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

[I'm A Banana]

In my mind, yes. I don't pretend to have any insight into how WotC sees it, but from a consumer's PoV, the end state of 3/3.5e 3rd party publishing was much better than the state right after release.

W0rd. Heck, Paizo apparently had so much success that they're not willing to totally jump ship just quite yet. You don't do that with something you're NOT successful with.

My pure speculation is that there will be effectively a two-tiered liscence. The GSL will be more restrictive, and it might boil down to "Make D&D supplements for us!" We definately won't see an SRD or anything like that, which is a bit of a shame, but only a bit. Many d20 companies will use the GSL to publish D&D supplements, things like monster manuals, campaign settings, cultural settings, things that WotC won't be really supplying to the market. There won't be a 4e flood, but I see different niches being served. In fact, the new definition of "core" might be advantageous for this, because it might allow 3rd party people to make stuff based off of WotC's newer supplements, too, to prevent re-inventing the wheel a bit.

The other liscence will come with d20 Modern 2nd Edition. This one will be much more open. d20M2e will be more of a kit. It will probably include the ability to take it into d20 Fantasy and d20 Future and other genres easily. This will be where much of the Interesting Things with the OGL will be happening.

So companies who want to make another Monster Manual will use the GSL. Companies who want to reverse-engineer the rules like True 20 or Spycraft or Mutants and Masterminds might be better off using the OGL and the new d20 Modern SRD, which, I'm guessing, will take a lot of the lessons learned in 4e and apply them going forward.

 

[Zinovia]

I'm buying it regardless of the license status. My hope is that third party publishers will be able to publish adventures and campaign settings. WotC hasn't provided much in the way of good adventures in the past compared to the 3rd parties.

I think the OGL didn't turn out the way WotC originally anticipated. Rather than a means for selling more core books, the SRD was published and became a free rules system for other people to build off of. Why should other companies get the full benefit of WotC's research and development of a new game? Sure, let them publish stuff - but not entire games based on WotC's rules. Most other games are not open source.

 

[xandore]

I generally only buy the core books and sometimes large adventures. I create my own campaign setting with campaign specific rules. I mostly create my own adventures, but have used a few from W.O.T.C. which closely fit my campaign. I'm already working on my 4e campaign. As soon as I get the new rulebooks I'll be able to start putting in specifics, like sorry no half-elves.

 

[Pale]

No.
*snip*

The wee suicidal one expressed my own feelings to a "T". Right down to the Necromancer Games clause.

 

[Pale]

That's true, but I certainly wouldn't go as far as to pity people who only play D&D, and don't check out Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, Runequest, Ars Magica, Feng Shui, etc.

I believe that he was more talking about 3rd-party D&D products. Like Tome of Horrors and Rappan Athuk for instance.

And... they did a d20 Ars Magica? Wow, that's either nothing like d20 or nothing like the original AM.

 

[Mercule]

Don't care. I have three or four 3rd party products for 3x and use exactly none of them. Adventures are my main interest for 3rd party, and I still really want to run Rappan Athuk sometime, though.

As far as new magic systems, new classes, new magic swag, etc. I just haven't seen anything worth my time or my players' time. Not that all WotC stuff is golden, just that I get enough usable stuff from them.

 

[SSquirrel]

See, I really question the truth of this.

When 3e hit the bricks, you had dozens, several dozen at least, of 3rd party publishers cranking out books. By the time 3.5 rolled around, the herd had thinned considerably. By this time last year, even before the 4e announcement, you had what, 4 maybe 5 companies producing D&D supplements?

In 8 years, we went from more companies than you could comfortably count, to about one hand worth of 3rd party publishers. And, of those, companies like Green Ronin were barely doing any 3e material.

Is that really a success? When the overwhelming majority of companies drop out of the field within 5 years?

Actually yes that is. You had MANY (100s likely if you count the purely pdf companies as well) companies producing d20 products as quickly as they could. Guess what, a lot of them sucked. Horribly so. Those companies are no longer with us. Those companies were part of what drove many game stores to not stock anything but WotC products.

The few remaining big companies doing print products are still here b/c they have proved they can produce product that is of good quality. The ones who made crap are gone and good riddance. You also have some who voluntarily stepped out like Monte. I think if anyone besides Necro would be able to easily obtain a 4E product license (if it was totally closed) besides Clark, it would be Monte. His work has been high quality, well balanced and just plain fun. Sadly, his upcoming 2nd pdf of houserules will be his last gaming product for awhile.

 

[hexgrid]

No.

Some of the best game material in the world has been produced by companies who are not WotC. Core be damned, if you are not checking out the 3rd party stuff, I kind of pity your games. There's stuff with production values on par with WotC products that contains daring, original, well-balanced, and incredibly imaginative stuff, and scads more things with slightly lower production values that utterly rock in ways WotC could only dream of.

3e has been a vast and intriguing menagerie of excellent game design, and I kind of pity those who don't partake of what is out there.

(snip)

I don't NEED 4e. 4e needs me.

You don't "NEED" anything beyond the first three books of any edition of D&D to run a fun game. Your pity is misplaced.

 

[Hussar]

Actually yes that is. You had MANY (100s likely if you count the purely pdf companies as well) companies producing d20 products as quickly as they could. Guess what, a lot of them sucked. Horribly so. Those companies are no longer with us. Those companies were part of what drove many game stores to not stock anything but WotC products.

The few remaining big companies doing print products are still here b/c they have proved they can produce product that is of good quality. The ones who made crap are gone and good riddance. You also have some who voluntarily stepped out like Monte. I think if anyone besides Necro would be able to easily obtain a 4E product license (if it was totally closed) besides Clark, it would be Monte. His work has been high quality, well balanced and just plain fun. Sadly, his upcoming 2nd pdf of houserules will be his last gaming product for awhile.

I take a different point of view. When 3e first hit, the field was open enough that it could support (at least for a while) lots and lots of publishers. Looking back to a year ago, we're down to about five. If 4e wasn't happening, and we were just continuing from 3.5, do you think the number of 3PP's would increase or decrease or stay the same?

If 4e wasn't coming, my prediction would have been that we'd be down to Paizo and Goodman games. Green Ronin was only producing a small handful of modules in their Bleeding Edge line. You had the Dragonlance bunch doing some very good quality, but terribly niche material. Who else?

If 3.5 had gone on for two more years, you wouldn't see any 3PP's doing D&D stuff at all.

 

[Wystan]

Necromancer would be there too....