Necromancer Games NOT going with current GSL.

[Raven Crowking]

The problem with that line of reasoning is that D&D (and by extension, WotC) has never had effective competition. I've yet to see a cogent argument that any publisher was in a position to change that. We should not mistake an attempt to maximize profits with anti-competitive maneuvers.

If there is X dollars of money to be spent on D&D, and 3pp gain X-Y of those dollars, where Y is what WotC is making on D&D sales, then anti-cometitive manuevers are an attempt to maximize profits.

You can certainly increase profits while remaining friendly to your competition. You can only maximize profits and remain friendly to your competition if you believe that you cannot pick up any part of that X-Y that your competition is currently getting.

Which doesn't mean that the GSL is about maximizing profits, mind you. It might not be. It might be about, for example, bringing the IP back "in house" as far as possible before selling the brand. It might be about bringing the IP back "in house" as far as possible to increase the perceived value of WotC to Hasbro. It might be about limiting competition to the DI platform, should such a thing ever appear. Etc., etc.


RC

 

[jaldaen]

I find designing and writing for 4E much more enjoyable and rewarding than designing for 3.5 and its variants. This isn't always the case with every mechanic, of course, but I've found it to be the case with at least, oh, 80% to 85% of mechanics.

I'm in the same boat as you are Ari, having done design work for 3.0, 3.5, True20, and now 4e... as a designer I'm really enjoying the flexibility that 4e offers me. I think this partially stems from 4e being designed to be more DM-friendly (which is another reason I like 4e over other systems). As you said there are a few mechanics in 4e that don't quite do it for me as a designer, but the percentage of rules-liking is up over the other incarnations of the d20 system.

However, like Clark I'm waiting for some GSL clarifications before I jump in to 4e with both feet.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Edit, one caveat however, if as you say pathfinder changes 50% of the core rules of 3.5 (I've not checked Pathfinder since I think the first Alpha), which is what you expressed in a thread here, doesn't that also require people to change their games and learn new rules, so it's not the whole of the 'don't like 4e' audience that's going to be opened up (which would indeed be bumper numbers).

It does require that people learn new rules. However, the types of things that are changed are things like save or die spells converting to damage. Turning becomes channeling energy, so you aren't just affecting the undead with the ability, but are actually bestowing positive energy into an area, which can heal allies that are near you. Fighters get a bump in power so that they're more balanced at later levels. Many of the feats are either brand new or are modified to increase their usefulness. For example, Cleave now works so that you get to take that second attack if you simply hit an opponent rather than dropping them. Also, there's a whole bunch of new combat feats, which make it so that fighters don't all end up with the same stuff by the time they hit 20th level if you're only using the core rulebooks with no splats. Another change is that combat maneuvers now all use the same basic mechanic (the combat maneuver bonus), which simplifies them.

The core of the game still functions the same and the changes are easy to remember. Some of the smaller changes, like the changes to feats and spells, will take a little more time to learn and remember, and will require you to consult the book from time to time, but that happens anyway, in my experience, because few people remember all the little details on how their spells and feats work anyway.

I suppose that the bottom line for me is that yes, there is change involved, but it isn't a radical change, and it is so small that my existing 3.5 stuff isn't now worthless.

I do not agree with this. How or why would the industry bust spectacularly? The industry of the hobby is not D&D. D&D is an iconic brand name among others of one part of the hobby. Miniature games, card games, board games, rpgs make part of the industry. Novels and video games can support it too. If 4e bombs nothing happens to the industry IMO. Home social-game entertainment is not going anywhere if 4e bombs.

I agree that the industry isn't D&D. There's also the issue of defining the industry, and which portion of the industry. When I talk about the industry, I'm not talking about CCGs, novels, and video games. I'm talking about RPGs specifically, which it could be argued, is a smaller subset of the larger hobby industry. If D&D were to die, I'm sure that there would still be something left behind so that you could still justify a hobby section of a book store, or maybe enough to keep the hobby stores in business since they're already relying on many of those things. The RPG industry is made up of certain people and companies, which in most cases, exist in their own little bubble that doesn't interact very much with those other categories you talked about.

Now if D&D went down, RPG sales would take a huge hit simply because D&D owns most of the RPG market already. RPG sales would drop by a huge amount unless a competing product were taking those sales away.

 

[evilref]

<snip>

The core of the game still functions the same and the changes are easy to remember. Some of the smaller changes, like the changes to feats and spells, will take a little more time to learn and remember, and will require you to consult the book from time to time, but that happens anyway, in my experience, because few people remember all the little details on how their spells and feats work anyway.

I suppose that the bottom line for me is that yes, there is change involved, but it isn't a radical change, and it is so small that my existing 3.5 stuff isn't now worthless.

The odd thing for me is I like a lot of the changes, especially those you've hilighted in the part I snipped, I just find that 3.X is not a game I want to be running anymore, wheras I love 4e. On the other hand I have a lot of games I don't run anymore but still pick things up for (such as paizo modules to convert).

 

[Darrin Drader]

The odd thing for me is I like a lot of the changes, especially those you've hilighted in the part I snipped, I just find that 3.X is not a game I want to be running anymore, wheras I love 4e. On the other hand I have a lot of games I don't run anymore but still pick things up for (such as paizo modules to convert).

And that's totally cool. Play the games that you enjoy and buy the products that appeal to you. Like I said before, everybody wins.

 

[xechnao]

not realising how intrinsic D&D and its sales are to the industry.

I do not realize that D&D or any brand name is intrinsic to the industry and you are the one that does not realize this intrinsic property may not hold. Where does the truth lie? IMO you are wrong. Why? Because we live in the era of internet and information. Word of mouth was never so powerful as it is today. Furthermore with minimum resources you can reach out to your audience.
OTOH, yes, you have "powers" competing for the limited positions of profit. The place of the positions can not disappear. Although who is the one that holds the positions is subject to change.

 

[occam]

If there is X dollars of money to be spent on D&D, and 3pp gain X-Y of those dollars, where Y is what WotC is making on D&D sales, then anti-cometitive manuevers are an attempt to maximize profits.

You can certainly increase profits while remaining friendly to your competition. You can only maximize profits and remain friendly to your competition if you believe that you cannot pick up any part of that X-Y that your competition is currently getting.

It seems you completely missed the point of the OGL and d20. You equated third parties with competitors, but that's not necessarily the case. D&D was opened up to make it easier for third parties to act as partners, and increase the sales of WotC products; i.e., maximize profits by way of being friendly to 3pps. And for the most part, it worked. The point being, X is not a fixed amount.

 

[evilref]

I do not agree with this. How or why would the industry bust spectacularly? The industry of the hobby is not D&D. D&D is an iconic brand name among others of one part of the hobby. Miniature games, card games, board games, rpgs make part of the industry. Novels and video games can support it too. If 4e bombs nothing happens to the industry IMO. Home social-game entertainment is not going anywhere if 4e bombs.

Boring Industry economics ahead:

I'm going to use the figures cited by a friend of mine who owns a game store.

RPGs+D&D miniatures (which if D&D goes down would have an uncertain future) make up about 50% of his yearly sales.

D&D books make up 40% of that overall 50% (with miniatures accounting for another 30% and other rpgs making up the final 30%, primarily White Wolf).

If D&D goes down as described, without a comparable seller to take its place then that store is going to be down 20% of its sales (the figure would likely be more becase of losing out on point of sales for other things).

Most small gaming stores will suffer serious hardships if they're out 20% of their overall sales, add in D&D miniatures as well and that's a bigger hit but we'll just focus on the books for now. Without the guaranteed cash from D&D sales, stores would have less money to put towards the possible sellers as opposed to products guaranteed to go out the door.

X percent of stores would go out of business as a result of this. With X percent less stores to distribute to, distributors would have to streamline their lines to account for this as well, as they'd also have less money coming in.

With distributors streamlining, this would see a number of other rpg companies dropped from distrubution (note, this has been witnessed before with the d20 'crash' so this isn't a wild guess, it's based on past precedent).

What would end up happening at best is a much smaller industry, with less shops, less easy access to books outside the internet (and the more people use the net for their rpg shopping, the more likely for other gaming companies to go down).

Thus overall a spectacular bust in the industry. It's not saying that rpgs would vanish, but it would see a significant hit to a lot of companies and individuals, one that would doubtless result in a lot of people getting out of the industry in terms of producing or selling rpgs.

 

[evilref]

I do not realize that D&D or any brand name is intrinsic to the industry and you are the one that does not realize this intrinsic property may not hold. Where does the truth lie? IMO you are wrong. Why? Because we live in the era of internet and information. Word of mouth was never so powerful as it is today. Furthermore with minimum resources you can reach out to your audience.
OTOH, yes, you have "powers" competing for the limited positions of profit. The place of the positions can not disappear. Although who is the one that holds the positions is subject to change.

If you don't think that D&D is regarded as being intrinsic to the industry (especially in terms of profits for distributors and stores) then I really don't know what else to add save this:

The trailer for futurama's next movie doesn't say 'we're playing a roleplaying game', it says 'we're playing Dungeons and Dragons'.

 

[xechnao]

Boring Industry economics ahead:

I'm going to use the figures cited by a friend of mine who owns a game store.

RPGs+D&D miniatures (which if D&D goes down would have an uncertain future) make up about 50% of his yearly sales.

D&D books make up 40% of that overall 50% (with miniatures accounting for another 30% and other rpgs making up the final 30%, primarily White Wolf).

If D&D goes down as described, without a comparable seller to take its place then that store is going to be down 20% of its sales (the figure would likely be more becase of losing out on point of sales for other things).

Most small gaming stores will suffer serious hardships if they're out 20% of their overall sales, add in D&D miniatures as well and that's a bigger hit but we'll just focus on the books for now. Without the guaranteed cash from D&D sales, stores would have less money to put towards the possible sellers as opposed to products guaranteed to go out the door.

X percent of stores would go out of business as a result of this. With X percent less stores to distribute to, distributors would have to streamline their lines to account for this as well, as they'd also have less money coming in.

With distributors streamlining, this would see a number of other rpg companies dropped from distrubution (note, this has been witnessed before with the d20 'crash' so this isn't a wild guess, it's based on past precedent).

What would end up happening at best is a much smaller industry, with less shops, less easy access to books outside the internet (and the more people use the net for their rpg shopping, the more likely for other gaming companies to go down).

Thus overall a spectacular bust in the industry. It's not saying that rpgs would vanish, but it would see a significant hit to a lot of companies and individuals, one that would doubtless result in a lot of people getting out of the industry in terms of producing or selling rpgs.

1st of all I do not believe this 20% figure simply because Wotc has not been producing enough books for this year to make up for it. But even if a significant gap takes place watch publishers like Monte Cook and Paizo rush to fill this up ASAP.