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

[FabioMilitoPagliara]

99% of my rpg are closed so why I should care?

but I think they will leave it open enough for the making of adventures, monster/class books and adventure worlds

 

[Flynn]

I'll buy the first three core rulebooks (PHB1, MM1, DMG1) whether 4E is closed or open. My reason is simple: one of my friends will be running a 4E game someday, and I'll want to play. Therefore, I may as well have the basic rules.

However, I've already decided that the only books I'll buy after that are those which have Open Content, under whatever license they care to publish under. Having gone through purchasing all the 3E books and about half of the v3.5 books before hitting Buyer's Burnout, I have decided that I will only pick up 4E books that contain material that a third-party publisher can use. I dabble in third-party publishing as a minor hobby, and so this seems like a good decision point to determine whether I should pick something up or not.

If WOTC does not follow through on their word and publish Open Content, I can almost guarantee you that within a year, someone will publish a 4E-compatible OGL product similar to OSRIC for the sole purpose of allowing people to publish 4E-compatible OGL products of their own. Sure, it might say Talents instead of Powers or something like that, but I'm pretty sure we'll see it.

My Two Coppers, Anyway,
Flynn

 

[shadowguidex]

I won't touch 3rd party books anyway, so I don't care. I write my own adventures and I hate non-core splat garbage that that vast majority of 3rd party supplements offer.

 

[Aezoc]

See, I really question the truth of this.

<snip>

Is that really a success? When the overwhelming majority of companies drop out of the field within 5 years? When you have basically five companies competing for the 20% of the market not dominated by WOTC? ((Note, that figure is totally made up))

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.

When 3e came out, the 3rd party market was basically flooded, because the barrier to entry was so low (at least for PDF publishing). There was a lot of stuff that was ridiculously unbalanced, or had poorly thought-out mechanics (or both). Part of that is unavoidable I think, since everyone's still relatively unfamiliar with the rules at that stage. But over time, I think the bad stuff got mostly filtered out, and by and large the remaining publishers were the ones making the best-quality stuff. (That's not meant to imply that every publisher who didn't make it was bad, definitely not the case. But the bad ones were weeded out by the market.) So I, as a consumer, don't have as many 3rd party options now as I did then, but I've got a much higher degree of confidence when I make a purchase that it's going to be worth the money.

<pure speculation>I imagine the smaller number and higher quality of 3rd party publishers now is a good thing from WotC's point of view too, since a glut of poor 3rd party support for D&D doesn't do their brand any favors. My hunch is that 4e will see some sort of "open" license for 3rd party support, but I think they are probably trying to retain some measure of control over it, unlike with the OGL. As I said, I don't think the deluge of initial 3rd party 3e products did them any favors, and I know there are specific types of products (i.e. BoEF) they would like to be able to prevent.</pure speculation>

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

"Open" or a normal so-called "Closed" product is irrelevant to me, so I'm going to buy it no matter.

Though thinking about it, I think I really wanted an open D&D 4. At least the core books should be open. I mean, how am I supposed to read the text if the books are closed? I don't have X-Ray vision!

On the other hand, if the back is good enough, it still looks nice on the shelf, even (or rather: especially?) when closed.

 

[Li Shenron]

I don't know if I'll buy it this time, but my decision is not affected by the licenses.

 

[delericho]

The presence or lack of 3rd party support for 4e will have no bearing on my willingness to buy 4e. Of the companies I used to look out for, most have now moved on (Paizo, Green Ronin, Malhavoc), leaving only a couple of significant players for me (Goodman Games, Necromancer). If 4e is closed, that would be unfortunate, but not a huge loss.

However, if 4e is closed, that would make me much more likely to buy in to Pathfinder (as well as 4e, or instead), since I would expect much of the support to go there.

 

[an_idol_mind]

If the game is good and something I can use, it doesn't matter if it's open content or not.

Of course, the big benefit of an open content game is that other companies get a crack at the system and put their own spin on things. I'm currently not very interested in WotC's apparent vision for 4th edition, but if some good 3rd party material comes out, then it might make the core books worth buying to me.

 

[Wormwood]

No other RPG I play is 'open', so why should I care if 4e is?

 

[TerraDave]

I would buy with much less enthusiasm...

Bah. GSL or no GSL, I intend to keep making new hacks for ego bucks.

Oh yeah. Some little legal thing doesn't stop what I do or post or host on my own.