Pathfinder 1E Is PAIZO becoming the next Wizards?

[JohnRTroy]

Wow, I must've missed the monoculture that sprang up, because I could still buy plenty of games not based on the d20 system... nWoD books, Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, Unisystem, GURPS, Qin the Warring States, PDQ, Warhammer FRPG, Reign, Savage Worlds, and so on.

Perhaps it wasn't so much a monoculture as it was you just overlooked the numerous games out there that weren't OGL based.

No, I am perfectly aware of this.

However, from what I've seen, many of these games were eclipsed in sales by the d20 glut. I think in many cases sales of the truly different games became eclipsed by the people going after the 3e market.

For instance, lets take GURPS. I specifically remember the GURPS product line being a lot healthier than it is today. Before, I could count on anywhere from 4 to 6 new books for GURPS per year. Now, it's hard to even find 1 book released a year, and the size of the books is a lot smaller now.

I don't believe the overall gaming market really expanded all that much with the OGL. Rather, I think it diverted gamer money going to 3rd party publisher to those that allied themselves with D&D. And I think the overabundance of product lead to what caused the d20 glut. And now, with the d20 license pulled and 4e going on ahead of the party, I think some of those companies won't survive. In other words, it appears to me the gaming market decided to standardize on potatoes instead of various vegetables once the person who created it shared the seed, other variants died, then a potato famine hit, and now the provider has changed to a genetically engineered plant that nobody else can use.

Granted, my stats could be wrong or there could be other issues, but I am curious to see if somebody could compare the sales figures in the RPG market from the past decade, and see what happen. But I see very little objective analysis of it, rather many people who defend the OGLs benefits are more often than not gamers who agree with its philosophy and are more into the "spirit of open gaming", or who quote the intentions of its creator, rather than publishers or people interested in making money, or people who have sales figures and other elements to back it up.

I guess this is why I am very skeptical of the OGL's benefits.

 

[AllisterH]

Well... to be fair, it wasn't just one element that sunk TSR. A wide range of campaigns splitting your audience and increasing your production costs (spend more to sell multiple products to basically the same amount of people you could sell one product line to) certainly didn't help, but it wasn't alone in making up the Doom that Came to Lake Geneva.

Even though I'm a fan of 4e and agree with WOTC about producing campaign settings I stil personally think it IS possible to have multiple campaign settings.

you JUSt can't produce them all at the same time...

You literally had 2-3 products coming out a WEEK. I always laugh when people think WOTC produces too much stuff (in either the 3e or 4e era).

In the 3e/4e era, WOTC put out roughly 1 new book every 3/4 weeks and that INCLUDES adventures.

Much easier for customer to keep up IMO than say 1st month of 1995 when TSR released
Dungeon Master's Survival Kit (for Mystara)
Planes of Law (for Planescape)
Player's Survival Kit (Mystara)
The Barbarian's Handbook (Generic supplement)
The Moonsea (for forgotten Realms)

and that's not including a novel for DL AND an Endless Quest book.

 

[JohnRTroy]

Not to mention the higher production values on some books. I heard that Planescape for instance had higher production values and that some works sold at a loss.

TSR of the 90s seemed to suffer from the same problems that Marvel did in the 90s, I think they virtually flooded the market with too many products, and it hurt both of them.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Bad example with GURPS.

GURPS is down because SJG publishes the stuff that makes them money. RPGs aren't in the top field of that but rather the old Munchkin material. They've been pretty open with the whole of their finances for several years and allow the readers peaks into the goings on for years.

No, I am perfectly aware of this.

However, from what I've seen, many of these games were eclipsed in sales by the d20 glut. I think in many cases sales of the truly different games became eclipsed by the people going after the 3e market.

For instance, lets take GURPS. I specifically remember the GURPS product line being a lot healthier than it is today. Before, I could count on anywhere from 4 to 6 new books for GURPS per year. Now, it's hard to even find 1 book released a year, and the size of the books is a lot smaller now.

I don't believe the overall gaming market really expanded all that much with the OGL. Rather, I think it diverted gamer money going to 3rd party publisher to those that allied themselves with D&D. And I think the overabundance of product lead to what caused the d20 glut. And now, with the d20 license pulled and 4e going on ahead of the party, I think some of those companies won't survive. In other words, it appears to me the gaming market decided to standardize on potatoes instead of various vegetables once the person who created it shared the seed, other variants died, then a potato famine hit, and now the provider has changed to a genetically engineered plant that nobody else can use.

Granted, my stats could be wrong or there could be other issues, but I am curious to see if somebody could compare the sales figures in the RPG market from the past decade, and see what happen. But I see very little objective analysis of it, rather many people who defend the OGLs benefits are more often than not gamers who agree with its philosophy and are more into the "spirit of open gaming", or who quote the intentions of its creator, rather than publishers or people interested in making money, or people who have sales figures and other elements to back it up.

I guess this is why I am very skeptical of the OGL's benefits.

 

[ggroy]

And now, with the d20 license pulled and 4e going on ahead of the party, I think some of those companies won't survive.

Which companies do you have in mind?

 

[BryonD]

However, from what I've seen, many of these games were eclipsed in sales by the d20 glut. I think in many cases sales of the truly different games became eclipsed by the people going after the 3e market.

Nobody goes there because its too crowded.

I've no doubt at all that the success of the OGL included some detraction from other products. And some degree of negative impact was observed.
But the very fact that people were spending their money in D20 demonstrates that it was giving the market as a whole what it wanted.

If your point is that the OGL didn't benefit *YOU* personally, then I readily concede that this may be very very true.

But the opinion of numerous industry types I've talked to disagree with yours on the market. Some of them do agree with you on the personal preference issue.

But even given the extreme benefit of the doubt, all your claim comes to is that the boom in gaming may have magically happened anyway, just spread out over a variety of systems. That seems a wild leap of faith even if you don't allow for the duldrums that RPGs were in at the time.

One could just as easily say that Drew Brees got too much credit because the Saints would have won the Super Bowl without him. I certainly can not prove they would not have. But idle speculation is one thing and actual events are another.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Which companies do you have in mind?

Necromancer Games? (ducks)

How about won't be d20 companies? Atlas was in it's own field long before d20 but managed to put out some fantastic material including Nyambe.

Oh... how about Malhavok? Fairly closed before the whole 4e bit but still pokes the nose in now and again....

Bastion under before...

I think those companies that would've been sunk by 4e were sunk by 3.5. If they weren't sunk, they moved onto in-house systems.

 

[ggroy]

I think those companies that would've been sunk by 4e were sunk by 3.5. If they weren't sunk, they moved onto in-house systems.

Even the top dog of 4E 3pp (Goodman), also appears to be moving to their own in-house system with their own DCC rpg.

 

[Nikosandros]

Atlas was in it's own field long before d20 but managed to put out some fantastic material including Nyambe.

Oh... how about Malhavok? Fairly closed before the whole 4e bit but still pokes the nose in now and again....

Atlas is still publishing Ars Magica. Malhavoc isn't publishing, but that's because Monte Cook is busy with novels and with his own subscription site Dungeon A Day.

 

[Erik Mona]

I can think of at least one company near and dear to my heart that views the OGL as an unqualified success.

--Erik