and going with their strengths rather than their past.

I don't think that the mutability of the agreement is a major concern. They deal with stuff like that on a daily basis. Ongoing contracts which govern the parties behavior up until the moment that one party decides to quit are, well, common. I can think of three that affect my job this very instant. They don't concern me because I have a pretty good idea of the likelihood that anyone will back out of an ongoing agreement, and that likelihood is low. This is how it is for a lot of businesses.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The "glut" and "quality control" and "competition" arguments don't hold that much water from where I'm sitting, for many of the reasons mentioned above.

What holds water is "brand identity." 4e is obsessively concerned with brand identity. The GSL is an extention of this brand identity. All the rules exist to preserve D&D's brand identity (at whatever expenses they need to have).

That's why the GSL forbids tinkering and terminates at will. That's why the GSL doesn't discriminate against basement publishers but freaks out people with valuable IP themselves. That's why the GSL mandates that a product line not be OGL as well as D&D compatible. Because WotC wants people to have a specific image in their head hwen someone says "D&D."

As an aside, I think arrogance played a bit part in the GSL. WotC assumed people would jump on board to 4e because of 3e's obvious problems and how 4e fixes them; they believe that 4e is a better game and that anyone who wants to play the best game (which should be everyone) would jump on board with it. They are the leader, and people should follow them, after all. WotC was wrong, and they didn't expect there to be this much resistence. I bet it does surprise them and they do wish things could be different.

 

[dmccoy1693]

I have this sneaking suspicion that, although its the thing that random people on ENWorld complain about the most, the third party publishers aren't actually worried about the clause permitting WOTC to change the GSL. Most of them have probably seen that sort of clause before, or dealt with that sort of business scenario before.

No, not really. Not like this. Imagine this: WotC doesn't like Mongoose's success with Traveller eating into their d20 modern/future market. So they change the GSL to include, "you cannot publish anything again that uses the OGL" (which is what WotC wanted in there originally, so I believe it is just a matter of time before that comes). While that doesn't shut down Traveller, that hurts its 3rd party companies since nothing new for Traveller will be released OGL. If I were a publisher, I would keep that in mind when I am considering working on Traveller.

The d20 license had that clause in there, but that just forbid the company from using the d20 license, not the OGL. You could still publish the exact same product with the logo blackened. You could even do something like M&M completely without the logo license. This license, nope.

 

[Korgoth]

To be clear, I never held that 3PP betrayed or failed to support WotC. (Nor did I ever feel that 3PP owed any loyalty to WotC or obligation to support WotC or D&D beyond the terms of the OGL and d20 STL.) What I observed is that WotC left holes in the marketplace, and many 3PP, rather than exploit those holes, chose to make products that competed directly with WotC's products.

That's not just bad in the OGL context--it's bad in any business context. Smart businesses look for opportunities and points of differentiation--they don't attack their competition's strengths (unless they're in a position to really win). When consumers already have good, solid choices in one product category, why pile on to that category when the need for a different type of product is unfulfilled?

Which brings me to why this is still relevant: Lots of people have observed that the GSL is designed to let WotC "regain" control of their brand and IP. That's nonsense--control of the D&D brand and IP has never been under threat. What WotC wants to do (in my no-longer-an-insider opinion) is put some controls on the market; in particular, to only open D&D compatibility to 3PPs who make products that complement (rather than compete with) WotC's products.

Is this because WotC fears the competition? No. The most successful OGL products of all time made only the tiniest blips on the WotC sales radar. If anything, a rising tide of quality D&D products drives consumer interest and floats all boats, including WotC's (which of course is part of why the OGL was created in the first place).

It's because WotC fears the glut. When an unrestricted number of companies creates an unrestricted number of products in an unrestricted range of categories (especially categories in which WotC is strong), the inevitable result is a huge glut that sucks revenues out of the sales channels and creates a swath of destruction. Consumers and retailers are confused about which products to buy, so they dabble in a range and end up with a lot of stuff that doesn't sell. Huge amounts of revenue is tied up in dead product--revenue needed to order new product or simply pay the bills. Shops close (nearly half the core hobby shops in the US shut down over the past five years--admittedly, there are other causes, but the RPG glut was a very real contributor); those that stay open order less and less new product as they see old product stack up.

So WotC changed the terms of 3PP compatibility with D&D, and made it more restrictive. Insofar as it controls the glut and keeps 3PP focused on products that players actually want and don't get (or don't get enough of) from WotC, more restrictive is good for the RPG business as a whole, it's good for WotC, and frankly it's good for the third-party publishers. And if it also means that a relatively small number of 3PP participate (currently 3 to 5, as opposed to hundreds under the OGL), so that the choices offered to consumers and retailers are relatively narrow but desirable, so much the better.

(Whether WotC did this well is not part of my argument; I leave that to a different discussion.)

(A side note: When I generalize about the behavior of 3PPs, I am, of course, generalizing. Obviously there are exceptions; I'm not pointing any fingers at specific companies. Offender or innocent: you know who you are (and odds are it's reflected in your level of success).)

(Hi, Nik!)

Mr. Ryan, your post appears to be full of revisionist history.

One of the distinctions at the heart of Open Gaming was between competitive products and competitive systems. Open Gaming was meant to reduce the market footprint of the latter, but was all for encouraging the former. Yes... you read that right: Open Gaming was meant to encourage competition. Why, you ask? Strangely, even though it is no longer the Party Line, this information is available on WOTC's own website! Here's an excerpt:

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]In other words, the more money other companies spend on their games, the more D&D sales are eventually made. Now, there are clearly issues of efficiency -- not every dollar input to the market results in a dollar output in D&D sales; and there is a substantial time lag between input and output; and a certain amount of people are diverted from D&D to other games never to return. However, we believe very strongly that the net effect of the competition in the RPG genre is positive for D&D.
[/FONT]

Open gaming, contrary to what you are saying, Mr. Ryan, was meant to encourage competition. Open gaming theorized that the more people who were actively into hobby gaming, the more revenue WOTC would harvest. Because D&D is the most popular role playing game, it benefits from the success even of competing products, because gamers as a whole tend to buy D&D stuff. A few will not, but overall D&D revenues are directly proportional to overall role playing revenues.


[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]This competition also ultimately grows the D&D brand. Why? Because as the amounts of supporting products become increasingly vast, the market becomes more resistant to alternate game systems. They have enough to choose from already!
[/FONT]


Then there's another part of the competition equation:

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The other great effect of Open Gaming should be a rapid, constant improvement in the quality of the rules. With lots of people able to work on them in public, problems with math, with ease of use, of variance from standard forms, etc. should all be improved over time. The great thing about Open Gaming is that it is interactive -- someone figures out a way to make something work better, and everyone who uses that part of the rules is free to incorporate it into their products. Including us. So D&D as a game should benefit from the shared development of all the people who work on the Open Gaming derivative of D&D.[/FONT]

See, rather than WOTC feeling annoyed when small-timers showed them up in terms of quality, WOTC was supposed to be overjoyed that someone else came up with an innovation that they can now incorporate for free!


Dancey goes on to mention that there is even a simpler version of the game, a "rules-light" version as Tweet put it, that can be constructed. He says the game can be extended to other genres, and it could even be made diceless. WOTC might experiment with some of these things, "or other people may choose to invest the time and energy to do so".


I think it's inappropriate to blame the so-called "glut" for the collapse of hobby stores, expecially with gasoline over 4 dollars a gallon. Game stores have collapsed out of poor business sense maybe (but in my opinion anybody who orders 500 copies of "OGL Chimney Sweeps" is going to go out of business eventually anyway)... but it's as much the economy as anything else. When people tighten the belt, it obviously gets tightened around luxuries.


Nevertheless, any "glut" as I assume you well know is a short-term problem. Sure... 1,000 startups come up with 1,000 different products. Most of them tank and the good ones rise to the top. That's called capitalism. In the long run, it's supposed to produce a body of superior product through an evolutionary process.


And if you'll look closely at the above quote, WOTC was supposed to take advantage of that evolution as well to incorporate innovations in their own products.


Myself, I think that if Open Gaming failed at all it was because too many changes were made to the core of the D&D game. D&D tried to become too much like Gurps and ended being overcomplicated and cumbersome for some people. A lot of people like lighter games and a lot of people liked the assumptions native to the older editions of D&D that were cast aside. So in a sense Open Gaming started off on the wrong foot because it stated up front that D&D was so successful because it was so popular and familiar, but right out of the gate they made changes that ended up (a few years down the road, for many of us) alienating a lot of the core audience.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

And no, I don't mean there were 100's, and I'm not talking about Mongoose's prolific space filling. There was a lot of real junk that is probably still on shelves.

We're still not at an agreement yet over whether or not GLUT means "crappy product" or "more product than the market would bear."

Some people say GLUT and mean the former: All this crap clogging the shelves. That is a specific indictment of quality. We'll call this kind of product crap-glut.

Some people say GLUT and mean the latter: Supply outstripped demand, independed of quality. We'll call this kind of product good-glut.

I think you're focusing a bit too much on the companies that became prolific and had quality products.

Again, it's possible to produce quality products so prolificly that you cause a glut. And yet, that's not the way most people use the glut epithet.

I mean, prolific pretty much = glut, no matter how good the product is.

These guys suffered as much, if not more, as WotC from the gameshops investing money & space into crap.

Well, let's try to put a number on it.

What percentage of the TOTAL d20 product supply in retail distribution came from "high quality" yet "prolific" 3PP?

I rather facetiously suggested 95% above, but I'm willing to run through the exercise a bit more rigorously.

If you were running a game store, how many dollars would you invest in proven-but-prolific good-glut vs. unproven crap-glut?

I would be VERY surprised if even the most inexperienced game store owner invested more than 10% of his rolling capital outside of the "Big Names."

The lion's share of his investment will be in WotC product. And then Sword & Sorcery, Mongoose, GR, Necromancer, FFG, etc. all the way down the line until we finally hit some of these publishers (that nobody ever names) with products (that nobody ever names) that is clogging up the shelves.

What percentage of his capital investment is going to THAT kind of product?

And we're only talking about his RPG investment, here, which should be a fraction of his total store inventory.

So we may not have a firm number here, but I think at this point you should have a pretty good idea of the amount of investment in crap-glut.

When folks talk about the GLUT, what they generally mean is, "Really crappy products from little crappy publishers that nobody wants to buy from utterly ruined the retailers."

The supposition is that this stuff was uniformly bad AND purchased in such quantities that it was capable of bankrupting the retail store.

I think that's a load of horseshit.

Another part of it was that very few of the companies "dabbled" in a product line. They went full blast into making little pamphlet adventures and cranked out 30 of them before someone said "hey, is anyone buying this on a retail level?".

Well now we're getting a little closer to specifics. I recall AEG and FFG in that "pamphlet adventure" space.

Do we have a specific scapegoat, at last?

Can we finally specify the glut canard as, "AEG and FFG ruined the market with pamphlet adventures that did not sell, but the retailers were powerless to stop purchasing month in and month out?"

I think not.

I don't think anyone will ever specify it, because they are all pointing their fingers elsewhere looking for a scapegoat.

If the retail game industry is capable of being brought to its knees by an infinite army of monkeys cranking out RPG doggerel, I hardly think you can point the blame at the OGL that "empowered" the monkeys.

 

[Lizard]

A simple question (or maybe two, not sure)

For all those claiming "glut" and "quality" were the motivators behind the change from the OGL/STL to the GSL, answer me this:

How does a free license with no approval process reduce product number (glut) or increase product quality?

In that area, the GSL is identical to the OGL/SLT: WOTC will not ask you for money for using it, will not limit the number of products you can produce using it, and will not require any specific level of quality in terms of writing, production values, rules balance, or any other area. If you think "defined terms" mean anything...read the STL.

If you can't explain, clearly, how "free, no approval license" leads to "fewer products of higher quality", I must humbly request you strike the word "glut" from your arguments over the potential merits of the GSL or the motivations behind drafting it.

Thank you.