D&D 5E So, 5e OGL

[Giltonio_Santos]

OK, so we agree someone would have filled the gap. It does not matter if they were as successful as Paizo was. We're not talking about levels of success, we're talking about whether or not it makes things hard for WOTC.

Then, the level of success does matter. If the company that creates new books for my old system only manages to sell to people who weren't changing anyway, their level of success has no impact on my own efforts. It only matters if they are enough of a competition to affect my own business. Was any of the d20 companies in good shape for that? I don't think so.

Personally, I (and this is just a guess, not an informed opinion) believe that no company was in real good position to take that stand, not even Paizo, and that's probably the reason why they would certainly keep doing Dragon/Dungeon and supporting 4E, If they had the chance to. By removing the main product of their best supporters, and also making it very hard for them to give additional support with their new product (the adventure paths), they basically forced them to become the competition.

In a normal situation, Paizo would have the much needed standards to challenge WotC's D&D, but they wouldn't be willing to do so. WotC forced them into a position where they had no choice. Now, look at the other top dogs of the d20 market of that time, and you'll see that most of them had already sailed in other directions (Mongoose and Green Ronin, for instance, were already having success with non-d20 games).

That is it: WotC, not the OGL, created the ideal situation for its own later failings. They laid off the top talents that went on to create products that were better than what they could create themselves. They forced their best third-party resource to become the competition. They designed a game that was a change of pace instead of an improvement of the games people had been playing for the last 30 years. They released core rules without staples of their own game, so they could sell more core rules in the later years.

And they failed to produce an OGL. We're talking about Pathfinder here, but when we had an OGL the mind of the community was really focused on D&D. Even when they were thinking about superheroes (Mutants and Masterminds), Call of Cthullu or Star Wars, they were thinking about D&D, because they were thinking about the D&D rules, they were talking about things like Wisdom score and Saving Throws, and I know a lot of people who decided to give D&D another try because of that.

Since then, people moved to Cortex, FATE and the Apocalypse Engine. While I like it that way, I also remember the days when we were all thinking of new ways to expand the D&D engine, and those were awesome days as well. I believe WotC benefited from that. If they didn't, it's entirely their fault, because there was a clear opportunity there.

Cheers!

 

[adamc]

This seems to imply a basic assumption that there was a gap in the marketplace, and if Paizo had not filled it then nobody else would have.

That's not how markets work. Someone always fills a gap left in the market. If it wasn't Paizo, then someone else would have...and others were already starting to before Paizo did it in fact.

My point isn't really about Paizo - they were just the company that ended up doing it. My point is about the impact an indefinite OGL has on WOTC in the long term.

I'm going to disagree with you here. Someone else doesn't always fill a market opportunity, any more than beneficial mutations necessarily show up in evolution at any particular time/place. It is entirely possible that if Paizo hadn't offered Pathfinder, a viable alternative would not have been present.

(I have no dog in the fight otherwise -- I don't really care whether the OGL hurt WOTC or helped it, except as a matter of curiosity.)

 

[sunshadow21]

OK, so we agree someone would have filled the gap. It does not matter if they were as successful as Paizo was. We're not talking about levels of success, we're talking about whether or not it makes things hard for WOTC. If they were only 25% as successful as Paizo, that's still 25% more of a drag on what they're trying to do than the zero that happens with almost every other company out there. And this is something they have to deal with forever! Again...100 years from now, on whatever edition they're on, they will STILL be dealing with this issue. Some company could be twice as successful as Paizo in that time. Heck, they can use the original OGL to replicate most of 12th edition and stomp WOTC in the year 2056! There was simply no need to make this thing last forever. It's nonsensical to think the short term benefits they gained from giving away hugely valuable intellectual property forever were worth that cost. It should have had some sort of expiration date. Even Hong Kong had an expiration date!

Level of success matters a lot. 25% of what Paizo achieved would not support enough of a fan base to stand up to what WotC could bring with 4E's release; the effort would have withered on the vine due to lack of fan support without WotC having to do all that much. Paizo succeeded because of a wide variety of factors, many of them coming from WotC themselves, but many also coming from the level of expertise and planning that Paizo had already built up. If Paizo had not been successful, there's a good chance this would be a moot point by this time. People still would probably have been disappointed and moved on from 4E in droves, and while WotC would still likely be the clear king going into this release, it would be because no one else could claim the title any better, not because WotC had done anything particularly great to retain it. In short, we wouldn't be having this conversation because whatever people would have ended up playing would have been so far different from D&D that there wouldn't even be a thought of coming back, especially with 4E not having any new material published in the last year. At least with PF and other OGL spinoffs, WotC and D&D are still in the conversation, even if they aren't at the heart of it all the time.

In the end, the open ended, never expiring OGL will help or hurt WotC as much as WotC is willing to acknowledge it's existence and work with it rather than trying to kill it and fight it over and over again, but it's presence ultimately helps WotC because it keeps the brand name floating around, giving them additional chances to rekindle official product for it that they otherwise would not have been given. Without it, there is a very good chance that 4E could have simply sank the brand into a state that no one outside of those actively playing it forgot about it and didn't care anymore; for all the angst created by edition warring, it was still the only real press that WotC was able to muster for 4E after the initial surge. Once that died down, most people simply stopped paying attention, and even Essentials really didn't do much to rekindle attention for very long. By the time they stopped releasing new product, I suspect even many of the active 4E players didn't notice right away. The OGL keeps the brand name in conversation; how well WotC takes advantage of that is entirely on them. Nobody was magically successful on the OGL alone before 4E, they weren't during 4E's time, and they won't be going forward, and WotC still has the upper hand of having the full D&D catalog of multiple editions behind them, not just the comparatively small snippet released to the OGL. If they can't make it work, it's not the fault of the OGL, it's the fault of a company that can't keep their management teams and long term plans around long enough for them to actually fully work.

 

[darjr]

If the OGL helped drive WotC to produce a better product, that's all good, for them and everyone else. Paizo included.

 

[tomBitonti]

If the OGL helped drive WotC to produce a better product, that's all good, for them and everyone else. Paizo included.

This.

For the level of success which WotC is looking for, they can't succeed by just selling core books. They need to create a whole ecosystem of D&D products, and they need to do all of them well.

That's what Paizo is doing: Adventure Path; Core Books; Campaign Supplements; Modules; Options booklets; Miniatures; Tile sets.

They are absent in software and social gaming, which will become (IMO) an increasing deficiency.

WotC needs to produce a range of products to begin to be successful, and they need to maintain a good relationship with games and the marketplace, and they need to do all of that with exceptional quality.

WotC has the brand, they have deep pockets, they have access to top artists and designers, they have access to folks with a deep passion for the game. They have long experience in the market, including player information, and marketing data. They have ties to a gaming company which gives them access to an even larger database, and which gives them access to additional product channels, with deep industry relationships already formed.

I don't think the OGL is preventing them succeeding. Their inability to respect their market, their inability to be visionary, and their inability to execute with quality is their problem.

If you think I'm being too harsh, to set appropriate measures: Think of them as scientist's whose goal is to win a Nobel prize, or a pianist who wants to perform in Carnegie Hall, or an athlete whose goal is to compete in the Olympics.

If they aren't capable of a higher level of performance, then hasta la vista; get out of dodge; step aside and make room for a company which will perform. Expecting rent as the brand holder while putting out a mediocre performance just isn't good enough.

Thx!

TomB

 

[Remathilis]

This seems to imply a basic assumption that there was a gap in the marketplace, and if Paizo had not filled it then nobody else would have.

That's not how markets work. Someone always fills a gap left in the market. If it wasn't Paizo, then someone else would have...and others were already starting to before Paizo did it in fact.

My point isn't really about Paizo - they were just the company that ended up doing it. My point is about the impact an indefinite OGL has on WOTC in the long term.

You're right, to a point.

SOMEONE would have done it. However, only Paizo had the capacities to make it successful. There are no other actors in 2008 who could if not Paizo.

Imagine an alternate timeline where Paizo folds quickly after Dragon and Dungeon do. 4e comes out to the same acclaim it got. Who fills Paizo's niche? Goodman is invested in 4e. Green Ronin is focusing on Tru20/M&M. Necromancer Games is MIA. Fantasy Flight has bigger fish to fry. The best you get is an OSRIC-type retroclone of 3.5 (perhaps with some tweaks from fans and community) being published on Lulu or through DriveThru RPG. Paizo is the only actor at the time with the goodwill, publishing know-how, and capacity to create a whole-new 3.5-based RPG, sell it to major distributors, and support it with all the bells and whistles.

Without Paizo, 3e joins the niche market of other retro-clones, which is what WotC wanted. What that would have done to the hobby (considering 4e's quick exit from the stage) is another matter entirely.

 

[darjr]

even then paizo was taking a huge risk. even they didn't know if they could do it

 

[tomBitonti]

Hey, folks seem to be assuming that the fracturing of the fan base would have been less without the OGL. But, might the fracturing have been even worse?

Paizo/Pathfinder at least keeps folks in the D&D stable (more or less).

Without the OGL and Pathfinder, folks might have wandered further afield. Perhaps, Paizo did WotC a favor by keeping the player base together. Paizo has provided WotC a concentrated base of players who are a ready market for D&D.

I say "might". Hard to know either way. I'm wanting to point out that there are alternate views of the impact of the OGL.

Thx!

TomB

 

[Morrus]

I've said this before, but the fracturing of the community was due to the actions of both parties. They're all the gatekeepers of our hobby; you can't just pick the one you like least and blame them. Everyone acted in their own interests (as they should), and the result was what it was.

It could be argued as good or bad. The general artificially created tribalism is horrible; the increased choice and variety is awesome. Pick your poison based on your agenda.

It's even worse now; the same tribes have split into D&D, Pathfinder, OSR.

 

[sunshadow21]

It's even worse now; the same tribes have split into D&D, Pathfinder, OSR.

To be fair to the OGL, though, all those are at least under the same general umbrella. Without the OGL, the D&D fanbase might not simply be fractured, it would most likely simply be gone. For example, White Wolf and WoD were all over the place until the debacle with nWoD, and now they have barely any fanbase at all. WotC at least still has a large crowd of people still half way paying attention to them and their brand. Ask the folks at White Wolf which problem they would rather have: trying to rebuild the fanbase from scratch or learning how to adapt to a fanbase that has changed it's direct buying habits but is still at least around. If WotC can actually pull off getting the table top game away from the center of the brand, the OGL will end up being a blessing in disguise for them because as long as other companies benefit from it, the D&D brand will always be protected from a single bad choice or even a single series of bad mistakes, and WotC won't have to care if one set of specific rules are copyable because their money isn't coming from the rules, it's coming from everything else.

The problems between the different groups within the D&D family line come mostly from the fact that the primary actor, WotC, is unwilling to accept the changed landscape for what it is; once they do that, most of the worst of the tribalism will fade away. Once WotC makes peace with the existence of the OGL and figures out how to work with it, and they will have to eventually, they will probably find it to be of greater value than anticipated and have less need to focus on just the problematic parts of it. Once that happens, it'll be a lot easier for Paizo and their other former partners to work with them again, making it harder for the respective fanbases to not find common ground. You're right in that everyone plays a part, but at least right now, WotC still holds control of where the situation goes from here, so until they show a shift in philosophy and actions, don't expect anybody else to do much. Already, though, WotC has set a completely different tone for the new edition than they did with 4E's release, so there's good reason to hope that even if the tribalism doesn't disappear, which it won't completely ever do, that it won't be nearly as big of a problem this time around.