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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6626561" data-attributes="member: 2067">You could make D&D-compatible stuff before the OGL, too (WotC, in fact, made some of their early money doing that). Part of the OGL strategy is to offer a safe harbor for folks who are willing to play ball in a way that keeps them making D&D material rather than making competing games. It's not really an accident that 4e's GSL was not supported by the third party - everyone publishing for PF is essentially still making (and presumably making at least some profit off of) 3e D&D. 4e was a competing game. If 5e doesn't want to be a competing game, going OGL is a smart choice - that would at least let people support it in addition to 3e. I am admittedly not the most neutral source, but I don't think I'll really ever understand this instinct. To make money off of someone else's work is what it means to participate in capitalism in specific and society in general. That's what productivity gains are, that's what your boss does, that's what the people who invest in your company do, that's what every employee does. You drive to work on roads made by the efforts of others (thereby getting your profit from their labor) you "look professional" at your job interview because of clothes made by others (also profiting from their work), you can work hard because you're fed by food that others have produced (getting profits from the energy they've made and made available to you) - we are all held tightly together in a web of obligation and benefit that probably only the most isolated of mountain-men can claim any sort of independence from (and even they have their knowledge, given to them by those who have come before). Part of why I'm a booster for the OGL is because it creates that community and is explicit about its interdependence. If Mearls couldn't write Iron Heroes, he wouldn't be heading up D&D today and 5e might've been less of a success. If Path-heads didn't have their game, the Edition Wars would've seen more casualties in the form of "people who just don't play D&D anymore." We build on the successes that have come before. It's not like Erik Mona is rolling around in a pile of ill-gotten loot born out of the sweat of the <s>proletariat</s> game designers of years past. Well, probably not, anyway.  The idea that this just lets people "rip off" D&D is just unnecessary tribalism from where I'm sitting - the hobby rises and falls as a whole, not just on the strength or weakness of its most successful publisher.</blockquote>

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