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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 1597423" data-attributes="member: 19675">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.</blockquote>

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