Would a OneDND closed/restricted license be good, actually?

[MNblockhead]

D&D is the dominant player that crowds out smaller games and denies the light and exposure for other rule systems. Brands do not thrive in shadows. Especially when entering into a recession / economic downturn.

No, it is a massive spotlight that if it went away would leave the hobby in darkness.

I mean, I hadn't even heard of Pathfinder before I started playing 5e. What other game publisher has the marketing power to make people completely outside the TTRPG hobby aware of their existence?

 

[Mistwell]

This is a non sequitur. Customers liking the D&D brand will not lead to people investigating or being interested in other non-D&D ttrpg. They might stick with 5e, transfer to 1D&D or give up altogether.

D&D is the dominant player that crowds out smaller games and denies the light and exposure for other rule systems. Brands do not thrive in shadows. Especially when entering into a recession / economic downturn.

A rising tide lifts all boats. That's not just a saying. ICv2 reports on sales and they've said as D&D does better, the games below D&D also do better.

The biggest barrier is just getting people to go from not playing RPGs to playing their first RPG. It's a whole lot easier to move someone from playing D&D to playing Pathfinder or something else, than it is to move them from playing no RPGs to directly playing Pathfinder or whatever other non-D&D game. Because the later requires a human to directly invite you to a game and encourage you to play.

D&D comes with it's own built in brand recognition - you can just see the Starter Set at Target, recognize what it is immediately because you watched Stanger Things (or whatever other brand exposure you've had, like a movie), and buy and try it. That just doesn't happen with any other RPG like it can with D&D.

 

[overgeeked]

But the fact that DnD has done so well certainly got me back into the hobby and led to me reading discussion boards, going to conventions and local gaming stores, and finding other games to try.

So you got back into gaming because 5E made a lot of money?

What other TTRPG has a company like Hasbro and its marketing power behind it?

None. That’s part of the problem.

If DnD were to go away, existing players might buy a lot more, but I think that fewer new people would be attracted to the hobby and it would sink back into being an obscure niche hobby.

Except you’re forgetting pop culture. The two main vectors for non-gamers finding out about D&D through pop culture over the last decade had been Stranger Things and Critical Role. Unless something drastic happens, CR and Stranger Things will continue to exist. They will keep going. CR is far more likely to continue putting out new content longer than Stranger Things. That’s not going away.

Word of mouth is still a thing. All the players that exist now, who like the hobby and want to keep engaging with it, will keep on doing so. Regardless of what D&D or WotC does. With D&D around, sucking up the majority of the money and audience, most fans will just stick with them. WotC sours enough fans or tanks the new edition, then interested fans will migrate to other games. We’ve literally been through this before with 4E and Paizo’s Pathfinder.

At a guess, the “new Pathfinder” will be Critical Role. All they have to do is put out a book of rules and their millions of fans will jump on it. If the rules are close to 5E, great. If not, their fans will still snatch it up. And just like that, you have a giant new competitor to D&D. They instantly have millions of eyes on their products and game system. Week after week after week. Oh, and their animated series on Amazon Prime. You want advertising that rivals Hasbro? There you go. I’d be surprised if they didn’t join up with MCDM to do something, considering they’re friends. Mercer can homebrew some classes and worldbuild better than most, but Colville has the design chops. CR has the fan base. WotC tanks it with the OGL…blam. “New Pathfinder.”

 

[pemerton]

Of course, WotC's commercial benefit is hardly our concern.

I didn't say it wasn't. But there are posters in this thread, and the other OGL threads, arguing that WotC is making a commercial mistake by proposing a different licensing regime for its revised SRD. I am saying that I think WotC is a more reliable judge of its commercial interests than are those posters.

 

[pemerton]

Lol. Let's shut down the whole discussion then.

Does the discussion have more to offer than ungrounded speculation about WotC's licensing plans and their commercial prospects?

As someone who regularly posts on these boards, almost always in the past six years about non-D&D play, I would say that one obstacle to the take-up of non-D&D games is that most posters seem to have a very strong preference for the D&D approach in which the GM controls backstory, and framing, and consequences. Whereas, the non-D&D games that I think are the most interesting are precisely those which depart from one or more of these key D&D premises.

Look at the thread on dungeon crawls, and see how many posters are not interested in dungeon crawl play beyond the aesthetics of being in a dungeon. Look at the thread on story, and see how many posters seem either ignorant of, or uninterested in, how extant RPGs like Apocalypse World or Burning Wheel support non-GM-authored story-oriented RPGing. Look at the threads on DM workloads, and see how few posts suggest that the solution to workloads is to adopt approaches that don't require the GM to do the work.

The success or failure of WotC's licensing plans is not going to change this basic orientation of the (apparent) bulk of RPGers.

 

[Maxperson]

I think it's certainly reasonable - more than reasonable - to wish for a permissive OGL if (i) you are a publisher whose business model depends on it, of (ii) you are a consumer of RPG products who wants the offerings of those licensed works.

But I'm not very persuaded by these attempts to argue that WotC doesn't know what it is doing in its own field of business, and hence that a permissive OGL is needed for WotC's own commercial benefit. I tend to think that WotC is the most reliable judge of that.

Bad business decisions happen all the time.

New Coke
The Edsel
The company that passed on buying Google for 750k
Blockbuster passing on Netflix at 50 million

Just to name a few.

 

[pemerton]

Bad business decisions happen all the time.

New Coke
The Edsel
The company that passed on buying Google for 750k
Blockbuster passing on Netflix at 50 million

Just to name a few.

No one says they don't. That doesn't give me any reason to think that anyone in this thread has a better grasp than WotC does of its commercial interests.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I didn't say it wasn't. But there are posters in this thread, and the other OGL threads, arguing that WotC is making a commercial mistake by proposing a different licensing regime for its revised SRD. I am saying that I think WotC is a more reliable judge of its commercial interests than are those posters.

Yeah, I don't know about that. I think they're making a consumer mistake, from my perspective.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, I don't know about that. I think they're making a consumer mistake, from my perspective.

Does a "consumer mistake, from your perspective" mean that you wish they would publish something different?

 

[pogre]

Malmuria I hope that was not your video, because I agree with much of your opening post, but the video was pure clickbait nonsense.

I would say that one obstacle to the take-up of non-D&D games is that most posters seem to have a very strong preference for the D&D approach in which the GM controls backstory, and framing, and consequences. Whereas, the non-D&D games that I think are the most interesting are precisely those which depart from one or more of these key D&D premises.

100%. Now, unlike you, I really enjoy running that kind of game.

However, like you, I enjoy running a number of other games - I would say at least 50% of the folks at my 5e games automatically pass on any campaign that is not 5e. They pass for precisely the reasons you mention - even though, I am not sure all of them would articulate it in this way.

 

[pemerton]

Now, unlike you, I really enjoy running that kind of game.

However, like you, I enjoy running a number of other games - I would say at least 50% of the folks at my 5e games automatically pass on any campaign that is not 5e. They pass for precisely the reasons you mention - even though, I am not sure all of them would articulate it in this way.

The closest I've come in recent years to running that sort of game is Torchbearer 2e, which uses GM-authored dungeons as a key element of play.

But I still suspect that Torchbearer, especially as my table approaches it, is more player-driven than many D&D players (and most D&D-only players) would prefer. The players made the main decisions that established PC backstory, and that set the overall agenda for our sessions (admittedly the game makes this pretty easy, by centring "get loot" as a key motivation for all characters).

So far I've had two sessions of play out of a 6-room dungeon that I wrote up in an afternoon, and expect to get at least another session out of it. I got two sessions out of the four-room house of one of the PCs' enemies, which again took an afternoon or an evening to write up. The system means that I don't need to do any prep for the PCs' time in town (it has its own framework for town events and in-town action resolution that drives downtime action).

It's about as low-prep as I can imagine a system getting that relies on the GM to provide D&D-style content, and if I was wanting to lower the barrier to entry for new D&D GMs, I'd be taking a look at some of the methods Torchbearer uses. Which I know is a bit off-topic, but to me seems more significant in thinking about how D&D sits in relation to other RPGs than speculating about the OGL.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

not sure about that, it was kicked to the curb faster than any other edition. It had a great first few months, then a steep drop off and a quick death with things getting cancelled (like Dragonlance 4e).

4e might have dropped of hard because the game stores (at least here in germany) did not stand behind that edition.
Maybe because the paper books were worthless after a few month. They had soo many errors in their first printing which were never corrected. Instead you needed online resources to keep up to date.
Actually that was the only time, I was a bit ashamed to like the current edition of D&D...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Yeah, I don't know about that. I think they're making a consumer mistake, from my perspective.

Which might be a good choice for wotc, because your preferences might be diametral to the popular demand.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Which might be a good choice for wotc, because your preferences might be diametral to the popular demand.

Maybe, but that does nothing for me and mine. I'm not responsible for WotC's profits, and I don't care if they make even more money. What I want is to have WotC's overbearing influence on gaming be less overbearing. This whole thing seems hell-bent on doing the opposite.

 

[mamba]

Which might be a good choice for wotc, because your preferences might be diametral to the popular demand.

If we were talking about game design you might have a point. I do not see how this at all translates to the OGL terms / who possibly could perceive them as an improvement. Best case for WotC they won't care or even know about it, and there will be enough of those.

 

[mamba]

4e might have dropped of hard because the game stores (at least here in germany) did not stand behind that edition.

Pretty sure they would have carried it if there had been demand, anything else is irrational

 

[overgeeked]

Maybe, but that does nothing for me and mine. I'm not responsible for WotC's profits, and I don't care if they make even more money. What I want is to have WotC's overbearing influence on gaming be less overbearing. This whole thing seems hell-bent on doing the opposite.

I wonder how dominant they have to be before it's a monopoly. I guess they could argue anyone can just make a game at any time, but that's irrelevant. It's essentially already a monopoly.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Maybe, but that does nothing for me and mine. I'm not responsible for WotC's profits, and I don't care if they make even more money. What I want is to have WotC's overbearing influence on gaming be less overbearing. This whole thing seems hell-bent on doing the opposite.

Ok. Never implied that.
Just said that regarding your estimation of what is a good or a bad decision by wotc.
I personall think it is a good idea for wotc to not do it as you like, because it would smaller their customer base.

That does not mean that I don't want your preferences to be supported in some way. I see nothing in the OGL 1.1 that prevents that.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

If we were talking about game design you might have a point. I do not see how this at all translates to the OGL terms / who possibly could perceive them as an improvement. Best case for WotC they won't care or even know about it, and there will be enough of those.

I did not specifically talked about that. But they hopefully have something planned that allows 3rd parties to do things that he likes.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Not sure that this is true. If it is, its sad. There is so much good 5e-compatible adventures and rules put out by third parties. I would like to think that the success of MCCM and Critical Role products, at least, so that the newer generation has an appetite for expanding their game with third-party content.

Of course it's true. And we know exactly how true it is EN World-wise by all the posters here who get all up in arms and argue and complain about the work WotC produces. Everything they make in books or in Unearthed Arcana playtest documents have people arrive here on the boards to go over all them with fine-toothed combs and complain about what they've made. Even people who admit they don't actually like or still play WotC-based 5E... still can't help but come here to rant and rave about what WotC does.

THAT tells us all we need to know about just how ubiquitous D&D 5E is. The very definition of "I wish I knew how to quit you." And why this hope of people that "the world of TTRPGs expands out beyond Wizards of the Coast" is I think a rather disingenuous complaint. All these people who want 3PPs or other RPGs to rise up out of the shadow that 5E is casting can't help themselves make the shadow even bigger by still keeping themselves handcuffed to 5E. They still keep involved in its development. They still want WotC to make D&D 5E rules changes in the style of games they want to play.

(General) you complain about WotC and their massive 5E game and how it crowds everybody else out... and yet rather than break ties with this game you feel is an anchor around the hobby... (general) you still care so much about how the game continues and what kinds of books and rules for it get released that you continually stayed involved and talk about it, thus perpetuating its influence. (General) you are as much responsible for WotC's 5E shadow as anyone.

You want me to believe you TRULY care about the larger TTRPG eco-system and want to bring other games and companies out from underneath the shadow of WotC? Break off from 5E once and for all. Stop giving them the press. Because every time you come here onto EN World to talk about it you are showing us all that you actually want to see WotC maintain its position.