buzz said:
Long and rambling stuff to follow, FYI.
Now, in that Paizo thread, someone put forth the idea that this edition divisiveness is WotC's fault. I don't really buy that. WotC produces new editions of the game, ideally aimed at improving it or making it more appealing, that same way that auto companies produce new cars, or software companies sell upgrades. Again, this is just how life works. WotC does it, TSR did it, WW does it, GR does it, etc, etc.
I wanted to talk about this for just a minute and comment on what Buzz wrote here, because I'm the person who blamed WotC for the problems.
Let me say that I agree with what Buzz wrote in the original post very much. He's right: this isn't an us/them situation, and I really do wish Paizo the best in their endeavors (they're good people!)
At the same time, even though I blame WotC for what's happening, I think they're good people as well, so this isn't a personal thing at all.
I really lay the blame on WotC for two things: not understanding the value of the OGL to them (and the hobby as a whole) and for not having a new license ready many months ago.
In the first case, I blame WotC for not understanding that the OGL (and the D20 license) was a good thing. It was good for gaming, but it was also very good for WotC. You had a situation where many, many game systems came together and used D20. You have an extremely diverse range of games that use the D20 mechanic, from Mutants and Masterminds to Conan to Iron Heroes to Perfect20 ... there is an enormous list, and they vary from rules heavy to rules light. In effect the goal of a community game system that was Ryan Dancy's vision happened to a great extent. Yes, there are still other games out there, but there are far fewer than we would have had without the OGL. This community allows me to use my system knowledge to play a huge variety of games.
That's great for the gaming community, but it's also great for WotC. I know many people who own a lot of WotC products but don't play D&D at all! The Complete series has some interesting things to add to a lot of different D20/OGL games, and with the OGL in place WotC is selling products to customers who otherwise would go entirely elsewhere for their games.
To direct things to Paizo, WotC has them to thank for the fact that I'm running D&D right now: I don't have time to create a whole campaign, so I've been using Shackled City. If I wasn't doing that, I would not be running D&D, and would most likely not have purchased the products I did in the last year.
So that's the first part: I think we all knew that WotC would not let the OGL or D20 license continue into the new edition, but I believe it was incredibly short-sighted of them to do so. Maybe I'm wrong, however, which leads me to my second reason for blaming WotC: they don't have a new gaming license yet, and we're almost at launch time!
We've been told that WotC has been working on 4E for over two years now, since project "Orcus" started. Okay, if we accept that, why during all that time was the gaming license not finished? WotC and Hasbro has a legal department that has nothing to do with developing games at all, let alone developing D&D, so why wasn't this done a year ago? Once the decision to kill D&D's participation in the OGL was made, and with that to end the D20 License, then it was time to hammer out the new license and get things moving forward, so that the companies who will be making the products that WotC can't (or won't) themselves could be in position to make those things happen with the new system.
So what this all comes down to is that, of course, the 4E decisions WotC has made are theirs to make, but in what has happened here gaming has lost a lot. Beyond that, I think that WotC has actually hurt themselves in the process, and has made the transition to a new edition more difficult than it needs to be.
I hope that it should go without saying, but I'll add this: the opinions expressed here are just my thoughts on the matter, and aren't created out of malice...far from it. I'd call it more of a sense of disappointment really, that a golden age of gaming is drawing to a close.
--Steve
