D&D 5E The Three Most Important Letters in 5th Edition

[CleverNickName]

OGL​

Regardless of where you stand in the whole "edition war," I think we all can admit that the 3rd Edition family of products was, and remains, highly successful...both from the financial perspective and from the hobby perspective. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think that the biggest reason for the success of 3rd Edition is the Open Gaming License. Why, you ask? Well:

Commercial Availability of Add-On Products
In a nutshell, having an Open Gaming License meant that third-party publishers could more easily produce a larger variety of gaming products. This created a large amount of gaming material on the market: gods, weapons, spells, feats, classes, everything. If you were wanting a Viking-themed campaign setting in modern-day Scotland, with psionics and dinosaurs, you could cobble together everything you needed from the Core Rulebooks and two, maybe three, splatbooks.

True, the "purists" of the hobby would argue that this wasn't necessarily a good thing. Not all of the products that were released were of the same quality, and this might have been a problem for some people. For the first time, there was a "glut" of gaming material on the market. This was only a problem for Wizards of the Coast, who lost the ability to control the quality (and scope?) of their brand. Remember the OGL revision that was pushed through when "The Book of Erotic Fantasy" was released?

(Personally, I think it is impossible to have too many gaming materials, regardless of quality. To me, they are like bacon. "Oh no, people in the industry are writing too many game supplements!" sounds a lot like "Oh no, people in the kitchen are cooking too much bacon!" to me. But I digress.)

Creativity and Development
The 3rd Edition was more than just a canned roleplaying game. Thanks to the Open Gaming License and its d20 System Reference Document, the floodgates of creativity were opened and new spinoff games and rules were developed. This was more than just modular, plug-in stuff like classes and monsters...there were entire game worlds and sweeping changes to the rules system. "Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords" laid the groundwork for the 4th Edition fighter, for example, and the d20 Modern game showed us just how versatile the d20 System Reference Document could be. Many of today's games, from the 4th Edition to the latest batch of kickstarter "retro clone" projects, owe a lot to the 3.5E SRD and OGL.

But again, many will say that this isn't necessarily a good thing either. By handing other publishers everything they needed to create our own rules and games, Wizards of the Coast created direct competition for themselves. But one has to wonder if this was the fault of the Open Gaming License, or if it was the fault of poor business decisions and plain old bad timing.

When WotC stopped supporting their line of 3.5E products and moved on to the 4th Edition, nearly every third-party publisher followed suit--except for (most notably) Paizo. This created the perfect storm: not every gamer wanted to switch to 4th Edition, after all, and now there were very few sources for the material they still wanted. They turned to Paizo, which grew fat from the sales and contributions of non-4E players. Four years later, they were the leading publishers for D&D-compatible material, and they continue to be today.

Product Longevity
The 3rd Edition of the game, along with its Open Gaming License, celebrates its 12th birthday this year. And adventures, campaign settings, and other 100% compatible gaming materials are still being developed, written, published, and purchased for it...even more than 5 years after the 4th Edition was announced. We can't say the same for older editions of the game, and I don't think we will be able to say the same for the 4th Edition of the game. The OGL was more than a development tool; it was a life insurance policy for the brand.

Ease of Use
The Open Gaming License, together with its System Reference Document, were valuable tools for more than just third-party publishers. They gave average gamers like you and me all the tools we needed to build our own game worlds and house rules, and a means to distribute them across the internet with other gamers without any of the legal headaches that can sometimes arise in the Internet age. Now, instead of a three-ring binder full of photocopied notes, you can hand your players a thumb drive with your favorite HTML copy of the System Reference Document (edited just the way you want it). Or put it on your website. Or stream it via torrent. As long as you follow the guidelines in the OGL, everybody is happy.

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Maybe Paizo would not have been as successful if WotC had continued supporting the 3.5E system (or at least continued to sell the Core Rulebooks and PDFs). Maybe if 4E had had a less-restrictive OGL, Paizo would not have enjoyed such a high demand for their product. Maybe 4E would have enjoyed a larger fan base if there were a larger variety of 4E-compatible products on the market. Maybe, maybe, maybe. We can only speculate, and your guess is as good as mine. But we all can agree on these two things: the 3.5E OGL helped Paizo, and the lack of one hurt 4E.

If 5E is going to do more than just "survive," if they truly want it to be the "edition to unite all gamers," then it absolutely must have an Open Gaming License...a real and robust one, not a weak and anemic imitation.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I think a strong case can be made for

PDF

Or online support, strong support.

 

[SeRiAlExPeRiMeNtS]

PDF is much more important to me. I like open things, but I think that d&d can do just fine beeing closed.

 

[GX.Sigma]

[big post explaining why OGL is awesome for players]

Yeah. We know. Try convincing Hasbro that it'll be good for them, because otherwise it's never going to happen.

 

[CleverNickName]

Yeah. We know. Try convincing Hasbro that it'll be good for them, because otherwise it's never going to happen.

Hmm, I thought my post was about why it was awesome for the game as a whole, not just for players. Apparently I missed the target.

Frankly, if the recent performance history of their brand isn't enough to convince Hasbro, I'm not sure it will matter what anyone says.

 

[SKyOdin]

Creativity and Development
The 3rd Edition was more than just a canned roleplaying game. Thanks to the Open Gaming License and its d20 System Reference Document, the floodgates of creativity were opened and new spinoff games and rules were developed. This was more than just modular, plug-in stuff like classes and monsters...there were entire game worlds and sweeping changes to the rules system. "Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords" laid the groundwork for the 4th Edition fighter, for example, and the d20 Modern game showed us just how versatile the d20 System Reference Document could be. Many of today's games, from the 4th Edition to the latest batch of kickstarter "retro clone" projects, owe a lot to the 3.5E SRD and OGL.

Uhh.. D20 Modern and the 3E Tome of Battle were both WotC products. Neither have anything whatsoever to do with the OGL. I don't really see why you are citing them as part of the advantage of the OGL.

But again, many will say that this isn't necessarily a good thing either. By handing other publishers everything they needed to create our own rules and games, Wizards of the Coast created direct competition for themselves. But one has to wonder if this was the fault of the Open Gaming License, or if it was the fault of poor business decisions and plain old bad timing.

I think it indicates that the OGL itself was a bad business decision.


Ultimately, the d20 System OGL was an attempt by WotC to acquire complete dominance in the RPG industry by trying to get every RPG company to produce their games using a single system. The plan completely backfired, stealing business from WotC.

Of course, I think the idea of "one rules system to rule them all" is rather silly. There is no rule system that is perfect for every game and playstyle. Variety is a good thing. I am not even particularly fond of the deeply imbedded presumptions of the d20 system.

 

[drothgery]

Hmm, I thought my post was about why it was awesome for the game as a whole, not just for players. Apparently I missed the target.

Frankly, if the recent performance history of their brand isn't enough to convince Hasbro, I'm not sure it will matter what anyone says.

I'd be shocked if anyone from Hasbro views the OGL and d20 SRD as anything other than a terrible idea than has hamstrung all post-3e versions of D&D by allowing 3.x and anything that can be reverse-engineered from it (which clearly includes 1e via OSRIC and probably includes 4e and anything that looks remotely like D&D) to be legally published by someone else indefinitely.

 

[Stormonu]

Uhh.. D20 Modern and the 3E Tome of Battle were both WotC products. Neither have anything whatsoever to do with the OGL. I don't really see why you are citing them as part of the advantage of the OGL.

Actually, d20 modern was released under OGL. You can produce OGL content for d20 modern.

I think it indicates that the OGL itself was a bad business decision.

Perhaps, but it was gold for gamers. No longer could a company's bad decisions keep D&D from being available - even if WotC or somehow Hasbro pulled the line from the shelves, it would still be available.

Ultimately, the d20 System OGL was an attempt by WotC to acquire complete dominance in the RPG industry by trying to get every RPG company to produce their games using a single system. The plan completely backfired, stealing business from WotC.

Of course, I think the idea of "one rules system to rule them all" is rather silly. There is no rule system that is perfect for every game and playstyle. Variety is a good thing. I am not even particularly fond of the deeply imbedded presumptions of the d20 system.

Yeah, pretty much.

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The logical conclusion says that reducing the "cost" to other people to publishing and supporting the core D&D game to zero should eventually drive support for all other game systems to the lowest level possible in the market, create customer resistance to the introduction of new systems, and the result of all that "support" redirected to the D&D game will be to steadily increase the number of people who play D&D, thus driving sales of the core books. This is a feedback cycle -- the more effective the support is, the more people play D&D. The more people play D&D, the more effective the support is.
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(Full Article Here)

However,
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The other great effect of Open Gaming should be a rapid, constant improvement in the quality of the rules. With lots of people able to work on them in public, problems with math, with ease of use, of variance from standard forms, etc. should all be improved over time. The great thing about Open Gaming is that it is interactive -- someone figures out a way to make something work better, and everyone who uses that part of the rules is free to incorporate it into their products. Including us. So D&D as a game should benefit from the shared development of all the people who work on the Open Gaming derivative of D&D.
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I think this is where things fell down. People, as witnessed by the rise of Pathfinder, are apparently fairly resistant to (radical) change. The OGL created a sort of anchor point people didn't want to move away from, because they didn't have to (me included). If someone didn't continue to support "their game", someone else could. So instead of making things better, things sorta stagnated and only improved very, very slowly. I think what Dancey failed to account for was that, by basing this on the computer GPL, computer hardware tends to only last for a few years and you HAVE to get new hardware. Books, on the other hand, last for years and years. There's folks who still have their 1E books in good condition (again, like me).
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[ComradeGnull]

I'd be shocked if anyone from Hasbro views the OGL and d20 SRD as anything other than a terrible idea than has hamstrung all post-3e versions of D&D by allowing 3.x and anything that can be reverse-engineered from it (which clearly includes 1e via OSRIC and probably includes 4e and anything that looks remotely like D&D) to be legally published by someone else indefinitely.

Yeah, I would love to see an OGL for 5e, but I hold out zero hope that it will happen.

Here's how I see Hasbro suits as describing the effect of the OGL:
1) Cannibalized sales. Before, if people had X dollars to spend on an RPG, we had to hope they would want to buy D&D. Now, even if they have X dollars dedicated towards D&D, they can pick from WotC supplements or other supplements by other publishers.

2) Duplication. Say WotC wants to make a Viking-theme setting. Now say that Horned Helmet Press has already published one, and it has already gotten popular. Now WotC is selling into a headwind- everyone who wanted a Viking book probably already bought it from someone else.

3) Permanent loss of control of the property. See also: Paizo, Pathfinder, OGL. Companies love planned obsolescence and upgrade cycles. The last OGL basically blow that out of the water forever. WotC can stop publishing an edition (which they did), but it no longer means that new buyers have to buy the new edition.

4) Lowering the barrier to entry for other games. Before, to try a new game (say, Deadlands) you had to learn a new set of rules and mechanics. Now shared mechanics mean that indy publishers can piggyback on WotC's rule development and balance work and then plug in their own settings and flavor.

5) Free advertising. Before OGL, a third-party game from a new publisher was just some hobbyist flogging their stuff out the back of a hatchback at a convention. OGL products, on the other hand, became part of the 'sales halo' of D&D. Retailers could take a chance on products from 3rd party publishers because they knew that the rules connected with the d20 system, and thus had an established customer base. Saying you were d20 compatible guaranteed a minimum level of rule coherency and balance- it was like having a free 'seal of quality' for your fresh-off-the-turnip-truck RPG concept.

6) Smaller slices of a shrinking market. The first OGL was released 7 years before World of Warcraft. There were no smart phones, no iPads, no Kindles, no Netflix, no motion control consoles, no BitTorrent sites... Digital distribution was a novelty for any form of entertainment- you couldn't yet legally buy books, movies, music, or TV over the internet. Tabletop RPGs face a lot more potential competition for attention than they ever did before. MMO's have grown to be a much bigger segment of the market than they ever where when Everquest was the cutting edge.

In the current market (and crappy economy), there are fewer dollars than before dedicated towards tabletop RPGs, and digital publishing and indy games means there are more competitors than before. Hasbro has to see every dollar spent on a product not published by WotC as a lost sale, not as 'building the market', because the odds are that the market as a whole is not going to grow substantially any time soon. I see 4e as an attempt to stimulate that growth, and however you feel about the game, the fact that we are already seeing another version and that it is going in quite a different direction so far seems to indicate that the attempt didn't work.

 

[Hussar]

The one and only way you will ever see the OGL return to a WOTC product is if you can explain how you can have a permissive OGL (a la 3e) and a DDI.

Because there is no way that they are going to go OGL and flush a 6 million dollar a year product down the toilet by allowing other people to play in their pool. In an industry that is only worth about 30 million a year, that would be a very, very bad business decision.