It's highly debatable how much of that truly came from the OGL.
Almost anything can be "highly debatable".
Even if WotC actually made extra profit from the OGL in the 3.x era, it's overall a big fat minus since Pathfinder appeared as a final consequence.
What's good for the game and its culture, is not always the same as what's lucrative for a particular economic body who is stewarding the IP of that game. There is of course an interplay between economic success and cultural flourishing, but they're not synonymous.
Don't you think that Paizo is a quality steward of the D&D game? If the Hasbro faction of D&D stewarship fails and falls, then I say: so what? Pathfinder and Paizo would continue--it's D&D under a different name.
Still, I have suggested ways for Hasbro and the D&D brand to not sink. They are unorthodox suggestions, yet they are expressed with goodwill.
In hindsight reading some later interviews with former WotC staff from that time responsible for the OGL, it seems more and more as if it was never ended as being a good business decision but rather passionate gamer employees working against their own employer to "save D&D" even if it means going against their employers financial interests.
Is this Adkinson's perspective?
Is this your perspective? ...That Dancey was just a loose canon who endangered the fiscal assets of his employer?
What is your personal wish? Do you really prefer that the 3E RPG blossoming never happened?
I remember the end of TSR. If it hadn't been for the OGL, 3E may well have been only a minor success, with D&D shrinking into an even smaller hobby, like wargaming or Shrinky-Dinks.
And that's exactly what happened. While a lot of brands switched to D20, the additional profit for WotC from that was much lower than expected.
Do you have a source for this?
I remember a WotC person saying that the 3.0E core books sold very very well.
And the market was flooded with D20 products that were 90% crap
I feel this is an overstatement. If I listed the thousands of d20 products that were published from 2000 to 2003, I suspect that the majority of them were interesting.
Yeah, I know that there were some dregs, yet I prefer that WotC had initiated a "Quality Mark" association with publishers who produced quality work (Green Ronin, Malhavoc), instead of disrupting the continuity of the 3.0 by spurring everyone to buy the rulebooks all over again. That's when I stopped patronizing D&D.
I'm not speaking only in hindsight. I suggest that in early 2015, Hasbro/WotC initiate a Quality Mark Association (in partnership with Hasbro's associates such as Paizo, Green Ronin, and Necromancer; not just with Hasbro's contractors such as Kobold Press and Sasquatch Studios), while at the same time releasing the 5E SRD in a way that is at least as open as the OGL.
to the point it collapsed because even die hard D20 fans wouldn't buy any more third party products due to being burned way too often.
A Quality Mark Association would be a way to educate game distributors, game stores, and game customers/participants.
And a sure way to bankruptcy for all those publishers, since each campaign world has a smaller and smaller subset of pontential customers. TSR broke it's back to due supporting to many campaign settings and thus publishing each expensive to make supplement for only a small subset of their overall customers. And these were even official campaign settings.
That's an old Dancey truism. It was true for TSR. Yet every truism has its limits. It is possible for enthusiasm and interest to blossom again even within existing TRPG hobbyists, like it did during the evolution from 2E and 3E. And it is even possible for the TRPG hobby and culture to grow. Despite the prevailing wisdom that TRPG is only a small geeky subculture, TRPG culture could grow and grow throughout this century. In that case, more and more diversity could be supported.
Catan is laying the groundwork for more and more people to become potential TRPGers. More and more people can now stomach a little more gearheadness and story-based play.
(IN FACT: And I thank you for this idea! If I were head of the D&D brand team--I would vigorously seek out a licensing agreement from Kosmos games to make a D&D Settlers of Catan roleplaying game.)
There's a reason most D20 publishers were companies people were running as semi-professional hobby beside their real jobs, as they never made enough to pay even one full time employee (with only very few exceptions).
That's not a bad thing.
I am only opposed due to my fear it would kill the real D&D due to selling that many more copies
This is the kind of thinking which turns me off to the D&D culture-as-it-exists.
If the "real D&D" fell, then Pathfinder and others would take up the mantle.
I am more concerned with the health, flourishing, diversity, and open creativity of the D&D and TRPG culture, than with the shareholder returns for the economic entity which holds the words "Dungeons & Dragons" and its multiverse of worlds.
Mirtek, if the thinking you express in this post were to become the prevalent thinking among TRPG participants, then I would remove myself from participating in, or patronizing, that thoroughly corporatized culture. I would leave the D&D Brand and the D&D Worlds (even my beloved Mystara) as dead.
I'm waiting until spring of 2015 to see whether Hasbro D&D has walked away from my values, or whether there can be rapprochement. The crux will be in the details of if and how Open are the system and its worlds.
