Three Tiered License

[Jraynack]

It's an interesting proposition, since a lot of smaller companies have products of quality far surpassing many of the bigger companies.

And especially since in some cases, "bigger" just means "the capacity to shovel a bigger pile of crap."

This is true. I am not sure if it will affect the small .pdf market. One of these "bigger companies" might just be White Wolf and their subsidiary, DriveThru. It would be in their best interest to get a d20 license for smaller companies to continue the .pdf push. It might mean some extra work, sifting through a lot of companies.

Overall, if that were the case, they would like to ensure quality thus raising .pdf sales in the long run.

I particularly do not like the idea of jumping through hoops to get a d20 logo on our products, but it might be a good thing.

 

[Wolfspider]

I'll wait until we hear this directly from Scott Rouse, or someone else at WOTC.

Until then, it's just Chicken-Little-ing over something that someone claims was said by a third party at a seminar in Italy.

Seems like sound advice to me.

 

[Jraynack]

I'll wait until we hear this directly from Scott Rouse, or someone else at WOTC.

Until then, it's just Chicken-Little-ing over something that someone claims was said by a third party at a seminar in Italy.

Solid point and I agree (just avoided a giant d20 logo smashing through my ceiling).

 

[Scribble]

I agree with this process.

I just hope there are ways for the little guys to eventually become big guys.

 

[Spinachcat]

If this is true (and quite possibly is not) then it turns small press guys into freelancers for the established D20 companies chosen by WotC. This is NOT a bad thing because you will get lots of innovation as small press guys are cherrypicked by the bigger publishers.

In fact, this way will lead to more stable D20 publishers since they don't have to compete with a glut of substandard fare with the identical logo.

And watch this! If you did create something uber cool (say the next Midnight or True20), you will be able to shop it around and create a bidding war between the various companies.

That's fine for everyone. The OGL as-is will allow for a faux 4e SRD to be created the same way the OGL has been used to create OSRIC and LL. Like OSRIC, this faux 4e will have a name and that will become the banner / logo for the small guys to use for the works that are not approved by the big boys. I suspect this "Faux Fourth" will be online a few scant weeks after the 4e books hit the shelves.

Final result: net gain for everyone.

 

[Dragonblade]

I agree with everything Mouseferatu said.

 

[GSHamster]

It does open an opportunity for someone to start a company who's sole purpose is certifying and editing RPG books. A model closer to the novel or book industry, where you have an editor who acts as quality control, rather than an RPG company paying staffers or buying works-for-hire.

The issue with having WotC or the bigger gaming companies certify books is that they are competitors, and have their own books to put out. A pure editor would have less self-interest. Hopefully you'd end up closer to an author-publisher relationship, where the author retains ownership of her works, and is paid residuals, but the publisher also gets a cut.

The issue would be getting the original permission from WotC. Perhaps one of the existing game companies would try and convert to being a "publisher".

 

[JVisgaitis]

And watch this! If you did create something uber cool (say the next Midnight or True20), you will be able to shop it around and create a bidding war between the various companies.

Final result: net gain for everyone.

On paper your post makes a lot of sense. In reality is pretty far from the way things are. No publisher wants to be bothered to release some else's product no matter how cool it is. Publishers are really busy producing their own lines.

I've tried to work with Mongoose to get Violet Dawn released via Flaming Cobra. Nothing against Mongoose at all, they're great folks, but they have their own product lines to worry about. A publisher will talk to you when you have a finished product that perfectly fits into what they are looking for. That's it. The idea of a bidding war happening between companies over a d20 product is absurd.

I would guess that Paizo and Green Ronin don't want to sit there sifting through tons of 3rd party submissions. They want to be working on the new Freeport, Pathfinder, or whatever. They don't need a 3rd party company to have an engaging and successful product line.

 

[Voadam]

PDFs are categorized in rpgnow and dtrpg under the OGL/d20 category and contain a system category tag in the product description pages.

I agree this would likely affect the printed book end of things requiring them to go through hoops of these delegated companies, but I expect pdfs would just not use the d20 logo and be mostly OK.

It is only when scanning through listings of recent release titles that it will no longer be apparent at a glance which pdfs are designed to be D&D supplements.

 

[Alzrius]

Let me get this straight... Wizards of the Coast is allowing other companies--competitors, small as they may be, in a niche market--use WotC's proprietary material. It's a move that, until 2000, was absolutely unheard of in the industry in any meaningful way. It may be a move that benefited WotC, but that doesn't change the fact that it's an incredibly generous one, since most of the current companies wouldn't exist at all without it.

In effect, WotC said "Here, everyone! Play with my toys."

And now, suddenly, it's "Big Brother" or "unprincipled" for WotC to say, "Well, we only want some other companies to play with our toys"?

In a word, yes.

I honestly don't understand why people always rush to defend the rights of corporations when it's much smaller groups, and individuals, who lose out more based on a corporation's decisions.

When you offer an amount of (creative) freedom to a group, it is unprincipled to attempt to dial it back at a later date because you don't like what they're doing with it. As an analogy, Congress made television media public domain several decades ago - if they now decided that they don't like what's being shown on it, and decided to only let a few companies broadcast, giving them license to let smaller networks also broadcast - people would be up in arms. I see WotC's move as tantamount to this.

WotC's giving out the d20 system in 3E was a vastly generous move; now they're saying they're uncomfortable with other companies having that much creative freedom, because they might not like what's produced. I call that unprincipled.