The Theory of Tens. A Knee Jerk Hypothesis

[jrowland]

Why?

What did the OGL actually do? Very few OGL products actually sold in any real numbers, there was a very large number of dross for that bit of gold, and, by the tail end of 3.5, virtually no one was doing any OGL products anymore for D&D. You had what, 4, maybe 5 OGL producers for D&D before 4e was even announced.

The OGL did get 3e on the shelves, but, I am constantly bewhildered by this unquestioned view that the OGL was the driving force behind 3e. 3e did fantastically because it was a very good game, at a perfect time (no new edition for about a decade) and some fantastic marketting.

Put it another way, what percentage of those buying 3e/3.5 books bought OGL products. Of those that bought OGL products, what percentage did those OGL products occupy of what those people spent on D&D?

I look at my own group, and I was the only one for a long time buying any OGL products. I'd try to use them in game, and very, very few DM's would ever let me. When I introduced them for my own games, players never took them up. It was always WOTC or nothing. It was years before anyone actually started seriously bringing any OGL material to the table.

4 or 5 competitors is huge in this market. Beyond that, WotC was very good at releasing "new" content splatbooks that were rehashed OGL. The OGL's strength wasin its CROWDSOURCING not in the products themselves. Pathfinder, as an OGL product, is giving WotC/HASBRO a run for their money. Yeah, and its only one OGL competitor...that is all it takes: one.

 

[Jester David]

I don't have the energy for it, but, it would be interesting to compare, year by year, what books were done by staff and what were done by freelancer. Because, unlike Jester Canuck, I think that you'll find that the ratio stays pretty stable throughout. But, that's my gut feeling and I'm more than willing to be shown to be wrong here.

There's a good list here:
List of Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Normally, the staff produces some books. That's why they're paid. But at the rate WotC was producing content, there will always be more words needed than writers. The issue isn't the use of freelancer, but the reliance on them. If you remove the late 3e compilations and fluff books, almost every product for a year was outsourced.
(Simmilar to the 2011 4e books)

 

[Jester David]

Put it another way, what percentage of those buying 3e/3.5 books bought OGL products. Of those that bought OGL products, what percentage did those OGL products occupy of what those people spent on D&D?

We'll never know...

I look at my own group, and I was the only one for a long time buying any OGL products. I'd try to use them in game, and very, very few DM's would ever let me. When I introduced them for my own games, players never took them up. It was always WOTC or nothing. It was years before anyone actually started seriously bringing any OGL material to the table.

That's one of the issues: WotC had a reputation for more solid crunch, while other 3PP did not. There were some good companies, but these were rare.
OGL products had to be excellent for players or aimed at DMs.

What did the OGL actually do? Very few OGL products actually sold in any real numbers, there was a very large number of dross for that bit of gold, and, by the tail end of 3.5, virtually no one was doing any OGL products anymore for D&D. You had what, 4, maybe 5 OGL producers for D&D before 4e was even announced.

The OGL did get 3e on the shelves, but, I am constantly bewhildered by this unquestioned view that the OGL was the driving force behind 3e. 3e did fantastically because it was a very good game, at a perfect time (no new edition for about a decade) and some fantastic marketting.

Okay, there are two big things the OGL did.
The first was remove competitors. Look at the companies producing competing products now. Had the GSL been more open they'd been supporting 4e not competing with their own products. Big names like Goodman Games, Paizo, and Green Ronin.

What OGL products do is produce content WotC doesn't have to, the niche products and small stuff WotC can't make enough profit to bother with. And all of them support the core rules, as the majority of OGL products require the core rulebooks. (Although, the ability to ake replacement core rulebooks was likely a mistake.) This includes alternate campaign settings or adventure paths.
This means all those players who don't want the base game experience of D&D can still play D&D and give money to WotC.
While using OGL products in a D&D game is tricky at times, using D&D products in an OGL game is much easier.

 

[billd91]

How close does that retreat match to Hasbro buying them out? I've read the accounts that says the sale was pretty much required, as the energy and finances to sustain the WotC push was shot, without some kind of backing. So maybe the early push of 3E was something that couldn't be maintained?

It doesn't, at least not directly. Hasbro owned WotC before the OGL was even out. It's hard to say whether or not the sale to Hasbro was required or not. I've come to the conclusion it was a good move at the time and helped a lot of the principle shareholders of Wizards who were otherwise stretched pretty thin.

It's hard to pin down an exact moment that Wizards backed away from the OGL, but I suspect it was in trouble as soon as its primary champion, Ryan Dancey, left the company in 2001. They put up the core books for 3.0 and 3.5 and added psionics, epic, and Unearthed Arcana and then what? Pretty much nothing. There was hardly any sharing of ideas or incorporation of anything 3rd party into the SRD or even an OGL clearinghouse to facilitate sharing. It amounted to a lot of lost potential pretty much right away.