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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ferghis" data-source="post: 5790999" data-attributes="member: 40483">You have a very valid point here, Hussar. There's a strain between what WotC can give away for free and what they must sell to make a profit. And nobody can provide the non-speculative answer you ask, because it's almost impossible to prove a mathematical relationship between sales and marketing, and that's basically what giving away free stuff is: marketing. Ad companies spend about half their budgets convincing their clients that making ads provides an excellent return on investment. If it were simple to prove the relationship, it wouldn't be such a huge effort, and they have plenty of research data that we don't have. So, in those two ways, your points are extremely valid.Having said that, I think releasing the core system, the most basic part of the game, for free would be a great thing. It's such a good idea that that's what they do now: anyone can go to the D&DI compendium and look up the PHB material without a subscription. Further, freely (and liberally) licensing for the core mechanic alone would allow many to publish for D&D. And I'm not just talking adventures. Optional modular elements, just like the ones that WotC seems to be planning, would be feasible. Integrating other publishers into the online Adventure Tools (at the moment, mainly the character builder and the monster builder) would only take a bit more work, but would be very feasible under a capped pay-per click/use scheme, in which each time a user makes use of a non-WotC element that's integrated into the tools, the third party publisher gets a small share of that user's subscription for that month. All you really have to do is decide on the format these components have to be in before hand (that's the hard part), and then the rest is gravy. Since this work, at least if the designers have learned anything from 4e, has to also be done at some early stage for potential future WotC components, it wouldn't be much *extra* work to make this format available to third parties. I'm sure you'll jump at the fact that WotC would actually be giving money away to third parties in this model. However, here they have very concrete proof that users like that third party publisher's content (the user is choosing that content), and they're profiting off of that content as well (in the sense that it makes their online tool richer and more complete). That's how you make D&DNext both open and profitable. First, you give away the basic part of the game, so that anyone can get a taste of it. Then, you restrict with a paywall most of the material, and do your best to pull third party producers within the paywall. Then everyone who is really interested subscribes, because it's the best way to get everything.</blockquote>

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