I touched on this in another thread, but I think it's worth discussing separately.
When 3E was released and the OGL and D20 STL were introduced, it was, without question, a huge boon for the gaming industry. WotC was willingly and freely giving other companies access to the rules and even lots of the IP of Dungeons & Dragons, making it possible for the first time for third parties to create and sell products that were explicitly derived from and/or connected to the most popular RPG of all time. Not only did this help many new companies get started and make profits, it also helped support 3E and ensure that the new edition took hold and flourished.
The ease with which the OGL/D20 STL could be used and the (seemingly) easy money of the early days led to a glut of bad product that damaged the D20 brand to an extent (how much is a matter of debate). But, even with that, there's no denying that the OGL had been a success, an amazing gift that allowed previously non-existent companies to arise and prosper. Though many D20 companies died, not all of them did and there are at least a few -- Paizo, for example -- still existing who owe their very existence to the Open Gaming movement.
This was a blessing.
But then came v.3.5, which was unexpected and unwanted and, from what I have gathered, it was this revision that mortally wounded an already-hurting D20 market. Many companies dropped D20 support as a result; many more died entirely -- all because WotC made a decision that was good for its business and without concern for how it'd affect third party publishers (I should make it clear I'm not attributing malice or even negligence to WotC. I am simply saying that its rational business decision was almost certainly made without taking D20 publishers into account and, frankly, there's no reason why it should have been otherwise).
Therein lies a curse. WotC will do what WotC will do for their own reasons and no one else's. It seems to me that, while the OGL gives unprecedented access to a piece (albeit a small one) of the D&D pie, it comes with a steep price, namely being at the mercy of WotC's future decisions, whatever they may be. There is no way for a third party publisher to plan for the springing of a new revision, edition, or other major change on the gaming public. That means that, in the event such a thing occurs, they're left scrambling. Just look at Paizo now and you'll see a good example of what I mean. The OGL binds a third party's fate to that of WotC's unpredictable future decisions and that limits the ability of a third party to plan for its own future.
The conclusion I draw from this is that, unless a company wishes to forever remain beholden to WotC's decisions, it is in their best interests to use the OGL to find their own path and forge their own destiny. Both Green Ronin and Mongoose provide examples of companies that have created their own games and IPs from the D20 base and run with them, expanding and developing the original systems (and even developing new, non-D20 systems), in the process making themselves "edition proof." You see no fretting or angst at companies like this about the advent of 4E. They can make their decisions based on their own assessment of the market and their customers, not WotC's.
I'd like to see Paizo survive and prosper. Whether they go 4E or not, I'd like to encourage them to think of the currently unimaginable future when 5E or whatever is on the horizon. Do they want to be in the same position they are today, worrying about which way to jump and which fans they may or may not lose by doing so? I wouldn't think so, which is why I hope they'll see the OGL for what it really is: a gift with a large hidden price tag.
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Of course the counter point is the software industry.
If you want to run a firm that creates software for Windows then you do it with the full knowledge that Windows will change and your code will need to be redone.
You could write your own OS but then you would be a very small fish in a very big pond, strugling to survive.
If a company wants to ride the D&D train then edition changes are going to need to be part of their business plan.
Of course the counter point is the software industry.
If you want to run a firm that creates software for Windows then you do it with the full knowledge that Windows will change and your code will need to be redone.
You could write your own OS but then you would be a very small fish in a very big pond, strugling to survive.
If a company wants to ride the D&D train then edition changes are going to need to be part of their business plan.
Of course, the analogy only goes so far... I'm pretty sure Microsoft gave more than 12 months warning on Vista coming out.
And the Dev-Kit equivalent would be the SRD... or at least a draft of the SRD, or the play-test version or something. And no third-party company has recieved that yet.
So while the analogy is a good one... Microsoft does a better job in ensuring that there are programs out for the new system, otherwise there isn't an impetus to be an early-adopter and update.
If a company wants to ride the D&D train then edition changes are going to need to be part of their business plan.
Agreed, but what I am suggesting is that maybe riding the D&D train forever isn't good business. D&D may dominate RPG sales but it is not the only game in town. And the RPG industry is not one where the only viable business model is following WotC's lead. Now, it may be that Paizo is simply too big a company (but simultaneously and ironically not large enough) to blaze its own trail independent of whatever WotC is doing. It may be that true independence from WotC's plans is financial disaster for Paizo. I simply don't know if any of this is the case.
All I hope is that Paizo is looking on the chaos, second-guessing, and uncertainty caused by the announcement of 4E -- to their business plans, nothing more -- and seriously considering the possibility that their current situation is bound to repeat again in the future if they continue to conceive of themselves as a support company for D&D. Maybe the rewards of this approach outweigh all the confusion and last minute scrambling. If so, I can't argue against the path they've chosen. But if it is the case, as it's implied through various forum posts here and elsewhere, that 4E has caused Paizo unexpected and unwelcome distraction from what they'd really like to be doing right now, I think it behooves them to look for alternative approaches in the future.
That's all. I don't have a horse in this race because I've already dropped out of the D&D. I just like the Paizo guys and want to see them succeed.
Agreed, but what I am suggesting is that maybe riding the D&D train forever isn't good business. D&D may dominate RPG sales but it is not the only game in town. And the RPG industry is not one where the only viable business model is following WotC's lead. Now, it may be that Paizo is simply too big a company (but simultaneously and ironically not large enough) to blaze its own trail independent of whatever WotC is doing. It may be that true independence from WotC's plans is financial disaster for Paizo. I simply don't know if any of this is the case.All I hope is that Paizo is looking on the chaos, second-guessing, and uncertainty caused by the announcement of 4E -- to their business plans, nothing more -- and seriously considering the possibility that their current situation is bound to repeat again in the future if they continue to conceive of themselves as a support company for D&D. Maybe the rewards of this approach outweigh all the confusion and last minute scrambling. If so, I can't argue against the path they've chosen. But if it is the case, as it's implied through various forum posts here and elsewhere, that 4E has caused Paizo unexpected and unwelcome distraction from what they'd really like to be doing right now, I think it behooves them to look for alternative approaches in the future.
That's all. I don't have a horse in this race because I've already dropped out of the D&D. I just like the Paizo guys and want to see them succeed.
I find myself feeling similiarly but differently to what Maliszew is saying here.
When I got back in the hobby, I started with Pathfinder and built my new 3.5 core rule books around the need to run it. And honestly, many of my other resources were given or lent to me by my players. But I've said that before so I won't belabor it.
Sometimes I do think.. what if Paizo switches to 4th edition.. what does it mean to me? Practically speaking it means a DMG, a PHB, and a Monster Manual.. and maybe any other source book like Psionics that might end up OGL.
I'm going to be relying on Paizo to make the other resources that I need to available, or buy them from other third party companies that make an OGL product.
Yeah, it crosses my mind sometimes, that wouldn't it be simpler just to cut the unnecessary part of this equation out altogether? I buy campaign setting oriented AP's like Pathfinder because I lack time to put a high quality presentation together. If WOTC comes out with 5 additional Monster Manuals I won't be using them, because they won't be OGL, and if my campaign setting can't use them, what good are they to me?
There was a time when I was younger that I might have questioned how much further I wanted to go with something like Pathfinder because they might not be able to support the new Edition. But frankly, there's not enough wrong with 3.5 to jump to that conclusion
But I'm not sticking to Maliszew's topic: Simply put, if I have to get most of my material from Paizo, why not get all of it?
Then again, I am in an odd kind of catagory. Despite what I've said about a new paradigm forming where the rules are secondary to the campaign setting, I read these boards and have to suspect that I'm in the vast minority. Other posters still seem focused on the rules; albeit that they're not changing, or they're considering it but haven't made that a final decision. I'm not focused on what the rules do at all, but rather what the campaign setting does.
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... maybe riding the D&D train forever isn't good business. D&D may dominate RPG sales but it is not the only game in town. And the RPG industry is not one where the only viable business model is following WotC's lead.
True. Trouble is that D&D is far and away the biggest game in town.
If Paizo wants to be the Apple to WotC's Microsoft it will need to be more like Mongoose. Run d20/OGL at the same time it develops its own niche.
Let's face, in $$$ WotC is probably as big as all the other RPG companies combined - if not bigger.
Independent RPG companies are typically small ventures that cater to a small fan base. They stay small with Whit Wolf being slightly bigger then the others.
It may not be a good thing to build and sustain a company based on the intellectual property of others but its also nod such a sound idea to move too far afield to quickly.
Notice how many companies stuck with XP?
<shrug>
Working in the IT field as I do, I'd say this is common for any new OS release. How long did it take businesses to upgrade from 2000 to XP? Or from NT/98 to 2000, for that matter? It's purely a matter of amortization of IT equipment/software and the incremental nature of network upgrades.
I wouldn't expect a wide adoption of Vista in the corporate sector for another couple years. It will take that long for application software to be re-written and enough workstations/servers to be replaced/upgraded for it to be economically feasible for most companies to switch (and purchase the licenses).
Getting back OT, Hasbro/WotC is in a similar position as MicroSoft: because they have such a large influence on the market, it's difficult for other developers to compete directly without hampering their ability to sell their product. The 3.x OGL, while initially developed by WoTC, is more like LINUX. However, 4e (much like Vista) will probably become the most widely used system, as long as it's at least decent (and WotC makes enough profit on it to keep Hasbro happy).
The software comparision isn't a good analogy for two simple reasons: back compatability and patches.
A program that ran on Win98 probably also ran on WinME with few to no problems. Plenty of software that was written for Win98 can run on Vista with a patch to fix the things that were changed from edition to edition. Loading a patch doesn't take that long and then you never think about it again.
Compare that with RPGs. For most new editions, crunch that was written for a previous edition is completely incompatable. Fluff generally still works, unless you're throwing out everything that was done in the past (like 4E) and creating all new fluff as well. A better analogy would be writing photoshop add-ons for the MAC and switching to MS Word add-ons for the PC.
The RPG equivilent of a patch would be to write new crunch for your existing fluff. That works great for RPGs as long as D&Ds fluff stayed the same (oops), and if it would be easy to insert pages inside your book with the new stat block. Sure it's ok for an adventure, but what about the Tome of Horrors? No way.
To the OP, the OGL is not a curse, merely a fact of life for freelancers/3rd party companies. If anything its a great blessing in that an unknown has a great place to start out in and plenty of room to grow. Goodman and Mongoose have very different business plans. Goodman wants to stay a 3rd party provider; Mongoose wants to stand on their own. What the Necromancer/Paizo alliance decides to do is up to them and what they feel are best for their companies. Yea, not having total control over the direction of your company isn't wonderful, but its more like sailing a ship. You can fight the current or find the path that works best with it.
Let's face, in $$$ WotC is probably as big as all the other RPG companies combined - if not bigger.
In market share alone WotC-D&D is ~50% of the total market. This excludes all other WotC games and the rest of the d20 market. White Wolf is #2 with all of their games combined totalling about 21-22% of the total market.
But then came v.3.5, which was unexpected and unwanted and, from what I have gathered, it was this revision that mortally wounded an already-hurting D20 market.
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How do you figure that?3.5 WAS needed, and fixed things that needed fixing.
Perfect? No. Better? Oh, absolutely!
How do you figure that?
Granted, the changes were needed, but the fact of the matter is is that 3.0 lasted 3 years and 3.5 was a new edition in every way but name (The book count was reset, books were largely incompatable, its a new edition). WotC didn't prepare anyone for it. So many companies found out that they could have products that they spent quite some time (and money) developing suddenly become obselete before they were even released.
Adventures don't sell well, never have, never will. And with the exception of a few, most adventure producing companies didn't survive. Some that did saw that WotC did and realized that they wanted to be charge of their own fate instead of waiting around for the rug to be pulled out from under them again.
I thought a big part of the reason for why third party publishers got out of the game was that WotC rewrote their d20 brand policies around the time of the Book of Erotic Fantasy. Sudddenly d20 publishers were bound to various subjective rules, and faced penalties that included forcible pulling of already sold books. Worst of all, these rules were retroactive, meaning that you couldn't even be sure that an old published book would be ok the next time WotC rewrote their policy.
One does wonder why they did that...
Hmm...
This reminds me of a Monte Cook Podcast I listened to at some point.
Monte Cook noted that when he worked for I.C.E. their entire goal was to pick up a piece of Dungeons and Dragons pie. Essentially their entire customer base came from players that had played D&D and wanted something a little more gritty. If D&D caught a cold I.C.E. died of pneumonia essentially.
WOTC is so huge and so integral to the current market that if it does well pretty much all the smaller publishers do better. If it takes a major hit (as in the dark days at the end of the 1990s with TSR) all the other publishers find their bottom line gets hurt.
Striking off in your own direction means deciding that your never going to have more then a tiny fraction of the overall market. If you stick with holding on to WOTCs apron strings your subject to their marketing decisions potentially hurting your bottom line but on the other hand you can probably pick up a fair number of sales from D&D fans and their is a small possibility that you make the next great add on product for D&D.
The one thats on everyones lips. The one that every D&D player sees as a must have. Should that miracle befall your little company and the millions of D&D players start snatching up your product every employee in the company (all 8 of them) gets to retire to the Bahama's.
There is risk but there is some potential for a phenomenal reward as well.
I thought a big part of the reason for why third party publishers got out of the game was that WotC rewrote their d20 brand policies
My understanding is that was the final nail in the coffin. Mongoose and Green Ronin (as far as I understand it) were looking to expand into a house system and this just made the decision final.
Striking off in your own direction means deciding that your never going to have more then a tiny fraction of the overall market.
No matter what currently (hitched to d20's wagon or not), any company that is not Paizo, Necro, or Goodman, is looking at a tiny market share. How many game tables are WotC only? A serious amount. There's a reason why these companies specialize in DM products, because the DM can make a "WotC only" rule and break it as (s)he sees fit "to throw something unexpected at their players." The market for non-WotC player products isn't really there anymore.