D&D 5E So, 5e OGL

[Mistwell]

Ok, just remember what I said at the beginning, when 4e came out it was a Huge drastic change for many players.

This is another good point for this discussion. The OGL worked to push WOTC to make the next version a radical change - because non-radical changes can be replicated more easily under the OGL and therefore any new edition which was not a radical change could simply be printed by competitors almost immediately, thus drastically reducing sales of the new edition (because the copy-cats need almost zero money for R&D and playtesting). Without the OGL, WOTC would have be more free to make a more incremental change from one edition to the next. Only by embracing radically different rules so lacking a resemblance to some rule already included in the OGL can they prevent immediate competition from essentially themselves.

It's also why they are so focused on brand and transmedia things for 5e - the brand is still protected and not in the OGL, and most electronic forms of the rules are also excluded from the OGL. They have to focus on those things, or else make another radical change (which didn't work out so well last time), to try and mitigate the damage from self-competition engendered from the OGL.

 

[Alzrius]

He was wrong though on that. It guaranteed D&D could never smoothly move on to another edition. Without the ability to end support for the prior edition, it guaranteed a greater fracture in the marketplace and community than would have existed without it...and the fracture in the marketplace and community did not serve WOTCs interests.

That's only the case if WotC ignores the OGL and creates a game with no (good) options for compatibility among the rest of the community...which is what they did. Had they simply made Fourth Edition an OGL game, they would almost certainly have brought a significant (if not a majority) portion of the third-party market with them.

In other words, the OGL did not create the fractured marketplace; WotC did by breaking away from the wider community that they themselves had created.

They needed a shut-off valve of some kind - something that could end the OGL eventually, but distant enough in the future that 3rd parties would still want to use it when it came out. Like a 15 year shut-off or something like that. Indefinite licensing in exchange for a very finite boost was not a good deal for WOTC. They were never going to publish under the same edition forever, under any rational scenario.

Such a shut-off valve would be kicking in right around now, when there's still a vibrant community utilizing the materials released under the terms of the license, to say nothing of myriad games unrelated to D&D (e.g. FATE, Spirit of the Century, etc.) that use it. Any sort of "kill switch" is an idea that sacrifices the good of the many for the good of the one. I honestly can't see how anyone can think that's a good thing - especially since WotC seems to think they're doing just fine having gone their own way.

fine replace the word spelljammer with space D&D and the words Dark Sun with Mad Max D&D... same thing...

It's not the same thing. You take away the IP aspects of it, and the reasons for WotC to be involved at all - much less contribute their own time and effort on a continual basis to overseeing the quality of another company's products - become virtually nil.

mean while in the real world they want to let people do that AND still maintain some control... almost like a quick approval process would help...

There's nothing "real world" about that - there's nothing to indicate that they want control, nor is there any particularly compelling reasons for them to have it. That's leaving aside the fact that control and freedom are mutually exclusive, so trying to do one means you have to sacrifice another - I'd prefer they sacrifice control, which does virtually nothing for them and constrains everyone else, in favor of letting third-parties make the games that they, and the gamers, want.

 

[Perram]

And that is not what I said at all. I said it guaranteed a GREATER FRACTURE in the community. Regardless of how good the new editions would be in the future (and this impacts editions 100 years from now - it's indefinite), there are always those who will like the prior edition simply out of inertia - it's what they are playing now, they want continued support for it, they don't want to disrupt their current game with a new rules said. We have seen that with every single prior edition, not just 4e but 3e and 2e as well, and now with 5e. The OGL makes that worse. That is my point.

I just don't see how that is a bad thing for gamers from their point of view. Forcing people into a new edition they don't want to play? This way people get to play what they want to play, instead of what WotC or whatever company gets the D&D license wants.

 

[Mistwell]

Any sort of "kill switch" is an idea that sacrifices the good of the many for the good of the one. I honestly can't see how anyone can think that's a good thing

A good thing PURELY from the perspective of WOTC. Nothing I've said implies any of this has anything to do with what is good for the fans or the third party publishers. Yes, it sacrifices the good of the many for the good of the one...the one company that created the intellectual property we're discussing. Which is how 99.9% of all product inventions work in this world - the company that creates it gets the rewards from it, and can control when it goes off the market, for as long as their intellectual property rights remain (which normally is a good long time).

 

[Mistwell]

I just don't see how that is a bad thing for gamers from their point of view.

Which is why I've said, repeatedly and with quite a bit of emphasis, that I am describing the perspective of WOTC, not the perspective of gamers or third parties. I do not think the OGL was good FOR WOTC. Even if they had come out with a new edition under the OGL, even if they had fully supported the OGL, it harms them overall in the very long term for several reasons. For instance, they always have to compete with themselves, never get the full benefit of the money and resources they sink into research and development and playtesting, because competitors can always then turn around and publish their stuff without having to pay those R&D costs. Another instance, the last edition will always still be supported so there is always less incentive to check out the new edition (even if it is better) and thus exacerbated fracturing of the community each time. In the long term, the harms outweigh the benefits to WOTC of having an INDEFINITE OGL, under all circumstances. It needed to end at some point, as the benefits to them are not indefinite, only the harms.

 

[Nellisir]

Again, this is a view that seems to lack some knowledge of the history of how things happened. There was once more a BIG fracture in the community. Every new edition has a fracture in the community - but the OGL makes it much much worse, because there is less incentive to check out the new edition, and more fuel to complain about it by seeking out someone still supporting the old edition.

That is incredibly false. If I had to guess, you were not around on usenet at the time this was happening, where support for 2e was hanging out. There is STILL lots of outrage out there by 2e supporters concerning how horrible they think 3e was. It would have been much worse at the time if major 2e support had continued in competition with 3e simultaneously.

If we're going to play this game, I was there. I was at Gen Con when 3e was first announced. Went to the seminar; have the t-shirt. There, and afterwards, online and offline, the consensus of almost everyone I knew was that 3e was overdue. We'd already had the proliferation of kits and the 2.5e attempt of the Option books. Dragon had shut down for 7 months; TSR had gone under and come back up again under WotC. Personally my house rules had more pages than the PH, and I wasn't the only one. 2e was a mess.

The 3e-4e transition was much, much worse in just about every possible metric, not the least being I didn't get a free t-shirt.

 

[jsaving]

That is incredibly false. If I had to guess, you were not around on usenet at the time this was happening, where support for 2e was hanging out. There is STILL lots of outrage out there by 2e supporters concerning how horrible they think 3e was. It would have been much worse at the time if major 2e support had continued in competition with 3e simultaneously.

I don't agree with your historical take at all. Sure, diehards for each edition were unhappy and made their opinion known in electronic forums, but highly unhappy people are always the most highly motivated posters so this shouldn't be taken to mean they actually spoke for many people. And sure, the small number of people who don't switch editions are going to feel outrage even today that their edition faded into the historical background, but again, these people are by definition the most diehard advocates for their edition and aren't remotely representative of the typical gamer.

Would there have been a much worse fracturing of the gaming community in 2000 if there had been a 2nd edition OGL? The unfortunate fact is that we just can't know. There is no way to disprove your theory that 2e could have gained a much stronger foothold if third-party publishers had been in a better position to support it. Nor is there a way to prove my theory that most people would have moved to 3e anyway because of the advances it contained.

But there are some things we do know. We know that Dancey believed lots more core books were being sold because of the OGL. We know that many people within the company never believed that a thriving but anarchic third-party adventure marketplace could possibly provide spillover benefits for WotC. We know the skeptics were firmly in control of WotC during the design and development of 4e, and that they made the conscious choice to make a dramatic break from editions past so they could regain the control Dancey had ceded nearly a decade before. And we know from sales data that this strategy didn't fare as well as WotC had hoped, though we'd obviously disagree on why this happened and who bears the responsibility for it.

The unfortunate thing is that WotC really needs to know the answers to these questions as they decide whether to re-embrace the OGL model today...

 

[Mistwell]

If we're going to play this game, I was there. I was at Gen Con when 3e was first announced. Went to the seminar; have the t-shirt. There, and afterwards, online and offline, the consensus of almost everyone I knew was that 3e was overdue. We'd already had the proliferation of kits and the 2.5e attempt of the Option books. Dragon had shut down for 7 months; TSR had gone under and come back up again under WotC. Personally my house rules had more pages than the PH, and I wasn't the only one. 2e was a mess.

The 3e-4e transition was much, much worse in just about every possible metric, not the least being I didn't get a free t-shirt.

LOL well go to a 2e oriented message board these days and ask them what they think. Heck, go to theRPGnet and ask around there. Still lots of bitter feelings about 3e, about how it's all about character optimization and taking power away from the DM and giving players a sense of entitlement, overemphasis on balance, abandonment of Gygax's vision, etc.. Mind you, I do not agree with those views - I just still hear them a whole lot. And if the internet had been more prevalent at the time, it would have been worse. And if 2e had been under the OGL and still being published, it would have been much worse still.

 

[darjr]

Remember the PDF debacle? Remember the change in policy for the character creator? Remember when 'free' PDF's that had been on wotc's site for ages and ages would no longer be available?

Creation rules in the starter set means that they'll always be in those products. Them being in a PDF means that legitimate copies are held up by the wim's of a corporation. That pdf could be gone tomorrow by a simple policy change or upper management fiat.

 

[Mistwell]

But there are some things we do know. We know that Dancey believed lots more core books were being sold because of the OGL.

Actually that is the one claim he had predicted that he hasn't continued to claim since then. The original plan was that all OGL games would NEED a PHB to play them. That didn't happen. Indeed, they didn't actually expect people to replicate the same rules they had published in addition to making their own games based on them. But that is exactly what happened - you didn't need a PHB to play all those other games, because they were simply replicating all the rules they needed to replicate in their books. You didn't need a PHB to play Spycraft or M&M or Call of Cthulu or Delta Green. The original intent was for everyone to buy the PHB to play any other game based on the open license, and it ended up there were definitely NOT selling PHBs to all those other game players. And you sure as heck never needed a DMG or MM to play those other games.

And it wasn't just non-fantasy games of course...Pathfinder proves that one, and other companies were starting to do it before them (and one company even had the call to put out a miniature PHB). It was inevitably leading to nobody ever needing a WOTC product to play any d20 game.

To address this oversight they first tried to put out new OGL licenses (different numbers). Most people simply ignored the new ones though - why use a more restrictive one when the older one remains indefinitely in effect and is less restrictive.

So the next step was a shift in the edition. This was one primary force behind 3.5e. Monte Cook has talked about it, how the OGL wasn't functioning quite as intended in that respect (though he was not pleased with the shift).

And you don't hear Dancey claiming it anymore either, and in the distant past when he did he refused to put any numbers on it, unlike everything else he was saying. That aspect of the OGL did not work out. They did not sell more copies of the PHB, and certainly not the DMG or MM, because of companies putting out OGL games which had nothing to do with D&D, and then eventually games which were like D&D but which had their own type of PHB.