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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Viktyr Gehrig" data-source="post: 2494996" data-attributes="member: 9249">That's amusing-- I can't imagine how someone would think the OGL could accomplish that, especially since the system most covered by the OGL is not suitable for every genre or playstyle.It has, however, acheived a relatively similar goal-- it has reduced the number of systems most players have to learn in order to experience a very broad variety of games in several different genres.While I will readily concede this point-- having bought a number of questionable products myself-- I do not see how this will affect the long term success or failure of the OGL experiment. There has always been a very large supply of questionable RPG material, along with a smaller supply of truly excellent material.Now, there are orders of magnitude more examples of both-- and the truly excellent material is more useful now because of cross-applicability.This is definitely a troublesome point-- though releasing a new edition does not invalidate previous OGC, so even a Closed new edition would be unable to completely destroy that market.While RPG sales are driven by new products, there is nothing preventing new products from being built atop decades-old OGC. Just because a game was originally based on mechanics derived from Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition doesn't mean that the game's newest supplements are out-of-date because Dungeons & Dragons is on its fourth.The degree of innovation being shown with d20 and d20-like mechanics indicates that this market can persist even if Dungeons & Dragons is no longer the center of it. (Though, I will admit it would persist in considerably reduced fashion.)Not all of these products are direct competitors-- I cannot use Spycraft or Grim Tales to run a superhero action game, nor could I use Mutants & Masterminds to run survival horror. Each competes, more or less within its own genre, with the use of similar mechanics as a benefit mostly for people who desire to play multiple games in different genres. I think, on this point, you drastically overestimate the "pulling away" from d20 and OGL, as well as the production of alternate d20 systems. Far, far more products are made in direct support of D&D than as d20-based alternatives to it.However, there are teams of designers and archivists working on this problem-- note the handful of SRD projects dedicated to extracting the OGC from existing products.You note later on that many companies are adamantly opposed to this-- but at the same time, they continue to publish products with OGC in them. Despite their complaints, they continue to contribute to the growing library of OGC systems and solutions.I do not agree; the cat is out of the bag, and even if Wizards distances itself from the OGL, they won't be able to do more than diminish the amount of new open content produced every year.There are a number of d20 publishers out there that are prominent enough to pick it up and run with it-- D&D may be the most popular RPG on the market, but it's not the only one that can benefit from third-party support.Among your arguments, I think this is the most flawed, for the reason noted above. The bulk of d20 companies might fold, but there are a couple of players big enough to survive it-- and their own need for a customer base will force them to take advantage.Wrong thread. Aren't we talking about D&D in this one? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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