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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 6689051" data-attributes="member: 22779">I guess my question becomes, what effect does the OGL actually have?For a long time, the common wisdom was that the OGL was a major driving force behind the success of 3e.  And proponents pointed to the lacklustre sales of 4e and it's absence of OGL as proof.  It was a pretty decent theory as theories go.  It certainly appeared that way.Only, now, 5e throws all that into question.  With no OGL whatsoever, 5e is blowing the doors off of sales.  Every single metric we have access to says that 5e is selling like gangbusters.So, does the OGL actually matter?Look at Paizo and Pathfinder.  Sure, I realise that without the OGL you can't have Pathfinder, so, at that point, it certainly has a huge effect.  But, if we consider Paizo as a first party producer, how much effect does the 3pp for Pathfinder actually have?  Is Pathfinder's success due, in part, to the support by 3PP?  Or is it due to the fact that Paizo produces lots of top notch material that people want to buy and 3PP have little or no effect?  Does a potential Pathfinder player look at, say, some 3PP module and say, "Hey, I guess I really do want to get into Pathfinder"?  Or is it mostly the other direction - people play Pathfinder and eventually wander into 3PP territory and pick up books?Look I don't know nor do I pretend to have any answers here.  AFAIC, the magic 8-ball says, "It's very unclear".  I've long contended that the OGL and 3PP really don't matter very much in the big picture.  That their contribution is relatively unimportant.  Not many players and DM's actually use or buy 3PP relative to the total numbers.  The percent of players or DM's who buy 3PP for use with D&D is so small that it just doesn't matter.  Again, though, this is just a gut feeling and I have nothing to back that up with.  All I know is, if a 3PP is selling less than 10000 copies, it doesn't even register as a blip on the vast majority of player's radars.  And, I think, that the overwhelming majority of 3PP fall into that range.</blockquote>

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