Pathfinder 1E Ryan Dancey Predicts Pathfinder RPG in '06

[King of Old School]

Funny, Monte Cook was just talking on his website forums recently about how the OGL was only good for WotC.

Clearly, the people who run WotC don't agree with Monte.

WotC has included refinements from other games into D&D, many aspects of 4E I have seen in other games released under the OGL.

WotC has not included refinements from other games into D&D -- there is not one single element of the SRD that has been lifted from other companies' OGC. Likewise, there is no WotC-produced D&D book that uses other companies' OGC except Unearthed Arcana (which doesn't count, as it's explicitly a catalogue of optional rules that exist outside of "regular" D&D). Any minor refinements that WotC has lifted from other games has done so without reference to the OGL and would have happened even if the OGL didn't exist. This is exactly the opposite of what Dancey predicted in his original article explaining the d20 concept.

The OGL did arrest the decline of the RPG industry and seemed to do so until WotC pulled the trigger on 3.5 earlier than originally planned, which hurt the other companies producing OGL material badly. 3.5 was where the shakeout of the OGL industry really began in earnest.

The OGL didn't arrest the decline of the RPG industry at all. It produced a temporary bubble, and the bubble burst because of the massive amounts of crap produced with a d20 logo, and now the industry is in worse shape than it was before d20 came along. No one disputes this, not even Dancey himself. Now one can say that the early introduction of 3.5 hastened the bursting of the bubble... but you know what? Even without 3.5, the bubble would have eventually burst anyway. The bottom line is that the OGL didn't arrest the decline of the RPG industry at all -- it slowed it down, and then shoved the industry off a cliff.

KoOS

 

[BryonD]

The OGL didn't arrest the decline of the RPG industry at all. It produced a temporary bubble, and the bubble burst because of the massive amounts of crap produced with a d20 logo,

I'd say that the bubble burst because people became saturated with quality material to the point that couldn't use it all and didn't need more. The field was very well plowed.

Yeah, there was a lot of crap also and it didn't help anything, but D20 was still booming as the market learned who was reliable and who wasn't and how to be careful with new entries.

and now the industry is in worse shape than it was before d20 came along. No one disputes this, not even Dancey himself.

link?
I think that is quite a stretch.

Now one can say that the early introduction of 3.5 hastened the bursting of the bubble...

That I agree with.

but you know what? Even without 3.5, the bubble would have eventually burst anyway.

Of course, all bubbles burst.

The bottom line is that the OGL didn't arrest the decline of the RPG industry at all -- it slowed it down, and then shoved the industry off a cliff.

Again, I don't see any evidence to support that claim.
I recall before 3E RPGs were "dying" and everyone was blaming everything under the sun, with MTG being the most common scapegoat. From my PoV things are solidly less bad than they were in 1997-1998.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Of course, all bubbles burst.

Right you are.

Until it bursts, it's not a bubble, it's... uhh, it's just a steady increase.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

I think that's a rather short-sighted interpretation of the results. It seems to me what we've got here is a Nash equilibrium based on a situation very similar to the classic Prisoner Dilemma game.

Given the situation where the D&D brand name is applied to a completely different game, players are left with two choices, play the new game (now branded D&D) or play the old game (now OOP). Assume, for the sake of this construct, that "new D&D" will garner many new players, while "old D&D" will mostly just retain the current players who decide not to switch. In a situation with two players, A and B, who currently play in each others games there are four possible combinations of choices. If A and B both switch to new D&D, both get to play (both with each other and probably with new players). If A and B both do not switch to new D&D, both get to play (but only with each other). If A switches and B does not, A gets to play with new players and B does not get to play at all. Vice versa, if B switches and A does not.

A rational player in this game will always choose to switch, because the consequences of not switching are more costly than the consequences of switching, on average. Switching is the only choice that guarantees the player will get to continue playing, independent of what his "opponent" chooses. Given that most people understand that brand names DO influence people's buying decisions, the choice to follow the brand rather than the ruleset is completely rational.

Well, seeing that even AD&D 1E or OD&D manage to get new players, and my personal experiences are that I can get new players to play Shadowrun 1E or L5R 1E without any problems, I'm glad this post of yours only describes a "construct" that doesn't have to do too much with reality as I know it.

Otherwise, I'd have to think you just called me irrational...and I had my quota of compliments for today already.

 

[Ourph]

Well, seeing that even AD&D 1E or OD&D manage to get new players, and my personal experiences are that I can get new players to play Shadowrun 1E or L5R 1E without any problems, I'm glad this post of yours only describes a "construct" that doesn't have to do too much with reality as I know it.

The value of the construct isn't that it's predictive, it's explanatory. It helps explain why brand name might be more important than rules in the context of an edition change. Note that it's not necessary for the assumption "I will have a difficult time finding people to play with if I don't switch" to be true in order for the construct to be valid; it only has to be perceived to be true by at least one of the players in the construct in order to trigger the predicted Nash equilibrium.

Also note that "rational" in my above post is used in the context of the field of Game Theory, where "rational" has a different meaning than is usually attached to it in casual usage and it is only being applied to the participants in the theoretical construct, not as a label for anyone making decisions in the real world.

 

[SSquirrel]

WotC has not included refinements from other games into D&D -- there is not one single element of the SRD that has been lifted from other companies' OGC. Likewise, there is no WotC-produced D&D book that uses other companies' OGC except Unearthed Arcana (which doesn't count, as it's explicitly a catalogue of optional rules that exist outside of "regular" D&D). Any minor refinements that WotC has lifted from other games has done so without reference to the OGL and would have happened even if the OGL didn't exist. This is exactly the opposite of what Dancey predicted in his original article explaining the d20 concept.

Which part of me saying "many aspects of 4E I have seen in other games released under the OGL." did you gloss over here? I specifically said that 4E sees many things rolled in from other OGL games and anything from UA that ended up in the SRD that was first in another company's product destroys your theory too.

The OGL didn't arrest the decline of the RPG industry at all. and now the industry is in worse shape than it was before d20 came along. No one disputes this, not even Dancey himself.

Link? Proof? Evidence? I see more gaming books on shelves now than I did back in 97 or even 99.

The bottom line is that the OGL didn't arrest the decline of the RPG industry at all -- it slowed it down, and then shoved the industry off a cliff.

I see nothing to show this at all. Several of the companies who started as new OGL companies have branched into their own product lines successfully, companies liked Paizo are creating their own system to support their popular adventure lines, etc. Are things slacked off since last summer sure, but guess what? The biggest company in the industry announced a new edition. Things like that tend to have a negative impact on the current edition market.

 

[RyanD]

He was wrong about every single industry prediction he made for 2007.

For the record, I score myself as follows:

Overall, 3 hits, 3 misses, 2 "passes". As prognostication goes, I would not call that a very successful series of predictions. I comfort myself though by knowing that Wizards will likely end up canceling all the new stuff it made in 2007, and that Games Workshop will be merged, taken private, or combined with something else soon, so in the end I expect to be "late", not "wrong" on that item.

On topic:

I don't know if 4E will be different enough from the SRD to suffer from "variation sickness". And I don't know if Pathfinder will be close enough to the SRD to be a seamless network externality tap. Time will tell in both cases.

RyanD

 

[Henry]

Which part of me saying "many aspects of 4E I have seen in other games released under the OGL." did you gloss over here? I specifically said that 4E sees many things rolled in from other OGL games and anything from UA that ended up in the SRD that was first in another company's product destroys your theory too.

As even more evidence, I find myself looking at several books that Mike Mearls worked on for Malhavoc, and the subsequent books that he worked on at WotC, such as Book of Nine Swords. Looking at The Book of Iron Might, and Iron Heroes, you can see the seeds of 4th edition right there, in addition to the seeds of the stunt mechanic from Complete Scoundrel. (Though Mearls doesn't appear in the credits to Scoundrel, he may have been a developer, or the authors may have gotten the idea from some of the stuff in Iron Heroes or Iron Might, and developed it further.) Saying the OGL didn't have a positive effect on D&D is definitely not accurate, in my opinion -- it's directly affecting how 4E is turning out!

 

[teitan]

I'd have to agree. D&D has name recognition that no other RPG has. Period. Ask any non-gamer if they heard of games called Vampire, Werewolf, the World of Darkness, RuneQuest, Traveller, Spirit of the Century, Muntants and Masterminds, or Call of Cthulu, you might get a yes on either Vampire or CoC. MIGHT. Unless someone starts a TV show called Pathfinder (or maybe, My Role Playing Game is better then Your Role Playing Game) there is no chance of the D&D name being debunked at the biggest name anytime soon.

Came awful close back in the late 90s. 3e saved D&D from oblivion at the hands of Vampire the Masquerade...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Came awful close back in the late 90s. 3e saved D&D from oblivion at the hands of Vampire the Masquerade...

Point of fact, there was also a V:tM based TV show on Fox at that time called Kindred: The Embraced. It wasn't very good- it only lasted about a month or so in 1996- but when you consider that the game itself was big enough to warrant Hollywood not just looking at the game but greenlighting a TV show based on it, that's pretty decent pop-culture penetration.