Gygax's views on OGL

[Staffan]

So you blame the stockholders?

I guess. Though I can't really blame them for wanting to see some real return on their investment as opposed to a theoretical return they couldn't turn into cash.

 

[Ranger REG]

The proliferation of poor quality, fluff-filled splatbooks is bad when there is no alternative. Once you have bought two bad splatbooks from a company, you probably won't buy anymore. Furthermore, you might blame the IP (D&D sucks) instead of the company (TSR sucks)

The proliferation of the same when there are alternatives is not so bad. You can still get good material another way. Additionally, bad rep is more likely to affect a company than the brand, which is good.

I concur. At least you have a variety of "peanut butter" products (e.g., nautical rules, realm management rules, mass combat rules, etc.) in the market. Eventually, one will be right for you.

 

[Ourph]

I concur. At least you have a variety of "peanut butter" products (e.g., nautical rules, realm management rules, mass combat rules, etc.) in the market. Eventually, one will be right for you.

Thanks for the replies everyone. There are some very intelligent and interesting opinions in them.

IMO (and this is JUST my opinion) the OGL has given gamers two important benefits in exchange for one important drawback.

Benefits: 1) As Philip and Incenjucar pointed out, the fact that there are numerous companies producing material means you can avoid poor products without having your only source of gaming material go under. That's good. 2) As R. REG pointed out, the variety of gaming materials has increased. Now niche markets with very eager, but not numerous fans are more likely to be filled.

Drawback: In exchange for choice and the ability to say "No" to bad material, you've basically given up the chance to purchase really high quality material. It seems to me, gamers and the hobby would be better served by demanding the company that sells them their core books also produce excellent quality supplements, rather than settling for a wider variety of medium quality ones.

 

[seankreynolds]

1. WotC's admission of being unable to produce profitable adventures is a cop-out. Certainly, Necro, Goodman, and other companies that make their living on making modules proves this.

Sorry to reply to something now several days old, but....
WotC is at least ten times bigger than Necromancer, Goodman Games, or probably even White Wolf. Not in terms of sales (I don't know what the multiplier is in a sales comparison between WotC and WW, but I'm guessing it's at least x2), but in terms of employees and other costs.
When I was laid off from WotC in 2002, WotC had about three hundred employees. Three hundred. That includes everyone on the sales staff, the marketing staff, human resources, the mailroom, etc. They took up seven floors of an eight-floor office building. By comparison, I doubt White Wolf has more than 100 people. Most other game companies have less than ten people. Hell, Pazio Publishing produces 2+ magazines per month (at least one of which has a monthly circulation of over 20,000 copies, 5-10 times or more what your average d20 publisher sells) and they only have about 20 employees.
All of those 300 people at WotC need a computer (barring the janitorial staff), chair, desk, office supplies, health insurance, and so on. They all use electricity and water. All of those things cost money, and that cost must be accounted for in every single product WotC makes. So even before they get a single product out the door, WotC has set costs that are ten times higher than the costs for your 10-man d20 company, especially as most of those d20 companies don't have a formal office (they're run out of peoples' homes and linked by phone or the internet) and thus don't have to pay janitors. Most probably don't have health insurance. They're using their personal computers.
Now do you see how a 32-page adventure, which makes maybe $1-$2 profit (based just on the cost of goods, printing, and the salaries of the designer, editor, artist, mapper, and typesetter directly involved in the book, but not counting the averaged-out costs of the marketing, sales, human resources, etc. employees) might be profitable for the ten-man housed-in-the-basement company (which has a low overhead) but not profitable for WotC (which has a high overhead)?

 

[seankreynolds]

After all TSR owned the Rights to the Nazi for when it had the Indiana Jones Game.

False. The trademark was on a piece of artwork on a chit/token in the Indiana Jones game, it stated that it was a trademark of Lucasfilm (which owns IJ),it was put there at Lucasfilm's insistance, and only referred to that specific piece of artwork as a representation of a Nazi (Disney can trademark the image of a specific mouse, Lucasfilm can trademark the image of a specific Nazi). It was not TSR's idea.

And had more lawyers then Game designers.

False. One lawyer (Constance Lindman), one legal assistant (Debbie Poutsch). At least nine designers (Monte, Colin, slade, Rich, Ted, Jim, Steve, Bill, Bruce).

 

[seankreynolds]

From what I understand, the timeline goes something like this:
5. Years pass. WOTC buy and then sell off various RPGs (like Ars Magica and SLA). Pokemon craze makes WOTC even more filthy rich. They buy D&D.

Up to this point, your timeline is pretty much dead-on. However, WotC bought TSR in 1997, Pokemon became a hit in 1998 (i.e., after the TSR buyout).

6. Stockholders tell Peter "Hey, we're sitting on this stock that's nominally worth quite a lot, but since WOTC isn't publically traded we can't sell them on the stock exchange. So, either you start paying out significant dividends, introduce the stock on the stock exchange, or figure out some other way we can actually get some money out of this stock."

I don't know if this is true, but it certainly is reasonable interpretation of stockholder opinions.

7. The solution hit on is to sell the company to Hasbro. Stockholders get rich. Peter stays on as boss of WOTC, but below the top brass at Hasbro.

Essentially. Peter was promoted to a Regional Director position (or something like that) at Hasbro.

8. Hasbro sells Hasbro Digital to Infogrames. As part of the sale, Infogrames gets the digital rights to all Hasbro games - including D&D.

I dunno about all Hasbro games, but certainly D&D, yes.

9. Peter Adkison gets angry about it,

And for good reason. The offering price was way too low, and he knew it, but other execs outvoted him. I think at that point he realized that he was no longer in control of the company he had created, and rather than have them nickel-and-dime away his morale with a bunch of similar events, he chose to leave.

As part of his resignation, he gets right to first dibs on anything formerly WOTC Hasbro decides to sell.

I don't know about that (I'm not privy to Peter's exit agreement).

Anyway, my point is that Peter's choice to leave WotC/Hasbro wasn't a "screw you, I'm rich!" sort of thing. He loved WotC and loves D&D, and didn't want people to make stupid decisions about it, but IMO he realized there was nothing (as an insider) that he could do to stop it any more. The business mentality at Hasbro is very different than the business mentality at WotC. I don't blame Peter for leaving at all, in fact I respect him for doing so. Peter is a good businessman _and_ a gamer at heart.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I haven't seen a real difference in the ratio of good products to bad over the 2Ed to 3.5Ed years, even with OGL.

What I HAVE noticed is a change in the fundamental structure of the industry. Whereas during the pre-OGL years, anyone who wanted to make a new game had to come up with a "new" system, that is no longer the case. Now, if you meet the requirements, you just use OGL and design your campaign/world features.

IMHO, this is both good and bad.

It is good in the sense that you're seeing more people trying out different games- with OGL, like HERO and GURPS before it, you only have to worry about 1 system (generally speaking). Any kind of game setting can be described within the OGL system. This means that game designers don't have to reinvent the wheel, just their backstory.

However, I think you're seeing less creativity in general. That is, pre-OGL, you really had to work to get something sellable. Game designers came up with a slew of systems, some of which were quite good if not excellent-and that pushed game design forward in general. If D&D had been OGL, you might not have seen the innovations that came with Traveller, Runequest, Melee, etc. that in turn drove improvements in D&D, ad infinitum.

The slippery slope formulation of this: If all you have to do is use OGL to get your game out, soon all you'll have to game with is OGL.

I don't think that that will actually happen- no system pleases everyone- so there will always be alternatives. But there are trends in that direction- more and more games are showing up in D20 versions- Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Deadlands, Silver Age Sentinels (and the list goes on)- while more good non-D20 games are showing up in the discount bins, even ones with D20 versions.

 

[rgard]

About bringing in new players.

I can see how a single consistent rule system such as d20 would help to bring new players into the hobby. A new player may not be interested in role-playing games as such, but he might be interested in the setting of a specific novel, TV series or movie, e.g. Middle Earth, the Star Wars universe, Pokemon, Harry Potter, etc, or he may be interested in a particular genre such as espionage, action, horror, anime, etc.

And let's face it, getting people into the hobby is still mostly done by an experienced player or DM teaching a new player the basics. No matter how interested a person is a particular setting or genre, it is not likely that he will go to the local game store, pick up an RPG based around that, and start playing.

The d20 system has two advantages in this respect. First, because there are so many publishers out there, there is a good chance (barring licensing issues) that there is a product that caters to the new gamer's area of interest. Second, because of the consistent system, the learning curve for the experienced player is less steep. He doesn't have to master a new system to run a game that would interest the new player.

Yep...Conan, Babylon 5, Stargate.

 

[Emiricol]

There's plenty of good non-OGL games and systems, imho. Riddle of Steel is a good example of new innovations in game system design. I'm sure the revised WoD stuff coming out soon will be innovative, and a healthy competition for D20. I don't think things are changing for the worse - just changing.

I haven't seen a real difference in the ratio of good products to bad over the 2Ed to 3.5Ed years, even with OGL.

What I HAVE noticed is a change in the fundamental structure of the industry. Whereas during the pre-OGL years, anyone who wanted to make a new game had to come up with a "new" system, that is no longer the case. Now, if you meet the requirements, you just use OGL and design your campaign/world features.

IMHO, this is both good and bad.

It is good in the sense that you're seeing more people trying out different games- with OGL, like HERO and GURPS before it, you only have to worry about 1 system (generally speaking). Any kind of game setting can be described within the OGL system. This means that game designers don't have to reinvent the wheel, just their backstory.

However, I think you're seeing less creativity in general. That is, pre-OGL, you really had to work to get something sellable. Game designers came up with a slew of systems, some of which were quite good if not excellent-and that pushed game design forward in general. If D&D had been OGL, you might not have seen the innovations that came with Traveller, Runequest, Melee, etc. that in turn drove improvements in D&D, ad infinitum.

The slippery slope formulation of this: If all you have to do is use OGL to get your game out, soon all you'll have to game with is OGL.

I don't think that that will actually happen- no system pleases everyone- so there will always be alternatives. But there are trends in that direction- more and more games are showing up in D20 versions- Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Deadlands, Silver Age Sentinels (and the list goes on)- while more good non-D20 games are showing up in the discount bins, even ones with D20 versions.

 

[viscounteric]

All of those 300 people at WotC need a computer (barring the janitorial staff), chair, desk, office supplies, health insurance, and so on. They all use electricity and water. All of those things cost money, and that cost must be accounted for in every single product WotC makes. So even before they get a single product out the door, WotC has set costs that are ten times higher than the costs for your 10-man d20 company, especially as most of those d20 companies don't have a formal office (they're run out of peoples' homes and linked by phone or the internet) and thus don't have to pay janitors. Most probably don't have health insurance. They're using their personal computers.
Now do you see how a 32-page adventure, which makes maybe $1-$2 profit (based just on the cost of goods, printing, and the salaries of the designer, editor, artist, mapper, and typesetter directly involved in the book, but not counting the averaged-out costs of the marketing, sales, human resources, etc. employees) might be profitable for the ten-man housed-in-the-basement company (which has a low overhead) but not profitable for WotC (which has a high overhead)?

Howdy SKR, Here's the $0.50 question: How many of those 300 WOTC employees work on role-playing on a daily basis? Last I checked CCGs, Magic in particular, were still the sacred cash cows (even with the loss of the Pokemon license and all their recent 'experiments). CCGs keep the company strong in good quarters, and afloat in bad (and keeps the rumor mill flowing here and abroad ). I'd love to see the division of labor between CCG/RPG/support/misc staff. The little accountant wheels in my head are starting to turn...

Thanks!
-Vis