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I've been checking on a rumor that has been going around that the OGL is going make a return to D&D Next. Okay, DaveMage, you can go . . . "Please, Please, Please!" These are my thoughts from reading one THREAD on EnWorld.
Well, yeah. Wizards of the Coast will be able make some serious competition with Paizo. And here's why. D&D Next is still going to be new. While we've been playing Pathfinder for 6 years now (2009-2014 = 5 actually), the refresh of D&D under "an" OGL would allow smaller 3PPs to make some interesting stuff for D&D Next and . . .
There might be less competition for a gamer's attention. A niche product, like this will be able to get a lot of attention if I change it to 5e. While Pathfinder sells more, some concepts are so niche you need a new direction to get attention. Although my big sell for attention is the cobbler model of doing business. The reason for that is because I feel Copyright has been interpreted to allow you to have and maintain a Monopoly on the cultural content you produce. U.S. Anti-Monopoly laws disallow that on Principle. In practice . . . Well, a Monopoly is the best way to earn money.
In regards to Next, if it does work with the OGL. Paizo will have to change the sails eventually, and we might see a new edition of Pathfinder based on D&D Next or something new. Whenever that happens, it remains to be seen.
Potentially yes, remember, the OGL was Wizards giving up Monopolistic rights over a core of D&D. The result of which Pathfinder happened. A lot of people over there thought that giving up Monopolistic rights was a terrible mistake. In way, they were right, however they were also wrong. More people buy 1st party material than 3PP, even though the quality of the 1st Party material began to languish.
Wizards now realizes the impact Paizo has had on their RPG sales, and have chosen to go OGL. They don't want stiff competition, and I guess they'd rather have the cat out of the bag than in it to help overall sales. Potential Sales of D&DNext will be hurt, but they will be better than 4e, since they are encouraging 3PPs to actually flourish again.
Joe Blow Gamer (who only purchases 1st Party material) won't care if a 3PP came out with something Awesome. So an OGL won't matter to them. However, it will matter to the indie 3PP and the core fans he built or is going to build. The GSL has been deconstructed on Enworld and elsewhere and has been determined a flop for most 3PPs, including Paizo (who had jumped the ship before it was posted).
Whether or not it's more open remains to be seen. But there is a Kickstarter out for D&D Next from one Publisher who had inside information.
Look around you on this site. The word has to be an emphatic yes. The OGL has succeeded because the idea is to keep Dungeons and Dragons going and not locked into the hands of lawyers for X number of years. A lot of people play D&D -- a'la Pathfinder and 4th Edition, to name a few -- and the Pathfinder brand is a big seller for 3PP.
What the OGL does is allow for a strong network base of players. The system largely exists out of WotC's hands, and the fun never ends. People play 1st edition, 2nd edition, 3rd edition, Pathfinder, and 4e. And there is a large enough group of indies and largely other systems to keep the hobby strong.
Personally, it's my opinion that WotC adopt "an" OGL for D&D Next. It would allow for a lot of Innovation and it will open a new market for 3PPs. D&D Next players will also get better material and it is possible that WotC could support the 3PPs a lot more. And while Pathfinder Compatible is the best brand going -- there's going to be competition as in the coming years, some 3PPs will think that the D&D Next grass is greener than Pathfinder's grass.
And again, Paizo will be able to change their sails, and take Pathfinder in a new direction with a new edition. The next two years after August is certainly going to be exciting.
EDIT: The only thing I don't like is the Decency clause in the GSL for other reasons besides that it's apart of the restrictive GSL. There is a lot of reasons why I chose the Hellenic Era for adventure, and one of the reasons is the nudity during the Olympic Games and in Classical sculpture and pottery paintings. I'd like more people to accept the human body as good and normal to look at, and the "soft" porn in D&D books in general isn't doing anyone a lot of favors. A bikini, no matter the style, still calls attention to the breasts and the loins and not to the face and the eyes. The face and the eyes should be the first thing gamers should see when they look at fantasy art, in my opinion. The loins and the breasts should be the most boring parts on a woman to see.
The Decency clause was created to save reputations, when both WotC and Paizo are technically not responsible for what is printed. All the responsibility should fall onto the heads of the 3PPs as to what art they do publish. However, both Wizards and Paizo has them. I'd rather not a Decency clause be included in the OGL, but part of a new STL or part of the trademark guidelines.
IMO, some kind of OGL-like license is a good thing. WotC I think probably agree due to how well it worked with 3/3.5 and because I believe they're gamers at heart and want to see people take what they make and expand on it. However, I imagine there's some totally disconnected people sitting behind desks at Hasbro that hate the idea of letting people use anything that's "theirs" and will try their best to put the boot in.
I can't really see any way Next would be hurt by opening the ability for others to legally produce material for it. The worst that can happen is the market is flooded with low-grade material, but that shouldn't really affect sales of the official stuff as much as it could just cause distrust of 3PP material in general.
They *might* want to avoid going the whole hog and allowing verbatim reproduction of rules as the d20 SRD and OGL provided, and I would imagine would be more inclined towards something that allowed enough use of specified game terms to make a compatible product. Or, to put it bluntly, something that is only of use to 3PPs and not really to players trying to download free stuff ;) However, there was a lot of negative reaction to the 4e GSL so they'd have to go a bit further than they did with that. They may still want to avoid the loopholes that allowed so many publishers to make complete standalone rulebooks, and focus on a license aimed purely at supplements for their own game, or they might be entirely happy with getting the basic rules out there to help sell the supplements. That decision is probably down to whoever has the higher-level responsibility for deciding whether the rulebooks are there to support the rest of the product line (like it is in Pathfinder) or the products are there to help sell core rulebooks.
Hopefully it'll all result in a competitive market that increases the quality of material from all avenues. I remain optimistic on that part :)
I doubt WotC will use the OGL. They may have a free-use license, but I doubt it will be as open as the OGL. I would expect something like the d20 license, but perhaps allow you to reference the "dungeons & dragons" name.
D&D is now about the brand - and the RPG is likely to become (if not already) a small part of the brand (if things go as WotC wants). I'm sure WotC wants the free advertising without allowing others to copy the game.
(On a personal note, I don't intend to play 5E, so I really don't care one way or the other.)
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I think the problem is 5E isnt different enough to matter one way or the other. I may change my tune once the game is released but im not sure what 5E brings that the 3E OGL cant accomadate.
I completely agree. I plan I buying at least the core books, but the lack of an OGL won't effect that decision.
Personally, I think it would be a bit of a douche move to clone a currently published system, but I've been following the playtest from the beginning, and haven't seen anything that couldn't be recreated under the OGL with as much fidelity as any of the OSR systems out there. If you're talking about supplements, given the simplicity of D&DNext/5E stat block and mechanics, I'm not sure you'd even have to file off the serial numbers; I can't think of any game terms that aren't available through the OGL.
Or maybe you would have to file some serial number off, now that I think about it, but not very many. You'd certainly be advised to call it The World's Oldest Role-Playing System without a WotC license. (It still surprises me that the marketers haven't realized that when you force people to use generic terms instead of your brand name, you're doing yourself a disservice, but I digress.)
The lack of an OGL for D&D 4E resulted in very few 3pps publishing anything to support that game system. If Wizards wants to re-unify the different game systems they came up with, an OGL would be the way to do it. From what I saw in the playtest materials, unofficial conversions between D&D Next and Pathfinder would not be too tough to come up with. But if the new system had a full OGL, they or somebody else could come up with an officially sanctioned conversion guide and then the material for either system would become usable with either.
But I would be very surprised if the folks running Wizards are smart enough to do that. I think it is far more likely that we will see news stories about Pathfinder still outselling D&D this fall.
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Well, for what's it's worth, they are working with some third party companies :)
@Marc - there isn't much info on the future of a possible OGL beyond KP's adventures, so while it is incredibly promising, it's not worth too much. ;)
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I think the main argument against the OGL -- namely, giving away the cow -- is moot. Pathfinder exists. The cow has been given. :)
If Wotc doesn't go OGL with 5E, they have the unenviable task of competing with an OGL game using a non-OGL game. Why give yourself a disadvantage like that right out of the gate?
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They think that Copyright is valuable, but the OGL has proven that it's not.
Look at their biggest competitor. If they don't compete with an OGL, then we are basically stuck because there won't be much competition for Paizo and Pathfinder. Pathfinder is the most valuable property there is. And if it takes another five years to beat it into Hasbro that they can't own D&D anymore the way they think, then so be it.
D&D lives through Pathfinder. It's the most valuable D&D version right now, since you have the freedom to create your own stuff with it. D&D will continue to be valuable. 3.x had to be heavily advertised to get a lot of 2e fans to try it (and non-2e fans). I was one of them. I still like 2e.
Since it's release in the OGL, the value of D&D has grown since it lives, freely, in a lot of people's minds -- minds that are free to express their ideas and storytelling with D&D through print using the medium of money in exchange. D&D has more value through Pathfinder and it's 3.x version than it does through 4e.
Even if people don't pick up 3rd party, the value of the game has risen far above anyone's expectations. Every 3PP's product adds value to Pathfinder. IF WotC limits publishing of 5e 3rd party materials to a few, then D&D 5th Edition is not going to beat Pathfinder. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is.
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Would it be good to see a OGL for 5E yes. I would be surprised if they do. Fans of 3pp forget it created their own competitor. If I was the ownder of the D&D IP a flat 500$ year a fee to use the rules. I get money and 3pp who make money off of me would also benefit. Not to mention I'm seeing more and more "Pathfinder only material allowed" in more and more games. Some of the DMs who restrict themselves to core only never having even read a 3pp. To say that no oGL would ruin 5E is forgetting that for years 1E and 2E had no OGL and were successful for the most part.
Would it be good to see a OGL for 5E yes. I would be surprised if they do. Fans of 3pp forget it created their own competitor. If I was the ownder of the D&D IP a flat 500$ year a fee to use the rules. I get money and 3pp who make money off of me would also benefit. Not to mention I'm seeing more and more "Pathfinder only material allowed" in more and more games. Some of the DMs who restrict themselves to core only never having even read a 3pp. To say that no oGL would ruin 5E is forgetting that for years 1E and 2E had no OGL and were successful for the most part.
No one is forgetting anything. 1E and 2E existed before the OGL. As I have previously pointed out, that ship has sailed. The choice WotC now faces is simply whether to be an OGL game or not, because either way they have to compete with one.
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Would it be good to see a OGL for 5E yes. I would be surprised if they do. Fans of 3pp forget it created their own competitor. If I was the ownder of the D&D IP a flat 500$ year a fee to use the rules. I get money and 3pp who make money off of me would also benefit. Not to mention I'm seeing more and more "Pathfinder only material allowed" in more and more games. Some of the DMs who restrict themselves to core only never having even read a 3pp. To say that no oGL would ruin 5E is forgetting that for years 1E and 2E had no OGL and were successful for the most part.
500 is nothing, but I get the point you are trying to make. Issue is as bugleyman says, will be with competing with an OGL. Why pay a fee to write for D&D when you could write for PF/D20 without?
If the deal with Kobold Press gives any hints on the future of 5E and OGL, I would say they might choose a middle road: contract out elements of the game they can't/won't develop to 3pp publishers, without creating an OGL open to all. That way they can get 3pp support, while still maintaining control on who produces what and maintaining a high standard of quality.
handled correctly, the above approach could be a really brilliant strategy for them.
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Could be. It could be.
I still think the Cobbler model is the most valuable model for an artist, and for a company. Sure, the OGL experiment has hurt them, when they left the OGL, I think it hurt them the worst. They did let the cat out of the bag and now they can't catch it again.
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However, if I have to pay for a license, I want the freedom and responsibility of putting what I want into my project. For instance, I want to bring this to life > Phaeselis, City of Psionics. If I'm paying $500, I'm making sure I get the right to be ridiculed for putting in an authentic picture of the ancient Olympic games. :) I also want to make darn sure that WotC is not blamed. :)
A free license is one thing, but if I'm forking over my hard earned energy in exchange, I want some freedoms to be laughed at, or snickered, or to shock people. :) I also want to make sure that WotC is not blamed. :)
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So, back to open licenses. I can't blame them for being more conservative, I can only see what will happen to WotC's "RPG R&D" department if they go this route, based on how they treated Eberron. Keith should have lost, looking at the results, and published his work under the OGL. It wouldn't have been just as good, but the new races could have been developed more freely.
All of the WotC Campaign Settings deserve a chance to be successful, and Eberron probably deserved it more than the ones that came before. However, it suffered media blitz advertising. When you do that to a copyrighted property, it rises as a rocket, and disappears quickly, never to be seen again.
If WotC released the whole of Eberron under a free license, it would be in print today, and have a good following. But they didn't. Really, I think they did Keith Baker a disservice, to his design genius and his talent.
While his talents aren't wasted, I still think it's a disservice. I don't want this to happen to my work, so the only way it can thrive is if I free it. After studying how Copyright can be very bad for everyone, I placed Phaeselis' text under a Creative Commons license. I wanted everyone to know, EVERYONE, that anyone can print it and reach markets that I can't reach.
I disagree that WotC is a really brilliant strategy for the health of D&D. It's a great strategy for them, yeah. But I don't think it will work out the way they want to when D&D passes, and WotC is still around.
People will still play the game, no doubt. It will still live. Maybe under Pathfinder's version and 3.x more than the other 4. However, if they lock it up for 95 years (or maybe longer if Disney keeps on getting its way) after D&D passes, the only way we will see it in print is through the OGL, and there will be no new editions to keep it fresh; otherwise you have to call it by something else.
With the way WotC advertising handles things, though, it's not a brilliant strategy for the health of the game long term. If they media blitz everything, it will hurt D&D.
Well, it looks like Frog God Games/Necromancer are trying the route of using the existing OGL to produce material for 5e, in much the same way people have used it to make OSR clones and material.
http://froggodgames.com/5th-edition
Will be interesting (to say the least!) to see where this goes :)
Well, it looks like Frog God Games/Necromancer are trying the route of using the existing OGL to produce material for 5e, in much the same way people have used it to make OSR clones and material.
http://froggodgames.com/5th-edition
Will be interesting (to say the least!) to see where this goes :)
Does this mean that Frog Gods have some sort of special permission to support 5E (or they know an OGL is coming)? Because I don't think they can flat out refer to supporting 5E if they are just trying to clone the rules using the 3.5 OGL. Note no reference to 4E for instance.
I wonder if 4th edition had an OGL, would it have been more successful and still be produced instead of being thrown away after 5 years, when their previous edition was around for about 2x the length (plus another 5 years under the Pathfinder name)?
Honestly, I think having 5th edition under an OGL would be a good thing for the edition. Having a fee charged for publishing under the new edition would be a terrible idea. Why would I pay to make things for 5th edition when I can make things for Pathfinder for free? And if they did go the fee route, a flat $500 would be terrible. A small percentage of sales would be better. But free would be the best.
Of course, if Wizards would support their previous editions as well as the newest edition (similar to Sony with the PS2 still being relevant and getting games made through most of the PS3's lifecycle, though doing in print instead of software will be much easier to do), maybe D&D would be the market dominator like it used to be, instead of being eclipsed by Pathfinder.
Well, it looks like Frog God Games/Necromancer are trying the route of using the existing OGL to produce material for 5e, in much the same way people have used it to make OSR clones and material.
http://froggodgames.com/5th-edition
Will be interesting (to say the least!) to see where this goes :)
Interesting indeed. Very interesting.
What does an RPG system "passing" even mean? 'Cause if we're talking about it passing away, as in a euphemism for dying, it was never alive to begin with and you can just say "goes out of production." Though personally I think D&D is so closely associated with RPGs that even if it did go out of production, people would still talk about D&D the way they talk about dialing a phone, even though phones don't have dials on them anymore.
Does this mean that Frog Gods have some sort of special permission to support 5E (or they know an OGL is coming)? Because I don't think they can flat out refer to supporting 5E if they are just trying to clone the rules using the 3.5 OGL. Note no reference to 4E for instance.Well, it looks like Frog God Games/Necromancer are trying the route of using the existing OGL to produce material for 5e, in much the same way people have used it to make OSR clones and material.
http://froggodgames.com/5th-edition
Will be interesting (to say the least!) to see where this goes :)
This revision of the adventure is just released under the standard OGL, by the looks. There's a legal disclaimer that there's no challenge to WotC's trademarks and no affiliation (so presumably no special permission).
Does this mean that Frog Gods have some sort of special permission to support 5E (or they know an OGL is coming)? Because I don't think they can flat out refer to supporting 5E if they are just trying to clone the rules using the 3.5 OGL. Note no reference to 4E for instance.This revision of the adventure is just released under the standard OGL, by the looks. There's a legal disclaimer that there's no challenge to WotC's trademarks and no affiliation (so presumably no special permission).
Yeah, I'd imagine if they actually had permission, they'd be able to actually name the system this module is for rather than a vague reference to "5th edition" :) (Sure, we all *know* what they mean by that, but they're avoiding using the actual trademarked name of the game system.) This looks very much like FGG attempting to fit it within the OGL by using it to allow them to reference various game concepts - the exact same way people have used the OGL to do OSR stuff containing the same ability scores and various stat block labels.
Either it'll go unnoticed on the WotC radar, will get noticed but they'll be uninterested in or unable to raise an objection, or there'll be a request to take it down. Whatever happens either a door gets opened, or it gets firmly wedged shut - either way we should all find out fairly soon whether this kind of thing will work or not :)
It has a pregen bard. Is bard even one of the classes they've released yet?
It also has boxed text that tells the PCs what they do: "Taking a brand from the fire, [the person on watch] leaves the fireside to investigate." :P Is that common for FGG? I've never actually looked at anything of theirs before.
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It has a pregen bard. Is bard even one of the classes they've released yet?
It also has boxed text that tells the PCs what they do: "Taking a brand from the fire, [the person on watch] leaves the fireside to investigate." :P Is that common for FGG? I've never actually looked at anything of theirs before.
No, this isn't their usual fare - it is very railroad/narrated to a degree, but this module was intended primarily for brand new players and DMs - hence the scripted aspect.
Joana it's a very atypical module. It was the first third edition adventure ever published I think, definitely the first 3pp one at least. It was getting played at conventions just as third edition was breaking. It's meant for first time DM's and first time players, and to be able to be run without any prep at all.
I have run it several times and just omitted the boxed text that dictated players actions because that rankled me quite a bit.
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As Grimmy says, the Wizard's Amulet is specifically designed as an introductory module for inexperienced players, and it is completely different from a normal Necromancer Games/ Frog God adventure. Our adventures are usually location-based sandbox modules.
Experienced players will want to use their own developed styles rather than following our easy-to-play advice, and will probably want to sketch out a bit of a place to set it in. As it stands it is laser-focused on developing the absolute basics.