The Open Gaming License: Almost 10 Years Later

[Wulf Ratbane]

The OGL is and was a cynical attempt to get people to curtail their rights to copy game rules wily-nilly.

Not entirely. The OGL did enable you to copy the exact text of the PHB, which would otherwise have been protected by copyright.

Exactly this.

"Safe harbor" isn't insignificant, either. There are lots of very small press publishers and hobby designers (myself included) who never would have bothered without the safe harbor.

And some bigger names, too. The game mechanics were significantly advanced because so many people outside of WoTC were getting into the guts of the system. Mike Mearls, Monte Cook, SKR, Chris Pramas... I don't think any of these guys had any interest in "fighting the good fight" over legal issues of game rules copyrights when what they really wanted to do was just write game rules.

 

[rjdafoe]

To be entirely correct, Pathfinder was born out of the GSL - its delays and hardnosed first draft more or less forced Paizo to either close down or to find another way.

I don't think that is correct either. I may be wrong, but I remember reading that right after 4E announcement, when (whatever his name is) started thinking/writing what has become Pathfinder. If you really think that Paizo did not take advantage of a situation where they saw a portion of people not going with the new edition, and being able to capitolize on that, then I don't know what to say. (and that is not bad, it is good business to break away like that)

I am not sure why people thought that the next edition of D&D was going to be open like 3.x was. WotC is a company. Like all companies with IP, they saw (right or wrong) other people using and profiting off of their work and ultimately decided that wasn't good for the company.

They likely knew back then, that if they ever did a new edition and it was substantially different in any regard, they would have this splitting of the game. I knew it back then when I read it.

While 3.x is open and always will be, and while it was good for gaming and D&D at the time, it is ultimately bad for WotC (the company) and their version of D&D, in the end - no matter what the decisions. No one was ever going to be happy with anything less than the same OGL as 3.x.

I have said it before, and I will say it again - Paizo could have and can provide Adventure Paths for D&D 4, they chose and continue to choose not to. It is their right, and ultimately what is right for their current business of supporting their own ruleset.

 

[rjdafoe]

Now, I'm hoping we see more game companies make widely different games.

I would like that to, but I doubt it. There is less work to do taking and tweaking the system than writing your own, therefore there is less R&D. I think there will continue to be alot of new systems that have this ruleset at it's base.

 

[ggroy]

I would like that to, but I doubt it. There is less work to do taking and tweaking the system than writing your own, therefore there is less R&D. I think there will continue to be alot of new systems that have this ruleset at it's base.

Which non-d20 rpg systems thrived during the 3E/3.5E era, besides White Wolf?

 

[JohnRTroy]

And some bigger names, too. The game mechanics were significantly advanced because so many people outside of WoTC were getting into the guts of the system. Mike Mearls, Monte Cook, SKR, Chris Pramas... I don't think any of these guys had any interest in "fighting the good fight" over legal issues of game rules copyrights when what they really wanted to do was just write game rules.

Actually, this brings up another point of the whole OGL system. Out of those three, only Mike came from outside TSR/WoTC during 3e. The last three worked for them either as freelancers or as staff.

I think one of the key things that hurt the whole culture of D&D (as in, designer culture staying at WoTC) was the OGL. What the OGL did was encourage designers to form their own labels. If the OGL still existed, it's very likely that the latter three would have, if not remained on staff, would have made their output exclusively for WoTC.

While that may be good for us consumers it came at a cost to WoTC. They might have been able to sell more products and reap the benefits. And they might have encouraged consumer and worker loyalty. And maybe 4e wouldn't have changed so much if the same designers were there in lead roles instead of the massive rollover of staff over the years.

 

[JohnRTroy]

I would like that to, but I doubt it. There is less work to do taking and tweaking the system than writing your own, therefore there is less R&D. I think there will continue to be alot of new systems that have this ruleset at it's base.

Well, 25 years of many RPGs before the OGL was released seem to say otherwise. There were a lot of games out before we reached the 1990s. (Unfortunately, many studios like FASA, GDW, etc, died off in the 90s as well).

The value of the existing OGL SRD is losing ground as more people move to 4e and/or other games. I don't think the primary value was the use of the OGL, it was being able to use the D&D rules to get the sales of complementary products. Now that D&D is changed, it is a lot less valuable. Fans of 3e will likely gravitate to Pathfinder, 1/2 e are represented now by the retroclones. But there's probably a lot less money in the market.

I think the smart companies will start developing their own systems again.

 

[Nifft]

I think one of the key things that hurt the whole culture of D&D (as in, designer culture staying at WoTC) was the OGL. What the OGL did was encourage designers to form their own labels. If the OGL still existed, it's very likely that the latter three would have, if not remained on staff, would have made their output exclusively for WoTC.

While that may be good for us consumers it came at a cost to WoTC. They might have been able to sell more products and reap the benefits. And they might have encouraged consumer and worker loyalty. And maybe 4e wouldn't have changed so much if the same designers were there in lead roles instead of the massive rollover of staff over the years.

As a consumer, I'm glad to have Arcana Evolved exist.

In general, I'm glad to have competition exist. A market with low competition is a boring place flush with boring products (at best).

While it may be a bit of a curse to those forced to live in interesting markets, it's very nice for those of us blessed to shop in them.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Desdichado]

I don't think that is correct either. I may be wrong, but I remember reading that right after 4E announcement, when (whatever his name is) started thinking/writing what has become Pathfinder. If you really think that Paizo did not take advantage of a situation where they saw a portion of people not going with the new edition, and being able to capitolize on that, then I don't know what to say. (and that is not bad, it is good business to break away like that)

Yeah, you're just wrong there. Your memory is either faulty or misinformted. Paizo have been very upfront about wanting to migrate to 4e, being frustrated by the delays in the GSL, and ultimately had to make a gamble that they would have preferred not to have been forced into.

I am not sure why people thought that the next edition of D&D was going to be open like 3.x was. WotC is a company. Like all companies with IP, they saw (right or wrong) other people using and profiting off of their work and ultimately decided that wasn't good for the company.

Well that's an easy question. At the announcement of 4e at GenCon 2007, Scott Rouse specifically said it was going to be open. Why would anyone not think that it was going to be?

Again... faulty or uninformed memory.

They likely knew back then, that if they ever did a new edition and it was substantially different in any regard, they would have this splitting of the game. I knew it back then when I read it.

Possibly. But you didn't know that. None of us knew that. That was one of the big questions that was being bandied about for months, with no answers forthcoming for some time.

I have said it before, and I will say it again - Paizo could have and can provide Adventure Paths for D&D 4, they chose and continue to choose not to. It is their right, and ultimately what is right for their current business of supporting their own ruleset.

And you'd continue to be as wrong as you have been generally so far in this thread. Paizo needed 1) a continuous revenue stream, to pay their employees and stay in business, and 2) sufficient lead time on products that provided that revenue stream. The GSL delays and uncertainties about what it would allow quite literally forced Paizo into the decision that they made.

True; they could choose to support the 4e GSL now but that ship's already sailed strategically.

 

[Mournblade94]

The OGL definitely spured greater advancements in game mechanics, of that I have no doubt.

Ultimately, my question is whether it was actually good for WOTC at large.

If your goal is technical advancement, open source can be a great way to do it. If your goal is profit, it can be counterproductive.

Currently, 4e faces a direct competitor in Pathfinder, which was born out of the OGL. I'm curious to know if open source really did bring in more profit more WOTC, or if ultimately it left them wtih less.

I am thrilled with pathfinder, and I prefer it to 3rd edition. With that said, I know WOTC did not want two competing systems on the market published by them. I wonder if they could foresee Pathfinder doing it anyway, or if they just didn't care. They had to know that the OGL still made 3rd edition a competitor.

 

[Garnfellow]

Somewhere there's a good, very pertinent quote from Dancey back before 4e or the GSL ever hit the street. Basically he said that WotC had a lot of incentive to keep D&D open, because if they ever tried to move away from the OGL in 4e, they would only end up creating their own competition.

In hindsight, it certainly sounds like a prophecy that came true.

Imagine an alternate world where WotC retained the OGL for 4e and also pulled some Paizo staff into the 4e development process (under NDAs). When 4e hit the streets Paizo was ready with a shiny new adventure path to support the game.

In this scenario, does anyone really think that Paizo would have still branched off and developed its own RPG?

I really doubt it. Developing a new RPG at a breakneck pace was probably the last thing Paizo wanted to do: it was a huge suck of time, energy, and treasure, and the results were never going to please everyone.

But in this alternate world both WotC and Paizo would have likely been far better off. A repeated criticism of 4e has been the lack of good adventures, which I'm pretty sure a close partnership with Paizo would have provided this missing element.

Necromancer Games would have been ready with a book of alternate rules that would have put missing 3e flavor back into 4e, which would have silenced a lot of 4e critics.

Instead WotC chose to go it alone, and we got what we got.