D&D 5E Light release schedule: More harm than good?

[Nergal Pendragon]

Your interpretation of the public record seems rather sketchy to me. Let us start with your premise that the OGL was revised. That never happened. I think you are confusing the OGL with the D20 license, which is a common error, but does show that your grasp of the specifics is questionable. Secondly, while it is true that WotC failed to properly manage 3e, a thing I think I said above, this does not itself show the edition was in any way a failure, just as the release of 3.5 does not demonstrate that the core design was flawed.

My recollection of 3e and the OGL was that it gave new life to the hobby, brought in more players, created whole companies out of almost nothing, and that the core d20 design has shown itself to be versatile and strong. 3e was a golden goose, but the killing of said goose by the owner does not show the goose itself to have been a failure.

The OGL I was referring to and the d20 license are the same thing. WotC had a habit of sometimes calling it the OGL. So, the confusion in terms is in part because WotC themselves never kept the terms entirely straight.

And, yes, the release of 3.5 does demonstrate that 3.0 had mechanical flaws, given that mechanical flaws in 3.0 are the exact reason WotC used for releasing 3.5. They outright said it on their website at the time. There's not a lot of room for interpretation, which is why I didn't use any.

Something important to note about my failures comment: I wasn't talking about only commercial failures. I was speaking of major blunders in general. With 3E, they had one and then managed to pick themselves up and keep going. With 4E, they stumbled and fell due to the different nature of the failure. With 5E, they're trying to avoid both what happened with 3E and what happened with 4E; they are trying to both get the mechanics right the first time and have a commercial success.

 

[dracomilan]

D20 System, d20 System licence, OGL and OGC are all different (albeit related) things. A quick read of wikipedia (if not of the legal documents) can clarify that.

I just had to point that out, sorry

 

[chriton227]

The OGL I was referring to and the d20 license are the same thing. WotC had a habit of sometimes calling it the OGL. So, the confusion in terms is in part because WotC themselves never kept the terms entirely straight.

And, yes, the release of 3.5 does demonstrate that 3.0 had mechanical flaws, given that mechanical flaws in 3.0 are the exact reason WotC used for releasing 3.5. They outright said it on their website at the time. There's not a lot of room for interpretation, which is why I didn't use any.

Something important to note about my failures comment: I wasn't talking about only commercial failures. I was speaking of major blunders in general. With 3E, they had one and then managed to pick themselves up and keep going. With 4E, they stumbled and fell due to the different nature of the failure. With 5E, they're trying to avoid both what happened with 3E and what happened with 4E; they are trying to both get the mechanics right the first time and have a commercial success.

Actually the Open Gaming License (OGL) and the D20 System Trademark License (D20STL) are separate licenses. The D20STL required that the product also use the OGL, but the D20STL introduced additional restriction in exchange for allowing the use of specific additional IP owned by WotC. There were many OGL products that were not released under the D20STL.

And every rules system has mechanical flaws and elements that can be improved. The existence of mechanical flaws does not automatically make something a failure, it just means that there is room for fixes and improvement. The vast majority of the rules for 3.0 were unchanged in the transition to 3.5, most of the changes were adjustments to specific elements to address game balance issues (altered spell durations, class ability tweaks, skill tweaks, etc.) rather than changes to the fundamental mechanics of the game (D20+mods vs DC, Fort/Ref/Will saves, use of HP and AC, CR system for encounter balance, etc.). 3.5 also served as an opportunity to include the collected errata and clarifications into the dead-tree versions of the books.

 

[Wicht]

The OGL I was referring to and the d20 license are the same thing. WotC had a habit of sometimes calling it the OGL. So, the confusion in terms is in part because WotC themselves never kept the terms entirely straight.

Um, no. You are just completely and factually wrong. The D20 license and the OGL were quite different things. And the OGL was never revised, and even if it was revised, it wouldn't matter, because the OGL itself lets you choose which version of the OGL (if there was ever a new version, which there has not been) you will use. (cf. OGL section 9)

And, yes, the release of 3.5 does demonstrate that 3.0 had mechanical flaws, given that mechanical flaws in 3.0 are the exact reason WotC used for releasing 3.5. They outright said it on their website at the time. There's not a lot of room for interpretation, which is why I didn't use any.

Heh.
I know what they said, but that does not mean that the publicly stated reason was necessarily the only reason, or even the main reason. There is a school of thought that says that WotC had the idea that it was core books which were the real money maker and that what was needed to boost sales was the release of a new core book. Doesn't mean that school of thought has to be right, but there is such a thing as "spin" when it comes to PR, and most PR statements should be read with some minor skepticism, imo. Still and all, the core mechanics were sound, and the changes to 3.5 were relatively minor, as demonstrated by the fact that I ran 3.5 material for a good many years using primarily the 3e core rulebooks. The core d20 mechanics are still going strong today in a variety of forms. Anyone who makes the claim that 3rd edition was a mechanical failure is serving pretty thin gruel by my estimates. YMMV.

Edit: Ninja'd by Chriton, who said essentially what I was trying to say...

 

[aramis erak]

I'm not arguing that it was in some way a failure; that is a matter of public record. 3.0 was the failure, given its design was screwed-up enough that the only way they could fix it was to release a half-edition.

Most of the ongoing success since then isn't a credit to WotC. WotC was actually a primary source of a lot of 3E's problems; they had poor quality control measures, were constantly fighting with 3PP companies (even going as far as to revise the OGL to try to stop some 3PPs from putting out products), had power creep that still makes people cringe, stopped caring about even producing quality errata and at least twice had to errata their errata before that, and had a lot of other problems.

Pretty much, Paizo had to work with a broken 3E fanbase that was fighting itself and try to forge a product out of an epic mess that was left behind when WotC decided to move on to 4E. At that point, it was no longer in WotC's hands and WotC could not claim any credit for what Paizo did.

So, for WotC, what I said is true; it was one of their editions with a pretty massive failure in it. For Paizo, what I said doesn't apply, since they got it right on their first try.

I tend to agree with your evidence, but still wouldn't say that 3.X was a failure. It was a flawed success. A success at a huge price....

For those who don't see it, the symptoms of 3.0E as a flawed success:

• The need for a half-edition
• The rise of the OSR and its resultant loss of customers
• The rise of electronic publication by 3pp
• The more radical surgery by Paizo to make 3.5 succeed
• The Rise of 3PP on the backs of the OGL to produce new non-d20 games in competition with the D&D brand
• The collapse of the 3pp market

The OSR stripped a bunch of loyal and a large number of potential customers. Brand loyalty overridden.

3pp going electronic: bad for the LGS... and at the heart of it, Paizo considered the end customer to be their customer, while WotC did and still does consider the LGS their customers, with the end customer being a good co-sold with the games to the LGS. Bad for the LGS is thus bad for WotC.

Pathfinder: It's not just the 3.5 SRD. It's a significantly modified 3.5 SRD. And that means that Pathfinder's success isn't just "We kept 3.X in print and succeeded." It was, in fact, "We created a new game upon the 3.x skeleton, and fixed the majority of the problems, while building a new brand loyalty."

3pp publishers going non-d20: Mongoose, Green Ronin, and others have become competitors, rather than supporters, of the D&D brand. Mongoose Traveller, Mongoose RuneQuest; Green Ronin's Dragon Age RPG, even MCG's Numenara...

The collapse of the 3pp market a decade ago was also firmly a function of failure by Wizards. After opening up the market to 3pp, 3.x became associated in retail with the stable selling corebooks, and the piles of worthless drekh from the 3PP... It's a symptom of a bad game design that the various uses it was put to were all too often incompatible with each other.... Many LGSs lost big due to the unmovable stock. This collapse wasn't entirely Wizards' fault, but was an unintended consequence of the OGL. Too many produced too much too fast, and many produced stuff that wasn't worthwhile. It was hard to tell the good from the bad. And so a lot of the good didn't get onto shelves, either. And a lot of what did make it didn't sell. Why? No controls on the 3pp market.

Let's compare to the videogame industry: The PS, X-box, and Wii markets are largely 3PP... but there is a quality control in place. So, for the most part, the standard packaging means a game that's at least relatively stable, relatively playable, and runs on the listed hardware. When Atari didn't do this, it killed brand loyalty. That was in the early 1980's. Atari never recovered, despite really good hardware that came out following the collapse of the 2600... Nintendo, in the late 80's, knew that 3PP would propel their platform, but they were smart enough to require an approval process before indications of compatibility using their logos...

So, WotC had a model to see what might happen with the open license... but didn't pay attention. And not one, but two different but closely related companies.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

Given they had to replace the core rules with a new set, I fail to see how one can justify not calling that a failure. One can point out it wasn't a financial failure (very true), or a failure of capacity to make the game popular (again true), or a failure to make the game long-lasting (again, true). But it was still a development failure in that they had to redesign part of the ruleset and rerelease the core books to deal with problems that could not simply be errata'd away.

As for not believing it: If you want to accuse WotC of lying, go right ahead. But it does not change that the evidence is on WotC's side on this one. They didn't just re-release the books with some errata and call it an anniversary edition (which they would later do). It's that they actually altered rules, openly admitted design mistakes, some people actually lost their jobs or quit over it (Monte Cook was one of them), and things went on.

 

[Zardnaar]

Given they had to replace the core rules with a new set, I fail to see how one can justify not calling that a failure. One can point out it wasn't a financial failure (very true), or a failure of capacity to make the game popular (again true), or a failure to make the game long-lasting (again, true). But it was still a development failure in that they had to redesign part of the ruleset and rerelease the core books to deal with problems that could not simply be errata'd away.

As for not believing it: If you want to accuse WotC of lying, go right ahead. But it does not change that the evidence is on WotC's side on this one. They didn't just re-release the books with some errata and call it an anniversary edition (which they would later do). It's that they actually altered rules, openly admitted design mistakes, some people actually lost their jobs or quit over it (Monte Cook was one of them), and things went on.

WoTC jumped the gun with 3.5. They had a massive hit with 3.0 but once everyone had the PHB sales dropped. 3.5 was always planned but they brought it forward by 2 years probably to try and get 2000/2001 all over again.

3E is one of the largest selling versions of D&D beaten by BECMI and 1E.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

WoTC jumped the gun with 3.5. They had a massive hit with 3.0 but once everyone had the PHB sales dropped. 3.5 was always planned but they brought it forward by 2 years probably to try and get 2000/2001 all over again.

Do you have any evidence of this? Because I'm getting tired of these unproven conspiracy theories.

 

[Zardnaar]

Do you have any evidence of this? Because I'm getting tired of these unproven conspiracy theories.

I beleive it was Monte Cook IIRC that stated it in an interview back in 2003. They used his name to sell 3.5 and he had nothing to do with it.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

I beleive it was Monte Cook IIRC that stated it in an interview back in 2003. They used his name to sell 3.5 and he had nothing to do with it.

Well, that would be interesting, given that he hadn't been working for WotC for two years by the time 3.5 was released.

Got a link to it?