# Gygax's views on OGL



## MeepoTheMighty (Jun 7, 2004)

Is it just me, or is Gary totally out of touch here?  

 From http://www.silven.com/articles.asp?case=show&id=115



> Q1) We know from previous columns with you that you are not a great advocate of open licenses. Before we delve into the details of this lets define your views on this using the OGL as our standard discussion point. Are you against open licenses like the OGL in any form or is it one factor of the licensing model that you think is poor?
> 
> It is my opinion in general that an open license is worth every penny paid for it, and returns to the grantor full value for the material offered in the deal.
> 
> ...


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## JeffB (Jun 7, 2004)

While I don't agree with Gary on every point, I do believe some of his comments have merit.

I suspect that having the company he started and the product he produced stripped away from him  (along with later products from another publisher having to be canceled because of his former company), he's probably damn gun-shy about giving up any kind of control general. Can't say I blame him in that regard.


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## Janx (Jun 7, 2004)

From the interview, one can see that Gary is clearly against OGL, and unwilling to even entertain any thoughts as to how he could make it better.

If I recall, Gary was in charge back in the Judges Guild days, thus it was HE that sued the pants off of anyone making products for D&D that wasn't TSR.

So it's no surprise that he still feels the same way.  It should also be no surprise that he's not running the company that makes the biggest RPG on the planet.  He lost that job, too.  So I wouldn't put much stock in his business acumen.


His comment on Q4, getting royalties for the D&D license to pay for staff QA is way off target.  This was the precise reason the OGL was created.  If WotC charged companies to make D&D products, few would pay.  Instead, they'd make their own RPG and sell that.  Instead, WotC has tricked them into making D&D content without minimal effort.  This is what the RPG industry was doing prior to 2000.  We would not likely have Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed or other products, as he wouldn't have been able to afford the royalty costs.

I do see one alternative to the OGL that WotC could have done.  And that would have been to "certify" other publishers products.  Basically, in order to release a product, the publisher sends a check and a  PDF to WotC's "external review" team.  Basically a bunch of editors.  The check is to pay for the editors (probably contractors).  Their job is to review the content for quality, consistency, and cleanliness.  If it passes, the publisher gets clear-to-ship and can put the D&D compatible logo on it.  If it fails, the publisher has to try again (I assume the editor would tell them why it failed).  As a publisher, I'd try to make my product perfect before I sent it to be certified.  The cost wouldn't be too bad.  An editor might want $40,000 a year.  That's $20 an hour.  At 2 pages an hour, a 96 page book would take 48 hours, and cost $960 to certify.  A real editor could probably provide real stats and I suspect the cost would actually be lower.

Janx


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## Thornir Alekeg (Jun 7, 2004)

Nah, I don't think he is completely off base.  While overall I think the OGL has been good for the game, I can understand where he is coming from about the lack of control and quality issues.  I also cannot say I disagree with the idea that a game company should be able to support its players, even if it requires generating low profit margin items like modules.  My impression of what Gygax is saying is that Hasbro/WoTC sold out in order to focus on more profitable areas thinking others would do the less profitable dirty work for them, rather than think about making the best material out there and supporting a fan base for the love of the game.  It comes down to business versus passion.

I can't say I'd go so far as to call the OGL a pig's ear, and in the end the OGL certainly benefits me more and a player than if it didn't exist, but I understand how he could feel this way considering his personal ties to the game.


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## BiggusGeekus (Jun 7, 2004)

While I have great respect for Mr. Gygax, I disagree with some of his points.  Clearly, he's a big mavin of creative control, which is only understandable as he was instrumental in ushering in a new form of entertainment.

However...



> All the OGL does is to allow virtually any sort of design to utilize D&D game material. The result might develop products that appeal to existing game enthusiasts, but it does virtually nothing in regards to bringing in new players




That's a pretty big "All" at the start of the quote.  And the ability for DMs to develop and reprint parts of the SRD is phenominal in the era of the internet.  

Also, if you look at RPGs in the 80s, a lot of them were essentially D&D compliant anyway.  Oh, sure.  "Will" might have replaced "Wisdom" and "Charm" would be used instead of "Charisma".  You'd have different classes and die-rolling techniques.  But converting a lot of those games to D&D wasn't all that hard.  Even skill-baesd games like _Runequest_ used familiar attributes.  The OGL brings that creative spirit under one roof.  

The OGL does indeed do nothing to bring new players into the game.  But neither did the non-existance of an OGL (if that makes any sense).  Furthermore, the OGL makes it more likely that games will use the same mechanics to bring down the learning curve (although a supported line of D&D-"lite" products is desperatly needed).  

But again, I can certainly see why he'd walk if someone told him they wanted to give his brainchild away for free and let other people make money off it.


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## am181d (Jun 7, 2004)

But... But... Gygax's name has appeared in the title of OGL products...

I don't... What does...

Head... can't... contain...

NYGAAHHHGGHhhht


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## MerakSpielman (Jun 7, 2004)

> A real editor could probably provide real stats and I suspect the cost would actually be lower.



My company charges customer $70/hour for professional technical editing (note that this is significantly more than the technical editors get paid. Also note that we primarly edit government technical documents, not RPG products, so the pricing might differ in different industries). 

Depending on requrements of the customer, the frequency of errors, and the complexity of the text, one can edit anywhere from 10 to 30 pages per hour.

edit, after some calculations: So, a 300 page product, assuming simple, "light" editing, could take 10 hours, or $700 to edit.


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## The_Gneech (Jun 7, 2004)

I suspect that the estimable Col. Pladoh also tends to think of the gaming industry in regards to how it serves the gamer, rather than whether or not any given company makes or loses money. He may believe (and I think it's valid idea) that different, competing game systems = more better game. Instead of having twenty tiny companies doing d20, it would be better to have six strong companies doing six different-but-really-cool games, each one working twice as hard to earn your gaming dollar.

Unfortunately, that's also diametrically opposed to an important real-world factor in gaming, which is "Who the hell has TIME to learn six different games? I barely get two sessions a month in as it is!"

   -The Gneech


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## Sir Whiskers (Jun 7, 2004)

Keep in mind that Gary has always been a bit of a control freak where D&D is concerned. I still remember the comment he made over 20 years ago, to the effect that anyone who used house rules might be playing an RPG, but they sure weren't playing D&D.

That said, his concern for quality control has been born out in the market - there's fair more bad stuff than good. There are, however, two contradictory approaches to this. Gary would prefer a Nintendo-like system, where the parent company designs and/or approves everything published for the game. Theoretically, this allows the company to maintain certain minimum standards. Personally, I'd argue that such control is bound to fail at some point, as shown by what happened in 2E and what is currently happening with some of WOTC's more infamous 3E products (ELH, PsiHB).

The other approach is based on competition. In this model, anyone with a few bucks and the necessary effort can get into the market. Theoretically, only the best will survive, leaving gamers with the best material to choose from. Unfortunately, it takes a long time for a market to shake itself out, and d20 is still doing so. The big names in d20 publishing are still putting out a lot of dreck, and the smaller players with some great ideas are having even more trouble getting noticed.

Neither system is perfect, but given a choice, I favor the second approach over the first. Too much of the really good stuff I've purchased the past 3 years came from a non-WOTC publisher for me to want a centrally-controlled system such as Gary seems to be proposing. Still, I acknowledge that his argument has some merit.


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## Zappo (Jun 7, 2004)

As much as it pains me to strongly disagree with Gary, for whom I have the utmost respect... I strongly disagree with Gary on this topic.

 * First of all, let's dispel this weird idea that centralized control over a license allows for better quality. TSR hasn't been a guarantee of quality for quite a long time before finally collapsing; lots of TSR stuff (especially from 2E days) is real dung.

 * Probably, Gary meant better _average_ quality. Ok, probably TSR stuff on average is better than d20 stuff on average. However, this is _entirely irrelevant_, because I only buy good stuff! I benefit from having loads of material, who cares about the average. And no, WotC can't give me the loads of material by itself, because...

 * TSR killed itself exactly by trying to make support material appealing to everyone.

 * I don't agree that WotC owes to the fans the production of quality support material. The fans must have that quality support material, no doubt on this; but whether it comes from WotC or anyone else is irrelevant. 

 * Certainly the OGL by itself does nothing to bring in new players. Keeping the game closed would do nothing all the same. So, this is entirely irrelevant.

 * Most d20 publishers couldn't feed themselves on their books alone. The idea that royalties would suffice to pay for employees doing quality checking could only work if the number of licensees is very small. Also, it would remove single-person operations entirely since they couldn't generate enough revenue to justify the employee-time spent on quality checking them.

 * "No real benefit to WotC" automatically implies "no benefit to the D&D system"? And this is the basis of the entire argument against the OGL? Then prove it, please.

 * Open licenses have been a benefit for consumers in the software field, and I think this is more fact than opinion.


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## Tav_Behemoth (Jun 7, 2004)

The older I get, the more I respect Gary and his remarkable achievements. Few people have had such a revolutionary impact on my life and the world we all live in. But one nice thing about getting older is learning that you can love your elders and still disagree with them...

As we were fooling around with cover design ideas for Masters and Minions, one of the things I considered was an homage to the 1980 World of Greyhawk  folio, both because it's a thing of beauty and because it's a 32-page book like our Horde Books--I'm not yet ambitious enough to even think of creating a jam-packed tome like the '79 DMG!

As I sketched out my tribute version of its cover, it gave me an incredible feeling of liberation to say "copyleft" everywhere the original says "copyright", and "all rights released" everywhere it says "all rights reserved". (There's a nice variant of this on a Guided by Voices album: "All wrongs reversed.") Now, that was published then, and we're dealing with an entirely different landscape now. We're not doing that version of the cover, nor is Behemoth3 actually giving up every moral right to our creation. But it was nice to feel that spirit of freedom for a moment!

I think that the Open Gaming License's contribution of the D&D ruleset to the community will ultimately be seen as having a transformative impact on gaming that's almost as great as the creation of the original roleplaying game.  We've got enough to thank Gary for already; if he doesn't want to wave flags for the current revolution, I reckon he's earned that right!


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## MeepoTheMighty (Jun 7, 2004)

BiggusGeekus said:
			
		

> The OGL does indeed do nothing to bring new players into the game.



 Really?  I'm sure there are people playing Mutants & Masterminds, Farscape, Babylon 5, or whatever, who wouldn't have ever picked up a D&D book.


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## Planesdragon (Jun 7, 2004)

Zappo said:
			
		

> * Open licenses have been a benefit for consumers in the software field, and I think this is more fact than opinion.



 No, it's a fact.  Open Licenses are why the internet happened at all.  Open standards are why we can actually read this website.  The question isn't "are open licenses good", it's "when are closed licenses better?"


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## BiggusGeekus (Jun 7, 2004)

MeepoTheMighty said:
			
		

> Really?  I'm sure there are people playing Mutants & Masterminds, Farscape, Babylon 5, or whatever, who wouldn't have ever picked up a D&D book.




All of those would have still been made.  Well, M&M might be more dubious, but there were puh-lenty of games non-d20 based that were being made, Star Trek and Star Wars being two big examples (the latter going to d20 when West End Games fell into trouble). 

Now, what the OGL _does_ do is encourage producers to publish with d20-friendly rules which lowers the learning curve for new games.  But that's not really bringing in new players, it's making things easier for gamers to try new  settings.


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## DanMcS (Jun 7, 2004)

Dueling quotes 



			
				GaryGygax said:
			
		

> Frankly, the D20 and OGL licenses are what they are, and in my opinion they have no real benefit to WotC, and thus they do not benefit the D&D game system. The concept is flawed, and I do not believe that any amount of time will serve to make a silk purse out of a pig's ear.






			
				Arthur C. Clarke said:
			
		

> Clarke's First Law: When a distinguished, but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.


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## Desdichado (Jun 7, 2004)

The_Gneech said:
			
		

> I suspect that the estimable Col. Pladoh also tends to think of the gaming industry in regards to how it serves the gamer, rather than whether or not any given company makes or loses money. He may believe (and I think it's valid idea) that different, competing game systems = more better game. Instead of having twenty tiny companies doing d20, it would be better to have six strong companies doing six different-but-really-cool games, each one working twice as hard to earn your gaming dollar.



If indeed Col_Pladoh thinks of the industry in regards to how it serves the gamer, then the argument is completely off base.  The OGL, especially now, a few years after its advent and the shaking out of the poorest products, is the most gamer-geared it's ever been.  Want a monster book?  Well, you can go get the MM, the MM2 or the FF, of course, but you can also go get oriental themed monsters with _Jade Dragons and Hungry Ghosts_ or _Creatures of Rokugan_, for instance.  Or more traditional faery tale type creatures in the _Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary._  You want to focus on the lower planes?  _Book of Fiends_ fills that niche.  You want monsters geared for specific settings?  Tons of those out there too.

This example shows that the consumer has much more choice in quality material than he ever would have had prior to the OGL.  Are there some clunker monster books out there?  Sure, but that's not the point.  The point is, there are more _quality_ monster books, in print and compatible with a single system, then we've ever had before by far.

Extrapolating beyond the rather constricted example of monster books, I'd say this is true for every type of book you can imagine for a game from toolboxes, to settings, to class splatbooks, etc.

Col_Pladoh clearly does _not_ focus on "the gaming industry in regards to how it serves the gamer" if this is his position on the OGL.  In fact, I have a hard time wondering what his gripe with the OGL really is, other than the fact that he's clearly got different ideas in terms of what the value of the D&D brand is and how to develop that, and that he wonders (and is dubious about) if the financial payback from the OGL ever materialized.  _That's_ reasonable, although he doesn't have any data to support his position either, so it's just a question of opinion.


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## Sigurd (Jun 7, 2004)

*Timing is decisive here*

Both Gygax & WOTC used an approach appropriate for their time.

Gygax grew a small idea into an industry. Shaping and controlling that Idea was a) managable and b) gave him steady work. He likes to write and play so TSR as an extension of his writing makes sense.


Wotc bought a game publishing company. I've heard, and I don't know it to be true, that at the time it wasn't a very profitable gaming company. OGL is a shrewd move for directors of a company who must split their interests. If you are not producing a great module for your game right now -- enable somebody else to and keep the game running.

I also have to say that OGL does bring in new gamers to WOTC. The OGL poached all the hard core games from other systems that had an itch to publish something. The bookstore near me has three roleplaying shelves - 1.3 shelves are WOTC, 1 shelf is OGL support material and the remaining .7 of a shelf has everything else. OGL is not a dungeon masters aid it is a publishing strategy.

sigurd


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## MerakSpielman (Jun 7, 2004)

The OGL does perhaps allow hordes of barely-literate power gamers to publish their own, poorly thought out drek, but it also has allowed a good number of gems to be published which would otherwise never have seen the light of day, like Elements of Magic, or some of the other small-publisher pdfs, like "Everyone Else" which I use all the time.


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## mattcolville (Jun 7, 2004)

First, remember that someone asked Gary his opinion. Gary gave it. We're not obligated to agree with him and we benefit from not lambasting someone for holding an opinion different from our own.



			
				The_Gneech said:
			
		

> I suspect that the estimable Col. Pladoh also tends to think of the gaming industry in regards to how it serves the gamer, rather than whether or not any given company makes or loses money.




In this, I wonder if he's consider the fact that with the advent of the OGL WotC no longer controls D&D. The license is free, and in perpetuity. It cannot be withdrawn. WotC gave away one of their greatest assets, and if they start ing up D&D, other people can pick up the slack. There's now no reason the things that happened to TSR in the 90's should happen again.


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## Sargon (Jun 7, 2004)

I think the OGL is sort of a double edged sword for WOTC

It is good that there are a ton of products out there.  I believe it is reaching 1500 or more different ones.  It is true that I can go online and order basically the exact book that suits my interest.  However, I am a regular lurker sometimes poster on d20 and other various rpg boards.  So I know what products are coming out.  

Here is where the problem as far as me as a customer goes.  I bought 3.5 Monster Manual, 3.5 DMG.  That is it as far as WOTC products in the last year are concerned.  My 3.5 Players handbook is from mongoose.  The rest of my books are all from 3rd party publishers.  I have no plans as far as I see to buy another WOTC product, all my money is going to 3rd party companies.  This works out to basically WOTC got 60 of my gaming dollars.

I have recently just bought

Book of Fiends
Every Midnight product out
Every Dawnforge product out
Advanced Players Guide

Supposedly 3.5 came out 2 years early, due to sales of 3.0 core books sales slowing down.  How long will it take for 3.5 core books sales to also slow down. 

To play D&D all you need to have is the 3 core books, 2 if you buy mongooses PHB.  You could spend the rest of your money buying various 3rd party products.  Recently Complete Divine and Complete Warrior has come out, bet you might find a better 3rd party product that does it better.  Racial Books, yep covered as well, probably in more depth.

I am waiting for some product like this to come out.  I recently got into the midnight campaign setting.  Now technically I could take the elements of the SRD, and the open content of the Midnight campaign setting, compile all the classes, races, spells, feats, skills, etc... into one book, format it so it looks better, and sell it as an ogl product.  Now you can buy one book and it will have everything you need to run Midnight without the need to buy WOTC core books.  Basically this would be a more advanced version of Monte Cooks Arcana Unearthed since it would serve as PHB, DMG and Monster Manual.

I basically believe that the OGL is better for players of the game, but not that great for WOTC. Currently there is more D20 licensed rpg products than OGL but that might change.


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## tetsujin28 (Jun 7, 2004)

MeepoTheMighty said:
			
		

> Is it just me, or is Gary totally out of touch here?



Personally? I think what he says is kind of irrelevent. No-one in the industry listens to him, anymore.


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## Turanil (Jun 7, 2004)

> Frankly, the D20 and OGL licenses are what they are, and in my opinion they have no real benefit to WotC, and thus they do not benefit the D&D game system. The concept is flawed, and I do not believe that any amount of time will serve to make a silk purse out of a pig's ear.




There has been excellent things by 3rd party publishers that would have never been produced by WotC. I am so glad to be able to buy some of them, much better than many WotC stuff that I don't like. Now, maybe it's true that WotC don't earn more money because of the OGL, and that we spend way more money because of it, often to buy products we will never use. But anyway, it's great as gamers to have the OGL!


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## epochrpg (Jun 7, 2004)

Janx said:
			
		

> If WotC charged companies to make D&D products, few would pay.  Instead, they'd make their own RPG and sell that.  Instead, WotC has tricked them into making D&D content
> Janx




And that is the Crime to RPG players everywhere that is the d20 system.  Nobody makes their own system anymore.  People that do are pushed out of the market.  Look at 7th Sea.  That was a TERRIFIC game, and now it is dead, because they tried to d20ize it, and nobody liked it that way.

Now you only have a choice of buying d20, Gurps, Palladium, or Whitewolf.  Those are the only 3 non-d20 systems that you see in stores, and even those are far rarer than d20.  

Today there are not enough alternatives to d20.  Great systems like Earthdawn, 7th Sea, etc cannot compete with d20, and so, they die.  Instead of producing their own systems that might be even better than d20 (and it would not be difficult) they start churning out subpar d20ized versions of stuff.  

So in that regard I agree with Gary.  Not because I think that WOTC should not be allowed to share its IP.  I just don't like the idea that is now basically the only show in Town, unless you want to buy something that is Out of Print or have to buy it online because stores don't sell it!


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## DaveMage (Jun 7, 2004)

epochrpg said:
			
		

> And that is the Crime to RPG players everywhere that is the d20 system.  Nobody makes their own system anymore.  People that do are pushed out of the market.  Look at 7th Sea.  That was a TERRIFIC game, and now it is dead, because they tried to d20ize it, and nobody liked it that way.
> 
> Now you only have a choice of buying d20, Gurps, Palladium, or Whitewolf.  Those are the only 3 non-d20 systems that you see in stores, and even those are far rarer than d20.
> 
> ...




So...basically you're saying (paraphrasing) that your hate of d20 knows no limit...


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## Desdichado (Jun 7, 2004)

epochrpg said:
			
		

> And that is the Crime to RPG players everywhere that is the d20 system.  Nobody makes their own system anymore.  People that do are pushed out of the market.  Look at 7th Sea.  That was a TERRIFIC game, and now it is dead, because they tried to d20ize it, and nobody liked it that way.



Buffy.  Lord of the Rings.  Blue Planet.  WHFRP 2nd edition by Green Ronin.  Four off the top of my head that are either for sale now or under development.


			
				epochrpg said:
			
		

> Now you only have a choice of buying d20, Gurps, Palladium, or Whitewolf.  Those are the only 3 non-d20 systems that you see in stores, and even those are far rarer than d20.



You have crappy stores then.  In fact, before d20 I'd bet those same stores just had D&D, GURPS, Palladium or White Wolf if that's the case.


			
				enochrpg said:
			
		

> Today there are not enough alternatives to d20.  Great systems like Earthdawn, 7th Sea, etc cannot compete with d20, and so, they die.  Instead of producing their own systems that might be even better than d20 (and it would not be difficult) they start churning out subpar d20ized versions of stuff.



Newsflash: they died before d20 too.  You know how many systems have come and gone?  I don't, but it's a lot.  There are still alternate systems in print just like before.  There are still systems that don't make it from a business perspective, just like before.  The only difference now is that disgruntled postal workers have a scapegoat in the form of d20.


			
				enochrpg said:
			
		

> So in that regard I agree with Gary.  Not because I think that WOTC should not be allowed to share its IP.  I just don't like the idea that is now basically the only show in Town, unless you want to buy something that is Out of Print or have to buy it online because stores don't sell it!



Since that's not actually the case on the market today, then that means you are _disagreeing_ with him then?


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## d4 (Jun 7, 2004)

epochrpg said:
			
		

> Today there are not enough alternatives to d20.  Great systems like Earthdawn, 7th Sea, etc cannot compete with d20, and so, they die.  Instead of producing their own systems that might be even better than d20 (and it would not be difficult) they start churning out subpar d20ized versions of stuff.



it sounds like you are contradicting yourself to me. if those systems were what people wanted, they'd be competitive and sell well against d20. since they are not competitive, that must mean that they are not what the market wants.

that's not to say they aren't good games; it just means they must not appeal to as wide an audience as d20 does.

it sounds to me like you dislike d20 mainly because it is popular, and not on its merits or flaws as a game system itself.


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## Paka (Jun 7, 2004)

I disagree.  I think OGL has allowed WOTC to put out books that they can be fairly sure will be big sellers like the Forgotten Realms books, Draconimicon, Monster Manuals, etc. while allowing others to take chances and put out Conan, Blue Rose, Midnight, Mutants and Masterminds, etc.  The quality of d20 books does vary rather drastically and hence the community we're posting on now.  It has become necessary to have a dialogue about which books to include and which to nix.

This system keeps the d20 market fresh and competitive.

d20 isn't the only system I play and I do not believe that the OGL would work for every game but I don't think it has done gaming, D&D nor WOTC anything but good.


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## Virate (Jun 7, 2004)

I have no problem saying that I do not put Gygax on a pedestal.  The man is a dinosaur, a relic of the past and his comments reflect this.

The man simply cannot understand the vast benefits the OGL has offered, in my opinion the OGL is the single most important development in the gaming industry since D&D was first written.  Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you a different gaming system.

The debate of OGL vs non-OGL systems has already been decided by a little rivalry between Apple and Microsoft.  Apple said that only apple could write their software, Microsoft let anyone do it...The latter's shrewd business (for good and ill) has given them the top spot in the market.

In my bookshelf I had three other gaming systems that I used before OGL/D20 was released.  Deadlands, Star Wars (WEG), World of Darkness, now Deadlands and Starwars are fully D20 systems and WoD is starting to make the conversion with the Trinity, Aberrant, Adventure systems (which I used).  This can't be coincidence alone.

The OGL/D20 is nothing short of revolutionary, and no matter how much Gygax and his "Lejendary Adventures" whines about it, one only needs to follow the buck to find the truth.


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## Kosala (Jun 7, 2004)

Greetings all!

Although we do not have any problems with people discussing articles that we post on our site on other forums, I would like to ask that you refrain from copying and pasting entire articles without prior permission. Feel free to link to them and copy and paste quotes, but not the entire article.

I would also like to point out that we have a comment system built into our site to allow people to leave comments to the authors. If you want your comments read by Mr Gygax himself, then please leave your discussion comments there.

Thanks.


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## Brother Shatterstone (Jun 7, 2004)

MeepoTheMighty said:
			
		

> Is it just me, or is Gary totally out of touch here?



I don't agree with him but in my opinion it doesn't seem like he's out of touch, just an idealist and I agree with what others have said.  Some of his comments have merit.

That all said I have probaly close to 200 OGL books so I' rather happy that it's around.


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## buzzard (Jun 7, 2004)

Virate said:
			
		

> The debate of OGL vs non-OGL systems has already been decided by a little rivalry between Apple and Microsoft.  Apple said that only apple could write their software, Microsoft let anyone do it...The latter's shrewd business (for good and ill) has given them the top spot in the market.




OK just so you get history straight, this paragraph has nothing whatsoever to do with the truth. 

Apple lost because they wouldn't let anybody else make hardware which sported their OS. Microsoft was never a hardware vendor. 

By the time Apple did try to allow clones, the battle was already decided because Microsoft finaly came out with a viable alternative. Had Apple allowed cloning before Windows 95, they may well have won. It's a moot point now. 

Oh, and for the argument that Open Software was necessary to the Internet, well that's bunk as well. Open standards are necessary, sure. That has nothing to do with open source software. They are completely different beasts. The internet was around way before the open source movement. Even the web was popularized using closed source software. Heck the most popular browser today is still IE, and it's certainly closed source. 

Now as for OGL and Gygax, well I tend to like the OGL. I enjoy the variety of stuff available due to it. I also don't see why people end up with such a beef about the large amount of stuff coming out for D20. Truthfully, the mechanics of a game really don't matter all that much (as in the core mechanics of D20 vs. DC) when you are flexible about it. Looking at the contrast between Mutants and Masterminds and D20 Call of Cthulu, could anyone really make an argument that D20 isn't flexible?

Calling him a dinosaur, however, does go a bit over the line. He was a pioneer and created a hobby which I am devoted to. I may not agree with him on this issue, but there's no need to disparage his opinion. 

buzzard


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## MerakSpielman (Jun 7, 2004)

Kosala said:
			
		

> If you want your comments read by Mr Gygax himself, then please leave your discussion comments there.



Not to burst your bubble, but Mr Gygax has been known to browse and post around here as well, and I'm reasonably certain that, if he has not seen this thread already, he will have read it within a day or two. 

But there's nothin' wrong with pimping your own web site. It's a real chore trying to attract visitors, and here we go chatting about your scoop on a different board. 

We're so inconsiderate.


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## Piratecat (Jun 7, 2004)

Kosala said:
			
		

> Greetings all!
> 
> Although we do not have any problems with people discussing articles that we post on our site on other forums, I would like to ask that you refrain from copying and pasting entire articles without prior permission. Feel free to link to them and copy and paste quotes, but not the entire article.




Our apologies, Kosala. That's certainly reasonable, and we'll enforce this from now on. Since the subject is already under discussion, may we please have permission to leave the article as currently quoted? If not, I'll go back and edit the original post.


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## jeffh (Jun 7, 2004)

Janx said:
			
		

> From the interview, one can see that Gary is clearly against OGL, and unwilling to even entertain any thoughts as to how he could make it better.
> 
> If I recall, Gary was in charge back in the Judges Guild days, thus it was HE that sued the pants off of anyone making products for D&D that wasn't TSR.
> 
> Janx




Yeah, whatever.  Maybe if by "sued the pants off of" you mean "explicitly endorsed right in the first edition DMG".

Next time you're tempted to slag someone in public, I recommend you do a little basic fact-checking first.


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## Kosala (Jun 8, 2004)

Piratecat said:
			
		

> Our apologies, Kosala. That's certainly reasonable, and we'll enforce this from now on. Since the subject is already under discussion, may we please have permission to leave the article as currently quoted? If not, I'll go back and edit the original post.




No problem at all. You are welcome to keep this thread intact as it is.


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## ddougan (Jun 8, 2004)

I completely disagree with Gary's views on the OGL.

I personally think its been a breath of fresh air to the gaming industry. It may not have been all things to everyone, but it has certainly rediscovered my love for DnD. I've also started 2 groups of completely new players (playing one night a week with each group). 

Before DnD3e, I found AD&D2e to be a bit of a mess. I thought they failed to clean up the 2nd edition rules over the 1st. And I thought the first was itself just a collection of hacks over DnD. (No flames if you disagree - these are just my opinions). Suddenly 3e brough a proper task system to the game. The mechanics where clean - D20 is a damn well-design and rather elegant game system. And Gary's Dangerous Journeys was rather ugly in my eyes too (I have nothing against him - I am glad he created the hobby, but I don't particularly think his biggest skill is game design!).

Before DnD3e, my favourite system was GDW's HouseSystem - playing Traveller and Twilight 2000. Sadly, both of these games are now pretty much dead (the reprints are just that - I don't think the system is being taken anywhere - though I am glad to purchase new copies of the books, and I am hopeful that the TNE sourcebook will bring the Traveller historyline back on track - for me, going back to pre-1000 just isn't advancing Traveller). GDW were trying to implement a common system (just as WW was) long before WOTC - what WOTC did that succeeded those efforts was the OGL.

WOTC have benefitted greatly from my purchases. I've bought 3 copies of 3e PHB, DMG, MM, plus virtually all the WOTC blue and brown hardback books (save Savage Species which really doesn't interest me). I've also picked up the complete core rules for 3.5. And I've got most of the new FR product in print. That's a testimony to the quality of their products.

OGL publishers have benefitted greatly from my purchases too. I've got every single item in the Spycraft, B5, Warcraft, Midnight and Everquest ranges. Plus a host of source books that WOTC simply hasn't released themselves, but which thanks to OGL can fit right into my campaign without any effort to integrate - aerial guides, naval guides, books on mass combat etc.

I've made a big investment in D20 products, and being able to take a dozen new players and play fantasy, modern and sci-fi games without requiring them to learn a new ruleset has justified that investment. 

I'm not saying the rules are perfect for all these genres - which is why I have house rules. But again, the elegant nature of the D20 system means I can cleanly add house rules and variants without having my players learn a new ruleset for each genre. Something which I also believe Gary isn't too fond of 

As someone else said, he was asked his opinion and gave it ... I just don't think it should be treated as gospel any more than my own or someone elses on the boards...


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## rgard (Jun 8, 2004)

BiggusGeekus said:
			
		

> While I have great respect for Mr. Gygax, I disagree with some of his points.  Clearly, he's a big mavin of creative control, which is only understandable as he was instrumental in ushering in a new form of entertainment.
> 
> However...
> 
> ...




I disagree on OGL doing nothing to bring new players into the game.  Here's an example:

My brother never was a D&D player except for one adventure I DM'd and his half-orc (named Tars Tarkas) was eaten by a gelatinous cube.  My brother is a huge ERB fan.  When I told him that there was a company designing a D20 Barsoom (ERB's John Carter on Mars) game, by brother was sufficiently psyched to learn D20 D&D and start playing in anticipation...that and Sean Reynold's Barsoom conversions I showed him.

He is a convert to not just D20/OGL but to RPGs in general now.  All that based on a game being designed based on ERB's John Carter stories...and the game hasn't even seen the light of day yet.  

Thanks,
Rich


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## Ottergame (Jun 8, 2004)

I've never really liked Gary's oppinions much, he's always stuck me as a raving egotist and very old fashioned.

For one thing, the TSR brand, even when Gygax controlled it, was never a seal of quality, and TSR released more than its fair share of stinkers, including stuff he wrote himself.

Gary has always had a "Less is more" mentality.  He was against the formation of the AD&D line of books and spearheaded the Basic line, because he didn't like how the AD&D rules provided rules for a larger variety of situations.  He's always thought that the GM should make most of the rules up as they went along, and that having printed rules took away creativity and power from the DM.

He also went after smaller companies with lawsuits who produced D&D compatable material, though TSR did this to a much large extint after he had left the company.

After reading a lot of posts and material from and about Gary, I think he figures the only good RPG rules are the ones he writes himself.  He was against the 3rd edition of D&D, and against the OGL, because it further dilutes the material he wrote for D&D.


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## rgard (Jun 8, 2004)

Ottergame said:
			
		

> I've never really liked Gary's oppinions much, he's always stuck me as a raving egotist and very old fashioned.
> 
> For one thing, the TSR brand, even when Gygax controlled it, was never a seal of quality, and TSR released more than its fair share of stinkers, including stuff he wrote himself.
> 
> ...




What did he write for GDW that got crushed by TSR in a lawsuit?  I think it was Dangerous Journeys or something like that.  Being the RPG junkie I was (am) I think I did buy his core rule books for that.  Too many weird spellings and unpronounceable words for even me.


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## rgard (Jun 8, 2004)

ddougan said:
			
		

> I completely disagree with Gary's views on the OGL.
> 
> I personally think its been a breath of fresh air to the gaming industry. It may not have been all things to everyone, but it has certainly rediscovered my love for DnD. I've also started 2 groups of completely new players (playing one night a week with each group).
> 
> ...




Agreed with all the above.  

One other benefit I see to OGL is the ownership aspect.  We can all write and sell or give away OGL products.  If D&D wasn't OGL, most of us wouldn't have a snow ball's chance of getting a D&D related product published.  How many total people submitted material to TSR, the Dragon or Dungeon over the years got published vs. the total number who submitted material?  I'll bet $ to doughnuts it's a pretty small ratio.

Thanks,
Rich


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## Ottergame (Jun 8, 2004)

rgard said:
			
		

> What did he write for GDW that got crushed by TSR in a lawsuit?  I think it was Dangerous Journeys or something like that.  Being the RPG junkie I was (am) I think I did buy his core rule books for that.  Too many weird spellings and unpronounceable words for even me.




The weird thing is that the original name, Dangerous Dimensions, was the one TSR had a problem with.  TSR dropped the suit when they changed the name to Dangerous Journies, but GDW still canned it.


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## rgard (Jun 8, 2004)

Ottergame said:
			
		

> The weird thing is that the original name, Dangerous Dimensions, was the one TSR had a problem with.  TSR dropped the suit when they changed the name to Dangerous Journies, but GDW still canned it.




Ah ok, didn't know that...thanks for clearing that up!


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## rgard (Jun 8, 2004)

Ottergame said:
			
		

> The weird thing is that the original name, Dangerous Dimensions, was the one TSR had a problem with.  TSR dropped the suit when they changed the name to Dangerous Journies, but GDW still canned it.




Also, I had hoped at the time that his system would be compatible with GDW's other games...so I could finally GM/DM fantasy characters in a Sci-Fi campaign or the reverse, with minimal conversion work.

Gee...my main reason for liking OGL/D20!


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## Walter_J (Jun 8, 2004)

No, he's far from being out of touch.  You have to consider that Gary and WotC are coming from two totally different points of view.  The  d20 STL is based on the belief that the most "popular" RPG is the best RPG.  From reading his replies to those questions, its not much of an assumption to gather that Gary believes that the best game would have the best quality rules and supplements and be easy to introduce to new gamers.  WotC put a plan into action to sell more PHBs and let other people produce what they will.  As far as the OGL/D20 is concerned, there are no other provisions--nothing about attracting new players, nothing about improving D&D, nothing about quality (although there are some standards now)--nothing except selling more PHBs and increasing D&D's "popularity".

Frankly, some of the questions are just plain loaded.  How could products produced under the OGL improve D&D?  (I'm assuming that "improve" means to somehow "make the rules better.")  Nothing produced by a party using the d20/OGL is "official", so the core rule books remain unchanged.  (What happens at the individual gaming table being up to the participants.)  How could the OGL attract new players?  Unless a 3rd party put out an introductory set, which couldn't be d20 and stand alone at the same time so it would have to be OGL and then the connection with D&D would be lost because the d20 trademark couldn't be used.

I don't think Gary's out of touch, so much as the questions don't make any sense.


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## rgard (Jun 8, 2004)

Walter_J said:
			
		

> No, he's far from being out of touch.  You have to consider that Gary and WotC are coming from two totally different points of view.  The  d20 STL is based on the belief that the most "popular" RPG is the best RPG.  From reading his replies to those questions, its not much of an assumption to gather that Gary believes that the best game would have the best quality rules and supplements and be easy to introduce to new gamers.  WotC put a plan into action to sell more PHBs and let other people produce what they will.  As far as the OGL/D20 is concerned, there are no other provisions--nothing about attracting new players, nothing about improving D&D, nothing about quality (although there are some standards now)--nothing except selling more PHBs and increasing D&D's "popularity".
> 
> Frankly, some of the questions are just plain loaded.  How could products produced under the OGL improve D&D?  (I'm assuming that "improve" means to somehow "make the rules better.")  Nothing produced by a party using the d20/OGL is "official", so the core rule books remain unchanged.  (What happens at the individual gaming table being up to the participants.)  How could the OGL attract new players?  Unless a 3rd party put out an introductory set, which couldn't be d20 and stand alone at the same time so it would have to be OGL and then the connection with D&D would be lost because the d20 trademark couldn't be used.
> 
> I don't think Gary's out of touch, so much as the questions don't make any sense.




I gave one example of OGL bringing new blood to the industry as well as a couple of other folks' posts.

OGL not improving the system?  Probably has already.  The folks at WotC don't live in a vacuum.  I'd bet that some of the .5 upgrade and some from Unearthed Arcana at least had some inspiration from something published by 3rd party companies.

Thanks,
Rich


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## Ottergame (Jun 8, 2004)

When 3rd edition was released, tons of PHBs were sold.  Now, those books had to go somewhere, and returning vets couldn't account for the whole number.  People were buying books to give as gifts to non-gaming friends, and brought them into the fold.

OGL has at least done something to keep those people playing, if not directly pulling them into the hobby, because someone, somewhere, has wrote the book you want to play with.  In the bad old fashioned days, you just had to hope and pray you'd get a useful nugget from an issue of Dragon if what you wanted was uncommon and never done before.


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## BiggusGeekus (Jun 8, 2004)

rgard said:
			
		

> I disagree on OGL doing nothing to bring new players into the game.  Here's an example:
> 
> ....
> 
> When I told him that there was a company designing a D20 Barsoom (ERB's John Carter on Mars) game, by brother was sufficiently psyched to learn D20 D&D and start playing in anticipation...that and Sean Reynold's Barsoom conversions I showed him.




I'm glad to hear your brother is enjoying the hobby, but again, ten years ago you'd just have a John Carter game, possibly with a Tarzan and Hollow Earth spinoff, all of which would not be based on d20.  There were a bazillion and five such games in the 80s.

I'm sure the similarity of game mechanics made the transition to playing other settings easier and more fun.  But, with all due respect, this is not an OGL thing.


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## Sir Whiskers (Jun 8, 2004)

rgard said:
			
		

> If D&D wasn't OGL, most of us wouldn't have a snow ball's chance of getting a D&D related product published.  How many total people submitted material to TSR, the Dragon or Dungeon over the years got published vs. the total number who submitted material?  I'll bet $ to doughnuts it's a pretty small ratio.




But by the same token, does anyone else see a relationship between the (IMO) declining quality of _Dragon_ articles and the advent of OGL? I have a couple friends who have come up with some really good material for d20, but they refuse to send it to _Dragon_ - instead they formed their own d20 company and publish under their own name. And I doubt they're the only ones.

When Dragon was one of the only venues for publishing D&D material, it could choose from the very best (and worst). Now I suspect it too often gets the leftovers. A shame really.


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## Ranger REG (Jun 8, 2004)

MeepoTheMighty said:
			
		

> Is it just me, or is Gary totally out of touch here?
> 
> From http://www.silven.com/articles.asp?case=show&id=115



Nope, he's not out of touch. He is like many publishers who view Open Gaming as either a threat or a bad move for the RPG industry. But such opposition does have merit by pointing out the faults of Open Gaming.

The main one being the *lack of quality control.* While it gives aspiring designers to make product for open game rulesets, the original creators of the ruleset cannot review and approve if the game itself would work well with the core ruleset seamlessly. The end result: The majority of _d20_ products in the market currently of are mediocre quality. Sorry, I won't list the names of the publishers. They know who they are and I like to believe that they will learn quickly (or the hard way) and their game-publishing performance will improve exponentially with regards to the open game rulesets. I have high hope that they will self-enforce the same if not better quality control of their products as WotC.

Personally, I think it's time the majority of the publishers in the _d20_ network take the time to review their products as well as other products and pick which mechanics is most likely to be reused and go from there, in an effort to solidify the _d20 System._ Personally, I think the saturation period is overdue.


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## Ottergame (Jun 8, 2004)

The OGL is like any free market in real life, a slew of junk and crap hits the streets, and those companies are weeded out while the good ones remain.

I don't care if there are a million bad books out there for d20..  I am perfectly capable of reading reviews and examing books first to only buy those good books, and the ones that appeal to me.


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## Walter_J (Jun 8, 2004)

rgard said:
			
		

> I gave one example of OGL bringing new blood to the industry as well as a couple of other folks' posts.
> 
> OGL not improving the system?  Probably has already.  The folks at WotC don't live in a vacuum.  I'd bet that some of the .5 upgrade and some from Unearthed Arcana at least had some inspiration from something published by 3rd party companies.
> 
> ...




By your example, the OGL didn't bring someone new into the hobby, a game based on some books your brother liked got him into the hobby.  The game could have been done using any system, and your brother would have still been interested.  The d20 logo itself only means something to those who already know about the D&D/d20 relationship.  Let's say someone puts out a d20 Lord of the Rings Game.  Lots of Lord of the Rings fans would be interested in checking it out.  The d20 logo would only attract the attention of those who already play d20 games.  So, the popularity of Lord of the Rings brings in the new gamers, not d20.

Is there an OGL in the 3.5 core books?  (I honestly wouldn't know).  As far as I know, though, Unearthed Arcana is a book of optional material and not a core book.

I understand your points.  My point is that the OGL/d20 wasn't created to attract new players or "improve" D&D, so the questions were going into areas that had very little to do with the OGL.

BTW, I'm a big fan of d20/OGL.  I've spent WAY more money on "third party" products that on WotC books (which isn't hard).


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## rgard (Jun 8, 2004)

BiggusGeekus said:
			
		

> I'm glad to hear your brother is enjoying the hobby, but again, ten years ago you'd just have a John Carter game, possibly with a Tarzan and Hollow Earth spinoff, all of which would not be based on d20.  There were a bazillion and five such games in the 80s.
> 
> I'm sure the similarity of game mechanics made the transition to playing other settings easier and more fun.  But, with all due respect, this is not an OGL thing.




Curiously, who published that John Carter game?  There was the SPI version which IIRC was more a board game and there was a Heritage (maybe them) wargame.  Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I do not think there was an RPG of ERB's Barsoom...if wrong...I'll go look for it on Ebay!    

As for the OGL connection, I'll peel it back a layer for you.  The people who were to publish the John Carter game were using the OGL.  I read about it in a yahoo group devoted to d20 sci fi.  If I hadn't read about it there, I wouldn't have told my brother about it.  And if I hadn't read Sean Reynold's conversions via a link from this forum (which has a decided OGL bent to it), I wouldn't have told my brother about that either.  

That's the chain of events.  Without my interest in Sean's site and without my interest in that yahoo group (both interests based in my liking of the OGL), my brother would not have known about the OGL and hence would not have learned the game.

Thanks,
Rich


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## Thornir Alekeg (Jun 8, 2004)

mattcolville said:
			
		

> In this, I wonder if he's consider the fact that with the advent of the OGL WotC no longer controls D&D. The license is free, and in perpetuity. It cannot be withdrawn. WotC gave away one of their greatest assets, and if they start ing up D&D, other people can pick up the slack. There's now no reason the things that happened to TSR in the 90's should happen again.




Actually I'm not sure if this is true.  First, I thought there was a way for the OGL to be revoked, and second, WotC did not lose control of D&D since they are the only ones who can make changes to the SRD, and third if they really wanted to, WotC could probably produce a 4e without an OGL if they wished and move on (although it would have to be a VERY dramatic change).  Of course if they cannot recsind the OGL (I'm no lawyer, so I really cannot say what they can and cannot do with the contract that is the OGL), they may not be able to prevent people from continuing to make products for 3e (and 3.5), but would people want to continue playing 3e or would they want to move on to a new edition?


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## rowport (Jun 8, 2004)

Ottergame said:
			
		

> The OGL is like any free market in real life, a slew of junk and crap hits the streets, and those companies are weeded out while the good ones remain.
> 
> I don't care if there are a million bad books out there for d20..  I am perfectly capable of reading reviews and examing books first to only buy those good books, and the ones that appeal to me.



Otter hit it right on the head, here.  Great post.  If you do not like the product, do not buy the product.  Problem solved.  No harm came to the consumer as a result of the OGL.

I also recognize the irony of GG's position as vehemently anti-OGL, yet publishing d20 products.  Hmm.


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## rgard (Jun 8, 2004)

Walter_J said:
			
		

> By your example, the OGL didn't bring someone new into the hobby, a game based on some books your brother liked got him into the hobby.  The game could have been done using any system, and your brother would have still been interested.  The d20 logo itself only means something to those who already know about the D&D/d20 relationship.  Let's say someone puts out a d20 Lord of the Rings Game.  Lots of Lord of the Rings fans would be interested in checking it out.  The d20 logo would only attract the attention of those who already play d20 games.  So, the popularity of Lord of the Rings brings in the new gamers, not d20.
> 
> Is there an OGL in the 3.5 core books?  (I honestly wouldn't know).  As far as I know, though, Unearthed Arcana is a book of optional material and not a core book.
> 
> ...




Hi Walter, please see my previous post responding to BiggusGeekus' post.   My brother probably would not have found out about a non-OGL/non-D20 version of a Barsoom RPG.  His half-orc died 26 years ago real time and that was his only experience with RPGs until 2 years ago.  

I think we are also missing the fact that there are probably many current and would be publishers out there that go ahead and use the OGL as it saves time and money with respect to designing and playtesting the game.  You don't have to devote any time to designing the character generation process or figuring out XP awards for CRs or designing an XP table or designing the system you use for attributes...and you don't have to playtest these facets of the game either.  It's done for you.  You can focus on your milieu specific aspects of the game.

Yea, I shouldn't have killed my brother's first PC then.  

Thanks,
Rich


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## Derulbaskul (Jun 8, 2004)

I read Gary's opinion as the point of view of a person who is a creative (and an incredibly creative one at that!), not a businessman. The OGL was a business decision, not a creative decision and, as a business decision, it has been very, very successful.


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## Henry (Jun 8, 2004)

Thornir Alekeg said:
			
		

> Actually I'm not sure if this is true.  First, I thought there was a way for the OGL to be revoked, and second, WotC did not lose control of D&D since they are the only ones who can make changes to the SRD, and third if they really wanted to, WotC could probably produce a 4e without an OGL if they wished and move on (although it would have to be a VERY dramatic change).  Of course if they cannot recsind the OGL (I'm no lawyer, so I really cannot say what they can and cannot do with the contract that is the OGL), they may not be able to prevent people from continuing to make products for 3e (and 3.5), but would people want to continue playing 3e or would they want to move on to a new edition?




As a matter of illustrating points, and these have been debated by quite a few actual copyright lawyers on these boards:

1. The Open Gaming License as written cannot be rescinded, and users cannot be forced into a version they do not wish to use. (The specific clause is _"9. Updating the License: Wizards or its designated Agents may publish updated versions of this License. You may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License."_)

2. They CAN rescind the d20 System Trademark License, or can add so many unworkable restrictions that it is no longer profitable to use. So any book could simply drop the compatibility messages, and become a book of d20 rules; they just couldn't say d20 by name in the book or its press releases.

WotC could indeed make a CLOSED 4th edition; on the positive side, the game community will have an ever-evolving set of rules that can split totally off of the parent, and never be quashed. In that instance, very little has changed from before 1999, it's just that there will be an actual license that material can be released under, WITHOUT fear of lawsuit.


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## Henry (Jun 8, 2004)

Henry said:
			
		

> 1. The Open Gaming License as written cannot be rescinded, and users cannot be forced into a version they do not wish to use. (The specific clause is _"9. Updating the License: Wizards or its designated Agents may publish updated versions of this License. You may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License."_)




Interestingly enough, this would have cost me one of my 10 uses per 10 days, if I had copied that from a DRM PDF.


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## tauton_ikhnos (Jun 8, 2004)

Here are the relevant questions about the OGL and its place in the marketplace, IMO:

*1. Does WotC make more, less or the same profit?*

This is an important point, because regardless of whether the quality of material improves, if it is a bad business decision, it won't be repeated in the future. The answer, unfortunately, is a resounding "We Don't Know". It hasn't finished playing out yet.

However, there is some indication that the model works at the small scale. It certainly worked for Fudge, which would have been a far more obscure system without this methodology.

*2. Is there more, less, or the same amount of high quality material?*

Easy answer: there is more. There is exactly as much quality material as WotC is capable of publishing, plus whatever additional gems were published via the OGL. Of course, if it isn't profitable to WotC, then this will not be repeated.

*3. Is it easier, harder or the same to FIND that quality material?*

Not so easy: On the one hand, you can buy only WotC stuff. Plenty of people do, and that is _exactly_ as difficult to do as it was prior to the OGL. In that sense, Gary Gygax is completely off his rocker - anyone who decides to accept WotC's quality control is perfectly capable of doing so.

The difference is that there's now more than just WotC's narrow little world available. Picking the quality stuff there requires more picking and choosing, however.

But to badly mangle a WotC quote: Options, not restrictions. Few people complain about the existence of non-IBM laptops as part of their choice. Few people complain that GE is not the only maker of lightbulbs. People have the choice of going only with the known source of quality, or they can taste the foods of other cultures as well.

*4. Has the quality of the game improved, worsened, or remained the same?*

Could be argued either way. Personally, I've never liked Gygax's view of house rules, and basically, there's more open communication of possible house rules out there now. It's called evolution - the good rules survive.


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## Spatula (Jun 8, 2004)

Ranger REG said:
			
		

> The main one being the *lack of quality control.*



Well, it's not like everything that WOTC has released has been of high quality (except, possibly, production-wise), so I don't see this as a compelling argument.  There's lots of d20 crap out there.  Some of it has come straight from the source.







> While it gives aspiring designers to make product for open game rulesets, the original creators of the ruleset cannot review and approve if the game itself would work well with the core ruleset seamlessly.



The "original creators" are for the most part no longer with WOTC, so they couldn't do that even if there was some sort of qualification process for d20 books in place.  But hey, thanks to the OGL, the original creators (and other veteran RPG writers) are free to publish more material for the game if they want, something they couldn't have done back in the day.

If the OGL had been around in the 80's, Gygax could have continued working on and publishing for the game he helped create even after being forced out, without giving one cent to TSR.  Perhaps if that had happened, he would be inclined to look more kindly on the concept...


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## Desdichado (Jun 8, 2004)

tauton_ikhnos said:
			
		

> *2. Is there more, less, or the same amount of high quality material?*
> 
> Easy answer: there is more. There is exactly as much quality material as WotC is capable of publishing, plus whatever additional gems were published via the OGL. Of course, if it isn't profitable to WotC, then this will not be repeated.
> 
> ...



This whole quoted section above builds off of the (IMO) mistaken assumption that WotC material is high quality by default.  There've been plenty of WotC products that I've been disappointed in, plenty of WotC that are fine, but which are trumped by better 3rd party books on the same subject, and probably (although off the top of my head I can't think of any) a very few WotC books that actually are the best of their type out there for d20.


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## Walter_J (Jun 8, 2004)

rgard said:
			
		

> Hi Walter, please see my previous post responding to BiggusGeekus' post.   My brother probably would not have found out about a non-OGL/non-D20 version of a Barsoom RPG.  His half-orc died 26 years ago real time and that was his only experience with RPGs until 2 years ago.
> 
> I think we are also missing the fact that there are probably many current and would be publishers out there that go ahead and use the OGL as it saves time and money with respect to designing and playtesting the game.  You don't have to devote any time to designing the character generation process or figuring out XP awards for CRs or designing an XP table or designing the system you use for attributes...and you don't have to playtest these facets of the game either.  It's done for you.  You can focus on your milieu specific aspects of the game.
> 
> ...




I apologize.  I didn't get to read your original post because the boards were slow.  So YOU are the reason your brother got into RPG's, and not the OGL at all.     Just kidding.

For the rest of your post--Absolutely.  I'm working on a FRPG that I intend to publish and the only way I could do it is with the OGL (at least legally).  I want it to be d20 compatible both as a time saver and so that all the other d20 material can be used with it.  (I may be creating a game that I'll be GMing for friends and family, but I'm not about to let 100's of $'s of source material set around unused at the same time.)


----------



## rgard (Jun 8, 2004)

Walter_J said:
			
		

> I apologize.  I didn't get to read your original post because the boards were slow.  So YOU are the reason your brother got into RPG's, and not the OGL at all.     Just kidding.
> 
> For the rest of your post--Absolutely.  I'm working on a FRPG that I intend to publish and the only way I could do it is with the OGL (at least legally).  I want it to be d20 compatible both as a time saver and so that all the other d20 material can be used with it.  (I may be creating a game that I'll be GMing for friends and family, but I'm not about to let 100's of $'s of source material set around unused at the same time.)




 Yes, I'm the reason, oh no, I have to peel back another layer!  My gaming group had played 1E and we had never played 2E and had pretty much stopped playing D&D as of 1997.  OGL is what brought me back to the hobby and so on and so on and so on...I should do a flow diagram for this!

Anyway, good luck with your FRPG!  I'm working on one as well.  I'll at least inflict it on my kids and friends!

Thanks!
Rich


----------



## Zappo (Jun 8, 2004)

Sigurd said:
			
		

> Both Gygax & WOTC used an approach appropriate for their time.



Yes. That's the point. The roleplaying industry is cursed, because players as a whole want a lot of different products, but any given player will only purchase very few. In these conditions, the OGL was a good way to really make D&D profitable and the fans happy.


----------



## rgard (Jun 8, 2004)

Walter_J said:
			
		

> I apologize.  I didn't get to read your original post because the boards were slow.  So YOU are the reason your brother got into RPG's, and not the OGL at all.     Just kidding.
> 
> For the rest of your post--Absolutely.  I'm working on a FRPG that I intend to publish and the only way I could do it is with the OGL (at least legally).  I want it to be d20 compatible both as a time saver and so that all the other d20 material can be used with it.  (I may be creating a game that I'll be GMing for friends and family, but I'm not about to let 100's of $'s of source material set around unused at the same time.)




On your 'at least legally' point...this makes a huge difference.  I wonder just how much $ I'm going to spend on Gary Gygax's next endeavor?  Lejendary Journeys?  I wonder how much time I'll devote to teaching my kids his new system?  I also wonder how much time and effort I will invest in writing modules and source books for it to submit to him hoping he reads it, likes it and decides to pay me for my efforts?  The answer to all the above will probably be zip.  I heard some of his releases will be dual house/D20 so I will at least look at them at the store.  

That said, I am grateful to Gary and the others who created this whole hobby.  I have friends today who I met in 1979 while playing D&D.  I have quality time (pardon the jargon, but it's true) with my kids as a result of this hobby.  Sure, we'd find something else to do together, but RPGs also do wonders for honing the math skills of 4th and 6th graders.

Thanks,
Rich


----------



## Son_of_Thunder (Jun 8, 2004)

*Who Cares What Gary Thinks????*

Hello all,

What I want to know is which bright individual's idea was it to ask Mr. Gygax the questions that were asked? From day one I've known Gary's feelings about d20 and the OGL from interviews he gave back in 2000. It's never been a secret and he's made it quite clear on several occasions.

Even on the long running Q & A threads here on ENWorld Gary has always skillfully stepped around questions asked about the new edition and he has instead said that he'd rather concentrate on DJ.

So lets stop worrying about what Gary thinks and just game.

Son of Thunder


----------



## Walter_J (Jun 8, 2004)

rgard said:
			
		

> Yes, I'm the reason, oh no, I have to peel back another layer!  My gaming group had played 1E and we had never played 2E and had pretty much stopped playing D&D as of 1997.  OGL is what brought me back to the hobby and so on and so on and so on...I should do a flow diagram for this!
> 
> Anyway, good luck with your FRPG!  I'm working on one as well.  I'll at least inflict it on my kids and friends!
> 
> ...




I know what you mean.  I started back in '81 at my older brother's house.  I had no idea what was going on, but I had a heck of a good time.  I was gaming with him and his friends, then I introduced the game via the blue book to some of my friends, and pretty soon we were all gaming together.  At one point I actually had a brand new white box set in my hands and could kick myself because I had my mother take it back!  I was in the hospital, and Mom  surprised me with it to chear me up and keep my mind occupied.  Being a dumb kid, though, I wanted the "new" boxed set and had her exchange it.  I still could kick myself.  We didn't play D&D much during the late 90's either, and had stopped all together for several years.  Stumbling across Eric Noah's website, and news of 3E got me back into it.  I bought 5 PHB's during the first few weeks after the release--one for myself, my brother, two old gaming buddies, and a guy I met at work.  (I figured, handing someone a shiny new book cuts down on arguments about tyring a new game!)

Thanks, and good luck with your game too!  Put a thread up about it sometime.  It sounds like we are doing it for similar reasons.  My big test will be when I hand the rules to my cousin (who knows next to nothing about RPGs) to give to her children (ages 8-12, roughly).  If they can start gaming on their own with those rules, I'll have succeeded.  If not, I'll blame my cousin for not insuring those children had a proper education!


----------



## dead (Jun 8, 2004)

I don't care if there's a crap load of bad d20 products out there (WotC included). If you buy 'em, then you're the sucker.  

What I'm concerned about is that there's only 20% non-d20/OGL in my game shop these days when it used to be 50% before d20/OGL (the other half was AD&D, of course). Sure, I know D&D was always huge but it seems even bigger now when you include all the d20/OGL products that follow it around.

Are these percentages a global trend or is it just that I'm living in a back-water, derelict town?


----------



## rgard (Jun 8, 2004)

Walter_J said:
			
		

> I know what you mean.  I started back in '81 at my older brother's house.  I had no idea what was going on, but I had a heck of a good time.  I was gaming with him and his friends, then I introduced the game via the blue book to some of my friends, and pretty soon we were all gaming together.  At one point I actually had a brand new white box set in my hands and could kick myself because I had my mother take it back!  I was in the hospital, and Mom  surprised me with it to chear me up and keep my mind occupied.  Being a dumb kid, though, I wanted the "new" boxed set and had her exchange it.  I still could kick myself.  We didn't play D&D much during the late 90's either, and had stopped all together for several years.  Stumbling across Eric Noah's website, and news of 3E got me back into it.  I bought 5 PHB's during the first few weeks after the release--one for myself, my brother, two old gaming buddies, and a guy I met at work.  (I figured, handing someone a shiny new book cuts down on arguments about tyring a new game!)
> 
> Thanks, and good luck with your game too!  Put a thread up about it sometime.  It sounds like we are doing it for similar reasons.  My big test will be when I hand the rules to my cousin (who knows next to nothing about RPGs) to give to her children (ages 8-12, roughly).  If they can start gaming on their own with those rules, I'll have succeeded.  If not, I'll blame my cousin for not insuring those children had a proper education!




Here's how I got interested in 3E.  I wandered into the local game store, saw they had the new edition and took a look at the PHB.  First thing I saw was the Sorcerer class.  I read it and thought, "I bet I can backwards engineer this into a 1E class!  I'll give it a MU THAC0, maybe the MU or Illusionist level/xp progression table."  How goofy is that?  Then I found out about OGL and I was hooked.

I'll get something posted about the sourcebook one of these days.  Nothing of it is ready from prime time yet, but it's fun to work on knowing I can do something with it if I want!

Have you posted a thread about yours yet?  I would love to see what you've posted if you have.

Thanks,
Rich


----------



## MerricB (Jun 8, 2004)

The point at which I significantly diverge from Gary's point of view is that he assumes (and I have no idea why, given his history), that the people running D&D _know what they're doing_.

I think that the current team running D&D know what they're doing. I think Gary knew what he was doing. I don't think for the period from when Gary lost control until Wizards took over that a certain woman knew what she was doing.

As we discovered, bad management of the D&D brand can kill it. It almost happened.

Another thing I strongly disagree with is the idea that "d20 System" = "D&D" in the minds of most people. Not at all! Certainly not for the general public, and unlikely to be so even in the gaming population.

Who here's equates a "d20 System" product with "D&D"? I see those products as being "compatible with D&D", but that's a long way from being "D&D". When I see a D&D product, I expect a certain standard of product that I do not expect from a normal d20 System product.

I have a feeling that view is held even by people who don't like Wizards' D&D books - they have found a d20 company they like, but they don't see them as being "D&D" products but more in the line of "Sword & Sorcery" products, or "Necromancer Games" products, or suchlike.

Cheers!


----------



## Ranger REG (Jun 8, 2004)

Spatula said:
			
		

> If the OGL had been around in the 80's, Gygax could have continued working on and publishing for the game he helped create even after being forced out, without giving one cent to TSR.  Perhaps if that had happened, he would be inclined to look more kindly on the concept...



Why couldn't he see it now and take advantage of the opportunity the OGL provide?

Of course, someone did mentioned that he had already published a few _d20_ products. Sorry, but I won't mention the "H" word.


----------



## Ranger REG (Jun 8, 2004)

Son_of_Thunder said:
			
		

> So lets stop worrying about what Gary thinks and just game.



You know, you didn't have to take part in this particular discussion thread.

Granted, this is more of an "industry news" discussion so not many gamers are going to be interested as to what this impacts the RPG market, any more than the _Wall Street Journal_ articles would impact a KMart shopper.


----------



## dead (Jun 8, 2004)

MerricB said:
			
		

> Another thing I strongly disagree with is the idea that "d20 System" = "D&D" in the minds of most people. Not at all! Certainly not for the general public, and unlikely to be so even in the gaming population.
> 
> Who here's equates a "d20 System" product with "D&D"? I see those products as being "compatible with D&D", but that's a long way from being "D&D". When I see a D&D product, I expect a certain standard of product that I do not expect from a normal d20 System product.




I used to think d20 = D&D but I have since been reprimanded. Many folks on this very site opened my mind (not the ones that attacked me with flame and acid, however).

Nevertheless, I think d20 will never shake loose its close association with D&D for as long as the 3E D&D corebooks remain the primary reference for the d20 system.

I personally would like to see a more *neutral* reference document for d20. I don't know if this is possible, but I think it would help in removing that erroneous stigma that d20 = D&D.

Take my gaming shop for example, D&D gets the primary shelf space. Then, like somekind of satilite, all the d20 material hovers close to it -- almost as if it would shrivel up and die if D&D ceased to exist. And I think this is why people confuse d20 with D&D, because it owes it's very life and continued existance to the *3E D&D corerules.*


----------



## Ranger REG (Jun 8, 2004)

dead said:
			
		

> Are these percentages a global trend or is it just that I'm living in a back-water, derelict town?



It's common everywhere, usually because distributors and wholesalers want products that can sell and empty their warehouses. But even they themselves have started to filter out products from lesser known publishers and stick to the major publishers that will guarantee higher sales. RPG industry is no different than any other industry, other than not being as highly profitable as TCG, CMG, and boardgames.

That doesn't mean non-_d20_ products cannot be sold in FLGS, especially those that offer special order service for current and upcoming products.


----------



## Derulbaskul (Jun 8, 2004)

MerricB said:
			
		

> (snip) I think that the current team running D&D know what they're doing. I think Gary knew what he was doing. I don't think for the period from when Gary lost control until Wizards took over that a certain woman knew what she was doing. (snip)




Although the fact that control was lost tends to suggest that Gary's creative skills far exceeded his business skills (which probably explains why he remains such a nice guy).

The OGL was and is a business decision made to sell PHBs because that's the most --efficient-- way for WotC to make money. This is the only perspective from which to judge the OGL.


----------



## Ranger REG (Jun 8, 2004)

You say that as if it's a bad thing.


----------



## The Thayan Menace (Jun 8, 2004)

*Lack of Respect & Modules*

In many ways, current criticism of Gary Gygax is based very heavily upon his age and, quite honestly, smacks of insolence and disrespect. When I see avid gamers go out of their way to defame the man who is almost single-handedly responsible for popularizing the greatest hobby on earth, I am both saddened and disgusted.
_________________________________________________________________

Though I do not entirely agree with him on OGL, Gygax has an extremely compelling point:

_Considering its investment potential, Wizards of the Coast has not been producing a whole lot of adventure modules._


----------



## MerricB (Jun 8, 2004)

The Thayan Menace said:
			
		

> _Considering its investment potential, Wizards of the Coast has not been producing a whole lot of adventure modules._




Interestingly, I'd say that, from Wizards of the Coast, we've seen more adventures than in the entire time of Gary's tenure at TSR.

Go to the Free Adventures on Wizards site, go to Dungeon Magazine, go to the Adventure Path and similar.

My quick estimate is somewhere from 100-150 adventures.

Hmm.

Not many adventure modules, as such, but a lot of adventures.

Cheers!


----------



## Ottergame (Jun 8, 2004)

The Thayan Menace said:
			
		

> In many ways, current criticism of Gary Gygax is based very heavily upon his age and, quite honestly, smacks of insolence and disrespect. When I see avid gamers go out of their way to defame the man who is almost single-handedly responsible for popularizing the greatest hobby on earth, I am both saddened and disgusted.
> _________________________________________________________________
> 
> Though I do not entirely agree with him on OGL, Gygax has an extremely compelling point:
> ...




I would hardly say someone disaggreeing with his oppinion is "going out of their way to defame the man".  Whatever he may have done in the past doesn't make him right in the present.


----------



## MerricB (Jun 8, 2004)

Derulbaskul said:
			
		

> Although the fact that control was lost tends to suggest that Gary's creative skills far exceeded his business skills (which probably explains why he remains such a nice guy).




Oh, I think Gary's take on where the game should go wasn't that bad. I do think that his choice of friends and business partners was extremely poor.

Cheers!


----------



## Ottergame (Jun 8, 2004)

MerricB said:
			
		

> Interestingly, I'd say that, from Wizards of the Coast, we've seen more adventures than in the entire time of Gary's tenure at TSR.
> 
> Go to the Free Adventures on Wizards site, go to Dungeon Magazine, go to the Adventure Path and similar.
> 
> ...




One of the reasons for the OGL, Wizards once said, was so that they DIDN'T have to do modules, since other companies can devote the time, resources, editors, and playtesters to them since they tend to focus on only a couple of things at a time.


----------



## Ottergame (Jun 8, 2004)

MerricB said:
			
		

> Oh, I think Gary's take on where the game should go wasn't that bad. I do think that his choice of friends and business partners was extremely poor.
> 
> Cheers!




We have one friend, Arneson and his Blackmoor game, to thank for the original concept of fantasy role playing though.


----------



## MerricB (Jun 8, 2004)

Ottergame said:
			
		

> We have one friend, Arneson and his Blackmoor game, to thank for the original concept of fantasy role playing though.




Oh, Gary didn't get _everything_ wrong. There were just a few choices there that worked against him. 

Cheers!


----------



## tarchon (Jun 8, 2004)

I think it makes economic sense for modules (etc.) to be done by smaller d20 companies.  Extremely high-quality publications can only be produced economically if they sell many copies, which modules and things in the "Flumph Players Handbook" category generally don't.  A big fancy company like WotC can't get by with publishing poorly edited and undertested stuff or else people shout "look at this poorly edited and undertested crap that WotC's trying to push off on us!"  Thus, it makes sense to cede that market to smaller companies that customers will forgive for having grotesque spelling mistakes in every other paragraph.  The d20s also have a lower overhead, I suspect, making them more able to subsist on low-volume products.  A public company like Hasbro has a very hard time justifying producing unprofitable products, unlike privately held companies which have much more freedom to put out obvious non-winners just because the owner thinks they should - it's one of the drawbacks to going public.  Thus, the OGL system is a fairly reasonable solution, allowing low-volume (and necessarily lower quality) support products to be produced without putting Hasbro-WotC in a difficult bind.  It's similar to the tactic of spinning off a separate outlet to publish "adult" material, as White Wolf did with Black Dog.  Some things just have to be divorced from the main line if you want them to ever see the light of day.


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## marketingman (Jun 8, 2004)

MerricB said:
			
		

> Interestingly, I'd say that, from Wizards of the Coast, we've seen more adventures than in the entire time of Gary's tenure at TSR.
> 
> Go to the Free Adventures on Wizards site, go to Dungeon Magazine, go to the Adventure Path and similar.
> 
> ...




Merric,

Its apples to organes time. The tech level from 1969 to when Gary left TSR is an informational stone age compared to todays ability to have vertual instant communcation.

WotC puts out more adventure because at three oclock in the morning thier time a person can upload thier project to the editor for appovale who the can  upload it to the site.

Garys time was cut and paste with real scissor glue and paper. :ile our communication with you would havre taken over a month via post back in the early 1980's. A web site wad just where you forgot to dust. 64k what would you do with all that memory, or tape boots that took twenty minutes to loads and that fast.

While I have ranted enough time for my hot coco.


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## johnsemlak (Jun 8, 2004)

MerricB said:
			
		

> Oh, I think Gary's take on where the game should go wasn't that bad. I do think that his choice of friends and business partners was extremely poor.
> 
> Cheers!



 You don't always choose who your friends are, sometimes you're stuck with 'em.

Business partners are different, but again, you don't always have options.

Also, people who know what they're doing can make bad decisions.


----------



## TheAuldGrump (Jun 8, 2004)

epochrpg said:
			
		

> And that is the Crime to RPG players everywhere that is the d20 system.  Nobody makes their own system anymore.  People that do are pushed out of the market.  Look at 7th Sea.  That was a TERRIFIC game, and now it is dead, because they tried to d20ize it, and nobody liked it that way.




I really hate to say it, but I suspect that 7th Sea was going to die anyway.

And when I say that I hate to say it I should mention that 7th Sea is my third favorite RPG of all time. First is Call of Cthulhu, second is Ars Magica, and third is 7th Sea. (Changeling: the Dreaming is fourth, Vampire is fifth, and D&D ranks in at number six.)

If anything being able to produce a D20 version of their game world allowed them to hang on for another year or two. Before D20 the business of RPGs in general was dying fast. Distributors were going under or consolidating. (Gonsalves, Wargames West, Greenfield, all gone. Chessex and Atlas merged to form Alliance, which is nearly the only large distributor of gaming materials in my section of the world.

The Auld Grump


----------



## Maggan (Jun 8, 2004)

*Ryan Dancey is the Anti-Gygax*

On Gygax: his views are not suprising, they echoe the thoughts he had when inteviewed by Oddities a long time ago. His recipe for bringing D&D to new heights was rerelasing original AD&D (as far as I can remember). He told WotC so and they went with 3rd, d20STL and OGL. So at least he's being consistent.

I think he is wrong on many levels, but is entitled to his opinion. The Od&dities in question are number 9 and 10, and they can be found here:

http://www.tongue.fsnet.co.uk/archives.htm

On OGL being a failure for WotC: Ryan Dancey posted to a thread on RPGnet where discussion on how the OGL had hurt WotC was going on. It's  sometimes painful, but overall an interesting read. Ryan's posts are some way into the thread.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=118888&perpage=30&pagenumber=1

On 7th Sea: The new books were dual-statted, so the existing 7th Sea players were, as far as I understand, getting new material. It still failed. Probably not because of d20 (there are about 50 or 60 new/revised print rpgs coming out 2004 that are not d20. Which is about the same as during the late 90's and early 00's).

Cheers!

Maggan


----------



## Desdichado (Jun 8, 2004)

dead said:
			
		

> Nevertheless, I think d20 will never shake loose its close association with D&D for as long as the 3E D&D corebooks remain the primary reference for the d20 system.



Naturally that would take some time.  The relatively recent publication of a number of games that are _not_ D&D but which are OGL (d20 without technically being d20) like _Everquest_ or _Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed_ for example are the first steps in this direction.

However, quite likely d20 will always have _some_ association with D&D if for no other reason that the vast majority of gamers are only interested in playing D&D.


			
				dead said:
			
		

> I personally would like to see a more *neutral* reference document for d20. I don't know if this is possible, but I think it would help in removing that erroneous stigma that d20 = D&D.



You mean like the d20 Modern SRD?  That's been out for, what, a year and a half?  Two years?  And what do you mean by calling the wrong assumption that d20 = D&D a stigma?  If anything, that's what's made the d20 brand viable; a far cry from being a stigma.


----------



## WayneLigon (Jun 8, 2004)

All I see is the early- and mid-80's all over again; lots of people publishing stuff for D&D. Back then, there must have been a dozen or more companies that would put out product specifically for D&D (or 'D&D compatable', with the serial numbers filed off). Some of it was good (_City of Haven, _A lot of the Role-Aids series), some of it was embarassingly bad and shoddy (Pretty much everything Judge's Guild did after _City State, _with a few exceptions here and there). I don't see that much has changed, save that it's easier to become a publisher now thanks to new technologies.


----------



## BiggusGeekus (Jun 8, 2004)

rgard said:
			
		

> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I do not think there was an RPG of ERB's Barsoom...if wrong...I'll go look for it on Ebay!




Apologies, I was typing rehtorically.  To be more clear: once a publisher got a license there was nothing stopping them from publishing any type of RPG with any kind of ruleset.  The bottleneck was not the ruleset (which the OGL provides) but the licensing (which has nothing to do with the OGL).  Many, many, many games were published that were similar enough to D&D without crossing the line too far.  Even TSR published games like _Star Frontiers_ and _Marvel Super Heroes_ that had little to do with the D&D game mechanics.



> That's the chain of events.  Without my interest in Sean's site and without my interest in that yahoo group (both interests based in my liking of the OGL), my brother would not have known about the OGL and hence would not have learned the game.




Fair enough!


----------



## Razuur (Jun 8, 2004)

I think that Mr. Gygax is allowed his opinion.

That said, I am glad he wasn't at the helm to prevent D20 from coming to be.

D20/OGL has really made some great products and really strengthened the industry.

I have always felt that this is a second golden age dor RPing.  After the first year, publishers really began to get their acts together, and now the coolest stuff is out or coming out.

While I disagree with him, he is allowed his opinion though.

Razuur


----------



## Staffan (Jun 8, 2004)

Ottergame said:
			
		

> The weird thing is that the original name, Dangerous Dimensions, was the one TSR had a problem with.  TSR dropped the suit when they changed the name to Dangerous Journies, but GDW still canned it.



Actually, they were sued anyway - not over the name, but over what TSR considered to be a ton of instances where DJ infringed on AD&D. These included things like "The description of the "First aid" K/S Area is an infringement on the AD&D spell "Cure Light Wounds." and other ridiculous things.


----------



## Desdichado (Jun 8, 2004)

Razuur said:
			
		

> I think that Mr. Gygax is allowed his opinion.
> [...]
> While I disagree with him, he is allowed his opinion though.



I didn't notice that anyone was arguing that point.  A slightly more interesting question is, why do we particularly care what his opinion is?  More than any other gamer, I mean?  Or, why, knowing his position on the subject, did the interview go out of its way to really beat the dead horse on the issue?  Or, what's _your_ opinion, using his as a springboard for discussion?


----------



## tauton_ikhnos (Jun 8, 2004)

By the by, Joshua, I think you misread my post, earlier on . I in no wise presumed that WotC's stuff was high quality - I presumed that whatever quality you believe they have, the OGL hasn't changed it, or changed the fact that you can choose to restrict your purchases to only their stuff.

I care what Gygax's opinion is for the same reason I care what PirateCat's opinion is, or Eric Noah's opinion. He's well known, and so lots of people hear his opinion, whether they end up agreeing with him or not, and that makes his opinion _influential_, whether it deserves to be or not.

My opinion is that the OGL has brought nothing but good so far, but if it ends up killing WotC, it is a good which is too costly. WotC is taking a risk, and good on them for it, but future corporations likely will not take a similar risk if it fails.

My opinion of Gygax's opinion is that he wants to be George Lucas, and no matter how crappy his movie turns out, it is HIS. That's a valid viewpoint (and a legally supported one!), just not one that benefits the fans/customers.


----------



## Desdichado (Jun 8, 2004)

tauton_ikhnos said:
			
		

> By the by, Joshua, I think you misread my post, earlier on . I in no wise presumed that WotC's stuff was high quality - I presumed that whatever quality you believe they have, the OGL hasn't changed it, or changed the fact that you can choose to restrict your purchases to only their stuff.



Gotcha.  That does make more sense.  At least to me.


			
				t_i said:
			
		

> I care what Gygax's opinion is for the same reason I care what PirateCat's opinion is, or Eric Noah's opinion. He's well known, and so lots of people hear his opinion, whether they end up agreeing with him or not, and that makes his opinion _influential_, whether it deserves to be or not.



Granted, but that only makes it useful as a springboard for discussion.  I'd hope that nobody is looking at his opinion on this matter as some kind of Gospel truth.  Gygax's influence on the industry is unmistakable, but his business acumen (as the ousted head of TSR and the head of numerous dubiously successful efforst since) is not so clear.  Therefore, whether he actually knows what he's talking about in this regard, or is merely yet another guy with an opinion are clearly debatable.


			
				t_i said:
			
		

> My opinion is that the OGL has brought nothing but good so far, but if it ends up killing WotC, it is a good which is too costly. WotC is taking a risk, and good on them for it, but future corporations likely will not take a similar risk if it fails.



I find it hard to believe that the OGL could potentially "kill" WotC.  Especially since WotC's largest profit center has always been CCGs -- the purchase of D&D was merely a passion of Peter Adkinson, not an acquisition that was supposed to make or break the company.  If anything's going to "kill" WotC it would be their over-reliance on CCGs to make most of their money, and inability to branch out when that market has shrunk substantially.


			
				t_i said:
			
		

> My opinion of Gygax's opinion is that he wants to be George Lucas, and no matter how crappy his movie turns out, it is HIS. That's a valid viewpoint (and a legally supported one!), just not one that benefits the fans/customers.



Yep, I agree.  It's very clear that the OGL has benefitted the fans.  I don't know that Gygax necessarily has that as his judging criteria of the OGL, though.  In fact, I'm not sure it's something he's given much thought to in regards to this issue at all.  Or if he has, he's laboring under the flase assumption that I misattributed to you; that the publishers of D&D have a better handle on quality control than third party publishers.


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## pogre (Jun 8, 2004)

All hail Gygax! I disagree with him here, but he is still the man. 

For those of you not interested in digging through heaps of volatile posts over at RPGnet here was the father of the OGL explanation about why it is a successful model for WOTC:



			
				ryand said:
			
		

> They tried from 1998, when they acquired the business of TSR, to 2000, when 3.0 was released.
> 
> As an example of how screwed up that old business model (that is, the business model used by most publishers in the RPG business even today) was, examine the sales of the Dark*Matter supplement for Alternity.
> 
> ...




A very compelling argument I thought. For me the OGL is the reason I play D&D. Being able to produce material I can share and sell (if I want) is an important part of the hobby for me. It gives us all some ownership in our game and benefits WOTC. Thanks Ryan!


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## Maggan (Jun 8, 2004)

*My view*



			
				Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> I didn't notice that anyone was arguing that point.




Nah, for me, I was just padding my reply so that no one would think that I was mean to Gygax. Sometimes I'm a bit too careful (and then again, sometimes I'm not).  



			
				Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> A slightly more interesting question is, why do we particularly care what his opinion is?  More than any other gamer, I mean?  Or, why, knowing his position on the subject, did the interview go out of its way to really beat the dead horse on the issue?  Or, what's _your_ opinion, using his as a springboard for discussion?




Why do I care about what Gygax says: Because he is an influential person involved in the hobby, and his views influence other people, both hobbyists and publishers. And since I think he is wrong in many ways, I see people being influenced to also be wrong. This is of course only in reference to my own views, and I realise that I am probably as much wrong on a lot of things as Gygax on others.

What is my opinion, had Silven intervied me? Well, since you ask...  (questions slightly edited to make sense).

Q1) Are you against open licenses like the OGL in any form or is it one factor of the licensing model that you think is poor?

A1) I think that using OGL is a very worthwhile endeavor. It gives me a possibility to tap into some of the D&D audience, without having to create my own rpg, which I hate. I like to do the support stuff. There are a few things I particularily don't like about the license (the nudity clause, the political clause and the religious clause), but these factors don't matter so much to me that they detract from the main value of the OGL.

Q2) WoTC have on many occasions maintained that they went ahead with the OGL to relieve themselves of the all the burden of creating add-ons to the D&D universe so that they could focus on the core products. Is this not in essence a good idea?

A2) Yes, I believe it is. WotC focuses on the core products, and small companies focus on fulfilling special needs that WotC probably would not touch with a 10 foot pole. For me as a customer, as opposed to me as a writer, this means that I can play D&D, and pick up special books to cater for my changing tastes in settings and atmosphere. So for me as a D&D player, I think it is fabulous! I don't think WotC would have produced Dynasties&Demagogues, or the Scarred Lands, or Swashbuckling Adventures, and I don't even think they should. But by releasing the OGL someone else made these great products, that I like.

Q3) Now a downside to the OGL is, of course, the mass of mediocre products to hit the marketplace immediately following the release of the license. No doubt this contributes in the short term to a dilution of the brand and a weakening of the market quality. However do you not think that in the long term better products will emerge out of necessity and slowly out compete the poor products, thus reestablishing the strength of the brand AND a larger selection of products for the consumer? Are we not seeing this happen today on a small scale?

A3) I think the OGL will have a long term positive impact on the quality of D&D material. Maybe even on non-D&D material, when good and solid d20-designers move to other challenges, which I think is inevitable. Writers learn by working within d20 and the OGL, and when they have skill and confidence they write other stuff. Or just keep on writing even better d20 stuff. There were crap products before the OGL, and there will be crap products after the OGL. I also think that the initial spike of d20 products were good so that a lot of writers could give it a try, see if they had what it took to continue. Many, many didn't, but now we have "new" companies like Necromancer Games, Green Ronin and Mongoose, all which I think very highly of (for different reasons).

Q4) What are your views on WoTC redefining the license after its release to shut out certain types of content and is this is a manifestation of one of the weaknesses in open licenses like the OGL?

A4) I was upset when that happened, not because I was surprised by it, but because it limited the appeal of making d20STL compliant stuff that was really dark horror as I envision it (I worked a bit on Kult, eg, and I don't think Kult would fly under the current d20STL). But then again, the limitations are only there if you work with the d20STL and not if you chose the OGL, so to answer your question, no it is not a weakness in the OGL, since the changes were to the d20STL (as far as I understand it).

Q5) Does the presence of the OGL at all assist WoTC in making steps towards [bringing in new gamers] 

A5) I don't know. I think they would do that by getting the brand out to more people, and I think the crpgs are more effective than the OGL in doing that. I also think the D&D collectible miniatures and the upcoming Basic Set might be more efficient in bringing new gamers to the table. But the OGL sure aint stopping anyone from entering the hobby, so I wouldn't worry about it. It's not an OGL issue, it's a business strategy issue (of which OGL is but one part).

Q6) If you would have been present at WoTC when the decision was made to create an open license, how would you have gone about it, assuming that not doing it was not an option.

A6) I would have supported the idea, and trusted Ryan Dancey and the business managers to carry it through. As a writer, there's not much more I could have done.  

Q7) Lastly, lets confront the reality of the existence of the OGL. Its here and it looks like its going to stay. We have seen some benefits and downsides to its existence. What can we [the industry] do now with the lessons learned so far to ensure that the OGL grows into something that is a benefit to the D&D and d20 genre over the years to come?

A7) I don't know about the downsides. I just don't see them as much as other people do. But what can we, the industry, do to ensure that the OGL is a benefit for years to come? Well, we could get down and play d20-games with a passion, showing people that this is a fun hobby! We could point out to people that are saying "all d20 is crap" that there are tons of good, innovative and exciting stuff available. We could also try some other games, and let them influence how we write stuff (if it's a good influence), we could ask publishers to clearly mark out the OGL contained in their products so that reuse is easier. But all this is just small stuff. I'm not a visionary who can see the shape of the hobby in front of me, so I just sort of keep doing what seems like a good idea. And for me the d20STL and the OGL seems like good ideas.

That's what I would have answered, had Silven Crossroads asked me.

Cheers!

Maggan


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## DaveMage (Jun 8, 2004)

pogre said:
			
		

> All hail Gygax! I disagree with him here, but he is still the man.
> 
> For those of you not interested in digging through heaps of volatile posts over at RPGnet here was the father of the OGL explanation about why it is a successful model for WOTC:
> 
> A very compelling argument I thought. For me the OGL is the reason I play D&D. Being able to produce material I can share and sell (if I want) is an important part of the hobby for me. It gives us all some ownership in our game and benefits WOTC. Thanks Ryan!




A fascinating read - thanks for posting that, pogre!


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## PJ-Mason (Jun 8, 2004)

I think the OGL/D20TL does bring in more non-gamers to the fold. I think some of these licenses that are being handed out lately is because those license holders see the potential profit of the large D20 community market. That same potential wouldn't exist (or not at not be as prevelant) if used with a less popular game system or a new game system altogether. So in that respect, i think the OGL/D20 IS bringing in new gamers to the hobby, even if thats is not its primary objective.

Black Company, Redstar D20, Ctuthulu (sp?), Babylon 5, Conan, and all the other license that originate from, or are linked to, other entertainment areas will no doubt bring in a fresh source of non-gamers to the hobby (whether that will be a significant source of new gamers can be debated of course). 

Basically, I think the size/resources of the D20 consumers makes licensing such famous trademarks more attractive to those parties. I am waiting for someone to create the Pokemon D20 game. That'll probably stagger the d20 community with new players. God help us all then!

I would ask Gary (or any other non-d20 supporter for that matter) what he/they has done lately to bring new gamers into the hobby? If that answer is nothing (i don't know the answer, hence the question), then how is that charge against the OGL/D20TL valid? Or rather, its a crime that they (and we) all then share guilt in.


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## Scutisorex (Jun 8, 2004)

I agree with Gygax on many things, but not this one. I think that, in a perfect world, the D&D brand could be controlled and supported by the same company and put out just enough quality product to give good support but not flood the market. However, that is not the world in which we live, nor was it the reality back when I started gaming in 1991. The D&D brand HAD to make a change... there had to be some significant change in order for it to prosper. In my opinion, OGL was the single most important advancement to occur in the gaming industry in decades.


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## sjmiller (Jun 8, 2004)

MerricB said:
			
		

> Who here's equates a "d20 System" product with "D&D"? I see those products as being "compatible with D&D", but that's a long way from being "D&D". When I see a D&D product, I expect a certain standard of product that I do not expect from a normal d20 System product.



That would be me raising my hand.  Generally, when I see D20 I think "D&D or D&D variant".  Why?  Because generally in my observations that is the case.  I often times see a D20 product and think "how did they modify D&D for this one?"  

I am sure there are folks out there who will gladly point out to me the differences between their favorite D20 System game and D&D.  The differences are often micro-system differences rather than macro-system differences.

Unlike you, I do not expect a certain product standard from WotC that is any better or worse than from someone else.  It's not that either of us is wrong, it's just that we have different viewpoints on the subject.

I for one like having different game systems for different styles of games.  I do not find D20 to be my system of choice for SF games or Modern Espionage games.  By the same token I don't find Classic Traveller to be my system of choice for fantasy games.


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## Majoru Oakheart (Jun 8, 2004)

Look, I AGREE with Gygax.  He isn't saying that the OGL is destroying D&D.  All he said is that he doesn't think it is a good idea to allow people to write books for your game without any control on what they put out because people could associate their book with your game.

I agree with him.  I like D&D to be a UNIFIED game.  I like to know that the game mechanics make sense and are internally consistant.  I'd like to think that someone who likely has read through all the other D&D books and who has a good sense of the D&D vision has at least looked at the book before it got printed.  D&D does have its own sense of what fits and what doesn't along with a game balance that (for the most part) it stays pretty close to.

I can't count the number of times that I've talked to gamers at a convention or at my local gaming store or even people who join my group who tell me stories about characters who were this race that gave pluses to all their stats for no level adjustment, who took feats from 3 different publishers D20 system books that let them add their strength, dex, and con to their damage, and their AC, and had a 2-20 crit range (ok, it's a bit of an exaggeration, but it's pretty bad)

With no control over what gets put out, gamers everywhere are integrating D20 system products into their games, and D&D isn't one game anymore, it is now 30 or 40 games that play completely different depending on which D20 system books you are playing with.  I like being able to sit down at a table and make a character without having to spend the next 2 or 3 hours listening to the DM tell me all the rules he is adding to the game from D20 system books.

I'll admit one thing, that the OGL HAS made more people play, but that's because they aren't actually playing D&D.  I'm with Gygax, if you are playing with house rules, you may be playing a game, but it isn't D&D.  Same thing with 3rd party OGL products.  Don't get me wrong, some of them may even be BETTER games than D&D, but they aren't D&D.  Each person is able to turn D&D into the game they'd actually LIKE to play, so they buy the core books, so they have a basis to begin with.  Which does make WOTC more money.  However, the problem with that is...I LIKE D&D.  It's fustrating when I create a D&D character for a game and I'm told by the DM that it isn't legal.

I, for one, wish that it was the "default" to use the rules as written, without any extra OGL books to confuse things.


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## The Tsar To Owls (Jun 8, 2004)

*Iconoclasm & Heresy*

i am tired of this Canonization of Gygax.

He helped to create and foster a great thing, but that does not make everything that comes out of his mouth golden, by any stretch of the imagination (except his).  A pillar of the game and it's origin, yes, but much like Ozzy, Gygax's strength and draw is in what he was, not what he is today.

If you want a tru opinion of the OGL, you need to look to the current generation of spearheaders like (the overly prolific) Monte Cook, or, beter yet, folk who actually have a  career stake in it like Green Ronin, Mongoose, Fantasy Flight, S&S, and the like.  

The OGL has not affected him one whit, as his residuals keep him happily floating along, not to mention the fact that a transcription of his farts could be bound and sold on his name alone to hundreds of doe-eyed gamers who might stare down a room ful of vampires and dragons, but go all grovelly at the mention of the name "Gygax".

Thank you Gary.  Next.


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## tauton_ikhnos (Jun 8, 2004)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> I find it hard to believe that the OGL could potentially "kill" WotC.  Especially since WotC's largest profit center has always been CCGs -- the purchase of D&D was merely a passion of Peter Adkinson, not an acquisition that was supposed to make or break the company.  If anything's going to "kill" WotC it would be their over-reliance on CCGs to make most of their money, and inability to branch out when that market has shrunk substantially.



Well, okay, I overstated the matter ^_^

Let me rephrase: if it turns out to be a bad profit decision, it won't happen again. It won't kill WotC, but it may kill the D&D division.


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## rogueattorney (Jun 8, 2004)

I see a lot of knee-jerk "Gygax is old and stupid" reactions, but not a whole lot of analysis of what the man actually said.  His main points were:

*1.  WotC's admission of being unable to produce profitable adventures is a cop-out.*  Certainly, Necro, Goodman, and other companies that make their living on making modules proves this.

*2.  He doesn't like the lack of quality control with the OGL, and saw the recent imposition decency standards as a good thing.*  He quite simply would rather have quality over quanity and sees no advantage to a flood of mediocre products on the market.

*3.  The OGL is nice for veteran gamers, but doesn't do much for beginners.*  Which, I'd guess, WotC is starting to agree with, given the impending release of the new Basic set.

What's the big deal?

R.A.


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## trollwad (Jun 8, 2004)

rogueattorney said:
			
		

> I see a lot of knee-jerk "Gygax is old and stupid" reactions, but not a whole lot of analysis of what the man actually said.  His main points were:
> 
> *1.  WotC's admission of being unable to produce profitable adventures is a cop-out.*  Certainly, Necro, Goodman, and other companies that make their living on making modules proves this.
> 
> ...





AMEN! It is amazing how much people love to go off on a rant about something that they dont even seem to read/refer to.  No one said Gygax is god or anything else but it seems wise to me to at least carefully consider what someone with more gaming credits than anyone I can think of, has to say on a given subject.

Just to give people on this list some context (Ive read a lot of gygax interviews over the years):

1)  modules are a thinner margin business.  By all accounts, the present TSR/WOTC/whatever is a high overhead business as currently constituted.  companies are often tempted to cede lower margin business to competitors (detroit ceding small autos to the japanese is one infamous example) rather than reorienting people/salaries etc to compete on the "low end."  Decide for yourself.

2)  centralized quality control does seem important to me.  even linux, the ultimate decentralized build your own system, has linus torvalds and others sitting at the center and deciding which system tweaks will be incorporated in the next version of linux.

3)  OGL helping veterans vs. enticing new gamers is important to gygax.  Other interviews show that he believes that young potential gamers are spending more time with videogames than with roleplaying with humans.  even when they do come to roleplaying they often come at the game from a videogaming mentality.  Gygax has implied that he believes that wotc should make more effort to entice new gamers and also to create roleplaying oriented video gaming product.

Decide for yourself the pros and cons of these matters (I think there is some merit to his case, though he probably overstates it somewhat) but at least read what he is saying carefully.  His few advocates on this board never said that mssr. gygax was an infallible oracle so anyone who is fighting against that is tilting against a straw man.


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## Desdichado (Jun 8, 2004)

Majoru Oakheart said:
			
		

> With no control over what gets put out, gamers everywhere are integrating D20 system products into their games, and D&D isn't one game anymore, it is now 30 or 40 games that play completely different depending on which D20 system books you are playing with.  I like being able to sit down at a table and make a character without having to spend the next 2 or 3 hours listening to the DM tell me all the rules he is adding to the game from D20 system books.



How is that bad?  And although it'd be difficult to scope it, how is that different really from the way it used to be when D&D was almost unplayable, and everyone had houserules?  I don't think you're going to get very far with that argument.


			
				M.O. said:
			
		

> I'll admit one thing, that the OGL HAS made more people play, but that's because they aren't actually playing D&D.  I'm with Gygax, if you are playing with house rules, you may be playing a game, but it isn't D&D.  Same thing with 3rd party OGL products.  Don't get me wrong, some of them may even be BETTER games than D&D, but they aren't D&D.  Each person is able to turn D&D into the game they'd actually LIKE to play, so they buy the core books, so they have a basis to begin with.  Which does make WOTC more money.  However, the problem with that is...I LIKE D&D.  It's fustrating when I create a D&D character for a game and I'm told by the DM that it isn't legal.



I'm not sure what you're point is, other than that you wish other people didn't play games that aren't D&D.  Since I wouldn't be playing d20 at all if D&D was the only way I could play it (not being involved in a D&D game at the moment, and not really interested in one either, for that matter) then we are clearly at opposite ends of the spectrum.  I can only conclude that what you mean by all this is that, and you'll forgive me if this comes across as putting words in your mouth, "I don't like the OGL because it makes it more likely that I'll end up in games that aren't the games I want to play."  You could otherwise make the argument that these same people would either be playing some other non-d20 game, or not even gaming at all, and you wouldn't be in a game at all, but that's speculative.  Whichever way you go, though, I find your position to be absolutely mind-boggling.


			
				M.O. said:
			
		

> I, for one, wish that it was the "default" to use the rules as written, without any extra OGL books to confuse things.



Isn't it already?


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## PJ-Mason (Jun 8, 2004)

sjmiller said:
			
		

> Unlike you, I do not expect a certain product standard from WotC that is any better or worse than from someone else.  It's not that either of us is wrong, it's just that we have different viewpoints on the subject.
> 
> I for one like having different game systems for different styles of games.  I do not find D20 to be my system of choice for SF games or Modern Espionage games.  By the same token I don't find Classic Traveller to be my system of choice for fantasy games.




Not to mention that a lot of the people who started up a D20 company and who write for them are ex-Wotc employees. Or at least established game designer/writers. Thats why i don't hold WOTC material over anyone elses. Some of the people who wrote 3E are the same guys who write non-wotc D20 material (monte cook, etc).

I have my favorite systems (DC Heroes, cyberpunk, warhammer, D20, etc) but i won't discount a D20 sci fi game or cyberpunkish d20 out of hand, because of not wanting my games to look alike. Since Mutants & Masterminds, i have realized that it IS possible for D20 to branch out into other genres and get it done right. Since i am a DC Heroes freak, it sorta hurts to say there is another supers game thats as good as it is, but M&M is. The same goes for Sci Fi, horror, Spy, westerns, or what have you. It just remains for someone to get it done in D20.


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## Dogbrain (Jun 8, 2004)

Gary Gygax:  The man in charge when "TSR" stood for "They Sue, Regardless of any actual intellectual property infringement, They Sue, Regardless."

This is the same guy who wrote "Sorcerer's Scroll" columns about how anybody who wasn't playing AD&D according to the "official" rules wasn't playing "real" AD&D.


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## marketingman (Jun 8, 2004)

It also stood for  Totally Spineless Rehashers, Imagine that you have caught lightening in a bottle with a hot new game that takes the country by storm spawning a new industry, Do you stand back an allow other to profit from your risk? If you stay in business no, if you want to  be nice you will get sscrewed by others..

Time for some more coco.


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## MDSnowman (Jun 8, 2004)

I've been playing D&D since I was eight years old... and until many years later I was ignorant of a lot of the history behind the game. Now that I know I'm inclined to say.. it is just that, history.

I've never been one to diefy anyone... and if often makes me come across as uncaring, but I'm of the opinion that Gary's perspective is slightly skewed.

Instead of posting a lengthy point by point argument I just want to put my two copper pieces into the discussion.

I love D20 and OGL to death, but I think that WotC have shot themselves in the foot with how they've approached it. They're taking sole responsiblity for the basic things, players handbooks, DMGs, Monster Manuels, and all premutations of such. Unfortunatly they've boxed themselves into just selling that stuff, when 3.0 came out they updated old material and I flocked to buy it without thinking. Now a few years go by and they release 3.5.... I felt a little slighted... did this mean I'd have to buy a new fiend folio? a new Book of Vile Darkness? A New Psionics Handbook? But still I bought my 3.5 books like a good boy and then I bought the complete warrior and it struck me... all WotC seem to be doing is rehashing their old ideas over and over again and dressing it up with fancy production costs and full color art few other companies can't afford and leaning back on the fallicy that just because WotC is "official" it is inherently better than 3rd party work... heck check the thread about different "flavors" of D&D core books... WotC will not stop until they've beaten the horse dead.

That's why the release of Unearthed Arcana, Dragonomicon and now Eberron are causing such a stir, these three books represent the first attempts for WotC to expand beyond what they know is safe. I applaud these efforts and consquently these are the only WotC books (well the jury is still out till I actually get and read Eberron) I haven't regretted buying in the longest time. 

The books I enjoy and I am moved by are all by third party publishers. Scarred lands presents me with a standard fantasy realm turned on it's ear by an earth shattering event, or Ravenloft... which WotC sold the rights to (much to their chargrin) has finally finished the ressurection it was trying to achieve for years and now the setting is finally expanding into new horizons, and Green Ronin, in my opinion one of the best d20 publishers bar none. Producing not only great d20 supplements, but also creating Mutants and Masterminds, showing just how flexible d20 can be. All of these are great books and products I would have never seen if d20 didn't exist. If Mr.Gygax wants to deprieve me of that then I'll disregard his opinion all together.

WotC will be lucky if I buy three books from them in a year...
Since January I've bought more than double that many from at least two third party publishers. 

Will just publishing Core books and the like hurt WotC? no, in fact it will keep them around for a long time...but if they stagnate they may wake up one morning to realize that another company, maybe White Wolf, maybe Green Ronin, hell maybe some company starting today, may be doing D&D better than they do. The OGL is a challenge for WotC to take risks, and I hope the success of books dedicated to one kind of monster, or optional rules shows them that those risks are worth making.

...I just realized I may have given you two silver worth.


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## sjmiller (Jun 8, 2004)

Dogbrain said:
			
		

> This is the same guy who wrote "Sorcerer's Scroll" columns about how anybody who wasn't playing AD&D according to the "official" rules wasn't playing "real" AD&D.



 I hear people constantly mention this, but can someone tell me when he said something even close to this?  I have the Dragon Archive, so it be nice to see some back up on this.


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## JeffB (Jun 8, 2004)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> from the way it used to be when D&D was almost unplayable, and everyone had houserules?




I'm sorry JR but I have to laugh everytime I hear something like this.   Me and my buddies had a damn good time playing that "almost unplayable" game for several years..what were we thinking?


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## tarchon (Jun 8, 2004)

rogueattorney said:
			
		

> *1.  WotC's admission of being unable to produce profitable adventures is a cop-out.*  Certainly, Necro, Goodman, and other companies that make their living on making modules proves this.
> 
> *2.  He doesn't like the lack of quality control with the OGL, and saw the recent imposition decency standards as a good thing.*  He quite simply would rather have quality over quanity and sees no advantage to a flood of mediocre products on the market.



The problem is that high quality and low volume and low price are not simultaneously achievable with profitability.  This is why most niche RPG stuff is really...er... poorly edited, let's say.  WotC has, not unreasonably, decided that they would rather not risk their brand making the compromises and taking the risks that would be necessary to chase after nickels and dimes, particularly when other people are willing and able to do it.  It's simple economics.  "High-quality" requires high resource expenditure.  That's just a simple fact of life.  One thing I've long come to recognize about WotC is that they're pretty sharp on the business end (or at least they used to be).  Let's not forget that TSR went down in flames, while WotC was a fantastic financial success and still is doing pretty well, so there's obviously some practical basis for thinking the WotC way has something going for it.


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## rogueattorney (Jun 8, 2004)

tarchon said:
			
		

> Let's not forget that TSR went down in flames...




Let's also not forget that TSR was doing quite well up to 1983, when G.G. was forced out as creative head, briefly rebounded when he took back control in 1985, and then went into it's protracted death spiral AFTER he was removed from the company in 1987.  Resting the sins of 1990's TSR on the head of Gygax is both ironic and insulting to the man.  

R.A.


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## Sargon (Jun 8, 2004)

Ok see if I get this right.

D20 products requires the three core books to be able to use it

OGL products stands alone, and does not need the three core books or any WOTC product to use it.

So a customer could potentially walk into a game store and see the Conan the RPG.  He also sees D&D.  He decides to buy Conan and then future suppliments for it.  He never picks up D&D.

Technically you can play ogl d20 games and never buy a single WOTC rulebook.

I think a better way for WOTC would be to charge a license fee for anyone that wanted to make a d20 product.

Mongoose released a ogl version of the Player's handbook.  How hard would it be to create an ogl version of the Pocket DMG and Pocket Monster Manual.

How soon will it be for more people to take the SRD and create their own Player's Handbook/Dmg/Monster Manual hybrids for their products and you won't have to buy WOTC ones.  Monte Cook has already done this for the diamond throne world.  You could easily use the srd to fill in the gaps and not use the DMG or Monster Manual at all.

Basicaly I agree with some thing Gygax said.  Giving your game away for free might not be the best way to go about it.


----------



## Sargon (Jun 8, 2004)

MDSnowman said:
			
		

> I've been playing D&D since I was eight years old... and until many years later I was ignorant of a lot of the history behind the game. Now that I know I'm inclined to say.. it is just that, history.
> 
> I've never been one to diefy anyone... and if often makes me come across as uncaring, but I'm of the opinion that Gary's perspective is slightly skewed.
> 
> ...




That is what they wanted, but now 3rd party publishers are releasing competitive things.  Complete Warrior and Divine came out, however how many different class books are out there from 3rd party publishers.  You could spend the rest of your d20 gaming dollars and never buy a WOTC product again.


----------



## Son_of_Thunder (Jun 8, 2004)

Ranger REG said:
			
		

> You know, you didn't have to take part in this particular discussion thread.
> 
> Granted, this is more of an "industry news" discussion so not many gamers are going to be interested as to what this impacts the RPG market, any more than the _Wall Street Journal_ articles would impact a KMart shopper.




Why, as a matter of fact, yes I did. Just as you seemed to take part in the discussion. I respect Mr. Gygax for all he's done for the industry but his words won't stop the OGL, they won't stop really good publishers from using it.

The fact remains that D&D is out of his hands, WotC chose the OGL and it's been a very good thing for the game.

I remember posts on Dragonsfoot about people wishing they had the money to buy the D&D game and give it back to Gary. I hope it's a cold day in hell before that happens.

Good day to you,

Son of Thunder


----------



## Ottergame (Jun 9, 2004)

Son_of_Thunder said:
			
		

> I remember posts on Dragonsfoot about people wishing they had the money to buy the D&D game and give it back to Gary. I hope it's a cold day in hell before that happens.




Heh, I couldn't aggree more.  Gary didn't do a good job with the brand the first 2 times he had it, I doubt third times a charm.


----------



## Staffan (Jun 9, 2004)

Son_of_Thunder said:
			
		

> I remember posts on Dragonsfoot about people wishing they had the money to buy the D&D game and give it back to Gary. I hope it's a cold day in hell before that happens.



In the perfect world that is inside my head, Peter Adkison and Ryan Dancey are in charge of D&D.


----------



## tarchon (Jun 9, 2004)

rogueattorney said:
			
		

> Let's also not forget that TSR was doing quite well up to 1983, when G.G. was forced out as creative head, briefly rebounded when he took back control in 1985, and then went into it's protracted death spiral AFTER he was removed from the company in 1987.  Resting the sins of 1990's TSR on the head of Gygax is both ironic and insulting to the man.




I'm not insulting Gary Gygax and all the gods you hold dear by saying that TSR went down in flames; I'm saying that TSR's basic business strategy wasn't sustainable in the long run.  It's a fairly classic story - someone starts a company on the Big Strike and it goes well for a while on the strength of that, but you can't build a lasting business on a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of genius and opportunity.  Survival of the business depends on solid management of the business's resources.  I don't know or much care who mismanaged TSR, but it's quite clear that it was mismanaged.  Maybe if someone at TSR had looked at the module/minor splatbook market and realized they were losing money on it AND more importantly taken a bold and innovative step like the creation of the OGL to balance their immediate financial interests with the interests of development of the hobby as whole, we'd be playing TSR's 3E instead of WotC's 3E.


----------



## trollwad (Jun 9, 2004)

tarchon said:
			
		

> The problem is that high quality and low volume and low price are not simultaneously achievable with profitability.  This is why most niche RPG stuff is really...er... poorly edited, let's say.  WotC has, not unreasonably, decided that they would rather not risk their brand making the compromises and taking the risks that would be necessary to chase after nickels and dimes, particularly when other people are willing and able to do it.  It's simple economics.  "High-quality" requires high resource expenditure.  That's just a simple fact of life.  One thing I've long come to recognize about WotC is that they're pretty sharp on the business end (or at least they used to be).  Let's not forget that TSR went down in flames, while WotC was a fantastic financial success and still is doing pretty well, so there's obviously some practical basis for thinking the WotC way has something going for it.




High quality does NOT denote high resource expenditure, it denotes efficient results!  I dont think your argument is true.  Look at my example of autos earlier.  Detroit abandoned the "low end", got squeezed into the medium/high end (trucks/suvs) and is presently in the process of losing that too.  Toyota is the leader in both the high end (lexus) and in the low end (high volume).  They have a superior SYSTEM of allocating resources.  Striking closer to home, within the publishing industry there are vast differences in efficiency and financial performance among the various publicly held companies (I analyze companies for a living).

History correction:  tsr went down in flames without gygax, it was extremely profitable relative to capital employed during his reign.  wotc HAS done pretty well but they are now buried in a conglomerate that is not known for its financial savvy (pull up any set of annual reports for mattel and hasbro and they have amazing record of bungling fairly decent slow growing businesses over the past six or seven years).

the question is, I agree that the OGL can pump up financial results in the short term as HAS/WOTC can dramatically reduce its required capital to support the business since it does so much less (no low margin modules etc), BUT does the fact that the company has done little to address its apparent high overhead structure and now has a restricted scope of revenue producing products mean that the company must soon produce 4.0 and then 4.5 to freshen its revenue line, thereby hurting its core relationship with customers?  Ive looked at a lot of companies and the avowed rationale for 3.5 smelled a lot more like my hypothesis than what was proclaimed in terms of timing and scope of change.

the bottom line of what I and perhaps gygax is saying is instead of pursuing a strategy of restrained but revenue-generating licensing, coupled with a significant cut in overhead, perhaps pdf publishing of modules to cut costs but retain breadth and stable if modest cash flow and only occasional reissuing of the core rule books, wotc appears to me to be opting for broad licensing, outsourced module production, and retaining what appears to be a very heavy overhead structure which has created enormous pressure to continually reissue its core rules.  the tradeoff between top line growth, returns on capital, and participating in the low end of the market (modules etc) is a very common dilemna in a mature business.


----------



## dead (Jun 9, 2004)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> You mean like the d20 Modern SRD?  That's been out for, what, a year and a half?  Two years?  And what do you mean by calling the wrong assumption that d20 = D&D a stigma?  If anything, that's what's made the d20 brand viable; a far cry from being a stigma.




I haven't read d20 Modern, but the very title of the book seems to pidgeon-hole it to *modern* settings. If I saw this work in my local games shop and just viewed the cover I'd assume that it's not a generic game or neutral rules reference at all -- it's for modern-day genres.

I know I'm judging a book by its cover here. It may very well be usable for a primative game or a sci-fi game but the title d20 Modern doesn't sugest it is a genre-neutral corerules reference.

D&D a stigma? No, I love D&D and it's not a stigma. It might be if it's stopping people getting into d20, however. People who don't like D&D and don't want to have to reference the 3E D&D corerules, for example. But as you mentioned, the OGL is changing this.

As for AU, I've had conflicting reports. Some say that you really *do* need the corerules otherwise you're disadvantaging yourself. Others say you don't need the corerules to use this product. I guess I'll never know until I buy it.


----------



## trollwad (Jun 9, 2004)

tarchon said:
			
		

> I'm not insulting Gary Gygax and all the gods you hold dear by saying that TSR went down in flames; I'm saying that TSR's basic business strategy wasn't sustainable in the long run.  It's a fairly classic story - someone starts a company on the Big Strike and it goes well for a while on the strength of that, but you can't build a lasting business on a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of genius and opportunity.  Survival of the business depends on solid management of the business's resources.  I don't know or much care who mismanaged TSR, but it's quite clear that it was mismanaged.  Maybe if someone at TSR had looked at the module/minor splatbook market and realized they were losing money on it AND more importantly taken a bold and innovative step like the creation of the OGL to balance their immediate financial interests with the interests of development of the hobby as whole, we'd be playing TSR's 3E instead of WotC's 3E.




claiming that those who are defending some of gygax's points view him as a god is tilting against a straw man since none of us have claimed such powers for him.  

which tsr business strategy?  the gygax strategy or the blume/williams strategy?  you should care about who mismanaged tsr because it offers evidence as to which strategy was unsustainable, the avowed purpose of your statement!

clearly, neither one of has access to tsr/wotc's financial statements BUT Ive read the financial statements of hasbro, mattel, many publishers, marvel entertainment group (both pre and post its own bankruptcy).  Based on such, oversimplifying greatly, read a book called Comic Wars (the saga of marvel's story) for the sense of the strategic issues confronting a mature niche business like TSR/WOTC.  My point is that in both cases, 'professionals' took over the businesses, undertook short-term measures which greatly boosted margins and free cash flow (in marvel's case, it was price hikes, in tsr's it was overdiversifying and adding too much overhead to hit another home run creatively with 2e etc.).  However, both Perlman in marvel's case, and Lorraine Williams/Blume in TSRs, had contempt for their customers and ended up alienating them.  Trying to hit the next "creative home run", both businesses added way too much overhead and 'creative talent' undertaking dubious projects rather than supporting their core customers with proven talent (monte cook, sean reynolds, gary gygax in one case; stan lee in the other).

Wouldnt it make more sense to offer other incentive compensation (royalties, options, etc.) to retain proven talent like sean, monte and gary rather than having them leave and keep all of the revenue that they are generating by using TSR/WOTCs intellectual property?!!  Arent these guys worth a lot more than the scores of names that you see on the wizards website?  If you look at someone like Warren Buffett, who has made a career out of buying mature businesses, allocating their capital very stingily and running a lean overhead outfit with key creative and management talent retained and incentivized with incentive comp (no options but a ton of incentive cash), you see what seems to me to be a much more successful means of running a mature business than fitful licensing schemes, a huge talent exodus, and no stable low margin cash flow stream (modules).

Just my 2 cents!


----------



## trollwad (Jun 9, 2004)

PJ-Mason said:
			
		

> Not to mention that a lot of the people who started up a D20 company and who write for them are ex-Wotc employees. Or at least established game designer/writers. Thats why i don't hold WOTC material over anyone elses. Some of the people who wrote 3E are the same guys who write non-wotc D20 material (monte cook, etc).





Actually, mr mason, skipping your concern about whether material outside wotc is inferior (since I dont care), isnt this an argument AGAINST the OGL?  In other words, if the OGL encourages talent like Sean Reynolds, monte cook to leave and instead of WOTC claiming 85 cents on the pretax dollar of their work (say losing 15 cents due to royalties, salary), due to the free OGL WOTC claims 0 cents as these gentleman make all the dough for themselves!  That is a substantial difference in value retention.  This is why Im arguing that the OGL (to me) seems to be pushing WOTC to the inexorable untimely rerelease of the core rule books (as it is their only reliable revenue stream).

note:  this is not an argument against sean and monte.  they are not violating any duties in leaving to capture their own creative revenue streams when the OGL is free.  this is an argument about the economics of the OGL from the perspective of WOTC.


----------



## Sir Whiskers (Jun 9, 2004)

sjmiller said:
			
		

> I hear people constantly mention this, but can someone tell me when he said something even close to this?  I have the Dragon Archive, so it be nice to see some back up on this.




I can't figure out how to cut and paste from the archive, but look at issue 26, article "D&D, AD&D, and Gaming" by Gary Gygax. In summary, his point was that in OD&D (white box) the rules were too loose, so that each person's game was unique. The purpose of AD&D was to provide a firm set of rules that everyone followed, so that players moving between games, or gaming at conventions, could be certain the rules wouldn't change. In effect, he was trying to provide a boardgame-like consistency to the rules, ala Risk or Axis and Allies. Of course, that wasn't possible. RPG's simply don't lend themselves to such rigidity, nor (IMO) should they.


----------



## Dogbrain (Jun 9, 2004)

marketingman said:
			
		

> Do you stand back an allow other to profit from your risk? If you stay in business no, if you want to  be nice you will get sscrewed by others.




Thank you for proving your utter ignorance of intellectual property law.  If they had wanted legal protection for their "idea", they should have patented.  Since they didn't have enough sense to patent, they had no legal leg to stand on.


----------



## Dogbrain (Jun 9, 2004)

sjmiller said:
			
		

> I hear people constantly mention this, but can someone tell me when he said something even close to this?  I have the Dragon Archive, so it be nice to see some back up on this.




Do a word search for "monopoly" and "free parking" to find one of his gems.


----------



## KB9JMQ (Jun 9, 2004)

Staffan said:
			
		

> In the perfect world that is inside my head, Peter Adkison and Ryan Dancey are in charge of D&D.




Amen Brother.


----------



## tarchon (Jun 9, 2004)

trollwad said:
			
		

> High quality does NOT denote high resource expenditure, it denotes efficient results!  I dont think your argument is true.  Look at my example of autos earlier.  Detroit abandoned the "low end", got squeezed into the medium/high end (trucks/suvs) and is presently in the process of losing that too.  Toyota is the leader in both the high end (lexus) and in the low end (high volume).  They have a superior SYSTEM of allocating resources.  Striking closer to home, within the publishing industry there are vast differences in efficiency and financial performance among the various publicly held companies (I analyze companies for a living).



It's nice that you do that, but I prefer to judge your argument by its merit.
Efficiency is a measurement of how much of a resource is required to produce a desired result.  It has no direct bearing on quality without some notion of resource expenditure.  You can produce a great product with low efficiency and huge expenditure, or you can produce a crappy product with high efficiency and hardly any expenditure.

The higher the quality in a product, the more resources it requires to produce.  It takes more time from more highly skilled editors, more highly skilled writers, more highly skilled artists, more highly skilled designers, even more expensive components (better paper, better processes), all of which are resources - they cost more money than would devoting smaller amounts of time and lower-skill workers to the project.   In fact, competitive market forces compel higher quality to require more resources, since by nature any clear product improvement that requires no additional investment and the same or less expenditure of resources is adopted by any rational producer.  Econ 101.

I agree that a more efficient company has an advantage in producing higher quality goods, since it requires less resources to produce the same quality of goods as a less efficient copmany, but we have no evidence that WotC is by nature more or less efficient than TSR or anyone else.  Given equal or at least comparable efficiences, which is probably the case with the high degree of employee migration and the general openness of the RPG industry, my argument holds.  And I might add that I've seen it echoed by many people in the RPG industry as well, along with most basic texts on economics.  Quality costs money.  Efficiency is only a measure of how much a given level of quality costs.



			
				trollwad said:
			
		

> History correction:  tsr went down in flames without gygax, it was extremely profitable relative to capital employed during his reign.  wotc HAS done pretty well but they are now buried in a conglomerate that is not known for its financial savvy (pull up any set of annual reports for mattel and hasbro and they have amazing record of bungling fairly decent slow growing businesses over the past six or seven years).



Thank you for "correcting" a statement I never made and making another "correction" that mostly repeats what I said about WotC.  I stand quasi-corrected, if you want look at it like that.


----------



## Allensh (Jun 9, 2004)

Ottergame said:
			
		

> The weird thing is that the original name, Dangerous Dimensions, was the one TSR had a problem with.  TSR dropped the suit when they changed the name to Dangerous Journies, but GDW still canned it.




Incorrect. TSR continued to pursue the lawsuit after the name change, using the infamous "points of similarity" argument, including that Dangerous Journeys used polyhedral dice...I remember all this well because I was on the Traveller Mailing List when GDW went down and the lawsuit was part of what did it. 

Allen


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## marketingman (Jun 9, 2004)

Dogbrain said:
			
		

> Thank you for proving your utter ignorance of intellectual property law.  If they had wanted legal protection for their "idea", they should have patented.  Since they didn't have enough sense to patent, they had no legal leg to stand on.




Actually they had copyrights back in that time also. I may be ignorant of intellectual property law but not copyright and trademarks. At that time 1969 to 1988 they had only Copy righted law anfd did file copyright for all of thier properties.

After all TSR owned the Rights to the Nazi for when it had the Indiana Jones Game. And had more lawyers then Game designers.

I shall return to my ignorance now and you can go back to your trailer park.


----------



## marketingman (Jun 9, 2004)

Also as a little side note the KKK was incorpated in Illinois in 1955 by a Jewish lawyer to keep that originazation from getting legal protection under the law and could not advertise in any form without his concent.

Also Micheal Jorden had to sue in court to get his name back from a defuct restuarant he sold it too.

I shall return to my ignorance now.


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## trollwad (Jun 9, 2004)

tarchon said:
			
		

> Efficiency...has no direct bearing on quality without some notion of resource expenditure.
> 
> The higher the quality in a product, the more resources it requires to produce.  It takes more time from more highly skilled editors, more highly skilled writers, more highly skilled artists, more highly skilled designers, even more expensive components (better paper, better processes), all of which are resources - they cost more money than would devoting smaller amounts of time and lower-skill workers to the project.   In fact, competitive market forces compel higher quality to require more resources, since by nature any clear product improvement that requires no additional investment and the same or less expenditure of resources is adopted by any rational producer.  Econ 101.
> 
> ...we have no evidence that WotC is by nature more or less efficient than TSR or anyone else.  Given equal or at least comparable efficiences, which is probably the case with the high degree of employee migration and the general openness of the RPG industry, my argument holds.  And I might add that I've seen it echoed by many people in the RPG industry as well, along with most basic texts on economics.  Quality costs money.  Efficiency is only a measure of how much a given level of quality costs.





I disagree.  (I guess you should have gone further than econ 101).  Toyota's Lexus simultaneously has the lowest cost, highest quality (car and customer service) and the highest efficiency in terms of man hours to produce among luxury cars.  Toyota also has some of the highest profit margins per lexus (recent bizweek and fortune).  Even in the people-intensive publishing world, high quality often goes with low cost/high efficiency (look at the relative capital and labor efficiency differentials between the various newspapers).  As I pointed out in other posts -- the 'efficiency' (profits per unit of capital/time required) of return to tomb of horrors or probably tsr's licensing deal to the guys who made the ToEE videogame appears to be huge (good volume plus reasonable outlay because you are building off a prior body of work rather than recreating the wheel).  

Actually, we have a lot of anecdotal evidence that WOTC has at least some bloat relative to the revenue generation capability of current inhouse creative staff.  The mere fact that module production for them isnt profitable is some evidence of such.  In addition, many people on Enworld have identified Sean Reynolds, Monte Cook and Gygax as some of the best module creators.  All no longer work for WOTC.  Together, the three of those, with apparently skeleton crew help, have/are producing damn near as much product as WOTC over the past couple of years (take a look at Monte's website for the sheer volume of what he is involved in, its pretty crazy and in my opinion pretty creative; meanwhile gygax has at least four major projects in the hopper right now before his stroke).  Now go to the WOTC website and your 3.5 books and simply add up the names of all of the people who are listed and appear to be creative or managerial employees of the company.  Now, pick your favorite prolific OGL producer (Troll Lords?, Necromancer?, Green Ronin?) and look at their website and forums.  I've done this for Troll Lords and they seem to produce a good bit of hi quality product IMHO with about three or four major guys and a few minions.  Look at Steve Jackson games for another apparent small, lean high efficiency (capital/effort) outfit.  A fairly small and fairly mature industry with volatile cash flows (like RPGs) should be run as leanly as possible because growth is unlikely to bail you out. 

My tentative contentions (they are tentative because Im not a WOTC insider) are (1) the OGL contributes to an exodus of talented creative types from WOTC because a guy like Monte can simply take his WOTC-honed skills and go and use them for his own benefit on a royalty-free basis -- thus pick your best three creative types (maybe Monte Cook?, Sean Reynolds?, Gygax?) and count out how many do not work for WOTC; (2) WOTC's biz model seems to be to avoid low margin but steady cash flow products like modules which are not profitable for the company due to WOTC's overhead whereas they are modestly profitable for apparently leaner Troll Lords, Malhavoc etc; as a consequence, wont WOTC be pressured to juice revenues by coming up with version 4.0 of the core rule books (prematurely) unless Eberron is a big hit?  Actually, even Eberron is interesting because WOTC evidently didnt have enough internal creativity to come up with a new setting, so they picked up steve baker from the outside.  Wouldnt it be better for WOTC to try a lower cost means of releasing modules (pdfs, to get around printing costs? with verisign certification and approval to prevent illegal copying) to have a steady source of cash flow rather than abandon the fray alltogether?  

Thus the analogy to Toyota, which tried to figure out more efficient ways to produce low end product rather than abandon the market altogether like detroit did as competition intensified.


----------



## marketingman (Jun 9, 2004)

Good Points Trollwad,

But WotC is Hasbro which has had an 11% increase in profit over 20o2 at 3.139 billion in revenue ranked 510 in Fortune magazine the stock is also well entrench with institional accounts. The OGL allow them to  have a thinner R&D.

Actually they can just buy anyone that they feel is an up and comer while allowing others to leave as they wish to start  thier own endvores not diluting company profits  in support of system that are not profitable.

even if Eberon is a total failure WotC lights will still be on payroll will still be meet and it will be support for at least a cyle while they develop more product. Monte he takes a bigger risk but trusts in his ability to pick his ponies.

Something simaler happened in 1960 when the gang of eight rebelled against the owner of the patented of the semiconducter, All of them wer engineers who had the patent owner. The gang of eight became Intel. What inside. Kind of ironic.

Ok back to my ignorance.


----------



## Henry (Jun 9, 2004)

In the perfect world inside MY head, Peter and Ryan again run WotC and 3E, and Gary (or his hand-picked successor) are returned full rights to the original D&D and AD&D game systems, to do with as they see fit.


----------



## marketingman (Jun 9, 2004)

Henry said:
			
		

> In the perfect world inside MY head, Peter and Ryan again run WotC and 3E, and Gary (or his hand-picked successor) are returned full rights to the original D&D and AD&D game systems, to do with as they see fit.




Leave it to the mod to find the best of all world, Bravo Henry Bravo.


----------



## dead (Jun 9, 2004)

marketingman said:
			
		

> Ok back to my ignorance.




I think your points are very enlightening.

On to other things . . .

No, I wouldn't give Gary D&D back. I've played AD&D since 1E but I like the way it has evolved into 3E. I'm not sure if Gary would have taken it this direction. Who knows? Maybe he could have done as good a job as the 3E team? I have no idea about his new endeavor, Lejundary Adventure. I should really give it a look one of these days. I hope it's doing well. I can say, however, that I wasn't a fan of Dangerous Journeys. Perhaps one can't give fair judgement of DJ, however, because it was never fully realised.

One thing I would give Gary back, however, is Greyhawk! I'm not sure if he'd be very interested in picking it up, though. But I've always been intrigued to know what Greyhawk would have turned out like if Gary had kept on contributing to it. I especially would have liked to have seen a Greyhawk City supplement by him.


----------



## Maggan (Jun 9, 2004)

*Did I miss again?*



			
				trollwad said:
			
		

> note:  this is not an argument against sean and monte.  they are not violating any duties in leaving to capture their own creative revenue streams when the OGL is free.  this is an argument about the economics of the OGL from the perspective of WOTC.




It seems you missed the link to this discussion:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=118888&perpage=30&pagenumber=1

It concerns the economics of the OGL from the perspective of WotC, and Ryan Dancey contirbutes to it.

Some points from the discussion:



			
				Ryan Dancey on RPGnet said:
			
		

> The real important number to keep in your head is 1.5 million. That's the number of people (conservatively) who play D&D every single month in the US. That is the real target of the D&D business at WotC. When you hear about OGL/D20 publishers selling a few thousand units of their books, remember that they're only managing to sell a few thousand to a potential audience of one and a half million active players.
> 
> WotC knows those players are out there. It also knows that the way to convert those players to purchasers is to figure out how to maximize the total value of each book they offer those players for sale. And it knows that a very, very large part of the value of an RPG book is external to the book itself - the value is in the player network.
> 
> ...




I recommend reading the whole discussion. I found it very interesting.

Cheers!

Maggan


----------



## Ranger REG (Jun 9, 2004)

Sargon said:
			
		

> Ok see if I get this right.
> 
> D20 products requires the three core books to be able to use it



At minimum, you only require one of the following core rulebooks: _Player's Handbook, d20 Modern,_ or any one of the licensed core game game books (_WoT, CoC, SW_).




			
				Sargon said:
			
		

> OGL products stands alone, and does not need the three core books or any WOTC product to use it.



You also cannot say "This Product is Compatible with _D&D_" or "The Rules is based on _D&D_ game."




			
				Sargon said:
			
		

> So a customer could potentially walk into a game store and see the Conan the RPG.  He also sees D&D.  He decides to buy Conan and then future suppliments for it.  He never picks up D&D.



Yep. He could be playing a variation of the _D&D_ rules without knowing.

HOWEVER, this OGL-based game is a licensed product, meaning Mongoose is paying the Howard Estate a hefty royalty payment for use of the famous trademarks. So they pretty much will catch a customer's eyes easily because of a known media brand.

The same could also be said of _EverQuest._

The true test of a standalone OGL-based product is a fresh and original brand. Not something known. I think _Castles & Crusade_ would be a good example, although you could put in an argument for Mongoose's _OGL Ancient, OGL Cyberpunk,_ etc.




			
				Sargon said:
			
		

> I think a better way for WOTC would be to charge a license fee for anyone that wanted to make a d20 product.



Perhaps, and it would be an indication of endorsement by WotC, but then we wouldn't have a flood of _d20_ products as we would with other games. Then-small companies like Mongoose Publishing wouldn't be where they stand now. And games like _Conan_ means you'll have to pay two royalties (Howard Estate and WotC). I don't know if such a company could afford to do that while keeping the price of the book (as it stand, gamers still complain about $30 HC products or 96-page products that cost $20).



			
				Sargon said:
			
		

> Basicaly I agree with some thing Gygax said.  Giving your game away for free might not be the best way to go about it.



Maybe, but then having seen some great rules content for the _d20 System_ created from outside the walls of WotC, I doubt that Gygax and his company of game designers would probably be that creative, especially when he is more interested in controlling the direction of his wares. That would have been a conservative approach. I prefer liberal thinking.


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## Maggan (Jun 9, 2004)

dead said:
			
		

> No, I wouldn't give Gary D&D back. I've played AD&D since 1E but I like the way it has evolved into 3E. I'm not sure if Gary would have taken it this direction. Who knows?




Well, we will never really know, but Gygax himself thought the best way for AD&D to go forward after 2nd edition was by rereleasing 1st edition, since it had the best rules.

Hmmm... I wonder what would have happened then. Maybe it would have been as successful as 3e, with the same kind of marketing muscle behind it. Hard to tell.

Cheers!

Maggan


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## Ranger REG (Jun 9, 2004)

Maggan said:
			
		

> Well, we will never really know, but Gygax himself thought the best way for AD&D to go forward after 2nd edition was by rereleasing 1st edition, since it had the best rules.
> 
> Hmmm... I wonder what would have happened then. Maybe it would have been as successful as 3e, with the same kind of marketing muscle behind it. Hard to tell.



I don't know about 1st edition. All I know is I'm way past the combat matrices, the nonweapon proficiency system, the individual class XP tables, the demihuman multiclassing & human dual-classing, etc. We are already spoiled by what 2nd edition have offered ... which is nothing more than an improved version of 1st edition.


----------



## Desdichado (Jun 9, 2004)

MDSnowman said:
			
		

> That's why the release of Unearthed Arcana, Dragonomicon and now Eberron are causing such a stir, these three books represent the first attempts for WotC to expand beyond what they know is safe. I applaud these efforts and consquently these are the only WotC books (well the jury is still out till I actually get and read Eberron) I haven't regretted buying in the longest time.
> 
> The books I enjoy and I am moved by are all by third party publishers.



I agree 100% with this sentiment.  From WotC so for in the last few months, I've bought only UA and Draconomicon, and Eberron is the only purchase I have from them on my buying schedule.

Of course, my buying is down all around, for several reasons (not least of which is that I'm starting to feel I have much more material than I can ever use) but besides Eberron, everything else I want to buy is third party:

Iron Kingdoms Campaign Guide
Iron Kingdoms World Guide
Conan RPG (when the second printing comes out, presumably sometime Aug/Sept.)
Black Company book
Probably Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying (not d20, but done by a famous d20 company, at least.)


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## Desdichado (Jun 9, 2004)

JeffB said:
			
		

> I'm sorry JR but I have to laugh everytime I hear something like this.   Me and my buddies had a damn good time playing that "almost unplayable" game for several years..what were we thinking?



I'm JD.  JR was shot in the mid-80s.    

More power to you.  I couldn't stomach even doing more than occasionally flipping through the books during 2e.  Reports I had of people who played it were ...inconsistent at best.  Lots of rules problems, lots of problems where the rules got in the way of playing, etc.  I had no interest in playing a game that wasn't heavily house-ruled, and most of the people I know share that sentiment.


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## Desdichado (Jun 9, 2004)

Ranger REG said:
			
		

> The true test of a standalone OGL-based product is a fresh and original brand. Not something known. I think _Castles & Crusade_ would be a good example, although you could put in an argument for Mongoose's _OGL Ancient, OGL Cyberpunk,_ etc.



What, like Mutants & Masterminds?  A big hit, by all accounts, and swiftly becoming _the_ default for superhero games?


----------



## Desdichado (Jun 9, 2004)

Maggan said:
			
		

> Well, we will never really know, but Gygax himself thought the best way for AD&D to go forward after 2nd edition was by rereleasing 1st edition, since it had the best rules.
> 
> Hmmm... I wonder what would have happened then. Maybe it would have been as successful as 3e, with the same kind of marketing muscle behind it. Hard to tell.



Eh, I doubt it.  I mean, really.  It wouldn't bring in new players any better than the any other edition of the game, and older players wouldn't have needed to buy it either.  Sounds like a hopelessly myopic (and frankly, egotistical) perspective to me.  "1e is the only true game.  Because I wrote it."


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## PJ-Mason (Jun 9, 2004)

trollwad said:
			
		

> Actually, mr mason, skipping your concern about whether material outside wotc is inferior (since I dont care), isnt this an argument AGAINST the OGL?  In other words, if the OGL encourages talent like Sean Reynolds, monte cook to leave and instead of WOTC claiming 85 cents on the pretax dollar of their work (say losing 15 cents due to royalties, salary), due to the free OGL WOTC claims 0 cents as these gentleman make all the dough for themselves!  That is a substantial difference in value retention.  This is why Im arguing that the OGL (to me) seems to be pushing WOTC to the inexorable untimely rerelease of the core rule books (as it is their only reliable revenue stream).
> 
> note:  this is not an argument against sean and monte.  they are not violating any duties in leaving to capture their own creative revenue streams when the OGL is free.  this is an argument about the economics of the OGL from the perspective of WOTC.




LOL. I'm debating about something you don't care about and your debating something i don't care about! 

I didn't buy the 3.5 core rule books and unless the 4.0 rules that eventually come out are a real change or upgrade (and maybe not even then!), i sure won't be getting them. So why do i care whether the OGL will kill WOTC or force them to keep putting out refits? There are several D20/Ogl game companies that have proven that they can easily carry the torch. I am a D20/OGL consumer, not a WOTC employee. WOTC turned D&D into a "business first" company, so no one can whine now that the customers have adapted to that colder attitude. Survival of the fittest. WOTC is now just one more D20 company scratching for my gaming dollars.


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## Razuur (Jun 9, 2004)

My perfect world would be with JUST Peter Adkison at the head of WOTC.

Razuur


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## Sir Elton (Jun 9, 2004)

dead said:
			
		

> I used to think d20 = D&D but I have since been reprimanded. Many folks on this very site opened my mind (not the ones that attacked me with flame and acid, however).
> 
> Nevertheless, I think d20 will never shake loose its close association with D&D for as long as the 3E D&D corebooks remain the primary reference for the d20 system.
> 
> I personally would like to see a more *neutral* reference document for d20. I don't know if this is possible, but I think it would help in removing that erroneous stigma that d20 = D&D.



 Have you seen the d20 Modern SRD, yet?  OR even Guardians of Order's Big Eyes, Small Mouth Anime d20 SRD?  Dead, these are new System Reference Documents that break away from the D&D core.  I hope you will check them out.


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## Dogbrain (Jun 9, 2004)

Maggan said:
			
		

> Well, we will never really know, but Gygax himself thought the best way for AD&D to go forward after 2nd edition was by rereleasing 1st edition, since it had the best rules.
> 
> Hmmm... I wonder what would have happened then. Maybe it would have been as successful as 3e, with the same kind of marketing muscle behind it. Hard to tell.




You mean, just like Disney has been such an INCREDIBLE FINANCIAL SUCCESS in recent years from releasing tired old rehash after tired old rehash?  (That's sarcasm based on Disney's recent financial floundering from having released tired old rehash after tired old rehash.)

You can't run a product like D&D only on nostalgia, you can only run it into the ground.


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## Maggan (Jun 9, 2004)

*1 lost customer at least*



			
				Dogbrain said:
			
		

> You mean, just like Disney has been such an INCREDIBLE FINANCIAL SUCCESS in recent years from releasing tired old rehash after tired old rehash?  (That's sarcasm based on Disney's recent financial floundering from having released tired old rehash after tired old rehash.)
> 
> You can't run a product like D&D only on nostalgia, you can only run it into the ground.




Yeah, that's a more than likely outcome, I think. They would have lost me as a customer at least if they had gone with rereleasing AD&D 1st.

Rereleasing D&D Rules Cyclopedia though, that would have hooked me! But hey, 3e hooked me real good as well.   

Cheers!

Maggan


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## RFisher (Jun 9, 2004)

buzzard said:
			
		

> By the time Apple did try to allow clones, the battle was already decided because Microsoft finaly came out with a viable alternative. Had Apple allowed cloning before Windows 95, they may well have won. It's a moot point now.




Plus, when Apple did allow clones, it was really only the appearance of clones. Apple still bore all the R&D costs & tried to control the clone makers too much. That has to be one of the greatest blunders in the history of business.

Apple's failings on the OS front can't be forgotten either. While they were staying on the forefront on the upper levels, they were neglecting core OS features. (The excuses don't matter.) With Win95 Microsoft had the most important core OS features and decent backwards compatibility and some good UI ideas stolen from NeXT. They also a more solid OS in WinNT with less backwards compatibility. Apple may have had them solidly beat on the details & the upper layers, but they couldn't compete without the crucial low level features.



			
				Ottergame said:
			
		

> The weird thing is that the original name, Dangerous Dimensions, was the one TSR had a problem with.  TSR dropped the suit when they changed the name to Dangerous Journies, but GDW still canned it.




TSR didn't drop the suit. See What was the result of the GDW/TSR lawsuit? They eventually bought DJ. (In fact, you can now buy a PDF of it from the same sources that sell PDFs of classic TSR products!)


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## woodelf (Jun 10, 2004)

MeepoTheMighty said:
			
		

> Really?  I'm sure there are people playing Mutants & Masterminds, Farscape, Babylon 5, or whatever, who wouldn't have ever picked up a D&D book.




And, who says those people are picking up D&D books now? Is there any evidence that anybody (much less significant numbers of anybodies) picked up a non-D&D D20 System book, especially a licensed property, who had never before played D&D, and subsequently got into D&D? It seems dubious, at best, to me: if they'd wanted to play D&D before, it'd've been plenty easy to find the books, and plenty easy to find other players.

Secondly, it's not clear whether Gygax was speaking of the well-being of D&D or of RPGs in general. If the latter, it is unlikely that anybody who bought B5 D20 or Farscape D20 because of teh license tie-in wouldn't have done so if they hadn't been D20 System. In fact, there were probably a few sales lost to otherwise-non-gamers who weren't interested in also buying a D&D PH to play a game in the universe they love (and, being novice gamers, didn't realize that they could get around that "requirement"). 

Finally, if you simply mean that it's good that the people playing B5 or Farscape happen to be doing so using D20 System, whether or not they will ever cross over into other D20 System games (like D&D), i'd say that's dubious: if someone really is an isolated customer in the market (only interested in Star Wars, or B5, or Stargate, or whatever), then the fact that the game shares a system some other games is unlikely to make any difference, one way or the other.


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## woodelf (Jun 10, 2004)

Sigurd said:
			
		

> The bookstore near me has three roleplaying shelves - 1.3 shelves are WOTC, 1 shelf is OGL support material and the remaining .7 of a shelf has everything else. OGL is not a dungeon masters aid it is a publishing strategy.




Wow! They must have bunches of copies of the WotC stuff, or you're talking small shelves--WotC hasn't produced more than a few dozen books since the advent of D&D3E, have they? Oh, wait, do you mean literally "shelves", not "shelving units"?


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## Emiricol (Jun 10, 2004)

I love the OGL.  I love not having to read someone's attempt to reinvent the wheel every time I pick up a new game.  I love the ability to publish something if I want to, whether it is good or not.  In this day of the Internet, anyone who buys a product that sucks can pat themselves on the back - they shoulda done their homework better (as I should have before buying Strongholds & Dynasties, but hey).

 People can say the OGL games out there would have been done anyway, but they wouldn't have.  They'd be *something else*.  The market decides what's best.  For every single OGL product out there, I can point to a non-OGL competing product.  The argument is specious.

 Gygax, while I respect the man tremendously and can't say enough how grateful I am for the creation of D&D, failed to run a company well.  He didn't kill TSR, but it sure didn't evolve and had a horrible reputation well before he lost control of his own company.  He doesn't have to create OGL content, and I hope he has the conviction of his words to avoid doing so. Meanwhile, most of what I buy will continue to be OGL and D20 products.


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## Ranger REG (Jun 10, 2004)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> What, like Mutants & Masterminds?  A big hit, by all accounts, and swiftly becoming _the_ default for superhero games?



Sorry, that slipped from my mind by the time of my posting.

But do keep in mind, _MnM_ do not follow the same distinguished format as _D&D_ and many _d20_-labeled products. Of course, that doesn't mean it is a failure. It is a big hit that is now undergoing second printing.


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## Ranger REG (Jun 10, 2004)

Razuur said:
			
		

> My perfect world would be with JUST Peter Adkison at the head of WOTC.



I dunno. AFAIC, he willfully resigned from that position and left the company behind with a trunkload of Hasbro cash and a smile on his face. I'd probably see him in a better light if he had at least filed a lawsuit against Hasbro for wrongful termination, at least gesture-wise.

Brutal opinion: it's a trend to build a company up in value then sell it to a larger corporation.


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## woodelf (Jun 10, 2004)

Gygax said:
			
		

> Q5) You have mentioned on numerous occasions that WoTC is not taking its responsibility to the industry when it comes to widening the appeal of the RPG game genre and bringing in new gamers. Does the presence of the OGL at all assist WoTC in making steps towards this goal?
> 
> No. All the OGL does is to allow virtually any sort of design to utilize D&D game material. The result might develop products that appeal to existing game enthusiasts, but it does virtually nothing in regards to bringing in new players.
> [/quote
> ...


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## Ranger REG (Jun 11, 2004)

Well, *woodelf,* we'll see if the upcoming _D&D Basic Set_ will bring in new players by itself ... even though the best way to get into _D&D_ and into the RPG hobby is to find a group in your area willing to take in new blood and teach them.


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## FireLance (Jun 11, 2004)

About bringing in new players.

I can see how a single consistent rule system such as d20 would help to bring new players into the hobby.  A new player may not be interested in role-playing games as such, but he might be interested in the setting of a specific novel, TV series or movie, e.g. Middle Earth, the Star Wars universe, Pokemon, Harry Potter, etc, or he may be interested in a particular genre such as espionage, action, horror, anime, etc.

And let's face it, getting people into the hobby is still mostly done by an experienced player or DM teaching a new player the basics.  No matter how interested a person is a particular setting or genre, it is not likely that he will go to the local game store, pick up an RPG based around that, and start playing.

The d20 system has two advantages in this respect.  First, because there are so many publishers out there, there is a good chance (barring licensing issues) that there is a product that caters to the new gamer's area of interest.  Second, because of the consistent system, the learning curve for the experienced player is less steep.  He doesn't have to master a new system to run a game that would interest the new player.


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## Staffan (Jun 11, 2004)

Ranger REG said:
			
		

> I dunno. AFAIC, he willfully resigned from that position and left the company behind with a trunkload of Hasbro cash and a smile on his face. I'd probably see him in a better light if he had at least filed a lawsuit against Hasbro for wrongful termination, at least gesture-wise.
> 
> Brutal opinion: it's a trend to build a company up in value then sell it to a larger corporation.



From what I understand, the timeline goes something like this:
1. Peter Adkison starts WOTC, mainly to publish a "capsystem" called The Primal Order (a metasystem for playing gods in various RPGs).
2. Various people helping out get a part of their pay as WOTC stock rather than cash.
3. The whole Magic the Gathering thing. Again, many of the involved people are paid in stock.
4. WOTC takes off like a rocket.
5. Years pass. WOTC buy and then sell off various RPGs (like Ars Magica and SLA). Pokemon craze makes WOTC even more filthy rich. They buy D&D.
6. Stockholders tell Peter "Hey, we're sitting on this stock that's nominally worth quite a lot, but since WOTC isn't publically traded we can't sell them on the stock exchange. So, either you start paying out significant dividends, introduce the stock on the stock exchange, or figure out some other way we can actually get some money out of this stock."
7. The solution hit on is to sell the company to Hasbro. Stockholders get rich. Peter stays on as boss of WOTC, but below the top brass at Hasbro.
8. Hasbro sells Hasbro Digital to Infogrames. As part of the sale, Infogrames gets the digital rights to all Hasbro games - including D&D.
9. Peter Adkison gets angry about it, and resigns. As part of his resignation, he gets right to first dibs on anything formerly WOTC Hasbro decides to sell.


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## Ranger REG (Jun 12, 2004)

So you blame the stockholders?


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## marketingman (Jun 12, 2004)

Chain of command is stockholders to board of directors to CEO. But since the shares had a par value they could have been sold at anytime to either the comapny or other shareholder with a transfer. Major Shareholder could control the Board of directors there by controlling the CEO postion. 

You have to remeber that when Hasbro bought WOTC it was for over 300 million two years earlier the entire industry was valued at that number. So Hasbro made WOTC the value of the entire industry.

Do not get me going about stock splits or other valuation. Or I ture into Jopjo tyhe circus MBA..


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## maddman75 (Jun 12, 2004)

epochrpg said:
			
		

> And that is the Crime to RPG players everywhere that is the d20 system.  Nobody makes their own system anymore.  People that do are pushed out of the market.  Look at 7th Sea.  That was a TERRIFIC game, and now it is dead, because they tried to d20ize it, and nobody liked it that way.
> 
> Now you only have a choice of buying d20, Gurps, Palladium, or Whitewolf.  Those are the only 3 non-d20 systems that you see in stores, and even those are far rarer than d20.
> 
> ...





As a huge fan of Unisystem, I have to strongly disagree with that sentiment.  There is certainly a lot more out there than White Wolf, d20, and Palladium.


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## Ranger REG (Jun 12, 2004)

Well, we do not mean to leave Unisystem out of the many rules system that can potentially be multi-genre. It was created out of _WitchCraft_ but now made famous in _Buffy_ and _Angel_ RPGs.


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## Incenjucar (Jun 12, 2004)

My theory is this:  When WotC is capable of providing all-good suppliments and satisfying every gamer need without losing money (Something which, to my knowledge, no gaming company has -ever- done), Gary can say they made a bad decision.  Until then, OGL is fine with me.  I only own two OGL products, but competition has its place.


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## Ourph (Jun 13, 2004)

This whole debate has left me with one burning question in my mind.  Maybe someone can answer it for me.  It honestly has me stumped.

Most people in the RPG community agree that the proliferation of poor quality, fluff-filled splatbooks (with a few decent bits here and there) during the 2e AD&D era was bad for the hobby, turned a lot of gamers off D&D and TSR and did nothing to bring new players in.

Yet I see people in this thread saying that the proliferation of poor quality, fluff-filled splatbooks (with a few decent ones here and there) from independent RPG publishers is great for the hobby.

What's the difference?


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## Philip (Jun 13, 2004)

Ourph said:
			
		

> This whole debate has left me with one burning question in my mind.  Maybe someone can answer it for me.  It honestly has me stumped.
> 
> Most people in the RPG community agree that the proliferation of poor quality, fluff-filled splatbooks (with a few decent bits here and there) during the 2e AD&D era was bad for the hobby, turned a lot of gamers off D&D and TSR and did nothing to bring new players in.
> 
> ...




The proliferation of poor quality, fluff-filled splatbooks is bad when there is no alternative. Once you have bought two bad splatbooks from a company, you probably won't buy anymore. Furthermore, you might blame the IP (D&D sucks) instead of the company (TSR sucks)

The proliferation of the same when there are alternatives is not so bad. You can still get good material another way. Additionally, bad rep is more likely to affect a company than the brand, which is good.


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## Incenjucar (Jun 13, 2004)

Precisely.  Now we, as a gaming community, can say "up yours, your material sucks" without outright having our hobby collapse and die.

And heck, we can actually perpetuate 3e even after WotC moves on or is, Elysium forbid, liquidiated.

There's a lot of pre-3e gamers that would LOVE to have that power so they could attempt to keep 2e and 1e and before going.


----------



## Staffan (Jun 13, 2004)

Ranger REG said:
			
		

> So you blame the stockholders?



I guess. Though I can't really blame them for wanting to see some real return on their investment as opposed to a theoretical return they couldn't turn into cash.


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## Ranger REG (Jun 13, 2004)

Philip said:
			
		

> The proliferation of poor quality, fluff-filled splatbooks is bad when there is no alternative. Once you have bought two bad splatbooks from a company, you probably won't buy anymore. Furthermore, you might blame the IP (D&D sucks) instead of the company (TSR sucks)
> 
> The proliferation of the same when there are alternatives is not so bad. You can still get good material another way. Additionally, bad rep is more likely to affect a company than the brand, which is good.



I concur. At least you have a variety of "peanut butter" products (e.g., nautical rules, realm management rules, mass combat rules, etc.) in the market. Eventually, one will be right for you.


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## Ourph (Jun 13, 2004)

Ranger REG said:
			
		

> I concur. At least you have a variety of "peanut butter" products (e.g., nautical rules, realm management rules, mass combat rules, etc.) in the market. Eventually, one will be right for you.




Thanks for the replies everyone.  There are some very intelligent and interesting opinions in them.

IMO (and this is JUST my opinion) the OGL has given gamers two important benefits in exchange for one important drawback.

Benefits: 1) As Philip and Incenjucar pointed out, the fact that there are numerous companies producing material means you can avoid poor products without having your only source of gaming material go under.  That's good.  2)  As R. REG pointed out, the variety of gaming materials has increased.  Now niche markets with very eager, but not numerous fans are more likely to be filled.

Drawback:  In exchange for choice and the ability to say "No" to bad material, you've basically given up the chance to purchase really high quality material.  It seems to me, gamers and the hobby would be better served by demanding the company that sells them their core books also produce excellent quality supplements, rather than settling for a wider variety of medium quality ones.


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## seankreynolds (Jun 13, 2004)

rogueattorney said:
			
		

> *1.  WotC's admission of being unable to produce profitable adventures is a cop-out.*  Certainly, Necro, Goodman, and other companies that make their living on making modules proves this.




Sorry to reply to something now several days old, but....
WotC is at least ten times bigger than Necromancer, Goodman Games, or probably even White Wolf. Not in terms of sales (I don't know what the multiplier is in a sales comparison between WotC and WW, but I'm guessing it's at least x2), but in terms of employees and other costs.
  When I was laid off from WotC in 2002, WotC had about three hundred employees. Three hundred. That includes everyone on the sales staff, the marketing staff, human resources, the mailroom, etc. They took up seven floors of an eight-floor office building. By comparison, I doubt White Wolf has more than 100 people. Most other game companies have less than ten people. Hell, Pazio Publishing produces 2+ magazines per month (at least one of which has a monthly circulation of over 20,000 copies, 5-10 times or more what your average d20 publisher sells) and they only have about 20 employees.
  All of those 300 people at WotC need a computer (barring the janitorial staff), chair, desk, office supplies, health insurance, and so on. They all use electricity and water. All of those things cost money, and that cost must be accounted for in every single product WotC makes. So even before they get a single product out the door, WotC has set costs that are ten times higher than the costs for your 10-man d20 company, especially as most of those d20 companies don't have a formal office (they're run out of peoples' homes and linked by phone or the internet) and thus don't have to pay janitors. Most probably don't have health insurance. They're using their personal computers.
  Now do you see how a 32-page adventure, which makes maybe $1-$2 profit (based just on the cost of goods, printing, and the salaries of the designer, editor, artist, mapper, and typesetter directly involved in the book, but not counting the averaged-out costs of the marketing, sales, human resources, etc. employees) might be profitable for the ten-man housed-in-the-basement company (which has a low overhead) but not profitable for WotC (which has a high overhead)?


----------



## seankreynolds (Jun 13, 2004)

marketingman said:
			
		

> After all TSR owned the Rights to the Nazi for when it had the Indiana Jones Game.




False. The trademark was on a piece of artwork on a chit/token in the Indiana Jones game, it stated that it was a trademark of Lucasfilm (which owns IJ),it  was put there at Lucasfilm's insistance, and only referred to that specific piece of artwork as a representation of a Nazi (Disney can trademark the image of a specific mouse, Lucasfilm can trademark the image of a specific Nazi). It was not TSR's idea.



> And had more lawyers then Game designers.




False. One lawyer (Constance Lindman), one legal assistant (Debbie Poutsch). At least nine designers (Monte, Colin, slade, Rich, Ted, Jim, Steve, Bill, Bruce).


----------



## seankreynolds (Jun 13, 2004)

Staffan said:
			
		

> From what I understand, the timeline goes something like this:
> 5. Years pass. WOTC buy and then sell off various RPGs (like Ars Magica and SLA). Pokemon craze makes WOTC even more filthy rich. They buy D&D.




Up to this point, your timeline is pretty much dead-on. However, WotC bought TSR in 1997, Pokemon became a hit in 1998 (i.e., *after* the TSR buyout).




> 6. Stockholders tell Peter "Hey, we're sitting on this stock that's nominally worth quite a lot, but since WOTC isn't publically traded we can't sell them on the stock exchange. So, either you start paying out significant dividends, introduce the stock on the stock exchange, or figure out some other way we can actually get some money out of this stock."




I don't know if this is true, but it certainly is reasonable interpretation of stockholder opinions.




> 7. The solution hit on is to sell the company to Hasbro. Stockholders get rich. Peter stays on as boss of WOTC, but below the top brass at Hasbro.




Essentially. Peter was promoted to a Regional Director position (or something like that) at Hasbro.




> 8. Hasbro sells Hasbro Digital to Infogrames. As part of the sale, Infogrames gets the digital rights to all Hasbro games - including D&D.




I dunno about *all* Hasbro games, but certainly D&D, yes.




> 9. Peter Adkison gets angry about it,




And for good reason. The offering price was way too low, and he knew it, but other execs outvoted him. I think at that point he realized that he was no longer in control of the company he had created, and rather than have them nickel-and-dime away his morale with a bunch of similar events, he chose to leave.



> As part of his resignation, he gets right to first dibs on anything formerly WOTC Hasbro decides to sell.




I don't know about that (I'm not privy to Peter's exit agreement).

Anyway, my point is that Peter's choice to leave WotC/Hasbro wasn't a "screw you, I'm rich!" sort of thing. He loved WotC and loves D&D, and didn't want people to make stupid decisions about it, but IMO he realized there was nothing (as an insider) that he could do to stop it any more. The business mentality at Hasbro is very different than the business mentality at WotC. I don't blame Peter for leaving at all, in fact I respect him for doing so. Peter is a good businessman _and_ a gamer at heart.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 14, 2004)

I haven't seen a real difference in the ratio of good products to bad over the 2Ed to 3.5Ed years, even with OGL.

What I HAVE noticed is a change in the fundamental structure of the industry.  Whereas during the pre-OGL years, anyone who wanted to make a new game had to come up with a "new" system, that is no longer the case.  Now, if you meet the requirements, you just use OGL and design your campaign/world features.

IMHO, this is both good and bad.

It is good in the sense that you're seeing more people trying out different games- with OGL, like HERO and GURPS before it, you only have to worry about 1 system (generally speaking).  Any kind of game setting can be described within the OGL system.  This means that game designers don't have to reinvent the wheel, just their backstory.

However, I think you're seeing less creativity in general.  That is, pre-OGL, you really had to work to get something sellable.  Game designers came up with a slew of systems, some of which were quite good if not excellent-and that pushed game design forward in general.  If D&D had been OGL, you might not have seen the innovations that came with Traveller, Runequest, Melee, etc. that in turn drove improvements in D&D, ad infinitum.

The slippery slope formulation of this: If all you have to do is use OGL to get your game out, soon all you'll have to game with is OGL.

I don't think that that will actually happen- no system pleases everyone- so there will always be alternatives.  But there are trends in that direction- more and more games are showing up in D20 versions- Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Deadlands, Silver Age Sentinels (and the list goes on)- while more *good* non-D20 games are showing up in the discount bins, even ones with D20 versions.


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## rgard (Jun 14, 2004)

FireLance said:
			
		

> About bringing in new players.
> 
> I can see how a single consistent rule system such as d20 would help to bring new players into the hobby.  A new player may not be interested in role-playing games as such, but he might be interested in the setting of a specific novel, TV series or movie, e.g. Middle Earth, the Star Wars universe, Pokemon, Harry Potter, etc, or he may be interested in a particular genre such as espionage, action, horror, anime, etc.
> 
> ...




Yep...Conan, Babylon 5, Stargate.


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## Emiricol (Jun 14, 2004)

There's plenty of good non-OGL games and systems, imho.  Riddle of Steel is a good example of new innovations in game system design.  I'm sure the revised WoD stuff coming out soon will be innovative, and a healthy competition for D20.  I don't think things are changing for the worse - just changing.



			
				Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> I haven't seen a real difference in the ratio of good products to bad over the 2Ed to 3.5Ed years, even with OGL.
> 
> What I HAVE noticed is a change in the fundamental structure of the industry. Whereas during the pre-OGL years, anyone who wanted to make a new game had to come up with a "new" system, that is no longer the case. Now, if you meet the requirements, you just use OGL and design your campaign/world features.
> 
> ...


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## viscounteric (Jun 14, 2004)

seankreynolds said:
			
		

> All of those 300 people at WotC need a computer (barring the janitorial staff), chair, desk, office supplies, health insurance, and so on. They all use electricity and water. All of those things cost money, and that cost must be accounted for in every single product WotC makes. So even before they get a single product out the door, WotC has set costs that are ten times higher than the costs for your 10-man d20 company, especially as most of those d20 companies don't have a formal office (they're run out of peoples' homes and linked by phone or the internet) and thus don't have to pay janitors. Most probably don't have health insurance. They're using their personal computers.
> Now do you see how a 32-page adventure, which makes maybe $1-$2 profit (based just on the cost of goods, printing, and the salaries of the designer, editor, artist, mapper, and typesetter directly involved in the book, but not counting the averaged-out costs of the marketing, sales, human resources, etc. employees) might be profitable for the ten-man housed-in-the-basement company (which has a low overhead) but not profitable for WotC (which has a high overhead)?




Howdy SKR, Here's the $0.50 question:  How many of those 300 WOTC employees work on role-playing on a daily basis? Last I checked CCGs, Magic in particular,  were still the sacred cash cows (even with the loss of the Pokemon license and all their recent 'experiments).    CCGs keep the company strong in good quarters, and afloat in bad (and keeps the rumor mill flowing here and abroad  ).   I'd love to see the division of labor between CCG/RPG/support/misc staff.  The little accountant wheels in my head are starting to turn...

Thanks!
-Vis


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## Maggan (Jun 14, 2004)

Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> However, I think you're seeing less creativity in general.




I don't see that. I have compiled (and posted somewhere on ENWorld, can't remember which thread though) a list of games coming out during 2004 and early 2005, and of these about 79% are non-OGL/d20. The number of games coming out is around 75, which is about the same as to what came out per year before the OGL. Of course, many are rereleases, but that's the game industry for you.  If you want the list, I can PM it to you.

Also, "creativity" is not limited to making your own system, creativity can be present in something as small as a 2 page pdf that introduces a new mechanic for D&D, or GURPS or Traveller. There's lots and lots of creativity in the hobby, at least where I'm looking, although that is in my opinion largely due to the Internet and the proliferation of computers, desktop publishing and Internet communities, and not so much the result of the OGL (even though it plays a part in the overall process).

As for major innovations, I think that 30 years of evolution is more to "blame" for the lack of revolutionary ideas in the hobby than the existance of the OGL. A lot of stuff has already been done. It takes more than a new fantasy rpg or a game about vampires to make a mark these days.  

Cheers!

Maggan


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## robberbaron (Jun 14, 2004)

Is Gaxy Gygar's latest production (Necropolis or somesuch) not D20, 'cos if it is then he is a big hypocrite, slagging off OGL then using it himself.

So GG is one of the founders of our hobby. So what?
He shouldn't be held up as a paragon of D&D development when he is so obviously out of touch with the game as it is now.


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## mossfoot (Jun 14, 2004)

To say he's "out of touch with the game as is" is unfair and certainly not accurate, concidering he still games on a regular basis.  And that is essentially all that is required to be "in touch".  It doesn't matter which game engine you're using, an RPG is an RPG.  

We're gamers, dammit, not politicians!  

The only thing required to be in touch is to game.  Gary Gygax and Peter Adkison are both "in touch" because they are both gamers, just because you might not agree with one or the other's opinions and views on the industry means jack.  You roll the dice, you play the game, that's all there is to it.  Nobody is going to game the exact same way, and nobody is going to have the exact same opinions about gaming.

There is a single truth I've found in life.

It is possible to have two completely opposing and irreconsilable points of view that are both correct in their own way.  

Gary made a lot of good points, but I also think OGL has its good points.  I can live with that.

As for being a hypocrite, sometimes you have to bite the bullet.  If the choices are "publish this as d20 and make a profit" or "publish this as X system and take a loss", what are you going to do?  Especially when, as a writer, you are more concerned with the game/adventure content rather than what system it's for.  As a writer, he's concerned with publishing his adventures/stories, as a game designer he's concerned with game engines and market image.

My opinion on the question "Does OGL encourage new players?"  No.  But it does make players who are already interested in gaming have an easier time getting involved.  

Also, before OGL there was a Babylon 5 RPG, but it failed (perhaps it should have been called Babylon 3  ).  The OGL Babylon 5 seems to be doing well (I have yet to get a copy) and perhaps that says something about the benefits of OGL, because current players aren't daunted by the "oh man, not ANOTHER system to learn" problem.  But it still doesn't make current non-gamers more interested in becoming gamers.

edit: additions


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## robberbaron (Jun 14, 2004)

I agree. OGL does the excellent job of allowing people to get their game ideas published without having to create their own systems from scratch.

Sure, some of them may suck but some of them will be classics, much like all the games and supplements ever written (and yes, I also agree that GG's productions may fall into both these categories).

BTW, I meant "out of touch" in the context of slagging off something that seems to be rejuvenating the gaming industry. GG sounded like someone who has let themselves get marginalised and has found he doesn't like it.

On the other hand, I admit that GG has made some stirling efforts in the field of D&D, but so have many others who don't get revered as gaming gods.

Disclaimer: I don't know the man and can only go by the products I've seen and the words he says.


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## mossfoot (Jun 14, 2004)

robberbaron said:
			
		

> BTW, I meant "out of touch" in the context of slagging off something that seems to be rejuvenating the gaming industry. GG sounded like someone who has let themselves get marginalised and has found he doesn't like it.




Fair enough.  I would have simply said "Seems to be out of touch" rather than "is obviously out of touch".  I don't agree, but I can understand the sentiment.


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## mhacdebhandia (Jun 14, 2004)

I firmly disagree with Gary Gygax's opinions on nearly everything related to gaming.


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## Desdichado (Jun 14, 2004)

Ourph said:
			
		

> Drawback:  In exchange for choice and the ability to say "No" to bad material, you've basically given up the chance to purchase really high quality material.  It seems to me, gamers and the hobby would be better served by demanding the company that sells them their core books also produce excellent quality supplements, rather than settling for a wider variety of medium quality ones.



Maybe I need to catch up, but I'm not following this one.  Are you saying that 3rd party games are medium quality by default and _can't_ be really high quality?  Because I think there are plenty of products on the market that would fly in the face of that logic.

I fail to see how we give up the chance to purchase really high quality material.  I've gotten to the point where I _only_ purchase really high quality material.


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## Desdichado (Jun 14, 2004)

mhacdebhandia said:
			
		

> I firmly disagree with Gary Gygax's opinions on nearly everything related to gaming.



So do I these days, it seems.


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## Ottergame (Jun 14, 2004)

mossfoot said:
			
		

> To say he's "out of touch with the game as is" is unfair and certainly not accurate, concidering he still games on a regular basis.




The problem, however, is that he only games with the material he personally wrote over 20 years ago.  That's sorta like a TV marketing exec watching 100 hours of "Howdy Doody" and saying he's in touch with children's programing.  That -defines- being out of touch, and it's precisely what is going on.


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## Grazzt (Jun 14, 2004)

Ottergame said:
			
		

> The problem, however, is that he only games with the material he personally wrote over 20 years ago.  That's sorta like a TV marketing exec watching 100 hours of "Howdy Doody" and saying he's in touch with children's programing.  That -defines- being out of touch, and it's precisely what is going on.




I believe I remember Gary saying (maybe even on one of the ENWorld threads here a while back) that he played through the Gaxmoor stuff with his son(s) when it was either being written/after it was written/something to that effect.


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## mossfoot (Jun 14, 2004)

Ottergame said:
			
		

> The problem, however, is that he only games with the material he personally wrote over 20 years ago.  That's sorta like a TV marketing exec watching 100 hours of "Howdy Doody" and saying he's in touch with children's programing.  That -defines- being out of touch, and it's precisely what is going on.




He started working on Lejendary Adventures in 1995, and to the best of my knowledge he plays L.A. regularly.  As for other games, I don't know, but I believe he plays as well as GMs, and for someone else to GM an adventure he wrote... well that would be cheating, wouldn't it? 

I'm afraid I don't know Gary as well as I would like, but we have chatted on and off for more than a year.  What I do know about him suggests that your statement is based on assumptions and/or hearsay.  I'm curious to know where you heard this.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jun 14, 2004)

Ottergame said:
			
		

> The problem, however, is that he only games with the material he personally wrote over 20 years ago.  That's sorta like a TV marketing exec watching 100 hours of "Howdy Doody" and saying he's in touch with children's programing.  That -defines- being out of touch, and it's precisely what is going on.




I donn't think that 1995, around when Legendary Adventures was written, was 20 years ago.  Is this an example of this new math I keep hearing about?

 :\


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## seankreynolds (Jun 14, 2004)

viscounteric said:
			
		

> Howdy SKR, Here's the $0.50 question:  How many of those 300 WOTC employees work on role-playing on a daily basis? Last I checked CCGs, Magic in particular,  were still the sacred cash cows (even with the loss of the Pokemon license and all their recent 'experiments).    CCGs keep the company strong in good quarters, and afloat in bad (and keeps the rumor mill flowing here and abroad  ).




Unfortunately, your point isn't really relevant. When the bean-counters look at the profitability of each part of the business, they look at how much money each part is making, not how much money each part is making per employee employed in that division. They just say (and note those numbers are just examples and not at all accurate) "RPGs are making $10M a year profit, cards are making $70M a year profit."
  The head of each division is trying to make their numbers look as good as possible so when the layoffs come around they can say "We're X profitable, we shouldn't have to lay off anyone."
  No division is going to say, "Sure, we bring in ten times the revenue of this other department, so we should factor into our profit ten times the overhead costs of that other department." Or "We have twice as many employees as this other department, so we'll include twice our share of the floorspace/rent portion of the overhead." It just doesn't happen ... nobody volunteers to make their own numbers look lower.

That's why companies apply these costs evenly. And that's why smaller, less-profitable products can be almost worthless to a larger company when they'd be deliciously tasty to a small company.

(I mean, if I wanted to stay at home and write adventures and publish them in PDF, I could probably make a decent living doing so. Writing it myself, getting a friend to edit it for a small cost, using clip art or 3D art I created or a small portfolio of stock illustrations from artists friends I know, typeset it myself, sell online. It would be a lot of work, but almost all of my costs -- other than the initial investment in the typesetting software, which I don't have) are costs I'd have anyway just for living in my apartment: computer, electricity, work space, etc. HR costs? None. Marketing/sales costs? None, I'm the marketing/sales guy. Mailroom employee costs? None, that's me again. Janitorial costs? None, I'm the janitor. And so on.)


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## JDJarvis (Jun 14, 2004)

seankreynolds said:
			
		

> Marketing/sales costs?
> Mailroom employee costs?
> Janitorial costs?




Those all cost you as much as you could make if you were producing materials for someone that was willing to pay you to do so.


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## Desdichado (Jun 14, 2004)

seankreynolds said:
			
		

> That's why companies apply these costs evenly. And that's why smaller, less-profitable products can be almost worthless to a larger company when they'd be deliciously tasty to a small company.



You're in a much better position than me to know how WotC does their accounting, but that's not necessarily true.  If they do Activity Based Costing, which is all the rage these days, then costs _are_ specifically binned to the group that incurs them, even the more generic costs like overheads and the like.  It's generally considered superior in that it allows you to truly evaluate the costs of a certain line of business without befuddling your numbers with things like general overhead allowances and the like, but at the same time, it's a more difficult process to get a handle on.

It may also be something that's more appropriate to a manufacturing type of operation, which I wouldn't really classify an RPG product as.  I wouldn't know; I'm not actually an accountant.  

However, regardless of whether or not WotC uses ABC Accounting, your point is still valid.  Those overhead expenses don't go away just because you have a fancy new accounting method, you just have a better understanding of who's really the heavy drain on the overheads.


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## Ourph (Jun 14, 2004)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> Maybe I need to catch up, but I'm not following this one.  Are you saying that 3rd party games are medium quality by default and _can't_ be really high quality?




Yes, I'm saying that IMO the D20/OGL products I've perused (quite a few, over 100 in the last ~2 years I would say) have not been excellent quality, though some of them have been good.  None of them have inspired me to spend my gaming dollar.  However, I'll admit I'm extremely picky.  For the most part I see the market producing two types of "good but not great" material.  The first, imaginative, well written stuff that's packaged with a lot of fluff to increase page count and drive up the price to the point that the item is profitable to produce.  The second, imaginative, well written stuff that's poorly packaged to keep costs down so that the item is profitable to produce.  I've yet to see a well written, creatively inspired product with quality artwork and binding whose content is over 20% "good stuff".  Of course, these two types are vastly outnumbered by the oceans of drek being produced.

It's possible that at some point the larger and more successful indie companies will be able to afford to put out the highest quality stuff, but right now doing so just isn't feasible.  It would drastically cut profits and isn't really necessary (when your competition is average to good, you only have to be consistently good to stay ahead of the pack, excellence is a waste of resources).



			
				Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> Because I think there are plenty of products on the market that would fly in the face of that logic.




I don't know if my comments rise to the level of logic.  Just opinion.    

I'm sure the OGL/D20 arrangement has benefited some gamers, maybe even MOST gamers.  But it's not really benefited me. :\


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## Henry (Jun 14, 2004)

JDJarvis said:
			
		

> Those all cost you as much as you could make if you were producing materials for someone that was willing to pay you to do so.




Maybe I'm misunderstanding your statement, but someone who does all three jobs costs one-third what it costs to pay three separate people to do those jobs; therefore, overhead is lower. Besides which, any company with over (what is it? 10? 20?) employees has a whole host of job laws that apply to them that a smaller work force does not - health benefits laws, worker's comp, etc.



			
				Ottergame said:
			
		

> The problem, however, is that he only games with the material he personally wrote over 20 years ago.




Gary has stated before, on these forums even, that he has enjoyed playing 3E occasionally, but that he would never DM it. However, he thoroughly enjoys the system he developed for Lejendary Adventures. That's why it's his chief money maker. Troll Lords has contracted him to write new material for Castles and Crusades this year, but only because it's similar enough to AD&D that he doesn't need to do a lot of conversion. They're putting money behind the idea that Gary's name is a big draw enough to make a profit. Time will tell, but I think they're right.

My biggest concern is that he keeps healthy right now, rather than him getting his products out on time.  Here's wishing him well.



			
				roberbaron said:
			
		

> Is Gaxy Gygar's latest production (Necropolis or somesuch) not D20, 'cos if it is then he is a big hypocrite, slagging off OGL then using it himself.




The OGL/d20 works you've seen Gary's name on were usually co-produced with another writer; Gary writes the "fluff" and the LA stats where applicable, and another writer does the d20 mechanics work. (Of course in some cases both writers contribute the "fluff", but you get the idea).

Necropolis was originally written almost 15 years ago for the Dangerous Journey RPG system.


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## JDJarvis (Jun 14, 2004)

Henry said:
			
		

> Maybe I'm misunderstanding your statement, but someone who does all three jobs costs one-third what it costs to pay three separate people to do those jobs; therefore, overhead is lower. Besides which, any company with over (what is it? 10? 20?) employees has a whole host of job laws that apply to them that a smaller work force does not - health benefits laws, worker's comp, etc.




Yes you are misunderstanding me.  If a person effectively earns $20.00 an hour for writing then it effectively costs that person $20.00 for every hour they aren't writting but are instead mopping up the bathroom, vacuuming the floor, getting paper, running down to the post office/Federal-express, dealing with distributors/sales points, arranging ads and updating a website. Not to mention insurance costs for you yourself should you become injured and or are unable to work (they can be huge for self employed individuals). There are a lot of expenses to being self employed/self publishing that lots of folks don't stop to consider before they jump in.


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## Desdichado (Jun 14, 2004)

Ourph said:
			
		

> Yes, I'm saying that IMO the D20/OGL products I've perused (quite a few, over 100 in the last ~2 years I would say) have not been excellent quality, though some of them have been good.  None of them have inspired me to spend my gaming dollar.  However, I'll admit I'm extremely picky.  For the most part I see the market producing two types of "good but not great" material.  The first, imaginative, well written stuff that's packaged with a lot of fluff to increase page count and drive up the price to the point that the item is profitable to produce.  The second, imaginative, well written stuff that's poorly packaged to keep costs down so that the item is profitable to produce.  I've yet to see a well written, creatively inspired product with quality artwork and binding whose content is over 20% "good stuff".  Of course, these two types are vastly outnumbered by the oceans of drek being produced.
> 
> It's possible that at some point the larger and more successful indie companies will be able to afford to put out the highest quality stuff, but right now doing so just isn't feasible.  It would drastically cut profits and isn't really necessary (when your competition is average to good, you only have to be consistently good to stay ahead of the pack, excellence is a waste of resources).
> 
> ...



Got it.  At least I understand where you're coming from for sure now.  Understand it well enough to know that I thoroughly disagree with it, of course!    

My favorite d20 products, with the exception of _Call of Cthulhu_, are not produced by Wizards of the Coast.  They've long since ceased to produce anything that I thought was really all that imaginative -- in fact the extremely bland nature of books like the ELH, the original PsiHB, MM2, the Complete Warrior, etc. have been real turn-offs.  Their very original splatbooks bring into question their ability to pull off quality mechanics products.  And little that I've seen since has dispelled that notion.  And even their presentation is lacking; it may be full-color, but I haven't been overwhelmingly impressed with the look or artwork of a WotC book in some time, with the exception of the _Draconomicon_.

Meanwhile, books like _Mutants & Masterminds_ have full-color, beautiful artwork, great rules, and better presentation than anything by WotC.  _Book of Fiends_ and the _Monsternomicon_ may be black and white, but they're my favorite monster books by far, much better than anything by WotC.

So, I guess it's a taste issue.  WotC doesn't impress me (as it obviously does you) with inventiveness in particular, but also with their writing quality, their mechanically soundness or their presentation and art.


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## trollwad (Jun 14, 2004)

robberbaron said:
			
		

> Is Gaxy Gygar's latest production (Necropolis or somesuch) not D20, 'cos if it is then he is a big hypocrite, slagging off OGL then using it himself.
> 
> So GG is one of the founders of our hobby. So what?
> He shouldn't be held up as a paragon of D&D development when he is so obviously out of touch with the game as it is now.




Again, please read what he said.  He said that OGL was bad for WOTC and ultimately the industry because of quality issues among other things.  Therefore, that does not mean he is a hypocrite for doing it.  

No one has said he is a 'paragon'.  He is not really out of touch.  He has said he has played 3.0 or 3.5 just that hed never dm it (too rules heavy, etc.)

Feel free to disagree with him but I just want to correctly represent his views.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jun 14, 2004)

Henry said:
			
		

> Gary has stated before, on these forums even, that he has enjoyed playing 3E occasionally, but that he would never DM it. <snip> Troll Lords has contracted him to write new material for Castles and Crusades this year, but only because it's similar enough to AD&D that he doesn't need to do a lot of conversion. They're putting money behind the idea that Gary's name is a big draw enough to make a profit. Time will tell, but I think they're right.



It's enough to get me back into d20 most likely.  Not just EGG's name, but a d20 lite system that may make DM'ing the system fun for me again.  EGG signing off on it only helps make the decision easier.  I share his views on 3e, fun to play and a chore to DM.


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## Ourph (Jun 14, 2004)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> So, I guess it's a taste issue.  WotC doesn't impress me (as it obviously does you) with inventiveness in particular, but also with their writing quality, their mechanically soundness or their presentation and art.




Whoa!!!  That's a big conclusion to leap to.  The fact is, the WotC offerings (IMO) range from barely even with the D20/OGL cream of the crop to....well, let's just say "significantly less appealing".

I guess my point is, if WotC WANTED to produce excellent quality gaming materials, they could afford to do so (especially if the OGL/D20 system weren't present).  I'm not maintaining that they DO produce excellent quality gaming materials.

BTW - I agree on Mutants&Masterminds, a very quality book in terms of writing, mechanics and presentation.  The actual physical characteristics of the book (binding, paper quality, etc.) isn't top notch, but it's at least above average.  If I were interested in Supers gaming I probably would have purchased it.


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## trollwad (Jun 14, 2004)

seankreynolds said:
			
		

> Sorry to reply to something now several days old, but....
> WotC is at least ten times bigger than Necromancer, Goodman Games, or probably even White Wolf. Not in terms of sales (I don't know what the multiplier is in a sales comparison between WotC and WW, but I'm guessing it's at least x2), but in terms of employees and other costs.
> When I was laid off from WotC in 2002, WotC had about three hundred employees. Three hundred. That includes everyone on the sales staff, the marketing staff, human resources, the mailroom, etc. They took up seven floors of an eight-floor office building. By comparison, I doubt White Wolf has more than 100 people. Most other game companies have less than ten people. Hell, Pazio Publishing produces 2+ magazines per month (at least one of which has a monthly circulation of over 20,000 copies, 5-10 times or more what your average d20 publisher sells) and they only have about 20 employees.
> Now do you see how a 32-page adventure, which makes maybe $1-$2 profit (based just on the cost of goods, printing, and the salaries of the designer, editor, artist, mapper, and typesetter directly involved in the book, but not counting the averaged-out costs of the marketing, sales, human resources, etc. employees) might be profitable for the ten-man housed-in-the-basement company (which has a low overhead) but not profitable for WotC (which has a high overhead)?




It is interesting to hear this from Sean Reynolds who obviously knows more about the inside of wotc than me.  If you read my earlier posts, my point was simply that WOTC could CHANGE their overhead structure to be leaner and more focused on modules, etc -- i.e. go from 300 employees to 100 or something.  Might this mitigate some of the need for reissuing the core rules mildly tweaked every four years?  I made the the analogy to marvel entertainment in the early to mid 90s, I hope that it does not come true.


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## trollwad (Jun 14, 2004)

Ottergame said:
			
		

> The problem, however, is that he only games with the material he personally wrote over 20 years ago.  That's sorta like a TV marketing exec watching 100 hours of "Howdy Doody" and saying he's in touch with children's programing.  That -defines- being out of touch, and it's precisely what is going on.





numerous articles on enworld and other easily readable sources indicate that mssr. gygax has an extremely eclectic types of gaming going on.  hes mentioned that he was interested in trying the cthulu game, he is active in LJ, he published the Hermit, hes working with Troll Lords on several crossover things, hes conversant with upcoming Castles & Crusades, hes mentioned that he played in one of his son's Gaxmoor 3e games, etc etc.

basically, I dont mind if people disagree with, or even slam an elder statesman like gygax, I just want to correct all of the disinformation that seems to be growing up about him.


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## Incenjucar (Jun 14, 2004)

In regards to WotC's setup, I think they really just need some more effective organization.  The constantly changing view on alignments and undead is proof enough at this point.  There needs to be a 'unified theory' in 3e's philosophy.  The organization required for that unification would, hopefully, include in-house editors, rather than the seemingly-inept freelancers they've been using (Not all inept, but enough of them...)


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## viscounteric (Jun 15, 2004)

seankreynolds said:
			
		

> Unfortunately, your point isn't really relevant. When the bean-counters look at the profitability of each part of the business, they look at how much money each part is making, not how much money each part is making per employee employed in that division. They just say (and note those numbers are just examples and not at all accurate) "RPGs are making $10M a year profit, cards are making $70M a year profit."
> The head of each division is trying to make their numbers look as good as possible so when the layoffs come around they can say "We're X profitable, we shouldn't have to lay off anyone."
> No division is going to say, "Sure, we bring in ten times the revenue of this other department, so we should factor into our profit ten times the overhead costs of that other department." Or "We have twice as many employees as this other department, so we'll include twice our share of the floorspace/rent portion of the overhead." It just doesn't happen ... nobody volunteers to make their own numbers look lower.
> 
> ...




Sorry sir, I won't settle for dodging the base question (# of employees directly related to RPG development).  I will concede some of your points against the ideas I was trying to form.  You can rip apart my faulty logic until the cows come home, but I'd like, in your estimation, how many are primarily working on RPG development.

Having done budgeting and analysis for work, our model was to compare the % difference between expenses and revenue.  That "$10 million profit" makes the bean counter happier if it $25M revenue and only $15M expenseves versus $250M revenue and $240 expenses.   A dip in sales would make a lot of nervous execs on all levels  in the latter example. 
(Of course all numbers are just examplesl  )

Using layman's knowledge:  Hasbro bough WOTC for one thing: Pokemon.  Since that's gone, Magic is the emphasis of the parent company's bottom line regarding it's subsidiary.  So long as the RPG line remains profitable at a certain level above it's variable expenses (printing costs), it should not be touched.   Remember, there are fixed expenses from the Hasbro corporate that are proportionately being distributed throughout its branches ACCORDING to its share of the company's success.  The Tuscaloosa Hillbilly Game division is not expected to take the lion's share of the expense if the home office's toilet paper stockpile goes up in flames   than Playskool, Tonka, or Parker Bros.  

Then again, what do I know.  I left my job when the higher ups tried to *slash* fixed costs   (which were rising due to inflation, etc.)   They've met their budget numbers since then, but their variable costs increased by triple the ammount they saved on reducing fixed.  Economics aren't a requirement to work in a management/executive position.  

Of course, saying that, why would Hasbro to operate any differently? :\


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 15, 2004)

Emiricol, Maggan, I'm not saying that there aren't new games being produced that are non-OGL, nor am I asserting that designing a new system is the only way to be creative within the industry.  Nor, for the record, am I bashing D20- its my 2nd favorite system.

If I may reformulate for clarity:

Any given game store has a limited amount of shelf space that must be divided between the various products.

I live in a major metropolitan area (Dallas/FW Metroplex, Texas, USA), and there are stores that only carry D20, GURPS, and perhaps one or 2 other systems, usually HERO or Palladium.  Why?  Because 1) those systems have a proven track record of sales, 2) brand recognition by even the newbies to the hobby, so they get asked for by name, and 3) no one wants to stock a game that doesn't sell.

Any other system is facing a HUGE uphill battle for survival.  Those games are coming out, but they aren't being seen by most gamers.

In fact several games of note have virtually dissapeared in their original forms and are stocked only in a D20 or GURPS version- Traveller, Deadlands, the Trinity System, Silver Age Sentinels,and Call of Cthulhu are all damnably hard to find in original form.  I haven't seen too many of the White Wolf Storyteller games on the shelves lately, either.

In addition, many games that have had excellent reviews are being edged out by the flood of OGL products- In Nomine and Godlike, 2 well recieved games, are virtually invisible.

I cannot agree that 30 years of gaming has exhausted the creative mine of possible systems.  I have personally playtested some systems that have not made it to market that were pretty good (though more were bad than good) and unlike anything currently out there (that I know of).  The designer of one such decent system felt that that there was no point in trying to get his product to press because he couldn't find a place to sell it.

Development of new systems matters because in the process of "reinventing the wheel," the game designer may come up with a more elegant or simply better way of doing things than has been done before- thus advancing the hobby by forcing other game designers to rethink their creations.  If it wasn't for games like Talisantha, Runquest or Palladium, many of the changes in D&D in the past 15 years might not have happened.  Remember the ads for Talisantha-  "NO ELVES!"  And while the concepts behind diceless or classless systems didn't make it into D&D, they still exerted a conceptual pressure on other designers-  Are classes neccessary?  Are dice?

I'm also seeing a different but related problem in my own groups.  Because D20 is ubiquitous, people aren't playing anything that isn't D20.  Whereas before OGL, if you wanted to play a sci-fi game you probably had to learn a new system, there have been at least 6 D20 sci-fi games released in the past couple of years.  While this is definitely making it easier to get people to try new genres, it seems to be stunting their growth as gamers, and that mentality makes it that much harder for a non-D20 game to succeed.

Once again, I'm not bagging on D20.  I'm just worried that its doing as much harm as good within the hobby.


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## Maggan (Jun 15, 2004)

*Shelf Space 2020*



			
				dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> Emiricol, Maggan, I'm not saying that there aren't new games being produced that are non-OGL, nor am I asserting that designing a new system is the only way to be creative within the industry.  Nor, for the record, am I bashing D20- its my 2nd favorite system.




That's cool, never felt you did.



> If I may reformulate for clarity:
> 
> Any given game store has a limited amount of shelf space that must be divided between the various products
> 
> I live in a major metropolitan area (Dallas/FW Metroplex, Texas, USA), and there are stores that only carry D20, GURPS, and perhaps one or 2 other systems, usually HERO or Palladium.  Why?  Because 1) those systems have a proven track record of sales, 2) brand recognition by even the newbies to the hobby, so they get asked for by name, and 3) no one wants to stock a game that doesn't sell.




Yeah, the shelf wars have been won by WotC and WW (and in Sweden, by some local rpgs that outsell everything from abroad). I think this trend started a long time ago, even before the OGL, as a result of your points 1,2 and 3.

What I think is the future for small press publishers is to use the Internet and build their brand, and when they have proven that they make games that the shops can sell, they will get their chance. Many shops are burnt out on trying the latest and greatest rpg only to find that it's badly produced and not interesting for anyone. They are taking a risk, and if a new talent want them to bet on him, I'd suggest one year of Internet and pdf-production, and only after aquiring an established fan base trying to get the game into the shops.

Anecdotal observation:

Many gamers I know really don't grasp this. They feel that just because they have a game, the shops should stock it. The shops should give them their chance at the title match. They basically feel entitled to shelf space. When, as you say, the shops are run according to 1, 2, and 3 above.

So the million dollar question is: how to expose a new game? Well, if it aint on the shelves, something else has to be done. Maybe we can learn from the source, how did the first D&D reach such popularity, and how come it sold so well?



> I cannot agree that 30 years of gaming has exhausted the creative mine of possible systems.




Neither can I. It's not exhausted by a long shot, that's sorta what I was trying to say. But it is more difficult to come up with new and revolutinary designs after 30 years, at least IMO and IME. And also it is more difficult to pit those new systems against the entrenched D&D, Vampire, GURPS and d6 and convince people that your (in a general meaning) design offers clear advantages over the competition.



> Development of new systems matters because in the process of "reinventing the wheel," the game designer may come up with a more elegant or simply better way of doing things than has been done before- thus advancing the hobby by forcing other game designers to rethink their creations.  If it wasn't for games like Talisantha, Runquest or Palladium, many of the changes in D&D in the past 15 years might not have happened.  Remember the ads for Talisantha-  "NO ELVES!"  And while the concepts behind diceless or classless systems didn't make it into D&D, they still exerted a conceptual pressure on other designers-  Are classes neccessary?  Are dice?




Oh yes, development is important. I don't think I said otherwise. And I think that it's going on all around us, all the time. And that it is not hampered by the OGL. But then maybe that's because I live in Sweden, and here, the dominant game is not D&D. D&D sits at around 5th place here. So I see a lot of development in the BRP clone we have, and another system that is very popular. And I get to see the development of d20 and D&D on an international basis, and I get to see the Forge and all that stuff. For me, that's plenty of things going on.



> I'm also seeing a different but related problem in my own groups.  Because D20 is ubiquitous, people aren't playing anything that isn't D20.




Maybe because of the situation in Sweden, I've never had that problem, although I have read many posters on eg RPGnet that has the same experience. That won't make you any happier though. You have my sympathies.   

Cheers!

Maggan


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## d4 (Jun 15, 2004)

Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> Any given game store has a limited amount of shelf space that must be divided between the various products.
> 
> I live in a major metropolitan area (Dallas/FW Metroplex, Texas, USA), and there are stores that only carry D20, GURPS, and perhaps one or 2 other systems, usually HERO or Palladium.  Why?  Because 1) those systems have a proven track record of sales, 2) brand recognition by even the newbies to the hobby, so they get asked for by name, and 3) no one wants to stock a game that doesn't sell.



the change i've noticed is that whereas it used to be D&D, White Wolf, Palladium, and GURPS, it's now d20, White Wolf, Palladium, and GURPS. meaning there's a lot more small publishers getting space at the game stores than there used to be, due to OGL and d20. even if they're using the same ol' d20 system, i still see that as a good thing for the hobby. i don't really care about new _systems_, so much as new blood coming in through new publishers and designers. it doesn't particularly concern me that their creativity is being channeled into the d20 system as opposed to making up their own systems. i don't really see the advantage of making up a new system from whole cloth for every new game, as opposed to tweaking an existing one, anyways.



> I haven't seen too many of the White Wolf Storyteller games on the shelves lately, either.



wow, really? White Wolf is still #2 behind d20 around here (new jersey), and was when i lived out in California too. (not to mention before that when i lived in upstate New York.)



> In addition, many games that have had excellent reviews are being edged out by the flood of OGL products- In Nomine and Godlike, 2 well recieved games, are virtually invisible.



i was a huge In Nomine fan back in the day -- IN died before d20 ever existed. i wouldn't blame SJ's inability to keep the line afloat on d20 and OGL.



> I cannot agree that 30 years of gaming has exhausted the creative mine of possible systems.



i'm going to be a bit pragmatic and probably controversial here. i'm not going to say d20 is the perfect end-all be-all gaming system. but, _it's good enough_. i don't particularly care to see new innovative systems because i'm content with the one i have. it may not be the Platonic Ideal of Gaming Systems, but it works, and i'm happy with it. to be completely honest, i'd rather see people spend their creative energy on fine-tuning existing systems, rather than creating new ones.


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## Desdichado (Jun 15, 2004)

d4 said:
			
		

> wow, really? White Wolf is still #2 behind d20 around here (new jersey), and was when i lived out in California too. (not to mention before that when i lived in upstate New York.)



Same in Michigan.  And in Texas when I lived there.


			
				d4 said:
			
		

> i'm going to be a bit pragmatic and probably controversial here. i'm not going to say d20 is the perfect end-all be-all gaming system. but, _it's good enough_. i don't particularly care to see new innovative systems because i'm content with the one i have. it may not be the Platonic Ideal of Gaming Systems, but it works, and i'm happy with it. to be completely honest, i'd rather see people spend their creative energy on fine-tuning existing systems, rather than creating new ones.



Not nearly as controversial as that same statement would be on rpg.net!      But I agree.  I've made that same point a few times myself -- I'm _fine_ with d20.  To be perfectly honest with you, I'd still prefer a more granular approach to improvement than levelling, but I can either cobble together such as system, or impose rigid controls on when and how players level in my campaigns, so it doesn't bother me anymore.  I'm sure the "level-less" d20 will come out soon enough, though -- in fact, isn't _Blue Rose_ by Green Ronin supposed to do something like that?

The thing I like about d20 is that with so many options in print, I don't have to create much of anything from scratch to get radically different feels.  True, I have to kitbash a bunch of stuff together, but that's a lot easier than creating it myself.


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## Emiricol (Jun 15, 2004)

I actually agree with Joshua on this one   As to WW getting less shelf space that is not something I've seen myself, but I imagine that if you are seeing it, it has more to do with the fact that they are revising the WoD system from the ground up, so it makes little sense to stock a bunch of WoD stuff that will be out of date in weeks or months.  (I could be wrong - that's just a guess).


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## seankreynolds (Jun 15, 2004)

viscounteric said:
			
		

> Sorry sir, I won't settle for dodging the base question (# of employees directly related to RPG development).  I will concede some of your points against the ideas I was trying to form.  You can rip apart my faulty logic until the cows come home, but I'd like, in your estimation, how many are primarily working on RPG development.




Well, I wasn't dodging your question, it just isn't relevant to the costs.
But I will answer it, given you clarify: do you mean now, or when I left WotC in 2002? Do you mean just the R&D staff, or do you mean the typesetters, graphic designers, and marketing and sales people who exclusively work on RPGs? Do you also want me to include people in those departments who work on RPGs _and_ other kinds of games?

{Using layman's knowledge:  Hasbro bough WOTC for one thing: Pokemon.  Since that's gone, Magic is the emphasis of the parent company's bottom line regarding it's subsidiary.  So long as the RPG line remains profitable at a certain level above it's variable expenses (printing costs), it should not be touched.}

In an ideal world, yes, but Hasbro is far from ideal. And the truth about most companies is that very few of them say, "We're making enough money at this rate" ... most of them are saying, "How can we make more money than we are now?" And that causes them to look at the less profitable part of the business and say, "Your section is at 20% profitability, while others are at 60% ... what can we change to make you more profitable?"


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## francisca (Jun 15, 2004)

seankreynolds said:
			
		

> In an ideal world, yes, but Hasbro is far from ideal. And the truth about most companies is that very few of them say, "We're making enough money at this rate" ... most of them are saying, "How can we make more money than we are now?" And that causes them to look at the less profitable part of the business and say, "Your section is at 20% profitability, while others are at 60% ... what can we change to make you more profitable?"



Yep.  And often the answer the bean counters come up with is "reduce payroll, up productivity".


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## Maggan (Jun 15, 2004)

*The small press*



			
				d4 said:
			
		

> meaning there's a lot more small publishers getting space at the game stores than there used to be, due to OGL and d20.




That's a very interesting observation. I have bought products from.. hang on a sec, I'll go count them... 29 companies producing d20 material, in addition to WotC. These include Green Ronin and Alderac, but also Eden, Sovereign Stone, Malhavoc, Mystic Eye, Mongoose, Fast Forward, Privateer Press, Sword&Sorcery and a lot more. So the number of publishers represented in my shelf has increased by at least 100% since the OGL. And most of the publishers are small... well, not in the "short" sense, of course... erm...  

Cheers!

Maggan

PS If someone knows who the tallest game designer in the world is, it'd be kinda neat to know. DS


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## viscounteric (Jun 16, 2004)

seankreynolds said:
			
		

> But I will answer it, given you clarify: do you mean now, or when I left WotC in 2002? Do you mean just the R&D staff, or do you mean the typesetters, graphic designers, and marketing and sales people who exclusively work on RPGs?




I'll take rough 2002 numbers, please    And if you could break it down developers vs. immediate support, that would be great.  

Of course, I'll assume the numbers are lower today, due to the cutbacks and other such things.  

--vis


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## seankreynolds (Jun 16, 2004)

OK, for R&D:
30 designers, editors, and creative directors, plus one manager for all of R&D

Support staff (some of the workloads here are just estimates)
1 admin
2-3 typesetters
2 art directors, each working about 50% on RPGs and 50% other
2 graphic designers
2-3 sales/marketing types

I think that's about right.
Note that the 30 number doesn't include about 5-6 people laid off about six months to a year before in previous rounds of layoffs.


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## sword-dancer (Jun 18, 2004)

epochrpg said:
			
		

> And that is the Crime to RPG players everywhere that is the d20 system.  Nobody makes their own system anymore.  People that do are pushed out of the market.  Look at 7th Sea.  That was a TERRIFIC game, and now it is dead, because they tried to d20ize it, and nobody liked it that way.
> 
> Now you only have a choice of buying d20, Gurps, Palladium, or Whitewolf.  Those are the only 3 non-d20 systems that you see in stores, and even those are far rarer than d20.  !



Sorry but you are wrong.

In Germany i`ve seen in the last years more new and innovative RPGs come out than in the years before, and depemning on which F(N)LGS i go, i could see Midgard, Rolemaster, Arcane Codex(Winner of the German RPG Award 2003, GURPS, Shadowrun, Space Gothic and naturally DSA/TDE.
It isbn`t possible for an Gamestore to have every(or even one) of such small games like Arcane Codex, Sorcerer or TROS in his shop, under tzis scircumstances you must order it over your Gamestore, as long as the distributor isn`t Pegasus.


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