D&D 4E Would you buy 4E if it were not open/had no licenses for 3rd party companies?

[xechnao]

creating a new system is not an answer, since you're basically relying on being able to tear away a chunk from original consumer base. Pathfinder RPG, because of its differences, is likely to become a product similar to 4E albeit with less of following.

True20 and other systems also suffer from the lack of compatibility - you either play 3.x or one of those.

But in the rpg industry you have to create new things. 3.5 needs and will be evolved because as it is, regarding product support it has already surpassed its limits.

 

[Hussar]

I only elaborated as to why, because Hussar asked. I didn't and don't want to turn this thread into a simulationism versus gamism debate. Unlike you, I do like simulationist aspects in my D&D, so you "nor should D&D be a simulation game", is a value judgment on your part worded as if it were an objective statement. Suffice it to say that my value judgment is different, and I like a higher degree of simulationism in my games than 4E is projected to provide. That does not mean that I would like transform D&D into a completely simulationist game, but rather that I would have liked to see designers take simulationism deliberately into account when designing the game and not discarding it entirely. To tie this back into the topic of the thread. It is precisely the provision of more simulationism and of the classic flavor that I would desire from 3rd party products and some degree of openness would be required for that. Direct licensing could, in theory, do the trick, but more likely than not, WotC would then require 3rd parties to follow its 4e philosophy....

BTW, because I forgot to say so, thank you for sharing.

Really, I have zero problems with someone who says they don't like a game. That's groovy. And, sometimes, it helps to know why they don't like the game, because it might just be that they don't like the game because of something they heard on the intarwebs.

Roman, OTOH, has some very solid reasons for not liking 4e and I pretty much agree that 4e, at least from what we've seen, likely won't be a good game for him.

I'd much MUCH rather people find a game that is a good fit rather than bitch and moan about how game X just doesn't fit their playstyle. Considering the HUGE amount of great games there are out there, I can never understand why people insist on staying with D&D when it just doesn't fit - and they know it.

 

[Hussar]

The licenses weren't open, though, were they?

And, I think that's what I was trying to get at. There were a number of D&D clones out there that Gygax himself denounced from the pages of The Strategic Review and then The Dragon. These were not licensed, but created pretty much entirely in violation of copyright.

Licensed products like Judges Guild is no different than if 4e were entirely closed but then spun off, say, Dragonlance to another company. Or, consider Kenzer with the Kingdoms of Kalamar line which has nothing to do with WOTC setting IP. ((/edit Thanks Mourn My brain is turning to jello. ))

So, I think your comparison is very off. Back in the day, D&D was always 100% closed content, it's just that either you had licensed product or copyright violations.

Then again, TSR wasn't exactly immune to those either.

 

[The Little Raven]

Iron Kingdoms

Kingdoms of Kalamar.

 

[Ingolf]

Or, consider Kenzer with the Iron Kingdoms line which has nothing to do with WOTC setting IP. ((That is the right setting isn't it? My brain is turning to jello. ))

Kingdoms of Kalamar

So, I think your comparison is very off. Back in the day, D&D was always 100% closed content, it's just that either you had licensed product or copyright violations.

Then again, TSR wasn't exactly immune to those either.

By the time the cease-and-desist letters went out to people hosting campaign websites, I had been away from AD&D for over a decade. As someone who (at the time) owned an original copy of Deities and Demogods full of copyrighted material that TSR had ripped off, I found the whole thing a little bit ironic.

 

[Hussar]

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The funny thing is, most of those forums violate the OGL anyway. I have never seen an OGL listed under any of the posts, I have seen numerous examples of stuff posted that isn't OGC and yet, we've never had a problem.

The existence of the OGL doesn't particularly apply to fan material. If WOTC, today, wanted to shut down most of the forums here, it would not be a problem. They violate OGL regularly.

 

[Imban]

As I said earlier, it's very important to me that 4e has external licensing in some form, to the point where I'm probably not going to give a crap about the game for very long if it doesn't. WotC books, especially late in 3.5e, weren't exactly shining gems of rules quality, and they didn't (and couldn't be expected to) cover nearly the depth and breadth of stuff that third-party material covered.

So, as long as I stayed with more respectable third-party sources (AEG, Atlas, Fantasy Flight, Goodman, Green Ronin, Kenzer, Malhavoc, Necromancer, Sovereign, and White Wolf, to name a few), I'd be getting about the rules quality WotC was putting out, and over an amazingly wide range of topics. (PDF publishing was more of a blah. I love Dreamscarred Press, but they're the only PDF publisher I can think of that I'd miss.)

I'm in favor of open licensing because any sort of paid license imposes a financial burden on licensors, which can cause them to not enter the market in the first place, far more than I'm in favor of it because of personal ideals. Sure, the OGL was nice, but I'd be willing to trade the OGL for a GSL that let you use and supplement classes beyond the original corebooks any day. I'm very concerned, however, about the possibility that there will be no, or drastically less, external licensing. That would suck for me in all sorts of ways.

 

[Hussar]

As I said earlier, it's very important to me that 4e has external licensing in some form, to the point where I'm probably not going to give a crap about the game for very long if it doesn't. WotC books, especially late in 3.5e, weren't exactly shining gems of rules quality, and they didn't (and couldn't be expected to) cover nearly the depth and breadth of stuff that third-party material covered.

Huh? Tome of Magic, Bo9S, Fiendish Codex I and II, PHB II, DMG II, all were late WOTC books. What was wrong with the quality of those?

So, as long as I stayed with more respectable third-party sources (AEG, Atlas, Fantasy Flight, Goodman, Green Ronin, Kenzer, Malhavoc, Necromancer, Sovereign, and White Wolf, to name a few), I'd be getting about the rules quality WotC was putting out, and over an amazingly wide range of topics. (PDF publishing was more of a blah. I love Dreamscarred Press, but they're the only PDF publisher I can think of that I'd miss.)

Funnily enough, most of the companies on your list are out of D&D and have been for some time - AEG, FFG, Malhavoc, White Wolf.

I'm in favor of open licensing because any sort of paid license imposes a financial burden on licensors, which can cause them to not enter the market in the first place, far more than I'm in favor of it because of personal ideals. Sure, the OGL was nice, but I'd be willing to trade the OGL for a GSL that let you use and supplement classes beyond the original corebooks any day. I'm very concerned, however, about the possibility that there will be no, or drastically less, external licensing. That would suck for me in all sorts of ways.

This I agree with.

 

[Mistwell]

That's not necessarily a reason for not supporting OGL. We're all here because of one base system and its openness serves the purpose of maintaining ties among users of vastly differing games.

That's how ENWORLD would look like without OGL... and that's how it may looks a few years from now if the OGL dies down:


Regards,
Ruemere

Scare tactics like that seem weak to me.

Again, you can have licensing without an OGL. In fact, most folks agree, including even the bigger proponents of the OGL among 3rd party companies, that the likelihood is that even without an OGL the bigger companies will probably obtain special licenses.

Nor is there any indication at all that WOTC will crack down on things like free conversions and fan created things.

Folks should advocate for the OGL on it's own merits. If you have to turn to exaggerations and scare tactics to get your message across, then your message probably isn't a very convincing one on it's own.

 

[ruemere]

Check out the bold parts:

Scare tactics like that seem weak to me.

Again, you can have licensing without an OGL. In fact, most folks agree, including even the bigger proponents of the OGL among 3rd party companies, that the likelihood is that even without an OGL the bigger companies will probably obtain special licenses.

Nor is there any indication at all that WOTC will crack down on things like free conversions and fan created things.

Folks should advocate for the OGL on it's own merits. If you have to turn to exaggerations and scare tactics to get your message across, then your message probably isn't a very convincing one on it's own.

Without license to rely on, all you can do is guessing. And, please do elaborate, why you seem to think that the answer to the fracture already taking place is limited to "Folks should advocate for the OGL on it's own merits" and "bigger companies will probably obtain special licenses".

For now the prospects are grim:
- OGL heavyweights pulling in different directions,
- 4E license details unknown, but already requiring investments,
- 4E early adopter phase apparently a failure due to lack of information,
- community base fracturing.

To me, the existence of shared consumer base made it possible for smaller third party publishers to bring us a lot of gems. And so I am concerned.

Regards,
Ruemere