Mongoose exits 4E ?

[BryonD]

I doubt goodwill has anything to do with it. If a free license and API was released for the Char Builder tomorrow, 3pp's would be mad not to jump on it. Anyone that turned their nose up because of they previously felt snubbed by the GSL situation would be a poor business-man.

Yep. The well run businesses follow the market and the ones who hold grudges are not around to discuss.

 

[MerricB]

Although the Character Builder is an important part of making 3PP products less desirable, when it's coupled with the increased utility of Dragon magazine for characters, this becomes a significant one-two combo.

Cheers!

 

[ggroy]

I recall some people very clearly stating their disappointment over some of these. And I also recall more than a few "celebrations" of the demise of certain key offenders. I couldn't say of either group qualified as "many". Though I'm not following the ultimate relevance of your point here.

Was OGL actually still viable in 2003/2004 (or later) for d20 type supplements?

Would there have been great anger if the OGL movement was stopped in its tracks, if 4E was released back in 2003 or 2004 with the strict 4E GSL license?

 

[BryonD]

Was OGL actually still viable in 2003/2004 (or later) for d20 type supplements?

Very.
A lot of 3.0 stuff got burned and 3PPs both great and awful took a hit in the transition. But a ton of really great stuff came out after that.

Would there have been great anger if the OGL movement was stopped in its tracks, if 4E was released back in 2003 or 2004 with the strict 4E GSL license?

Well, it is impossible to stop the OGL in its tracks. But I suspect that, yes the anger over a new system plus an OGL hostile GSL would have been significantly higher than the (very real) anger over 3.5 was. IMO.

I think that it is the success of the really good OGL stuff that came out in the later part of the 3E era that drove WotC to be so protective the next time around.

 

[Krensky]

That's unfortunate, as I really enjoyed Wraith Recon (yes, I was the one).

Hey, I thought Ghost Recon was enjoyable too. I don't even play 4e, I just found the premise interesting. Maybe when I get a chance I'll work it up as a FantasyCraft game.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Hmmm, I am going to defend the Quintessential series a bit here - not so much the character options (which were often hit or miss) but the added bits, such as libraries in the Wizards supplement, and Open Mass Combat in the Fighters book. Those saw a lot of use.

Wraith Recon is an interesting setting, and I may, at some unspecified point in the future, end up converting it to Fantasy Craft. (I actually feel that it fits Fantasy Craft better than it might 4e....)

The Auld Grump

 

[JoeGKushner]

I suspect this was the case in the first year or so after 4E was first announced at gencon 2007. Several of the bigger 3PPs probably got fed up with sitting on their hands for the whole time, waiting for WotC to get their act together. Things may have possibly turned out quite differently if WotC didn't drop the ball early on.

But... we don't necessarily know that. Green Ronin for one, made it pretty clear after the 3.5 release and them getting burdened with all that 3.0 stock that was rendered useless, that they didn't want to hit the main bulk of their business on a company that could change their core product line at a drop of a hat.

Now I'm not saying that WoTC helped matters along, but the what if game has to include actual events and things that happened up to and before the fumble no?

 

[ggroy]

Now I'm not saying that WoTC helped matters along, but the what if game has to include actual events and things that happened up to and before the fumble no?

What would be examples of this, besides the green ronin case mentioned?

 

[JoeGKushner]

What would be examples of this, besides the green ronin case mentioned?

Bad Axe Games canning the gnome/compilation book (if I'm recalling correctly).

Bastion Press and Oathbound, although I don't remember if they were ready to drop prior to that and the 'crash' caused by 3.5 for 3rd party publishers.

Necromancer wanted to move forward but the GLS wasn't to Clark's liking...

Atlas was burned with the whole Fantasy Bestiary bit and the few books they came out with but don't recall if they had made any mention of their plans forward from that point on.

The guys who do Arcanis mentioned that while the living campaign was solid that they didn't like being tied to someone else's potential release schedule (paradigm I believe).

AEG suffered HUGE burn with their whole Warlords of the Accordland system/setting being late, initially for 3.0, then 3.5, then kinda it's own system. Not to mention that their L5R dual statted games weren't doing it and that the 3rd ed had some serious editing problems that a reprint didn't fix so no idea of 'official' stance there.

I'm sure someone with a better memory than me can clafiy some of those.

 

[ggroy]

I was thinking of other things, different from the (real) cases of 3PPs being burned by the 3E -> 3.5E transition with tons of unsold inventory. I'm sure this was one major reason for some 3PPs to move onto something else that was not 4E D&D related.

I was thinking more along the lines of the uncertainty before the GSL was first published. This would be the period of Aug 2007 -> Jan 2008.

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (4E SRD and OGL)

Also the period of time they took to remove the problematic parts of the GSL, with still some uncertainty over most of 2008.