OGL; Is it working?

[GMSkarka]

I do not believe the "One System to Rule Them All" theory. It makes the assumption that the guys behind the OGL were really dumb, and believed that everyone would be satisfied with one system.

I direct you to this interview with Ryan Dancey, on the WotC website.

...and in particular, this quote (bolded for emphasis):

The logical conclusion says that reducing the "cost" to other people to publishing and supporting the core D&D game to zero should eventually drive support for all other game systems to the lowest level possible in the market, create customer resistance to the introduction of new systems, and the result of all that "support" redirected to the D&D game will be to steadily increase the number of people who play D&D, thus driving sales of the core books.

 

[Psion]

On a side note, why don't settings count as "support"?

 

[BryonD]

"There's no food around here."

"What are you talking about? There's a ton of food in the fridge!"

"I don't like any of that, so it doesn't count as 'Food.'"


Wow.

Well man, if you can't understand your audience any better than that, then that is your problem.

The distinction has been clearly laid out, but, as usual, GWSkarka refuses to see anything that he doesn't like and uses snarkiness as a means of trying to woo the consumer base to his side.

Good luck with that.

 

[BryonD]

...

 

[Psion]

Byron, are you in a bit of a snarky mood today? You sound a bit hostile.

 

[BryonD]

Byron, are you in a bit of a snarky mood today? You sound a bit hostile.

Sorry, it doesn't take much of G's typical crap with me anymore.
I shouldn't have responded to Phil right after.

 

[BryonD]

I don't get it. Chris posted a listing that proves, to me, that Green Ronin has heavily supported the d20 System in 2005. How are products that include the d20 logo, and work with the baseline system, not d20 products?

Can any other print publisher, besides WotC, list more d20 System products in 2005?

Actually, it would be interesting to see a breakdown of number of d20 products by year since 2000.

I think Chris already spoke to the heart of the matter.
Just being technically a D20 product doesn't mean it offers something to the bulk of the D20 gaming community. Which, in my impression, despite sales, is still predominately based on the D&D centric game.

If Green Ronin released D20 Soviet Union next week, no one would see that as support for TW. That is an extreme example. But most of the time the example is close enough to the truth. A think a large number of people say "D20" when they mean "the D&D game I play". And even if TW is compatible with D&D (I'm sure a lot of it is), it is marginalized compared to, say, Plot and Poison.

Does that mean they should do another Plot and Poison and expect it to sell? By no means. It just means that a lot of people are going to see TW in a significantly different category than P&P.

 

[Rasyr]

Assumning they have functioning brains - I suspect they'd have to prove that there's actually enough competition to bother. Litigation has costs, and they aren't small. Unless they can show that the 3rd party publishers are really eating enough profits to more than cover the litigation cost (plus the cost of lost goodwill of the consumers), then they won't bother.

And how many companies will actually get to the point of actual litigation? WotC has lawyers on staff, so that means that the basic costs for doing C&D letters is already subsumed by the general overhead of employing them.

Also, you state the loss of goodwill of the consumers. That is assuming that the consumers find out. Unless those contacted by the lawyers make that contact public (and very few companies would do that, as the distributors would be likely to drop them like flies as soon as they found out), or they actually file for litigation (said filings being public records), there is no way for the consumers to find except when company xx just quietly disappears without a word. And then it is only that company xx disappeared. If this happens after 4.0 is released, a lot of people, unless told otherwise, are going to think that it is because their sales dropped to levels that won't support the company.

Micheal Tree -- please note that I did say that it was a worst case scenerio. I never said it was likely, only that it was possible. There is a big difference between whether or not they COULD do it versus if the WOULD do it, and I never said that they would, only that they could.

 

[MerricB]

I direct you to this interview with Ryan Dancey, on the WotC website.

...and in particular, this quote (bolded for emphasis):

The logical conclusion says that reducing the "cost" to other people to publishing and supporting the core D&D game to zero should eventually drive support for all other game systems to the lowest level possible in the market, create customer resistance to the introduction of new systems, and the result of all that "support" redirected to the D&D game will be to steadily increase the number of people who play D&D, thus driving sales of the core books.

Thank you. (I know I've read that before, but it managed to slip my mind).

Cheers!

 

[The Shaman]

If Green Ronin released D20 Soviet Union next week, no one would see that as support for TW.

I would definitely see it as support for d20 Modern!

In fact...country or region books for Modern gamers...hrrrmmm...

The quote from Mr. Dancey spells it out: OGL was meant to sell players handbooks and stifle competitors. The fact that other companies have created alternative approaches to fantasy gaming using the OGL probably gives the Wizards staff nightsweats, since it "splinters the market" (I believe that was the phrase I've heard), but as a consumer who prefers these alternatives to The World's Most Ubiquitous Role Playing Game, I think it's ducky.

OGL? Great for consumers - may not have worked out quite the way Wizards thought it would, though (and thank goodness it didn't!).

Oh, and books like Thieves World and Black Company aren't support for Dungeons and Dragons? That seems like a terribly narrow view of what can and can't be done with the rules options in these books. I suppose if one takes the view that Dungeons and Dragons is its own specific fantasy genre, than this might hold true - the options are not "more of the same." On the other hand, if D&D is truly a "generic" fantasy RPG, how could anything in those books be any less 'core' than the content in Unearthed Arcana?