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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mxyzplk" data-source="post: 4135503" data-attributes="member: 16450">So major new companies forming isn't a boom?  Adding Mutants & Masterminds, Conan, Spycraft, etc?  The boom wasn't limited to d20-based games of course; but the bigger the main games are doing, the more support there is even for indie and fringe games.  Larger industry = more for everyone.And sure, other people making D&D product is a key component of that.  I'm a little confused about your point.  OGL, lots of compnies make lots of money by making direct (Dragon) or indirect (M&M) products...  But that's no industry revival!Here's the problem - they didn't work against WotC's profitability, and I defy you to show that they did.  Again, this is the "little man" view of economics, where "every copy of M&M is money I shoulda gotten!"  Why, did WotC sell a supers game I missed?  Would people have bought two PHBs instead of one PHB and one M&M?  No.  People buy more RPGs than they ever use.  WotC has shown that they are not wanting to or going to ramp up to provide every product anyone wants and will pay for/make profitable.  No one can.My RL company developed a new computing bus.  We could have kept it for our own products and said 'that's our years of work!'  But, you see, we're not retarded.  So it's open.  So even though there are some companies that do things like make cheap knockoffs of our boards, there are many more that devise additional products that complement them and create a rich product ecosystem that then makes other people want ours.  The previous Conan game was GURPS Conan.  If you wanted to play Conan you'd have to use that or devise it yourself.  Now there's an OGL version that, even though not one physical dollar from it goes to WotC, uses the d20 rules.  You're now playing D&D - not the other old school games you rightly point out as having been largely static ghettos for so long (GURPS, Hero, WoD, Palladium).   This 'trains' customers on your product and reduces the mental cost of them to get into another new game along the same lines - including D&D.Believe it or not, there are people that haven't played D&D.  We'll take one of my coworkers.  He's only played other stuff, most recently Savage Worlds.  But recently their gaming group tried out Castles & Crusades.  Now, they're going to run a Savage version of Paizo's Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path.  That's attracting people into their games.  It's selling direct and indirectly related products, meaning that there's more money for everyone, more skilled game designers to work for everyone, more distributors that take that niceh seriously, more bookstores (and even game stores, nowadays) bother to put any shelf space towards it....Again, read a business book written in the last decade.  Being completely closed is NOT in your best interest, despite it being "common sense" for people without real business education.</blockquote>

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