Pramas on the OGL

[xechnao]

Actually I get your point just fine, you are failing to grasp that it is the consumers that make the final call.

You fail to grasp that in our economy capitalists are the ones to make it. It may virtually seem to you that you make the final call but it is just not the case. He who has capital controls the market -from production to marketing to whatever.

Um, first, you have been suggesting that my anecdote should not exist.
If you claim that no human is over 7 ft tall, then a single anecdotal response is adequate to prove you wrong.

Ok, so let me explain better since you seem to not understand what I am trying to say. Your anecdote fails to explain how modern market works. In the modern market your anecdote is 1 among millions. Yet the modern market's structure does not get involved in this way. Instead it tries to use as few mechanisms as the ones only necessary to achieve control over it. This is why all consumers adequate to one degree or another.

Second, you are demanding that everyone comply with your definition of quality. The reality is that a lot of people are very much satisfied with the overall quality package that Dominos provides. Maybe they LIKE the pizza. Maybe the like the price. Maybe they like the delivery guy's shoes. Your deeply flawed assessment of market level "quality" based on your personal preference is just as wrong in the case of pizza as it is in RPGs.

I am not demanding: I am just telling the truth. And the truth is that satisfaction is dependent to lifestyle and lifestyles are dependent to the market. Generally, lifestyles are not a choice people have. But there are some lifestyles that give you more choices around certain matters. Unfortunately they are not yet to a level that could let us use the word satisfaction in the way you want to use it.

 

[xechnao]

So the SRD should've had a set of guidelines about what constitutes a good vs a bad product? Move outside the boundaries, and it's an automatic fail? I'm pretty sure Mutants & Masterminds is way beyond what anyone at WotC envisioned for the d20 rules, but it's awesome.

I was agreeing with that statement:"...Which is something entirely outside the scope of the OGL as well as running counter to each individual person's taste."

You -want- Wizards to do exactly what you say is wrong with capitalism - you want them to set up fixed standards and tell the consumers what to buy. I think that's a horrible idea.

Nope. OGL is the thing that has already done what you are saying here. I just want consumers and publishers to let go their attachment to D20 because of D&D. I want more standards than the D20 standard. D&D should be just D&D. Other games should be just other games and not just hybrids of the D&D's D20 standard. And this IMO now would help the whole hobby (D&D included).

 

[xechnao]

Y'know, I'd bet alot of money that you're wrong. If you looked at all the pizza's sold in the US over a year, I'd bet that the vast, vast majority were sold by single shops or small/local chains. For instance, there are 45 entries under "Pizza" in my local yellow pages. Only 3 are chains.

Let's not talk about pizza here. Let's talk about rpgs.

 

[Lizard]

Nope. OGL is the thing that has already done what you are saying here. I just want consumers and publishers to let go their attachment to D20 because of D&D. I want more standards than the D20 standard. D&D should be just D&D. Other games should be just other games and not just hybrids of the D&D's D20 standard. And this IMO now would help the whole hobby (D&D included).

So, lemme get this straight:
Opening up cpyrighted material and letting anyone use it, even in direct competition with the originator of the material, without charging a fee or exerting any control over it, is capitalistic.

Keeping material closed so that other people can't benefit from it is anti-capitalistic.

Say "Hello" to Bizarro Number One and Bizarro-Lois for me, will you?

 

[xechnao]

So, lemme get this straight:
Opening up cpyrighted material and letting anyone use it, even in direct competition with the originator of the material, without charging a fee or exerting any control over it, is capitalistic.

Keeping material closed so that other people can't benefit from it is anti-capitalistic.

Say "Hello" to Bizarro Number One and Bizarro-Lois for me, will you?

So are you claiming that Wotc did it for piety? And if not for what?

Fact is that both methods have been and are capitalistic in the market (for reasons analyzed many times in these threads). You have no argument here.

 

[Dragon Snack]

You fail to grasp that in our economy capitalists are the ones to make it. It may virtually seem to you that you make the final call but it is just not the case. He who has capital controls the market -from production to marketing to whatever.

The market sets the price. The capitalist can set what he thinks the market will bear, but if it is set too high they will not be maximizing their return. Unless there is a pure monopoly, the customer is not forced to buy.

 

[xechnao]

The market sets the price. The capitalist can set what he thinks the market will bear, but if it is set too high they will not be maximizing their return. Unless there is a pure monopoly, the customer is not forced to buy.

Eventually every economy is about control. Economy is a game about control. Fact is that in capitalism the game is not genuine. This means that he who finds himself with more control, he has bigger potential to keep it than the one who finds himself with less control. This is achieved because in capitalism we can only make choices among the ones provided to our level of control. It is less a game of absolute maximization and rather more a game of the limits of the various levels.

 

[Nellisir]

This is achieved because in capitalism we can only make choices among the ones provided to our level of control.

Is this a confusing way of saying "we can only buy what they sell"? Because that works both ways. They can only sell what we'll buy.

 

[xechnao]

Is this a confusing way of saying "we can only buy what they sell"? Because that works both ways. They can only sell what we'll buy.

You will just buy what the system has made as the most appropriate thing available to your level (-and rarely the system fails to produce). This of course in not personal but rather statistical. And the significance of this has been a solid one because who is "we" and who is "they" simply can't change by the system (always statistically speaking). Entertainment belongs to this system too. And RPGs make part of entertainment.

And note that buy does not simply mean buying a roleplaying book. It means whatever money can buy* (always statistically speaking): a freelance artist to the book you want to make, your time spent to design your game, publishing expenses from marketing to whatever, your internet connection, your DDI subscription, your time spent on this forum, your time spent with friends playing rpgs, etch.

*across all levels.

 

[Piratecat]

This is not the place for a debate on the merits of capitalism, please.