Najo said:
Besides, it is not laziness on the retailer or distributor when they are having to place their own money week after week onto products that they have no clue whether or not they are going to be any good. Those products that retailers ordered to give selection to their customers that are now sitting there, those retailers ate that...it was money lost. Especially the d20 stuff that will never sell. So, who can blame a retailer or distributor for being cautious or special ordering? They want to stay in business.
It is a niche hobby. If you want to sell to me you should at least be familiar with the game. It is laziness to buy a product and _hope_ it sells without any idea of why it should sell to any given segment of the customer base. Other businesses actually pay attention to their market, pay attention to sales numbers, read the descriptions of the product, and do what they can to make informed decisions. The businesses that cannot do this basic effort often go out of business.
We aren't even talking about that much effort. There are well run game stores out there. But there are a lot of game stores where the owner started as a gamer that loves games and is hoping that enthusiasm is enough to keep her in business. I am talking about a lack of basic things - greeting the customer that walks in the door, watching your cash flow, researching your market and trying to sell to that market. Owning any business requires a lot of hard work. Game stores are no exception. Being able to judge good product and bad product is part of that process.
You are saying it isn't the retailers fault that they buy crummy product and put it on the shelves? I am saying that the retailers have an even higher motivation to avoid buying crummy products than most consumers. If we buy one bad book, we avoid buying another one like it. If a retailer buys one box of bad books, she might only sell one book from that box.
This is all that needs to happen:
Publishers can either publish as OGL or D20 TM. As OGL it is business as usually. As D20 TM, they pay a reasonable fee and then agree that their product:
* Meets the content decency standards (i.e. no real world religion, no sex, etc)
* Does not include how to generate ability scores or use experience to level a character.
* That the writers/ game designers/ developers made use of the official design document kit giving to them and made sure that they use all of the same materials WOTC uses to make new rules. This is extremely important, more so than many realize.
All of which do nothing to address quality of product. During the roll out of 3.X, it would seem that even WotC didn't have such a kit for internal use. I wish I could remember the link, but I distinctly remember a discussion between the designers where one designer created a new class and didn't know that the original designers had a formula for saving throws. At the time, it wasn't documented so that everyone at WotC could find that information.
Maybe the 4E team has those resources, maybe they don't. Such documentation seems standard in some industries and backgrounds, I know. But that documentation takes time away from design and development.
Let's assume that the documentation does exist, and that WotC would be willing to part with it for a price that most third party publishers might pay. The documentation would still be constantly changing. Game design has solid mechanical principles behind it, especially for a system such as D20. But game design is much more an art. At some point, you still look at a new idea and say - I think this will work without being too abusable or too overpowered, but I still could be wrong.
Quality is still not assured, even with a documented methodology.
In turn, the publisher gets to put on the product:
* The D20 logo (or whatever logo WOTC uses to show it is official)
* The 'requires the use of the Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition Player's Handbook' or whatever other compatiblity langauge WOTC wants to allow.
* Limited D&D Trade Dress. This would be graphic design elements that tie in with the logo, allow the publisher to use some, none or all of a selection of style elements made for the 3rd party D&D product lines. These become visual cues that the products are part of the new D20 logo.
WotC would be insane to offer some of that in our litigious society.
I say WOTC goes for it and treats D&D like a console game system. They can make their own high quality products (like Nintendo does with Mario, Zelda or Metroid) and then they can end up getting some really good, creative teams in their from other companies (like console third party companies). The only way to make that happen is provide developer packages like what I am talking about or create a legal deal with each and every company on a one on one basis, and that second option is more expensive.
See Tenkar's statements about sales numbers. Pen and paper RPGs are less than pennies on the dollar in comparison. We are still a small, niche hobby. WotC doesn't have the resources to even try this type of model out. For third parties, it would make the publishing process too onerous. Effectively, it would cut out the D20 logo branding at all. All WotC is doing is cutting out the effort to achieve the same results.
In fact, I would bet that Piazo did have access to some or all of those documents while they were working on Dragon and Dungeon, and that is the reason their mechanics are as tight as they are.
Why discount the idea that Paizo is staffed with experienced game designers? As an alternative, look at Mike Mearls. He started as a freelancer who showed he was creative, responsible, and could make products that work. He worked his way up the rungs, gaining experience until he was able to get a job at WotC. Other companies design product with 'tight mechanics' and did so without any design kit in place. Sure, it would be a great thing to have! Don't think that for a moment I am discounting the idea that a kit would be nice to have. I'm just saying it wouldn't assure quality and wouldn't create any benefit for WotC to provide it.
