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

[xechnao]

Do you see what I'm basicly getting at?

I do not really. Ok I get it for Necro that they are a D&D support company but why does every other established publishing company has to dedicate support to 4e D&D? Don't we need to better have some other game lines in the market?

 

[Fenes]

I do not really. Ok I get it for Necro that they are a D&D support company but why does every other established publishing company has to dedicate support to 4e D&D? Don't we need to better have some other game lines in the market?

Not if all we want is to play D&D. If I was playing 4E, I'd want as many options as possible for it. Lack of viable options is a big reason for me not to switch - 3PP could have changed that.

 

[xechnao]

Not if all we want is to play D&D. If I was playing 4E, I'd want as many options as possible for it. Lack of viable options is a big reason for me not to switch - 3PP could have changed that.

This is not the case for the rpg market. Not all people want just what 4e can cover. If the market production decides to exclusively focus on people that all they want is 4e, the market -or at least 4e- will not last more than 5 years.

 

[Fenes]

This is not the case for the rpg market. Not all people want just what 4e can cover. If the market decides to exclusively focus on people that all they want is 4e, the market -or at least 4e- will not last more than 5 years.

Then let me phrase it like this: If those 3PP mentioned would support 4E, odds for me switching would be much bigger because what I want of a D&D/Fantasy game is not yet provided by WotC.

 

[dmccoy1693]

I do not really. Ok I get it for Necro that they are a D&D support company but why does every other established publishing company has to dedicate support to 4e D&D? Don't we need to better have some other game lines in the market?

My basic point is that 20% of the 5 large companies known for quality that felt that the old business model acceptable to work with do not feel that the current model is acceptable. 80% are either going other routes or are not announcing what they are doing. Necromancer has not announced they have applied or been approved for licencee status; only Mongoose has. Even then, Mongoose isn't dedicated 4E support. They have Traveller and Battlefield Evolution which are among their all time best sellers (even better then the majority of their d20 stuff).

If Wizards was going for a model of "raise up a new crop of licencees with every new edition and then encourage them to fly on their own", I could understand that (even if it would be a head scratcher to me) but they're not. They would have invited more younger companies to their confrence call back in Jan and less of the old guard if they were going that route.

 

[Alzrius]

But the bottom line I see is that of the 5 major 3PPs (Paizo, Goodman, Mongoose, GR, and Necro) only 1 has publicly said they applied and been approved by Wizards to be a licensee.

To be fair, there's some indication that it may be more than that.

Thus far, only Mongoose has declared that they'll be using the GSL at all.

Green Ronin and Paizo have both definitively declared that they won't be using the GSL at all.

Goodman Games is releasing 4E-compatible adventures prior to October 1st, 2008, which seems to indicate that they're not using the GSL. However, they've also announced that they're canceling their 3.5 DCC line, which seems to be in line with the GSL.

Necromancer Games is releasing several Pathfinder books under the OGL, last we heard. However, the last indications we heard from Clark were that he did still want to publish at least some books under the GSL. However, his statements about that didn't seem to be definitive due to some of the license restrictions (e.g. you can't redefine terms, so if Clark's Advanced Player's Guide has druids, and then the GSL SRD updated to includes druids, Clark has to change his book), and he's been silent ever since, leaving the situation ambiguous for Necromancer.

So thus far, of the "big five," it's one "yea" vote, two "nay" votes, and two apparently undecided.

 

[kenmarable]

This, of course, turns out to be patently false. I hope no one ponied up $5 grand on the basis of this claim.....either because they saw this claim before ponying up the money, or because this was the "OGL" that was included in the early adopters kit.

Wasn't the early adopter's kit really late, btw?

No one paid the $5000. We were all waiting on the GSL that was never delivered.

If you look at any of the many threads since that initial press release up until April when the early buy-in period was eliminated, it is clear that publishers were waiting on delivery of the license to review first.

Here's a couple relevant threads, but there's many:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=223988

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?p=4118634

Even setting aside the digging around in EN World forums, unless Wolfgang Baur was confused or lying to us, communication directly with WotC was:

1) Get $5000 (Open Design did that, presumably Paizo, Necromancer, Goodman, Mongoose, and others were ready with that as well)

2) Contact WotC rep and indicate interest (Open Design did this, presumably the others did as well)

3) Sign NDAs (Open Design did this, presumably the others did as well)

4) WotC delivers the OGL/GSL to the publishers who indicated interest. (As we all know this never happened.)

5) IF the publisher accepts the OGL/GSL, THEN they pay the $5000 for the rules and the right to publish in the exclusivity period. (This never happened because #4 never happened.)

6) WotC mails 3 hard copies of each of the books on non-photocopyable paper to the publisher. (Again, obviously didn't happen.)

Regardless of whatever the initial press release and other answers were that first day, within a week, the above is the process that was outlined directly from WotC to the publishers in question. (Or Wolfgang Baur was confused or lying.)

Now, there may have once been an offhand offer of "If you want to skip #4 for now since it's not ready, we can take the money and give you the rules." But it was more them trying to help publishers meet deadlines than to trick publishers into investing into 4e without seeing the license. And I don't know if it was even an official offer to all, or just a "let's see what we can work out" idea. But without the license, we opted not to (since, as stated above, we were waiting for the license before we paid).

Or that might not have happened. I'm not sure, my memory under the NDA is hazy if you know what I mean.

Didn't Necromancer start planning 4e products on the basis of that announcement that, as it turns out, are now off the table because what WotC indicated then bears scant resemblance to what WotC is saying now?

Or am I just dreaming?


RC

Well, from what I understand, Tome of Horrors 4e is off the table because Clark doesn't want to lock away that IP.

The Advanced Player's Guide is tricky because of the "can't redefine" issue and the assumption that eventually things like druids, monks, etc. will be added to the SRD later. But that's easily avoided by the lame name game of a "Druidic Protector" class, and such.

But Clark's silence on his specific plans since the GSL release isn't comforting.

 

[Lizard]

I didn't say a thing about this. I said the GSL is more restrictive, and as a result fewer companies are adopting it, and as a result of that there's less likely to be a glut of ill-conceived product.

You didn't, but it's a common twin to the "less products" meme as a putative goal of the GSL, so I lumped them together. IAE, there will be fewer ESTABLISHED companies using the GSL. There will be plenty of new ones, those with no IP to risk. I have a long list of ideas for PDFs for 4e, that are pretty much purely mechanical, of no value outside the 4e market (and, I hope, OF value within it, since I would need to hire an artist and someone to do layout and otherwise produce something better than a block of text if I want someone to shell out $1.99 for it...).

I doubt I'm alone. The field being clear of Large Players leaves everyone with Dreams Of Glory free to leap in...just as so many did in 2000/2001...and there will be an all new flood of people, including many willing to risk their IP on WOTCs whims. (I suspect there will be a class of publishers who do not "get" the GSL and think it offers the same rights and protections as the OGL...looking for some serious heartbreak in 2-3 years...)

 

[kenmarable]

Last 2 or 3 years, eh? I wonder how much of this is due too:
1) Aftershocks of the 3.5 transition.
2) Caution at buying new products amidst increasing rumors of 4e.

I'ts been almost a year, of course, but from my recollection, many of those were 3.0 books. So my personal guess is that #1 is a big culprit. Many publishers have said that 3.5 killed the majority of their 3.0 back catalog sales. Considering that 3.0 sales were originally in the many thousands, print runs were very large. After 3.5 killed the demand for those products in consumers' minds, many publishers, distributors, and stores were left with vast inventories of unsold 3.0 products.

I'm not sure how much #2 was a factor since when the 4e rumors were really heating up, many publishers had already folded or branched away from core d20 support.

But I certainly agree that 3.5 had at least as much to do with the stacks of unsold products cluttering store shelves and bargain Gen Con booths as overlap in topics.

Besides, are there any examples of, say 3 hardcover books covering the same topic, released within, say a 2 year period? (which is very generous for a book's shelf life that isn't a core rulebook or core setting book).

Plus as has been referenced above, how many of the overlapping topic books were WotC re-doing a topic that a third party publisher had already covered?

Lastly, the references to adventures is pretty dubious. WotC claimed that publishers were no longer releasing many adventures, so they decided to get back into the adventure business. But it was dubious then and even moreso now. First off, the only major print publishers left providing d20 fantasy support around that time (as opposed to their own product lines) if I recall were Paizo (admittedly that was Dragon and Dungeon magazines then), Necromancer, and Goodman Games, and to some extent Green Ronin (although they were getting much more focused on their own lines). What are the main focus of all of those publishers? Adventures. I suppose Malhavoc was still around, but might have already been focusing on Ptolus, but might have still had some rule supplements in the mix.

Also, it would be interesting to compare when WotC announced that they were getting back into the adventure design business with what we know now about when they began 4e design. Right about the time WotC got back into the adventure to fill an unmet need of the consumers, was also about the time they also got into the alternative rules and less splatbook business. Filling the adventure niche sounds an awful lot like marketing spin to cover 4e design that, obviously, couldn't be announced yet.

 

[Voadam]

So in other words, we have only a secondhand report from someone who, while a pretty smart guy, could have been misinterpreting what he was hearing. So there is, contrary to what you said earlier, nothing from WotC directly saying the poison pill ever existed? I just want to be clear on this.

To be clear.

The poison pill exists. WotC wrote the GSL with a poison pill clause. It is right there in their publicly accessible document. Accept the GSL and you agree not to publish or sell any OGL product from the same product line.

What changed from what Clark was told is merely the scope of the poison pill. He was told it was all of a company's OGL products and not restricted to product lines. Whether it is by product line, all of a company's OGL products, or all of a company's RPG products of any type, it would still be a poison pill clause.

What also changed was the addition of the survivability of the poison pill license term after termination of the license as part of the license.

It is true WotC never said it was a poison pill, they used a less negative sounding label in describing it. But they did create the poison pill, it exists now, and you can verify it for yourself directly.

Just so the matter is clear.