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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1489824" data-attributes="member: 812">JohnRTroy:Have you any data for your assertion that Wizards intends to move away from an OGL-supported release strategy? Are sales of the Player's Handbook especially poor? Is the RPG portion of WotC losing money? Are other publishers failing to make money? Is the industry actually dying?I'm sure the bubble of the early d20 days is collapsing, but I'm not at all sure that d20 publishers are unable to make ends meet. Seems to me that Green Ronin, Privateer Press, Mongoose, Sword & Sorcery are all doing pretty well. Now, I'm far from being very well-informed on this, but if you have data that suggests things are as dire as you say they are, I would want to see that before taking your word on it.I wanted to address your specific example:The misleading portion of this example is that it posits the publisher as the hard-done-by family who were temporarily unable to meet their obligations. Obviously, it's NICE when people make allowances for others who are unlucky.But WotC cannot be considered UNLUCKY to have released UA using the OGL. Nor can Green Ronin be considered to have suffered a temporary setback by releasing Skull and Bones under the OGL. d20 publishers are CHOOSING to use a particular license. Presumably they are doing so with the expectation that the conditions of that license will be upheld.A better example would be a tenant who signs a lease agreement, and then expresses surprise that they are expected to pay their rent each month. Calls the landlord "sleazy" for asking for that rent. Now, it would be NICE of the landlord not to insist on having the rent paid, sure. On occasion the landlord might even do that, if they understood the tenant was temporarily unlucky. But if the tenant had no intention of living up to the conditions of the lease, why did they sign it in the first place? Who's being sleazy now?The OGL is specifically designed so that material released under it can be freely distributed by anyone who cares to. That's not exploiting a loophole, that's using the license for what it was designed for.And as far as WotC potentially releasing no further materials under the OGL, that doesn't mean "the death of the hobby" -- at least, not as far as I'm concerned. The SRD has already been released and cannot be rescinded and suits my needs just fine.So I don't see a downside to people obeying the law. I don't see it as unethical. And I certainly don't see it as sleazy.</blockquote>

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