D&D 4E Monte Cook on licensing (and 4E in general?)

[Dedekind]

I think you are reading too much into it.

You are probably right

At some point, when licensing gets figured out, and his peers are playing 4e for a while, and he starts to try out 4e a bit here and there, I strongly suspect Monte will come around and publish 4e stuff. Because at heart he is a gamer, and someone who often changes his mind about RPGs. He just cannot stay away.

Agreed. My implied criticism is that it is too early to write it off, particularly from someone that has always struck me as a reasonable and respectable opinion leader. I hope he looks at it and thinks "Well, this is an improvement. I think I can do something cool with this." He may not (and that is OK) but I hope he does...

 

[Dedekind]

Hmm. I don't think he's "written off" 4E, he's simply stating, that as an industry professional, he does not really see any means to plan anything due to lack of license.

That's not how I read it. "Even if I wanted to do 4E stuff, and to be honest I really don't, ...". He does not wish to do anything in 4E. Additionally, even if he did, the licensing situation stinks. Even if he were able to make bread, he does not wish to.

So, written off may be too strong a term, but it certainly does not seem that he wants to do any development in 4E, regardless of the publication licensing.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Honestly, if I was a publisher, even had I been enthused about 4E at one stage, I would no be in "bitterness containment mode". It's all very well for people like trancejeremy to say "Oh look how few things he sells, I can see why they don't care!" but essentially that's a terrible attitude, if WotC really have it (and I suspect that other potential GSL'ers sell rather more).

It's really disappointing to me how WotC seems to be dragging it's feet on the GSL. As they say, the game is out in "mere weeks", yet they've not finalised the arrangements to let even publishers who want to pay them to have access.

 

[Dedekind]

I've always had the impression that many 3rd party publishers really sold a lot at GenCon. Is that true? If so, is the lack of GSL at this point essentially hosed those publishers anyways? Can you publish something of quality in less than 5 months?

 

[DreamChaser]

Me too, though I can't say I'm terribly surprised. We've got a growing list of prominent 3.x publishers who are not terribly interested in the new product.

Not to say he's jumping on some kind of bandwagon; he's always used sound reasoning before, so I don't doubt his reasoning in this case is any less thoughtout.

I think this has more to do with the size of the company (Paizo perhaps notwithstanding). The edition change represents a potential enormous loss for a small producer...

Of course the potential loss of 60 to 80% of a niche (actually niche of a niche) client-base is also a very real issue. It will be interesting to see how many "not switching" companies change their tune when faced with only the "grognard" or bi-edition set to market to.

DC

 

[JoeGKushner]

With the extremely vague wording of Monte's declarations in many of his products, I'm surprised he isn't more behind WoTC protecting their own IP.

 

[trancejeremy]

Honestly, if I was a publisher, even had I been enthused about 4E at one stage, I would no be in "bitterness containment mode". It's all very well for people like trancejeremy to say "Oh look how few things he sells, I can see why they don't care!" but essentially that's a terrible attitude, if WotC really have it (and I suspect that other potential GSL'ers sell rather more).

I didn't mean to sound terrible, but I was just pointing out how big a difference in scale there is between WOTC/Hasbro and even the top 3rd parties. To the third parties, obviously this is a very important thing, but for WOTC/Hasbro, it's simply not important at all, especially to the ones making the decisions.

I know some of the very very early d20 books probably hit 6 figures in sales (Creature Collection, for instance), but near the tail end, print books were often luck to hit 1000. And the PDF market is probably closer to the latter (as shown by Monte Cook's best product only selling 20,000 copies)

And probably the one thing WOTC/Hasbro doesn't want is another Creature Collection, swoping in and getting sales while also delivering a bad product, but merely taking an advantage of a delayed release of the MM.

 

[trancejeremy]

Me too, though I can't say I'm terribly surprised. We've got a growing list of prominent 3.x publishers who are not terribly interested in the new product.

Are there any prominent 3.x publishers left, though? Other than Paizo, most others jumped ship to house systems a long time ago. Green Ronin with M&M and True 20; Mongoose with Runequest, Traveller, etc; I don't think AEG or FFG are in the RPG business anymore; White Wolf dropped out of d20 a long time ago (I guess when they got bought out); Troll Lord has C&C.

The two left (and the two I have the most product by) are sticking with 4e - Necro and Goodman. And Necro's not even a publisher - Paizo is publishing their stuff (in the d20 days, either White Wolf, Kenzer, or Troll Lord published their stuff).

 

[dm4hire]

I don't think AEG or FFG are in the RPG business anymore; White Wolf dropped out of d20 a long time ago (I guess when they got bought out); Troll Lord has C&C.

AEG is still making L5R books, the ccg and rpg are their main money maker, especially outside the US.

 

[AZRogue]

Honestly, if I was a publisher, even had I been enthused about 4E at one stage, I would no be in "bitterness containment mode". It's all very well for people like trancejeremy to say "Oh look how few things he sells, I can see why they don't care!" but essentially that's a terrible attitude, if WotC really have it (and I suspect that other potential GSL'ers sell rather more).

It's really disappointing to me how WotC seems to be dragging it's feet on the GSL. As they say, the game is out in "mere weeks", yet they've not finalised the arrangements to let even publishers who want to pay them to have access.

I agree. The GSL fiasco has been the only real factor keeping me from fully embracing the new edition. But I don't feel like tapping into that fount of bitterness at the moment.