Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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But then I got to write a large part of Frostburn, so a lot of the ideas I had for that setting got put into that book anyway.May I just take a second to mention how much I loved all the environmental books? HUGE amounts of GM crunch, very helpful!
And also put in a vote for a combined Environments book down the road. :) Sort of Frostburn/Stomrwrack/etc all rolled up into one. A chapter on each environment, a chapter of environment specific spells, archetypes, and a little gear? ;)
+1 for me. I thought those books (including Sandstorm) were the best things that came out during the last couple of years of 3.5.
LOVED the environmental books!
Dumb question: If entries became the property of WotC, so that we can't see Rich Burlew's entry, for example, how was Dawnforge able to be published if it was an official entry?
And also put in a vote for a combined Environments book down the road. :) Sort of Frostburn/Stomrwrack/etc all rolled up into one. A chapter on each environment, a chapter of environment specific spells, archetypes, and a little gear? ;)
>threadjack<
*Cough* Northlands (cold) *cough* Sunken Empires (underwater) *cough*
Sorry, something in my throat. Nothing a little cold water won't clear up.
>/threadjack<
-Ben.
LOVED the environmental books!
Dumb question: If entries became the property of WotC, so that we can't see Rich Burlew's entry, for example, how was Dawnforge able to be published if it was an official entry?
Apparently, it was only the 3 finalists entries that became WotC property.
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And also put in a vote for a combined Environments book down the road. :) Sort of Frostburn/Stomrwrack/etc all rolled up into one. A chapter on each environment, a chapter of environment specific spells, archetypes, and a little gear? ;)>threadjack<
*Cough* Northlands (cold) *cough* Sunken Empires (underwater) *cough*
Sorry, something in my throat. Nothing a little cold water won't clear up.
>/threadjack<
-Ben.
Yeah both those books had big and nice sections on dealing with the environments in them. I will also add in Cerulean Campaign setting By Alluria Publishing as another very good book for underwater environment rules as well.
I wouldn't say WotC is hostile to 3pp, more indifferent. My personally mental image is WotC see's it's self as the big shark swimming along and 3pp the little fish Remoras, or beneath the sharks notice.
Funny, my mental image is more of a bloated white whale with the remains of 3PP's tangled up in the ropes and harpoons on it's hyde, with huge myopic eyes, and barnacles stuck in it's earholes.
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I wouldn't say WotC is hostile to 3pp, more indifferent. My personally mental image is WotC see's it's self as the big shark swimming along and 3pp the little fish Remoras, or beneath the sharks notice.Funny, my mental image is more of a bloated white whale with the remains of 3PP's tangled up in the ropes and harpoons on it's hyde, with huge myopic eyes, and barnacles stuck in it's earholes.
Well I did say my mental image is how WotC see's it's self. :)
Well I did say my mental image is how WotC see's it's self. :)I wouldn't say WotC is hostile to 3pp, more indifferent. My personally mental image is WotC see's it's self as the big shark swimming along and 3pp the little fish Remoras, or beneath the sharks notice.Funny, my mental image is more of a bloated white whale with the remains of 3PP's tangled up in the ropes and harpoons on it's hyde, with huge myopic eyes, and barnacles stuck in it's earholes.
AH! That explains the difference then. :) Those big myopic eyes I'm sure, distorting their reflection in the hulls of passing whaling ships.
The main problem I started to see at WotC, before 4e, was the tendency to devalue some 3pp products. It may have not been intentional, but there was too many coincidences. A company would put out a book on drow, then suddenly WotC would. Another put out a good book on sailing & pirates, the WotC put out Stormwrack. It started looking like they waited to see if a certain product did well for somebody else, then make "official" rules. Again, may not have been intentional, but there it is.
+1 for me. I thought those books (including Sandstorm) were the best things that came out during the last couple of years of 3.5.
+1 here as well with an added "hell yeah".
Frostburn and Stormwrack were fantastic, Sandstorm was good too but slightly behind the other two. I didnt realize James wrote a big part in Frostburn (my favorite of the three).After MMII and the FF, the enviro-books, XPH and the Dragonomicon were the only supplements worth anything IMHO.
I skipped the whole "Complete" series, ToM, Bo9S, etc. Im really sorry I didnt skip the "Races of" series, the rest of the MM's, and the boatload of crappy FR books. I could have saved hundreds.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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The main problem I started to see at WotC, before 4e, was the tendency to devalue some 3pp products. It may have not been intentional, but there was too many coincidences. A company would put out a book on drow, then suddenly WotC would. Another put out a good book on sailing & pirates, the WotC put out Stormwrack. It started looking like they waited to see if a certain product did well for somebody else, then make "official" rules. Again, may not have been intentional, but there it is.I think what you may have been seeing was 3PP trying to "jump the gun" on WoTC. WoTC would publish its upcoming release schedule or start advertising a book coming out in the months ahead and a 3PP would rush something out in that exact same space to try to cash in on the anticipated wave of interest.
I see the same thing sometimes happening with Pathfinder stuff today.
This is the case, from a few conversations I've had with people working in the industry - 3PP claim-jumping off of another company's release schedule. It's a significant reason why most companies are intentionally vague nowadays about releases unless they are already well along the pipeline.
I see a lot of comments about the OGL and the SRD and open gaming and etc, etc, with comments of WotC being a bloated whale or literally being compared to a nation that worships Satan (I mean come on guys, really?)
So, history lesson.
The OGL has it's roots in three main things.
First off, the era. Remember, the OGL was written at the same time the internet was in a compelete frenzy over "open source." It was everywhere. You couldn't even think about Wired without something about open source popping up, in your brain if need be. Just as oWoD was the most 90's game imaginable, the OGL was directly influenced by "the inevitable triumph of open source."
Secondly, TSR was insanely, insanely restrictive of their license. Whenever people get misty eyed and nostalgic for TSR, some part of me screams in horror. They were suing fansites left and right and generally had no concept at all of how their own business functioned, much less how the internet worked. If you've ever read Dancey's entries / posts on what he found while overseeing the TSR buyout, it's insane stuff. The OGL was a direct response to the absurd inclusiveness that TSR had practiced. The OGL was also meant to solve the biggest problem TSR had - too many miniproducts. Rather then make the weirdly specific low-volume, no-margin products that TSR went bankrupt with, third party would handle those, while WotC would focus on the big sellers. So your Ecology of the Thri-kreen could be made by Paizo, while WotC would be making Complete Warrior.
In fact, funny enough, that super-tight restrictiveness of TSR is what lead to them being bought out. It was after many TSR lawsuits aimed at the universe that the then blooming WotC decided to try their hand at a collectible card game that became M:tG. I'm willing to bet TSR would've taken back that lawsuit if they could today.
Thirdly, the OGL had some good core ideas. But, a few of them, several people might actually find repugnant. See, the OGL wasn't just meant to help D&D become bigger, it was also meant to destroy the opposition. The goal was to make d20 so synonymous with gaming as a whole that non-d20 games would dry up completely. If you enjoy a non-d20 game, that was running hardline against the assumptions. Never forget that the OGL as designed first and foremost to sell 3e.
So, what went wrong?
The OGL was too big. It contained too much. Rather then just make the low-volume products that WotC didn't want to deal with - and while Paizo gets some flake, I gurantee adventures were a part of that, so they operated completely within WotC's expectations - you had entire game systems being made. Now, I enjoy Pathfinder, but in some ways you could say that Pathfinder is exactly what the OGL's failing is - from a business perspective, Pathfinder is proof that the OGL experiment failed.
The idea goes like this: D&D is the #1 RPG. Other RPGs are short lived blips in comparison, and most RPG groups are short lived. Thus, players who are pulled into the hobby are in turn inevitably pulled into D&D, since that's where all the campaigns and source material is! Even when you hit things like Spycraft or M&M that don't pay one cent to WotC, they will inevitably leave that for D&D, since they're already familiar with the basic rules.
But that didn't work. The network effects didn't create the network. Part of it was failings outside the OGL - Dancey also wanted a very robust internet presence and RPGA presence, both of which flopped hard, especially the online presence. Part of the failings was simply that the OGL was too optimistic in regards of open source - releasing your source code increases market share but doesn't neccisarily translate to money.
Beyond that, the third party market did not evolve the way WotC hoped it would. Third party wasn't making Ecology of the Thri-Kreen, they were making their own entirely separate things unrelated to WotC products. The Glut ran it's course, demolishing the hopes of a strong and well developed market - what you instead ended up with was a dismal swamp with a few towers sticking out of it.
In the end, the OGL experiment was just that - an experiment. A brilliant experiment, mind you! But, nonetheless, it was an experiment. It's one that benefited a whole lot of companies...but WotC was the one that had to foot the bill. It's not surprising in the least that in 4e they would go much more conservative with their license.
There is a reason WotC is mostly neutral to third party - they saw little to no benefits of the third party market in 3e. Rather then footing the bill and openly assisting third party, WotC is sitting back and letting third party sink or swim on their own. What third party producers need to ask when looking at the 4e license is something that previously they never had to ask in the OGL. That something is: "What am I providing for 4e that players would be interested in?" When you look at the 4e success stories, such as with EN World's modules, they succeed because they have an answer to that question. Morris is providing long and detailed adventure paths, the kind that WotC is fairly awful at. WotC is not going to prop up the third party, no more then they're actively trying to sink them - what the third party does is the third party's business.
As for Pathfinder, there's been some good third party stuff for it - I'm a rather proud owner of Psionics Unleashed and probably the most irritating fanboy that Dreamscarred has had to deal with ;p - but there's also a lot of stuff that I glance at and think: "Oh boy, the second glut begins!"
In the end, Pathfinder is not the size of WotC. A robust third party market favors them more...at the time. As the glut grows, I think we'll see a falloff in just how much the third party helps Paizo. Don't forget as well that Pathfinder is not an original engine. Pathfinder uses the 3e chassis with a few things changed and other things added on. They are the third party market. So naturally it benefits them to benefit the market.
So, I'm sure that the robust third party market supported by the main publisher is good...for the third party. And for Pathfinder, who builds itself off of being psuedo-third party in of itself, having a robust third party market improves their own sales as they are to some degree a part of that same market. But for WotC who is not in or a part of the third party market, a robust third party market is meaningless in of itself, and so it is left to it's own devices. For them, what is good for the third party market is not always what's good for them.
In a lot of ways the very campaign world that Paizo has developed (Galoria) with it's multiple empires built on older empires is a wonderful mirror to what has happened in the gaming industry in the pass two decades.
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In the end, the OGL experiment was just that - an experiment. A brilliant experiment, mind you! But, nonetheless, it was an experiment.
I get that you don't like the OGL. I try not to let that bother me. But do you have to constantly talk about it in the past tense as if its day is over and all we have left is a memory? The OGL is still a going concern; very much alive.
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Ah, I was wondering when our local all-knowing expert on gaming industry will show up...
Pathfinder is proof that the OGL experiment failed.In the end, Pathfinder is not the size of WotC.
I'm confused by the logic here. If Pathfinder is not size of WotC (a small issue here already, because you're comparing a product to a company), then why did the OGL experiment fail? Because OGL allowed for a company that is not the size of WotC?
So your Ecology of the Thri-kreen could be made by Paizo, while WotC would be making Complete Warrior.The OGL was too big. It contained too much.
Third party wasn't making Ecology of the Thri-Kreen, they were making their own entirely separate things unrelated to WotC products.
Again, I am confused by the logic here. Your take is that WotC wanted to make OGL big enough to allow WotC to do A and 3PP to do B.
Then you state that it was too big.
And you follow up with a statement that OGL was a miss due to 3PP not making B. Which they couldn't do, as the open content did not allow that.
So, was OGL too big, or too small?
Sorry to nitpick, but I'm used to hold Professors to a high standard of discourse. :)
I have to say, in one respect the OGL did succeed, in that it made the D20 system the default system. However, it is hard to quantify how much it helped WotC rather than stole their thunder.
I think - and these are just my thoughts - that at the end of the day, people who went off to play non-WotC d20 games were the ones who would have done so anyway, but without the 'd20' bit. Having those games d20 system just made playing the rules-heavy incarnation that was 3.x D&D easier to transition to if they did. It may not have added to WotC coffers directly, but it certainly didn't hurt them.
What I can see as a theme all the way through is that while WotC certainly understand games, they didn't always get role playing games, or the people that play them.
Before we go overboard on what WotC could or couldn't produce, though, bear this in mind:
They created the 3.x core, which was the best thing I have ever seen done with D&D and is the reason I started playing it again.
They created the OGL, without which we would not be.
Give them credit for that at least, whatever later accountants and marketing gurus who knew nothing about how gaming works might have done.
Not the same. I don't think that (m)any of the people who made 3e and gave us the OGL still work at wotc. They have that tendency to fire people all the time.
And I belief many of the people who were responsible for the best about 3e are with Paizo now.
In the end, the OGL experiment was just that - an experiment. A brilliant experiment, mind you! But, nonetheless, it was an experiment.I get that you don't like the OGL. I try not to let that bother me. But do you have to constantly talk about it in the past tense as if its day is over and all we have left is a memory? The OGL is still a going concern; very much alive.
Uh, Where did you pick up that I don't like the OGL?
I'm not in the business. For me, the OGL owns, and it owns hard. Seriously, the OGL is great if you're a consumer.
I'm not saying the OGL is objectively bad - very few things in the tabletop games industry are. I'm saying that the OGL was bad from the perspective of WotC.
As for past tense, I'm not trying to imply that the OGL is dead, merely that the current edition of D&D doesn't use it.
>threadjack<
Did someone call for me, citizen?
I'm not saying the OGL is objectively bad - very few things in the tabletop games industry are. I'm saying that the OGL was bad from the perspective of WotC.As for past tense, I'm not trying to imply that the OGL is dead, merely that the current edition of D&D doesn't use it.
Actually, OGL was great from the perspective of WoTC when 3.0 and 3.5 first came out. It gave them a huge boost in support at first. I remember when 3.0 first came out. Everyone was 'Meh, it's D&D' in my area. There wasn't a lot of enthusiasm for it, and even the game stores weren't all that excited. Then a lot of 3PP hit the shelves, and quite a bit of it began to go off the shelves, and the stores started carrying more. It took off with 3.5 about that time, and I remember people getting into it again and loving it.
Now, once it got to the point of being popular again, by that time, most of the people who had the vision of what the OGL could do had been fired or left. At that point, the people in charge could only see that there was this vibrant eco system based on their IP that they weren't getting $$$ for. It was an alien thought to them, they didn't like it.
It's very much like Oracle purchasing Sun Micro recently, they have all sorts of open source software from Sun (like OpenOffice) that they can't monetize, and people are making forks of it, and Oracle is confused and sulky, so they're unloading it to Apache.
In WoTC's case, they killed off the OGL version and put out a whole new version they had all the control over so they could monetize it six ways from sunday.
Ah, I was wondering when our local all-knowing expert on gaming industry will show up...
Merely someone interested in the industry who reads up on how things happen.
I'm confused by the logic here. If Pathfinder is not size of WotC (a small issue here already, because you're comparing a product to a company), then why did the OGL experiment fail? Because OGL allowed for a company that is not the size of WotC?
Because the OGL created a rival for D&D. I meant to state that Paizo is not the size of WotC, if that helps.
Basically, Pathfinder being created through the OGL and them competing against the very game of D&D that the OGL was created to serve is proof that, from a business standpoint, the OGL was flawed.
Again, I am confused by the logic here. Your take is that WotC wanted to make OGL big enough to allow WotC to do A and 3PP to do B.
Then you state that it was too big.
And you follow up with a statement that OGL was a miss due to 3PP not making B. Which they couldn't do, as the open content did not allow that.
So, was OGL too big, or too small?
You're mixing multiple things.
Did you play 2e? If so, you may be faimilar at the incredible amount of product that TSR pushed - for all the complaints that WotC prints too much, it hasn't even come to half of what TSR pumped out in the 90's, upwards of 100+ products each month. Most of the products were extremely niche ones, like the aforementioned Ecology of the Thri-Kreen. Fun book, don't get me wrong! But awfully niche, being printed only for Dark Sun players who were interested in Thri-Kreen. That's a small market.
That third party developers didn't make the books that would serve as Ecology of the Thri-Kreen has nothing to do with the size of the OGL and more to do with how the third party market evolved. Remember, pre-OGL, there wasn't a third party market. TSR would sue you if you even thought about printing out something D&D related. Wot's hope is that the third party would pool into the niche products that were popular for niche groups but unpopular on a grand market - which, incidentally, is exactly why the OGL was so large. We'll stop using Thri-Kreen as Dark Sun wasn't one of the settings carried into 3e.
You know how Paizo prints out the books that goes over 5 or so monsters and super details them and such? I forget the names off the top of my head. Fun books. That's exactly what WotC was hoping third party would produce - books that took pre-existing D&D identity be it goblins or flumphs or bugbears and expands on that. That way, the "niche" products are printed for the consumers without costing WotC, and those consumers are then kept in a feedback loop that keeps them purchasing D&D products.
Not the same. I don't think that (m)any of the people who made 3e and gave us the OGL still work at wotc. They have that tendency to fire people all the time.
And I belief many of the people who were responsible for the best about 3e are with Paizo now.
Being fired and being laid off are not the same things. Yes yes, I'm sure someone is going to jump in here to disagree, but from the perspective of someone who has been laid off before, they are not the same things.
Uh, Where did you pick up that I don't like the OGL?My apologies. I am obviously mistaken. But you have most certainly given that impression with your constant critiques of where it went wrong.
If you cannot critique something, you do not love it.
The OGL was a huge success, IMHO (maybe not for WotC long term).
We saw numerous 3PPs advance the hobby which probably helped WotC sales at least with Core Books and some Splat.
To me it did the unthinkable. It whisked all that was good about D&D away from the suits and placed it in the hands of people better suited to keep it healthy.
I dont know about everyone else, but Goodman, Necromancer, Paizo, Arthaus, etc gave me some pretty epic gaming memories that rival some of the best times that I had with AD&D.
WotC did put out 3E/3.5 for that I thank them, at least the designers responsible at that time. I knew Wizards would destroy the brand from early on though, for reasons some people may agree with, and some will not agree with, so Ill leave that out. :)
Chief Technical Officer
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In fact, funny enough, that super-tight restrictiveness of TSR is what lead to them being bought out. It was after many TSR lawsuits aimed at the universe that the then blooming WotC decided to try their hand at a collectible card game that became M:tG. I'm willing to bet TSR would've taken back that lawsuit if they could today.
You seem to be implying that TSR sued Wizards; that's not so. Wizards sent a cease-and-desist letter asking Wizards to remove the AD&D conversion notes from future printings of The Primal Order, and Wizards did so; while it was kind of a bummer, it really wasn't that big a deal to us. The company that sued Wizards over TPO was Palladium. But neither of those things in any way spurred Wizards on to publishing Magic: The Gathering; that would have happened regardless of the TPO situation. (Launching M:TG was made much more complicated by the economic impact of fighting the Palladium lawsuit, but it would have happened either way.)
See, the OGL wasn't just meant to help D&D become bigger, it was also meant to destroy the opposition.
This is true... and I think that many of the people who even recognize that don't realize that it was actually a two-pronged approach. The OGL divided the industry into two group: publishers who were still spending their effort on non-OGL games, which automatically made them a small player relative to the leader—and publishers who were now spending their time on OGL products, which meant they were no longer busily trying to come up with their own game to dethrone the leader. Essentially, whichever side you chose helped cement Wizards' position.
Basically, Pathfinder being created through the OGL and them competing against the very game of D&D that the OGL was created to serve is proof that, from a business standpoint, the OGL was flawed.
Pathfinder would never have succeeded if Wizards hadn't essentially abandoned the network they created. That's not a failure in design of the OGL.
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Pathfinder would never have succeeded if Wizards hadn't essentially abandoned the network they created. That's not a failure in design of the OGL.
Precisely. It's exactly the same as LibreOffice, in the software world. Had Oracle not abandoned the OpenOffice.Org network when they purchased Sun Microsystems, LibreOffice would never have been born.
An open license works very very well for the incumbent company so long as they do not then turn their back on the very network they create. Wizards lost way more $$$ by turning their back on the 3PP network in the long run that they ever lost to 3PP sales. Especially since turning their back on it produced a fork in the code (to continue the software parlance), resulting in Pathfinder vs D&D 4E. Both share a common source code base (3.5), but both took that source code in different directions.
The difference now is that 4E has one major house contributing code to it's eco-system (WoTC) and a few minor but heavily controlled contributions from other sources (GSL compliant 3PPs).
Pathfinder has a medium sized main backer (Paizo), and a very very large eco-system also providing secondary code support (Pathfinder 3PPs).
The result is that Pathfinder is currently experiencing a much more lively evolutionary cycle, while 4E has a less eclectic, but more tightly controlled theme of expansions.
Neither in and of itself is bad, but I think in the long term that just like in biology, a broader and more energetic eco-system will lead to long term growth and stability, while a closed eco-system and static evolution will lead to eventual extinction.
But then I got to write a large part of Frostburn, so a lot of the ideas I had for that setting got put into that book anyway.May I just take a second to mention how much I loved all the environmental books? HUGE amounts of GM crunch, very helpful!
And also put in a vote for a combined Environments book down the road. :) Sort of Frostburn/Stomrwrack/etc all rolled up into one. A chapter on each environment, a chapter of environment specific spells, archetypes, and a little gear? ;)
I liked the ability to attune sites and get certain powers if you had the right feat. Not sure how balanced it was, but it sure got the feeling of places of power across.
Pathfinder has a medium sized main backer (Paizo), and a very very large eco-system also providing secondary code support (Pathfinder 3PPs).
I would argue that it is even bigger than just 'Pathfinder 3PPs' in that any OGL system still can attach or not to pathfinder and due to the large degree of compatibility still run on the same system. If someone wants to simply stick to the 3.5 license they still are likely to find themselves working with Paizo simply due to Paizo being the big fish in the pond currently.
Pathfinder has a medium sized main backer (Paizo), and a very very large eco-system also providing secondary code support (Pathfinder 3PPs).I would argue that it is even bigger than just 'Pathfinder 3PPs' in that any OGL system still can attach or not to pathfinder and due to the large degree of compatibility still run on the same system. If someone wants to simply stick to the 3.5 license they still are likely to find themselves working with Paizo simply due to Paizo being the big fish in the pond currently.
Well, obviously, it depends on your point of view. I was simply talking about the specific 'Pathfinder Compatible' support, not OGL d20 support in general. Granted, anything d20 OGL compatible supports the OGL eco-system, but not necessarily the Pathfinder sub-ecology. There are still other d20 OGL game systems out there. And not all of them will work with PF (not without a lot of conversion).
The OGL was a huge success, IMHO (maybe not for WotC long term).
We saw numerous 3PPs advance the hobby which probably helped WotC sales at least with Core Books and some Splat.To me it did the unthinkable. It whisked all that was good about D&D away from the suits and placed it in the hands of people better suited to keep it healthy.
I dont know about everyone else, but Goodman, Necromancer, Paizo, Arthaus, etc gave me some pretty epic gaming memories that rival some of the best times that I had with AD&D.WotC did put out 3E/3.5 for that I thank them, at least the designers responsible at that time. I knew Wizards would destroy the brand from early on though, for reasons some people may agree with, and some will not agree with, so Ill leave that out. :)
I will agree that the short term effects of the OGL on it's release were very positive for WotC. However, I would contend that, as time went on, the OGL lost it's luster by quite a bit.
Again, I don't think the OGL was ditched was because it was leaking too many sales from WotC. That was never the problem. The OGL was changed because open gaming as a whole was simply not benefiting WotC in a high enough level.
You seem to be implying that TSR sued Wizards; that's not so. Wizards sent a cease-and-desist letter asking Wizards to remove the AD&D conversion notes from future printings of The Primal Order, and Wizards did so; while it was kind of a bummer, it really wasn't that big a deal to us. The company that sued Wizards over TPO was Palladium. But neither of those things in any way spurred Wizards on to publishing Magic: The Gathering; that would have happened regardless of the TPO situation. (Launching M:TG was made much more complicated by the economic impact of fighting the Palladium lawsuit, but it would have happened either way.)
I may have misunderstood from notes I've gathered then; I was under the impression that TSR's lawsuit-happy nature (not neccisarily towards WotC) is what lead to pushing M:tG out as it was.
Pathfinder would never have succeeded if Wizards hadn't essentially abandoned the network they created. That's not a failure in design of the OGL.
Here I disagree.
To change up a quote, if Pathfinder did not exist, someone else would have had to create it.
Let us assume WotC makes fourth edition exactly how they did previously with one exception - they keep the OGL and apply 4e to it. Now, would Paizo have made Pathfinder? I dunno! I know there were murmurs on EN World about Paizo making Pathfinder even had 4e been entirely open due to dislikes of the system itself. However, even if Paizo had not made Pathfinder, I think you would've seen other 3e sprouts pop up for those that like 3e over 4e. Certainly none would've been as popular due to not having Paizo supporting it, but I think the meme of Pathfinder - albeit given a different name - would've still happened. And it would have happened due to the OGL.
Pathfinder would never have succeeded if Wizards hadn't essentially abandoned the network they created. That's not a failure in design of the OGL.Precisely. It's exactly the same as LibreOffice, in the software world. Had Oracle not abandoned the OpenOffice.Org network when they purchased Sun Microsystems, LibreOffice would never have been born.
An open license works very very well for the incumbent company so long as they do not then turn their back on the very network they create. Wizards lost way more $$$ by turning their back on the 3PP network in the long run that they ever lost to 3PP sales. Especially since turning their back on it produced a fork in the code (to continue the software parlance), resulting in Pathfinder vs D&D 4E. Both share a common source code base (3.5), but both took that source code in different directions.
The difference now is that 4E has one major house contributing code to it's eco-system (WoTC) and a few minor but heavily controlled contributions from other sources (GSL compliant 3PPs).
Pathfinder has a medium sized main backer (Paizo), and a very very large eco-system also providing secondary code support (Pathfinder 3PPs).
The result is that Pathfinder is currently experiencing a much more lively evolutionary cycle, while 4E has a less eclectic, but more tightly controlled theme of expansions.
Neither in and of itself is bad, but I think in the long term that just like in biology, a broader and more energetic eco-system will lead to long term growth and stability, while a closed eco-system and static evolution will lead to eventual extinction.
You, sir, have just earned the Super Geek award of the day for you colorful use of gaming, business, biology, & programming in one analogy.
Bravo!! Bravo!!
WotC's problem is that they created a piece of "classic literature" with 3e and then placed it in an open license. In a hundred years we might see some version of 3e in a specialty binding with gilt edged pages. That hadn't happened to D&D since Loraine pushed Gary out (some of the reputed sales figures from the 1e era were just massive compared to anything that came later). WotC didn't have any idea how to handle the property and thought that they could, basically, gut Moby Dick and rewrite the book for profit (Paizo on the other hand provided stats for the great white whale).
I get the feeling though that the current mess that is much of gaming had less to do with the OGL than business models. Lots of companies thought that they could do super premium hardcovers. The periphery started to have problems in the lead up to the economic crash, WotC had the bad luck to put out a new edition right when the crash hit. Paizo is doing well, but I suspect that this is a combination of picking up where 3.5 left off and having a different business model than many of the companies that are current in trouble.
You, sir, have just earned the Super Geek award of the day for you colorful use of gaming, business, biology, & programming in one analogy.Bravo!! Bravo!!
LOL
I tried to shove a car anology in as well, but I couldn't get the Tesla vs Corvette analogy in with a crowbar, so I deleted it. :)
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...huge clip..., stating Pathfinder is proof the OGL experiment failed...
I don't agree. In fact, I think if you ask Ryan Dancey he'd say the existence of Pathfinder is proof the OGL experiment worked. That is certainly my view--that Pathfinder is proof the OGL worked.
See, the OGL wasn't just meant to help D&D become bigger, it was also meant to destroy the opposition.This is true... and I think that many of the people who even recognize that don't realize that it was actually a two-pronged approach. The OGL divided the industry into two group: publishers who were still spending their effort on non-OGL games, which automatically made them a small player relative to the leader—and publishers who were now spending their time on OGL products, which meant they were no longer busily trying to come up with their own game to dethrone the leader. Essentially, whichever side you chose helped cement Wizards' position.
Vic is DEAD ON CORRECT (and so is the Professor in this regard). The OGL (or more accurately the d20STL) was designed to push d20 as the default game mechanic and thus crush all others.
Proof of the pudding is in the eating: White Wolf, the greatest of the non-Wizards companies, was one of the first to actively and on a HUGE scale sell d20 products. BIG win for Wizards. Here is WW actively making products supporting their competitor and at the same time NOT spending that time and money making its own products. They only have so many people (which is one of the reasons Necro and WW did business, they were able to have a d20 presence through me without having to dedicate their internal writers to the task).
So d20 worked as intended as well--dominate the market with one game system and co-opt ones competitors into supporting you. Genius.
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Pathfinder would never have succeeded if Wizards hadn't essentially abandoned the network...
Once again, Vic is 100% correct. This isn't really even open to reasonable debate. I mean, I was there. This is how it was. The man is telling you the truth. Vic FTW.
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Again, I don't think the OGL was ditched was because it was leaking too many sales from WotC. That was never the problem. The OGL was changed because open gaming as a whole was simply not benefiting WotC in a high enough level.
The OGL was never ditched. It can't be (though I think what you mean is in moving to 4E and the GSL they no longer utilized the OGL, and with that I agree obviously). The d20 STL was, and THAT is where the failure was. And also the OGL was not changed, it can't be. It was not utilized by Wizards, who instead created the GSL for 4E.
The real problem is that once 3Ps realized they didnt need the d20 STL and its restrictions, they stopped using it and started doing things with the OGL that Wizards likely didnt anticipate or want. BUT that is because THEY (Wizards) failed to maintain the value of the d20 STL (see my long letter above). It's pure carrot and stick. They needed a D&D license, like the one I proposed. Had they done that, people wouldnt have abandoned the d20 STL. THAT is what the 3Ps wanted all along. Heck, most 3Ps didnt give an att's rass about open gaming, they just wanted to make D&D books and this was the only way to do it. But it was Wizard's plan to use the OGL to dominate the market with d20 and failing to line that plan up with the interests of the 3Ps that failed. Not the OGL. Wizards failed to support and focus the network it created.
Vic is DEAD ON CORRECT (and so is the Professor in this regard). The OGL (or more accurately the d20STL) was designed to push d20 as the default game mechanic and thus crush all others.
Proof of the pudding is in the eating: White Wolf, the greatest of the non-Wizards companies, was one of the first to actively and on a HUGE scale sell d20 products. BIG win for Wizards. Here is WW actively making products supporting their competitor and at the same time NOT spending that time and money making its own products. They only have so many people (which is one of the reasons Necro and WW did business, they were able to have a d20 presence through me without having to dedicate their internal writers to the task).
When speaking of White Wolf about this - does anyone in-know knows if their great reduction in RPG presence was anyhow related to OGL overall success (even if it was only medium-term and not long-term success for WotC) or was this caused by completly unrelated reasons?
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When speaking of White Wolf about this - does anyone in-know knows if their great reduction in RPG presence was anyhow related to OGL overall success (even if it was only medium-term and not long-term success for WotC) or was this caused by completly unrelated reasons?Vic is DEAD ON CORRECT (and so is the Professor in this regard). The OGL (or more accurately the d20STL) was designed to push d20 as the default game mechanic and thus crush all others.
Proof of the pudding is in the eating: White Wolf, the greatest of the non-Wizards companies, was one of the first to actively and on a HUGE scale sell d20 products. BIG win for Wizards. Here is WW actively making products supporting their competitor and at the same time NOT spending that time and money making its own products. They only have so many people (which is one of the reasons Necro and WW did business, they were able to have a d20 presence through me without having to dedicate their internal writers to the task).
White Wolf was bought by computer game developer CCP. The focuse over there is currently at CCP developing a WoD MMO and WW staff helping with CCP's existing MMO, Eve Online. Pen and paper stuff got sidetracked as a result.
White Wolf was bought by computer game developer CCP. The focuse over there is currently at CCP developing a WoD MMO and WW staff helping with CCP's existing MMO, Eve Online. Pen and paper stuff got sidetracked as a result.When speaking of White Wolf about this - does anyone in-know knows if their great reduction in RPG presence was anyhow related to OGL overall success (even if it was only medium-term and not long-term success for WotC) or was this caused by completly unrelated reasons?Vic is DEAD ON CORRECT (and so is the Professor in this regard). The OGL (or more accurately the d20STL) was designed to push d20 as the default game mechanic and thus crush all others.
Proof of the pudding is in the eating: White Wolf, the greatest of the non-Wizards companies, was one of the first to actively and on a HUGE scale sell d20 products. BIG win for Wizards. Here is WW actively making products supporting their competitor and at the same time NOT spending that time and money making its own products. They only have so many people (which is one of the reasons Necro and WW did business, they were able to have a d20 presence through me without having to dedicate their internal writers to the task).
This is in addition to instabilities in the way they did things originally. My understanding is that during the original World of Darkness era, you had different teams working on each line of product, one for Vampire TM, one for Werewolf TA, one for Changling TD, and so on. The big problem was that there was a rivalry between the groups. So, you'd have someone put out a 'vampire slayer' power in Werewolf, and the Vampire team would respond with a 'werewolf slayer' combined with a 'complete defense to vampire slayer' power, then the other team would respond with an escalation.
As a customer, it was easy to see. I always wanted to mix and match the systems, but you couldn't, because there was always a new expansion that tried to break the other system. :(
My understanding is that the new revamped lines have only one group working on rules for all lines, rather than one group per line. Unfortunately, they then got bought by CCP...
Oh, and also, I've gotten burned out on the idea of worlds where no matter what you do it's all going to end in a giant barbeque of souls. Get's depressing.
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Someone already DID "create Pathfinder before Pathfinder" – it was called Arcana Evolved, and it was backed by Monte Cook! And yet, it was totally unable to break significant market-share compared to WotC's products for as long as WotC was making things that worked off the same network.
WotC abandoned the 3.x player network because it was the only way to start making games that weren't OGL-compatible. And they did THAT for exactly the same reason they've stopped selling PDFs: to prove to their corporate overlords they had "fixed" a problem they were internally claiming were hurting sales.
When WotC sales go down, they must answer to Darth Potato Head. If sales are down for D&D, the Dice-Bouncing Department Head (exact title may vary) must explain why it's not *his* fault. The easiest way to do this is to blame the actions of someone who is no longer with the company (or assign actions to someone who is no longer with the company, even if they were only tangentally involved – after all they arent around to defend themselves anymore).
So it's:
Darth Potato Head (DPH): Why are D&D sales down? You had a movie, just like Lord of the Rings! Why can't we license D&D toys to people?!
Dice-Bouncing Department Head (DBDH): One of the earlier guys decided to sell easily-pirated copies of our books, my lord. That means we can't sell as many copies, so our sales are artificially deflated. It's not my fault!
DPH: Then stop selling those!
(Next fiscal quarter)
DPH: Okay, NOW why are sales down?! They should have bounded back after you stopped selling pee-dee-effs.
DBDH (may be a different person than last time): My lord, the previous directors allow any rebel rabble that wishes sell games that use our rules. Fanbois can sell such thigns out of their garages, and we can't stop them!
DPH: Then stop making games they can do that to!
DBDH: There are... difficulties... with such a plan my lord. You see, our player base is...
DPH: Your player base is nothing! Make a new game! Make a new player base!
(Next fiscal quarter)
DPH: For the Love of Monopoly, NOW what's wrong?
DBDH (yet another guy): Well, eye-covered master of evil, it seems some designers failed to capture the Essentials of a good D&D system, but we have a plan to fix this...
And so it goes. Now, the Paizo version:
Lisa: Erik, why are sales down!?
Erik (looks confused): Ah, they aren't?
Lisa (mollified): Oh, Good. I was having a flashback, I guess. But.. What if sales *were* down? What would you do?
Erik (confident): Make better games!
Lisa: Good! Good plan. Weird, I haven't heard that before.
I don't think that's entirely accurate. Hasbro did buy WoTC knowing full well D&D was one of their bigger properties after all.
Hasbro bought WotC because of Magic and Pokemon. D&D might have been a small bit of extra icing or sprinkles on that cupcake, but those other two were the real reasons.
Darth Potato Head.
Dungeon Grrl, you officially made my #QuoteOfTheDay. Thank you for the laugh.
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Dunno. I seem to remember that the Morningstar campaign setting was one of the finalists. And maybe Fantasy Flight's Dawnforge. I don't think either was in the super-finalist category, but possibly in the top 10 or something.
I think the other two super finalist's worlds were kept by WotC for possible future release. I am nott 100% certain of that though.
So we won't see Rich Burlew or Nathan Toomey's campaign setting till WotC decide to release them. Which might be why Nathan has not donbe anything else....as he can't just published his world under 3PP stuff.
I think you are correct that WotC kept the rights to all the finalists.
I also have a feeling chunks from them found their way into Eberron; there might not be enough left to publish.
Just adding this in case anyone reading this thread gets confused by the terminology: the d20STL and the OGL are completely different things.
SpyCraft 1E, Conan 1E, M&M 1E (among others) were all d20STL.
SpyCraft 2E, Conan 2E, M&M 2E (among others) were all OGL; big difference.
SJ
How much space are we going to waste arguing about the success/failure of the OGL when the difference of opinion is obviously one of perspective?
If you ask WotC today if they wish the OGL did not exist, I'm pretty sure the (honest) answer would be "hell yes." How could a license that enabled the existence of one's biggest competitor be considered anything but a gigantic failure?
On the other hand, from the consumer's, the game industry's, or certainly Paizo's perspective, the OGL was (and remains) a smashing success.