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<blockquote data-quote="Lord Zardoz" data-source="post: 4412728" data-attributes="member: 704">I suspect you are making quite a few assumptions which do not necessarily hold up.First, the GSL license, regardless of what its terms may be, does not necessarily have any impact on how good a game 4th edition is.&nbsp; What will ultimately drive the success of D&amp;D under the 4th edition is how widely that game is adopted.&nbsp; Though the GSL terms may cause a non trivial portion of the player base of D&amp;D to avoid it, the actual quality of the game on its own merits will have a far greater impact on that.At this time, I suspect that the Worst Likely scenario for the hobby as a whole would be that enough people avoid 4th Edition products that WotC is unable to profit from making books for it, and that the&nbsp; 3rd party content publishers stick to 3rd edition based products.&nbsp; If this comes to pass, than the hobby will probably shrink in terms of commercial impact.&nbsp; Dedicated users will continue to sustain OGL content online, and eventually someone with a whole lot of money will purchase the rights to D&amp;D, and try creating a new edition of the game.Now, what I expect to actually happen is one of two things.1)&nbsp; 4th edition is successful without 3rd party support.&nbsp; The companies unwilling to produce GSL content either go out of business or they eke out some measure of profit by supporting 3rd edition derived games.&nbsp; Some companies choose to back the GSL anyway.&nbsp; People buy and play whatever it is they prefer.2)&nbsp; The lack of 3rd party support hurts the profits of 4th edition enough that it is not as sustainable as Wizards would like.&nbsp; The combination of financial and fan pressure force Wizards to modify the GSL to make it worthwhile for the holdouts to back it.&nbsp; Then the game will then return to profitability.Either way, I do not expect the hobby to die out any time soon.&nbsp; Considering that 1st edition games are still being run despite years of no official support and having to hold out without any internet based fan support, I do not think the modern incarnations of the game will die out.END COMMUNICATION</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Lord Zardoz, post: 4412728, member: 704"] I suspect you are making quite a few assumptions which do not necessarily hold up. First, the GSL license, regardless of what its terms may be, does not necessarily have any impact on how good a game 4th edition is. What will ultimately drive the success of D&D under the 4th edition is how widely that game is adopted. Though the GSL terms may cause a non trivial portion of the player base of D&D to avoid it, the actual quality of the game on its own merits will have a far greater impact on that. At this time, I suspect that the Worst Likely scenario for the hobby as a whole would be that enough people avoid 4th Edition products that WotC is unable to profit from making books for it, and that the 3rd party content publishers stick to 3rd edition based products. If this comes to pass, than the hobby will probably shrink in terms of commercial impact. Dedicated users will continue to sustain OGL content online, and eventually someone with a whole lot of money will purchase the rights to D&D, and try creating a new edition of the game. Now, what I expect to actually happen is one of two things. 1) 4th edition is successful without 3rd party support. The companies unwilling to produce GSL content either go out of business or they eke out some measure of profit by supporting 3rd edition derived games. Some companies choose to back the GSL anyway. People buy and play whatever it is they prefer. 2) The lack of 3rd party support hurts the profits of 4th edition enough that it is not as sustainable as Wizards would like. The combination of financial and fan pressure force Wizards to modify the GSL to make it worthwhile for the holdouts to back it. Then the game will then return to profitability. Either way, I do not expect the hobby to die out any time soon. Considering that 1st edition games are still being run despite years of no official support and having to hold out without any internet based fan support, I do not think the modern incarnations of the game will die out. END COMMUNICATION [/QUOTE]

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