D&D 4E Interesting Article on OGL and 4E

[TerraDave]

Following up on some of the above posts...D&D dominated the market after the release of 3rd ed in a way it had not for years. "But terradave, D&D always dominated the market". No, before 3rd ed came out, it was sharing with Gurps, WoD, various cyber games...after 3ed, D&D went on a complete tear.

And I think those third party products helped sale the D&D core rules. If they later cut into sales of things like the splatbooks, it was because those splatbooks where not very good. When WotC raised the quality of those books, they got the sales back. And they remain the 800 pound gorrila. In part I think due to the OGL.

 

[Lizard]

Since the original TOH was done with special WOTC permission -- all those old monsters weren't public domain, after all! -- I see no reason to believe the same permission will not be given for the new one. No need to use OGL content -- they just tell Necro "We are allowing you to convert 2e monsters to 4e". The OGC in the TOH is skipped entirely.

Other companies without a special relationship might have more trouble upgrading from material derived from 3.5 SRD. Also, if a book uses material from sources the company does not own -- i.e, reusing third party OGC -- it can be difficult to 'extract' the material to which the publisher has the copyright (and can thus reuse freely) and the material to which they don't.

 

[Gareman]

I have to agree with the posters here who say that the early 3E days could have done with a lot more modules and a lot fewer sourcebooks.

As someone who bought a buttload of those adventures as a player, and then became a liquidator of dead 3.0 product, I can tell you there were an awful lot of adventures, the majority of which blew big wind. AEG, for example, had an entire rack of dozens of half-sized adventure books. At the height of the 3.0 boom, there were over a hundred new products released each day. If you didn't see a lot of adventures, kudos to your local game store for putting on the brakes.

 

[Hussar]

Dave - I agree with you. The OGL was there to sell PHB's. That's the refrain, but, that's not entirely the whole story. What the OGL did was allow 3e to hit the ground with a speed that no other RPG game has ever managed. Within a month or two of release you had dozens, if not more, D&D 3e books on the shelves. 3e was taking over shelf space at the FLGS at an alarming rate.

And it had to. You had a fairly unknown company (c'mon WOTC? Those Magic guys? They're going to turn D&D into a bloody card game ) publishing an untried game. Granted, 2e was dying on the vine and the fans were clamoring for something better. So, they got lots of stuff. Tons of it. All at once. WAHOO!

But, this time around it's different. The biggest competition that 3e faced was games like GURPS and Vampire. The biggest competition that 4e faces is 3e. There is a real danger here of WOTC getting screwed by its own success. They built a game that brought in gamers in numbers unseen in decades. And, while 3e may have its problems, it's still certainly playable. Far more playable than the kludge 2e had become by the end.

So, it's really in their best interests for the new OGL, or GSL as its called this time around, to push D&D. Only D&D. Only D&D 4e. 3rd party publishers are more than savvy enough to be able to take a new SRD and convert it into a new game. We know they can do that. So, WOTC is trying to narrow the field a bit and force people who use their mechanics to produce 4e D&D stuff.

From a business standpoint, I think it's not a terribly bad way to go. Why spend hundreds of thousands of dollars developing mechanics only to hand it out to other people who are going to directly compete with you? That's bad business sense. Better to funnel the other guy into areas that you don't really want to cover or at least away from stuff that you can't cover at all.

 

[Sir Brennen]

I agree with Hussar's points. Third Party publishers are usually the first to bitch about their 'intellectual property' but also the first to jump and grab free products (OGL SRD), and then the first to bitch again when these free products are taken away.

I am not directing this at any particular publisher, simply those who do this.

Oh and Mongoose is releaseing runequest and traveller as OGL SRD, AFAIK and green ROnin is releasing True20 as an OGL SRD. These should be enough to kick start some new 3rd party companies.

Even in kinder terms, I think the idea of a 3rd party publisher 'consortium' doing a stable 3.75 core set of rules is a pipe dream for the reasons you describe. Every designer/publisher will:

1) have their own idea of what should be in such a document

2) will more often than not end up creating a setting or new OGL game which would deviate significantly from the 'new' core rules anyway, just as we've seen with 3.x.​

Both of these factors would lead to a continued fragmenting of an already splinter group of publishers for a system which would have a steadily declining customer base. Danny Devito's buggy whip analogy from Other People's Money comes to mind.

Some publishers/designers/writers are happy to create great support content for their favorite system, and some want to produce their own system and support material. The d20 OGL helped create a unique niche between the two, which WotC no longer wants to encourage.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

Useless Post now.

 

[Sir Brennen]

I'm Pretty sure that was Other People's Money.

Corrected

 

[cavesalamander]

The biggest competition that 3e faced [were] games like GURPS and Vampire. The biggest competition that 4e faces is 3e. There is a real danger here of WOTC getting screwed by its own success. . .So, it's really in their best interests for the new OGL, or GSL as its called this time around, to push D&D. Only D&D. Only D&D 4e. 3rd party publishers are more than savvy enough to be able to take a new SRD and convert it into a new game. We know they can do that. So, WOTC is trying to narrow the field a bit and force people who use their mechanics to produce 4e D&D stuff.

My question isn't directed necessarily at Hussar. He just brought up an issue that raises the question in my mind. Taken as given that the 3e OGL allowed WoTC to "hit the ground running" with their game upon its release, thanks to the deluge of adventures and sourcebooks available for it shortly after it came out, AND given as taken that such a deluge helped propel 3e into sales figures never before seen in the history of the hobby, why then is WoTC being so tight about the license now? I don't mean in terms of what 3rd parties are allowed to publish, but in terms of the actual contents of said license. 4e goes live in 4 months, but unless you're willing to pony up $5,000 you can't publish anything for it until next year*. That leaves game stores with one shelf of 4e products, and many more shelves with 3e products.

In the long run, those 3e products will fade away as more and more gamers switch over to the new system and new ones come into it, but upon its initial release it seems that it faces stiff competition from its predecessor.

Maybe this is a moot point since according to their release schedule for 2008 alone, WoTC is perfectly capable of creating their own glut. I dunno.

Cavesalamander.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Even in kinder terms, I think the idea of a 3rd party publisher 'consortium' doing a stable 3.75 core set of rules is a pipe dream for the reasons you describe. Every designer/publisher will:

1) have their own idea of what should be in such a document

2) will more often than not end up creating a setting or new OGL game which would deviate significantly from the 'new' core rules anyway, just as we've seen with 3.x.​

Both of these factors would lead to a continued fragmenting of an already splinter group of publishers for a system which would have a steadily declining customer base. Danny Devito's buggy whip analogy from Other People's Money comes to mind.

Some publishers/designers/writers are happy to create great support content for their favorite system, and some want to produce their own system and support material. The d20 OGL helped create a unique niche between the two, which WotC no longer wants to encourage.

 

[tomBitonti]

WotC can't stop someone from making a set of OGL rules that mimic 4E. If there is a "Nature" skill in 4E, then there's nothing to stop someone from writing up a new skill called "Nature" under the OGL and - so long as the text isn't identical - giving it the same set of bonuses, making it usable under the same set of conditions, etc.

So, is this true? I was wondering if a two team approach would be needed, where one team reviews the 4E rules and writes specifications, and a second team writes the OGL rules? I'm thinking that if you just looked at the "Nature" skill and did a rewrite while looking at the original text, that that would count as derivative.

Just my 2 cents. I maybe misapplying techniques from software engineering that don't apply here.