The Open Gaming License: Almost 10 Years Later

[DEFCON 1]

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.

With Dungeon Magazine back in house, and it continually said over all these years that adventures are some of the worst-selling products... I don't think this lack was something WotC was concerned about.

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.

But it's a lot of critics who either are still playing 4E anyway (and thus, WotC still gets their money even while the critics grumble), or it's critics who would move away from WotC to go to Necromancer (and thus, WotC doesn't get their money).

The number of people who are currently sitting on the sidelines and not playing 4E because they are just waiting until 3PP support products they might enjoy are more readily available to them (at which time they will jump in with both feet and give money equally to WotC and these 3PPs), is probably extremely small. Small enough that WotC isn't going to change their philosophy to cater to them. The money these people would bring in would just not justify making the change.

 

[Desdichado]

With Dungeon Magazine back in house, and it continually said over all these years that adventures are some of the worst-selling products... I don't think this lack was something WotC was concerned about.

They did say that when 3e launched.

And yet... a few years later, they started issuing adventures again.

 

[DEFCON 1]

And yet... a few years later, they started issuing adventures again.

Well yeah... a single adventure for every three levels of advancement, one at a time every couple of months. But as we've seen from how in-depth these adventures are (which of course means 'not very')... it's pretty obvious these were meant more to help new players along who might not know how to build adventures themselves, then they were to impress the established D&D base. They said "here's a string of basic adventures that'll take you from 1 to 30, and you can find them in most major bookstores. If you want even more of this kind of stuff, just buy Dungeon Magazine! Available online at wizards.com".

If WotC really cared about off-the-shelf adventrure modules as a money-generator in of itself... we'd have seen a lot more of them produced over these past 18 months.

 

[rjdafoe]

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

That is what I am saying.... d20 systems will continue to be the norm I think for the forseable future.

 

[Jason Bulmahn]

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.

Just to be clear here, it was a bit of both. I had started working on a 3.5 revision on my own (really just as a hypothetical, possibly for pdf release to cater to folks not making the change) before the GSL delays, but when our hand was forced by delays, I was ready to present it as an alternative.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

 

[rjdafoe]

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.

No, I am not:

From Wikipedia.

October 2007: Jason Bulmahn began development of an updated system based on D&D 3.5, in part as a reaction to the waning support for the system in the wake of WotC's announcement of the upcoming 4E and in part as a reaction to the desire to improve on weaknesses in the D&D 3.5 game mechanics.

4E was announced in August of that same year.

As I stated, development was started BEFORE any of the GSL mess. It also makes good business sense to take advantage of an edition change. I think they would have Pathfinder regardless. The GSL mess made it so they would not publish any 4E material.

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.

Let me be clearer: I am not talking about the announcementod 4E. I am talking about when the OGL was first talked about at WotC. Back then, they KNEW that if they ever changed D&D too much for people or went back to a closed system, what the cost would be. This has nothing to do with whether 4E is open or not. They knew, up front, any deviance from an open system could cause a rift. They locked themselves in to possibly creating a split in the userbase, and I think they knew 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.

Yes, I did. Please don't tell me what I knew back then. If WotC decided to stop development in D&D, the game would live on. If the next version of D&D was a card game, the OGL version would live on, if the next version of D&D was 4E, the old game would live on, etc. They also knew that other companies could create their own tweak of the system. All of it could fracture the current customer base and fans of D&D. It doesn't matter wether the decision was right or wrong.

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.

Or maybe I wasn't wrong and you did not understand what I wrote? Or i did not explain it as well as I could have?

 

[Garnfellow]

With Dungeon Magazine back in house, and it continually said over all these years that adventures are some of the worst-selling products... I don't think this lack was something WotC was concerned about.

A main driver behind the OGL was the fact that some products . . . like adventures . . . were not profitable for WotC. The thinking was that with the OGL, 3PPs would be able to step in and provide those products.

Based on the complaints I've heard about 4e Dungeon, it sounds like this lack was something WotC should have been concerned about.

But it's a lot of critics who either are still playing 4E anyway (and thus, WotC still gets their money even while the critics grumble), or it's critics who would move away from WotC to go to Necromancer (and thus, WotC doesn't get their money).

Wrong. It's not a zero sum game: it's not as if buying Necromancer products would suddenly mean that customer stops buying WotC products. What Necromancer and other 3PP would have done was keep that customer locked into the 4e system, rather than looking to alternative game systems. The 3PP never really competed with WotC products directly; they complimented them.

The number of people who are currently sitting on the sidelines and not playing 4E because they are just waiting until 3PP support . . .

No one is suggesting that anyone is waiting any more. The ship sailed almost 2 years ago, and that's kind of the point.

 

[rjdafoe]

Just to be clear here, it was a bit of both. I had started working on a 3.5 revision on my own (really just as a hypothetical, possibly for pdf release to cater to folks not making the change) before the GSL delays, but when our hand was forced by delays, I was ready to present it as an alternative.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

Thanks Jason. I did not remember the exact situation arouond it, but I knew you had started it before the GSL mess.

In the end, if I was Paizo, I would have released it even with an OGL version of 4E.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Wrong. It's not a zero sum game: it's not as if buying Necromancer products would suddenly mean that customer stops buying WotC products. What Necromancer and other 3PP would have done was keep that customer locked into the 4e system, rather than looking to alternative game systems. The 3PP never really competed with WotC products directly; they complimented them.

I think you're giving far too much weight to the number of individuals who have moved onto alternate game systems, but would come into the 4E fold if only they had additional Paizo 4E adventures or Necromancer Games fluff to play with.

From all the indications I've seen here on ENWorld... those fans who aren't playing 4E fall primarily into two camps... those who just don't like the game of the new addition itself (and who wouldn't play it regardless of who produced product for it - WotC or otherwise)... and those who only played 3PP 3rd edition stuff, and thus won't play 4E so long as WotC itself is the only maker of product. And of those people, if WotC ever did make their GSL as open as the OGL had been... those folks would go back to playing the 3PP 4E products exclusively (because of some internal beliefs of the quality of those companies over what WotC has).

Long story short, I think many 3PPs and their products most certainly did compete with WotC in many cases and splinter the fanbase... which is why they chose to make the GSL as restrictive as they did. They could still claim that their game was "open" to other publishers, but they could also make sure that the game platform would be less likely to be inundated with piles upon piles supplements that would intrude upon territory they eventually were planning on creating and marketing to.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Not entirely. The OGL did enable you to copy the exact text of the PHB, which would otherwise have been protected by copyright - handy for people wanting to make D&D variants. ...

Technically, it allows one to copy the rules portion of the PHB only. It does not allow use of proper names, trade dress, artwork, etc.

On topic. How can anyone dislike or excoriate a license that allowed so much support for D&D? It's a great system, made more diverse. Sure beats the wars over names in D&D with the Tolkien Estate.