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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Big Mac" data-source="post: 5702137" data-attributes="member: 61182">Ironically, you can do this. The OGL and SRD gives you full access to the core of the 3rd Edition D&D rules and, while you can't call it Dungeons & Dragons, there is nothing to stop you (or anyone else) picking up 3e D&D and making what they want from it.Paizo did just this, when they made the Pathfinder RPG. There is nothing to stop you making your own house-ruled 3e and selling it.The fact that the companies copying Paizo and making their own D&D offshoots is not high probably indicates that this is not a financially viable route for most people. But I would urge any fan who thinks they can make better stuff than WotC to give it a bash. A lot of you will probably fail, but the occasional person who invents something similar to Pathfinder RPG will make up for all the failures.WotC (and TSR before them) may turn out a number of products that we (as individuals*) do not like, but so long as they "please most of the people most of the time" they are going to out-sell small companies that only have the manpower to put out one or two products a year.* = One of us may dislike one product, while another may dislike a different product.And I think that if you make hundreds of products, you are much less likely to go down because of a single product being hailed as a turkey. A tiny RPG company might have a much higher quality threshold, but could be destroyed by a single bad decision.WotC would appear to be forced to go for the majority market......or are they?If only some of the disused campaign settings had an SRD, I'd be 100 percent in agreement with you.Mind you the ESD Conversion Agreement would appear to allow any pre-3e campaign setting to survive as a fan supported non-profit product.I am sure that WotC would do "what is best for the game" if they believed that was best for the game. I think they make the best guesses they think they can make. Like anyone, I think they make mistakes. I think there is a tendency among certain people (WotC staff and non-staff) to blame certain past products as being "bad for D&D".The way I see it, any product that has any sort of level of fanbase is not actually bad for D&D. But economically, a product needs to pull in more cash than it costs to be a "financial success".I think that if WotC could get past the need for every product to be a "big success" it could perhaps look to some of the smaller RPG companies as models for making low-cost production methods that would make products with a smaller market share more viable (to the accountants) than they are now.Licensing parts of the IP out (as they did with the Dragonlance and Ravenloft campaign settings during 3e) is one way to get cash in for less risk. Another way would be to allow certain authors to write material on a percentage deal and publish it on a Print on Demand basis. Doing stuff similar to that would be a way to get other people to assume some of the risk of putting out other parts of the product line.Good points (all around). I'm a 3e fan, but I meet plenty of 2e, 1e and Classic D&D fans. I know that they are no crazier than I am to like the rules they like.One area where I think that WotC (and even fans) go wrong is to view the different editions of D&D rules as things that compete with each other. I get great ideas from talking to fans of other editions. 4e seems to have raided some cool ideas from the distant past.At the moment WotC either sell you 4e or you choose to go to a rival company or buy second-hand copies of 3e D&D or one of the versions of TSR D&D. If they found a way to sell (or licence) the other versions of D&D, they could use 4e to shoot for the largest slice of the RPG pie and then see how many little slices they could grab with the older editions.If they could shoot for the most successful system, with 4e, and get the forth, eighth and tenth most successful systems, with three of the old school systems, they would capture the interest of more punters.But as you say, we don't have the numbers they have.I have always been resistant to learning new rules. But I've always been interested in learning about new gameworlds.4e came with a promise of "one setting per year", which as a setting fan, is something that should be interesting me, but it is taking so long for 4e to give me the same number of settings as 3e (let alone 2e) that I think that I wouldn't be interested in considering learning it before 5e takes over.I would love to see more worlds get done. Sadly, I think the "3 books per setting" model is too slow for most worlds to get converted. Perhaps some of the smaller settings, like Jakandor, Chanak or Pelenor could get shunted into a product line that brings each world out as a single setting+monsters+adventure book.The one new world that 4e has given us is Nentir Vale. I know that (as a 3e customer) I'd be interested in looking at that. But I know that WotC have held back the Nentir Vale Gazetteer. With me being one of the "WotC don't sell anything I want to buy" brigade, I'm extremely frustrated that the one book that I may have bought has been taken away from me.I think that something like a splatbook is fairly useless to old school players, but (with a Web Enhancement that gives you conversion rules) a 4e campaign setting could be something that could bring in cash from old school fans. It might not be the primary target for WotC, but it could be a secondary target.</blockquote>

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