If an OGC Wiki existed . . .

[Wombat]

About the only thing I could see myself doing with an OGC Wiki is pick up the stray bits of open content that I am interested in from books that I would otherwise not purchase -- I cannot see the Wiki otherwise encouraging me to or discouraging me from buying particular volumes.

 

[Yair]

I think I'll just add "What Yair said" to my sig. It'll save so much posting time.

I think that should be a general forum policy.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

I voted no.

I purchase to support people I know, and PRODUCTS I need.

Sure, OGC is good, but you know, there's more than one book out there where I couldn't care less about the mechanics, and purchase for non-crunch.

Darwin's World is one such thing. All the mechanics don't matter, it's the SETTING I buy for, and the mechanics just mean I don't ahve to adapt others.

I mean, seriously, do you buy the Eberron or FR books for the crunch?

 

[Khuxan]

I answered NO, except if I saw an item I liked on the Wiki and wanted to buy it.

Frankly, I (believe I) could download most d20 products illegally online. I don't. Not because it is illegal and a wiki would be legal, but because I have a moral aversion to it. In a day of BitTorrent and LimeWire, the morality of the end user is becoming more and more important.

 

[Vascant]

No. It will begin with a flurry, then the activity will falter, and then it will settle into a regime of slow, occasional and sporadic, updates. It will then pick up steam after accruing more content, exponentially.
Until the system changes. Then all the rules are broken. Since the time to 4e is relatively short, it is possible the wiki will never reach the exponential stage.

Then do it..

 

[JoeGKushner]

If the material I'm looking is it like the Tome of Horrors revised, cheap and illustrated, then no. If it's some small product with a normal price with no art, etc..., then yes. Art and layout, especially as the price of the PDF's go up or find their market, becomes just as important to me in a PDF as it is in print. Options are also good. Despite my love for the TOH revised, there were no bookmarks and no printer friendly version. Annoying.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I generally buy PDFs to support the PDF publishers. The price point is low, it's practically "play money" since I just buy from my RPGnow account, and as a "crunch guy" I usually get more for my money than I get in a print purchase. A PDF may only be a two-stroke engine compared to some snazzy print products with a V-8, but at least I know the PDF is going to be firing on all cylinders.

There are a LOT, and I mean a LOT, of print publishers that I buy only for the OGC.

Incidentally, at the top of that list is pretty much anything by Mike Mearls.

I probably referenced $150 worth of print materials this past weekend that I would not have purchased if the content that piqued my curiosity was available in a Wiki. Some Green Ronin, some WOTC, some Monte.

I have purchased a lot of Green Ronin PDFs lately. My observation is that GR is pre-releasing PDFs to help finance their print runs and get back on their feet after the Osseum Implosion. That's a cause I can get behind (for obvious reasons).

 

[eyebeams]

DRM did nothing to stop piracy.

That said, I think a lot of people that aren't willing to download illegal PDFs would be willing to access a legel source for all of the same material.

I tracked a couple of DRMed (Dark Ages: Fae and Exalted) products over P2P (gnutella, kazaa and a few bt portals) on a bet and the DRM source files did not, in fact, end up on those networks (as far as I could tell) for quite some time. It was just a matter of time, but given that a few vociferous parties practically vowed to get these particular files on networks within a week of release, I'd say it did an OK job, but that the decreased functionality wasn't a reasonable tradeoff.

A searchable, web-based portal is a very powerful tool. I didn't upgrade to 3.5 largely because I bought a laptop with wifi and found D20SRD.org . As long as I have someone with a 3.5 PHB to confirm the odd fishy bit of text, it has superior functionality compared to owning a physical book. Even without the laptop, I find myself looking up things on the SRD or Modern sites at least as often as I do a book.

I teach computer skills to new users for a living. In my experience, there is a world of difference between the user friendliness of web and .pdf content. Properly organized web content is superior in almost every way. It requires nothing but your browser, it is easier to read, and it often allows intuitive cross-referencing. People who are more skilled users do not find the difference to be so extreme, so they might not notice the powerful advantages of web content over .pdf, especially in situations where you are not going to print the document anyway (true for many .pdfs).

 

[Yair]

What do you mean IF? There is one already.

I was amused to find an OGC Wiki while strolling the web.
The site does say "DO NOT ADD ANYONE ELSE'S OGC YET!" on the front page, so it is obviously not in working condition. The creator did invest some time into it, but apparently abandoned the project after about a month. It seems the project is meant to house Mearl's work; I suspect he stopped working on it after Mearls did not wildly cooperate.

Vascant: I do not support a comprehensive OGC Wiki. I would support a more limited resource, but am not willing to put my money to purchase the resources needed, or handle the headache of running one.
As mearls said, the barrier is time and effort - I'm willing to spend some but not a lot.
That has nothing to do with the wiki's dying out or not.

 

[XCorvis]

I was amused to find an OGC Wiki while strolling the web.
The site does say "DO NOT ADD ANYONE ELSE'S OGC YET!" on the front page, so it is obviously not in working condition. The creator did invest some time into it, but apparently abandoned the project after about a month. It seems the project is meant to house Mearl's work; I suspect he stopped working on it after Mearls did not wildly cooperate.

IIRC, the posting of it was mentioned in the comments to mearl's original OGC Wiki post. I think it was more of a proof-of-concept. The author added his own OGC stuff and asked others to do the same, but he didn't have much, and with no major announcement he didn't get a lot of support.