D&D 4E Paizo and 4e.

[TarionzCousin]

I think it's also important to understand that Clark's personal life changed a lot during this period, with him taking on the role of a real-life judge. THAT's the main reason he's not more involved in gaming these days, not the OGL, not the GSL, or any other factor. He simply does not have the time to commit to this stuff these days. Barring that, I suspect he'd be replying to this thread right now.

That's quite a list of legal terms there, Erik. Coincidence?

 

[fanboy2000]

Lots of promises about how robust and fair the new OGL was going to be, for starters.

I almost stopped buying 3PP in the 3e era. Quality was an issue. And the high quality stuff wasn't what I was interested it. (Usually whole new d20 games, which isn't what I wanted.) So the GSL never affected me.

That said, I did buy a couple of products from Necromancer in the 3.5 era. Both were tied to the old judges guild Wilderlands setting. Good stuff. Not just high quality, but the kind of product I wanted.

Also lots of stuff about how the game was going to make the DM's job easier, etc.

For me, it has. However, some of my job would have been made easier for me under 3.5 (and was slowly starting to towards the end there) simply by caring less about precise stat blocks and building everything to the nth degree. It can be done under 3.5, but 4e seemed to really embrace that idea.

In the end it was pretty obvious that WotC wanted to take a "go it alone" approach to the edition, so that's what we let them do.

It's my opinion that Wizards was to generous with licenses during the 3.x era. Gamma World was horrible. Polyhedron's Omega World was much, much better. The official fansites were hard to navigate. I'd go to one, and I found it hard to find material for my game there. I once went to the official Dragonlance website and most of it was about the novels. The faq even seemed to focus on telling people who were only familiar with the novels that it was also an RPG setting.

But now they've gone to far. Pulling the print magazines was a bad idea. For one thing, the print magazines gave the game extended visibility. Second having a magazine publisher publish the magazines made them the most professionally produced versions of them magazines ever. It's not like it's not viable, White Dwarf and No Quarter have managed to survive and their house organs like Dungeon and Dragon are.

But worse, the professionalism has just gone down in the magazines completely. No deadlines, no pdf compilations, no way to purchase back issues. The articles are miniature splat books. Dungeon has completely disintegrated. It's like they've forgotten how close to death it was before it was combined with Polyhedron (even then it was on severe life support.)

And the software. Well, at least we have software. It literally took years for CMP to get e-tools working properly. When 4e was on the horizon, simply wasn't any 4e software, and it stayed that way until development was pulled in-house. Then we got it. Then it improved. And now, now they've gone and messed it all up.

And thing is, I think 4e is a good game. There is some really good stuff there and I've been running it since before the PHB came out, I've enjoyed it so much.

Yeah, they went it alone. But they forgot one thing: incremental improvements and that slow and steady wins the race. It's just tough for me to keep having them scrap everything and start over when all I really need is an incremental improvement.

You know, at least I'm still having fun once a week running a game.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

The GSL is a direct response to the OGL and it's flaws. The problem is, the flaws with the OGL weren't really seen by us, because we didn't foot the bill.

The big flaw in the OGL is that it was too much.

The OGL has it's roots in three main things.

First off, the era. Remember, the OGL was written at the same time the internet was in a compelete frenzy over "open source." It was everywhere. You couldn't even think about Wired without something about open source popping up, in your brain if need be. Just as oWoD was the most 90's game imaginable, the OGL was directly influenced by "the inevitable triumph of open source."

Secondly, TSR was insanely, insanely restrictive of their license. Whenever people get misty eyed and nostalgic for TSR, some part of me screams in horror. They were suing fansites left and right and generally had no concept at all of how their own business functioned, much less how the internet worked. If you've ever read Dancey's entries / posts on what he found while overseeing the TSR buyout, it's insane stuff. The OGL was a direct response to the absurd inclusiveness that TSR had practiced. The OGL was also meant to solve the biggest problem TSR had - too many miniproducts. Rather then make the weirdly specific low-volume, no-margin products that TSR went bankrupt with, third party would handle those, while WotC would focus on the big sellers. So your Ecology of the Thri-kreen or Big Book of Mindflayers could be made by Paizo, while WotC would be making Complete Warrior.

Thirdly, the OGL had some good core ideas. But, a few of them, several people might actually find repugnant. See, the OGL wasn't just meant to help D&D become bigger, it was also meant to destroy the opposition. The goal was to make d20 so synonymous with gaming as a whole that non-d20 games would dry up completely. If you enjoy a non-d20 game, that was running hardline against the assumptions. Never forget that the OGL as designed first and foremost to sell 3e.

So, what went wrong?

The OGL was too big. It contained too much. Rather then just make the low-volume products that WotC didn't want to deal with - and while Paizo gets some flake, I gurantee adventures were a part of that, so they operated completely within WotC's expectations - you had entire game systems being made. Now, I enjoy Pathfinder, but in some ways you could say that Pathfinder is exactly what the OGL's failing is - from a business perspective, Pathfinder is proof that the OGL experiment failed.

The idea goes like this: D&D is the #1 RPG. Other RPGs are short lived blips in comparison, and most RPG groups are short lived. Thus, players who are pulled into the hobby are in turn inevitably pulled into D&D, since that's where all the campaigns and source material is! Even when you hit things like Spycraft or M&M that don't pay one cent to WotC, they will inevitably leave that for D&D, since they're already familiar with the basic rules.
But that didn't work. The network effects didn't create the network. Part of it was failings outside the OGL - Dancey also wanted a very robust internet presence and RPGA presence, both of which flopped hard, especially the online presence. Part of the failings was simply that the OGL was too optimistic in regards of open source - releasing your source code increases market share but doesn't neccisarily translate to money.

The other big problem is that third party producers weren't really interested in making the Big Book of Mindflayers. The intention for the OGL was to build of the base of D&D, but only third party folks that did actively expand on WotC's established 3e base were those that typically just churned out a lot of crap.

The big 3p players - well, big for third party - generally just did their own thing with the license. The only publishers I know of that actually expanded on WotC's stuff successfully were Paizo through Dragon/Dungeon, a few weird "second party" materials made by Monte Cook at Malhavoc Press, and the psionics stuff done by Dreamscarred. And even most of that was also used to build up themselves - Paizo built up their own Pathfinder line of adventure paths and modules for their own setting, and Malhavoc made their own I Can't Believe It's Not 3e line through Arcana Unearthed. Most stuff was third parties pumping and beating their own chests. Rather then make the Big Book of Aboleths and Mind Flayers, they'd make the big book of monsters in their own homebrew setting that earned WotC zero other sales. Of course, the 3p glut and the fact that you had a billion books that were all utter garbage, leading most DMs to just banning third party altogether, also removed any incentive for WotC to utilize them as an unofficial branch in the first place

In the end, the OGL experiment was just that - an experiment. A brilliant experiment, mind you! But, nonetheless, it was an experiment. It's one that benefited a whole lot of companies...but WotC was the one that had to foot the bill. It's not surprising in the least that in 4e they would go much more conservative with their license.

There's been some good third party stuff for Paizo - I'm a rather proud owner of Psionics Unleashed and probably the most irritating fanboy that Dreamscarred has had to deal with ;p - but there's also a lot of stuff that I glance at and think: "Oh boy, the second glut begins!"

 

[brewdus]

IMO, the OGL was the one of the best things to happen to D&D!

 

[Fifth Element]

I think it's also important to understand that Clark's personal life changed a lot during this period, with him taking on the role of a real-life judge.

I didn't realize that. I guess that's one way to get your players to stop questioning your rulings as DM.

"Who's the judge?"

"Sigh...you are."

 

[Fifth Element]

The GSL is a direct response to the OGL and it's flaws. The problem is, the flaws with the OGL weren't really seen by us, because we didn't foot the bill.

Pretty clear-headed analysis here. The OGL was not all rainbows and hugs.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

IMO, the OGL was the one of the best things to happen to D&D!

I love the OGL on principle; open, irrevocable, and it invited a wave of creativity.

The reality though, was that a lot of that creativity was untested, unpolished, and a lot of it unplayable. We ended up waist-deep in a torrent (no pun intended) of trashy pdfs, which you'd have to sift through to find the gems.

Sure, sometimes the good stuff was obvious, but as another poster pointed out, because the vast majority of the 3rd party product was basically gaming sewage, most DMs just blanket-banned the stuff (every DM I knew at any rate, and I played in lots of games during that time).

So it was a double-edged sword in that regard.

The GSL, on the other hand, went too far in the other direction. It is fairly draconian (especially) towards potential publishers, and while that virtually assured that most of the crap would disappear, it also meant that the 'successful' 3PPs would have to choose and not be able to do both.

That's a real shame, because there are a lot of 4e folks who love Golarion and the Adventure Paths. It'd be nice if they didn't have to convert them in order to use them (for example).

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater - I like and respect all editions - and it's great that the OGL ensures that the current stuff for Pathfinder and 3.x will be available for a long time to come. It's great that people will be able to use the ruleset behind the SRD indefinitely and for free. In fact, if one of my group hadn't been so rabidly insistent that we try 4e, we would have switched to PF or E6 or a combination of the two in all likelihood, and been pretty happy with it.

What's done is done though, and we all ended up liking 4e, so that's what we use these days. Still, it would have been nice if the GSL allowed for a bit more, but that horse has long since left the barn, never to return.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Pretty clear-headed analysis here. The OGL was not all rainbows and hugs.

The following is your fault -

OGL Rainbow by TheAuldGrump, on Flickr

The Auld Grump, just some silliness that came to mind.

 

[Beginning of the End]

We do not allow personal attacks on ENworld. Welcome to a seven-day vacation.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I know there were good 3rd party products out there. But the first one i had in hand was opened, browsed through and closed, never to be opened again. And 3rd party products were banned before i even got a single splatbook.

I was more open to completely different games that used d20. But I really did not want any unofficial crap in my game. Ok, later I also did not want official crap in my game.
The best days of 3rd edition were those shortly after 3.0 came out (with sword and fist like books) and then again, when i got 3.5 with all "complete" books and banned all 3.0 stuff. DM books however were more or less backwards compatible. And this was the selling point in the 3.0 -> 3.5 transition.

Too much options can destroy a game. And if those options are terribly unbalanced, it happens faster.

I guess Pathfinder is doing well right now. As was 3.0 and 3.5 after that. I wish them all luck, that they retain their success. I believe it is easier for them, because they don´t really need to compete with companies that churn out crap for their edition. And if they can keep the game more or ess compact with a reasonable number of balanced options, they are doing well.

And 4e is doing well enough, as they are more or less confine themselves. They however recognized, that they were running their train into the wall however, as the game, with all those feats and powers was getting really unwieldy. Bad dragon articles with too specialized feats were one of the reasons. Tying more abilities into the class structure, and not trying to give alternatives to class defining higher level powers is a way to limit this process of overloading with seless options.

Ok, I am maybe i am diverging a bit. But what I want to say:

To keep a game alife, you need to:
- give new, interesting options
- Keep those options tight enough, that a new player can overlook them
- Keep all options balanced

Those three principles are competing with each other. If a third party mingles with that, a game can become overloaded and ubalanced fast.

4e and Pathfinder are both doing quite a good job at it.