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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shadzar" data-source="post: 5453493" data-attributes="member: 6667746">If that is what he is saying, then I would agree with him, not you personally.Taking the OGL as a good thing it should have pushed improvement in design as such all other industries have when a competitor comes along. It seems the OGL probably backfired a bit, and one reason was because the quality of product found for the system was better at other places than from the originator WotC.That is good for WotC considering the root system was popular enough for so many to take it on and increase the size of the people using the system and playing RPGs so that more would be likely to buy WotC products.Again the problem was the quality of WotC products was not as high for many as the others. Which is to be expected to an extent since you cannot cater to everyone's tastes. Those niche corners for specific things could be handled by 3pp while WotC focused on their own focused projects and the core.The niche products won because they weren't as generic and of better quality than the WotC ones.It was good for WotC, but they never took full advantage of increasing the quality of material since they didn't really perceive anyone as being competitive with them.WotC had what you suggested in the form of the STL, and still OGL material was just as good if not better than that paid for licensed material.Had their only been the STL then the player population wouldn't have advanced to be able to the numbers it had under the OGL edition. There just wouldn't have been enough of those niches covered.That is the thing with closed and open systems. The closed system strives to control itself by closing it off from others. It works. The open system strives to increase performance by competition.The open system would have worked better for WotC had they fully understood it and actually viewed others as competition. When they found out it was too late and people using the OGL had already taken a strong foothold and WotC needed 4th edition in order to make a stand again.IF the 4th edition 3pp license for a cost exists now to where people use it, then WotC now has the closed system you say should have been done for the OGL edition.It seems that closed system isn't working out so well, or at least not as well as the open system of the OGL.</blockquote>

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