Mike Mearls On the OGL

[redcard]

I mean what, did hit men show up from their distributor and force them to order 50 copies each of "Philately D20" and "The Complete Book of Gastric Disturbance D20"? No. No one forced them to order those unsold books. They ordered those unsold books because of poor business acumen. Sorry but how else to explain it?

No, but it was indicated by the distributors that had purchased their own 50 copies of Philately D20 that PD20 was selling better than indicated, since they had to get rid of their copies. There was a lot of grandstanding in those days about how wonderful this was, and how great the products were.

I'll admit it was their choice to buy it, but there was a lot of people holding a lot of product that shouldn't have been out there, and the FLGS is near the end of that chain.. and sometimes some little white lies were told with regards to sales.

 

[pawsplay]

I think Mike Mearls missed the point. OGL was not going to evolve or improve D&D. The fragmented market he talked about, with different solutions to different "problems" is actually the logical result. This fragementation was productive. He used an FTP client as an example, but RPGs are more like "an OS," and there are a zillion of them with slightly different characteristics that are aimed at different requirements. FreeBSD is not the same as Linux, or for that matter, BSDi.

In a relatively short period of time, the OGL resulted in Conan, Mutants & Masterminds, and Arcana Unearthed, then rapidly spread over to the Runequest games and other stuff. WotC's own Unearthed Arcana became wildly popular with GMs. 3.5 grew and flourished, and the third party market along with it.

Then WotC decided they were done with it. Mike Mearls is declaring the OGL a "failure" basically because his paycheck comes from people who want it to fail. I'm not saying Mr. Mearls is a bad person or deluded or whatever, just that people's opinions definitely reflect their reality. The OGL and similar ideas are very threatening to traditional corporate mentalities, and that definitely describes Hasbro.

WotC is wondering, "What will this show on our balance sheets in the next four quarters?" Whereas hobbyists want to know, "What's the future of gaming? This year? Ten years from now? For my children?"

Corporations tend to be conservative; the OGL is hard to quantify. Corporations are territorial; the OGL questions some assumptions about value.

WotC is hoping people will want to ride 4e's coattails. That is a reasonable expectation. But what happens when WotC wants to hitch a ride on the OGL? The cat really is out of the bag. The potential was there before for open gaming, but with the biggest player not joining in the game, it was a stiff climb. That barrier is gone. 4e remains inaccessible, but it cannot remain that way forever or it will be abandoned by this new generation of hobbyst/designers Mearls talked about. Who will there be to write 5e?

 

[Grazzt]

I think Mike Mearls missed the point. OGL was not going to evolve or improve D&D. The fragmented market he talked about, with different solutions to different "problems" is actually the logical result. This fragementation was productive. He used an FTP client as an example, but RPGs are more like "an OS," and there are a zillion of them with slightly different characteristics that are aimed at different requirements. FreeBSD is not the same as Linux, or for that matter, BSDi.

Yeppers. Torvalds gave us the kernel, and the developers built off of that basically (Debian, Red Hat, Slackware, etc)

Then WotC decided they were done with it. Mike Mearls is declaring the OGL a "failure" basically because his paycheck comes from people who want it to fail. I'm not saying Mr. Mearls is a bad person or deluded or whatever, just that people's opinions definitely reflect their reality. The OGL and similar ideas are very threatening to traditional corporate mentalities, and that definitely describes Hasbro.

Which is odd, because if not for the OGL Mearls wouldn't have his WotC job. Go figure.

WotC is hoping people will want to ride 4e's coattails. That is a reasonable expectation. But what happens when WotC wants to hitch a ride on the OGL? The cat really is out of the bag. The potential was there before for open gaming, but with the biggest player not joining in the game, it was a stiff climb. That barrier is gone. 4e remains inaccessible, but it cannot remain that way forever or it will be abandoned by this new generation of hobbyst/designers Mearls talked about. Who will there be to write 5e?

Yep.

 

[cr0m]

The OGL's failures were actually failures on WOTC's part. Failures that they still aren't going to address with the GSL.

Why is being focused on a few products and leaving others for other companies a failure? If it weren't for OGL, we would have had M&M, Conan, etc... they just would have been done with some other game system. IMO OGL gave those games a much, much wider audience than they would have had they used their own custom systems.

edit: didn't notice this thread has 8 pages, so i'm probably late to the discussion... never mind.

 

[Henry]

I do want to correct one thing here, just as other posters did: Mike said, "I don't think it's fair to say that open gaming was a failure" (exact words). He's saying it failed in some ways, but didn't fail overall.

I disagree with his list of failures, but that's a subject already covered by pawsplay and Grazzt.

 

[JDJblatherings]

Why is being focused on a few products and leaving others for other companies a failure? If it weren't for OGL, we would have had M&M, Conan, etc... they just would have been done with some other game system. IMO OGL gave those games a much, much wider audience than they would have had they used their own custom systems.

Conan may have come out but a super hero game built off of D20 is a super hero game built off of D20. The M&M attraction was it took D20 and made work in a crowded field in one corner of rpg land. Other super hero games came out using D20 and failed horribly and other superhero games have come out and gone unnoticed. The OGL does provide a wider audience, but it carries along a larger number of critics as well.

 

[cdrcjsn]

WotC is hoping people will want to ride 4e's coattails. That is a reasonable expectation. But what happens when WotC wants to hitch a ride on the OGL? The cat really is out of the bag. The potential was there before for open gaming, but with the biggest player not joining in the game, it was a stiff climb. That barrier is gone. 4e remains inaccessible, but it cannot remain that way forever or it will be abandoned by this new generation of hobbyst/designers Mearls talked about. Who will there be to write 5e?

For every small designer out there, there are several thousand DMs who will never publish anything beyond what their small group of friends will see.

For every person that buys 3rd party products, there are perhaps dozens more that will only buy WotC stuff because it's "official".

The whole OGL thing might be an enduring force in RPGs in the future...but it can just as easily fall away and most gamers that don't frequent internet forums won't notice. New gamers will enter this hobby because they'll either be introduced by someone they know or see the core 4e books at a game store, Barnes and Noble, Walmart or some other venue...not because some d20 company was able to make a supplement based on an open SRD.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

New gamers will enter this hobby because they'll either be introduced by someone they know or see the core 4e books at a game store, Barnes and Noble, Walmart or some other venue...not because some d20 company was able to make a supplement based on an open SRD.

Actually, mostly by someone they know. People rarely impulse-purchase a product that costs more than $50 and contains more text and rules than a degree-level technical manual.

If we're looking for people to join the RPG hobby on an impulse purchase, we need attractive products that look like a game (e.g. in a boxed set), contain everything you need including dice, character sheets, starter adventure etc., can be picked up and played by a novice in an evening, at an impulse-purchase price point.

In other words we need something like Basic D&D. Remember that?

 

[Scribble]

If we're looking for people to join the RPG hobby on an impulse purchase, we need attractive products that look like a game (e.g. in a boxed set), contain everything you need including dice, character sheets, starter adventure etc., can be picked up and played by a novice in an evening, at an impulse-purchase price point.

In other words we need something like Basic D&D. Remember that?

I agree... Supposedly there's an entry level set comming down the road? Will it be any good? Shrug.

The big black boxed set wasn't "that good" but it got me into the game, and got me to purchase the rules cyclopedia... and then the onaslaught began.

 

[Mark]

New gamers will enter this hobby because they'll either be introduced by someone they know or see the core 4e books at a game store, Barnes and Noble, Walmart or some other venue...

There is no doubt in my mind that more gamers come to the hobby either through the Internet or with the Internet as a component of their introduction to this type of gaming than come to the hobby without the Internet at all. I do not doubt that WotC is aware of this and is gearing up to take full advantage of it. However, search engines make it quite easy for people with an interest in tabletop roleplay gaming to find all sorts of things they might not have found in a brick and mortar location.