D&D 5E Some thoughts on WotC's release schedule and the OGL

Mercurius

Legend
This topic has been discussed quite a bit before, but I wanted to tease out a very specific element of it. As I see it, WotC has two non-mutually exclusive choices:

1. Churn out a slew of adventures and supplements for 5E
2. Provide an OGL to allow other publishers to churn out a slew of adventures and supplements for 5E

Sure, they could just stand pat and delay the OGL indefinitely, but to me that would be a huge--even crippling--mistake, which I will go into further. Either way, D&D "needs" more adventures - it needs a thriving publishing schedule. I know, I know, the dreaded glut - do we really want another glut-fest like 2000-03? But for one, did that actually hurt D&D 3E? I suppose you could argue that allowing everyone to publish just about anything, it not only diluted the market but created a situation whereby 3PPs were producing stuff that WotC might have eventually wanted to produce, "beating them to the party," so to speak and perhaps consequentially shortening the lifespan of 3E. But I think that is a tenuous theory at best.

The thing is, these things have a way of working themselves out. Quality will win out in the end, or at least popularity. We might see another garbage truck of mediocre product in the early years of a so-called 5E OGL, but the lesser products and companies will select themselves out. But more importantly, here is what the OGL is actually good for (from WotC's perspective): producing product that WotC doesn't want to make for profit reasons AND supports the health of the game. Namely, adventures. And, to a lesser degree, theme books, campaign settings and splats.

So in my mind the clock is ticking. Clearly, barring a complete change of direction from their early statements, WotC is not going to start churning out tons of adventures. But also clearly, the game needs more adventures. I'm happy to homebrew adventures to some extent (and always homebrew my campaign settings), but I also like using one-shot adventures and I imagine that there are many DMs out there that don't want to homebrew at all and are running out--or have run out--of options, post-Tyranny of Dragons. To put it another way, many (most?) D&D groups can't be sustained only by the WotC-sanctioned story arcs. There's actually a certain claustrophobia to the idea, a lack of diversity and therefore options. It isn't only about needing enough material to use, but having plenty of options to choose from. I don't think they can rely upon back catalogue as many folks won't want to bother with conversions.

And, for the love of all that's holy (or unholy) offer a world or two for people to play in! I know, back catalogue...but, but...and of course maybe you're taking the approach that as long as there's a paper-thin set, ala Tyranny of Dragons' smattering of Realms info, then you're good to go on one story arc after the other. But I think for the real immersion to take place, that is for new players and DMs, they need a starting world (or three), something to inhabit, to live within. You don't need to create another Realms bible (yet), but how about a book detailing a starter region like the Sword Coast or the Dalelands or Greyhawk and environs? Take one from Paizo: A living, breathing, growing world really supports the health of the game, even if specific products are loss leaders.

It is well known that a large segment of D&D players--whether it is the lone big bump on a kind of gamer demographic bell curve, or one of the largest bumps on a sine save--is aging, or has aged - is in their (our) 30s-50s, with careers and family and not as much free time to create settings and adventures. While I really appreciate D&D 5E's traditionalism as far as emphasizing homebrews and DM improvisation, I do think that it would be a huge mistake for WotC to assume that most DMs want to create everything themselves. I think this simply isn't true. So WotC, here's my unsolicited advice: it is time to roll out the carpet on the OGL, and/or start producing one-shot adventures and campaign settings. You've offered a great, core game - but now it is time to bring it to life.

Just a few thoughts to add to the mix.
 
Last edited:

log in or register to remove this ad


Another one of these? They can do one, or the other, or both. Or neither.

I have resisted doing this...but...

If, over a few years, they put out 5 or so decent adventures (not APs, just adventures), a monster book, maybe 1 or 2 player books, and 1 or 2 settings, it would be enough. For quite a while.
 

My feeling are the OGL is going to be nothing more than a formal license/agreement requiring 3rd parties to pay a royalty for the right of saying "Approved for use with D&D 5E.

I don't think this is a bad thing for 3rd parties or players, it just will not be as open to gamers.
 
Last edited:

Another one of these? They can do one, or the other, or both. Or neither.

I have resisted doing this...but...

If, over a few years, they put out 5 or so decent adventures (not APs, just adventures), a monster book, maybe 1 or 2 player books, and 1 or 2 settings, it would be enough. For quite a while.

Something tells me you aren't going to get any of those. You are going to get adventure paths. You are going to get an article on the website maybe once a month. They aren't going to put out stuff for the GM. The 3 core books were made to be as encompassing as they can make it so they don't have to put out anything else. You either have to buy into their season adventure paths or go somewhere else for your inspiration.
 

Wizards shot themselves in both feet and their right knee with the OGL back in 3rd. It didn't achieve the intended result, well, it did, but it went well beyond that into spawning a whole "new" game that heavily impacted their market. Wizards then continued chopping off their limbs by having no OGL in 4th, which impacted their market because there was no 3rd-party support for the system.

If Wizards is smart for a change, they'll try to find some middle ground that will allow people to create new content, without allowing people to go as far as to essentially copy their game, apply some errata and sell it as their own.
 

5E in no way "needs" new setting books-- "needs" as in "required to be made because otherwise DMs have no other options"-- because we have all the setting books we "need" on dndclassics.com.

The only thing those products are missing for 5E which would be "helpful" to DMs are NPC stats. That's it. Everything else-- 95% of material in the book-- is story and fluff... none of which is edition-dependent. You can buy and use those products right now. Hell, I'm using the 3E Silver Marches setting book for my 5E game and haven't had a single moment of feeling like I was hamstrung because it wasn't a "5E book".

People had been clamoring for YEARS during 4E that not having any of these older products available for purchase was *such* an issue... that they were stuck just buying nothing but 4E products because that's all WotC was offering to people, and my god think of all the money WotC was leaving on the table because they'd give them their first-born for the opportunity to pick up those better older products. But now that WotC *has* made almost 40 years worth of material available for purchase to any player that wants it, all that we hear now is "We need *new* stuff!" And that "I want to give WotC all my money, but they won't take it!"

When the fact is... the whole reason they built the 5E game the way they did was so that you *could* buy all the adventures and settings from the past 40 years and just spend like 30 minutes before your session making any obvious monster adjustments in the module as necessary, but otherwise run the adventure relatively as-is. And by doing so... they don't need to spend the countless man-hours basically just re-writing all of these supplements over again just in order to layer 5E stats into it.

If you want new adventures... have you tried using any of the adventures you already own and just take a few moments to tweak perhaps the quantity of monsters in the encounters? If you haven't, you should give it a try. You might find that all of this product you already own more than covers what you need for your campaign.
 

(. . .) it went well beyond that into spawning a whole "new" game that heavily impacted their market. Wizards then continued chopping off their limbs by having no OGL in 4th, which impacted their market because there was no 3rd-party support for the system.


You've got that backwards insofar as Paizo wanted to support 4E but WotC's delaying tactics regarding continued use of the OGL made that impossible. When WotC came up with the 11th hour replacement in the form of the restrictive GSL, Paizo cut ties and started working on a replacement backbone for underneath their Game Mastery products and adventures. Of course, no sense republishing the SRD without making some revisions and filling in some holes, thence Pathfinder. PF didn't come before WotC abandonment of the OGL. WotC's abandonment of the OGL triggered all of the things that caused their current situation.
 

You've got that backwards insofar as Paizo wanted to support 4E but WotC's delaying tactics regarding continued use of the OGL made that impossible. When WotC came up with the 11th hour replacement in the form of the restrictive GSL, Paizo cut ties and started working on a replacement backbone for underneath their Game Mastery products and adventures. Of course, no sense republishing the SRD without making some revisions and filling in some holes, thence Pathfinder. PF didn't come before WotC abandonment of the OGL. WotC's abandonment of the OGL triggered all of the things that caused their current situation.

The OGL for 3rd still made what Pazio did possible for that edition. While I agree Wizards shouldn't have totally abandoned it for 4th, there's some happy point to be found between allowing whole clones to be made of your game without your consent and not allowing people to support your game at all.
 

The OGL for 3rd still made what Pazio did possible for that edition. While I agree Wizards shouldn't have totally abandoned it for 4th, there's some happy point to be found between allowing whole clones to be made of your game without your consent and not allowing people to support your game at all.

Maybe, they certainly tried to find that middle ground and failed. In any event, another reason Paizo would have been where they are today with or without the OGL is their company is primarily made up of people trained on the WotC payroll. If there had been a restriction on the OGL that prevented PF the way it is, there would have been a PF made completely from scratch. But, they wouldn't have left supporting WotC if WotC hadn't abandoned the OGL in the first place. That's the lynch pin in what WotC did to themselves.
 

Remove ads

Top