Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder: The reason the OGL was a bad idea for WOTC

[Sunderstone]

I dont like 4e. I wont be playing 4e. Either 3.x or Pathfinder for me and mine.

Same here, but if Pathfinder went 4E, I wouldnt be on board either. I was pretty much thinking at one point "I have 3 Dungeon magazine AP's, the Castle Whiterock box, and a host of smaller modules from Necro/GR/Goodman/Paizo. After that Im screwed for new gaming material". I dont have the time I used to to create my things anymore. I saw a possible end to my tabletop RPGing.

Not a good feeling. I really dont care what they do with their GSL. Im not a fan of the 4E game itself.

 

[roguerouge]

Well, sure, if you ignore the profits they got from having other companies provide slim profit margin products (modules, adventures) for them, which expanded their profile and made for more money flowing into the industry generally and thus to them specifically. I mean, if you cut that out, it's a very bad deal for them. Why you'd ignore that in evaluating the OGL, I'll never know.

 

[roguerouge]

For us consumers, that's great. Two systems to choose from! But from WOTC's standpoint, that's horrible. The dnd market is already a tight market, and consistent profits are already hard to come by.

First of all, as another poster noted, many corporations would love to be oligopolies or monopolies, but we've banned the practice because it's bad for the consumers, but also because it ends up being bad for our economy and our nation.

But more directly to your point, monopolies are bad for the monopoly long-term. They stagnate, they don't innovate, they don't specialize, they don't respond to market demand and they end up getting clobbered by a new competitors internationally or domestically.

An example? The origins of Hollywood is one that I know of. The Motion Picture Patents Company loved controlling the American film market right up until the companies that became the Hollywood studio system rebelled and started making a better product. They weren't prepared for that kind of competition, nor were they prepared when the federal government forced them to compete honestly when the feds sued on anti-trust grounds and won in 1915. The MPPC was out of business by 1918, having had a dominant position for 10 years in the US.

Long term, WotC is much better off with vibrant competition pushing them to excel.

 

[carmachu]

Same here, but if Pathfinder went 4E, I wouldnt be on board either. I was pretty much thinking at one point "I have 3 Dungeon magazine AP's, the Castle Whiterock box, and a host of smaller modules from Necro/GR/Goodman/Paizo. After that Im screwed for new gaming material". I dont have the time I used to to create my things anymore. I saw a possible end to my tabletop RPGing.

Not a good feeling. I really dont care what they do with their GSL. Im not a fan of the 4E game itself.

Exactly. If Pathfinder went 4e I wouldnt have stayed with a subscription most likely. I would have gotten one or two simple because they do tell a good story, but in the end most of the subscriptions I have would have canceled.

Screwed for new gaming material with all that? What, after 10 years or so maybe...Thats quite alot of material if you think about it. But it would have been an end to a new flow for sure. TBH I know with what I have handy right now between Ptolus, necro/Paizo/GR and a pair of wotc's modules-red hand of doom and RTTEE and various dungeon mags I'd be good for quite a while......

Hell WLD would have been a broken out. I think even playing 4 times a month you would have been good for many years....but someone producing new material for use is a very nice thing.

 

[Ranger REG]

In the long run and in the big picture I don't think Pathfinder is going to compete with people playing 3.5E D&D.

Why would they? FWIW, and if Paizo plays their cards right, their supplements may offer an indirect continued support for 3e during 4e's run.

4E D&D? Pathfinder isn't on the radar.

Meh. 4e is not even on MY radar. Ask me if it is when 2010 comes around.

But like many big brand names ... iPod, TiVO, Coca-Cola, Big Mac ... D&D is always going to be a big seller in its market (RPG). Many will not resist it. It is futile, you will buy Dungeons & Dragons if you're an RPG hobbyist/enthusiast. It's "mainstream" RPG.

 

[Caliber]

I think Pathfinder is a bad way to demonstrate this fact, because its fans are generally pretty touchy about criticism towards the game (IME), but there were several other similar games that came out during 3Es lifetime at WotC that did pull away potential customers.

More specifically to Pathfinder, while I'm sure a lot of its customers wouldn't be buying 4E anyway, that doesn't go for everyone, and guessing how high or how low the percentage of Pathfinder customers would have purchased 4E without it is pointless without any data.

So, that is to say, I think Stalker0 is dead on for the reason the GSL is more restrictive this go-round.

 

[joethelawyer]

i was at a few stores today. i live near new haven, connecticut. big college town, lotsa money (yale university). anyhow, there are a ton of used bookstores there. at least 8. none of them sell dnd or rpg stuff. there are a few of the rare non chain bookstores there. none of them sell dnd or rpg stuff. there is a comic book store there. geek central. they sell everythinbg geeklike, from comics to action figures to magic card game stuff. they have about one foot of shelf space devoted to rpg products, 10 books were 3e wotc, a few white wolf, no 4e. i went to the official yale bookstore, which is a barnes and noble chain store expanded to be huge---a full scale barnes and noble, plus textbooks, plus college kid stuff for dorm rooms. they had about one foot of rpg bookshelf space. no 3pp stuff, all 4e and 3.x stuff.

yale is one of the top 3 or 4 richest universities in the world. their students are sojme of the smartest brightest and richest people who go to college. around new haven, within 20 miles or so, are 5 other colleges. from small, to state, to private. all levels of income.

and we have 2 feet total of rpg space in the entire greater new haven area. for 20 miles around.

last weekend i called every chain bookstore in the state to see if i could find a castle zagyg product. no one had any. nor did they have any of the 3e books i was looking for. it was all 4e.

i called into new york city yesterday to compleat strategist, looking for castle zagyg stuff, and some of the older 3.x books on my list. they didnt have what i wanted in stock. compleat strategist is one of the largest gaming/hobby stores in the entire new york city area. 13 million people live within 30 miles of it this store. and they had nothing i wanted. (call me old fashioned, but i live online but dont like to buy books or anything else online. i like to go to stores once i find out what i want online)

so when a someone wants to get into rpg's and do it like many of us did it when we were kids, and go to a bookstore, what are they going to get? wotc 4e. just like we got the basic boxed set, or ad&d, or whatever edition we came into the scene at.

thats the problem in a nutshell for 3pp's. no chain of distribution. basically 3pp's do well because of the internet and conventions. i dont have hard and fast numbers or statistics or market breakdowns. just my experiences.

paizo and pathfinder and true 20 and all those other games and systems we love so much here on these boards, have essentially no presence or recognition in the world at large of potential new customers.

they will live and die based on us, the net community. for better or worse, thats the way it is for the near future.

which makes 4e the entry level game of choice, since it is the only one out there. i think now paizo's growth strategy, as well as the other games out there, ought to be to steal the new customers that 4e gets from wotc. thats the only real way to expand and grow. for the most part we here in the internet community have made up our minds. whether it is a 50/50 split, or some other number, i think we can all agree that the existing net base has mostly decided who they're going to bed with tonight.

the problem for 3pp's, and the reason why dnd is so big and commands such a market presence, is simply their name. their ip. the name dungeons and dragons is like bandaids. a readily identifiable trademark. slap that name on anything they it make money, no matter the quality of the product. thats what paizo and pathfinder and true20 compete with.

none of the other games out there even come close to a name which is identifiable as a rpg like dnd is, except maybe castles and cryusades. paizo/pathfindrer suffers from the same problem gleemax suffered from before they that horse down---namely, wtf is it? even if i saw it on a shelf in the barnes and noble, near a dnd book, in the rpg area, i would have no idea as a newbie wtf it was.

these 3pp's need something to make them stand out, stand apart. something to help them get new gamers, asuming they can even get chain stores to stock the product in the first place. they can make a living out of us, here on the internet, but never truly grow into their full potential, which many of them deserve, imho, unless they get some more readily identifiable name/brand recognition in the world at large.

and i'll be damned if i know how to do that.

 

[joethelawyer]

yet another duplicate post. a true test of patience, this server issue. it took me 10 minutes to get this to post, after i finished typing it.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Don't you think this exact conversation was hashed out before the OGL even went live the first time?

 

[Darrin Drader]

these 3pp's need something to make them stand out, stand apart. something to help them get new gamers, asuming they can even get chain stores to stock the product in the first place. they can make a living out of us, here on the internet, but never truly grow into their full potential, which many of them deserve, imho, unless they get some more readily identifiable name/brand recognition in the world at large.

and i'll be damned if i know how to do that.

Conventions and word of mouth is the only thing that will work in the current market. When I went to SpoCon a couple weeks ago there was initially no buzz about Pathfinder because nobody knew what the heck it was or who the heck Paizo was. Sure, they remembered Dragon and Dungeon, and when I reminded them that it was done by an outside company called Paizo, there were a few who suddenly identified with it, but most people just gave me blank stares at first. Many of them were carrying around 3.5 books, saying that they didn't like 4E, but weren't completely happy with 4E.

I was in a fortuitous position because the even coordinator wanted me to talk about Pathfinder at their 4E panel. It was his idea, not mine, and I was the lone dissenter in the bunch. I kept it positive and focused on the good things about Pathfinder without dissing 4E. By the end of the day, there were at least 5 people who came up to me and wanted to know how they could get Pathfinder. A couple days ago I got a call out of the blue from the guy who invited me there and he also wanted to know how he could get Pathfinder because I had managed, through talking to people and running games, to sell his players that it was the way they wanted to go.

The only way to bring new people in for 3PPs is to go out there, talk to people, run the games, and show them how awesome those companies and their products are. With effort, the people online can reach out to the people who aren't online, who can reach out to more people, and it will snowball, but it takes an individual effort on people's part, and unfortunately not everybody has the time to do that. I really don't have the time to do that very often myself, but that's the only way.

We, online here, are the seeders if the 3PP forest is ever going to grow. If you want these amazing products to have a presence out there in the real world, go plant some trees.