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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Darrin Drader" data-source="post: 4407137" data-attributes="member: 7394">I don't think WotC's bottom line was hurting because of the 3PP products. There was a clear preference for "official" D&D content in the market. I do agree that most of the meaningful innovation came from the 3PPs. I think that the GSL is a reaction to the overall shrinking of the RPG market in general. Not having access to WotC's numbers, I can only guess that they saw 3rd edition sales drop down to numbers not seen since TSR was going out of business and they decided that they wanted all of the business this time around. Even if 3PPs have (at most) 10% of the market, that's a 10% boost in sales that they can show to Hasbro, thereby keeping the brand alive and jobs intact.The problem, as was pointed out above, is that many gamers can see blatant corporate greed for what it is and are willing to rebel against it. If Necromancer adopts the GSL, they will effectively stop being a publisher the minute WotC decides to yank the license. They might be generous and keep it in place until 5th edition, or they could pull it in the middle of the edition, but either way, it's bad news for anyone else who wants to make D&D compatible stuff.What's more is that with the OGL, they managed to convince the gaming public that having a standardized set of rules for all genres and settings is a good thing. People bought in and competing systems lost popularity. The bottom line is that if the publishers and the customers drop support for open gaming now, OGL games will disappear from the market and successful non-WotC gaming products will be mostly a thing of the past - at least until someone either comes up with a new system that is vastly superior, versatile, and somehow manages to capture a good chunk of the market, or Hasbro pulls the plug on D&D and the third party publishers become the primary source for gaming. I don't like that scenario.If you're a 4th edition fan, enjoy the game and play the game. What I urge you to do though, is to stop judging those who choose not to adopt it and join in a game or two of either 3.5 or Pathfinder when convenient. In other words, assume that the worst case scenario is possible and hedge your bets a bit.</blockquote>

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