Mearls' Latest Thought on the Industry

[The Sigil]

PDF publishing hurts innovation, particularly for d20. Rather than use the Internet as a medium to spread concepts and test ideas, the RPG industry has instead turned it into a massive shopping center. The impulse for widespread collaboration, sharing, and improvement, precisely the sort of factors needed for an open source movement to take root and produce useful results, have been undercut by the rush to sell PDFs.

Um... WTF? Not to sound bitter, but the blame for this falls solely on WotC, because they have never wanted to bother themselves with enforcing the OGL.

WotC is the entity that has allowed publishers to withhold portions of their contributions from the community rather than making it an "all-or-nothing" proposition and in doing so, allowed obfuscated PI/OGC designations to, for all practical purposes, create products that contribute nothing to the community (Remember kids, the OGL requires that "You must clearly indicate which portions of the work that you are distributing are Open Game Content." - emphasis mine).

WotC is the entity that has declined to enforce the OGL in any meaningful way, thus allowing "non-compliant" OGC declarations - and hence closing up of material - to persist. (They could have fixed this one early by actually enforcing the OGL and requiring publishers to CLEARLY designate their OGC, something that a great many publishers STILL DON'T DO TO THIS DAY - 5 YEARS LATER. Lean on someone early, when the stakes are still small, and everyone else gets the point and does a good job of things - and the community has a steady flow of clear OGC.)

If there's one thing I've learned watching the OGL versus the GPL, it's that if you really believe in the Open movement, you have to write that spirit into the "letter of the law" because anyone who doesn't have that spirit is just going to take your stuff and not give back if you don't. The GPL has teeth to force things open. The OGL doesn't (and it doesn't help that WotC has never really leaned on anyone to comply, meaning any teeth it does have become non-existent because they're never used).

Mike, I know you don't work in legal over at WotC, but if you really want to increase the innovation and make things Open for the benefit of all, get WotC to start issuing letters of non-compliance to every company that has not clearly designated their OGC, with the threat that if the designations are not updated within 30 days (per the license), litigation for copyright infringement will follow. Trust me, that action alone will open the floodgates of Open Content. You don't have to do this to every company out there - one or two biggies, whom any ENWorlder could probably name off the top of his/her head - would be enough of a warning shot to get the whole industry straightened up.

Some blame DOES fall third-party publishers' feet... the ones with obfuscated OGC/PI designations clearly don't want to be a part of the Open Gaming Movement (else they wouldn't close their content via bad designations) - of course, WotC is ALSO in this crowd, so for a WotC employee to rant about not making things open is something of the pot calling the kettle black.

I'll probably regret writing that, but there it is.

--The Sigil

 

[philreed]

But doesn't it matter how many are sold? Its great if you are making more per unit sold, but if the print gives you twice as many sales isn't that better? Now, I have no idea how sales of PDFs compaire to print books.

Well, discussions I've had with people has led me to the conclusion that many Ronin Arts PDFs outsell the print products of smaller publishers.

 

[Henry]

And how much more does WOTC need to release in order to create a viable OGC? For me, 3rd party publishers have nothing to preen about. We do not see them releasing their data in a way that makes it easy to reuse. Where is the SRD doc for them?

It seems to me that they have released plenty of OGC material. Enough that we have an entire industry based on it.

I don't mean this to sound harsh, but I'm not seeing how this relates to what I said. What i said was, "how is it that 3rd party publishers (most of which release material in PDF) are hurting the market?" not, "WotC doesn't release enough OGC."

As for publishers not releasing SRD's, it's not an issue - in fact, WotC releasing NO SRD wouldn't hurt me, as someone would surely have come up with one under the OGL by now. I'm willing to bet, however, that no one in management at WotC (not alluding to Mike, I'm talking the brand) would be a proponent of an OGC Wiki if there weren't an SRD for all their current OGC material.

As for adventire modules...good luck finding them. Dozens of feats, classes, setting, etc, but god forbid the same level of adventure support.

Goodman Games, Necromancer, Green Ronin, Creative Mountain Games, Ronin Arts, to name four - all have released adventure modules in the past few years, and the first three have had print editions of such, not just PDF's. The problem's not in that they aren't there, the problem is in the distribution - no one has the clout of WotC or White Wolf, and the only ones who were seen in retail outlets were distributed by one of those two.

 

[Jim Hague]

Yeah, people can keep saying that PDFs aren't selling but I'll just keep working away at them.

Phil, how dare you bring that pesky reality into this?

But more seriously and on topic - yes, Mike's right in the sense that quality is an issue (again, look at LPJ Degins)...but I also point out that the publishers that work hard and produce quality product (Phil, GM Skarka/Adamant, Green Ronin, just to nae a few) are the ones making a profit.

And they're spurring innovation while they're at it - thanks to a fistful of PDF products I've got for Mutants and Masterminds, I'm on my way to finalizing an entire campaign world, also to be sold as a Superline PDF. Am I going to make money? I'm certainly going to try. And I'm not putting out a product that's anything less than what I'd buy as the theoretical consumer.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

As for adventire modules...good luck finding them. Dozens of feats, classes, setting, etc, but god forbid the same level of adventure support.

You're just staggeringly uninformed.


GameBuyer magazine continues to report Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl classics outselling anything WOTC releases, month after month.

http://www.goodmangames.com/DCCpreview.php


Necromancer Games is also still publishing adventure modules by the cartload.

Dungeon Magazine catches the rest.

 

[Crothian]

Well, discussions I've had with people has led me to the conclusion that many Ronin Arts PDFs outsell the print products of smaller publishers.

Okay, so the big PDF publishers out sale the small print guys. But will Green Ronin PDF's out sale their Print side?

 

[jgbrowning]

Which is why I don't understand what he is trying to say. Is it because the PDF Market is releasing PDF products and not working the concept to death to make it more polished what is harming innovation in his opinion? I dunno. I certainly don't think any open product is harming innovation.

....but Denizens of Avadu isn't innovative (or at least it's less innovative) because it wasn't created under a certain paradigm. Had the same exact product been created by a group of people working for free out of a sense of "community" it would qualify for Mike's definition of "innovation."

Apparantly innovation is measured by the process, not just the results.

The logical extension of this paradigm would seem to result in something like this..... "The most innovative products will occur when a community has replaced the entire rpg industry. Only when everyone who's doing this for money stops, will the most innovative outcomes occur."

joe b.

 

[BryonD]

The moment WotC releases a new rule it's closed.

Not true. They simply release completely outside the SRD. Two different things.

Of course you could take the essence of that rule, and change it's name

Right.

- and the mechanics to some degree.

Not at all certain that is required.

But you're treating on thin ice if you do so. WotC could call it foul anytime they'd want to.

How's that? If you produce within the OGL then WotC could "call foul", but that would be the limit of their ability. They could not back it up with any action.

And even if you did, where's the benefit? Meaning "touchstones" and calling them "power locations" won't help philreed sell his "101 Power Locations", because people won't know what he's talking about. "Touchstones" are closed, "power locations" are without meaning.

Oh, I agree with you there. That was not the point. The point was that WotC has not carved off a piece of gaming concept and forever excluded it from the OGL.

Imagine the term "feat" wouldn't be OGC - would you buy a book named "101 tricks your character can learn every now and then"?

Well, you set up an absurd circumstance. If critical concepts such as feats had not been established as open under the OGL / SRD then the entire concept of the current open gaming movement would be moot.

But, again, that is completely beside the point. The SRD-derivable aspects of touchstones are not and may not be "locked" by WotC. The name and flavor / setting portions most certainly are protected, but that is no different than any other IP. It is just that rather than being OGC, it exists outside the OGL. A Power Locations product would not need to refer to any WotC product other than the SRD in Section 15. None of that means anyone would buy it or not.

Oh, and IANAL.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Profit per unit for Denizens of Avadnu was around $14 through distribution which included art, writing, editing and everything else. It was 224 pages and full color. Our numbers won't be the same for most publishers as we had a lot of inhouse designers working for us so art and layout were basically free for the most part.

It retrospect, profit on Legends of Avadnu is money in the bank now. I don't know what the per unit profit was, but after we paid for writing and editing (after we sold our first 40 PDFs), every unit I sell now is pure profit.

With the distribution system as it is now, there certainly is no question in my mind what the safer route to take is. I can't wait for the day when its economical to do full color Print on Demand.

 

[The Sigil]

I should also note that my experience (limited though it is) in watching industry mailing lists, emailing publishers, and so on, indicates that most publishers are willing to share (if not necessarily sit down on a collaboration). Collaboration happens mostly behind the scenes, not on an internet messageboard open to everyone - otherwise nobody would need to buy the finished product.

But if it's an OGC repository wanted, with all the great stuff from all the OGL works out there, well, you ain't gonna get it until somebody forces all the OGL publishers to clearly designate what is and isn't OGC - otherwise the host of said OGC Wiki opens himself up for legal problems. Yes, by and large the unwillingness of publishers to answer questions or grant permission to a free Wiki is one hurdle and is perhaps not in the true "spirit" of Open Gaming (whatever that means). But until the legal uncertainty is removed forcibly, there are considerable limits on what can safely be included in any OGC Wiki due to legal concerns.

And there is exactly one entity that has the standing to force that uncertainty to go away by clearing up OGC delineations... WotC, since nearly every OGL product I can think of references one of their SRDs. However, in five years, they've shown no interest in doing so, and until that unwillingness changes to willingness, nothing's going to happen.

--The Sigil