Ryan Dancey - D&D in a Death Spiral

[billd91]

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?

WotC bears the majority of the blame for the OGL not living up to its potential. They put it out there and pretty much let it languish rather than use it to improve the core rule set. They should have been cross-pollinating with suitable improvements in rules once the first 3pp were off and running. They did not. The example they set was "Here's the rules. Use them. Share stuff. Oh, but we're not going to pollute it with your stuff. And most of our additional stuff won't go in there, so you can't use that." They set a terrible example despite being in the best position to get leverage out of the OGL.

If you want to decry other publishers not sharing what other people are producing, go right ahead. I'm not about to stop you. But I still don't think there's any getting around WotC's abdication of leadership with the OGL.

 

[ggroy]

WotC bears the majority of the blame for the OGL not living up to its potential. They put it out there and pretty much let it languish rather than use it to improve the core rule set. They should have been cross-pollinating with suitable improvements in rules once the first 3pp were off and running. They did not. The example they set was "Here's the rules. Use them. Share stuff. Oh, but we're not going to pollute it with your stuff. And most of our additional stuff won't go in there, so you can't use that." They set a terrible example despite being in the best position to get leverage out of the OGL.

Sounds like the "not invented here" syndrome at work.

Not Invented Here - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Hussar]

What do you mean, "Left it to languish"?

As I recall, they added psionics, Unearthed Arcana, and the Epic rules to the SRD.

What did any 3pp make available appended to the SRD?

There was no incentive at all for WOTC to make their material OGC. It wouldn't help them in the slightest. They made the core game available, they made a fair amount of supplementary material available.

But they also should have been cherry picking from 3pp as well? When virtually none of the 3pp publishers were doing it and were actually vocally opposed to any sort of OGC initiative like the current OGC wiki?

The 3pp made their bed. WOTC gave them all the opportunity in the world and they dropped the ball. Let's not forget that a couple of years before 4e was even announced, virtually all 3pp were gone. Even Green Ronin was only publishing a handful of modules by the end.

They did very little to help each other, why should WOTC have helped them?

 

[Hussar]

Sounds like the "not invented here" syndrome at work.

Not Invented Here - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Just out of curiosity ggroy, would you equally apply that to 3pp?

I would.

 

[ggroy]

Just out of curiosity ggroy, would you equally apply that to 3pp?

I would.

It can go both ways.

 

[Mirtek]

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?

Being a paperback (which is part of the actual production value), the size, thickness and font size.

When I saw the package I thought "hm, what's this? Did I order a DVD I don't remember?" I just didn't think the RC would be in this small package and after seeing it I only thought "What? That's it?"

If I had known in advance what this was going to be, I wouldn't have ordered it (and yes I could have known at least the size in advance if I had bothered to translate the cryptic size information from amazon into the metric system values the civilized world uses ). Now that I have it, my laziness prevents me from sending it back, but I am glad that I didn't also already order HotFL which I am now not going to order after having seen the RC.

 

[jonesy]

When I think of this thread, I think of this:

 

[MrMyth]

Being a paperback (which is part of the actual production value), the size, thickness and font size.

Fair enough. Still, I don't know if it is reasonable to bash it as a decline in quality for being a smaller paperback that is also cheaper than the usual larger hardcover. The product line features these cheaper books to make them more accessible to new gamers, in theory. And for myself, the portability of the RC is a selling point.

I can certainly see preferring hardcovers to the paperbacks, but it seems strange to consider it a decline in quality without acknowledging a lower pricetag on the books has to come from somewhere.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

What do you mean, "Left it to languish"?

As I recall, they added psionics, Unearthed Arcana, and the Epic rules to the SRD.

What did any 3pp make available appended to the SRD?

Third party publishers have no ability to add anything to the SRD.

Everything published as Open Content by a 3rd party publisher was (and still is) Open Content.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, but they were pretty quick to make sure that no one appended something like an OGC wiki to the d20 SRD too, Wulf.

Look, I'm not saying WOTC couldn't have done more. They likely could have. But, the 3pp are hardly blameless victims here as well.