BryonD
Hero
While I think the larger picture for 4E is pretty telling, I completely agree that Mongoose can't really be cited as evidence.
Mongoose exits 4E ?
- Thread starter ggroy
- Start date
Even if today WotC suddenly "got religion" and changed the GSL and SRD to be more like the stuff from the 3E/3.5E era, I doubt things would change much in the end. The GSL fiasco may very well have fretted away whatever goodwill WotC had with existing 3PPs.
Even having a system license similar to the 3E/3.5E era, does not always encourage lots of 3PP companies to jump on the bandwagon. For example, the core Mongoose Runequest ruleset SRD was released under some OGL style license, but so far there hasn't been a glut of 3PP supplement books released for Mongoose Runequest.
If 4E was released back in 2003 or 2004 (instead of 3.5E) with the same tougher 4E GSL and useless 4E SRD, would things be much different as today?
Wow. I didn't think anyone would be hurt by that. My apologies.
mattcolville
Adventurer
People correctly blame the Character Builder for the death of third party stuff. Even if you produce quality 4E stuff, besides adventures, who's going to buy it? Those five guys on a mac who don't want to boot into Windows? That does not a market make.
The Builder makes it so easy to make a dude that any info not in the builder is useless.
What this tells us is that the only reason there was a third party market in the first place was because there was no builder for 3E. There was E-Tools, which I believe gave people cancer, but nothing like the Character Builder.
It should be no surprise to anyone that WotC can put out more stuff faster of higher quality than anyone else. The only reason people bought third party stuff in the first place was because there was no easy way to use all the WotC stuff.
The Builder makes it so easy to make a dude that any info not in the builder is useless.
What this tells us is that the only reason there was a third party market in the first place was because there was no builder for 3E. There was E-Tools, which I believe gave people cancer, but nothing like the Character Builder.
It should be no surprise to anyone that WotC can put out more stuff faster of higher quality than anyone else. The only reason people bought third party stuff in the first place was because there was no easy way to use all the WotC stuff.
If WotC had produced a fully functional Character Builder (that wasn't totally buggy) back in the early 3E days, would 3PP d20 player options splatbooks have gained any traction at all in the rpg market?
In such a case would titles such as the Mongoose 3E Quintessential books or the "Book of Eldritch Might" by Malhavoc, have flopped or been DOA when they were first released?
jdrakeh
Front Range Warlock
I think so, but largely because you could likely port 3PP stuff into that theoretical character builder (this was the heyday of the OGL, after all). That said, I still think the real deal killer for 3PP content right now isn't the character builder (something that I am fairly certain is used only by a fraction of D&D players) but, rather, the GSL restrictions and the way that said license was horribly fumbled from day one.
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.
evildmguy
Explorer
Back in the day, I really wanted to like Fast Forward books. The ideas of a sets of magic items, demons, staves, etc. in their books were good but I didn't like the execution.
I, for one, have been turned off on 3PP with regards to the character builder. I have some very casual players and the thought of trying to explain how to do a character by hand makes me shudder. It's easier to stick with official stuff compared to try and explain how to do it by hand.
edg
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