Scott Thorne, a retailer, comments on recent events

[Wicht]

One, there are people who spent a lot of money on 3.x and are unwilling to pay more on 4E, because they know they have the full system support (adventures and supplements) from Paizo.
So, no OGL, no system support. no Paizo-DnD.

I'm afraid I never understood this sort of reasoning: Because I am invested in 3e I will refuse to buy 4e but I will spend hundreds of dollar a year on Pathfinder (and some more besides on other game systems like Warhammer, Dragon Age, etc.)? Whatever Paizo's monetary success is built on, it cannot be built on the desire of people not to spend money.

 

[Wicht]

Second, there are people who like to play DnD for the kind of fantasy it provides. You know, mind flayers and beholders and drow instead of skaven and warpstone and chaos warriors. Paizo creates products with this kind of fantasy because of the OGL. No OGL, no Paizo DnD, only WotC-DnD.

Whatever else Pathfinder might have, it does not have beholders and illithids. Anyone who wants those things has to look elsewhere.

 

[BryonD]

You are talking two different points. Which is fine, but it is important to note.

You list four examples of types of people. I don't dispute any of those. But I would point out that none of the really contradict the idea that system preference is key.

I don't remotely claim it is the one and only issue. But it is the 800 pound gorilla of the issues. The world ain't black and white, but sometimes certain issues come pretty close, and this is one of them.

The OGL is another matter.

I agree that without the OGL Wizards would not face the current Pathfinder competition. I do not then leap to the conclusion that PF fans would instead play 4E. I think that is a wild, unfounded, and even unlikely presumption. Again, I know a lot of people who knew they were not going to go to to 4E before they knew PF was an option. So clearly PF had zero impact on their selection. And I also know people who have left 4E because they decided it didn't hold their interest.

At best you are claiming a lack of OGL would simply make people play a second choice by denying them their best choice. Perhaps a good market move, but as a gamer, that sucks. Do YOU want to deny choice to other gamers?

But even all that aside, roll the clock back to 1999. WotC made a ton of money on 3E. And OGL was part of that. Yeah, we can argue if they would have made more or less, but the facts are it was there and they did well. So it is very hard for me to see how you can justify that it was not a great choice at that time.

Now, when they did 4E they choose to reject the OGL. I think THAT was a mistake. (To be clear, I think the markt they choose to target with the design philosophy was the BIG mistake, but fighting the OGL was also a mistake.) A choice that had been made nearly a decade earlier was now simply part of the market reality. I think WotC may have over-rated their position and assumed they could just bully the market using the D&D brand name. They were wrong and THAT was a mistake. Just because the OGL was there did not mean they were obligated to throw themselves into its teeth. They had good business choices available and they did not make them in this case.

But, I think people will play the game they like.
And I don't think trying to wave that away with simple accusations of being "black and white" change it.

But, we can disagree.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I agree that without the OGL Wizards would not face the current Pathfinder competition. I do not then leap to the conclusion that PF fans would instead play 4E. I think that is a wild, unfounded, and even unlikely presumption. Again, I know a lot of people who knew they were not going to go to to 4E before they knew PF was an option. So clearly PF had zero impact on their selection. And I also know people who have left 4E because they decided it didn't hold their interest.

By way of example, I offer my group: a largeish rotating group with a solid core of 8, most had pretty much decided not to adopt the game based on the Core 3 and previews/leaks.

As of today, we ARE playing a 4Ed game- which I'm enjoying, FWIW- but it's only because the guy DMing the 3.5Ed game needed a break and ONE guy felt like giving it a whirl...and so far, only 5 of the group have played in the majority of the sessions.

And as for the standard-bearers of post-4Ed 3.X games? I am the ONLY to have purchased/read AU/AE, True20, Fantasy Craft, Pathfinder, W&W (and M&M) to date. Though I'd like to run something in Pathfinder or AU/AE, there is currently no interest in the 3.X games.

IOW, in our group, 4Ed was judged and found wanting entirely upon it's comparison to 3.5Ed- the other games mattered not at all.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

And some, quite frankly, comes down to 'What Does the DM Want to Run?'

I currently have three groups. Of them one plays a Steampunk/Spycraft game, because it is what I wanted to run. However, the PCs are all playing Gargoyles because one of the players is a huge fan of the Disney show Gargoyles, and talked everyone (including me) into it. But Jen could not have convinced me to run Forgotten Realms in Spycraft.

My Teens & Tweens game is Pathfinder because, umm, I got hired to run a game for some of my players' kids, and it stuck - I had fun and continued running, unpaid. (The first few games were birthday and Christmas presents from their parents). I ran Pathfinder because some of the kids were familiar with 3.X.

My third game, alternating weeks with the kids' game, started as Spycraft/Delta Green, and switched to Pathfinder because the parents kept hearing wonderful things about the game from their kids. But I would not have run 4e.

A lot of times one of the deciding factors is simply 'What game does the guy who is gonna run the game wanna run?' In my examples it is pretty obvious that the players had input, but it came down, in part, to what I was and am willing to run.

Mind you, none of them have tried to convince me to run 4e, and none, as far as I know, wanna play 4e.

4e needs to pull in more DMs, some argue that it does, that speed of adventure creation and the ease of balancing treasure, XP, and difficulty makes this a game for the DMs, but, in my experience, the loudest voices against 4e, including my own, are also from DMs.

WotC lost a large number of DMs, and the DMs took their groups with them. Large number does not mean 'all', and may not even mean 'most' - it means just what it says, there are a lot of DMs who decided to stay on a sinking ship, patched the holes, made it to port in the Paizo Shipyards, and discovered that the ship didn't need to sink after all. As a result they go back to that port and tell other sailors about the good taverns and the saucy tavern wenches. And more ships are pulling into port, sheltering from the storm and laying on provands.

It is possible that I stretched my metaphor a bit, there....

The Auld Grump

 

[TheFindus]

At best you are claiming a lack of OGL would simply make people play a second choice by denying them their best choice. Perhaps a good market move, but as a gamer, that sucks. Do YOU want to deny choice to other gamers?

I think that WotC does NOT want people to be able to choose between two kinds of DnD - Pathfinder and 4E, no.
For me personally, you can choose whatever you like. I am not even sure if I would like you to prefer 4E the way I do, be through with 3.x the way I am or resent the OGL as a business decision. Because that would mean that we would not be having this conversation, but be like: "Yeah, isn't 4E wonderful? Yes, it is. Wasn't the OGL a bad idea for WotC? Oh yes, it was. Now, what can we talk about next?" Boooring.

But even all that aside, roll the clock back to 1999. WotC made a ton of money on 3E. And OGL was part of that. Yeah, we can argue if they would have made more or less, but the facts are it was there and they did well. So it is very hard for me to see how you can justify that it was not a great choice at that time.

It was a bad business decision because they gave away their IP. Even worse because they gave the brand itself to Paizo as well. For a new edition, which would eventually come out, that would obviously be a problem. Legally, they could have easily provided other companies with the very easy chance to produce stuff without giving away their IP. Trust me, it is really that simple.

But, I think people will play the game they like.
And I don't think trying to wave that away with simple accusations of being "black and white" change it.

I did not write that to accuse you. My apologies if it came across that way.

But "game" does not equal "rules". There are many reasons to play the "game" that have nothing to do with the "rules".
But "game" has much more to do with "system support". And because Paizo is able to keep the Pathfinder-DnD system supported through the OGL, they can be successful. Which is something WotC cannot want.

But, we can disagree.

Yes, we can. And looking at the situation in Egypt at the moment, that is a wonderful thing. I am glad, there is no RPG-Mubarak here.

 

[Nagol]

<snip>

It was a bad business decision because they gave away their IP. Even worse because they gave the brand itself to Paizo as well. For a new edition, which would eventually come out, that would obviously be a problem. Legally, they could have easily provided other companies with the very easy chance to produce stuff without giving away their IP. Trust me, it is really that simple.

<snip>

The OGL didn't really affect their IP since you can't protect game rules with copyright. There are companies producing content for 4e without using the GSL because they know what side of the IP line to stay on. OSRIC and other OD&D and AD&D retro-clones are further examples of people producing content for game systems without infringing on IP because they stick to rule reproduction.

WotC IP is still fully protected -- that's why Pathfinder doesn't have illithids, githyanki, umber hulks, and spells named after Greyhawk wizards, for example.

It DID provide a safe harbour that clarified what can be used without threat of litigation by accepting some relatively light additional licensing requirements. That safe harbour encouraged others to construct complementary, and in some case competitive, works.

The safe harbour may have emboldened some game producers who otherwise would steer clear of anything that smacks of potential litigation, but the success of OSRIC would suggest a supporting system would have been created anyway since a large audience was apparent even before 4e was released. The reaction to the previews certainly made it clear that a proportion of the audience was not impressed with the new system.

 

[TheFindus]

The OGL didn't really affect their IP since you can't protect game rules with copyright. There are companies producing content for 4e without using the GSL because they know what side of the IP line to stay on. OSRIC and other OD&D and AD&D retro-clones are further examples of people producing content for game systems without infringing on IP because they stick to rule reproduction.

WotC IP is still fully protected -- that's why Pathfinder doesn't have illithids, githyanki, umber hulks, and spells named after Greyhawk wizards, for example.

It DID provide a safe harbour that clarified what can be used without threat of litigation by accepting some relatively light additional licensing requirements. That safe harbour encouraged others to construct complementary, and in some case competitive, works.

The safe harbour may have emboldened some game producers who otherwise would steer clear of anything that smacks of potential litigation, but the success of OSRIC would suggest a supporting system would have been created anyway since a large audience was apparent even before 4e was released. The reaction to the previews certainly made it clear that a proportion of the audience was not impressed with the new system.

I had already given up on this thread, and I just wanted to write this note to respond.

I find your post to be somewhat dishonest. You are jumping at the sentence “They gave away their IP” and then go on to lecture me on the fact that in most countries, the BCC has been adopted and that game rules are not subject to IP-protection.

Well, the text that describes the rules usually is subject to copyright. And copyright is a form of IP, of protecting the rights you have to that text. And that makes all the difference to the problem here.

Now, the laws here in Germany in the Urheberrecht are a little bit different than the laws in the US. And the commentaries I have here are in german. But you might want to check this link here, to find out more about that, the site is in english:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property

The WotC 3rd edition OGL content is vast and, with only small exceptions, provides 3rd party publishers with a lot of (usually) copyrighted (sp?) material they could not normally use, distribute, copy, edit, format, modify, translate, etc without risking litigation.
You might want to check this site, to find a very good explanation of what the OGL-liscense contains and what it’s uses are:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/oglfaq/20040123d

Now, I did not write: “They gave up their IP” or "They lost the copyright". I wrote “They gave away their IP”. And if you read my posts in this thread, you cannot honestly - in no way - come to the conclusion that with this sentence I am saying anything else but this: that WotC let other companies use a vast amount of (copyrighted) material, the basic stuff that 3rd edition is made out of in fact, without being able to stop them before introducing a new edition. Which is what they did. I was clearly talking about the practical implications of the OGL and what could have legally been done to provide an acceptable alternative back in 1999/2000.
So, just in case you missed that point: it does not really matter if WotC has any rights to the text of the rules or the rules themselves, because the OGL lets anybody use that text in the 3rd edition OGL content for their own products. And if that is not “giving away” IP, I do not know what is.

But you either did not read this thread thoroughly enough or you were unable to understand the content of this thread. Or you are trying to pull a rhetorical rabbit out of your hat to prove some point. The point probably being, if I understand the rest of your post correctly, that we would have seen Pathfinder anyways, because Paizo would have gone the OSRIC route. Well, I do not agree with that as I do not think that the system you describe can be called “successful” in the sense it has to be for a company like WotC to operate properly.

But I thank you for staying polite. The person who gave you XP for your post would have probably insulted me. I would have really been annoyed by that.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I am the person who gave him the XP.

At no time in this thread have I insulted you. And in fact find your assertion that I would in turn insulting. I would have been blunt, but I tend to avoid insulting the person rather than his posts.

Good day.

The Auld Grump

 

[pawsplay]

I agree that without the OGL Wizards would not face the current Pathfinder competition.

I think without the OGL, we might not have had 4e. For one thing, who would have designed it? One of the things Wizards has done that has earned ill will from me is to profit from the OGL, then try to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.