D&D 5E Licensing speculation

[Hussar]

I had a thought.

Mearl's is saying that you will have something that will let you play DnD with just the phb. Wotc has licensed out making the first two modules to Kobold.

How about this: we get a revamped release of the play test rules complete, but nothing is open content. Home use only. Just like the play test. Any outsourcing will be done on a case by case basis directly with wotc.

Is this plausible?

 

[Li Shenron]

Sounds like a 3e SRD, except that it cannot be used for creating 3rd party products.

But wasn't the purpose of the SRD exactly to allow 3rd parties to create products?

I don't think the purpose of the SRD was to give players the rules of the game for free, so I don't see why your idea would be convenient for WotC.

There are games where the rules are free, because the rules are not the selling point, for example collectible cards games or miniatures games. Maybe this idea could work if WotC intended to make e.g. adventures or supplements their main selling point, but right now it looks like adventures might be regularly outsourced and supplements won't be nearly as many as in 3e, therefore...

 

[Hussar]

Depends on the licensing deals I suppose. If wotc gets a cut of Kobold's sales then that makes to farm out making supplements. Far less risky and a much simpler return.

Sort of like franchising.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Depends on the licensing deals I suppose. If wotc gets a cut of Kobold's sales then that makes to farm out making supplements. Far less risky and a much simpler return.

Sort of like franchising.

Seems like a very poor deal unless WotC also markets the supplements and gives people super-official branding to put on them (particularly the former, though), as a franchise does. The RPG business is a tough one, and WotC cutting into the tiny profits 3PP companies typically make both by taking some of it, and making it harder to make 3PP products (any kind of non-open licensing means lawyers, waiting on decisions and the like, which is a big deal for smaller companies) doesn't seem awesome.

The reason the OGL worked so well was that it was, well, open, and didn't require this kind of work. What you're proposing is heavy-duty, high-overhead stuff.

Further I would offer that any suggestion that this would increase the average quality of 3PP products is open to question - WotC's official adventures for both 3E and 4E were pretty terrible, on average (certainly below the 3PP average).

To be clear, it's only "simpler and less risky" for WotC.

 

[MerricB]

I had a thought.

Mearl's is saying that you will have something that will let you play DnD with just the phb. Wotc has licensed out making the first two modules to Kobold.

Just a note: Wizards have not licensed out making the modules to Kobold.

Instead they contracted Kobold Press to write the modules (and test & develop, most likely). Wizards will be publishing the adventures. This is a lot different to Kobold Press printing the adventures themselves.

Cheers!

 

[Phototoxin]

I think they dropped the ball with 3Es OGL thing as it let tonnes of splatty stuff be published and some well dodgy, clearly untested stuff through too. In the end pathfinder brought Pazio forward and this has probably hurt D&D most of all!

 

[delericho]

I had a thought.

Mearl's is saying that you will have something that will let you play DnD with just the phb. Wotc has licensed out making the first two modules to Kobold.

How about this: we get a revamped release of the play test rules complete...

I fully expect some sort of "survival kit" to be available, at least for a few months. Whether that will be as full-featured as the playtest packets, or whether it will only include monsters and magic items, I'm not sure.

but nothing is open content. Home use only. Just like the play test. Any outsourcing will be done on a case by case basis directly with wotc.

Is this plausible?

Yes, but...

Someone has noted a couple of times that they'd been told by some would-be third-party suppliers that there would be some sort of open license for the edition. That may have been misinterpreted, of course, or plans could have changed, but it does indicate there may be something in the works.

There is, of course, no reason WotC couldn't have an open license and officially-license someone else for official adventures and do official supplements in-house. Or any combination of the above. (If nothing else, a lot of the late-3e adventures were actually written by freelance talent, including "Expedition to the Demonweb Pits" by one Wolfgang Baur.)

 

[delericho]

There are games where the rules are free, because the rules are not the selling point, for example collectible cards games or miniatures games. Maybe this idea could work if WotC intended to make e.g. adventures or supplements their main selling point, but right now it looks like adventures might be regularly outsourced and supplements won't be nearly as many as in 3e, therefore...

I wouldn't be at all surprised if WotC's strategy wasn't, essentially, to sell Core Rulebooks and DDI subscriptions and virtually nothing else. So, very few in-print supplements, very few in-print adventures (and those done by outsourced talent), and only one in-print setting (FR, of course).

After all, the traditional wisdom has been that the Core Rulebooks are the items that make most money in the game, with sales tailing off sharply after that. And we know that the DDI, with it's ~80k subscribers and low running costs (initial startup aside) is a good source of money. But the rest?

So, publish the money-making bits, contract someone else to do the less-profitable bits you feel the game 'must' have, and then leave it be.

(This certainly opens up room for third-parties to then publish materials using some sort of open license. Whether WotC would accomodate such third-parties with an open license, though, is another matter.)

 

[Kinak]

Their outsourcing of the launch adventures is very interesting and, frankly, should improve our chances of getting good adventures.

And I suspect you're right about outsourcing @Hussar . Outsourcing on a case-by-case basis seems more in line with the vision of D&D as an intellectual property.

I'll be very surprised if we see full rules for free, though. Giving away the IP (well, the expression of the IP) doesn't seem like the model they're going for.

Cheers!
Kinak