Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheFindus" data-source="post: 5446914" data-attributes="member: 75791">There is a difference between what I think helps my game as a gamer and the strategical business decision somebody has to make as a manager of a company. I think I made myself very clear that as a gamer I use, loot and scavenge every bit of material I bought and think I could use to improve my game. I do want WotC to succeed as a company because I like the new version of the game very much. Maybe you feel the same way about Pathfinder. And although this seems to be completely off the topic of this thread, we are discussing the effect of the OGL on WotC's ablitity to be successful with 4E. And I still argue that the OGL took a huge chunk out of that success.Of course it hurt them! But only more so because these other companies had the OGL to turn to. They could, effectively, live without the creator of the main rules. And if that is not bad for WotC, then I do not know what is.Again: Would you not have bought WotC products if Freeport, Ptolus and the Scarred Lands had been 1. nonexistant or 2. published under a more limited version of the OGL, a GSL let's say?I never claimed that and I think this is the wrong question to ask. Again, the question is whether gamers would not have bought WotC's 3rd edition material if less 3rd party publishers had been around.And I am saying that judging from the fact that before 3rd edition DnD was strong for a very very long time without an OGL, WotC's 3rd edition would have been very strong also without a OGL. The reason being that people were ready for a new edition and really liked the new version of DnD. That was the reason why they bought so many PHBs, not because they said: "Oh, without Ptolus/Freeport, I do not want to play 3rd edition".What Steel Wind said was that they should not have given Paizo the rights to publish the magazines. And he is right about that. With the OGL, they gave their IP away for free. With the magazines, they also transferred the brand identity to Paizo. But, mind you, without the OGL, Paizo would have never been able to use the rule-system like they are doing now. WotC could have taken back the magazines and left Paizo in the dirt. WotC would still have to keep up the quality of their products. But there would not have been a second fullfledged supported version of DnD that effectively competes with the new version of DnD which is 4E.And again, to make this very clear: as a DM, I like the fact that I have Paizo's products to choose from that I can loot for material. But it is not my job to make money in the RPG business. It is WotC's job to do that. And they should not have created the OGL in my opinion. It hurt them really badly. Have you ever wondered why WotC did not publish the old campaigns in hardcover format? Maybe they thought that they would not sell because of the sheer amount of campaign worlds out there. Maybe that caused a glut in the market. At least I felt that there were too many campaigns to choose from. WotC wants to make a pirate campaign. Oh, wait, because of the OGL, Green Ronin already has one. What about a mega-city full of adventure? Oh, Mr. Cook came up with that after he left.As a gamer, I do not care if I buy Ptolus from Cook or WotC. But as WotC, I probably want the gamers to buy Ptolus from me only perhaps? I would argue that the OGL created missed opportunities for WotC, because it gave the competition the chance to fully implement interesting game worlds using the 3rd edition rules.At some point, I found I had enough minis to last a lifetime. I am lending them out to other groups actually. And with a wife, kids, job and other hobbies, I do not even have the time to paint them. So then I start paying others to paint them for me. And when all the mins are painted I will stop spending money on them altogether. Again, the glut.The only thing I still buy is terrain. I just love Worldworksgames products too much. The usablity an ingenuity of their products makes me weep. I am actually crying right now just thinking about it <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification