Licensing, OGL and Getting D&D Compatible Publishers Involved

[Hussar]

See, I look at Pathfinder and say "Thank you, Ryan Dancey, for making it possible for a company to keep a palatable D&D alive when WotC drops the ball." And for that matter, if Pathfinder weren't putting up such a fight, I'm not so sure WotC would be putting so much effort into D&D Next.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ible-Publishers-Involved/page28#ixzz2iQnGsJGz

Well obviously. But, that's basically saying, "Well, I like X, therefore X must be true." WOTC dropping the ball is your opinion, not an actual fact regardless of how often it gets repeated. Some of us actually, believe it or not, prefer 4e to Pathfinder, meaning that for us, there was no ball dropping whatsoever.

However, the fact that 4e is doing well enough on its own to allow the company to spend 2 years not releasing a single new product (outside of novels of course) points to a product that didn't do quite as badly as some believe. I mean, could Paizo, on the strength of Pathfinder, stop releasing any new material for the next two years and develop Pathfinder 2.0? Do you believe that? Does anyone?

Anyone who isn't actually personally invested in 3e being the One True Game, can't help but to look at the situation and see that WOTC created it's own competition. Every single licensing venture that D&D has engaged in has come back to haunt them. Every single one.

Thinking that Next is going to have an OGL is a pipe dream. It will never, ever get past Hasbro's lawyers or marketing department. It's wishful thinking, but, honestly, I know where I'd lay my money. It would be great if 5e was open like 3e. That would be fantastic. I would love it. I honestly would. Get me some Scarred Lands back, maybe another World's Largest Dungeon and fill up my book collection with lots of other goodies. Fantastic.

Not going to happen. IMNSHO of course.

 

[wedgeski]

See, I look at Pathfinder and say "Thank you, Ryan Dancey, for making it possible for a company to keep a palatable D&D alive when WotC drops the ball."

"palatable"..?

You could also look at what he did and read it as: Guys, it's my way or the highway. 3E or nothing. And by god, I'll blow this fanbase apart before I let any future editions sully what I've created!

I'll always be grateful for what Dancey and Adkison achieved in rescuing D&D and creating a game and ecosystem which I played and loved for a decade, but they created a time-bomb that blew up in WotC's face in 2009, long after the two of them had made their money and left for greener pastures (some of which happen to be in Paizo's back yard).

And now people are actually expecting Wizards to do it all over again? I just don't see it happening.

And for that matter, if Pathfinder weren't putting up such a fight, I'm not so sure WotC would be putting so much effort into D&D Next.

Absolutely agree! Pathfinder's ferocious quality will inspire WotC to better things and we'll all benefit from that.

 

[Morrus]

Just as a point of history, virtually no WOTC content made it into the OGL, 3.5 or 3e.

I assume you mean the SRD; and it's got the whole core rules of D&D 3.5 in it!

 

[I'm A Banana]

See, I look at Pathfinder and say "Thank you, Ryan Dancey, for making it possible for a company to keep a palatable D&D alive when WotC drops the ball."

Well obviously. But, that's basically saying, "Well, I like X, therefore X must be true." WOTC dropping the ball is your opinion, not an actual fact regardless of how often it gets repeated.

Unless the dude said it, yeah?

I also had the goal that the release of the SRD would ensure that D&D in a format that I felt was true to its legacy could never be removed from the market by capricious decisions by its owners

I mean, it sure seems to me, from his actual statements, like one of Dancey's goals was to make sure that D&D was not able to be dragged in any one direction by any one company: that it at least "a" D&D that met Dancey's personal needs would be not part of any one company, so even if WotC "dropped the ball" in one way or another, a version of D&D would live on.

However, the fact that 4e is doing well enough on its own to allow the company to spend 2 years not releasing a single new product (outside of novels of course) points to a product that didn't do quite as badly as some believe.

If you're into reading tea leaves like that, you could just as easily say that the company only selling legacy product for 2 years shows that they think there's more money in reprinting 2e, 3e, 1e, and OD&D than in printing any more 4e sourcebooks. But basically, D&D's financial position is opaque. One can't say it's been a rousing success any more than one can say it's been a colossal failure. It kind of seems to maybe be a little troubled to me (For the first time, another game is outselling it in the official channels, and 4e kept trying to reinvent itself), but there's a lot of unknowns in play, too (DDI subs could be HUGE! and what may be more important, RELIABLE!), so that could be an inaccurate perspective.

Thinking that Next is going to have an OGL is a pipe dream.

I'm not usually one to interrupt a good soapboxin', but I think it'd be a little crazy to imagine it's not an influencing element. Clearly WotC doesn't like the OGL at some level, but change is almost always forced on an institution from outside competition and need. The fact that Pathfinder is so huge is something they need to address. Numenera might be a problem down the road, too. The OGL largely did what its principle architect set out to do with it: it made D&D the dominant market force (at least until D&D abandoned the OGL, possibly), and let people make D&D-style games regardless of what WotC does. The OGL is still there for them to plug into if they want, and it still promises all the things that Dancey promised (and appears to me to have been mostly right about) back in '02. It's not something I think the invested parties are dismissing out of hand, even if it's not exactly something they'd go with now.

 

[Nellisir]

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.

Emphasis mine. I think this is where things went a bit off the rails for WotC. The OGL didn't force 3pp to support the core D&D game. It allowed them to branch off of it. Whether or not the $$$ diverted away from D&D by the branched games were greater or less than the $$$ generated by incoming players is not something we can answer, though.

 

[ThirdWizard]

[/COLOR]Emphasis mine. I think this is where things went a bit off the rails for WotC. The OGL didn't force 3pp to support the core D&D game. It allowed them to branch off of it. Whether or not the $$$ diverted away from D&D by the branched games were greater or less than the $$$ generated by incoming players is not something we can answer, though.

The OGL d20 SRD did put a huge emphasis on the d20 system development during 2000-2010 or so, though. So much so that publishers who might have otherwise made new games or supported non-d20 systems went for the ease of developing for OGL games, which is mostly, but not exclusively, d20 based. This swing the market decidedly toward d20, which D&D was the center point of. The absence of D&D from the OGL has, I think, been one of the (many) reasons we're seeing more indie games now, as publishers who might have otherwise gone to d20 during those years are branching out.

D&D being in the center of the d20 movement, despite the fact that they didn't monetize every OGL game that came out, was still a giant boon for them. It kept d20 familiar and it kept D&D in the conversation.

 

[Nellisir]

I'm not sure that what you said contradicts anything I said. However...

...So much so that publishers who might have otherwise made new games or supported non-d20 systems went for the ease of developing for OGL games...

This strikes me as an assertion that feels good, but doesn't actually have much evidence behind it. We can look at the companies that supported d20, but I'm not sure we can say what they would have done if there were no OGL or d20. (The only instances of this that leap out as obvious are Legend of the Five Rings and Swashbuckling Adventures. Possibly Weird West/Weird Wars.)

 

[Hussar]

I assume you mean the SRD; and it's got the whole core rules of D&D 3.5 in it!

We were talking about WOTC splat books. Which don't have OGL in them. Bill91 commented that not including WOTC material in the SRD was somehow a 3.5 thing. It was much earlier than that. Other than the Epic Level Handbook and the Unearthed Arcana, what other WOTC book made it into the SRD (outside of core of course)?

 

[Hussar]

And, let's not forget, that virtually no one was producing 3pp material for D&D by about 2006. There were maybe what, half a dozen companies publishing anything for 3e? There were considerably more who had taken the SRD and the OGL and gone off to do their own thing completely divorced from WOTC or D&D.

You could make a pretty decent case that games like Mutants and Masterminds have more to do with WOTC dropping the OGL with 4e than anything else. The idea was that people would come to D&D from outside games, but, there's little or no evidence that that was ever true. People went from D&D to other d20 games, or went straight to other d20 games. How many people started playing d20 variants and then moved into buying D&D?

How many 3.5 PHB's does Pathfinder sell? How many 3.5 Monster Manuals does Pathfinder sell? How is WOTC drawing any benefit whatsoever from Pathfinder? After all, Pathfinder is using the license that is supposed to directly benefit WOTC.

The existence of 4e and the GSL doesn't change that.

 

[Stormonu]

Other than the Epic Level Handbook and the Unearthed Arcana, what other WOTC book made it into the SRD (outside of core of course)?

Expanded Psionics and I *think* the rules for making gods out of Deities and Demigods.