I find the irony that 4e's biggest cheerleader isnt going 4e/GSL hysterical.
I find it sad... I find much of the events surrounding 4e sad though. It's been sort of like watching a train crash in slow motion. You see where the tracks are broken, watch the engine pile into it, then one after the other the cars slowly piling into the back in a giant jumble.
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I find the irony that 4e's biggest cheerleader isnt going 4e/GSL hysterical.I find it sad... I find much of the events surrounding 4e sad though. It's been sort of like watching a train crash in slow motion. You see where the tracks are broken, watch the engine pile into it, then one after the other the cars slowly piling into the back in a giant jumble.
It's both. Hysterical for the sheer amount of incompetence it must have taken on WotC's part to piss off one of the biggest 4e fans out there in terms of 3PP, and sad for just that exact same reason. WotC is, apparently, being run by the lawyers and marketing department, or at least certainly not the actual fans of the game, and Hasbro doesn't care. (As evidenced by their recent profit reports - Wizards is only even mentioned at all for the sales growth of card games in Japan)
Wow. I beginning to think more and more that the GSL is the biggest mistake that WotC made in the 4E rollout. And this from someone who had a subscription to Dragon since the early Eighties.
If Necromancer Games can't accept the GSL ... wow.
Paizo is looking smarter and smarter for keeping with the OGL.
It's both. Hysterical for the sheer amount of incompetence it must have taken on WotC's part to piss off one of the biggest 4e fans out there in terms of 3PP, and sad for just that exact same reason. WotC is, apparently, being run by the lawyers and marketing department, or at least certainly not the actual fans of the game, and Hasbro doesn't care.
Well I am a little happy about this because it means Clark is more likely to develop stuff for PRPG. However I really think a healthy third party license from WotC would help the gaming community as a whole.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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It's both. Hysterical for the sheer amount of incompetence it must have taken on WotC's part to piss off one of the biggest 4e fans out there in terms of 3PP, and sad for just that exact same reason. WotC is, apparently, being run by the lawyers and marketing department, or at least certainly not the actual fans of the game, and Hasbro doesn't care.Well I am a little happy about this because it means Clark is more likely to develop stuff for PRPG. However I really think a healthy third party license from WotC would help the gaming community as a whole.
You think as I do.
I think I can officially take off my tin foil hat since it would appear that I am not crazy.
While I have pretty much decided I'm sticking with Pathfinder, I have to say after seeing that the system was better than I had feared it would be, I kind of wished for some 3pp support, for example, to create a campaign setting that was truly designed with the rules in mind, and for some really good, deep adventures to show what the system can do in more ways than just encounter design.
WOTC has a fairly good handle on rules and what they want them to do (though I do think there were some things rushed out the door), but they really have failed to "frame" 4th edition as well as they could have by having a 4th edition specific campaign setting or some killer "must run" adventures ready for the game.
Leaving the heavy lifting of the campaign to individual DMs or assuming that they will "spice up" less than stellar adventures isn't going to bring in anyone on the fence, but 3rd party support that shows what the rules can do with the right people working with them certainly would.
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Leaving the heavy lifting of the campaign to individual DMs or assuming that they will "spice up" less than stellar adventures isn't going to bring in anyone on the fence, but 3rd party support that shows what the rules can do with the right people working with them certainly would.
i still think part of the reason the gsl exists is that WotC was tired of being outdone (badly) by 3pp creative minds. it almost seemed like EVERYONE did d&d better than WotC, especially in the adventure and campaign setting arenas.
like i said in another thread, WotC is pretty good at crunch, but they've never made me believe they could write a decent adventure, or really follow through with a campaign setting...
like i said in another thread, WotC is pretty good at crunch, but they've never made me believe they could write a decent adventure, or really follow through with a campaign setting...
One of the problems they have with campaign settings is that, other than the initial Campaign Setting book, if Random Campaign Setting Sourcebook doesn't sell as well as Complete Ferret Rancher, even if Random Campaign Setting Sourcebook made money, if it didn't make as much money as Complete Ferret Rancher, they assume that they could have made more money for the amount of time and effort they put into the project.
Its not unreasonable to want a good return on your effort, but at the same time, perhaps the solution is to put out the CS book, then farm out the setting books to a publisher that is happy with the profit margin from the Campaign Setting books, such as the case with Dragonlance and Margaret Weis Productions.
But instead of doing that with all of the campaign settings, they decide that if they have more "generic" content in the books, more "generic" non fans will buy the book. But those guys don't like the setting, so they still won't buy the books, and the books now have less content that fans of the setting want. Making it a vicious circle.
But hey, what do I know? They may still be making money on all of this, so if they are, why wouldn't they follow this model? I don't have the numbers to see if this is the case or not.
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like i said in another thread, WotC is pretty good at crunch, but they've never made me believe they could write a decent adventure, or really follow through with a campaign setting...
I'll second this part : I think the only way to write a good adventure, is to write plenty of adventures, and learn from your errors.
How many adventures have they published in recent years ? Especially by their own team ?
Go Paizo !
Well he is quite hopeful that clarifications can be made to the GSL that will make it possible for him to publish for 4E. Whether or not WOTC will oblige will remain to be seen. Is this the first time that a divide like this has happened in our community? I know that when we went from 2E to 3E (and 3.X) there were those gamers who stayed with the older versions, but is this the first time where the divide went deeper into other publishers? I assume yes seeing as the OGL was born out of the change to 3E. We live in interesting times.
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Is this the first time that a divide like this has happened in our community? I know that when we went from 2E to 3E (and 3.X) there were those gamers who stayed with the older versions, but is this the first time where the divide went deeper into other publishers? I assume yes seeing as the OGL was born out of the change to 3E. We live in interesting times.
The number of third-party publishers for 2nd edition/1st edition products was negligible. Those companies who did so had to be very careful in how they presented their products, because they couldn't use any trademarked materials. In large part, also, there were so many settings and sourcebooks available for 1st/2nd edition that there wasn't a lot of demand for alternate settings and adventures, anyway.
Honestly, I think that WoTC is doing themselves a disservice by scrapping the OGL, and switching to a more restrictive GSL - even if they do loosen it somewhat. Do they really think they're going to lose a lot of money to third-party companies that print their own base rulebooks? I would estimate that 99.9% of people who would purchase a third party rulebook are ones that would have already bought the D&D core books.
More importantly, those people who would skip the D&D core materials for a third party book, aren't going to change their minds and buy the core stuff because of this. I can think of two major reasons:
1) They're skipping the core D&D rulebooks, because they're diehard fans of this one particular setting (Conan, perhaps), and are only interested in playing that.
2) They're skipping the core D&D rulebooks because the product WoTC is putting out is (hypothetically) so drastically inferior that they want nothing to do with it.
In the case of 2), you're going to be shedding market share regardless - and I would hope WoTC is confident enough in their product quality to discount this. ;)
In the case of 1), it doesn't matter if the rules are 3.5/OGL, 4th, d6, SAGA, whatever - they're going to pick up the rules associated with the setting.
Honestly, had it not been for the nature of the OGL/GSL matter, I'd probably be buying 4th edition rulebooks now, because Pathfinder et al would likely be converting to 4th Edition, and I'd stick with that.
So, I'd buy the 4th Ed rules from WotC, setting books from Pathfinder, and probably subscribe to DDI for various articles, updates, and web enhancements, since there aren't major sourcebooks coming out the way there used to be. So... where is WotC losing money here? Sure, if Paizo printed a Pathfinder 4ed Rules book, I'd buy that - but only after getting the 4e books. They wouldn't be getting my money for the 4e Forgotten Realms campaign sourcebook, but that's an entirely unrelated issue, based around my dislike for what they've done to the setting.
Instead, I'm not buying anything of theirs, and spending more money on Paizo products. Certainly Paizo is hurt by this situation too, as there are others who like 4e rules, and might pick up Golarion supplements if they were printed for 4e... so it's bad for the hobby in general.
I think I can officially take off my tin foil hat since it would appear that I am not crazy.
Well, let's not overstate the matter. ;)
I think I can officially take off my tin foil hat since it would appear that I am not crazy.
Hat off?
Good.
YOU ARE NOW UNDER THE POWER OF MY MIND CONTROL LASER!
SEND ME ALL OF YOUR CREDIT CARD NUMBERS, BANK ACCOUNT NUMBERS, AND EVERY FRESH BLUEBERRY YOU CAN FIND... I have a bunch of muffins to bake this weekend for Sunday brunch.