Unearthed Arcana - the Rationale behind the OGC

[Pants]

The only 'bad' thing is the fragmentation of the market, perhaps....you'll have d20 players who use the injury system, d20 players that use armor as DR, and d20 players that use VP/WP, and potentially a product needs to give advice for them all.

And how is this different from now?

"You mean you don't use elves, dwarves, or gnomes?"
"You wrote up a new Sorcerer?"
"How did you make your own magic system?"

From the amount of house rules that I've seen that take D&D into completely new and (IMO sometimes drastic) new directions, I don't really see this as new at all.

 

[Storminator]

And how is this different from now?

"You mean you don't use elves, dwarves, or gnomes?"
"You wrote up a new Sorcerer?"
"How did you make your own magic system?"

From the amount of house rules that I've seen that take D&D into completely new and (IMO sometimes drastic) new directions, I don't really see this as new at all.

Or even those that use Core only vs all WotC vs all d20 vs publishers X,Y & Z only vs each feat/PrC/spell personally reviewed by DM vs ...

The fragmentation of the community is already here, and has been since Relics and Rituals.

PS

 

[F5]

The fragmentation of the community is already here, and has been since Relics and Rituals.

Heck, it's probably been around since the first person bought a D&D set and started their own campaign. Each game, and each DM, does things their own way...all the OGL and 3rd-party publsihers do to fragment the market is make it easier to find house rules that DMs like.

I guess the way I see it is that even with all these optional/variant rules out there, I don't think the D&D/D20 community is really that fragmented. In order for a game to use the D20 logo, enough of the rules have to remain the same that it's really still the same game. If you took the most far-out rule variants in Unearthed Arcana, (say, VP/WP, Armor as damage-reduction, spell-point magic, and Generic Classes instead of Core Classes), you'd be pushing it, but I think you'd still be playing a game that's recognizable as D&D.

If a player in a core-books-only campaign can jump into a crazy-UA-enhanced game and still feel like they're playing the same game, I don't think that's really fragmentation. People will have personal preference as to which take on the rules they like better, but that will happen anyway.

 

[Desdichado]

Nobody's ever explained to me in a way that makes any sense why the "fragmentation of the market" is a bad thing.

It seems to me to be a totally cool thing, as long as a fragmentation of tastes in the market exist, and we're all still buying D&D books.

 

[Psion]

Nobody's ever explained to me in a way that makes any sense why the "fragmentation of the market" is a bad thing.

Well, it makes players less portable, and game products less portable. What if I really dig something made with Airships but the spelljammer website decides to use "Aether & Flux" instead.

Not to mention, it makes the margins of d20 companies thinner, which makes it harder to keep good d20 authors writing stuff because it is less worth their while, as companies are forced to compete for the same niche, and thus smaller print runs and worse scale economy.

It seems to me to be a totally cool thing, as long as a fragmentation of tastes in the market exist, and we're all still buying D&D books.

It's not a universally good or universally bad thing. As mentioned in the other thread, I am GLAD to have alternatives to the class-based-defense and flaw systems than those presented in UA.

 

[Arnwyn]

You're hoping none of the rules in UA catch on and are used by other publishers?

For "D&D" products, yes. I have no intention of retro-fitting a product that is supposed to be for d20 fantasy that includes a schwack of rules that I don't use - thus severely decreasing the utility of a product that includes these variant rules. A decrease in product utility = a "no-buy" from me.

Seems like an odd wish.

Of course it isn't.

 

[diaglo]

i always suspected they wrote the UA as OGL content b/c most of it wasn't their ideas. but things they harvested from the open call for new campaigns.

 

[Ranger REG]

Can anyone give me a rundown of which mechanics/rules are not their own and who are the original Contributors?

 

[Psion]

Can anyone give me a rundown of which mechanics/rules are not their own and who are the original Contributors?

Well, a cursory look at the OGL statement will show M&M and artifacts of the ages. The hp-less damage mechanic is from M&M, and legendary weapons and scion classes are straight out of artifacts of the ages.

AU isn't mentioned in the OGL statement, but the Paragon classes are, by WotC's own admission, patterned after AU's leveled races.

Many other mechanics aren't straight after existing mechanics, but somewhat similar to what has been done before. WotC is not required to credit their own work, so obviously things from SW and d20 modern (like VP/WP, defense bonus, reputation, contacts, hero points) aren't credited in the OGL statement.


Several other mechanics resemble stuff already out there, but don't seem to be lifted directly.

 

[am181d]

i always suspected they wrote the UA as OGL content b/c most of it wasn't their ideas. but things they harvested from the open call for new campaigns.

Wow. That doesn't make sense on a number of levels. First, you can only use someone else's content using the OGL if they released that content using the OGL, and clearly none of the submissions to Wizards' open call used the OGL. Second, I can't imagine that ANY of those new campaign submissions actually included any new rules anyway, unless someone COMPLETELY missed the point of the submission process. Third, the kind of rules that appear in UA are NOT the kind of rules you'd generally expect from campaign specific rules sets. And fourth, a casual look through the UA will make clear what they took from other sources, and it wasn't that much.

Those issues aside, I think you may be on to something.