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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 5726847" data-attributes="member: 22424">Incidentally, it occurs to me that the smartest thing WotC could do at this point in time might well be to open 4e under the OGL.Here's my thinking;- WotC do a poor job on adventures (to put it mildly). They have also shown they have very little interest in doing adventures, since they don't make money. Opening the game just makes it so much easier for others to support the game with adventures, which can surely only be a good thing.- Likewise, WotC's support for settings has been very limited - for each setting they do a couple of books and then stop. Again, there's not much money in settings. So, it probably makes sense to make it easier for others to support the game with settings material.- In the area WotC do care about (player-side supplements), they don't have to worry about competition. The DDI is the killer app, and it's something that only WotC have access to. Thus, there's no market for third-party competition in this area.Of course, this would also open the door for Paizo (or someone else) taking the 4e rules and incorporating them into their own game. Which seems like a pretty big risk, except:1) Paizo won't do this. One of the big selling points of Pathfinder is that it is not 4e. Pulling in the 4e rules, in whole or in any significant part, would be a bad move.2) If someone else builds a 3.75e using 3e and 4e mechanics, that's just more competition for Pathfinder - any competitor would be too small to seriously bother WotC.3) If and when someone does lift some part of the rules and develop them in an interesting manner, those advances would necessarily also be open - meaning that WotC could take any good innovation and roll it right back into D&D.4) There's almost nothing in 4e that can't be done using the OGL anyway. Healing surges are pretty much just a re-codification of Reserve Points (which are in Unearthed Arcana, and so open content); Daily, Encounter and At-will powers all already exist, if not by name; Minions are just weaker monsters, and elites and solos more powerful ones; and so on. All formally opening the rules actually does is remove even the risk of litigation from the equation.</blockquote>

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