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In contrast to the GSL, Ryan Dancey on OGL/D20 in WotC archives
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<blockquote data-quote="PapersAndPaychecks" data-source="post: 4323938" data-attributes="member: 28854"><p>Open Gaming has one other challenge to surmount, which is a cost for accessing it.</p><p></p><p>If I download Firefox, I can start using it immediately and pick up all the nifty features while surfing the web. But if I download an RPG, there's an investment of time in reading it and understanding it before there's any payoff in play. And if it's an RPG along the same level of complexity as 3.x, that investment of time is really quite significant. That's a cost--and it's offputting to the target market. Any OGL game has to surmount that cost in perceived value added <em>before</em> it will receive significant community interest.</p><p></p><p>Complexity is key. I'm sure an unbiased university would say 1e D&D was complicated enough that you could earn a degree for understanding it well.* That's a really serious investment of time and effort! It's much quicker and (reckoning learning time in £, $, or whatever currency you get paid in) cheaper to play WoW.</p><p></p><p>The reason we still play D&D when there's WoW is because a GM creating an individually-tailored game makes for better gameplay, and imagination has better graphics, than any MMORG. But try explaining that to a teenager who's never tried RPGing...</p><p></p><p>Which is why, when OSRIC 2 comes out, my marketing angle isn't going to be, "OSRIC: It's free!" It's going to be, "OSRIC: You already know the rules." <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> Because that's more of a benefit: If you earn (say) £12 per hour, then a game that takes three hours to learn costs £36 + cover price. So my game's £36 cheaper than a free game.</p><p></p><p>What I'm coming to is this: A collaborative open game <em>needs</em> to be "cheap" to learn. If it has a single web-portal that has everything you need, a simple and streamlined rules framework that works fast and elegantly in play, and a modular set of options you can hang off the framework to complexify and add detail to whatever part of roleplaying tickles your fancy, then it's much more likely to succeed.</p><p></p><p>But if it's so simple and open source, it doesn't need the OGL.</p><p></p><p>Which is why, I think, the OGL has resulted (and will keep resulting) in near-clones of various D&D editions: that's what it's optimised to do.</p><p></p><p>*Assuming there's someone who understands the initiative rules well enough to grade the papers, of course...</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="PapersAndPaychecks, post: 4323938, member: 28854"] Open Gaming has one other challenge to surmount, which is a cost for accessing it. If I download Firefox, I can start using it immediately and pick up all the nifty features while surfing the web. But if I download an RPG, there's an investment of time in reading it and understanding it before there's any payoff in play. And if it's an RPG along the same level of complexity as 3.x, that investment of time is really quite significant. That's a cost--and it's offputting to the target market. Any OGL game has to surmount that cost in perceived value added [i]before[/i] it will receive significant community interest. Complexity is key. I'm sure an unbiased university would say 1e D&D was complicated enough that you could earn a degree for understanding it well.* That's a really serious investment of time and effort! It's much quicker and (reckoning learning time in £, $, or whatever currency you get paid in) cheaper to play WoW. The reason we still play D&D when there's WoW is because a GM creating an individually-tailored game makes for better gameplay, and imagination has better graphics, than any MMORG. But try explaining that to a teenager who's never tried RPGing... Which is why, when OSRIC 2 comes out, my marketing angle isn't going to be, "OSRIC: It's free!" It's going to be, "OSRIC: You already know the rules." ;) Because that's more of a benefit: If you earn (say) £12 per hour, then a game that takes three hours to learn costs £36 + cover price. So my game's £36 cheaper than a free game. What I'm coming to is this: A collaborative open game [i]needs[/i] to be "cheap" to learn. If it has a single web-portal that has everything you need, a simple and streamlined rules framework that works fast and elegantly in play, and a modular set of options you can hang off the framework to complexify and add detail to whatever part of roleplaying tickles your fancy, then it's much more likely to succeed. But if it's so simple and open source, it doesn't need the OGL. Which is why, I think, the OGL has resulted (and will keep resulting) in near-clones of various D&D editions: that's what it's optimised to do. *Assuming there's someone who understands the initiative rules well enough to grade the papers, of course... [/QUOTE]
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