Okay, so I've been stumbling around the house, thinking about this and nodding while my wife talks about something else which I'm not really listening to. I'm walking through some lines of thought -- not sure I believe any of this, mind you, but I'm walking through it.
First of all, Wizards and Paizo had a relationship that we assume was good -- they've never said it wasn't good. But that doesn't mean that it WAS a good relationship. It's possible -- probable -- that there were tensions and challenges, and especially now that Paizo has really thrown down the gauntlet with their excellent writing and production values, it's not hard to imagine that Wizards doesn't see Paizo as a former ally, but as a current adversary in the market -- if not really competition for volume, then at least for design respect, etc.
Another train of thought . . . The SRD, on which so much since the launch of 3.0 has been based, wasn't made available to anyone before the original 3.0 books were released. Those companies that are heavily invested now in 3.5 didn't exist in this way before 3.0, and the formed themselves out of primordial gamer clay after the original release of 3.0. SO . . . there really is no precendent for Wizards to follow right now. We might all like to see them be much more open with the new game, but expecting them to make a new 4.0 SRD/GSL available before the public release of the game is not asking them to continue the way they've operated in the past, it's asking them to do something they have no real business need to do. Remember, they've pretty much given up on any serious book sales for the past year, since the announced 4e last gen con. I don't have any numbers, but I can't imagine that the sales of the fluff books they have released this year have been anything like the numbers for books they've produced in the past. The payoff for that lean year is a year of big numbers as the new version comes out, and a honeymoon period as they're the ONLY company with content for the new version. I can understand a lot of business managers sitting back and asking "why in the heck would you give that up"?
It's like, yesterday, when I knew I would be going to a bar for dinner, and not wanting to go over my weightwatchers points for the day, so I limped along all day on just a few points for each meal, drinking a lot of water, so that I would have enough points for the bacon cheeseburger at the bar. Once I got to the bar, if you had asked me to let someone else eat my burger and settle for a nice diet frozen dinner instead, I might just have punched you in the nose. I can't really recommend that anyone ask me for a bite of my burger, even. You might just want to keep your hands and feet away from the table when it's burger time, that's all I'm saying.
So . . . I guess I can see how the decisions that have apparently been made at Wizards (made through inaction or delay, if not through solid direction and leadership) might not be bad business. I can wish, though, that they would have done things differently. I wish that they had not promised some sort of gsl with the potential for an early bird deal for publishers willing to pony up some "are you serious" cash. I wish that they had had the balls and sense of purpose to say "We can't make the final game available until the launch, after the launch we'll talk about the SRD/GSL". It's not the decisions that I really disapprove of, it's the methods and the relationship they have with the community that bothers me. Make a decision, live up to it, and stand up and tell people what you're doing. Even if the community doesn't like the decision, it's going to be far less painful to deal with it in an upright manner than it is to deal with the slow death of this sort of mess.
All of this doesn't really get into what we're planning to play. My experience with 4e as a game, divorced from the companies and issues around it's production, is positive enough for me to have no doubt in my mind about what I'll be playing 6 months from now. I think the designers who've worked on the game have really done some terrific work.
I wish that this mess were not out there, though. it's going to keep a lot of people in the community from being able to try the new edition with an open mind.
-j
