Ryan Dancey - D&D in a Death Spiral

[Hussar]

(Shrug) You see more cross-pollenation later because there is more stuff to cross-pollenate with. If the earlier material had been less generous with OGC, there would be precious little to use later.


RC

Really? How many 3e 3pp titles are there compared to 3.5? There were lots of books for 3.5, don't get me wrong, but, the bubble was firmly in 3.0. Yet, you don't see much, if any cross pollination by the big boys. It isn't until the field is almost empty - Mongoose out, S&S Press mostly out, AEG out, that you start to see a lot of cross pollination between 3pp titles.

But, then again, this is entirely anecdotal. I've got no proof at all, just a gut feeling.

I'm very happy that they are finally doing it, but, I have a strong feeling that it is too little too late. This should have been going on in 2001, but, it wasn't until almost the end of 3.5 edition before you start seeing serious attempts to cross pollinate works.

 

[billd91]

I'm very happy that they are finally doing it, but, I have a strong feeling that it is too little too late. This should have been going on in 2001, but, it wasn't until almost the end of 3.5 edition before you start seeing serious attempts to cross pollinate works.

I think you have to lay a lot of the blame for this at WotC. They put the game out via OGL and shortly thereafter the OGL champions were gone. There wasn't a centrally coordinated effort to realize the potential of the OGL, an effort that should have been led by the source of the licence and base rules, WotC.

 

[Raven Crowking]

EDIT: This is a response to Hussar.

I'm not sure what the relevance of your point is to what I said.

As more material is available to cross-pollenate with, more cross-pollenation will occur.

So, yes, a big glut occurred early, but that big glut included a lot of material that was very short on OGC. Good books, some of them, but not helpful for cross-pollenation. As 3e was coming to its end, a lot more OGC was released (based on the books I own, anyway!), and then more in the 3.5 era, and then even more with the OSR.

During that early glut there was some really fine OGC produced as well, but it required some time to (1) identify it, and (2) realize how cool it would be to use it. The ToH comes immediately to mind as perhaps the most-referenced 3pp OGC ever.

Even so, there was some early adoption of cross-pollenation almost from the start. Quite a few books with large amounts of OGC proclaim it boldly and often on the (usually back) cover or 1st page; clearly the publishers thought that was a selling point.



RC

 

[Mirtek]

- Nope! Essentials was designed by some of WotC's most experienced and tenured designers. [...]the essentials are quite consistent.

Yet they're variants and a step away from the unified system 4e used to be.

Although I don't disagree with your assertion, this is not what Dancey was referring to in his original post. He was talking about the rulebooks. As far as I have seen the quality of the books has gotten better,

Having just received my rules compendium from amazon I can't see this "book" as anything but a decline in quality of the printed rule books.

The only way I could see for it to "negatively" effect 4e is if they stopped producing new material because they were only producing Arcana Unearthed stuff.

Or produce less new material because of the working hours going into Arcana Unearthed. If the page count of Dragon increases by the page count of the AU articles it would be fine. I doubt that, the page count will stay the same (or even decrease) and thus any page of UA is a page less on new material

 

[Raven Crowking]

I think you have to lay a lot of the blame for this at WotC. They put the game out via OGL and shortly thereafter the OGL champions were gone. There wasn't a centrally coordinated effort to realize the potential of the OGL, an effort that should have been led by the source of the licence and base rules, WotC.

Disagree.

They okayed making a lot of IP OGC with the Tome of Horrors. They included OGC from at least one other publisher in the MM 2, and did so in a very cool way to boot. Lots of the psionics, epic, and deity information was included in the SRD shortly after release. When UA came out, again, it included tons of OGC.

They dropped the ball on utilizing the best of the OGC out there for a new version of the game -- which is perhaps the saddest failure of the OGL, IMHO. With 4e, they sought to address specific problems of 3e -- and, again IMHO, these were real problems that needed addressing -- but they sought to address them in a vaccuum. AFAICT, this was specifically to make a clear break between 4e IP and OGC.

Had 4e been an OGL game, I think we would have seen the same resurgence in interest that we did with 3e. I think WotC's sales would have been greater (and I am not saying that they are not great), that WotC's commitment to the OGL would have made 3pp produce even more OGC, and that this would have given the designers an amazing breadth of materials with which to craft 5e, when it eventually appears.

But I'm just blowing smoke in that last paragraph; I have no way to know.

What I do know is this -- WotC had some really strong early support for the OGL. It was not until later that they began to withdraw that support....right around the time that they were doing "design tests" as it were for 4e. And even then, it was announced that 4e would be an OGL game ("some form" of OGL) for a while, because WotC clearly understood how important the OGL had been.

And still is, to some of us.

All IMHO. YMMV.


RC

 

[MrMyth]

Having just received my rules compendium from amazon I can't see this "book" as anything but a decline in quality of the printed rule books.

Out of curiousity, why?

Is it the format as a paperback? Or are your complaints about the actual production value of the book or the content within it?

 

[billd91]

They dropped the ball on utilizing the best of the OGC out there for a new version of the game -- which is perhaps the saddest failure of the OGL, IMHO.

That's largely my point and, I believe, WotC's failure with the OGL. They incorporated virtually nothing new or innovative or even revisionary from 3rd party publishers. The monsters they included were minimal in number.

What I do know is this -- WotC had some really strong early support for the OGL. It was not until later that they began to withdraw that support....right around the time that they were doing "design tests" as it were for 4e. And even then, it was announced that 4e would be an OGL game ("some form" of OGL) for a while, because WotC clearly understood how important the OGL had been.

I think I'd date WotC's lack of support for the OGL far earlier than you. Yes, Unearthed Arcana and 3.5 Psionics ended up in the SRD. But none of the splat books did, for 3.0 nor 3.5. No Practiced Spellcaster feat, no reserve feats, no divine feats, no PH2 feats or base classes, not even the feats that people saw as pretty useful for giving the fighters the improvements they needed to better balance mechanically vs full spellcasters.

I would have expected all of that as well as supporting a clearing house of other OGL offerings and incorporating good ideas into the core rules of the SRD as being hallmarks of good OGL support from WotC. Since we got none of it, I'd blame WotC for squandering what could have really been a dynamic opportunity.

 

[Hussar]

Hang on a tick though Bill91. No one else was ponying up to the plate either. In fact, a number of the OGC producers were pretty vehemently against including any of their OGC in any sort of SRD.

There's a reason we didn't get a OGC wiki until after the release of 4e.

Pointing fingers at the only company that actually did put anything into the SRD and saying they should have done more lets to the 3pp off the hook way too easily. Between broken Open Content and publicly decrying any attempt to have any sort of public OGC SRD beyond what WOTC published, I think the 3pp should be wearing some of this at the very least.

 

[billd91]

Hang on a tick though Bill91. No one else was ponying up to the plate either. In fact, a number of the OGC producers were pretty vehemently against including any of their OGC in any sort of SRD.

There's a reason we didn't get a OGC wiki until after the release of 4e.

Pointing fingers at the only company that actually did put anything into the SRD and saying they should have done more lets to the 3pp off the hook way too easily. Between broken Open Content and publicly decrying any attempt to have any sort of public OGC SRD beyond what WOTC published, I think the 3pp should be wearing some of this at the very least.

I'm not saying that 3pp shouldn't bear some blame, but whose licensing program was it? WotC should have borne the lion's share of the responsibility, thus I believe they should bear the lion's share of the blame for any failure to use the OGL's potential.

 

[Hussar]

I'm not saying that 3pp shouldn't bear some blame, but whose licensing program was it? WotC should have borne the lion's share of the responsibility, thus I believe they should bear the lion's share of the blame for any failure to use the OGL's potential.

Hang on a second. WOTC provides the opportunity for companies to share ideas through different products. WOTC provides the base rule set for companies to use in order to set some sort of standard on what will be shared.

But WOTC is to blame for companies not sharing?

What more could they have done? I suppose they could have started including more OGC in their books, but, since for the first several years of 3e at the least, very few companies actually sharing each others material, what incentive did they really have to provide yet more material for sharing?

They could have used some other companies OGC in their materials, but, then again, no one else was doing that either.

I'm not sure why they should bear the lion's share of the blame for what other companies choose to do. There was nothing stopping companies from using each other's OGC. Yet we still got four (at least) OGC d20 naval supplements in 3e before WOTC tossed its hat into that ring. (Living Imagination's Broadsides!!, Mongoose (name escapes me), 7th Sea, Sword and Sorcery Press - Seas of Blood, just to name the ones that I actually own.)

In a market so limited as what d20 publishers had, the fact that they chose to compete against each other (since they certainly weren't competing with WOTC) and cannibalize eachother's markets is not something you can blame WOTC for.

IMNHO at least.