D&D 5E The OGL -- A Lesson for 5E

[trancejeremy]

Even if you do get creative works, I'm not sure how WOTC wins.

Most gamers probably have a fixed entertainment budget. Are they going to spend it on WOTC products or third party stuff?

The theory behind d20 was they would sell more corebooks, but because many companies ditched the d20 license and went with just the OGL, there wasn't the need for the corebooks.

And I don't think there was any incentive to buy anything from WOTC besides the corebooks, because almost everything was either walled off or reprinted somehow if it was released as open content by them.

In theory, they wanted to use something like the Apple an iOS model, but in practice it was more like the old Atari 2600 one (which resulted in the crash)

 

[MerricB]

For those arguing that PF has the OGL, if I understand the D&D OGL correctly, please note that PF is required to have an OGL, because they are using the 3.5 OGL themselves. This is not an option for them.

Although older rule elements of Pathfinder must be OGL, new rule elements don't have to be.

 

[CleverNickName]

2) Paizo isn't coming back unless Pathfinder fails catastrophically. This is now a personal issue between many at Paizo and WotC, due to the way the transition to 4E was handled by WotC management (in a word: poorly), and the ensuing decisions regarding the GSL and Dragon/Dungeon.

Coming back from where? From what I can tell, Paizo hasn't gone anywhere but up. Why would they want to come back from that?

 

[Savage Wombat]

I still think that if 5th Ed proves to be awesome, and WotC shows willingness to cooperate, Paizo will happily produce their adventure paths to be run under 5th ed as well as Pathfinder.

They've said they're not in the business to sell rulebooks, anyway.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Coming back from where? From what I can tell, Paizo hasn't gone anywhere but up. Why would they want to come back from that?

Not only that, but some people support both game systems. How many products has Wayne's art been on from both companies? It's a very small pool and let's remember folks, WoTC tends to use freelancers almost as much, if not more than Paizo.

 

[grimslade]

An OGL is a benefit to consumers and to preserving D&D forever. When WotC purchased D&D from TSR, the huge mismanagement and colossal hole in accounts threatened to take D&D to the dust bin of history. I think that fear over seeing warehouses of rotting unsold Buck Rogers stuff is the only reason we saw an OGL and especially the gentlemen's agreement. If 3E failed, D&D was done.
3e was huge. The hobby was vibrant again. But the majority of the chaff has been cut from the field since 3.5e. There are very few pubs using d20 anymore.
Paizo succeeds because it is staffed by a tenacious core of former WotC and TSR folk, who cut their teeth trying to ressurect Dragon, Dungeon and Polyhedron. The mags survived because of fantastic editing and an eye for talent that resonated with paying rabid fans. They made that their business model.

 

[Iosue]

Whether it's good or not is debatable, but I can't see 5E having an OGL. When 3E came out, Wizards was a young, new, hip company who bought the brand for the love of the game. But now Wizards is a division of Hasbro, I can't see Hasbro endorsing an OGL. In fact, I think Hasbro is pretty cheesed off that the biggest brand in roleplaying is losing ground to a competitor because of the OGL.

Statistical probability: 10%.

Hasbro owned Wizards when the first OGL was released.

The OGL was good in the short term, but mainly it created a bubble, and when the bubble burst things weren't so good. Ryan Dancey's meta-industry goals aside, as a business decision the idea of the OGL was for smaller companies to take on the burden of creating supplements, settings, and adventures, while WotC focused its energies on the core books. But once the bubble burst, the smaller companies just focused on making their own variants of D&D. That's not so great for WotC, so I don't see them making the same mistake twice. Particularly when the design is meant to appeal across edition boundries. They'd essentially be telling other companies to create their own flavor of D&D using whatever modules they wanted.

More likely, I see them keeping the core proprietary, but loosening up the GSL to encourage 3rd party involvement in making supplements and splats.

 

[Number48]

5E is not only make-or-break for WotC, but for Paizo as well. If 5E is a colossal flop and there is no more 4E material and no 4E OGL, then I can see Pathfinder taking an even larger market share. On the other hand, if 5E is a success, Paizo is kinda painted into a corner because there are limitations to how much they can change a game using the OGL. To compete with 5E, they'd have to make a new game with NONE of the IP from D&D.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Hasbro owned Wizards when the first OGL was released.

The OGL was good in the short term, but mainly it created a bubble, and when the bubble burst things weren't so good. Ryan Dancey's meta-industry goals aside, as a business decision the idea of the OGL was for smaller companies to take on the burden of creating supplements, settings, and adventures, while WotC focused its energies on the core books. But once the bubble burst, the smaller companies just focused on making their own variants of D&D. That's not so great for WotC, so I don't see them making the same mistake twice. Particularly when the design is meant to appeal across edition boundries. They'd essentially be telling other companies to create their own flavor of D&D using whatever modules they wanted.

More likely, I see them keeping the core proprietary, but loosening up the GSL to encourage 3rd party involvement in making supplements and splats.

This isn't quite correct. There were two burst if you will. I'll agree one was volume, but the market would have taken care of that.

The other was 3.5.

Unlike 3.0, publishers weren't given a heads up on this one and were now bonned.

Given that boning and no support from WoTC in terms of moving the product that they were just boned on, (anyone remember the debates about moving to 3.5 or stayingwith 3.0 on huge products like the Atlas Bestiary or Violent Dawn or other books? It was ugly folks) couped with the complete collapse of a certain distributor that screwed over many a publisher, including Green Ronin, other companies saw their best bet as creating hteir own game engines and not having to rely on a partner that was... well, unpredictable would be the best way to put it.

 

[Mokona]

I've made similar points. See "Licensed To Have Fun".

There was a lot of poor quality, third-party product that hurt hobby stores because those small businesses didn't know how to handle the influx & change in the industry but it eventually worked itself out.