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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 6218701" data-attributes="member: 3400">I can see where you may get that, but I don't agree with all of your points. For one thing, shifting production from one edition to the next is pretty normal within the industry. GDW stopped production of MegaTraveller material when they published Traveller: New Era (losing the support of third party Digest Group Publications in the event). R Talsorian stopped production of Cyberpunk 2013 in favor of Cyberpunk 2020. Villains and Vigilantes had an adventure in development when they shifted from 1st to 2nd edition and so published stats for both editions in one adventure, but every adventure after that was all 2nd edition. So I don't think it was really arrogance that drove WotC to do the same for materials when going from 2e to 3e. That was simply the standard practice. Why would you split your company's resources on two editions rather than focus on the current, in print one? 3e was a significant change from 2e's mechanics in many ways, sure, but WotC took steps to ameliorate the problems that could arise from the change. They published a free conversion document that, in many ways, made the conversion fairly easy. The changes to multiclassing meant those characters need more significant reinterpretation. But, overall, game play could often proceed in a very similar manner and I, at least, found the transition to be pretty easy and smooth. Most adventures weren't hard to convert at all. Dragon magazine was also a pretty useful resource at this time with a lot of supporting articles on the new game.Where you see arrogance in the 3e edition change, I see a company working to smooth the transition and foster the adoption of the new edition rather than simply ramming it down our throats. Moreover, the open license meant someone could produce other materials to ease the transition or provide tips on analyzing and playing the game. They may not have done so with an ant's humility, true, I really can't see what they were about then as being a function of arroganceContrast that with the 4e change and I see a company really excited about what it was doing, selling (!) some of its major marketing efforts as books, and making a game that allowed for no easy campaign transition. They were upfront about that, but the company had gone from making a game that was different but allowed for adaptation to one that was different and didn't allow for easy adaptation. If you had a long-running campaign from previous editions, they didn't seem too interested in compatibility. That was info and developments coming from the creative end of the game, but the business end was busy too. They produced an initial license that prevented third party producers from supporting multiple editions or producing dual stat products capable of being used by both the old and new editions. Now that's arrogant.I suspect WotC deliberately went out to try to kill the companies working the OGL in support of 3e assuming that the vast majority of D&D players out there would transition to 4e and cause the OGL product market to collapse. I won't put that on the R&D team at WotC. By pretty much all accounts, they get along fine with companies like Paizo and Green Ronin. But someone devised the GSL and made it pretty toxic, keeping most companies out of 4e material production and keeping companies from fully supporting both editions. Fortunately for those of us who didn't like the way 4e gameplay changed D&D, they couldn't take back the OGL and a company like Paizo was able to produce a version of D&D that we enjoyed.</blockquote>

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