D&D 5E Hope for an open GSL?

[JoeGKushner]

Can someone hit Hussar form e with the 'chilling' bit on OGL books? I have to spread some xp around before I can do it.

 

[Alzrius]

See, right there. That's the first one in this thread that came to mind. I'm sure there are others. And, nicely ignores the fact that 3.5 COMES OUT 2 years after 3e, rather than being announced 2 years after the release.

If the OGL was so responsible for 3e sales, then why the failure?

It wasn't a failure.

You're operating under the assumption that 3.5 was a reaction to the performance of 3.0. In this, you are mistaken. 3.5 was planned from the very beginning, when 3.0 launched. But don't take my word for it, take Monte Cook's. Here's the relevant excerpt:

See, I'm going to let you in on a little secret, which might make you mad: 3.5 was planned from the beginning.

Even before 3.0 went to the printer, the business team overseeing D&D was talking about 3.5. Not surprisingly, most of the designers -- particularly the actual 3.0 team (Jonathan Tweet, Skip Williams, and I) thought this was a poor idea. Also not surprisingly, our concerns were not enough to affect the plan. The idea, they assured us, was to make a revised edition that was nothing but a cleanup of any errata that might have been found after the book's release, a clarification of issues that seemed to confuse large numbers of players, and, most likely, all new art. It was slated to come out in 2004 or 2005, to give a boost to sales at a point where -- judging historically from the sales trends of previous editions -- they probably would be slumping a bit. It wasn't to replace everyone's books, and it wouldn't raise any compatibility or conversion issues.

 

[Hussar]

I would point out a few things here.

Firstly, I am in no way saying that MarkC or JoeG or others are wrong. They could very well be right. My point is, we don't really know.

Bottom line, we don't know how much of an effect OGL had on 3e. Did it have a huge effect? Negligible effect? There's no real way to measure. And, with that in mind, making strong statements that 5th E should or should not be OGL becomes very problematic. It comes down to a gut reaction.

Honestly, I think that OGL material is largely in the realm of the Gnome Effect where you generally had that one guy in many groups who was buying into OGL material while the rest of the group couldn't really care less. But, because we like that one guy (or might even BE that one guy), his opinion matters to us. So, even though it probably has little to no impact on our game, we back his opinion and figure that the OGL is important.

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Side note. I would hardly call Essentials a "major relaunch". Considering that Essentials is 100% compatible with 4e, is entirely meant to be played side by side with 4e, and was marketed towards new gamers, rather than existing gamers, it's not really fair to call it a new edition. 3.5 was meant specifically to replace 3e. They are not compatible. 3e is not compatible with earlier editions. 2e was meant to replace 1e.

Essentials is no more a new edition than any other splat book series.

 

[Hussar]

It wasn't a failure.

You're operating under the assumption that 3.5 was a reaction to the performance of 3.0. In this, you are mistaken. 3.5 was planned from the very beginning, when 3.0 launched. But don't take my word for it, take Monte Cook's. Here's the relevant excerpt:

If that's all true then, how do you explain releasing it two years earlier?

If 3e was selling like hotcakes, why shoot it in the head by releasing 3.5 years before it was initially expected to be released.

I would point out another little tidbit too:

3.5 comes out in July of 2003, 3.0 came out in August 2000. Sorry, I was off by a year when I said 2 years. My bad. 3 years almost to the day. Still at least 1 year to 2 years earlier than orginally planned. So, why the rush?

 

[pemerton]

are you ever going to get an errata'd Player's Handbook for 4th edition? The answer is no.

What are your criteria for a yes answer? I can get systematically errata-ed versions of the Cleric, Wizard, Warlock, Fighter and Warlord for free from the WotC website.

 

[JoeGKushner]

What are your criteria for a yes answer? I can get systematically errata-ed versions of the Cleric, Wizard, Warlock, Fighter and Warlord for free from the WotC website.

the 3.5 versions sold enough that we got an errata'd version of them at one point. I know I had a softcover of that book that got used all the time.

and website being the same as integrated into the core book? M'eh. No? For me, going into the store and buying the PHB1, new printing, that has all the errata incorporated is a yes answer.

But that goes onto another reason why the OGL in and of itself isn't the end all be all for WoTC.

Errata.

Now most of it was minor mind you, but 4th ed has a ton of it, especially when you look at monster damage/hit points. People can point to Essentials and go, "it da same." and lack of rituals, change up in mosnters, and somewhat restricted game play indicated that no, it's not the same. You can mix and match elements of them but I know people who did the same with 3.0 and 3.5.

WoTC will have to figure out a way to minimize the need for high amounts of errata with the next edition, regardless of web support. I don't think I'm the only one who hates printing out errata and sticking it into the books.

(Another reason why they shoudl do PDFs as they could update the PDFs for the next printing.)

 

[JoeGKushner]

Side note. I would hardly call Essentials a "major relaunch". Considering that Essentials is 100% compatible with 4e, is entirely meant to be played side by side with 4e, and was marketed towards new gamers, rather than existing gamers, it's not really fair to call it a new edition. 3.5 was meant specifically to replace 3e. They are not compatible. 3e is not compatible with earlier editions. 2e was meant to replace 1e.

Essentials is no more a new edition than any other splat book series.

 

[pemerton]

People can point to Essentials and go, "it da same." and lack of rituals, change up in mosnters, and somewhat restricted game play indicated that no, it's not the same. You can mix and match elements of them but I know people who did the same with 3.0 and 3.5.

I don't have a lot of acquaintance with 3.5, but I gather it fairly significantly revised some classes, and changed the facing/space/weapon size/DR rules.

I haven't played enough 3E to know how dramatic these changes are.

I know that Essentials doesn't change 4e in any dramatic fashion. The Rules Compendium is a compilation, not a revision. The new classes are extras, not substitutse (analogous to the *Power build options). The damage revision is the most dramatic thing. For some people it may be a major change. My mental arithmetic is pretty strong, so for me it's minor.

I think WotC agree the Essentials is part of 4e, at least as far as marketing is concerned, because they are continuing to publish rulebooks containing elements that only work with pre-Essentials material (Heroes of the Feywild, Heroes of the Elemental Chaos).

 

[JoeGKushner]

I think WotC agree the Essentials is part of 4e, at least as far as marketing is concerned, because they are continuing to publish rulebooks containing elements that only work with pre-Essentials material (Heroes of the Feywild, Heroes of the Elemental Chaos).

Is this WoTC before or after they had major outcry from fans about supporting material post-Essentials and cancelling the first quarter of products last year while they quickly tried to turn the PR nightmare around?

 

[Hussar]

How much is a "ton" of errata?

If you look at the PHB 1, the most errata'd book in 4e, you'll find that about 5% of material actually saw any changes, and most of those were simply language fixes.

And, it's not like the game is unplayable pre-errata. It's fine. It does work. Post errata might work better, that's fair enough, but, it's not like it's massively changing the game to have something do an extra +1 to damage on every hit.

I mean, heck, the Monster Manual 1 only has 5 pages of Errata. That's it. 5 pages out of 250(ish) isn't exactly game breaking.

Heck, you've got TranceJeremy talking about how 3pp had such higher production values. Yet, I've got a stack of OGL material here that has abysmal proofreading (ores instead of orcs being one of the most egregious, thank you Alderac EG) and absolutely horrid mechanics (I'm looking at you Mongoose and certainly in the direction of Sword and Sorcery Press). But, when it comes down to actual comparisons, suddenly WOTC's not doing too badly.

But, everyone goes on and on and on about WOTC's errata. Good grief, why don't you go bug Paizo for a change. They've got an errata document too. Yet I never here the constant complaints about how Paizo is doing such a crappy job with their material.

Having gamed through the era when we were actually charged for errata, I think putting errata in an easily found location on a website is probably the best way to go.