TSR TSR's War on Fans

[Morrus]

I can't make head nor tails of that.

Anyway, the OGL and the d20 STL served WotC very well and created a network of supporting publishers which produced all the material that WotC didn't want to produce, driving sales of the core rulebooks. I've interviewed WotC staffers at length about this stuff; it's uncontroversial. It worked.

The d20 glut hurt the d20 publishers. There were too many of them. It didn't hurt WotC one iota, any more than DMs Guild is hurting them now.

The fact that they blew it with the 4E GSL and created a rival (a talent of theirs) in Pathfinder is by-the-by. If they'd stuck with the OGL for 4E, and not pulled the D&D magazines from Paizo, that wouldn't have happened. Paizo would be driving sales of D&D core rulebooks to this day.

 

[Zardnaar]

I can't make head nor tails of that.

Anyway, the OGL and the d20 STL served WotC very well and created a network of supporting publishers which produced all the material that WotC didn't want to produce, driving sales of the core rulebooks. I've interviewed WotC staffers at length about this stuff; it's uncontroversial. It worked.

The d20 glut hurt the d20 publishers. There were too many of them. It didn't hurt WotC one iota, any more than DMs Guild is hurting them now.

The fact that they blew it with the 4E GSL and created a rival (a talent of theirs) in Pathfinder is by-the-by. If they'd stuck with the OGL for 4E, and not pulled the D&D magazines from Paizo, that wouldn't have happened. Paizo would be driving sales of D&D core rulebooks to this day.

Prettyuch how I see it. It's just a tool, use it right good things happen. Use it wrong you hurt yourself.

 

[Morrus]

Prettyuch how I see it. It's just a tool, use it right good things happen. Use it wrong you hurt yourself.

What?

 

[Zardnaar]

What?

Dems straight forward. OGL has blown up in WotC face one or twice before.

Main point is there's been a lot of trial and error to get to this point, it's not like TSR in 1994 had the data, experience etc to institute the OGL and make it work in 1994.

There's a tendency to laugh at them but there's been a lot of trial and error along the way.

 

[ChaosOS]

As a fair point to TSR with digital copies, e-commerce technology wasn't remotely secure enough until the 2000s at least.

For the Paizo thing, I'm not familiar with what led WotC to try and pull the rug out from under them in that 2006-2008 time frame.

I'm also of the understanding that the Book of Erotic Fiction contributed to the choice to neuter 3PP for 4e.

 

[Voadam]

There's a tendency to laugh at them but there's been a lot of trial and error along the way.

Or to curse at them for being jerks who used their position as a market dominant company with a legal department to misapply the law and bully and harass their own fans.

 

[Longspeak]

1994 The year I got married, had a kid, bought a house, and some more dice. Have two those still. :0

I'm.... really sorry to hear about your house and your dice?

 

[Zardnaar]

Or to curse at them for being jerks who used their position as a market dominant company with a legal department to misapply the law and bully and harass their own fans.

Some of it was erm bad.

One of the first things I remember looking up online was D&D. There was an AD&D book of sex iirc circa 95/96.

Cover had the AD&D font, topless women on it and inside it had things like successful chance of crossbreeding the various races. Had rape implications as well with your own harem of sex slaves.

Made the Book of Erotic fantasy look nuanced and a literary masterpiece by comparison.

Anyone else remember that?

So yeah some fan stuff was utter trash. Other fan stuff hid enter sections of books copy pasted on the links.

 

[MGibster]

I forget the award show, but seeing the head guy of Napster (pre-iPod music-sharing site) come out wearing a Metallica shirt was awesome.

It's been twenty years! Fanning wore the Metallica t-shirt at the MTV Video Music Awards back in 2000. Man, oh man! How things have changed since then!

 

[jeffh]

That's all fine and good, but when you are dealing with "fans are posting online every number and every table and most of the passages of text of the books we print online for free and likely making them more accessible, interactive and easier to navigate than they are in our actual book" how exactly do you create a "license" around that?

So deal harshly with that, if you feel it's necessary. It doesn't follow that you have to deal equally harshly with the other 95% of the fan works that are/were out there. The stuff you're describing certainly existed (indeed, there's more of it, and more easily accessible, now than there was then), but it was only a small fraction of what got C&D letters.