Gygax's views on OGL

[Staffan]

I remember posts on Dragonsfoot about people wishing they had the money to buy the D&D game and give it back to Gary. I hope it's a cold day in hell before that happens.

In the perfect world that is inside my head, Peter Adkison and Ryan Dancey are in charge of D&D.

 

[tarchon]

Let's also not forget that TSR was doing quite well up to 1983, when G.G. was forced out as creative head, briefly rebounded when he took back control in 1985, and then went into it's protracted death spiral AFTER he was removed from the company in 1987. Resting the sins of 1990's TSR on the head of Gygax is both ironic and insulting to the man.

I'm not insulting Gary Gygax and all the gods you hold dear by saying that TSR went down in flames; I'm saying that TSR's basic business strategy wasn't sustainable in the long run. It's a fairly classic story - someone starts a company on the Big Strike and it goes well for a while on the strength of that, but you can't build a lasting business on a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of genius and opportunity. Survival of the business depends on solid management of the business's resources. I don't know or much care who mismanaged TSR, but it's quite clear that it was mismanaged. Maybe if someone at TSR had looked at the module/minor splatbook market and realized they were losing money on it AND more importantly taken a bold and innovative step like the creation of the OGL to balance their immediate financial interests with the interests of development of the hobby as whole, we'd be playing TSR's 3E instead of WotC's 3E.

 

[trollwad]

The problem is that high quality and low volume and low price are not simultaneously achievable with profitability. This is why most niche RPG stuff is really...er... poorly edited, let's say. WotC has, not unreasonably, decided that they would rather not risk their brand making the compromises and taking the risks that would be necessary to chase after nickels and dimes, particularly when other people are willing and able to do it. It's simple economics. "High-quality" requires high resource expenditure. That's just a simple fact of life. One thing I've long come to recognize about WotC is that they're pretty sharp on the business end (or at least they used to be). Let's not forget that TSR went down in flames, while WotC was a fantastic financial success and still is doing pretty well, so there's obviously some practical basis for thinking the WotC way has something going for it.

High quality does NOT denote high resource expenditure, it denotes efficient results! I dont think your argument is true. Look at my example of autos earlier. Detroit abandoned the "low end", got squeezed into the medium/high end (trucks/suvs) and is presently in the process of losing that too. Toyota is the leader in both the high end (lexus) and in the low end (high volume). They have a superior SYSTEM of allocating resources. Striking closer to home, within the publishing industry there are vast differences in efficiency and financial performance among the various publicly held companies (I analyze companies for a living).

History correction: tsr went down in flames without gygax, it was extremely profitable relative to capital employed during his reign. wotc HAS done pretty well but they are now buried in a conglomerate that is not known for its financial savvy (pull up any set of annual reports for mattel and hasbro and they have amazing record of bungling fairly decent slow growing businesses over the past six or seven years).

the question is, I agree that the OGL can pump up financial results in the short term as HAS/WOTC can dramatically reduce its required capital to support the business since it does so much less (no low margin modules etc), BUT does the fact that the company has done little to address its apparent high overhead structure and now has a restricted scope of revenue producing products mean that the company must soon produce 4.0 and then 4.5 to freshen its revenue line, thereby hurting its core relationship with customers? Ive looked at a lot of companies and the avowed rationale for 3.5 smelled a lot more like my hypothesis than what was proclaimed in terms of timing and scope of change.

the bottom line of what I and perhaps gygax is saying is instead of pursuing a strategy of restrained but revenue-generating licensing, coupled with a significant cut in overhead, perhaps pdf publishing of modules to cut costs but retain breadth and stable if modest cash flow and only occasional reissuing of the core rule books, wotc appears to me to be opting for broad licensing, outsourced module production, and retaining what appears to be a very heavy overhead structure which has created enormous pressure to continually reissue its core rules. the tradeoff between top line growth, returns on capital, and participating in the low end of the market (modules etc) is a very common dilemna in a mature business.

 

[dead]

You mean like the d20 Modern SRD? That's been out for, what, a year and a half? Two years? And what do you mean by calling the wrong assumption that d20 = D&D a stigma? If anything, that's what's made the d20 brand viable; a far cry from being a stigma.

I haven't read d20 Modern, but the very title of the book seems to pidgeon-hole it to *modern* settings. If I saw this work in my local games shop and just viewed the cover I'd assume that it's not a generic game or neutral rules reference at all -- it's for modern-day genres.

I know I'm judging a book by its cover here. It may very well be usable for a primative game or a sci-fi game but the title d20 Modern doesn't sugest it is a genre-neutral corerules reference.

D&D a stigma? No, I love D&D and it's not a stigma. It might be if it's stopping people getting into d20, however. People who don't like D&D and don't want to have to reference the 3E D&D corerules, for example. But as you mentioned, the OGL is changing this.

As for AU, I've had conflicting reports. Some say that you really *do* need the corerules otherwise you're disadvantaging yourself. Others say you don't need the corerules to use this product. I guess I'll never know until I buy it.

 

[trollwad]

I'm not insulting Gary Gygax and all the gods you hold dear by saying that TSR went down in flames; I'm saying that TSR's basic business strategy wasn't sustainable in the long run. It's a fairly classic story - someone starts a company on the Big Strike and it goes well for a while on the strength of that, but you can't build a lasting business on a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of genius and opportunity. Survival of the business depends on solid management of the business's resources. I don't know or much care who mismanaged TSR, but it's quite clear that it was mismanaged. Maybe if someone at TSR had looked at the module/minor splatbook market and realized they were losing money on it AND more importantly taken a bold and innovative step like the creation of the OGL to balance their immediate financial interests with the interests of development of the hobby as whole, we'd be playing TSR's 3E instead of WotC's 3E.

claiming that those who are defending some of gygax's points view him as a god is tilting against a straw man since none of us have claimed such powers for him.

which tsr business strategy? the gygax strategy or the blume/williams strategy? you should care about who mismanaged tsr because it offers evidence as to which strategy was unsustainable, the avowed purpose of your statement!

clearly, neither one of has access to tsr/wotc's financial statements BUT Ive read the financial statements of hasbro, mattel, many publishers, marvel entertainment group (both pre and post its own bankruptcy). Based on such, oversimplifying greatly, read a book called Comic Wars (the saga of marvel's story) for the sense of the strategic issues confronting a mature niche business like TSR/WOTC. My point is that in both cases, 'professionals' took over the businesses, undertook short-term measures which greatly boosted margins and free cash flow (in marvel's case, it was price hikes, in tsr's it was overdiversifying and adding too much overhead to hit another home run creatively with 2e etc.). However, both Perlman in marvel's case, and Lorraine Williams/Blume in TSRs, had contempt for their customers and ended up alienating them. Trying to hit the next "creative home run", both businesses added way too much overhead and 'creative talent' undertaking dubious projects rather than supporting their core customers with proven talent (monte cook, sean reynolds, gary gygax in one case; stan lee in the other).

Wouldnt it make more sense to offer other incentive compensation (royalties, options, etc.) to retain proven talent like sean, monte and gary rather than having them leave and keep all of the revenue that they are generating by using TSR/WOTCs intellectual property?!! Arent these guys worth a lot more than the scores of names that you see on the wizards website? If you look at someone like Warren Buffett, who has made a career out of buying mature businesses, allocating their capital very stingily and running a lean overhead outfit with key creative and management talent retained and incentivized with incentive comp (no options but a ton of incentive cash), you see what seems to me to be a much more successful means of running a mature business than fitful licensing schemes, a huge talent exodus, and no stable low margin cash flow stream (modules).

Just my 2 cents!

 

[trollwad]

Not to mention that a lot of the people who started up a D20 company and who write for them are ex-Wotc employees. Or at least established game designer/writers. Thats why i don't hold WOTC material over anyone elses. Some of the people who wrote 3E are the same guys who write non-wotc D20 material (monte cook, etc).

Actually, mr mason, skipping your concern about whether material outside wotc is inferior (since I dont care), isnt this an argument AGAINST the OGL? In other words, if the OGL encourages talent like Sean Reynolds, monte cook to leave and instead of WOTC claiming 85 cents on the pretax dollar of their work (say losing 15 cents due to royalties, salary), due to the free OGL WOTC claims 0 cents as these gentleman make all the dough for themselves! That is a substantial difference in value retention. This is why Im arguing that the OGL (to me) seems to be pushing WOTC to the inexorable untimely rerelease of the core rule books (as it is their only reliable revenue stream).

note: this is not an argument against sean and monte. they are not violating any duties in leaving to capture their own creative revenue streams when the OGL is free. this is an argument about the economics of the OGL from the perspective of WOTC.

 

[Sir Whiskers]

I hear people constantly mention this, but can someone tell me when he said something even close to this? I have the Dragon Archive, so it be nice to see some back up on this.

I can't figure out how to cut and paste from the archive, but look at issue 26, article "D&D, AD&D, and Gaming" by Gary Gygax. In summary, his point was that in OD&D (white box) the rules were too loose, so that each person's game was unique. The purpose of AD&D was to provide a firm set of rules that everyone followed, so that players moving between games, or gaming at conventions, could be certain the rules wouldn't change. In effect, he was trying to provide a boardgame-like consistency to the rules, ala Risk or Axis and Allies. Of course, that wasn't possible. RPG's simply don't lend themselves to such rigidity, nor (IMO) should they.

 

[Dogbrain]

Do you stand back an allow other to profit from your risk? If you stay in business no, if you want to be nice you will get sscrewed by others.

Thank you for proving your utter ignorance of intellectual property law. If they had wanted legal protection for their "idea", they should have patented. Since they didn't have enough sense to patent, they had no legal leg to stand on.

 

[Dogbrain]

I hear people constantly mention this, but can someone tell me when he said something even close to this? I have the Dragon Archive, so it be nice to see some back up on this.

Do a word search for "monopoly" and "free parking" to find one of his gems.

 

[KB9JMQ]

In the perfect world that is inside my head, Peter Adkison and Ryan Dancey are in charge of D&D.

Amen Brother.