Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5608243" data-attributes="member: 4937">"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 know just how close that came to happening. In 1997, TSR had pledged most of the copyright interests in D&D as collateral for loans it could not repay, and had Wizards of the Coast not rescued it I'm certain that it would have all gone into a lenghty bankruptcy struggle with a very real chance that D&D couldn't be published until the suits, appeals, countersuits, etc. had all been settled (i.e. maybe never). The OGL enabled that as a positive side effect." - Ryan DanceyWhile I don't intend to go to the work to dig up all the similar quotes by former WotC employees, I've seen that sentiment echoed by a lot of the people who were part of creating 3e D&D and the OGL.  I believe it was a labor of love by fellow gamers who were close enough to product to know just how close it came to dying.  Sure, they also wanted to make money, but there is nothing wrong with that either.  Everyone has to eat.Let me state that the majority of companies and publishers that thought the way to make money off the OGL was primarily to sell rule books are now either out of business or entirely or almost entirely out of the RPG business.  It's not entirely impossible that WotC will soon be one of them.The companies that stayed healthy used the OGL to make adventures, settings, and apply the very basics of the rules set to completely different generas.  So even to the extent that it is true that WotC didn't foresee exactly what sort of products would be created, I totally disagree that the third party rule books ever represented a threat to WotC.  They were almost always supplemental, and the ones that weren't (mostly offered by Monte Cook) never seemed to gain wide following.  What really represented a threat to WotC was modules, and WotC in no period ever really recognized that.  WotC thought modules had poor profitability and that the could use the OGL to outsource them.  And to a certain extent they were right.  Paizo and Goodman games created probably stronger adventure lines than WotC did.  The problem with that thinking is that its adventures that in my opinion ultimately drive a game system because its adventures that create and sustain new RPG groups more than rules do, and which IMO have ultimately led to D&D's dominant position (and which will eventually lead to Paizo's dominate position if it hasn't already) because its adventures that create the most valueable thing that any gaming company really owns - original intellectual property.  The most valueable aspect of D&D isn't the iconic rules set, it's the iconic intellectual property - Strahd and Ravenloft, Acererak and the Tomb of Horrors, White Plume Mountain, Against the Giants, Drow Elves, Beholders, Mind Flayers, The Temple of Elemental Evil, and on and on and on.  Rules are important, but if you want to talk about the core of D&D in terms of what WotC has to sell, that's the core right there.Paizo is busy creating the IP that will sell games for the next two decades, and WotC is busy creating rule sets.  Paizo has a line up of the best most exciting story tellers and artists in the business, and WotC has a bunch of guys that have survived the corporate culture.I hate to tell you this Mearls, but alot of the core of D&D you are searching for has done walked out of the building.The basic problem with this is that the stuff that it is published as FantasyCraft and Pathfinder and Conan D20 and so forth is readily compatible with not only the core 3e rules set, but my own esoteric take on the rules set.  To the extent that I can buy Pathfinder material and either mine it for ideas or incorporate it outright in the game I'm playing, the community hasn't actually fractured.  It will be a very long time before that's not true, and frankly it might never be true.  Conceivably I could not change my game system at all, and yet 20 years from now I could still be adopting material from Pathfinder into my game.  Afterall, the reverse is also true.  My game system is markedly different from 1e AD&D, but I still incorporate material from that game almost directly in to my 3e inspired game.4e is so far removed from what I'm doing though, that mine it though I may, I just can't come up with enough from it to justify the purchase.  And since I don't want to leave my game behind, I'm not moving on to 4e.  It's its own beast; it's own branch on the D&D family tree.  And frankly it looks to me like a shoot rather than the trunk.I want to again restress that the OGL didn't create the diversity of rules and play that was out there.  The OGL only recognized and legitimized it.  Play diversity under 1e was so high that there were probably no two tables playing with the same rules.</blockquote>

Verification