We All Won – The OGL Three Years Later

[bsss]

I am content that existing OGL 1.0a-licensed works and future derived works may continue. I believe they --- from third parties, anyway --- could have continued all along, even if WOTC "de-authorized" 1.0/1.0a, but it was an unsettled matter, admittedly. Meanwhile WOTC burned much goodwill. That's a warped form of winning, even if the hobby continues along despite it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

IMO, anyone who trust WoTC at this point in time, is setting themselves up to be screwed.

I don't even know where trust comes into it. I don't trust or mistrust any company, beyond what the law requires of them.

wotc makes a line of products. When I like one, I purchase it.

 

[Dire Bare]

That's .. kinda weird when my memories of the early emails was it was about offloading the production of loss-producing products onto third parties so WotC only had to produce the evergreens...

Multiple things can be true at the same time. A product can serve multiple purposes.

One of Dancy's motivations to create the OGL was to preserve D&D from future corporate decisions. But the WotC execs weren't going to give the okay for that reason! The OGL also served, as you point out, to offload products that are important to the overall health of the game, but not profitable in and of themselves for WotC to want to bother with. Another reason was to put D&D in the center of the entire industry ecosystem, which happened with the "D20 Boom".

 

[delericho]

Edit; on reflection, I can't see how this post can help the conversation. Apologies to anyone who read it in the interim. Fair to say this isn't a happy topic for me!

 

[Morrus]

That's .. kinda weird when my memories of the early emails was it was about offloading the production of loss-producing products onto third parties so WotC only had to produce the evergreens...

It had multiple goals, which is why he used the word “also”.