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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RyanD" data-source="post: 2400604" data-attributes="member: 3312"><ASBESTOS>Many moons ago, I suggested reasons that Open Gaming would be embraced by the market.  As a result, I was excoriated for daring to suggest that the simple act of having many different RPG systems was a Bad Thing, and that the OGL/D20 project was A Secret Plan to Monopolize All of RPG Publishing.Rather than restating, allow me to quote myself:(from: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/article.php?a=1" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/article.php?a=1</a>)I set up the problem thusly:"The downside here is that I believe that one of the reasons that the RPG as a category has declined so much from the early 90's relates to the proliferation of systems. Every one of those different game systems creates a "bubble" of market inefficiency; the cumulative effect of all those bubbles has proven to be a massive downsizing of the marketplace. I have to note, highlight, and reiterate: The problem is not competitive product, the problem is competitive systems. I am very much for competition and for a lot of interesting and cool products."And this was my statement of intent vis-a-vis Open Gaming to address this problem:"The logical conclusion says that reducing the "cost" to other people to publishing and supporting the core D&D game to zero should eventually drive support for all other game systems to the lowest level possible in the market, create customer resistance to the introduction of new systems, and the result of all that "support" redirected to the D&D game will be to steadily increase the number of people who play D&D, thus driving sales of the core books. This is a feedback cycle -- the more effective the support is, the more people play D&D. The more people play D&D, the more effective the support is.The other great effect of Open Gaming should be a rapid, constant improvement in the quality of the rules. With lots of people able to work on them in public, problems with math, with ease of use, of variance from standard forms, etc. should all be improved over time. The great thing about Open Gaming is that it is interactive -- someone figures out a way to make something work better, and everyone who uses that part of the rules is free to incorporate it into their products. Including us. So D&D as a game should benefit from the shared development of all the people who work on the Open Gaming derivative of D&D."</ASBESTOS>It would be very fair to say that the implications of those statements are that one of the purposes of the OGL was to make the experience of playing an RPG more fun.  I hope that, long term, that proves to be true.=====PS:  This is one of those areas of the early period of the OGL process where I am often accused of "rewriting history" - mostly because so many people read the criticisms of things I wrote, rather than the actual things I did write, and when they hear me defend those writings today, it appears as though I've backtracked.  Luckily (for me) Eric Noah (and now Morrus) have never removed those interviews and they're available as historical reference to anyone who chooses to read the primary source material in question.</blockquote>

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