# Licensing, OGL and Getting D&D Compatible Publishers Involved



## dmccoy1693 (Sep 26, 2013)

I posted a new blog post on my *blog at Wizards*. Today, we are talking about the *Licensing, OGL and Getting D&D Compatible Publishers Involved*. Read more at the link or here below.

While everyone is focused on the last D&D Playtest Packet, I would like to talk to offer Wizards some unsolicited advice on the D&D 5e Compatible License, because someone there has to be thinking about how to get other companies involved. As a publisher that puts out products compatible with other systems, I would like to share all my thoughts and the reasons behind them and why they are good for Wizards of the Coast and D&D in the long run. 

1) *Use the Open Game License and use it liberally*. Why should you use the OGL: the gaming industry as a whole knows and trusts the OGL. It doesn't matter if you make a license as good as the OGL but change the name. Think of the OGL as brand recognition to us publishers. You rely on the D&D name for brand recognition to gamers; well, the OGL is a brand to publishers that we can make products that we want to make. Even if the license that lets us put D&D on our books restricts us some (we'll get to that in point 3), the OGL is a marketing gimmick that works. Use it. 

Now here's the real trick that really makes this work: *put the OGL in the Player's Handbook*. That's right, make it easy on yourselves, save the work of coming up with a seperate document of what can be used and just put the OGL right in the PHB. This saves time and money on your part and every company out there that is interested in working with you knows how to work with this. Its not like 2000 when the OGL was brand new and no one had a clue what to do. Just say the whole PHB is open content except the artwork and you're good. 

And yes I said the whole PHB. But you should also include deities for clerics. So what should you do there? How about using real world mythology deities. Why not put Thor and Ra and Mars in there instead of Greyhawk/FR deities. Heck, you guys have several version of Deities and Demigods that you can pull from and they are already written up. It keeps your IP from being open content and is easy legally. 

Here's another little thing that you really need to do: *use the OGL beyond the PHB*. There is little reason why you can't put the OGL in every non-setting specific book and declare everything or almost everything open content. Do that. But this is the real trick that only you, Wizards of the Coast, can do: leave OGL out of the setting specific books like the Forgotten Realms setting book. You own the system. You won the license. You are literally the only ones that can choose to do exactly that. Use it to your full advantage. 
So put the OGL in the PHB, PHB2, PHB 3 and beyond as well as the fighter supplement, the wizard supplement, the psionics expansion and so on, but leave it out of Dragonlance books and so on. Use the OGL to its maximum potential and you can enable us publishers to provide more support your material that you didn't have to come up with and will drive sales of your other books. If you include a new background that works great for fighters in the fighter supplement book, I can use that in an adventure I come up with, driving the sale of that book so people can use that background. So its a win-win.

2) *Give us a logo that says "Dungeons and Dragons Compatible Product" and let us put it right on the front cover of our books*. Having an easy way to show people that the product is D&D compatible is key to our sales. More sales for us => we keep producing material for your game => more and varied people will play your game => the better D&D sells. 

2a) *Don't be afraid of "crap" having the D&D logo on it*. This one is a subset of the previous point but it really goes right to the heart of the compatible market and what it is good for. A compatible publisher puts out stuff you're not going to both with. Stuff that is far too niche for you to deal with. Not all of it is going to be balanced. You know that. I know that. But some people like unbalanced. Some people like to play underpowered or overpowered classes/races/etc because it works for their game. Some like that material for story reasons. Some like to play overpowered characters. Some like to play underpowered. Some are going to take the game in a direction you don't want. Like guns. I don't like guns in my fantasy. Others do. So I don't buy that supplement while those that want it buy it. That is their game. Let them play their way. 

Sure it is easy to see that that unbalanced thing as crap. I understand you don't what that with your logo on its cover. But you know what happens with time: improvement. I will freely admit this: not all of the products I put out have been exceptional. Some, particularly my early products, were crap. But I improved with time. My writing is now good enought that I write for Paizo. Think of "crap" as a growing phase and if that crap isn't there, you'll never get mature authors working on your system.

I understand that as a company you want to retain control over what people do with the D&D name. But the best thing you can do is let people people put out whatever they want. The more ways that the game has support, the more people will play it. And lets be frank, you can't provide support for every style of play. Sure you might put out rules for mass combat, but are you going to put out adventures using those mass combat rules? Or supplements devoted to mass combat? Probably not as many as just your basic dungeon crawl devoted adventures/supplements. Not all of the material produced for that style of play will be good. But it will improve with time. And you will eventually have top notch publishers working on your game and you don't have to pay them a dime.

3) *Embrace your Compatible Publishers*. Make them feel valuable. If we have a question, have someone for us to email so it can be answered. I know your time is valuable and helping out the "competition" is not a good thing. But we are not your competition. Someone that signs the license to work on D&D is a Licensee. Treat us like such. We are your unpaid, unfocused marketing arm. That is essentially what we do. Paizo literally has over 100 other companies providing marketing for their books that cost them nothing except a little time on rare occassions. How much free marketing do you want? 

Sure, we would like a few simple things. Access to the PHB early for those willing to sign the license early would be really nice. Limit it to companies that put out a print product available through distribution as a test of a serious publisher. Something that I think all potential compatible publishers want is a relatively free compatible license. Lets take the GSL for example. The GSL (atleast the early version did, I don't know about the current version) prevented publishers from changing the flavor of anything established in the game. Frankly, that sucks. If I don't want to say that all barbarians are savage brutes but are instead sacred warriors that fly into a holy anger whenever their deity decides it should happen, why can't I? Why do I have to come up with an entirely different class just because you have a different vision then me? What if I don't like undead being held together with necrotic energy? What if I want some made of radiant energy? Why do I have to come up with a whole different class of monster just to make helpful and friendly spirits? Community standards, absolutely. No porn or violence against kids, sure. No hate speech towards any real world groups, you got it. But frankly, that should be it as far as restrictions on what we can do. 

*What do you think? Is there anything else you would like in the D&D 5e license? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.*

*Sign up for my newsletter* where we talk about Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition, our hopes for the new edition and where we discuss ideas for potential releases while we are waiting on licensing details. And be sure to follow us at *JonBrazer.com*.


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## Wicht (Sep 26, 2013)

It would be fantastic if WotC would re-embrace the OGL. Would definitely make me take a look at their game.


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## Gadget (Sep 26, 2013)

cant' read black (or dark grey) on black text.  From outlining your rather lengthy post it seems this is another screed to get WOTC to use OGL and re-create the perfect storm of 2000-2004 (or thereabouts).  I can't say that WOTC will find such arguments convincing, as times are different and there already is a few OGL products out there lots of people use, but you never can tell.


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## Wicht (Sep 26, 2013)

Gadget said:


> cant' read black (or dark grey) on black text.  From outlining your rather lengthy post it seems this is another screed to get WOTC to use OGL and re-create the perfect storm of 2000-2004 (or thereabouts).  I can't say that WOTC will find such arguments convincing, as times are different and there already is a few OGL products out there lots of people use, but you never can tell.




I think it boils down to this: does WotC want 3pp to put out 5e material or do they not want it? If they want it, then they should embrace the OGL. If they don't want it, they should say so and be done with it. The fence sitting of 4e was rather sad and hurt them more than it helped them. 

Dale is assuming, I would guess, that it is the former not the latter. I would dearly like to believe that it is true they want 3pp on board with their game, but not being privy to their inner dialogues, have to guess from their actions (or lack thereof) they probably lean more towards thinking of 3pp as competition (much as I would disagree with that notion).


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## dmccoy1693 (Sep 26, 2013)

Gadget said:


> cant' read black (or dark grey) on black text.




Try hitting the link at the top of the post. It takes you to the same thing but easier to read. I change ENWorld to a white background a long time ago. It really makes the whole site so much easier to read.


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## dmccoy1693 (Sep 26, 2013)

Wicht said:


> I think it boils down to this: does WotC want 3pp to put out 5e material or do they not want it? If they want it, then they should embrace the OGL. If they don't want it, they should say so and be done with it. The fence sitting of 4e was rather sad and hurt them more than it helped them.
> 
> Dale is assuming, I would guess, that it is the former not the latter. I would dearly like to believe that it is true they want 3pp on board with their game, but not being privy to their inner dialogues, have to guess from their actions (or lack thereof) they probably lean more towards thinking of 3pp as competition (much as I would disagree with that notion).




Wizards isn't dumb. They have seen that migration of publishers migrate to Pathfinder or their own systems. They have seen all the good designers of the past few years either work directly for Paizo or are working on a compatible basis for Paizo. They know that Mearls came out of the OGL market and Wizards has not make a single high profile developer hire since they the start of 4e while Paizo has hired Sean K Reynolds, Stephen Radney-Macfarland in that time frame. 

They know their influence is shrinking while Paizo's is growing. If they want to change it, a quality license and using the OGL are a serious part of that solution.


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## Morrus (Sep 26, 2013)

dmccoy1693 said:


> Try hitting the link at the top of the post. It takes you to the same thing but easier to read. I change ENWorld to a white background a long time ago. It really makes the whole site so much easier to read.




You've posted it in black, rather than  colour-free.  So it displays black whatever skin someone is using.  If you edit your post and use the little xAA button in the top left of the editor, it will remove the black formatting, and the text will display in whatever colour is appropriate for the skin being used.


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## Wicht (Sep 26, 2013)

dmccoy1693 said:


> They know their influence is shrinking while Paizo's is growing. If they want to change it, a quality license and using the OGL are a serious part of that solution.




I absolutely agree with your conclusion, your reasoning, and your solution. But, I am not convinced that Wizards does. I don't put it down to stupidity so much as a sort of blindness as to the benefits of sharing your work with other companies. You say that 3pp are not competition. I agree they are not competition. They should be rightly viewed as partners. But if WotC thinks of 3pp as competition stealing pieces of their pie, then they are not going to be listening. 

Still, I hope you are right and my cynicism is misplaced.


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## dmccoy1693 (Sep 26, 2013)

Wicht said:


> Still, I hope you are right and my cynicism is misplaced.




Same here.


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## Jeff Carlsen (Sep 26, 2013)

So, obviously, the OGL would be the most open and friendly license, because it lets people create tools with the D&D rules built in, or to republish D&D monsters inside their adventures, and the like. I know I have ideas for online RPG tools, and the OGL makes supporting Pathfinder the most legally safe option.

That said, the Savage Worlds method of approved licensees (requiring no cost, but a quality assessment) might prove valuable as well. It gives a layer of quality control, and allows licensees to have a D&D Official Licensee logo on their work. Note that this was the method behind the d20 logo during 3rd edition, but that might have been granted too easily.


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## Morrus (Sep 26, 2013)

dmccoy1693 said:


> They know their influence is shrinking while Paizo's is growing. If they want to change it, a quality license and using the OGL are a serious part of that solution.




I'd say that the primary thing they could do to regain their market share is to produce and sell a roleplaying game; something they're not currently doing.  Anything else is tangential to that.


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## dmccoy1693 (Sep 26, 2013)

Jeff Carlsen said:


> That said, the Savage Worlds method of approved licensees (requiring no cost, but a quality assessment) might prove valuable as well. It gives a layer of quality control, and allows licensees to have a D&D Official Licensee logo on their work. Note that this was the method behind the d20 logo during 3rd edition, but that might have been granted too easily.




I disagree with an approvals process. I like Savage Worlds. but ultimately, I don't produce for SW _because _of the approvals process. I don't want someone having any kind of say over what I produce (outside of reasonable guidelines like I mentioned above). Sure SW doesn't have any kind of approvals beyond the first check. However, the more barriers you put in the way, the less support there will be. The less designers will come their way.


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## DEFCON 1 (Sep 26, 2013)

dmccoy1693 said:


> The less designers will come their way.




They get all kinds of "high profile" designers via just hiring them freelance for a particular product.  The difference being... Wizards actually owns and makes money off the product the designer produces, unlike the OGL where it's whatever company that produces the product.

If having "high profile" designers and developers actually mattered to them... they would have eliminated the apparent contract legalese they have that states that anything a full-time employee creates on their off time is automatically owned by Wizards, even if its not D&D related.  THAT'S why they don't have so-called "high-profile" people working for them full-time.  It's why Monte left, it's why Stan! left, and why Bruce Cordell eventually left.  They couldn't work on non D&D things while working on D&D because of the contract stipulations (which I don't know if we know are Wizards-mandated or Hasbro mandated.)

So instead, Wizards hires them on a freelance basis and everyone is happy.


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## Jeff Carlsen (Sep 26, 2013)

dmccoy1693 said:


> I disagree with an approvals process. I like Savage Worlds. but ultimately, I don't produce for SW _because _of the approvals process. I don't want someone having any kind of say over what I produce (outside of reasonable guidelines like I mentioned above). Sure SW doesn't have any kind of approvals beyond the first check. However, the more barriers you put in the way, the less support there will be. The less designers will come their way.




That's both a pro and a con of an approvals process. d20 glut was a real problem, and its something that Savage Worlds has avoided for the most part.

That said, I was actually thinking of a combination, where the rules are OGL, but an approval process meant you could use the "official licensee" logo and actually have D&D on your product.


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## Jan van Leyden (Sep 26, 2013)

Hmmh, I'm missing the part where you explain the possible advantage to Hasbro/WotC...


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## Wicht (Sep 26, 2013)

DEFCON 1 said:


> They get all kinds of "high profile" designers via just hiring them freelance for a particular product.  The difference being... Wizards actually owns and makes money off the product the designer produces, unlike the OGL where it's whatever company that produces the product.
> 
> If having "high profile" designers and developers actually mattered to them... they would have eliminated the apparent contract legalese they have that states that anything a full-time employee creates on their off time is automatically owned by Wizards, even if its not D&D related.  THAT'S why they don't have so-called "high-profile" people working for them full-time.  It's why Monte left, it's why Stan! left, and why Bruce Cordell eventually left.  They couldn't work on non D&D things while working on D&D because of the contract stipulations (which I don't know if we know are Wizards-mandated or Hasbro mandated.)
> 
> So instead, Wizards hires them on a freelance basis and everyone is happy.




i suspect some people could be happier with other arrangements. And your post just reinforces that whole "competitor" mentality which I mentioned above and which seems to be prevalent in certain circles.

Consider the alternative mindset, such as that of Paizo, where they allow their chief designer to open his own little company on the side (making Pathfinder compatible PDFs no less) while still maintaining him on staff. I would guess Bulmahn is happier with that arrangement than he would be working entirely freelance. Freelance is nice if you have another day job but it takes a special sort of drive and opportunity to make it work as your primary employment.


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## Wicht (Sep 26, 2013)

Jan van Leyden said:


> Hmmh, I'm missing the part where you explain the possible advantage to Hasbro/WotC...




They increase their sales.


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## DEFCON 1 (Sep 26, 2013)

Wicht said:


> I would guess Bulmahn is happier with that arrangement than he would be working entirely freelance.




And thus, WotC only hired full-time people who are happy only working on D&D.  The need for "high-profile" anybody to actually be on staff is lessened.  Especially when they can hire many more "high profile" people via freelance jobs.

Not to mention the fact that just working on D&D for Wizards of the Coast is what turn most of them into a "high-profile" designer or developer in the first place.  Wizards MAKES "high profile" designers and developers.  They don't need to bring them back on staff.


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## the Jester (Sep 26, 2013)

Wicht said:


> They increase their sales.




I've seen this asserted, but I'm not convinced that there is any evidence behind it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very pro-OGL, but I have a hard time seeing where it's good for WotC. Good for the hobby itself? Good for D&D? Good for the community? Absolutely! Good for the parent company's bottom line? Not so sure... and that's the case that needs to be made.


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## Wicht (Sep 26, 2013)

the Jester said:


> I've seen this asserted, but I'm not convinced that there is any evidence behind it.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, I'm very pro-OGL, but I have a hard time seeing where it's good for WotC. Good for the hobby itself? Good for D&D? Good for the community? Absolutely! Good for the parent company's bottom line? Not so sure... and that's the case that needs to be made.




The evidence is what it is: Pathfinder outsells Dungeons and Dragons and one must take into account the OGL as a possible factor in this.

My reasoning, in a nutshell would be thus. The OGL gives the game a greater life span by allowing players to experiment with the system; greater appeal by allowing niche markets which, while small, add up; greater community goodwill; and greater advertisement through an increased presence in the gaming world: all of which translates into possible sales, some of which might not have been possible without the OGL.


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## dmccoy1693 (Sep 26, 2013)

Jan van Leyden said:


> Hmmh, I'm missing the part where you explain the possible advantage to Hasbro/WotC...



*Advantages to Wizards:
*1) greater exposure. Which is better: A) 1 company with a huge budget doing all the advertising and product creation or B) 1 company with a huge budget doing all the major advertising and product creation while 100 other companies produce products for your game that you do not have the time, energy, interest or resources to produce and spreading the word about your game (even if indirectly) using social media, word of mouth and kickstarter? All those little companies are small individually but essentially work to promote your game in a huge way in aggregate.

2) Larger pool of designers that are highly experienced with your game to choose from. Take Mike Mearls for example. When Wizards hired him, he was a top notch designer and thoroughly experienced with 3.5. Had there never been an OGL, Mearls probably would have written for someone on some other game system (we'll never know for sure, but ...). Maybe it would have been Wizards, maybe not. But the one thing that is certain is that they would not have had as large of a pool of designers to pick from. The larger pool means the top producers are generally higher quality. 

3) Higher sales ... indirectly. Here's the science of the OGL: You play a game, you get bored and move onto something else. But if you have a large pool of options for that game, you are more likely to stick with it that game. Its the basic "replayability" argument of many video games and board games. So if a DM gets tired of playing basic fantasy and wants to fantasy with guns. If there is no option for guns in a Wizards book, the group will probably goto an entirely different game. But if a D&D Compatible Publisher makes a supplement on guns, then the group can stick with D&D. But the mage doesn't use a gun, he is still using spells. So he buys the latest mage expansion for new spells. And that is a sale Wizards would not have had had the group switched to a different game. While Wizards had not sold as much to that one group had they produced a gun book themselves, they had higher sales with the mage supplement then a book on guns will. 

*EDIT:* The reason Wizards' did not (in this hypothetical scenario) produce a gun book themselves is basic business: opportunity cost. By taking one opportunity, you are turning down another. This means that if Wizards has the resources to produce 5 splat books/year, they can do martial classes, roguish classes, spellcasters, elves/halflings, dragonborn/tiefling books. Or they could do guns, space hamsters, androids, incarnum and an Ancient Canadian setting book. Which of those opportunities gets them more money. The first. This means they get higher sales because they could ignore those opportunities despite that 1% of gamers begging for guns in their ancient canadian themed setting. Without a sizable Compatible market, that 1% of gamers will go elsewhere. Do that often enough and you lose your market share. So either you A) produce to a 1% niche at the expense of the 99% that are not interested in that product or B) you slowly lose customers. Or you could go C) encourage a vibrant Compatible market that can cover those kind of niche markets that you never will that ultimately keep people in the game.

You should notice A and B are both lose-lose while C is a win-win.


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## Morrus (Sep 26, 2013)

Wicht said:


> The evidence is what it is: Pathfinder outsells Dungeons and Dragons




It'd be pretty embarrassing if they didn't outsell a game not currently being produced.

I'm all for the OGL (obviously - I publish with it) but I think it benefits me a lot more than it benefits WotC.


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## Alzrius (Sep 26, 2013)

Jeff Carlsen said:


> That's both a pro and a con of an approvals process. d20 glut was a real problem, and its something that Savage Worlds has avoided for the most part.




Actually, the so-called "glut" (which has been inflated in the retelling) wasn't really a problem at all. The major problem happened when WotC changed from 3.0 to 3.5, which then caused the market for 3.0 materials, which was quite prevalent in late 2003, to collapse.

In other words, it was the needless revision cannibalizing the third-party market that was the real problem (and that's even without how it made new editions become the forefront on everyone's mind for the next ten years...or more; it won't be long after 5E is out that people start speculating about 6E).



			
				Morrus said:
			
		

> I'm all for the OGL (obviously - I publish with it) but I think it benefits me a lot more than it benefits WotC.




In the short-term, it does. Over the long-term, however, it benefits WotC more. It's like any other investment; you have to pay into it first and wait for a while before you start receiving the dividends.


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## Wicht (Sep 26, 2013)

Morrus said:


> It'd be pretty embarrassing if they didn't outsell a game not currently being produced.




I call strawman. 

Pathfinder was outselling 4e before 5e was announced.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 26, 2013)

dmccoy1693 said:


> Wizards isn't dumb. They have seen that  migration of publishers migrate to Pathfinder or their own systems. They  have seen all the good designers of the past few years either work  directly for Paizo or are working on a compatible basis for Paizo. They  know that Mearls came out of the OGL market and Wizards has not make a  single high profile developer hire since they the start of 4e while  Paizo has hired Sean K Reynolds, Stephen Radney-Macfarland in that time  frame.
> 
> They know their influence is shrinking while Paizo's is growing. If they  want to change it, a quality license and using the OGL are a serious  part of that solution.




Other than independent game  companies avoiding the GSL, and that Mearls came out of the OGL market  almost every part of the above would appear to be wrong.

Paizo  have hired Stephen Radney-Macfarland, who's far more known for his RPGA  work than his design work - and SKR who I don't think has learned  anything about design  since  he rated Weapon Focus as twice as powerful as Natural Spell.   They are picking up WotC's former third rate talent there.

Wizards,  on the other hand in just the past few years have first hired then  parted ways with Monte Cook.  They've had Robin Laws freelancing for  them.  They've got both Tarnowski (whatever I think of the RPG Pundit)  and Zak S (who wrote the brilliant Vornheim, and has done fascinating  things with open sourcing hexcrawls) on retainer.

But more to the point, the names you mention for Paizo _are ex WotC employees_.   The good new game designers in the past few years are independents from  either the Forge/Storygames or OSR schools.  I'd buy games by Rob  Donahughe, Vincent Baker, Jason Morningstar, and Luke Crane on spec.   Paizo aren't even looking vaguely in that direction so far as I can  tell.  They aren't looking in the direction of the OSR either (which  WotC demonstrably are - and Wizards are at least aware of the Forge and  its successor in Story Games).



Morrus said:


> I'd say that the primary thing they could do to  regain their market share is to produce and sell a roleplaying game;  something they're not currently doing.  Anything else is tangential to  that.




This.  Between Heroes of the Elemental Chaos (Feb  2012), and Murder in Baldur's Gate (about a month ago) I think the only  thing Wizards have produced that wasn't a reprint was the Dungeon  Survival Guide (half advertising - May 2012) and Menzobaranzan which was  systemless and if I've read between the lines of the State of the  Mongoose only sold a few hundred copies.  That's about eighteen montsh  without producing a serious book.


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## Wicht (Sep 26, 2013)

Alzrius said:


> In the short-term, it does. Over the long-term, however, it benefits WotC more. It's like any other investment; you have to pay into it first and wait for a while before you start receiving the dividends.




Exactly. If WotC had better used the OGL we would not now be talking about 5e. (imo)


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## Zireael (Sep 26, 2013)

I heartily support using the OGL except for setting-specific stuff. Just look at Pathfinder.


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## Wicht (Sep 26, 2013)

Neonchameleon said:


> Other than independent game  companies avoiding the GSL, and that Mearls came out of the OGL market  almost every part of the above would appear to be wrong.
> 
> Paizo  have hired Stephen Radney-Macfarland, who's far more known for his RPGA  work than his design work - and SKR who I don't think has learned  anything about design  since  he rated Weapon Focus as twice as powerful as Natural Spell.   They are picking up WotC's former third rate talent there.
> 
> ...




I think taste in Game Designers is just that: a matter of taste.

To argue that Paizo is "third rate talent" is I think reflective of a great deal of bias. But even if true, what a testament to the power of the OGL that third rate hacks can outperform the best of the best.


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## dmccoy1693 (Sep 26, 2013)

... post deleted. I was ninjaed.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 26, 2013)

Wicht said:


> I think taste in Game Designers is just that: a matter of taste.
> 
> To argue that Paizo is "third rate talent" is I think reflective of a great deal of bias. And if true, what a testament to the power of the OGL that third rate hacks can outperform the best of the best.




I didn't say Paizo was third rate and didn't intend to imply it.  Notably Eric Mona and Lisa Stephens may just be the two best people in the RPG industry at what they do.  What I said was that they were picking up third rate talent from WotC.  Notably SKR who was cited in the post I was replying to.


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## Warbringer (Sep 26, 2013)

Morrus said:


> It'd be pretty embarrassing if they didn't outsell a game not currently being produced.
> 
> I'm all for the OGL (obviously - I publish with it) but I think it benefits me a lot more than it benefits WotC.




I wonder how much the initial logic of the OGL holds true, namely "Core books generate most of the profit in the RPG industry" and anything that encourages core sales id good. That initial analysis was based on a 1990s revenue model, and i'm sure it held true through early 2000s. With subscription models and print on demand I wonder if that is true today?

Add to this the simple fact that Paizo is WoTC largest competitor with arguably their own product, the fiasco with Sweetpea over movie rights, the mess that needed to be untangled with Atarii on the digital, I wonder does WoTC even have the appetite to even consider anything that complicates the management of the brand?


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## GMforPowergamers (Sep 26, 2013)

I first want to say there is NO EVADANCE that Piazo every outsold WotC... it is a common belief, one I am not sure if is right or not, but no one will ever really know, and lots of Wotc haters will not even try to talk it out. For now lets just agree to disagree on that...

 next up is weather the OGl could help Wotc... lets start with does anyone really believe it is going to increase the amount of public know of the largest name in gameing?

I like the idea of a set of licenses 1) a fan/low level one. As long as you are not selling your product for money you can post and use and XYZ legal things. 2) if you want to sell then you can pay a small fee and WotC has the right to edit for content...


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## Warbringer (Sep 26, 2013)

GMforPowergamers said:


> I first want to say there is NO EVADANCE that Piazo every outsold WotC... it is a common belief, one I am not sure if is right or not, but no one will ever really know, and lots of Wotc haters will not even try to talk it out. For now lets just agree to disagree on that...
> 
> next up is weather the OGl could help Wotc... lets start with does anyone really believe it is going to increase the amount of public know of the largest name in gameing?
> 
> I like the idea of a set of licenses 1) a fan/low level one. As long as you are not selling your product for money you can post and use and XYZ legal things. 2) if you want to sell then you can pay a small fee and WotC has the right to edit for content...




It's based on distribution rankings published quarterly, which is a good indicator as WotC does not sell direct, while Paizo does. This means the number actually underestimate when and by how much Paizo product began to outsell 4e, which I think started Q4 2011.


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## Alzrius (Sep 26, 2013)

Neonchameleon said:


> Notably SKR who was cited in the post I was replying to.




It's difficult to take your assertions seriously if you think that Sean K Reynolds is a third-rate game designer, especially given that you seem to be predicating that on the basis of you disagreeing with him over the comparative value of two feats.


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## GMforPowergamers (Sep 26, 2013)

Warbringer said:


> It's based on distribution rankings published quarterly, which is a good indicator as WotC does not sell direct, while Paizo does. This means the number actually underestimate when and by how much Paizo product began to outsell 4e, which I think started Q4 2011.




so lets try this again... we don't have real data. We have a self regulated third party that only measures a small percentage of the market and extrapolates... and even then we have WotC #1 for X months and #2 for Y where Y is way more months that Wotc put on no new products, and WotC was trying out a new business model (DDI). 

I hate to have this argument again, but the numbers are so far from conclusive it isn't even funny. Someone had the quarters maped out along with products put out in each quarter and said it totally proving Piazo only once really beat WotC, then someone else posted something proving that the reason for 5e is because Piazo was outselling wotc... yes same numbers proved exact opposite results.


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## Wicht (Sep 26, 2013)

Neonchameleon said:


> I didn't say Paizo was third rate and didn't intend to imply it.  Notably Eric Mona and Lisa Stephens may just be the two best people in the RPG industry at what they do.  What I said was that they were picking up third rate talent from WotC.  Notably SKR who was cited in the post I was replying to.




Eh, you're not helping yourself. Either you are claiming that the two best people in the RPG industry lack the ability to hire real talent, or you are just making a personal attack against Mr. Reynolds based on a rules disagreement.


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## Wicht (Sep 26, 2013)

GMforPowergamers said:


> I first want to say there is NO EVADANCE that Piazo every outsold WotC... it is a common belief, one I am not sure if is right or not, but no one will ever really know, and lots of Wotc haters will not even try to talk it out. For now lets just agree to disagree on that...




The announcement of 5e seems like evidence of something. And even before that the ICV2 evidence was scarcely the only indicator of which way the wind was blowing. 



> next up is weather the OGl could help Wotc... lets start with does anyone really believe it is going to increase the amount of public know of the largest name in gameing?




yes


*edit:* _let me add that I think it is scarcely "hating" on WotC to suggest they could perform better in the market if they utilized the OGL. I do believe that Paizo is outperforming WotC and will continue to do so over the long haul until WotC changes their RPG model. That is scarcely hate; it is to the contrary, evidence of desiring the best for them and suggesting a possible path to better performance._


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## Morrus (Sep 26, 2013)

Folks, we are NOT going to insult individual designers here.


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## GMforPowergamers (Sep 26, 2013)

Wicht said:


> The announcement of 5e seems like evidence of something. And even before that the ICV2 evidence was scarcely the only indicator of which way the wind was blowing.



 onc again the evadance is just enough that you can read it either way.





> *edit:* _let me add that I think it is scarcely "hating" on WotC to suggest they could perform better in the market if they utilized the OGL. I do believe that Paizo is outperforming WotC and will continue to do so over the long haul until WotC changes their RPG model. That is scarcely hate; it is to the contrary, evidence of desiring the best for them and suggesting a possible path to better performance._



I on the other hand belive that paizo is keeping up with WotC by cashing in on WotC biggest mistake (the ogl) and piggy backing on there work.  Weather you personally are part of the hatedome of WotC I don't know (I don't really follow who is who) but ALOT of people use this as a way to edition war or worse...


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## Morrus (Sep 26, 2013)

Wicht said:


> I call strawman.
> 
> Pathfinder was outselling 4e before 5e was announced.




I think that's likely true (anecdotal evidence certainly supports it) and I also agree that the OGL is partly responsible for Paizo's success - though I think they'd have been successful whether Pathfinder was based on 3.x or not because they're a well-run company -  but I think dislike of 4E was the biggest driving factor in splitting the fan base. OGL usage falls far behind that in contributing factors.


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## darjr (Sep 26, 2013)

I love the idea of WotC doing the OGL!

But the only reason they should do it is because their customers want them to. 

Maybe its only potential customers, many of those so passionate about the game it's important to them.

I firmly believe that's why Paizo keeps with the OGL. Their customers want it and that makes it good business. Simple as that.

Everything else may be true and good besides, but other than the above I don't think it really matters. I think without the OGL 5e will suffer in sales.


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## Warbringer (Sep 26, 2013)

GMforPowergamers said:


> so lets try this again... we don't have real data. We have a self regulated third party that only measures a small percentage of the market and extrapolates... and even then we have WotC #1 for X months and #2 for Y where Y is way more months that Wotc put on no new products, and WotC was trying out a new business model (DDI).
> 
> I hate to have this argument again, but the numbers are so far from conclusive it isn't even funny. Someone had the quarters maped out along with products put out in each quarter and said it totally proving Piazo only once really beat WotC, then someone else posted something proving that the reason for 5e is because Piazo was outselling wotc... yes same numbers proved exact opposite results.




Of course we don't have real data, everybody is a privately held company, but the distributors survey is hardly a small percentage of the market as it's WoTC's primary selling method.

With Paizo sales number, an indication of growth, the profit elements from selling through distribution and some assumptions on mix, we actually can get a decent picture. But, I'm not here to convince you, so we will just have different opnions.


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## Warbringer (Sep 26, 2013)

darjr said:


> I firmly believe that's why Paizo keeps with the OGL.




Without designing a game from the ground up, do they really have a choice? (I do like that they publish most of their new content to the PRD, and they don't have to do that)


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## GMforPowergamers (Sep 26, 2013)

Warbringer said:


> I'm not here to convince you, so we will just have different opnions.





there is no one that can convince anyone in this way. I once thought I new for sure, but all the arguments have shown me is there is too many ways to interp the evadance. All you can possible do is prove the way you read it...

for now I just don't belive any of us can say for sure...

in the mean time I still would not want another OGL that would atleast in theory help lead the way to another pathfinder... in my perfect world Hasbro lawyers would be able to just undo the OGL so no one could use it and we could go back to every company makes it's own games


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## billd91 (Sep 26, 2013)

Morrus said:


> I think that's likely true (anecdotal evidence certainly supports it) and I also agree that the OGL is partly responsible for Paizo's success - though I think they'd have been successful whether Pathfinder was based on 3.x or not because they're a well-run company -  but I think dislike of 4E was the biggest driving factor in splitting the fan base. OGL usage falls far behind that in contributing factors.




I largely agree. But I would also add that the OGL enabled a publisher to continue to support and enhance the older rules, helping the fan community for those rules to thrive rather than whither over time as groups of other abandoned rule sets eventually do. That is a difference between any fan base splits for previous edition changes - if you wanted to play a currently-supported version of D&D, you had only one place you could go and WotC could probably expect eventual assimilation of most previous-edition players - with the OGL, that's no longer true. I don't think the OGL caused the fan base split, but I think it probably enhanced the effect.


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## an_idol_mind (Sep 26, 2013)

Personally, I think one big reason WotC might want to avoid an OGL is that they don't know where the brand or the company is going to be in five years.

The OGL served 3rd edition well, but the constant changeover in employees at WotC led to a shifting of design and business goals that helped contribute to a break when 4th edition was so different from what had come before.

Paizo has consistency on their side right now and can use the OGL to their advantage. They've got their audience, their design goals haven't changed that much over the years, and they don't see a lot of turnover in their staff. When they do a new edition of Pathfinder, it's probably going to be done by the same folks who did the previous edition rather than a whole new team.

From WotC's perspective, using the OGL for 5th edition might wind up biting them again if they release a 6th edition that splits the fanbase again. Regardless of the problems that 4th edition faced, one thing that seems pretty certain is that if the OGL hadn't existed, there would have been no Pathfinder to take a large portion of the fanbase away.


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## an_idol_mind (Sep 26, 2013)

That said, I think the OGL is a good thing overall and that there are reasons for WotC to consider using it or something like it. And if 5th edition is as similar to 3rd edition as the playtest material suggests, there isn't a lot of reason for them not to make use of it - especially if they want to stick with their stated goal of making material that can be used in other versions of D&D.


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## darjr (Sep 26, 2013)

Warbringer said:


> Without designing a game from the ground up, do they really have a choice? (I do like that they publish most of their new content to the PRD, and they don't have to do that)




They've released new rules that didn't have to be OGL and OGL'ed them. Yes, for new things they do have some choice. And they chose the OGL because I think they are choosing to give their customers what they want.


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## Wicht (Sep 26, 2013)

Morrus said:


> I think that's likely true (anecdotal evidence certainly supports it) and I also agree that the OGL is partly responsible for Paizo's success - though I think they'd have been successful whether Pathfinder was based on 3.x or not because they're a well-run company -  but I think dislike of 4E was the biggest driving factor in splitting the fan base. OGL usage falls far behind that in contributing factors.




I think that I agree with most of that mostly. 

But at the least, it is safe to say (in my mind anyway) that the OGL is a net plus for Paizo rather than a net loss.

I certainly think that using the OGL is not going to be the biggest factor in the success of 5e. But I do not think it would hurt them in anyway and I suspect it would, if they did it right, be a net plus for them as well.


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## Wicht (Sep 26, 2013)

GMforPowergamers said:


> in the mean time I still would not want another OGL that would atleast in theory help lead the way to another pathfinder... in my perfect world Hasbro lawyers would be able to just undo the OGL so no one could use it and we could go back to every company makes it's own games




You make it sound like a world with Pathfinder, and Mutants and Masterminds, and Spycraft, et.al. is a bad thing overall. You're perfect world would do away with a lot of things I like and strikes me as being rather lacking therefore. For me, the OGL has made the world, at least the gaming portion of it, a better place overall, with more opportunity, a greater gaming base, and a richness of variety. 

The world is a better place when innovation occurs, but most innovation is built off of the ideas and work of others. Ideally, things like the OGL speeds up the innovation in gaming, rather than hinder it. When every company has to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, you are making a lot of unnecessary work and hindering the development of ideas.


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## Umbran (Sep 26, 2013)

Warbringer said:


> Of course we don't have real data, everybody is a privately held company, but the distributors survey is hardly a small percentage of the market as it's WoTC's primary selling method.




It may be their primary method of selling printed rulebooks.  But we don't know how much they get in DDI revenue.


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## GMforPowergamers (Sep 26, 2013)

Wicht said:


> You make it sound like a world with Pathfinder, and Mutants and Masterminds, and Spycraft, et.al. is a bad thing overall. You're perfect world would do away with a lot of things I like and strikes me as being rather lacking therefore. For me, the OGL has made the world, at least the gaming portion of it, a better place overall, with more opportunity, a greater gaming base, and a richness of variety.
> 
> The world is a better place when innovation occurs, but most innovation is built off of the ideas and work of others. Ideally, things like the OGL speeds up the innovation in gaming, rather than hinder it. When every company has to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, you are making a lot of unnecessary work and hindering the development of ideas.




I think pathfinder is the only one that actively makes the world worse for me (and even then it is by a very small amount) on the other hand I think true 20, and Mutants and Masterminds got better the farther they went from d20...

I don't want 30 different variants of D&D on the market, I would rather the 5-7 great makers of games come up with there own system...


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## Warbringer (Sep 26, 2013)

Umbran said:


> It may be their primary method of selling printed rulebooks.  But we don't know how much they get in DDI revenue.




True,  but we can estimate based on subscription rates, montly and yearly rates, and some assumptions about the likelyhood that subs are actually payers and get a range of 5-8mm a year.

Not perfect, but probably decent for magnitude .


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## Mistwell (Sep 27, 2013)

dmccoy1693 said:


> *Advantages to Wizards:
> *1) greater exposure. Which is better




Their greater exposure is going to come through a new D&D cartoon, two new D&D movies, and a pretty big national media advertising campaign.  Those things dwarf any exposure from tiny third party publishers so much it's essentially meaningless.



> 2) Larger pool of designers that are highly experienced with your game to choose from.




Money does this far better than anything else.



> 3) Higher sales ... indirectly. Here's the science of the OGL: You play a game, you get bored and move onto something else. But if you have a large pool of options for that game, you are more likely to stick with it that game.




I've heard this argument before, but I've never seen any evidence it actually bears fruit that way.

I really don't think there is a strong profits-based case in favor of the OGL for WOTC.


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## Mistwell (Sep 27, 2013)

Wicht said:


> I call strawman.
> 
> Pathfinder was outselling 4e before 5e was announced.




It really wasn't.  People making that argument were not counting DDI subscriptions, and yet the bulk of the WOTC sales model was focused on that.  Once you add back in digital subscriptions from both companies, 4e and legacy 3e sales were outselling Pathfinder at the time.

That does not however mean 4e was doing well.  From Hasbro standards, I think it was underperforming, and that is one motivating factor behind 5e.


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## Mistwell (Sep 27, 2013)

Warbringer said:


> Of course we don't have real data, everybody is a privately held company, but the distributors survey is hardly a small percentage of the market as it's WoTC's primary selling method.




The DDI was their primary selling method.  They'd already gone from a hardcopy-based system to a digital-based system.


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## Wicht (Sep 27, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> It really wasn't.  People making that argument were not counting DDI subscriptions, and yet the bulk of the WOTC sales model was focused on that.  Once you add back in digital subscriptions from both companies, 4e and legacy 3e sales were outselling Pathfinder at the time.




If you say so, but color me skeptical.  

The ratio of DDI profitability to Pathfinder Subscription profitability is conjecture for most of us. And there is no good way of non-insiders counting the number of PDFs Paizo sells either, so I just put that all as mostly a wash that is unknowable. I look elsewhere for my tea leaves and settle on book sales as the best measure an outside observer can use to make an educated guess. All the evidence points to Pathfinder books outselling 4e books at the time. Anecdotal evidence from a variety of sources strongly indicated that Pathfinder's popularity was beginning to outpace 4e's popularity even before the announcement of 5e. WotC was, to all outward appearances, floundering for a way to stabilize the brand before they finally threw in the towel and announced a new edition. I just can't believe that if WotC was happy with the performance of 4e (DDI included) they would have moved on to 5e like they have. 4e gave the appearance of a slowly sinking ship, crippled by a variety of factors and unable to regain steam. That assessment could be way of the mark, and maybe DDI subscriptions were a panacea of profit that WotC simply decided to discard because of whimsical caprice. But I doubt it.


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## Mistwell (Sep 27, 2013)

Wicht said:


> If you say so, but color me skeptical.




I was basing it on pretty extensive analysis done before, but it's not positive.  Which is why, ultimately, the answer is "we don't know".

So, to be clear, you admit you're not sure as well, right? That's what "skeptical" means, right?

Do you plan to continue to make firm statements in the future that you're positive Pathfinder was outselling 4e at the time, next time this comes up?

I'd love it for this aspect of edition warring to end.  If we could all just say "we don't know", and leave it at that.  But, that seems to be a hopeless desire at this point.  I'm guilty of it as well.  But, it's not a good habit.


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## GMforPowergamers (Sep 27, 2013)

Wicht said:


> I just can't believe that if WotC was happy with the performance of 4e (DDI included) they would have moved on to 5e like they have.




My brother in law always new my sister was what we called a 'bad student' as a kid.... when we went through some old files and found mine and her old report cards he looked and couldn't figure out why we called her that. She had 2 in the mid seventies, 2 in the low eighties and 3 classes in the mid eightis... My brother in law said if he or his brothers brought that report card home they would throw a party and say it was the best ever...

So we then showed him me and my brother the same year all had in the ninties... to us in my family it was a bad students report card, and it was better then he or his brothers ever had...


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## GMforPowergamers (Sep 27, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> I'd love it for this aspect of edition warring to end.  If we could all just say "we don't know", and leave it at that.  But, that seems to be a hopeless desire at this point.  I'm guilty of it as well.  But, it's not a good habit.




I even tried in my first post to say no one knows I just don't belive it... and I still found myself argueing


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## Wicht (Sep 27, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> I was basing it on pretty extensive analysis done before, but it's not positive.  Which is why, ultimately, the answer is "we don't know".
> 
> So, to be clear, you admit you're not sure as well, right? That's what "skeptical" means, right?
> 
> ...




No. I am skeptical of your facts. Not of Pathfinder's performance. 

To be clear, the "outselling" I was referring to was specifically book sales, which I think is the best long term measure of a Table-top RPG's strength (at least at the moment).  All the evidence points to Pathfinder outperforming the competition in this one area at the time in question and I have no legitimate reason to doubt it was so. I am pleased for Paizo, but would be happy for WotC to perform better and for the market to grow for everyone. 

I don't think of constructive analysis of the RPG market as edition warring. My point is not to rub 4e fans' faces in the dirt in triumph, saying, "see my game is better." I have a legitimate interest, as both a fan and a designer, in keeping abreast of developments in the market. I also enjoy discussing the ramifications of the evidence, such as it is, and I think it is relevant, in urging WotC to readopt the OGL for 5e, in pointing out the outstanding success of Paizo in utilizing this particular license to good effect for their brand. If there is edition warring, it is not on my part.


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## Mistwell (Sep 27, 2013)

Wicht said:


> No. I am skeptical of your facts. Not of Pathfinder's performance.  [cut continuing the debate]




You're not able to stop, are you.  OK.  Well, I've explained I think it's a harmful thing you're engaged in, I do not think it's helping anything at all, and I am trying to stop it. If you're OK with it...well, that's just not me.



> I don't think of constructive analysis of the RPG market as edition warring.




First, it's not constructive.  Second, others do.  And as long as others do (many others, I think), then it is edition warring whether it's your intent or not.

We don't have the data, but you're pretending you have the answer.  You're not gaining any ground on it, you're not changing hearts and minds, you're not making the industry better with this stuff, you're just re-treading over very old ground with the same arguments we've all heard before dozens of times, for literally years now.  

If it's what you need to feel good about talking about RPGs with your peers here, then I hope you find the right people to have that debate with.  But, I am no longer that guy, and I think you will find your audience for that sort of stuff is really dwindling.  For me at least, it's enough already.


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## Wicht (Sep 27, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> If it's what you need to feel good about talking about RPGs with your peers here, then I hope you find the right people to have that debate with.  But, I am no longer that guy, and I think you will find your audience for that sort of stuff is really dwindling.  For me at least, it's enough already.




Well then, I am sorry to have dragged you into it. I'll try not to argue anymore when you rebut my posts. 

Seriously, I'm not warring. There is no animosity on my part. And I legitimately think it would be good for WotC to adopt the OGL. I get that others disagree, but I don't think I will stop advocating for something I feel is a good idea all around for everyone involved, especially when the opportunity to constructively do so presents itself (as I think it did with Dale's blog post). If it gets your dander up for someone to merely suggest that Pathfinder outperformed 4e in the marketplace at any given period of time, then I am sorry for you. I happily concede that for a time in the lifespan of 4e it was king of the hill. I do not believe that has been the case for a while and I do think it useful to try and pinpoint when the shift happened and why it happened.


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## Mistwell (Sep 27, 2013)

Wicht said:


> Well then, I am sorry to have dragged you into it. I'll try not to argue anymore when you rebut my posts.
> 
> Seriously, I'm not warring. There is no animosity on my part. And I legitimately think it would be good for WotC to adopt the OGL. I get that others disagree, but I don't think I will stop advocating for something I feel is a good idea all around for everyone involved, especially when the opportunity to constructively do so presents itself (as I think it did with Dale's blog post). If it gets your dander up for someone to merely suggest that Pathfinder outperformed 4e in the marketplace at any given period of time, then I am sorry for you. I happily concede that for a time in the lifespan of 4e it was king of the hill. I do not believe that has been the case for a while and I do think it useful to try and pinpoint when the shift happened and why it happened.




You can argue that WOTC should use the OGL again, without re-treading the "who was selling more stuff for a particular 6 month period of time years ago" debate.  

It does not even help your case.  Pathfinder depended on the OGL for it's own existence.  IF Pathfinder ended up outselling 4e using the OGL, the logical conclusion from that is the OGL ending up harming WOTC rather than helping them in the long run.  Now, that's a debatable conclusion, and I know you would debate it - but there is no reason to debate it in the first place since the thesis of your support for the OGL isn't that 6 month period of time anyway.  It's a list of a whole lot more compelling things than that particular issue.

So why keep at it? How is that debate about that short time frame concerning that vague data something worth fighting about, in support of your larger argument that WOTC should support the OGL? The bottom line for "why the shift happened" is 4e was not as successful as WOTC wanted it to be.  No other argument trumps that truth.


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## Wicht (Sep 27, 2013)

I believe, in context, I was replying to something Morrus said that I thought (pedantically on my part to be sure) was off. Morrus responded politely, acknowledged my point and that was that.


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## Jeff Carlsen (Sep 27, 2013)

The OGL is a competitive advantage. I can buy HeroLab or FantasyGrounds and play Pathfinder or 3.5 out of the box. I can reference the SRD online quickly during game prep for free (which has never prevented my from buying a book I liked). Pathfinder is hardly my favorite game, but It's so _easy_ to get resources for because of the OGL. This has made Pathfinder the _default RPG_ in many contexts.

Releasing under the OGL might quickly make D&D the default game again. Or it might not. But not releasing under the OGL (or something similar) means they will never be the default RPG in any third party tools. It means they go it alone.


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## Mistwell (Sep 27, 2013)

For me, the strongest argument in favor of the OGL, for WOTC, is simply goodwill.

There are an awful lot of people who simply are pissed off at WOTC for a variety of things, and not going with the OGL is high on that list of things they're upset about.  Remedying that for 5e would help that, along with all the other things they're doing to reach out to those who were upset about the last several years of WOTC actions.  

Putting out Dragon magazine, in paperback magazine format you can buy at your local store, would be another thing that would go a long way to repairing goodwill for people.  Even if the magazine were merely a break-even or slight-loss venture from a direct profits standpoint, I think it would be a net gain from a marketing and PR standpoint, which feeds heavily back into the profits of the core product itself.

So, do OGL, and do the magazine again (at least Dragon, if not Dungeon as well), and publish stuff for multiple editions of D&D in those magazines (though with heavier focus on 5e), and you'll get a bunch of people back on board with your product line.


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## Nellisir (Sep 27, 2013)

WotC isn't going to do the OGL again.  They won't do the GSL either.  They're going to aim for a middle ground that allows people to produce supplemental material, like adventures and options, but not wholesale reproduction of the core game.  They want weird niche rules, adventures, and little campaign stuff.  You'll be able to reproduce monster stats in an adventure, or put out a Book of Monsters, but not reprint the Monster Manual.  They want SuperGenius Games, not Paizo.  I think they were OK with Mutants & Masterminds, but Arcana Unearthed/Evolved, and Iron Heroes, and Spycraft, and Castles & Crusades, are all too close for comfort.


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## Nellisir (Sep 27, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> Putting out Dragon magazine, in paperback magazine format you can buy at your local store, would be another thing that would go a long way to repairing goodwill for people.



Oh, wouldn't I love that.


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## GMforPowergamers (Sep 27, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> There are an awful lot of people who simply are pissed off at WOTC for a variety of things, and not going with the OGL is high on that list of things they're upset about.




I honestly believe that there is a not insignificant number of those people that are a true lost cause. The question as to if the number of very pissed off people that you can ever win back is worth it...


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## GMforPowergamers (Sep 27, 2013)

Nellisir said:


> WotC isn't going to do the OGL again.  They won't do the GSL either.  They're going to aim for a middle ground that allows people to produce supplemental material, like adventures and options, but not wholesale reproduction of the core game.  They want weird niche rules, adventures, and little campaign stuff.  You'll be able to reproduce monster stats in an adventure, or put out a Book of Monsters, but not reprint the Monster Manual.  They want SuperGenius Games, not Paizo.  I think they were OK with Mutants & Masterminds, but Arcana Unearthed/Evolved, and Iron Heroes, and Spycraft, and Castles & Crusades, are all too close for comfort.




that would be great... just throw in some way to do quality assurance... last thing I want to see is another mongoose...


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## Talath (Sep 27, 2013)

Whomever asserted that the OGL benefited WotC directly and indirectly, they were correct. Directly, the OGL fosters good will and expands the pool of designers to work with (as someone pointed out already). Indirectly, by creating the OGL, as we observed back in 2000, the market expands as more and more gamers buy OGL products that are compatible with D&D by the nature of the license. Expanding the market may not increase the proportionality of WotCs market share (and might even hurt it if new big players arise), but a bigger market means more sales even if market share falls (to a certain extent). 

I am not a business person and I'm just on the outside with some theory, but frankly, if WotC doesn't create a new open OGL like the one they did for 3.X, I can't see them growing the market like they did back then.


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## Jan van Leyden (Sep 27, 2013)

dmccoy1693 said:


> *Advantages to Wizards:
> *1) greater exposure. Which is better: A) 1 company with a huge budget doing all the advertising and product creation or B) 1 company with a huge budget doing all the major advertising and product creation while 100 other companies produce products for your game that you do not have the time, energy, interest or resources to produce and spreading the word about your game (even if indirectly) using social media, word of mouth and kickstarter? All those little companies are small individually but essentially work to promote your game in a huge way in aggregate.




This would be the economics effect cited in the discussion about the OGL all those years ago: if you build a network around a core product aou're selling, the network feeds back to you increasing the sales of your core product. This effect might have been working with the D&D Trademark License, which required the producers to print something like "D&D PHB is required to use this product". But the OGL, where you don't have to give any reference to the producers of the core product?



dmccoy1693 said:


> 2) Larger pool of designers that are highly experienced with your game to choose from. Take Mike Mearls for example. When Wizards hired him, he was a top notch designer and thoroughly experienced with 3.5. Had there never been an OGL, Mearls probably would have written for someone on some other game system (we'll never know for sure, but ...). Maybe it would have been Wizards, maybe not. But the one thing that is certain is that they would not have had as large of a pool of designers to pick from. The larger pool means the top producers are generally higher quality.




This might be an advantage if your strategy is to gain market share due to (percieved) higher quality or you have to fight for quality personnel to further your own product development.



dmccoy1693 said:


> 3) Higher sales ... indirectly. Here's the science of the OGL: You play a game, you get bored and move onto something else. But if you have a large pool of options for that game, you are more likely to stick with it that game. Its the basic "replayability" argument of many video games and board games. So if a DM gets tired of playing basic fantasy and wants to fantasy with guns. If there is no option for guns in a Wizards book, the group will probably goto an entirely different game. But if a D&D Compatible Publisher makes a supplement on guns, then the group can stick with D&D. But the mage doesn't use a gun, he is still using spells. So he buys the latest mage expansion for new spells. And that is a sale Wizards would not have had had the group switched to a different game. While Wizards had not sold as much to that one group had they produced a gun book themselves, they had higher sales with the mage supplement then a book on guns will.




Your example only works if the hypothecial 3rd party publisher designs his book on guns in fantasy as strictly additional elements, say, a gunmen class with gunmen feats and, of course, guns. But what if he changes the rules for ranged attack in order to make his gunmen more realistcal or cooler? Suddenly this material is at odds with WotC books. Isn't it much better for the 3pp to take the OGL and run? Make a complete game of it instead of just an expansion?

Sure, there's convenience for the players involved, as they can play the new game as a variation of the one they already know. 



dmccoy1693 said:


> *EDIT:* The reason Wizards' did not (in this hypothetical scenario) produce a gun book themselves is basic business: opportunity cost. By taking one opportunity, you are turning down another. This means that if Wizards has the resources to produce 5 splat books/year, they can do martial classes, roguish classes, spellcasters, elves/halflings, dragonborn/tiefling books. Or they could do guns, space hamsters, androids, incarnum and an Ancient Canadian setting book. Which of those opportunities gets them more money. The first. This means they get higher sales because they could ignore those opportunities despite that 1% of gamers begging for guns in their ancient canadian themed setting. Without a sizable Compatible market, that 1% of gamers will go elsewhere. Do that often enough and you lose your market share. So either you A) produce to a 1% niche at the expense of the 99% that are not interested in that product or B) you slowly lose customers. Or you could go C) encourage a vibrant Compatible market that can cover those kind of niche markets that you never will that ultimately keep people in the game.
> 
> You should notice A and B are both lose-lose while C is a win-win.




Your analysis leaves out an important fact: the 1% loss to your customer base isn't all the wandering taking place. You'll have:

A) New players/customers gained (non-gamers)

B) New players/customers gained by winning them from other companies

C) Players/customers lost who don't game anymore

D) Players/customers lost due to them beind dissatisfied with your/3pp offerings.

Your 1% is oart of point D). I can easily imagine a lot of business strategies focusing on point A) alone. Present your customers a cohesive product world. Change this product world to keep in touch with changes in your target population. Focus on trademark image rather than on subjective quality. Sell your core products to new customers.

Note: For me as a player the OGL is cool. I relish the choice it gives me and I enjoy the sometimes quirky results it produces. Also, I firmly believe that Mike Mearls and team are trying to develop the best D&D they can and certainly wouldn't have any problems with a 3pp extending and expanding their work.

Note 2: The Pathfinder example shows another risk of the OGL model. WotC loses customers when thy change the game, as the existing customer base is serviced by another publisher. In this situation the economic effect turns around. The core producer actually feeds the network at its own expense.


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## Zireael (Sep 27, 2013)

Jan van Leyden said:


> This would be the economics effect cited in the discussion about the OGL all those years ago: if you build a network around a core product aou're selling, the network feeds back to you increasing the sales of your core product. This effect might have been working with the D&D Trademark License, which required the producers to print something like "D&D PHB is required to use this product". But the OGL, where you don't have to give any reference to the producers of the core product?




What's stopping the D&D Next version of OGL to require the publishers to print something similar?


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## Nellisir (Sep 27, 2013)

GMforPowergamers said:


> that would be great... just throw in some way to do quality assurance... last thing I want to see is another mongoose...



Nope.  Too much hassle from WotC's point of view, and it puts the brakes on the production process.  There won't be the same glut of print publishers there was last time, though.  If you don't want poor products, wait a few months and read reviews.


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## Nellisir (Sep 27, 2013)

Zireael said:


> What's stopping the D&D Next version of OGL to require the publishers to print something similar?



Nothing.


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## an_idol_mind (Sep 27, 2013)

As far as whether Pathfinder outsold D&D, here's what Lisa Stevens had to say in the Paizo blog a while ago. Take it with a grain of salt if you think she's got reason to lie about this:



> This will be news to most readers: By the end of  2010, the Pathfinder RPG had already overtaken D&D as the  bestselling RPG. It would take almost half a year before industry  magazine ICv2 first reported it, and several quarters more before some  people were willing to accept it as fact, but internally, we already  knew it was true. We'd heard it from nearly all of our hobby trade  distributors; we'd heard it from buyers at book chains like Barnes &  Noble and Borders; we could see it using industry sales trackers such  as BookScan; we were even regularly coming out on top on Amazon's  bestseller charts. Each individual market we sold in had us either tied  with or outselling D&D, and none of those sources counted our  considerable direct sales on paizo.com.




Now how much of that is due to Paizo going totally OGL with their rules is up in the air, but I'm betting the folks at Paizo would probably say it helps.

Regardless, I doubt the OGL fits in with WotC's business plan, and my guess is that 5th edition doesn't even offer a half-effort like it did with the GSL.


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## Wicht (Sep 27, 2013)

an_idol_mind said:


> Now how much of that is due to Paizo going totally OGL with their rules is up in the air, but I'm betting the folks at Paizo would probably say it helps.




I doubt that there is anyone who would argue that the OGL is the only factor in Pathfinder's success. But yes, it does very much seem to be at least one piece of a larger success story.

Paizo is doing what I always believed WotC should have done with the OGL.  For those that argue the OGL was Wizards big mistake, I would counter that mishandling the OGL once they had it was the real mistake. It served them well for a while, but it could have done so much more if they were willing to fully embrace it. And it still could serve them well. Its only an obstacle if they set themselves against it.


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## Hussar (Sep 27, 2013)

There's one point that I keep bringing up with regards to the OGL.

How do you make it work with the DDI?

Right now, even though we haven't had a new WOTC product in over a year, they STILL have around 80000 subscribers.  That's somewhere, as a was mentioned, between 5 and 8 million dollars a year.  That's HUGE in a market that's only worth 30 million dollars total.  WOTC controls between a quarter and third of the entire market with a single product that costs them virtually nothing to keep running.  

If you go with an OGL PHB, an entirely open PHB, it will take about a week before people put up free character builders and whatnot.  We saw that before.  Within a month of 4e coming out, you had for pay character builders going up.  They got shut down, because the GSL doesn't allow for that.  But an open 5e?  That just opens the floodgates.

Now, how many new PHB's do you have to sell in order to make up the losses to the DDI and the steady revenue stream that represents?  How do you have an open 5e and still protect that cash cow?


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## JeffB (Sep 27, 2013)

A sizeable chunk of wishful thinking in this thread.  Nothing wrong with it, but..

IMO,with the recent vigor to clearly define the D&D brand and offer a uniform experience in all of it's media forms, (as Schindewhatshisname, Leeds, and Mearls talk about in recent months) the last thing WOTC wants is another OGL. Strict licensing ala Kenzer or Judges Guild is far more likely.


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## Dausuul (Sep 27, 2013)

Hussar said:


> There's one point that I keep bringing up with regards to the OGL.
> 
> How do you make it work with the DDI?
> 
> ...




What you do is what Wizards should have done from the start. You create an API to the DDI database, with authentication for DDI subscribers. You also create a system that allows DDI subscribers to sign up and pay for third-party services. Then you encourage third-party developers to target your API and benefit from a) a back end already built and ready to go, b) up-to-date stats with errata applied, c) access to Product Identity material, and d) Wizards handling the nitty gritty of charging credit cards and managing subscriptions. (Have you ever worked with credit card processing systems on the Web? I have. It's a huge pain.)

And throw open the doors! As a whole, the D&D fanbase is creative, slightly obsessive, and very tech-savvy. Inside a month they'll create better online tools than Wizards has ever been able to build, and most of them will require a DDI subscription. Sure, you _could_ just build your own database of open material without recourse to the API. But why take on the hassle of keeping it up to date, scrubbing it to make sure there's no Product Identity stuff, and handling your own authentication and billing, when you could let Wizards take care of all that and focus on making your app the best it can be?

End result: Wizards gets the goodwill of being "open," a bunch of highly motivated and talented developers working for free to make DDI better, and the DDI revenue stream continuing to flow.

(Now, this approach doesn't _require_ an OGL. It could be done under the GSL or an even stricter regime. But going OGL wouldn't undercut it and might encourage it.)


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## Jan van Leyden (Sep 27, 2013)

Zireael said:


> What's stopping the D&D Next version of OGL to require the publishers to print something similar?




We are talking two different licenses here. The OGL allows anyone to use anything published under it - essentially the SRD in the D&D 3e case - and do with it whatever she wants. There is no connection whatsoever with any trademark owned by Wizards/Hasbro. It cannot be revoked or rescinded, thus Paizo may publish Pathfinder stuff until humanity has died. 

The other one allowed publishers to use the Dungeons & Dragons logo on their products and required the byline mentioned in my post. It could and has been revoked. After this, 3pp had to remove the D&D logo from their products.

So we have one license covering content (OGL) and one covering trademarks (D20). I can't imagine any corporation handing out usage of their trademarks on an infinite basis. (Wouldn't make this the trademark impossible to defend under American law, anyway?)


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## Alzrius (Sep 27, 2013)

Hussar said:
			
		

> There's one point that I keep bringing up with regards to the OGL.
> 
> How do you make it work with the DDI?




I'd say the same way that offering free PDF downloads with subscription-based print products, plus an online System Reference Document (and a fan-generated wiki of OGL materials) works for Paizo, but that's just me.



> _Right now, even though we haven't had a new WOTC product in over a year, they STILL have around 80000 subscribers. That's somewhere, as a was mentioned, between 5 and 8 million dollars a year. That's HUGE in a market that's only worth 30 million dollars total. WOTC controls between a quarter and third of the entire market with a single product that costs them virtually nothing to keep running. _




There are a large number of assumptions here that are not necessarily true.

The big fiction is that there's any way of measuring the number of DDI subscribers. There's not.

The numbers that get so often cited are self-reported by WotC - which creates credibility problems right there, not because WotC is necessarily dishonest, but simply because it's in their business interests to make sure that they never admit that something of theirs is floundering (unless it's part of a strategy to tell you how their new thing is about to fix all of that). These numbers are always going to be high, because that makes them look successful.

Moreover, the number of subscribers are pretty clearly something manually tabulated, rather than being auto-generated by a program based on the number of subscriptions at any given moment. The way you know that is that the numbers should be varying by some not-inconsiderable degree on at least a per day basis, as at any given time people will be signing up or cancelling their service. That these numbers are relatively static for long stretches shows that someone is going in and manually toggling them at various intervals - which casts further doubt on their reliability.

The idea that the DDI makes them money equal to X subscribers times Y dollars per month over a 12 month basis is also fatally flawed, as that's a measure of gross revenue, not net. I know that some people scoff at the idea that producing the DDI costs any significant revenue at all, which is an excellent way of easily identifying the people who don't know about the costs that go into maintaining (let alone updating) a system of any type, let alone an internet-based one. Make no mistake, it does not cost WotC "virtually nothing" to keep the DDI up and running, and the total profits it makes them (presuming the subscription numbers are even close to accurate) is not the gross.

Finally, the market estimation of $30 strikes me as something that needs citing, but bear that in mind against Ryan Dancy having told us that Hasbro set annual targets of $50-$100 million annually for D&D as a brand. Even in the highly-suspicious circumstances that they're actually making $30 million net profit off of the D&D, that's not nearly enough.

Finally, the DDI at this point consists of little more than the 4E tools, which are naturally going to become less valuable over time as 4E becomes an unsupported game. That's not edition warring - unsupported games lose profitability fairly rapidly; it's why Paizo decided to make Pathfinder its own RPG to begin with, rather than just continuing to print 3.5 supplements. Keeping the DDI at 4E-levels of profitability will require a not-insignificant investment to make it a 5E-compatible tool, regardless of whatever else they decide to do with it...and as mentioned, that's a time-and-money sink, potentially a huge one.

The DDI is not the cash cow a lot of people seem to think it is.



> _If you go with an OGL PHB, an entirely open PHB, it will take about a week before people put up free character builders and whatnot. We saw that before. Within a month of 4e coming out, you had for pay character builders going up. They got shut down, because the GSL doesn't allow for that. But an open 5e? That just opens the floodgates._



_

Not particularly - HeroLab hasn't been the death of any particular game, and in fact it's common for smaller companies to tout their HeroLab compatibility. Quite simply, the idea that another pay-for character builder is a serious threat to, well, anything is like saying that having an SRD will make people give up on buying Core Rulebooks. It's demonstrably untrue, and has been for years.




Now, how many new PHB's do you have to sell in order to make up the losses to the DDI and the steady revenue stream that represents? How do you have an open 5e and still protect that cash cow?

Click to expand...



See above. These questions are based on premises that, when scrutinzed, are suspect at best._


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## Nellisir (Sep 27, 2013)

Jan van Leyden said:


> We are talking two different licenses here. The OGL allows anyone to use anything published under it - essentially the SRD in the D&D 3e case - and do with it whatever she wants. There is no connection whatsoever with any trademark owned by Wizards/Hasbro. It cannot be revoked or rescinded, thus Paizo may publish Pathfinder stuff until humanity has died.
> 
> The other one allowed publishers to use the Dungeons & Dragons logo on their products and required the byline mentioned in my post. It could and has been revoked. After this, 3pp had to remove the D&D logo from their products.
> 
> So we have one license covering content (OGL) and one covering trademarks (D20). I can't imagine any corporation handing out usage of their trademarks on an infinite basis. (Wouldn't make this the trademark impossible to defend under American law, anyway?)



He does specifically say the D&D Next _version_ of the OGL, not the OGL itself.  The 4e version of the OGL was the GSL, which combined the functions of the d20 license and the OGL.  I expect the 5e license to do the same, although not as restrictively as the GSL.


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## Mistwell (Sep 27, 2013)

an_idol_mind said:


> As far as whether Pathfinder outsold D&D, here's what Lisa Stevens had to say in the Paizo blog a while ago. Take it with a grain of salt if you think she's got reason to lie about this:
> 
> 
> 
> ...




She is, again, talking about print-only products, not digital products.  And, again, at that point WOTC had moved to the DDI as their primary distribution method, which Stevens was not measuring at all.

How many years are we all going to engage in this identical argument, with Paizo fans arguing Pathfinder outsold BOOKS, and WOTC fans arguing that WOTC outsold DIGITAL? Can't we all just admit "We don't know" and let it go already?


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## darjr (Sep 27, 2013)

The DDI subscription numbers from the last iteration of the forum software at WotC I think were pretty spot on. And I think it did indeed behave just like a number calculated automatically by the number of DDI subscribers becoming forum members. I'm pretty satisfied that that number was correct and served as a great bottom line for the number of subscribers. The current software they are using seems less so. That number seems to be all over the place and I don't trust it but maybe it'll turn out once they get all the bugs worked out. I don't think that WotC fakes that number in any way, nor do I think they leave it inflated artificially, it has gone down before.

Now as it only measuring revenue, I agree. We don't know how much they are spending, nor do we know how many accounts there are over that number.

As an aside the number of folks who are Paizo forum accounts and subscribe to Paizo product is public knowledge. Every Paizo forum account lists out what that user is subscribed to. It's only a matter of effort to collect it and count them up and get a similar lower bound of subscribers to Paizo products, much like the DDI number.

I think we could indeed get something at least interesting though not completely answering the question of who has more subscribers. I do think the number of Paizo subscribers with a forum account tied to thier subscription would be a much higher ratio than the DDI one.


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## Dausuul (Sep 27, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> She is, again, talking about print-only products, not digital products.  And, again, at that point WOTC had moved to the DDI as their primary distribution method, which Stevens was not measuring at all.
> 
> How many years are we all going to engage in this identical argument, with Paizo fans arguing Pathfinder outsold BOOKS, and WOTC fans arguing that WOTC outsold DIGITAL? Can't we all just admit "We don't know" and let it go already?




Well, if we can get an idea of the extent to which Paizo outsold D&D in books, and calculate WotC's gross income from DDI subs, we should be able to work out a very rough estimate of who is in fact selling better. Of course that doesn't answer who's making more _profits_--that depends on printing costs for books and maintenance overhead for DDI, neither of which we are likely to learn--but it could answer the question of which is more _popular_, in the sense of end users being willing to shell out cash for it.


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## Mistwell (Sep 27, 2013)

Alzrius said:


> The big fiction is that there's any way of measuring the number of DDI subscribers. There's not.




Except, there is...the membership in the DDI message board does accurately fluctuate depending on when people join and loose access.  This has been experimented with pretty extensively at this point.  The only thing we don't know is how many people insist on an unsubscribe from that forum while remaining subscribers to DDI...so the number can only under-report, and not over-report.  But, it's an accurate "floor" for the number of subscribers.



> The numbers that get so often cited are self-reported by WotC




No it's not.  It's not based on a report from them at all.  It's based on a ticker attached to a particular automated forum subscription.  In fact, I don't recall ANY self-reporting from WOTC.  Do you have a link to such a statement?



> Moreover, the number of subscribers are pretty clearly something manually tabulated, rather than being auto-generated by a program based on the number of subscriptions at any given moment. The way you know that is that the numbers should be varying by some not-inconsiderable degree on at least a per day basis, as at any given time people will be signing up or cancelling their service. That these numbers are relatively static for long stretches shows that someone is going in and manually toggling them at various intervals - which casts further doubt on their reliability.




They are automated, people have experimented and proven they are automated, and it DOES fluctuate frequently.  You can test it yourself if you like.  Check the number, then subscribe to DDI, then check the number again, then cancel, and then once you get the notification of cancellation check the number once again.  You will see it alters with each event.



> The idea that the DDI makes them money equal to X subscribers times Y dollars per month over a 12 month basis is also fatally flawed, as that's a measure of gross revenue, not net.




It's not fatally flawed, it's merely a useful data point which is entirely not contained within the larger "Pathfinder outsold WOTC in books" argument.  It's certainly an important data point, and it does involve both a very large source of revenue, and a large source of profits, for WOTC.  Pretending it doesn't exist because it's difficult to measure isn't helpful.



> The DDI is not the cash cow a lot of people seem to think it is.




It generates lots of money.  How much profit is in dispute.  That it's not enough profit to satisfy WOTC is not in dispute, but then how much profit satisfies WOTC is not the same as how much profit would satisfy another company like Paizo.


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## Mistwell (Sep 27, 2013)

Dausuul said:


> Well, if we can get an idea of the extent to which Paizo outsold D&D in books, and calculate WotC's gross income from DDI subs, we should be able to work out a very rough estimate of who is in fact selling better. Of course that doesn't answer who's making more _profits_--that depends on printing costs for books and maintenance overhead for DDI, neither of which we are likely to learn--but it could answer the question of which is more _popular_, in the sense of end users being willing to shell out cash for it.




A big chunk of Paizo sales are also digital, so you'd have to factor that in.  Maybe some day someone will run the calculation, but the Paizo calculation would take a lot more work to run, and as far as I know nobody has done it.  Nor could they anymore - as we're talking about a time frame long gone now.


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## the Jester (Sep 27, 2013)

Nellisir said:


> WotC isn't going to do the OGL again.  They won't do the GSL either.  They're going to aim for a middle ground that allows people to produce supplemental material, like adventures and options, but not wholesale reproduction of the core game.




I think you have just described exactly the thinking behind the GSL. And frankly, it flopped.


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## dmccoy1693 (Sep 27, 2013)

Jan van Leyden said:


> Isn't it much better for the 3pp to take the OGL and run? Make a complete game of it instead of just an expansion?





In this scenario ... no. As a small press designer, I don't have any interest in making a complete game. Here's why, I have a day job. I have a family and a kid. I don't have crazy amounts of time on my hands. 

I recently release a 68-page monster book for Pathfinder this past GenCon. When did I start writing it: the previous GenCon. That's right, it took me a solid year to get a 68 page book out, and that is with one of my awesome editors helping me write some of the NPCs in it and the other editor running a team of volunteers to make sure that the book sang with perfection. I'm not about to create my own game without a darn good reason and (using our combined example) adding in guns and changing the way ranged attacks work is not a darn good reason. Its much, _*MUCH *_more reasonable, both from a time investment standpoint and the sales standpoint, to just come up with a PDF of how to change ranged attacks work, add in guns, and add a few subclass options. 

What is a reasonable reason to use the rules and go solo: changing the entire feel of the game. Taking the fantasy rules and making a superheroes game or a scifi game out of it. Or getting a super huge license that can make sales on their own like say Conan or the Lord of the Rings. That would make me want to go solo and possibly use the OGL rules as a base. However, if I got the Nina Kimberly the Merciless license, I'd just make a supplement using the existing rules. The game isn't going to sell well enough to justify the time to re-layout the existing rules, make changes here and there to exactly capture the feel of the book, commission artwork in DROVES to cover the hundreds of pages required, and then start writing all brand new supplements to keep the game going. 

But frankly, if I did a guns supplement, I wouldn't change how ranged attack works. I'd create new equipment, add in a few subclasses, write a short clarification on how guns worked with the existing rules without changing the rules themselves, make a few organizations and other setting pieces to help incorporate guns into the game and call it a day.


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## Wicht (Sep 27, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> How many years are we all going to engage in this identical argument, with Paizo fans arguing Pathfinder outsold BOOKS, and WOTC fans arguing that WOTC outsold DIGITAL? Can't we all just admit "We don't know" and let it go already?




I don't want to argue with you, because I know you are ready to let it go, so consider your words to merely be a launching point for an observation. I think part of the problem here is the conflation of two separate points of data as being identical in their inscrutability. 

We do know, (or least have a really, really, really, really strong set of data points, to indicate) that in point of fact, Pathfinder was outselling in the area of books. Evidence from multiple sources, including Paizo's own statements make the case for this factoid. Call this point A.

What we do not know is the comparison to be made between electronic sales. It is possible that Paizo was on par with WotC, behind WotC or even ahead of WotC in this one arena. Without actual reporting of income and net and gross revenue streams, this is a legitimate area of fog where all we have are conjectures. We shall call this point B.

Now, with these two points in mind, it is not really valid to say because nobody knows the details of point B that point A is therefore in dispute. Point A is not really in dispute by anyone that was paying attention. Lisa Stevens acknowledges the validity of point A in her comments. Many of us, in having discussions of the matter, settle on Point A because we acknowledge the futility of trying to analyze in a meaningful way, apart from the actions of the companies, point B. But, we can't all admit "we don't know," in relation to point A because some of us have a good idea that we do actually "know" point A to be true and therefore it is a viable option for legitimate discussion.


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## Wicht (Sep 27, 2013)

dmccoy1693 said:


> I recently release a 68-page monster book for Pathfinder this past GenCon. When did I start writing it: the previous GenCon. That's right, it took me a solid year to get a 68 page book out,...




Heh. You should try a 200 page campaign book sometime.


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## dmccoy1693 (Sep 27, 2013)

Wicht said:


> Heh. You should try a 200 page campaign book sometime.



Thanks, but no thanks.


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## Mistwell (Sep 27, 2013)

Wicht said:


> I don't want to argue with you, because I know you are ready to let it go, so consider your words to merely be a launching point for an observation. I think part of the problem here is the conflation of two separate points of data as being identical in their inscrutability.
> 
> We do know, (or least have a really, really, really, really strong set of data points, to indicate) that in point of fact, Pathfinder was outselling in the area of books. Evidence from multiple sources, including Paizo's own statements make the case for this factoid. Call this point A.
> 
> ...




For each company P and W, A+B = Total Revenue for that company.

We can say that Company P's "A" was larger than Company W's "A".

We can sort of know what the "B" for Company W was.

We really don't know what the "B" for Company P was.

Which means we can never add up A+B for each company, and compare each result to the other.

And given an inability to do that, we can never say which company was making more money, or selling more products, during that time frame.

Period.  That's it.  Without the digital sales data for Company P, we cannot even approximate a conclusion.

But good Lord people like to do it anyway.  Based purely on data concerning "A", which everyone knows is only half an equation that doesn't, itself, give you a general answer.

When you say "We know Pathfinder sold more than 4e during that time frame", what you're really saying is this:

A=Book Sales
B=Digital Sales
TR= Total Revenue for a company

A+B=TR
Pathfinder=8+B=?
4e=6+12=18

Therefore Pathfinder TR > 4e TR

It's an obviously faulty conclusion.  Because you'd have to know Pathfinder's B = 11+ to come to that conclusion.  But you don't know that's the case, you're purely speculating on that number.  So, why the heck are you drawing the conclusion without the data to support your conclusion?  The answer is WE DON'T KNOW.  That's it, that's the real answer to this question, we don't know.  It's OK to not know.


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## Morrus (Sep 27, 2013)

Guys.  Wicht says you know A and don't know B so you should base your conclusions on A.  Mistwell says unless you know A and B, you should not come to a conclusion at all.  Everyone gets it! There's only so many times you can repeat the same thing in different words until you accept that the other person _understands_ your argument, they just _disagree_ with it; and repeating it won't change that! I know the temptation is to try and win and get the other person to admit they're wrong:  but it's the internet.  You know that doesn't happen, right?


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## Wicht (Sep 27, 2013)

Morrus said:


> Guys.  Wicht says you know A and don't know B so you should base your conclusions on A.




Actually I'm just trying to say to base your conclusions about "A" from "A." I'm not trying to argue about "B" one way or the other. I quite happily clarified that I was only talking about book sales. 

But point taken.


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## Talath (Sep 27, 2013)

Morrus said:


> Guys.  Wicht says you know A and don't know B so you should base your conclusions on A.  Mistwell says unless you know A and B, you should not come to a conclusion at all.  Everyone gets it! There's only so many times you can repeat the same thing in different words until you accept that the other person _understands_ your argument, they just _disagree_ with it; and repeating it won't change that! I know the temptation is to try and win and get the other person to admit they're wrong:  but it's the internet.  You know that doesn't happen, right?




What about C?


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## Wicht (Sep 27, 2013)

Talath said:


> What about C?




We don't talk about C around here.


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## trancejeremy (Sep 28, 2013)

I think 3rd parties probably could make 5e products using the OGL right now, based on the 3e SRD.  Much like there have been numerous old school products based on it. 

What there wouldn't be is some sort of trademark license, to indicate compatibility. They'd have to say something like "For Use with the 5th Edition of the Worlds Most Popular Fantasy RPG"


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## Nellisir (Sep 28, 2013)

the Jester said:


> I think you have just described exactly the thinking behind the GSL. And frankly, it flopped.




So?  They're going to change some things and try again.  This isn't some kind of either/or situation.  It's not either the OGL or the GSL.  They can, and will, write a new license.


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## Plaguescarred (Sep 28, 2013)

Nellisir said:


> WotC isn't going to do the OGL again.  They won't do the GSL either.  They're going to aim for a middle ground that allows people to produce supplemental material, like adventures and options, but not wholesale reproduction of the core game.  They want weird niche rules, adventures, and little campaign stuff.  You'll be able to reproduce monster stats in an adventure, or put out a Book of Monsters, but not reprint the Monster Manual.  They want SuperGenius Games, not Paizo.  I think they were OK with Mutants & Masterminds, but Arcana Unearthed/Evolved, and Iron Heroes, and Spycraft, and Castles & Crusades, are all too close for comfort.



I agree and have a feeling that's what is gonna happen. If they put another OGL for D&D Next, they run the risk of Paizo making another game based on it to retain fans that might have migrated back to WoTC.  

I'm sure they want to find a way to allow Third Party Publishing without offering their core rules as freely usable as they did with the OGL. They first tried a GSL that proved too restrictive to many. I think they'll try something else more flexible, but i doubt they'll return to an OGL.


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## Zireael (Sep 28, 2013)

trancejeremy said:


> I think 3rd parties probably could make 5e products using the OGL right now, based on the 3e SRD.  Much like there have been numerous old school products based on it.
> 
> What there wouldn't be is some sort of trademark license, to indicate compatibility. They'd have to say something like "For Use with the 5th Edition of the Worlds Most Popular Fantasy RPG"




I don't understand why we can't have a trademark license.
And I don't get how saying "Compatible with D&D Next" is a trademark problem - after all, "D&D Next" is used in reviews and all over the forums here. Anyone can explain?


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## darjr (Sep 28, 2013)

trancejeremy said:


> I think 3rd parties probably could make 5e products using the OGL right now, based on the 3e SRD.  Much like there have been numerous old school products based on it.
> 
> What there wouldn't be is some sort of trademark license, to indicate compatibility. They'd have to say something like "For Use with the 5th Edition of the Worlds Most Popular Fantasy RPG"




This such a good point. I've run other ad&d adventures right out of the book with next at low and high levels and had little problem. I've also heard tell of folks having players use ad&d characters in a next game along with next characters with only a few changes. I think this could go a long way. But without official support it is still a bit of a grey area supporting next with a third party products


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## pemerton (Sep 28, 2013)

Wicht said:


> Pathfinder outsells Dungeons and Dragons and one must take into account the OGL as a possible factor in this.



From WotC's point of view, I tend to see this as the number one reason to doubt the commercial benefits of releasing their content under the OGL!


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## pemerton (Sep 28, 2013)

Wicht said:


> _I just can't believe that if WotC was happy with the performance of 4e (DDI included) they would have moved on to 5e like they have._



I don't understand how this has any bearing on comparative sales of 4e and PF. 4e could be outselling PF 10:1 (which is probably the rate at which it outsells a whole bunch of indie fantasy RPGs) yet WotC still not be happy with its performance.



Alzrius said:


> _the DDI at this point consists of little more than the 4E tools, which are naturally going to become less valuable over time as 4E becomes an unsupported game._



Huh? As long as the DDI continues, 4e is fully supported!



darjr said:


> _I firmly believe that's why Paizo keeps with the OGL. Their customers want it and that makes it good business. Simple as that._





Warbringer said:


> _I do like that they publish most of their new content to the PRD, and they don't have to do that_






darjr said:


> _They've released new rules that didn't have to be OGL and OGL'ed them. Yes, for new things they do have some choice. And they chose the OGL because I think they are choosing to give their customers what they want._



It seems to me that there are at least two aspects to this.

First, is Paizo operating in a market in which it is vulnerable to a competitor going head-to-head agaist it using its OGL-licensed material? My gut feeling is that the answer to that question is No - WotC, in particular, has never shown any tendency to take this approach (despite the fears of many publishers in the early days of the OGL that WotC would do just this). Whereas WotC clearly does face such a competitor, namely, Paizo.

Second, all material that is derivative of Open Game Content is itself Open Game Content, and hence licensed for use under the OGL. The default setting for Paizo material is that it is derivative of the 3.5 SRD (though there are further complexities here, because PF uses 3.5 SRD but last time I looked at its OGL s 15 declaration it ony referred to the 3.0 SRD). In ight of the first factor, how much is it worth Paizo's time and money to work out which new material is derivative, and hence already OGC, and which is genuinely new?


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## pemerton (Sep 28, 2013)

Jan van Leyden said:


> This effect might have been working with the D&D Trademark License, which required the producers to print something like "D&D PHB is required to use this product". But the OGL, where you don't have to give any reference to the producers of the core product?





Zireael said:


> What's stopping the D&D Next version of OGL to require the publishers to print something similar?



Nothing. But then PHB will not make it a perpetual licence - they are not going to grant anyone a perpetual licence to use the D&D trademark - and then we will have people posting threads attacking WotC as an IP monopolist just like they did in relation to the GSL.



Nellisir said:


> The 4e version of the OGL was the GSL, which combined the functions of the d20 license and the OGL.



I don't think it's accurate to describe the GSL as a "version" of the OGL. The OGL is bascially a copyright licence. The GSL is basically a trademard/tradedress licence.



Jan van Leyden said:


> We are talking two different licenses here. The OGL allows anyone to use anything published under it - essentially the SRD in the D&D 3e case - and do with it whatever she wants. There is no connection whatsoever with any trademark owned by Wizards/Hasbro. It cannot be revoked or rescinded, thus Paizo may publish Pathfinder stuff until humanity has died.



Exactly.



Jan van Leyden said:


> I can't imagine any corporation handing out usage of their trademarks on an infinite basis. (Wouldn't make this the trademark impossible to defend under American law, anyway?)



I agree with the first sentence. I'm not an expert on the US trademark system by any means, but I don't think an indefinite licence would therefore lead to a loss of title in the trademark. But I'm happy to be corrected by a trademark lawyer!



Zireael said:


> I don't get how saying "Compatible with D&D Next" is a trademark problem - after all, "D&D Next" is used in reviews and all over the forums here. Anyone can explain?



Those reviews and forums aren't selling RPG products under the label "D&D Next". That's the basic issue.


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## Morrus (Sep 28, 2013)

Zireael said:


> I don't understand why we can't have a trademark license.
> And I don't get how saying "Compatible with D&D Next" is a trademark problem - after all, "D&D Next" is used in reviews and all over the forums here. Anyone can explain?




Reviews, news, discussion, and parody all have their own special law known as "fair use". That law puts them out of the context of this discussion.


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## Nellisir (Sep 28, 2013)

pemerton said:


> I don't think it's accurate to describe the GSL as a "version" of the OGL. The OGL is bascially a copyright licence. The GSL is basically a trademard/tradedress licence.



The GSL allows third-parties to use WotC's "proprietary" game material in their own works.  How is that not a variation on the OGL?

"4.1 4E References. Licensee may reprint the proprietary 4E reference terms, tables, and templates (each, a “4E Reference”) described in the 4E System Reference Document as presented in the file “SRD.pdf”..."


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## Wicht (Sep 28, 2013)

pemerton said:


> I don't understand how this has any bearing on comparative sales of 4e and PF. 4e could be outselling PF 10:1 (which is probably the rate at which it outsells a whole bunch of indie fantasy RPGs) yet WotC still not be happy with its performance.




It is a supposition that the performance of PF in comparison to 4e is one of the factors in the unhappiness with 4e. While I concede that there is a possibility (however remote) this might not be the case, the mere fact that there could be other reasons for the unhappiness does not of itself make the supposition irrelevant or wrong. Pathfinder is obviously selling better than many indie fantasies so I am not sure what that proves. The performance of Coca Cola in comparison to Ale8 proves nothing about the success in the market of Pepsi or Coke's competition with Pepsi.  

But this treads close to having an argument Morrus already asked to be dropped, so I won't take it further. Just wanted to answer your question as to what the bearing was.


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## Zireael (Sep 28, 2013)

Nellisir said:


> The GSL allows third-parties to use WotC's "proprietary" game material in their own works.  How is that not a variation on the OGL?
> 
> "4.1 4E References. Licensee may reprint the proprietary 4E reference terms, tables, and templates (each, a “4E Reference”) described in the 4E System Reference Document as presented in the file “SRD.pdf”..."




The problem with GSL is that the 4E SRD is basically nonexistent.



> Reviews, news, discussion, and parody all have their own special law  known as "fair use". That law puts them out of the context of this  discussion.




Ah, right, fair use.

In this case, we'd best hope for the OGL to make a return.


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## pemerton (Sep 28, 2013)

Nellisir said:


> The GSL allows third-parties to use WotC's "proprietary" game material in their own works.  How is that not a variation on the OGL?



Because clause 5.6 of the GSL states that "Licensee will not publish or reprint (a) the contents of the SRD in their entirety; or (b) definitions of any 4E References, whether or not similar to those listed in any product published by Wizards" and clause 5.5 precludes a licenssee "reprinting any material contained in a Core Rulebook except" if it appears in the SRD. And the 4e SRD is basically a list of the names of game elements and concepts. It does not actually contain any rules or story text - quite unlike the 3.0 and 3.5 SRDs.

To be licensed under the OGL, a document must contain OGC, which is defined by the OGL as "the game mechanic and includes the methods, procedures, processes and routines". The 4e SRD contains no OGC - no game mechanics.


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## dmccoy1693 (Sep 28, 2013)

trancejeremy said:


> I think 3rd parties probably could make 5e products using the OGL right now, based on the 3e SRD.  Much like there have been numerous old school products based on it.
> 
> What there wouldn't be is some sort of trademark license, to indicate compatibility. They'd have to say something like "For Use with the 5th Edition of the Worlds Most Popular Fantasy RPG"




we could, but we're not. We're playing nice. I know i had a discussion with the people of my company about making products for the playtest, but ultimately we decided to play nice, sit on the side lines and encourage Wizards to take an open route with the final version. I am sure that my company is not the only one that had that discussion with their people.


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## Morrus (Sep 28, 2013)

trancejeremy said:


> I think 3rd parties probably could make 5e products using the OGL right now, based on the 3e SRD.  Much like there have been numerous old school products based on it.
> 
> What there wouldn't be is some sort of trademark license, to indicate compatibility. They'd have to say something like "For Use with the 5th Edition of the Worlds Most Popular Fantasy RPG"




True.  But it's a risk - how compatible will it actually be with the final ruleset?  The game keeps changing at the moment; up until now we've seen the changes, but we're probably not going to see any more of the changes between now and release.  You could end up producing something that's basically incompatible.


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## Nellisir (Sep 28, 2013)

pemerton said:


> To be licensed under the OGL, a document must contain OGC, which is defined by the OGL as "the game mechanic and includes the methods, procedures, processes and routines". The 4e SRD contains no OGC - no game mechanics.



Of course it doesn't contain OGC - it's not the OGL.  It's a different license.  That's...look, I don't know how else to say it.  The GSL is not the OGL, but it is an evolution of it.  

Is the GSL a "good" license?  No.  Personally, I think it sucks big time donkey balls.  I don't hate it, because it's an inert piece of legalese and that would be stupid, but I wouldn't bother wiping my butt with it either. Nonetheless, the GSL was intended to replace both the OGL and the d20 license with a single license that allowed a very limited amount of use, reproduction, and reference to WotC's D&D trademarks and copyrights. It is true that, even as limited as the GSL was, WotC did not take advantage of it, but the fact that they didn't fill out the SRD does not and did not mean that they could not have done so. The capability is in the license. I stand by what I said, and I'm not going to waste time arguing about how the GSL doesn't contain OGC (it doesn't), or how the GSL is worthless (not relevant), or how the only choices are those we've seen before (there are more).


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## Nellisir (Sep 28, 2013)

Zireael said:


> The problem with GSL is that the 4E SRD is basically nonexistent.



Yup. And all the crap about WotC changing the license whenever and however they want, with no notice, and so on and so forth.  That really killed it.  But starving the SRD didn't help either.


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## pemerton (Sep 29, 2013)

Nellisir said:


> Of course it doesn't contain OGC - it's not the OGL.



My point is that it contains no _candidate_ OGC, because it contains no mechanics.

The basic idea of the OGL is to permit reproduction of rules text in which WotC claims copyright. WotC's OGL FAQ opens with the observation that the OGL is a "royalty free copyright licence". It's all about allowing people to reproduce WotC rules text in their own games and game supplements. An the relevant text is characterised as mechanics, methods, processes, procedures and routines.

The basic idea of the GSL is to permit reprodruction of words and designs in which WotC claims trademarks, other rights related to trade dress and also copyright: the GSL FAQ describes the GSL as licensing certain "Terms, Tables and Templates". With its prohibition on defining, redefining or altering the definition of SRD references, its all about allowing people to produce material that adds to WotC's 4e world. With its permission (in clause 4.3) to create derivative 2D imagery, it allows including illustrations modelled on WotC's illustrations of its creatures, races etc. But with its contractual obligation not to reproduce any rulebook text, it forbids doing just the sort of thing that the OGL is about permitting. It allows reproduction of work that is derivative of WotC's copyrighted texts (eg encounters with bulettes or tieflings), but not of WotC's text themselves.
  [MENTION=38140]Frylock[/MENTION] had a very nice blog on the issue here.

Given that - as others have noted upthread - WotC is trying to create an integrated, transmedia D&D experience, I think it's as likely with D&Dnext as with 4e that they will want to ensure story integrity by imposing the same sorts of constraints on 3rd parties. What they might try and do differently is communicate exactly what the function of any new licence is. I think with respect to the GSL there was quite a bit of miscommunication, because it was so different in nature and purpose from the OGL but people were judging it as if it was meant to be a substitute for or equivalent to the OGL.


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## pemerton (Sep 29, 2013)

Nellisir said:


> Is the GSL a "good" license?  No.  Personally, I think it sucks big time donkey balls.  I don't hate it, because it's an inert piece of legalese and that would be stupid, but I wouldn't bother wiping my butt with it either.



I personally think the GSL is a very generous licence. People who are expecting a royalty-free trademark licence of unlimited duration in my view have completley unrealistic expectations, given that - as a publishing company - the _only valuable asset_ that WotC owns is its IP.

The GSL could be improved, though, in my view by making it clearer what it permits and doesn't permit and what its rationale is. But it is always going to require legal advice for its use.


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## darjr (Sep 29, 2013)

I think the idea is that after the final rules it may be possible to create stuff using the older ogl compatible rules that are compatible with next


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## Wicht (Sep 29, 2013)

pemerton said:


> I personally think the GSL is a very generous licence. People who are expecting a royalty-free trademark licence of unlimited duration in my view have completley unrealistic expectations, given that - as a publishing company - the _only valuable asset_ that WotC owns is its IP.




No, that's not completely true. An IP has no value if people are not willing to pay you for it. Public goodwill, name brand recognition, and the like all have value, though they are harder to measure.

I also think that you seem to be misunderstanding an important point concerning the OGL and games in general (I know that you are responding to a point about the GSL but your comment about "unlimited" seems to imply a conflation of the two licenses and the OGL is the license most of us would want, not the GSL ): rules are never truly off limits to anyone nor are they able to be trademarked. Rules, as such, have no real legal protection (which is part of the reason there are so many Monopoly clones), though the copyrighted presentation of them might. What the OGL does, and does well, is make rules and the application of those rules, open and available in a way that allows other companies to expand upon them freely, without having to worry about the finer points of treading the line of violating copyright. Companies can actually publish compatible game material without it, but its simply, imo, going to be a little more of a headache (Judges Guild used to do it for AD&D for instance without a license). The OGL does not make company Trademarks available and publishers are free (indeed obligated under section 8 of the OGL) to delineate which parts of a book are Closed and which are Open. If publishers want to utilize Trademark, section 7 of the OGL demands a separate license to do so.


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## pemerton (Sep 29, 2013)

darjr said:


> after the final rules it may be possible to create stuff using the older ogl compatible rules that are compatible with next



I think that's possible, yes. And I think any new licence from WotC is likely to be authored keeping that possibility in mind.


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## pemerton (Sep 29, 2013)

Wicht said:


> No, that's not completely true. An IP has no value if people are not willing to pay you for it. Public goodwill, name brand recognition, and the like all have value, though they are harder to measure.



True, although my understanding (admittedly based more on Anglo-Australian than US trademark law) is that goodwill cannot be assigned without assigning other business assets.



Wicht said:


> I know that you are responding to a point about the GSL but your comment about "unlimited" seems to imply a conflation of the two licenses and the OGL is the license most of us would want, not the GSL



My comment was about trademark licences - I referred to "a royalty-free trademark licence of unlimited duration" - so I'm not sure why you think I'm talking about the OGL. The OGL is a copyright licence, not a trademark licence.



Wicht said:


> rules are never truly off limits to anyone nor are they able to be trademarked.



I think you mean "rules cannot be copyrighted". Rules absolutely can be trademarked, in the sense that WotC absolutely can sell rulebooks under the trademark "Dungeons & Dragons" and if you attempt to sell RPG rules under the same trademark you will be legally liable to WotC.



Wicht said:


> Rules, as such, have no real legal protection (which is part of the reason there are so many Monopoly clones), though the copyrighted presentation of them might. What the OGL does, and does well, is make rules and the application of those rules, open and available in a way that allows other companies to expand upon them freely, without having to worry about the finer points of treading the line of violating copyright.



From WotC's point of view, here are two options: (i) release text in which WotC owns the copyright so that other can use it for free; (ii) publish my rules, maintain control over my copyright text, and let others do the work of reproducing my rules without violating my copyrights.

I would think that option (ii) looks more attractive, especially given that I probably don't _want_ other publishers publishing my rules, as opposed to publishing material to be used by those who have bought my rules from me.



Wicht said:


> publishers are free (indeed obligated under section 8 of the OGL) to delineate which parts of a book are Closed and which are Open.



A publisher who attempts to "close" material which is OGC - whether OGC in virtue of a declaration of such, or OGC in virtue of being derivative of other OGC - is in violation of the license, and perhaps also in violation of other people's IP rights.



Wicht said:


> Companies can actually publish compatible game material without it, but its simply, imo, going to be a little more of a headache (Judges Guild used to do it for AD&D for instance without a license).



Sure. But if you are suggesting that Paizo could publish PF in its current form without a licence from WotC then I think you're badly mitaken.


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## Mistwell (Sep 29, 2013)

Wicht said:


> rules are never truly off limits to anyone nor are they able to be trademarked.




Rules however can be part of a trade dress lawsuit, and indirectly copyright as look and feel.  That was decided with the Tetris case just last year.  "The look and feel of [a game] is copyrightable expression distinguishable from the ideas of the game".

The elements that made up the "look and feel" are similar to any other game rules.  For example, the number of playing pieces, the configuration of playing pieces, the size of the playing field, the way pieces moved in the playing field, the behavior of the game when a horizontal line was filled, and the behavior of the game when over, were all held to be both copyrightable look and feel, and trade dress.  And yet, those are all part of the rules of Tetris.

So I would not be so sure that rules can no longer play a role in copyright issues.  They now definitely can.  And I don't think anyone wants to tempt fate with Hasbro.


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## pemerton (Sep 29, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> Rules however can be part of a trade dress lawsuit, and indirectly copyright as look and feel.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> So I would not be so sure that rules can no longer play a role in copyright issues.  They now definitely can.



Another sort of interaction between rules and copyright that I have discussed from time to time with [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] in relation to OSRIC relates to the old AD&D-style rules for number appearing, number of higher level leaders per base level creature, etc. These are clearly part of the AD&D world-building and encounter-building rules. But they are also part of the story elements of D&D, and therefore perhaps able to attract copyright protection.  I also think about a spell like Contact Other Plane, and wonder whether its a non-copyrightable rules element or rather a copyrightable story (about how the mage's spirit wanders to another plane and receives information from entities there, with certain likelihoods of truth, lies or insanity) which also happens to operate as a D&D rules element.

I don't have any strong intuitions about how "look and feel" in a computer game might carry over to copyright over RPG rules text, but WotC clearly thinks (or at least hopes) that they can copyright their 4e layouts/templates for powers, monsters, items etc (part of what the GSL does is authorise use of those templates).



Mistwell said:


> I don't think anyone wants to tempt fate with Hasbro.



And I would also be surprisd if Hasbro wants to tempt fate in the way that it did with the OGL/SRD!


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## S'mon (Sep 29, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> The elements that made up the "look and feel" are similar to any other game rules.  For example, the number of playing pieces, the configuration of playing pieces, the size of the playing field, the way pieces moved in the playing field, the behavior of the game when a horizontal line was filled, and the behavior of the game when over, were all held to be both copyrightable look and feel, and trade dress.  And yet, those are all part of the rules of Tetris.




You need to distinguish 'rules', as in number of pieces on the board, from rules as in formulae & processes - the latter are not copyrightable.


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## pemerton (Sep 29, 2013)

S'mon said:


> You need to distinguish 'rules', as in number of pieces on the board, from rules as in formulae & processes



Do you have a view as to what, in D&D or other RPGs, might be analogous to "number of pieces on the board"?


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## Wicht (Sep 29, 2013)

pemerton said:


> My comment was about trademark licences - I referred to "a royalty-free trademark licence of unlimited duration" - so I'm not sure why you think I'm talking about the OGL. The OGL is a copyright licence, not a trademark licence.




Because you said that people were asking for a trademark license of unlimited duration. The thread is about asking WotC to extend the OGL to 5e. The OGL is an unlimited license. I just assumed you were mistakenly conflating the two. My apologies for the error. 



> I think you mean "rules cannot be copyrighted". Rules absolutely can be trademarked, in the sense that WotC absolutely can sell rulebooks under the trademark "Dungeons & Dragons" and if you attempt to sell RPG rules under the same trademark you will be legally liable to WotC.




No I meant that rules cannot be trademarked or copyrighted. Putting rules under the trademarked name of Dungeons and Dragons is not the same as trademarking those rules anymore than Coke putting the calorie count of their 12 oz. soda on a can with their logo trademarks the number of calories. 



> From WotC's point of view, here are two options: (i) release text in which WotC owns the copyright so that other can use it for free; (ii) publish my rules, maintain control over my copyright text, and let others do the work of reproducing my rules without violating my copyrights.
> 
> I would think that option (ii) looks more attractive, especially given that I probably don't _want_ other publishers publishing my rules, as opposed to publishing material to be used by those who have bought my rules from me.




And of course here is where the major disagreement in business philosophy occurs, but we've already hashed it out, so I won't do more than note that I sincerely hope that is not, contrary to your assertion, WotC's viewpoint or they are indeed going to slowly smother their game. The open market is already here and thriving and I do not believe that a closed market can compete with what I think is clearly a superior model for the consumer over the long haul. Namebrand only gets you so far. Eventually a superior product and superior services are going to win out. Open Gaming provides superior choice to the consumer (and the publisher if they take advantage of it) and is not going to die anytime soon, I do not believe.   



> A publisher who attempts to "close" material which is OGC - whether OGC in virtue of a declaration of such, or OGC in virtue of being derivative of other OGC - is in violation of the license, and perhaps also in violation of other people's IP rights.
> 
> Sure. But if you are suggesting that Paizo could publish PF in its current form without a licence from WotC then I think you're badly mitaken.




Sure, but that's besides the point I made, section 8 still require you to note, in the publication which parts of the publication are closed and which are not. And closed content can be new rules as well as trade dress, IP, and what not.  

That being said, I truly believe it is in the best interest of all OGL publishers to make as much of their game Open as they can. Paizo seems to agree seeing as how, in point of fact, they have released quite a few things that did not have to be Open, but they did it anyway.


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## S'mon (Sep 29, 2013)

pemerton said:


> Do you have a view as to what, in D&D or other RPGs, might be analogous to "number of pieces on the board"?




Well, in the Tetris case they copied the whole game, AFAIK, inasmuch as the end user was concerned. This look & feel of a computer program has been held unprotectable in the UK, but US copyright is broader and more amorphous. This amorphousness makes it hard to know where a US court would set the boundary, but I would think that a completely cloned game sans OGL would probably be held infringing even if the _description_ of the game elements was slightly different than any particular text published by TSR-WoTC. Whereas a particular element such as using 3d6 to generate stats STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA very probably would not be infringing.

A precise reproduction of the 1e AD&D saving throw tables would, I think, likely be infringing; similar tables have been held to attract copyright in US & UK, though generally not in Civil-law nations. The general idea of a saving throw table is not protectable though, nor (AFAICT) are any elements derived from a formula, such as "+1 every 3 levels". So the formula-derived 3e saving throw tables might not be protectable whereas the 'messy' 1e tables probably would be.


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## S'mon (Sep 29, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> Rules however can be part of a trade dress lawsuit, and indirectly copyright as look and feel.  That was decided with the Tetris case just last year.  "The look and feel of [a game] is copyrightable expression distinguishable from the ideas of the game".




If you're claiming that rules can be protectable as trade dress, I think that's highly misleading.  I can claim that you've infringed my trade dress through the look and feel of my game, and I can claim (in the USA) that you've infringed my copyright in the look and feel of my game. But those are actually two completely different claims that the judge needs to deal with separately, if he's doing his job right. One relates to a misrepresentation (passing off/unregistered mark), the other to copyright.


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## Mistwell (Sep 29, 2013)

S'mon said:


> You need to distinguish 'rules', as in number of pieces on the board, from rules as in formulae & processes - the latter are not copyrightable.






S'mon said:


> If you're claiming that rules can be protectable as trade dress, I think that's highly misleading.  I can claim that you've infringed my trade dress through the look and feel of my game, and I can claim (in the USA) that you've infringed my copyright in the look and feel of my game. But those are actually two completely different claims that the judge needs to deal with separately, if he's doing his job right. One relates to a misrepresentation (passing off/unregistered mark), the other to copyright.




Did you just forget you had already responded to me?

I am claiming that the matter is now so confused as to not be worth risking it for anyone.  The difference between "look and feel" and "rules" is so unclear that I don't think a reasonable person can make the distinction reliably.  You're claiming the distinction is there - and in theory it is.  But, in practice, it's not really something that can be achieved.  I see no bright line between what is a rule, and what is a look and feel, when things like "number of game pieces" and " the way pieces moved in the playing field" is a look and feel and also a rule.

If it's on the iconic character sheet of a version of a game, it's likely going to be look/feel.  Your ability scores are both rules and look/feel.  Hit points are both rules and look/feel.  Armor Class is both rules and look/feel.  Alignment is both rules and look/feel.  Move rate is both rules and look/feel.  There is no realistic distinguishing line between being a rule and also being look/feel.  And as the later is protected, the claim that rules are not protected becomes a meaningless point.  In practice, as a practical matter, they may be protected, and so nobody is going to mess with the issue.


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## Talath (Sep 29, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> Rules however can be part of a trade dress lawsuit, and indirectly copyright as look and feel.  That was decided with the Tetris case just last year.  "The look and feel of [a game] is copyrightable expression distinguishable from the ideas of the game".




Bloody common law.


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## Wicht (Sep 29, 2013)

Didn't Goodman publish for 4e without using the GSL. I don't remember them getting sued, so I am not convinced the danger of litigation is as great as some might think it is.


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## darjr (Sep 29, 2013)

What Goodman games did clearly wasn't infringing because wotc would have been required to go after them or give up certain rights, right? Could wotc have just ignored it and still gone after others?


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## Wicht (Sep 29, 2013)

darjr said:


> What Goodman games did clearly wasn't infringing because wotc would have been required to go after them or give up certain rights, right? Could wotc have just ignored it and still gone after others?




Well sure, but to hear some people describe it, any sort of thing that gets close to even suggesting compatibility is ripe for a suit. While we do not know what discussions went on inside WotC in relation to Goodman eschewing the GSL and following the old Judges Guild route, obviously if they did consider it they decided it was not worth pursuing, which does indicate some measure of leeway in publishing compatible material.


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## Nellisir (Sep 29, 2013)

Wicht said:


> The open market is already here and thriving and I do not believe that a closed market can compete with what I think is clearly a superior model for the consumer over the long haul. Namebrand only gets you so far.




Does anyone know if Numenera  is open in any way?  I have never gotten the impression that Monte was in favor of the OGL or a fan of its use.


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## Morrus (Sep 29, 2013)

Nellisir said:


> Does anyone know if Numenera  is open in any way?  I have never gotten the impression that Monte was in favor of the OGL or a fan of its use.




He's always been a major fan of its use - he used it extensively for 80-odd products under his Malhavoc Press banner.


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## Gundark (Sep 29, 2013)

Peole keep saying that the OGL benefits Pathfinder.I am skeptical that the OGL or their PRD (or whatever it is called) significantly benefits Pathfinder all that much. Note that I am NOT saying that there is zero benefit to the OGL. However their success comes from producing high quality adventure paths, not from a third party publisher putting out "Bob's guide to magic carpets" and that this is somehow keeping people buying Pathfinder.


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## darjr (Sep 29, 2013)

Gundark said:


> Peole keep saying that the OGL benefits Pathfinder.I am skeptical that the OGL or their PRD (or whatever it is called) significantly benefits Pathfinder all that much. Note that I am NOT saying that there is zero benefit to the OGL. However their success comes from producing high quality adventure paths, not from a third party publisher putting out "Bob's guide to magic carpets" and that this is somehow keeping people buying Pathfinder.




I agree, they are successful because they put out high quality products that their customers want. In my mind part of that equation IS releasing under OGL. Bigger for some rather than others.


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## Nellisir (Sep 29, 2013)

Morrus said:


> He's always been a major fan of its use - he used it extensively for 80-odd products under his Malhavoc Press banner.



"Was required" to use it would seem more accurate.  He locked down anything that could be locked down, and the declaration of OGC that applied whatever had to be OGC was almost always some variation of "if it's OGC elsewhere, then it is here, and if it's not, it isn't", so in order to determine what was OGC and what wasn't, you needed to consult each of the sources listed in the license.  I don't consider someone who routinely locks down spell names, monster names, and class names as particularly OGC friendly.  On a spectrum, I'd say he was among the least open with his content of the major 3rd-party publishers, if not the least open.

Spell templates, for instance - the concept was open, but the spell templates published in Arcana Unearthed/Evolved were all closed in their entirety.  I emailed him about this, and he clarified that was the intent.  We could write our own (which had to be open), but not use his.

Mind you, I am NOT saying he did not have the right to do so.

Anyways, Numenera?


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## Morrus (Sep 29, 2013)

Well, the answer to your question is "no". Numenera is not open, but it does have a recently published community use policy.


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## Nellisir (Sep 30, 2013)

Morrus said:


> Well, the answer to your question is "no". Numenera is not open, but it does have a recently published community use policy.




Thanks.

Well, this might be an interesting test of how far name brand (to go back to Wicht's comment) will get you with a closed system.  Monte's fan use policy is clearly spelled out (good job!), but I am not sure that it does anything over and above conventional fan use policies, with the possible exception of allowing some artwork reuse.  There's certainly no chance of a 3rd party market evolving around it (the policy explicitly disallows products for sale).


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## Wicht (Sep 30, 2013)

Numenera does provide a good test case. Cook has the name recognition, which will give it the initial sales, but I do have to believe OGL brands, especially the OGL engines, are going to have the longevity.

If I was a wagering man (which I am not) I would wager that of the three: FATE, Savage Worlds, or Numenera; in five years FATE and Savage Worlds will still be in print in one form or another, but Numenera will not. For Monte Cook's sake I would like to be wrong, and I wish him success. But in my experience, it seems stand alone systems (especially ones tied to a particular setting rather than to a particular engine) have an initial burst of enthusiasm which tapers off when the next new shiny hits. There are exceptions, Call of Cthulhu being the premier of these (though even there, Chaosium is very generous in letting others use both their setting and their engine), so I guess we shall see.


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## Nellisir (Sep 30, 2013)

Wicht said:


> it seems stand alone systems (especially ones tied to a particular setting rather than to a particular engine)



That's the main reason I'm not prepared to really call it a great test case. It's in a niche environment of RPG settings & systems, and a kinda uncommon niche at that.  I'd be happier if it was straight-up fantasy, sci-fi, or superheros - that would make for easier comparisons to D&D, Mutants & Masterminds, GURPS, etc.

I'm trying to think of other game systems that have come up in since 3e and survived.  Hackmaster seems to still be a going concern.  Warhammer Fantasy? Lot5R? Deadlands?  Dragon Age? Is there a notable difference between games that were established pre-2000 and survive as closed systems vs newer games that are more recent and closed?

Didn't Mutants & Masterminds become DC Heroes or something?  How is the OGL handled in those books?


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2013)

Wicht said:


> rules cannot be trademarked or copyrighted. Putting rules under the trademarked name of Dungeons and Dragons is not the same as trademarking those rules



A trademark is (by definition) a sign. A (representation of a) rule is also a sign (or collection of signs eg E = MC^2). I don't see any reason in principle why the expression of a rule by a sign couldn't be used as a trademark - WotC's d20 logo is getting pretty close to this, for instance.



S'mon said:


> Well, in the Tetris case they copied the whole game, AFAIK, inasmuch as the end user was concerned.



Knowing nothing more of the case that was has been posted on this thread, what you have said here give me the impression that the publisher of the infringing game was using different code - and thereby trying to avoid copyright infringement - while delivering an identical play experience to the end user. Is that correct? And if so, is the idea of "look and feel" in the case then related to this contrast - which arises in the computing case - between code and end user experience?



Mistwell said:


> I see no bright line between what is a rule, and what is a look and feel, when things like "number of game pieces" and " the way pieces moved in the playing field" is a look and feel and also a rule.



If the Tetris decision is related to peculariaties of computing - and the contrast between code and user experience - then it's not clear to me what, if any, its implications would be for very different modes of gaming in which the end users themselves apply the rules. Hence my question above to S'mon.



Talath said:


> Bloody common law.



Isn't copyright law, in the US at least, predominantly a statutory body of law? I assume that we are talking about judicial interpretation of a copyright statute, rather than common law.



S'mon said:


> using 3d6 to generate stats STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA very probably would not be infringing.
> 
> A precise reproduction of the 1e AD&D saving throw tables would, I think, likely be infringing
> 
> ...





Mistwell said:


> Your ability scores are both rules and look/feel.  Hit points are both rules and look/feel.  Armor Class is both rules and look/feel.  Alignment is both rules and look/feel.  Move rate is both rules and look/feel.  There is no realistic distinguishing line between being a rule and also being look/feel.



For what it's worth, my intuition is that armour class, hit points and movement rate as numerical representations of hardness, toughness and distance per unit of time would be like the non-copyrightable examples that S'mon gives. But that having AC 9 or AC 10 = unarmoured, and AC 3 = plate mail, etc, might be closer to the example of "number of game pieces" and hence copyrightable.

My feeling is that the description of a human being as characterised by six stats STR INT WIS DEX CON CHA might be in a similar category.

And the D&D alignment system strikes me as not just "look and feel" but itself a substantive story element from which similar game elements in other games could be fairly said to have been derived. (The idea of alignment wouldn't be like this, but I would have thought you would have to use different alignments.)

S'mon, any thoughts on how far off target I am in the above?


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2013)

Wicht said:


> Didn't Goodman publish for 4e without using the GSL. I don't remember them getting sued, so I am not convinced the danger of litigation is as great as some might think it is.





darjr said:


> What Goodman games did clearly wasn't infringing because wotc would have been required to go after them or give up certain rights, right? Could wotc have just ignored it and still gone after others?



Darjr, WotC can ignore some copyright infringements while pursing others. The situation can be different for trademarks - my simplistic understanding is that a trademark diluted is a trademark lost - but I would be surprised if Goodman was purporting to use any WotC trademarks to identify its products.

As for the issue of infringement - I think there's a big difference between publishing an adventure containing original story elements (NPCs, monsters, events etc) and the only reproduction of WotC's material is using certain keywords without defining those keywords, and trying to write something which can be used in place of WotC's rulebooks to deliver the same gaming experience.

The latter is what the retroclones do, and what PF does, and they are reliant on the OGL for doing so. (And I'm personally not 100% sure that all the retroclones are compliant with the OGL, but that's really a matter between those publishers and WotC.)


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## Talath (Sep 30, 2013)

pemerton said:


> Isn't copyright law, in the US at least, predominantly a statutory body of law? I assume that we are talking about judicial interpretation of a copyright statute, rather than common law.




I have to be honest, I don't even know what I really said.


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## Wicht (Sep 30, 2013)

pemerton said:


> A trademark is (by definition) a sign. A (representation of a) rule is also a sign (or collection of signs eg E = MC^2). I don't see any reason in principle why the expression of a rule by a sign couldn't be used as a trademark - WotC's d20 logo is getting pretty close to this, for instance.




I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that E=MC^2 is of itself not going to be easily trademarked as a generic sort of sign. Now if one made a fancy graphic utilizing it, then I am pretty sure that the graphic in and of itself would be able to be trademarked. The word "Cola" for instance, is not able to be trademarked of itself as its a generic word, but put it in a swirly sort of font similar to what Coke uses and you have crossed a line. 

With D20, the utilization of the phrase in a book is not going to be trademark infringement if its used as an expression to indicate a type of dice, as it commonly is, and it will be able to be shown that d20 is a common gamer expression. Again, put it in a fancy logo as a product identification and then you can call trademark on it.


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## Nellisir (Sep 30, 2013)

pemerton said:


> Darjr, WotC can ignore some copyright infringements while pursing others. The situation can be different for trademarks - my simplistic understanding is that a trademark diluted is a trademark lost - but I would be surprised if Goodman was purporting to use any WotC trademarks to identify its products.



Trademark and copyright are very different things.  A trademark has to be registered and defended.  Copyright is (now) automatic and cannot be abandoned without intent. (IANAL) A trademark represents a company, brand, or product - it's a symbol.  A copyright applies to a creative work.  Dungeons & Dragons is a trademarkable phrase; the entirety of the Player's Handbook is not.

You probably couldn't trademark E=MC^2 on it's own, because it's a pretty common equation.  You might trademark "E=MC^2 Foot Lotion", however. (Just a guess - I'm thinking "Axe Body Spray", for example.)

From wikipedia:


> *Abandonment of copyright:* Abandonment is recognized as the explicit release of material by a copyright holder into the public domain. However, statutory abandonment is legally a tricky issue which has little relevant case precedent to establish how an artist can abandon their copyright during their lifetime. The more common approach is to license work under a scheme that provides for public use rather than strictly abandoning copyright.
> Copyright protection attaches to a work as soon as it is fixed in a tangible medium, whether the copyright holder desires this protection or not. Before the Copyright Act of 1976 an artist could abandon or forfeit their copyright by neglecting to comply with the relevant formalities. Difficulty arises when one tries to apply the doctrine of abandonment to present-day concerns regarding the abandonment or gifting of a digitized work to the public domain. The abandonment of a work is difficult to prove in court, though Learned Hand stated proposed a test which parallels other forms of abandonment law wherein an author or copyrightholder could abandon their work if they intend to abandon it and commit an overt act to make public that intention.Despite this test, the current legal environment towards protectionism is so strong that a court might disregard an author’s statements regarding their intent.
> 
> *Abandonment of trademark:* Abandonment of trademark is understood to happen when a trademark is not used for three or more years, or when it is deliberately discontinued; trademark law protects only trademarks being actively used and defended.


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## Nellisir (Sep 30, 2013)

Wicht said:


> I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that E=MC^2 is of itself not going to be easily trademarked as a generic sort of sign. Now if one made a fancy graphic utilizing it, then I am pretty sure that the graphic in and of itself would be able to be trademarked. The word "Cola" for instance, is not able to be trademarked of itself as its a generic word, but put it in a swirly sort of font similar to what Coke uses and you have crossed a line.
> 
> With D20, the utilization of the phrase in a book is not going to be trademark infringement if its used as an expression to indicate a type of dice, as it commonly is, and it will be able to be shown that d20 is a common gamer expression. Again, put it in a fancy logo as a product identification and then you can call trademark on it.




That agrees with my interpretation.  A trademark is often text + graphics, and the text alone does not necessarily constitute a trademark.


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## Mistwell (Sep 30, 2013)

pemerton said:


> And the D&D alignment system strikes me as not just "look and feel" but itself a substantive story element from which similar game elements in other games could be fairly said to have been derived. (The idea of alignment wouldn't be like this, but I would have thought you would have to use different alignments.)
> 
> S'mon, any thoughts on how far off target I am in the above?




Why are you asking the guy in the UK about American IP law when you're talking to an American attorney who represents some of the very RPG companies we're discussing?


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> Why are you asking the guy in the UK about American IP law when you're talking to an American attorney who represents some of the very RPG companies we're discussing?



Because I know that  [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] is an academic lawyer who specialises in IP law, whereas until the post to which I'm replying all I knew about your profession was that you make academic gowns.

If you want to express a view on my intuitions than by all means do so - I teach Australian private law and publish in constitutional law and theory, but am not an IP lawyer.


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2013)

Nellisir said:


> A trademark has to be registered and defended.



Anglo-Australian law recognises unregistered trademarks. I would guess that US law does also, but am happy to be corrected on that. My understanding is that civil law jurisdictions do not.


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## pedr (Sep 30, 2013)

Some civil law jurisdictions have stronger prohibitions against "unfair competition" though, which may well amount to or even surpass protection given to unregistered marks, though I don't know the details of that doctrine.


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## Nellisir (Sep 30, 2013)

pemerton said:


> Anglo-Australian law recognises unregistered trademarks. I would guess that US law does also, but am happy to be corrected on that. My understanding is that civil law jurisdictions do not.



No, I'm sure you're more right than I am.  The wikipedia quote I used clearly talks about use, not registration - I just assumed registration was necessary.


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## S'mon (Sep 30, 2013)

pemerton said:


> Knowing nothing more of the case that was has been posted on this thread, what you have said here give me the impression that the publisher of the infringing game was using different code - and thereby trying to avoid copyright infringement - while delivering an identical play experience to the end user. Is that correct? And if so, is the idea of "look and feel" in the case then related to this contrast - which arises in the computing case - between code and end user experience?
> 
> If the Tetris decision is related to peculariaties of computing - and the contrast between code and user experience - then it's not clear to me what, if any, its implications would be for very different modes of gaming in which the end users themselves apply the rules. Hence my question above to S'mon.




Yes. Courts have had to grapple for a long time with the difficulties inherent in applying copyright to computer programs, because you can copy the ideas and the presentation of a program without copying any of the code. In the UK look & feel has been held non-protectable in copyright (eg Navataire v Easyjet, on a flight bookings system). The Tetris decision looks to have gone the other way. I would be very reluctant to draw any conclusions from this area for RPGs.

However if I were representing an RPG company in court I'd be willing to give it a go - to try to stretch the precedent to fit the facts of the case. From an objective perspective it seems an unlikely argument to me but this is what effective lawyers do. If the judge goes along with that argument I've just created new law.


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## S'mon (Sep 30, 2013)

pedr said:


> Some civil law jurisdictions have stronger prohibitions against "unfair competition" though, which may well amount to or even surpass protection given to unregistered marks, though I don't know the details of that doctrine.




You are exactly right. Civil law nations usually have a concept of 'good faith in business dealings' which covers stuff like misuse of a competitor's marks.


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## S'mon (Sep 30, 2013)

Wicht said:


> Didn't Goodman publish for 4e without using the GSL. I don't remember them getting sued, so I am not convinced the danger of litigation is as great as some might think it is.




Yes, Kenzer too. IME the trick to not getting a C&D is is 
(a) don't use any registered trade marks 
(b) don't use a license (OGL, GSL) and then breach the terms
(c) don't literally copy a significant chunk of text or art.


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## S'mon (Sep 30, 2013)

pemerton said:


> As for the issue of infringement - I think there's a big difference between publishing an adventure containing original story elements (NPCs, monsters, events etc) and the only reproduction of WotC's material is using certain keywords without defining those keywords, and trying to write something which can be used in place of WotC's rulebooks to deliver the same gaming experience.
> 
> The latter is what the retroclones do, and what PF does, and they are reliant on the OGL for doing so. (And I'm personally not 100% sure that all the retroclones are compliant with the OGL, but that's really a matter between those publishers and WotC.)




Yes, I agree.


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## S'mon (Sep 30, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> Why are you asking the guy in the UK about American IP law when you're talking to an American attorney who represents some of the very RPG companies we're discussing?




Maybe your opinion is likely to be more biased?  I've seen US IP lawyers say some pretty amazing things, although it's good to see because understanding how US lawyers act so differently from UK lawyers despite the ostensible similarity of the law is very useful when I'm teaching international 
commercial law. The heat & passion of the US legal arena is one reason why companies around the world seek to avoid disputes coming under US law. This is very good for English lawyers as it makes us a favoured jurisdiction for commercial disputes.

Edit: If your advice on look & feel is "it's all a big confusing mess", I'm not sure that's the best advice. You should be able to advise your client 
(a) whether a specific activity is likely to be actually held infringing in court, and for what, as well as advising 
(b) How another company might react to an activity, and thus what the best tactics are re use or non-use of material.


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## Zireael (Sep 30, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> I am claiming that the matter is now so confused as to not be worth risking it for anyone.  The difference between "look and feel" and "rules" is so unclear that I don't think a reasonable person can make the distinction reliably.  You're claiming the distinction is there - and in theory it is.  But, in practice, it's not really something that can be achieved.  I see no bright line between what is a rule, and what is a look and feel, when things like "number of game pieces" and " the way pieces moved in the playing field" is a look and feel and also a rule.
> 
> If it's on the iconic character sheet of a version of a game, it's likely going to be look/feel.  Your ability scores are both rules and look/feel.  Hit points are both rules and look/feel.  Armor Class is both rules and look/feel.  Alignment is both rules and look/feel.  Move rate is both rules and look/feel.  There is no realistic distinguishing line between being a rule and also being look/feel.  And as the later is protected, the claim that rules are not protected becomes a meaningless point.  In practice, as a practical matter, they may be protected, and so nobody is going to mess with the issue.




Aye, that is a problem. I've seen various OGL projects heap on rules changes, but the basic mechanics remain unchanged. So are they look/feel or not?


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## dmccoy1693 (Sep 30, 2013)

Gundark said:


> Peole keep saying that the OGL benefits Pathfinder.I am skeptical that the OGL or their PRD (or whatever it is called) significantly benefits Pathfinder all that much. Note that I am NOT saying that there is zero benefit to the OGL. However their success comes from producing high quality adventure paths, not from a third party publisher putting out "Bob's guide to magic carpets" and that this is somehow keeping people buying Pathfinder.



 As the publisher of the Book of the River Nations, the book that many people told me that it saved their Kingmaker game, yes, Paizo has benefited from the OGL. All I did was repackage the exploration, kingdom building, and mass combat rules in one player friendly book, clean them up, add a few options of my own, add feats spells, archetypes, prestige classes and magic items and people bought it in droves. It is stil one of the best selling Pathfinder Compatible books out there. The book put the rules player needed to play the game in player hands and it make the exploration, kingdom building and mass combat sections of the adventure path playable.. Before that was published, players were floundering and unsure what to do in those areas becuse only the GM had those rules.


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## Wicht (Sep 30, 2013)

Zireael said:


> Aye, that is a problem. I've seen various OGL projects heap on rules changes, but the basic mechanics remain unchanged. So are they look/feel or not?




Apples and oranges.

The OGL gives you the freedom to do this. You could pull any single rule or mechanic you wanted from an OGL system and plug it into any game you wanted or you could reprint large chunks of the PFRPG Core rulebook verbatim and in either case you would be fine.


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## Wicht (Sep 30, 2013)

S'mon said:


> Yes, Kenzer too. IME the trick to not getting a C&D is is
> (a) don't use any registered trade marks
> (b) don't use a license (OGL, GSL) and then breach the terms
> (c) don't literally copy a significant chunk of text or art.




That seems like reasonable and sensible advice to me.


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## Zireael (Sep 30, 2013)

Guys, I'm making an OGL project and I need to know: is the phrase "System Reference Document" or the acronym "SRD" considered PI?


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## Umbran (Sep 30, 2013)

Well, several games out there have official "system reference documents" - D&D, Pathfinder, Fate, Fudge, and others released under the OGL.  So, no, I'm pretty sure "SRD" is not itself product identity.  "D&D SRD" would be, but only because it names D&D, specifically.


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## pemerton (Oct 1, 2013)

Zireael said:


> I've seen various OGL projects heap on rules changes, but the basic mechanics remain unchanged. So are they look/feel or not?



As others have noted upthread, the OGL is a copyright licence. The owner of the copyrighted material that is OGC is permitting you to use that material in return for conforming to the terms of the licence.



Zireael said:


> I'm making an OGL project and I need to know: is the phrase "System Reference Document" or the acronym "SRD" considered PI?



Are you referring to the 3.5 SRD?

If so, you might want to refer to this page: https://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/srd35

The file called "legal.rtf" has WotC's product identity statement in relation to the 3.5 SRD. The terms "SRD" and "System Reference Document" do not appear in that declaration of product identity.

What are you intending or hoping to do with the phrase?


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## GMforPowergamers (Oct 1, 2013)

it is a funny thought, if you made a game, would you make it open or closed? Part of me wants to say open so it can be played for years, but I would fear someone stealing it and my fan base... I just don't know what I would do.


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## billd91 (Oct 1, 2013)

GMforPowergamers said:


> it is a funny thought, if you made a game, would you make it open or closed? Part of me wants to say open so it can be played for years, but I would fear someone stealing it and my fan base... I just don't know what I would do.




I think it's also worth keeping in mind D&D's particular place in the gaming world and history. When the hobby's flagship game has been in danger of being tied up, probably for years, in bankruptcy litigation, you may start looking about for a creative solution to make sure that can't happen again. Thanks to the OGL, there's a version of D&D out there that seems to be permanently out of the bottle. If Hasbro were to lose its nut and crack down on D&D IP on the internet like TSR tried to do, there's a safe harbor version of the game for us to continue to write about and share stuff for.

If you made a game, do you expect you'd be in D&D's position?


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## dmccoy1693 (Oct 1, 2013)

GMforPowergamers said:


> it is a funny thought, if you made a game, would you make it open or closed? Part of me wants to say open so it can be played for years, but I would fear someone stealing it and my fan base... I just don't know what I would do.



"The tighter you tighten your grip, Tark, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."


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## Wicht (Oct 1, 2013)

GMforPowergamers said:


> it is a funny thought, if you made a game, would you make it open or closed? Part of me wants to say open so it can be played for years, but I would fear someone stealing it and my fan base... I just don't know what I would do.




Open. Definitely. Because 
1) As a gamer and a game designer, I want a game to be played. That's the real mark of success.

2) As a gamer and a game designer, I want the game experience to be the best possible for all involved. If I have a hand in that then I am satisfied, regardless of whether someone else has a hand in improving the experience. Boardgamers nd board game designers understand this already, pretty well, and I think the OGL is going to facilitate the same mentality moving more heavily into the RPG game community. The game Dominion was groundbreaking and soon spawned many deck-building offspring which used the same, relatively new mechanic of building a deck while you play. Many of these are superior games. That does not diminish Dominion, which provided the mechanic, but rather cements its legacy. One recently released game, Trains, is virtually identical to Dominion, but it adds a board to the mix. Board games do this all the time, taking mechanics from other games and finding new ways to thematically use them. The OGL allows the same innovation in RPGS, building off the work of others and thats a good thing for games and gaming, not a bad thing.

3) As a Christian, I believe it is better to give than to receive. If my success can help others be more successful, I am thankful for the opportunity to contribute to their success.


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## Zireael (Oct 1, 2013)

pemerton said:


> What are you intending or hoping to do with the phrase?




Point out differences from "SRD" or "System Reference Document". Let the player guess _which_ SRD I mean.


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## TerraDave (Oct 1, 2013)

Some facts:

1. 3E was published with the OGL, and was a massive, smash, success. It could have been bigger without it, but we will never know.

2. Pathfinder was published with the OGL, and is a massive, smash, success. Its hard to separate the two, actually.

3. GSL: total fail.

4. The 3E OGL can be used to do non 3E products. The retroclones are the big example here, but it seems like this would be very easy with Next.

5.  You can clone a game or do a supplement for it without the OGL. (yes, there has been a lot of copyright back and forth above...) Several 4E supplements were done this way. And look at games like Dragon Age or the most recent edition of Mutants and Masterminds. Given how much D&D is basically in the public domain, by its very nature it would seem easy to do this with next. 

So, from what I can tell, these all point in the same direction. But thats not a fact. Its a conclusion.


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## Nellisir (Oct 2, 2013)

GMforPowergamers said:


> it is a funny thought, if you made a game, would you make it open or closed? Part of me wants to say open so it can be played for years, but I would fear someone stealing it and my fan base... I just don't know what I would do.



Open.
As far as stealing it, name one OGL game and fanbase besides D&D that you've seen "stolen".  Would you support a publisher that stole a game from someone else?  If they are "stealing" via the OGL, then (a) it's not stealing, and (b) they have to give you credit in Section 15.  And (c), if it's a game that's based on an OGL game, you're already building on someone else's work.  And (d) if they're stealing outside of the OGL, then the OGL doesn't make a difference, so you're only hurting legitimate reuse.


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## Morrus (Oct 2, 2013)

Yeah, characterizing legit usage of OGC as stealing is a bit off-base. 

That said, some practices can be best described as parasitical. Unless someone adds their own content, simply reproducing OGC is a little icky. Pathfinder, for example, is a great example of how to do it: take 3.5 and then do a crap load of really hard work to it to make it something new.  Some OGC compilations from a few years ago are a bit on the parasitical side, though.


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## pemerton (Oct 2, 2013)

Morrus said:


> Yeah, characterizing legit usage of OGC as stealing is a bit off-base.



Sure. But I think posts implying or suggesting that IP owners are under some sort of obligation to the community to release their material as OGC are also a bit off-base. (I'm not suggesting that you've mae such implications or suggestions.)

Either we analyse the whole situation through the lense of legal permissibility - in which case their's no stealing but likewise no obligation - or the whole situation through some other (moral, political, etc lense) in which case notions of "stealing", "parasitism", etc, going all the way back to the Gygax-Arneson debates, might have work to do.


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## wedgeski (Oct 2, 2013)

Can I just ask, in simple terms, a question I've asked before, but this thread seems like a good place to do it again.

Let's say that, at Wizards Towers, there is a meeting on what kind of open licensing system they're going to put in place for DDN. It's going well, and lots of the pro's and cons mentioned in this thread are brought up, nodded over, discussed, argued, etc. Then, a couple of hours in, someone walks in with a Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, slams it down on the table, and walks out.

Does the meeting go on after that point? Or does everyone nod ruefully, sigh at what their predecessors wrought, and go get a sandwich instead?


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## an_idol_mind (Oct 2, 2013)

wedgeski said:


> Let's say that, at Wizards Towers, there is a meeting on what kind of open licensing system they're going to put in place for DDN. It's going well, and lots of the pro's and cons mentioned in this thread are brought up, nodded over, discussed, argued, etc. Then, a couple of hours in, someone walks in with a Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, slams it down on the table, and walks out.
> 
> Does the meeting go on after that point? Or does everyone nod ruefully, sigh at what their predecessors wrought, and go get a sandwich instead?




I think the person slamming the book down on the table would be missing the point that Pathfinder wouldn't have existed if the GSL of 4th edition had been more timely and less restrictive.


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## Morrus (Oct 2, 2013)

an_idol_mind said:


> I think the person slamming the book down on the table would be missing the point that Pathfinder wouldn't have existed if the GSL of 4th edition had been more timely and less restrictive.




Might not have.  Who knows!  Heck, even if the OGL itself had never existed, Pathfinder might still exist - just as popular, but with a slightly different ruleset.  The strength of Pathfinder is that Paizo is incredibly good at what they do; the OGL's a tool, but there are other tools.


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## Cyberen (Oct 2, 2013)

Concerning legal advice : IANAL, but people could consider first publishing in non Anglo Saxon countries. For instance, french droit d'auteur...
Concerning new games : go open ! It works well for Fate and SW, so it should work for you
Concerning WotC : IMHO, the 3.x flagship broke under its own weight (fundamental design flaws) and the 3.5 quagmire. I don't play Pathfinder, but I am thankful to Paizo for keeping the game alive while WotC is designing Next. I would guess WotC is aiming at a GSL like licence for 5e, with permissions specially tailored to the rule elements (for instance, an open How to Play and Combat chapters, but closed Classes and Races, or whatever... maybe the Class groups play a role in that !). It could go OGC later, once the first big wave of books have been sold, to make sure the edition would remain evergreen. If they are wise, they should also open DDI to an API model which would ensure both 3pp support and profitability.


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## Mistwell (Oct 2, 2013)

I've been torn on this issue, but I guess I've finally come to a conclusion.  These two points, to me, are correct:

1) Releasing 5e under the OGL is useful PR for getting some lapsed fans back in the WOTC fold;
2) The existing OGL will essentially allow all the negatives of a new OGL for 5e regardless.

Given the old OGL allows anyone to basically replicate 5e right now, with some tweaks here and there and filing off serial numbers, I see no point in not going ahead with 5e being under the OGL for PR reasons.  

If the old OGL did not exist, I'd think it would be a mistake to go ahead with an OGL for 5e.  But that's not the world we live in.  It does exist, so there is no real point to pretending 5e can be protected from third party use.


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## darjr (Oct 2, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> I've been torn on this issue, but I guess I've finally come to a conclusion.  These two points, to me, are correct:
> 
> 1) Releasing 5e under the OGL is useful PR for getting some lapsed fans back in the WOTC fold;
> 2) The existing OGL will essentially allow all the negatives of a new OGL for 5e regardless.
> ...




Interesting. I wasn't under the impression that 5e the game could be cloned with the OGL but that adventures and other things could be made for it using the OGL. But that wouldn't really be enough, and I think your right.

Can anyone say there are any big showstopper parts of the existing 5e that could not be cloned using the older OGL?


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## Cyberen (Oct 2, 2013)

5e is wriiten so 3e material should be compatible, but the core of 5e is really distinct from the 3.x SRD.
Could WotC maintain DDI for 5e under an OGL ? I don't think so (there would be craploads of competing software). So I don't think an OGL is on their radar.


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## darjr (Oct 2, 2013)

Cyberen said:


> 5e is wriiten so 3e material should be compatible, but the core of 5e is really distinct from the 3.x SRD.



Good point, which parts though, do you think?



Cyberen said:


> Could WotC maintain DDI for 5e under an OGL ? I don't think so (there would be craploads of competing software). So I don't think an OGL is on their radar.




I think they could. Though I agree, it would have to compete with others.


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## Cyberen (Oct 2, 2013)

Next take on Proficiencies, universal bonus, backgrounds, ability score increases, action economy, basic math for monsters, exploration, interaction, lack of WpL, magic items, ... is quite far from d20 OGC.
Compatibility is ensured by rebuilding PCs and monsters, but character sheet and monsters statblocks are not directly compatible. I would say the rulesets are no more compatible than 3e and 4e are.
The real key to openness is the status of the discrete abilities : 4e SRD was an empty shell, because it didn't contain Powers. For 5e, WotC could open (or not imo) specific build elements (specific backgrounds, races/ subraces , class groups / classes / subclasses, spells... ). I think they will go with a licence permitting to extend those elements, but not copypasting nor rewriting the RAW, ie modular design.
You can't compete in selling free rules in electronic form !


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## Mistwell (Oct 2, 2013)

Nobody thought you could replicate 1e D&D with the OGL, until someone did it.
Nobody thought you could replicate 4e D&D with the OGL, until someone (sort of) did it.

I feel confident someone can do it with 5e as well.  It's different, but not so different it cannot be done.  In fact, it's closer to 3e than 4e was, and so even easier to do under the OGL than 4e was.  

And of course the concept of proficiencies exists under the OGL, in the form of weapon proficiencies, armor proficiencies, even proficiencies granted by races, classes, and even backgrounds.  Ability score increases were there, all the listed actions, almost all the magic items, etc..

Plus, I believe some of those concepts were already similar to other OGL games which included those concepts in their own OGL.  The body of things to draw from for an OGL game is not just prior official editions of D&D, it's anything released under the OGL by any company.  

I think there is plenty to replicate 5e with. It wouldn't be perfect, but I think it would be close enough.


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## darjr (Oct 2, 2013)

Cyberen said:


> You can't compete in selling free rules in electronic form !




You can. I agree it wouldn't be easy. You'd have to do it in a way that was better than the competition. Or provide better service or a better add on software.


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## Morrus (Oct 2, 2013)

The OGL doesn't facilitate or not facilitate cloning a game.  The OGL is just how you release your clone when you're done.  You can clone 4E (i.e. rewrite every part of it in your own words), but the OGL doesn't assist you in that process.


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## Nellisir (Oct 3, 2013)

wedgeski said:


> Can I just ask, in simple terms, a question I've asked before, but this thread seems like a good place to do it again.
> 
> Let's say that, at Wizards Towers, there is a meeting on what kind of open licensing system they're going to put in place for DDN. It's going well, and lots of the pro's and cons mentioned in this thread are brought up, nodded over, discussed, argued, etc. Then, a couple of hours in, someone walks in with a Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, slams it down on the table, and walks out.
> 
> Does the meeting go on after that point? Or does everyone nod ruefully, sigh at what their predecessors wrought, and go get a sandwich instead?




I'd say that person is a couple of hours late, and that book should've been on the table when the meeting began.


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## Warbringer (Oct 3, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> Nobody thought you could replicate 1e D&D with the OGL, until someone did it.
> 
> Nobody thought you could replicate 4e D&D with the OGL, until someone (sort of) did it..



I think the existence of 13th age shows how far you can push the OGL


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## Morrus (Oct 3, 2013)

Warbringer said:


> I think the existence of 13th age shows how far you can push the OGL




_13th Age?_  The game is marvellous, but the OGL was pushed much, much further than that, long before that.  _Mutants & Masterminds_, for example, is far more of a push than _13th Age_.  As was _Spycraft_.  Or our own _Four Colour to Fantasy_ or_ Elements of Magic_. _13th Age_ is pretty tame compared to what some folks have done with the OGL.


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## Warbringer (Oct 3, 2013)

Morrus said:


> _13th Age?_  The game is marvellous, but the OGL was pushed much, much further than that, long before that.  _Mutants & Masterminds_, for example, is far more of a push than _13th Age_.  As was _Spycraft_.  Or our own _Four Colour to Fantasy_ or_ Elements of Magic_. _13th Age_ is pretty tame compared to what some folks have done with the OGL.




True, and all good games.


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## pemerton (Oct 3, 2013)

wedgeski said:


> Let's say that, at Wizards Towers, there is a meeting on what kind of open licensing system they're going to put in place for DDN. It's going well, and lots of the pro's and cons mentioned in this thread are brought up, nodded over, discussed, argued, etc. Then, a couple of hours in, someone walks in with a Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, slams it down on the table, and walks out.
> 
> Does the meeting go on after that point? Or does everyone nod ruefully, sigh at what their predecessors wrought, and go get a sandwich instead?





an_idol_mind said:


> I think the person slamming the book down on the table would be missing the point that Pathfinder wouldn't have existed if the GSL of 4th edition had been more timely and less restrictive.





Morrus said:


> Heck, even if the OGL itself had never existed, Pathfinder might still exist - just as popular, but with a slightly different ruleset.  The strength of Pathfinder is that Paizo is incredibly good at what they do; the OGL's a tool, but there are other tools.





Morrus said:


> The OGL doesn't facilitate or not facilitate cloning a game.  The OGL is just how you release your clone when you're done.  You can clone 4E (i.e. rewrite every part of it in your own words), but the OGL doesn't assist you in that process.



My sense is that the benefit of releasing under the OGL is that it lets you preserve a very high degree of fidelity in your description of game elements - classes and class features, races, monster abilities etc - which therefore makes the transition of players from the original to the clone as seamless as it can be. You can do this without concerns about being hit for copyright infringment. And the widespread use of the SRD as a reference tool just reinforces the prospects that your text will be experienced by your players as seamlessly merging with the text of the original game.

The challenge for a non-OGL 4e clone is to be textually close enough to the existing game for players to smoothly transition without being so close as to be an infringement of WotC's copyright. Probably not impossible, but I think not trivial either.



Mistwell said:


> Nobody thought you could replicate 1e D&D with the OGL, until someone did it.
> Nobody thought you could replicate 4e D&D with the OGL, until someone (sort of) did it.
> 
> I feel confident someone can do it with 5e as well.  It's different, but not so different it cannot be done.  In fact, it's closer to 3e than 4e was, and so even easier to do under the OGL than 4e was.





Mistwell said:


> Given the old OGL allows anyone to basically replicate 5e right now, with some tweaks here and there and filing off serial numbers, I see no point in not going ahead with 5e being under the OGL for PR reasons.
> 
> If the old OGL did not exist, I'd think it would be a mistake to go ahead with an OGL for 5e.  But that's not the world we live in.  It does exist, so there is no real point to pretending 5e can be protected from third party use.



If you are correct about cloning D&Dnext out of existing OGC (the SRD + other stuff out there) then (i) I think WotC are in a pretty difficult situation, and (ii) your advice to them is plausible.

There one thing that makes me wonder whether you're correct, though, and I wonder what you think of it: D&Dnext is presented in a very narrative-mixed-in-with-mechanics style, both in class features and spells. And those narratives are new ones, they're not just taken from the existing SRD. A clone based on current OGC couldn't just replicate all that descriptive text without breaching WotC's copyrights - so it would either have to present the D&Dnext mechanics in a more stripped back, mechanics-first way (a bit like 4e); or it would have to rewrite with its own descriptive texts. This might be an obstacle, then, to the "seamless transition" for players that a clone is aiming for.

If WotC think that they have achieved this sort of obstacle, then maybe they have a reason not to follow your advice. But I'm curious what you (and others) think about this.


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## trancejeremy (Oct 3, 2013)

Morrus said:


> The OGL doesn't facilitate or not facilitate cloning a game.  The OGL is just how you release your clone when you're done.  You can clone 4E (i.e. rewrite every part of it in your own words), but the OGL doesn't assist you in that process.




While you can copy the mechanics, you might run into problems if you use all the terminology. And spell names. And monsters (since a lot of have their own spin on mythology).

You can get around that by changing those things, but then you aren't really making a D&D clone anymore. 

The OGL lets you use a lot of what makes D&D, D&D.


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## Zireael (Oct 3, 2013)

> Nobody thought you could replicate 4e D&D with the OGL, until someone (sort of) did it.




What? Where? I want to check it out!

About 'cloning' D&D Next - I don't think cloning the specific style is possible. Cloning the mechanics - definitely possible.


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## Morrus (Oct 3, 2013)

trancejeremy said:


> While you can copy the mechanics, you might run into problems if you use all the terminology.




You're right; good point.


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## D'karr (Oct 3, 2013)

pemerton said:


> The challenge for a non-OGL 4e clone is to be textually close enough to the existing game for players to smoothly transition without being so close as to be an infringement of WotC's copyright. Probably not impossible, but *I think not trivial either*.




The highlighted part is the real crux of the issue.  It is *a lot* of work if you want to stay clear away from copyright infringement.  It is doable, but not trivial.  Even a clone that used the OGL as a basis would require a lot of work, but mechanically it is totally possible.


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## ThirdWizard (Oct 3, 2013)

Warbringer said:


> I think the existence of 13th age shows how far you can push the OGL




I really think a distinction needs to be made here between the OGL and OGC. OGL does not mean the D&D SRD or even _necessarily_ d20. Fudge is OGL, after all.


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## Warbringer (Oct 3, 2013)

ThirdWizard said:


> I really think a distinction needs to be made here between the OGL and OGC. OGL does not mean the D&D SRD or even _necessarily_ d20. Fudge is OGL, after all.




Ok. Explicitly, it is the Wizards of the Coast 2000 v1.0 OGL.


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## Mistwell (Oct 3, 2013)

Zireael said:


> What? Where? I want to check it out!




Well some would argue 13th Age, but closer to it is this project.


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## Wicht (Oct 3, 2013)

Warbringer said:


> Ok. Explicitly, it is the Wizards of the Coast 2000 v1.0 OGL.




I think you are misunderstanding. What you have just referenced is a license. It says nothing about the content released under that license. There is nothing stating that content released under the OGL has to be d20 based. Other games can be released under the exact same license. Therefore it is the Content that must be clarified and referenced.


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## Warbringer (Oct 3, 2013)

Wicht said:


> I think you are misunderstanding. What you have just referenced is a license. It says nothing about the content released under that license. There is nothing stating that content released under the OGL has to be d20 based. Other games can be released under the exact same license. Therefore it is the Content that must be clarified and referenced.



You're right, I'm am.

Does the OGL above not point back to the original open content within the SRD, hence they get to use D&Disms, such as spell names, classes, ability scores? And doesn't the reference in the language of the OGL point at the original open content?

If not, how do they use they gain access to classes, spells etc without breach of IP ownership by WoTC? (I'm really curious about this now)


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## darjr (Oct 3, 2013)

Here is the FATE Core OGL license. Is it identical to Wizards? I think it is.

http://www.faterpg.com/licensing/licensing-fate-ogl/full-ogl-text/


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## Wicht (Oct 3, 2013)

Warbringer said:


> You're right, I'm am.
> 
> Does the OGL above not point back to the original open content within the SRD, hence they get to use D&Disms, such as spell names, classes, ability scores? And doesn't the reference in the language of the OGL point at the original open content?
> 
> If not, how do they use they gain access to classes, spells etc without breach of IP ownership by WoTC? (I'm really curious about this now)




The OGL can point back to the SRD. Section 15 is the pertinent section. Each book that uses the OGL references prior OGC (Open Gaming Content) in section 15 and then lists itself in section 15. 

Thus, if I was doing a Pathfinder book, I would reference in section 15 the SRD, the Core Rulebook, The Book of Experimental might, the Tome of Horrors, any other book I might wish to use, and then would list my own book. 

If I was doing a non-d20 book, I might reference a Fate book or some other book. But if you look at the Fate form used above, it is the WotC OGL, but it does not reference the SRD, rather it becomes a new base upon which to build.

But any content released under the OGL is thus OGC, and can be used by anyone else. The d20 SRD, released by Wizards, has reference to some particulars, such as monster names, Alignment, and the like, that make it easier to use to recreate a game using the same terms, because the terms themselves have become Open Content.


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## ThirdWizard (Oct 3, 2013)

Warbringer said:


> If not, how do they use they gain access to classes, spells etc without breach of IP ownership by WoTC? (I'm really curious about this now)




To attempt to simplify it, the Open Gaming License is a contract that says "I'm going to make specific parts of my game Open, so anyone can use it." There is no content in the OGL. It's just a contract. Anyone can take part in the contract.

What Wizards of the Coast circa 2000 did was create a document, the d20 SRD, and use the License to agree to make it Open. Thus, the d20 SRD became Open Gaming Content, available for anyone to use.

If you go and create a wholly new game, with no ties to d20 or any other system, you can release it under the OGL. Anyone can. Then, that RPG material will be Open Gaming Content, and others who use the Open Gaming License can use it for their own games. That's what happened with Fudge, which was released as OGC. Evil Hat took it and made FATE, which is a Fudge derivative that is also Open.


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## Warbringer (Oct 3, 2013)

[MENTION=221]Wicht[/MENTION]

thanks for that answer, i always read section 15 as a general copyright, but now it all makes actual sense.

---
Q: What is the COPYRIGHT NOTICE?

A: The COPYRIGHT NOTICE is a specific part of the License itself, as opposed to a general copyright notice that might appear elsewhere in a given work. The License requires that you combine all the COPYRIGHT NOTICE sections of each Open Game License you are extracting or deriving Open Game Content from, and include the consolidated notice with the copy of the Open Game License you will be distributing.

This mechanism is the way that proper credit is retained for each person who contributed some work to the Open Gaming community. No matter how small the contribution, each and every COPYRIGHT NOTICE propagates forward.


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## Wicht (Oct 3, 2013)

You are most welcome, glad to help.


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## dmccoy1693 (Oct 3, 2013)

wedgeski said:


> Let's say that, at Wizards Towers, there is a meeting on what kind of open licensing system they're going to put in place for DDN. It's going well, and lots of the pro's and cons mentioned in this thread are brought up, nodded over, discussed, argued, etc. Then, a couple of hours in, someone walks in with a Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, slams it down on the table, and walks out.




You're absolutely right to ask this question and it is a good one. I think more than anything else that Pathfinder is proof positive that that Wizards absolutely *should* use the OGL for 5e. 

I know what you're thinking: I'm crazy. Wrong. I'm thinking like a corporate executive. 

What does a corporate executive care about: *selling products*. Keep that in mind for a slightly different take on the above scenario.

First some history. Late 90's, White Wolf was gaining dominance over (possibly even beating) D&D 2E. *They were not selling as much products as they should be.* 

Then 3E came along, Wizards release the core rules for everyone to use under the OGL, giving the fans a sense of ownership that they never had before. This made the fans happy, *allowing them to sell more books*. 

Then they switched to 3.5 and released the core rules again under the OGL. The fans still had that same sense of ownership. While it did not sell as well as 3E, it did sell still quite well. *They were selling good numbers of books.* 

Then came the switch to 4E and used a completely different license that was not give the fans the same sense of ownership. Infact it felt more like a leased vehicle or a rented apartment then owning a home or a car. Fans were not happy and *thus did not buy in good numbers.* 

Meanwhile Pathfinder, a game that was using the OGL, gave the fans that same sense of ownership to the rules. This made the fans of D&D happy, and it did not take long for them to outsell D&D. *Pathfinder sold in good numbers for using the OGL.* 

Even less well known games that used the OGL were doing well. Spirit of the Century, Traveller, Mutants and Masterminds, and a bunch others. They all had that same sense of ownership and made their fans happy. *They were selling in good numbers.*

So the conclusion that a corporate executive would draw is:
Use the OGL =>
Give customers a sense of ownership =>
Customers are happy =>
*Higher sales.* 

The trend is pretty clear. *Use the OGL => Higher Sales*. If anything, Pathfinder should be a cautionary tale of why Wizards should never have abandoned the OGL in the first place and that not going OGL for 5e will hurt sales now. 

Now to answer everyone who has been saying, "But that will hurt 6E in 5 years." Yea, well, do you know what 5 years is to a corporate executive: _20 quarters of earning reports_. If you were a corporate executive, would you really want to tell shareholders for the next 20 quarters that you a) are *making lower sales *then you could have because you didn't use some obscure marketing tool that is niche to the industry that would have made customers happy, or b) you have *higher sales then in previous quarters *because you allowed the fans a sense of ownership, making them happy that also enabled somebody in their home garage to make something compatible with your product and not get sued over it? What would you rather say?


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## Morrus (Oct 3, 2013)

dmccoy1693 said:


> You're absolutely right to ask this question and it is a good one. I think more than anything else that Pathfinder is proof positive that that Wizards absolutely *should* use the OGL for 5e.
> 
> I know what you're thinking: I'm crazy. Wrong. I'm thinking like a corporate executive.
> 
> ...




However, you are treating correlation as causation.  Perhaps the reason that 3.x and Pathfinder sold and sell so well is that they're damnably good games?  And customers like damnably good games?

One reason I think this is the case is that none of my gaming group has the faintest idea what an OGL is, nor do they care.  They do know that they liked 3.x, that it was a good game, and that Pathfinder in their mind is the current version of that good game.  I have no way of knowing, but I would wager a lot on that being the case of the majority of gamers.

I'm not saying the OGL isn't a factor; I'm just saying we're guessing here.  We don't really know anything non-anecdotal, and nobody's in a position to make declarations.


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## Wicht (Oct 3, 2013)

At the same time, being OGL does help get a game exposure. I don't imagine it hurts Evil Hat much when Rite Publishing puts out a nice little game which introduces players to the Fate System.


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## DEFCON 1 (Oct 3, 2013)

dmccoy1693 said:


> Then 3E came along, Wizards release the core rules for everyone to use under the OGL, giving the fans a sense of ownership that they never had before. This made the fans happy, *allowing them to sell more books*.




I would quibble with this, simply because I don't understand what your statement "giving the fans a sense of ownership" is meant to mean.

Did the OGL give certain fans the idea that they could design their own D&D rules/products and then sell them to other people?  Sure.  And okay, for them, the sense they were now a part of the D&D design and sales team in a manner of speaking _could_ be considered a type of "ownership" of D&D.

But in the grand scheme of all  those who played 3rd edition?  Those people were an _exceedingly_ small group.  For the rest of us?  The other 99% of 3E players who didn't create product to sell?  How did we "own" D&D differently than we had in the past?  Because now there were more choices in product to buy?  Yeah, sure, we had more product to choose from since now there were a whole heap of companies selling stuff to us... but I fail to see how that meant we "owned" D&D differently than before.  We still liked the game same as we ever did... we still bought the books that we thought were cool same as we ever did... we still played the game same as we ever did.  Speaking for myself... I felt no different about owning D&D 3E as I did owning 2nd edition or AD&D.  I bought the books, I played with the books, I enjoyed the books.  Same as I always did.

So no... I don't think a "sense of ownership" had anything to do with why 3E sold well... unless you can explain more specifically what exactly this "sense of ownership" is you are actually are talking about.


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## ThirdWizard (Oct 3, 2013)

DEFCON 1 said:


> So no... I don't think a "sense of ownership" had anything to do with why 3E sold well... unless you can explain more specifically what exactly this "sense of ownership" is you are actually are talking about.




Not to speak for [MENTION=51747]dmccoy1693[/MENTION] but back in the '90s with the Internet becoming more popular, people were taking the fan material that at this point was the norm, and posting it online. There was huge backlash from publishers about this kind of thing. Look up the response of TSR, as well as other game publishers, and you'll see it was incredibly adversarial. Cease and desists, threats to sue, these were not the responses that the public had anticipated.

And even if WotC, after purchasing D&D, promised not to sue fans, there wasn't a lot of good will left. There wasn't a lot of trust.

The OGL gave fans a very real safeguard against this kind of thing. At that point in time, it was probably the most important aspect of the OGL. Not to sell the games, but to be sure that WotC wasn't going to send the lawyers after you or to have a safe haven if WotC got out of control like TSR did before them.


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## Wicht (Oct 3, 2013)

DEFCON 1 said:


> But in the grand scheme of all  those who played 3rd edition?  Those people were an _exceedingly_ small group.  For the rest of us?  The other 99% of 3E players who didn't create product to sell?




Huh, I know that when the OGL hit and I realized what it was, it made me, as a fan, feel like I had a greater ownership of the game, and in fact, it helped spur me into wanting to contribute instead of merely consuming. I always assumed that was the typical response and that most RPG players really invested in the hobby had a desire to be creative contributors.


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## dmccoy1693 (Oct 3, 2013)

ThirdWizard said:


> Not to speak for [MENTION=51747]dmccoy1693[/MENTION] but back in the '90s with the Internet becoming more popular, people were taking the fan material that at this point was the norm, and posting it online. There was huge backlash from publishers about this kind of thing. Look up the response of TSR, as well as other game publishers, and you'll see it was incredibly adversarial. Cease and desists, threats to sue, these were not the responses that the public had anticipated.
> 
> And even if WotC, after purchasing D&D, promised not to sue fans, there wasn't a lot of good will left. There wasn't a lot of trust.
> 
> The OGL gave fans a very real safeguard against this kind of thing. At that point in time, it was probably the most important aspect of the OGL. Not to sell the games, but to be sure that WotC wasn't going to send the lawyers after you or to have a safe haven if WotC got out of control like TSR did before them.



Exactly what I was talking about. Thank you.


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## Hussar (Oct 4, 2013)

> Then came the switch to 4E and used a completely different license that was not give the fans the same sense of ownership. Infact it felt more like a leased vehicle or a rented apartment then owning a home or a car. Fans were not happy and thus did not buy in good numbers.
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ible-Publishers-Involved/page21#ixzz2gheSOSIg




But, is this actually true?  The 4e PHB outsold any other PHB since 1e.  Unless WOTC was flat out lying about that.  The game is profitable enough that it has allowed WOTC to take a 2 year hiatus from publishing any new material while they develop 5e, which is unprecedented for any gaming company.

Put it this way.  Do you think Paizo could close up publishing today, not produce a single new product for two years, and develop Pathfinder 2.0?  Do you believe that Pathfinder is that strong?

I honestly wonder if 4e isn't the mostly evergreen product that they said it would be.  Sure, Pathfinder might be outselling in brick and mortar stores.  But, who cares?  It's not like WOTC is selling anything in that venue currently anyway.  And, let's not forget, 4e is still outselling everything else on the market, even without publishing a single new product for over a year now.  That's some pretty decent inertia built up right there.

I think the presumption that Paizo, because it's selling better in brick and mortar stores, is automatically the dominant game, is just that - a presumption.  Which makes it very difficult to use as a basis for any analysis.  It just ignores so much.  D&D, according to Ryan Dancy, is a 30 million dollars a year industry.  It's easily possible that the DDI alone can account for 25-30% of that.  Not a bad deal for something that is costing peanuts to keep running.


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## Mark CMG (Oct 4, 2013)

Morrus said:


> We don't really know anything non-anecdotal, and nobody's in a position to make declarations.





Except that we do know something non-anecdotal in that we know generally that the sales are good for the games you saying might only be selling well because they are quality games. But we also know that there are plenty of games of quality that do not use the OGL and don't sell anywhere near as well.  Further, we have seen another game use a poorer version of the OGL, the GSL, that many would say is of equal quality, not manage to retain the full market share of the previous version with the OGL, despite having the power of the same brand name behind it and despite having great advances in the technology being leveraged to support it.  On the one hand, you are using anecdotal evidence, the knowledge base of your group, to dismiss the strength of the OGL as a factor, while on the other hand dismissing the actual evidence based your relative devaluation of the OGL as a factor.  What you suggest is that you can use anecdotal evidence to dismiss the OGL but not use the actual non-anecdotal evidence to favor the OGL.  I find the argument unconvincing.


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## Morrus (Oct 4, 2013)

Mark CMG said:


> Except that we do know something non-anecdotal in that we know generally that the sales are good for the games you saying might only be selling well because they are quality games. But we also know that there are plenty of games of quality that do not use the OGL and don't sell anywhere near as well.  Further, we have seen another game use a poorer version of the OGL, the GSL, that many would say is of equal quality, not manage to retain the full market share of the previous version with the OGL, despite having the power of the same brand name behind it and despite having great advances in the technology being leveraged to support it.  On the one hand, you are using anecdotal evidence, the knowledge base of your group, to dismiss the strength of the OGL as a factor, while on the other hand dismissing the actual evidence based your relative devaluation of the OGL as a factor.  What you suggest is that you can use anecdotal evidence to dismiss the OGL but not use the actual non-anecdotal evidence to favor the OGL.  I find the argument unconvincing.




I literally couldn't parse that paragraph!  To clarify: what I am saying is that none of us are in a position to declare exactly why 3.x/Pathfinder sold/sells better than 4E.  Perhaps it was because it had an OGL; perhaps it was just that folks liked that game more.  I don't know; but I don't believe anybody else in this thread does, either.


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## DEFCON 1 (Oct 4, 2013)

Wicht said:


> Huh, I know that when the OGL hit and I realized what it was, it made me, as a fan, feel like I had a greater ownership of the game, and in fact, it helped spur me into wanting to contribute instead of merely consuming. I always assumed that was the typical response and that most RPG players really invested in the hobby had a desire to be creative contributors.




Creative contributors for what purpose?  To make money off your creativity?

I was always a creative contributor to Dungeons & Dragons.  I bought it, I played it, I invented stuff for it, I created monsters and characters and adventures and worlds.  3E did not change that.  I didn't become "more creative" just because other companies sold their own D&D material.  All it changed was that I could theoretically sell my stuff to other people too if they wanted to buy it.

But yeah, in that one regard... if you had aspirations to have a career in game design, I can see why you'd feel more "ownership" towards the game (since you needed the game's ubiquitousness and advertising to actually get people to see your stuff and maybe possibly buy it in the first place.)  You were part of the Dungeons & Dragon sales force now, and its success drove your success.  But the number of people who actually had those designs?  We obviously have no official data to back it up... but in my own opinion based upon just seeing how many game companies / LLCs came into existence during those years... I suspect the number of 3E players who actually became merchandisers of their OGL material was an exceedingly small proportion of the total player base.

Which means for the rest of us... the game didn't really change.  We "owned" it just as much as we always did.  By buying it.


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## Wicht (Oct 4, 2013)

DEFCON 1 said:


> Creative contributors for what purpose?  To make money off your creativity?




No, to share that creativity. Getting a little something in cash is nice once in a while, but really, the true reward for me is hearing about people using and reading stuff I had a hand in. 

The OGL made that possibility seem more likely and indeed it did make it more likely. I actually figured most long term roleplayers felt the same way about their own work. Talking with them seems to suggest the drive to create and share that creativity is not a small factor in the RPG community, at least that has always been the feeling I get from our crowd. Maybe I am wrong. But I would like to think not.


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## Nellisir (Oct 4, 2013)

DEFCON 1 said:


> Creative contributors for what purpose?  To make money off your creativity?
> 
> I was always a creative contributor to Dungeons & Dragons.  I bought it, I played it, I invented stuff for it, I created monsters and characters and adventures and worlds.  3E did not change that.  I didn't become "more creative" just because other companies sold their own D&D material.  All it changed was that I could theoretically sell my stuff to other people too if they wanted to buy it.
> 
> ...




I was on TSR AOL from 1996 until it...dissolved, or whatever, and my outlook was much the same as Wicht's and ThirdWizards.  The OGL gave me a "safe" way of putting my home campaign material online, whether or not I published anything (and I didn't until this year). The security to do that had literally not been there before. There was fan material online, much of it in the TSR/AOL file library, but there was real uncertainty and paranoia about moving fan material onto an independent site.


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## darjr (Oct 4, 2013)

The other thing the OGL provides is continuity for players. Even if you never plan to publish a thing you might have a lot invested in the current edition. The OGL guarantees that others can make new stuff that supports all that material regardless of what the parent company does.


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## dmccoy1693 (Oct 4, 2013)

Morrus said:


> you are treating correlation as causation.




And you're treating corporate executives like they understand the difference between correlation and causation. While I do want to believe that Wizards is a company that is a different kind of company than most of Corporate America, I vividly remember Scott Rouse in a candid moment here on these boards bemoaning the fact that the license was stuck in committee*s* and how he was spending a considerable about of time at that particular point in time in meetings that were going nowhere. I realized that while the game developers, much like software programmers, are hard workers and love games much like you and me and everyone else here on these boards, they have a layer above them that may or may not be as such. They are just like every other corporate management out there. They may or may not understand the nuances of the industry all that well. They may or may not understand why they should allow their fans to post their homebrew material on their website. They may or may not understand what is a good game. 

What they do understand is how to manage people to do the work, profits, and graphs. And what I described in my post above would be the basis for a graph on how to make more profits. Now while it is true that I did take facts that are correlated and make them out to be causation, if you make a bar graph of sales vs OGL usage, a corporate executive would see the two as directly related and say "Go OGL." Seriously, this kind of thinking is straight out of the Dilbert (or any corporate office).


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## dmccoy1693 (Oct 4, 2013)

Hussar said:


> But, is this actually true?  The 4e PHB outsold any other PHB since 1e.  Unless WOTC was flat out lying about that.  The game is profitable enough that it has allowed WOTC to take a 2 year hiatus from publishing any new material while they develop 5e, which is unprecedented for any gaming company.




While I don't think that Wizards is lying (or even misleading) how well the 4e PHB1 sold, I highly suspect that the 4e PHB 2 and 3 sold nowhere near as well, not to mention all other supplements and cards and so forth. I also suspect that it wasn't D&D's profits that allowed them to take the time to develop 5e but rather Magic's since MtG is Hasbro's #2 property. I imagine that profits from that game alone allows them to fuel the rest of the company, no matter how well anything else sold. Also, since the start of 2012, they have release 21 D&D fiction titles (plus 1 more coming later this year), 2 D&D Board games and 1 expansion, 6 dungeon command sets, collectors version of all their major versions and released much of their back stock as PDFs. So they have managed their property quite well to pay the bills and keep the money coming in while working on the new version. 

Besides, no company would just stop releasing for 2 solid years if they had a choice. The way a company would want to do it is the way they did the 4e transition: produce material for the old version until the minute they switched over. They probably looked at a cost-benefit analysis and discovered it would cost them less money to focus all their people (not working on the above mentioned products) on a new version instead of splitting their people between coming up with more products and developing a new edition. From a business prospective, this is the most logical answer.


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## pemerton (Oct 4, 2013)

Warbringer said:


> Does the OGL above not point back to the original open content within the SRD, hence they get to use D&Disms, such as spell names, classes, ability scores? And doesn't the reference in the language of the OGL point at the original open content?
> 
> If not, how do they use they gain access to classes, spells etc without breach of IP ownership by WoTC? (I'm really curious about this now)





Warbringer said:


> i always read section 15 as a general copyright, but now it all makes actual sense.



The first time that you actually release a game text as OGC under the OGL, the terms of the licence (clause 6) specify that you include a copyright notice for your game text within section 15 of the licence as that licence appears within your game text.

To see where WotC did this for their SRD, have a look the file called "legal.rtf" on this webpage.



darjr said:


> Here is the FATE Core OGL license. Is it identical to Wizards? I think it is.



Yes. You can see that the text of the licence is itself copyright WotC.


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## pemerton (Oct 4, 2013)

dmccoy1693 said:


> 3E came along, Wizards release the core rules for everyone to use under the OGL, giving the fans a sense of ownership that they never had before. This made the fans happy, *allowing them to sell more books*.
> 
> Then they switched to 3.5 and released the core rules again under the OGL. The fans still had that same sense of ownership. While it did not sell as well as 3E, it did sell still quite well. *They were selling good numbers of books.*
> 
> Then came the switch to 4E and used a completely different license that was not give the fans the same sense of ownership. Infact it felt more like a leased vehicle or a rented apartment then owning a home or a car. Fans were not happy and *thus did not buy in good numbers.*



I don't know of any particular evidence that 4e was not bought "in good numbers".

I don't see why WotC would have stopped publishing 3.5 and started with 4e if they didn't think they could improve their sales. And as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has indicated, they did. I think it's pretty clear they didn't reach their $50 million target. Is their evidence that their D&D revenue stream in (say) 2011 was significantly different from the D&D revenue stream in (say) 2007?



dmccoy1693 said:


> Meanwhile Pathfinder, a game that was using the OGL, gave the fans that same sense of ownership to the rules. This made the fans of D&D happy, and it did not take long for them to outsell D&D. *Pathfinder sold in good numbers for using the OGL.*



Do we know that PF has generated more revenue over its lifetime than 4e over its?

 [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has said that we don't know these things. I think he's right.



dmccoy1693 said:


> I also suspect that it wasn't D&D's profits that allowed them to take the time to develop 5e but rather Magic's since MtG is Hasbro's #2 property. I imagine that profits from that game alone allows them to fuel the rest of the company



Does WotC subsidise D&D via MtG? I've never heard this said before, which isn't to say that it's not the case. But I thought each product line reported as a distinct item to Hasbro, and that that is why D&D has to aim for a $50 million target on its own.



dmccoy1693 said:


> Even less well known games that used the OGL were doing well. Spirit of the Century, Traveller, Mutants and Masterminds, and a bunch others. They all had that same sense of ownership and made their fans happy. *They were selling in good numbers.*



Are you seriously suggesting that these games sold better than 4e? 

So the conclusion that a corporate executive would draw is:
Use the OGL =>
Give customers a sense of ownership =>
Customers are happy =>
*Higher sales.* [/quote]The conclusion I would draw from the 3E/PF/4e debacle, were I a WotC executive, is that pissing off your fans in a niche hobby market, in an environment in which you have granted all your competitors a royalty free licence to try and capture your customer base, is something to be avoided.

I would therefore look for a way to avoid pissing off my fans without granting my competitors a royalty free licence to try and capture my customer base. The D&Dnext "big tent" rhetoric seems to be one element of the "avoid pissing off my fans" part of this strategy.



dmccoy1693 said:


> Now to answer everyone who has been saying, "But that will hurt 6E in 5 years." Yea, well, do you know what 5 years is to a corporate executive: _20 quarters of earning reports_. If you were a corporate executive, would you really want to tell shareholders for the next 20 quarters that you a) are *making lower sales *then you could have because you didn't use some obscure marketing tool that is niche to the industry that would have made customers happy, or b) you have *higher sales then in previous quarters *because you allowed the fans a sense of ownership, making them happy that also enabled somebody in their home garage to make something compatible with your product and not get sued over it? What would you rather say?



The OGL is not an obscure marketing tool. It is a royalty free licence to your IP, which - for a publishing company - is one of your most valuable assets.

As a corporate executive, my job would include working out to leverage my assets to generate maximum revenue over the near- to medium-term. (I agree the long term tends to be disregarded.) It is going to take a fair bit to persuade me that the best way to do that is to give all my competitors a royalty free licence to exploit those assets.

I more-or-less agree with [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] upthread, though I'd put it in terms of "customer preferences" rather than "quality". 4e is a game that seems designed to people who like (i) gonzo fantasy, (ii) highly technical action resolution, and (iii) a high degree of indie-style player protagonism achieved via metagame mechanics. In these respects it overlaps somewhat with Burning Wheel, though BW is less gonzo and more gritty and thematically "serious". WotC - whether guided by Heinsoo, or Mearls, or Slavicsek, or Ron Edwards, or whomever - seemed to have thought that there was a big market for this sort of game which Luke Crane had not yet tapped but which they could. It turns out they were wrong. (Though I don't think they really had the best go at it that they might have - their GMing advice was so-so, and their pre-packaged adventures were bad.)

Misjudge your customer preferences like this, in an environment in which your competitor can continue to publish material for the ruleset that you've abandoned, and you won't do as well as you had hoped! The idea that people who hate fighter dailies, and "player empowerment", and "everything is core", would have happily played 4e if only it was released as OGC, strikes me as somewhat fanciful.


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## Cyberen (Oct 4, 2013)

The Official Executive Advice I would give to WotC is :
Stop competing with yourself !
Which is exactly what they're aiming for with Next "Big tent" approach.
As PHB are major hits sale-wise, I wouldn't let anybody be able to compete with mine for some time (one or two GenCons/Xmas, perhaps)
Once the edition is on rails and thriving, I would release most of it as OGC, and keep on selling supporting material (including already paid, prior editions material !), transmedia spin-offs, etc.
I would also rewrite the OGL in order to permit limited copying, book printing, but keeping web-based massive diffusion under control, in order to protect their very lucrative DDI subscription model. (and I don't have a clue about the means to achieve those ends)


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## DEFCON 1 (Oct 4, 2013)

Wicht said:


> Talking with them seems to suggest the drive to create and share that creativity is not a small factor in the RPG community, at least that has always been the feeling I get from our crowd. Maybe I am wrong. But I would like to think not.




I would not disagree with you here in the slightest.  I think you are absolutely right, people enjoy showing off their stuff and knowing that other people are making use of it.  My only quibble is with the idea that this was only possible _because_ of the OGL, and that is what drove people to buying the game.  Nellsir right below your post made an interesting point that he felt "safer" putting his stuff online that he did before that... but at the same time, he was in fact posting his stuff online prior even when he didn't feel as safe.  So it wasn't the OGL that drove him to buy 3E, because he did with 3E the same stuff he did with editions prior.

I'm only bringing this up because dmmcoy used "sense of ownership" so many times in his post to justify the use of the OGL, that it just came off to me as nothing more than a marketing buzzword.  So I'm trying to figure out what exactly he means by it in a way that truly illustrates why people bought 3E because of it.  And "sense of ownership" just isn't passing my sniff test.


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## Zireael (Oct 4, 2013)

Wicht said:


> The OGL can point back to the SRD. Section 15 is the pertinent section. Each book that uses the OGL references prior OGC (Open Gaming Content) in section 15 and then lists itself in section 15.
> 
> Thus, if I was doing a Pathfinder book, I would reference in section 15 the SRD, the Core Rulebook, The Book of Experimental might, the Tome of Horrors, any other book I might wish to use, and then would list my own book.
> 
> ...




"You must spread some Experience Points around".
Exactly. It's as easy as pie.


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## Wicht (Oct 4, 2013)

DEFCON 1 said:


> So it wasn't the OGL that drove him to buy 3E, because he did with 3E the same stuff he did with editions prior.




Yes, but the attitude towards doing that stuff was different. I know exactly what Dale was meaning, because I felt it when I realized what the OGL was. It happened after I bought my first 3e book, but once it sank in, the attitude change towards the game itself (and WotC) was deep and profound, though the effects were not immediately obvious. 

While I hesitate to criticize WotC, because to some it comes off as edition warring, which it is not because it happened way before 4e, I would point out, that WotC squandered that feeling of good-will produced in me by the OGL. They simply never took advantage of it and pushed the OGL aside so that other companies, such as Green Ronin, and Swords and Sorcery, and Necromancer became the guardians of the OGL. This meant that for me, in a practical sense I began looking away from WotC well before 4e was announced and by the time 4e was rolling out, my fidelity, such as it was, was with Paizo and Necromancer. But it was not solely because of the products these companies were producing, though I thought the Rise of the Runelords to be fantastic, but because they were supporting the OGL, and the OGL was a thing that created a sense of "ownership" in me towards the game.  And all of this was well before I had anything published.


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## Wicht (Oct 4, 2013)

Cyberen said:


> I would also rewrite the OGL in order to permit limited copying, book printing, but keeping web-based massive diffusion under control, in order to protect their very lucrative DDI subscription model. (and I don't have a clue about the means to achieve those ends)




One of the features of the OGL is that if a new version is released, a revised version, publishers can choose to use the version they prefer (as per section 9 of the license), so trying to create a more restrictive form of the OGL is sorta pointless. They either need to use the OGL, use a different license, or use no license. Marvelous thing that OGL, covers a lot of possibilities


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## DEFCON 1 (Oct 4, 2013)

Wicht said:


> Yes, but the attitude towards doing that stuff was different. I know exactly what Dale was meaning, because I felt it when I realized what the OGL was. It happened after I bought my first 3e book, but once it sank in, the attitude change towards the game itself (and WotC) was deep and profound, though the effects were not immediately obvious.
> 
> While I hesitate to criticize WotC, because to some it comes off as edition warring, which it is not because it happened way before 4e, I would point out, that WotC squandered that feeling of good-will produced in me by the OGL. They simply never took advantage of it and pushed the OGL aside so that other companies, such as Green Ronin, and Swords and Sorcery, and Necromancer became the guardians of the OGL. This meant that for me, in a practical sense I began looking away from WotC well before 4e was announced and by the time 4e was rolling out, my fidelity, such as it was, was with Paizo and Necromancer. But it was not solely because of the products these companies were producing, though I thought the Rise of the Runelords to be fantastic, but because they were supporting the OGL, and the OGL was a thing that created a sense of "ownership" in me towards the game.  And all of this was well before I had anything published.




I don't doubt that open gaming has had this big of an impact on you as a consumer.  But the real question is though... is how many other people actually see things the way you do?  Enough such that it makes an actually noticeable difference in the sales of 5E?  Maybe I'm cynical, but I don't think it's really that much of a factor in the grand scheme of things, despite what people say.

I mean let's be honest... besides the OGL, what were the two other reasons people said they wouldn't support WotC and/or 4E?

1) It was the "badwrongfun" attitude that they supposedly gave off when they introduced 4E.  But they've made it a point to change that during these open playtest months, and are trying to make the game as inclusive as possible.  But I don't believe we've heard _nearly_ the same number of people giving WotC credit for this attitude change and their word that they will give 5E a fair shake, as we did the number of people caterwauling against them back in '07 and '08.

2)  It was not having any D&D products available for download that made countless people scream out that they would never support WotC so long as they had these byzantine attitudes and hatred towards their customers.  But now that Wizards have released all their old material in PDF form... I don't recall seeing nearly the same amount of people on boards like this saying they are now coming back to WotC's D&D because of it.

Now is my memory possibly a bit faulty on my recollections on the numbers and strident attitudes of people back in the transition to 4E?  Maybe.  But at the same time... I honestly don't think so.  I really think that anyone who was here during that time would agree that the amount of time, energy, and anger spent on ripping WotC a new one for the "badwrongfun" and the removal of the PDFs far, far outweighed the time, energy, and thankfulness people have had towards WotC for changing their stances on both of those point.  I mean hell... we STILL get people complaining about the tired "skip the guards to get to the fun" statement Wyatt made.

So I'm sorry... but I just don't see how changing their stance on the OGL would really have any substantive impact on people's attitudes towards WotC enough to actually generate substantial additional sales of 5E over what they'd get without it... since their changes to the other two have not seemed to create a giant groundswell of support either.

But like I said.. maybe I'm just cynical.


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## Wicht (Oct 4, 2013)

DEFCON 1 said:


> I don't doubt that open gaming has had this big of an impact on you as a consumer.  But the real question is though... is how many other people actually see things the way you do?




I don't know. I can only speak for myself. I don't claim to be representative of anyone other than me.



> So I'm sorry... but I just don't see how changing their stance on the OGL would really have any substantive impact on people's attitudes towards WotC enough to actually generate substantial additional sales of 5E over what they'd get without it... since their changes to the other two have not seemed to create a giant groundswell of support either.
> 
> But like I said.. maybe I'm just cynical.




Well, like I said, they had begun to lose me long before 4e and it was their utilization of the OGL, or lack thereof, which moved me out of their camp. My departure was not a matter of hostility (I found myself annoyed by some of their moves but there was no anger on my part), but a more passive thing due to other companies picking up the slack. If WotC had utilized a better attitude towards the OGL from earlier on, I think things would have happened very differently. Because a different attitude would have led to different behavior. 

But that's all hindsight speculation and is irrelevant to what did happen. But I do think that a change in attitude towards the OGL would help them still today.


----------



## dmccoy1693 (Oct 4, 2013)

DEFCON 1 said:


> I'm only bringing this up because dmmcoy used "sense of ownership" so many times in his post to justify the use of the OGL, that it just came off to me as nothing more than a marketing buzzword.  So I'm trying to figure out what exactly he means by it in a way that truly illustrates why people bought 3E because of it.




You hit the nail on the head exactly how I am trying to use it. I said that I am thinking like a corporate executive that may or may not understand the nuances of our industry or even what goes into making a good game. 

Most gamers (on both side of the debate) banter about the OGL from an almost philosophical prospective: "Did Paizo steal Wizards' customers?" "Is it good for the industry as a whole?" "Does it encourage good game designers?" etc. But the decision to use or not use the OGL rests (or rested, if the decision has already been made and they are just hanging onto that little tidbit) with an executive wants to hear the bottom line: *"Will it help this company sell more books?"* and not someone that is wax philosophical about the OGL. So using a buzzword like "sense of ownership" helps them understand why the OGL will help them sell more books. 

And yes, as far as that same executive is concerned, the OGL is a marketing tool. It does not contribute directly to the bottom line but it will have an impact on it. How much that impact is a guess, but my educated guess is is that it would have a significant impact on 20% of their customer base that make up 80% of their revenue. The 80% of their customer base (i.e. @_*morris*_ whole gaming group) will buy the PHB and maybe a supplement or two afterwards. For them the OGL doesn't mean a thing. But to the 20% of their customers that buy almost every single book they produce (aka most of us that hang out on message boards talking about things like the OGL) will buy probably compatible books as well (perhaps not as frequently as the D&D books, but still, more than the 80% of D&D's customers who are never even going to hear about anyone other than Wizards). It is that 20% that drive the remaining 80% of their customers to buy anything. if the GM says to his 4 players, "I don't like D&D 4e. I like Pathfinder and that is what I'm going to run." Well, that 1 person just cost wizards 4 copies of the PHB. Does it matter to the players that the reason the GM wants to use a monster book produced by another company such as the Book of Beasts because the group munchkin is going to buy the monster books produced by whichever company produced the game and he wants to surprise him. To that GM, the OGL matters. Or the GM doesn't have much time and makes frequent use of pre-published adventures and feels that Wizards doesn't really produce good adventures. To that GM, the OGL matters. Or there's the GM that makes his own NPCs and wants to throw something new and unique that the players had never seen before or is tired of always using options in the main company's books. To that GM, the OGL matters. And things like that make the difference for a GM deciding which game to play and who's books to buy on a regular basis.

So while it does not contribute directly to the bottom line, *the OGL makes a difference in sales to Wizards.* 

And before someone calls my 80/20 numbers into question, the 80/20 rule is a pretty well known business rule. Lisa Stevens was part of the study for Wizards (back when she worked at Wizards) that proved that it was true for them and she talks about that on a not-infrequent basis.


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## dmccoy1693 (Oct 4, 2013)

Zireael said:


> "You must spread some Experience Points around".
> Exactly. It's as easy as pie.




I know, I keep trying to give Wicht XP but the system won't let me.


----------



## DEFCON 1 (Oct 4, 2013)

dmccoy1693 said:


> You hit the nail on the head exactly how I am trying to use it. I said that I am thinking like a corporate executive that may or may not understand the nuances of our industry or even what goes into making a good game.




Okay, now I see where you're coming from.  Point made.  And I can't even attempt to dispute it, because that would involve trying to understand the most basic corporate executive and how he thinks, and god knows based upon decisions made in places like Hollywood, they are some of the most inscrutable people on earth.


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## Mark CMG (Oct 4, 2013)

dmccoy1693 said:


> While I don't think that Wizards is lying (or even misleading) how well the *(anything)* sold, I highly suspect that the 4e PHB 2 and 3 sold nowhere near as well, not to mention all other supplements and cards and so forth. I also suspect that (. . .)





Unless the RPG market has nearly doubled (or increased by 40% with all of it going to one company), it's simply impossible for the most recent edition to have done as well as the previous one.  If D&D had, let's just say, 80% of the RPG market share in its hey day, and PF took half the market during the time of 4E and PF's rise, thus 40% each, then the market simply isn't large enough for the current edition to have done as well as the last.  You don't need exact sales figures to reason that out.


----------



## Nellisir (Oct 4, 2013)

DEFCON 1 said:


> Nellsir right below your post made an interesting point that he felt "safer" putting his stuff online that he did before that... but at the same time, he was in fact posting his stuff online prior even when he didn't feel as safe.  So it wasn't the OGL that drove him to buy 3E, because he did with 3E the same stuff he did with editions prior.




I bought 3e because I was exhausted by 2e.

I didn't make this point well enough in my earlier post.  Prior to 3e, I posted material online, but I posted it as discrete files to the AOL/TSR file library. I don't remember if there was a review process, but certainly things that were blatant copies of D&D products were deleted.  The OGL gave security to moving off of TSR's site and opening my own website, one not under the aegis of WotC.

I don't remember the exact sequence of events (this was 14+ years ago), but the internet was also a very different place.  Google wasn't incorporated as a private company until 1998.  It didn't go public until 2004.  There was no Facebook.  PDFs were relatively newfangled technology.  There were a lot of rumors and second- or third-hand information about people getting cease & desist, or being sued, for the content of their websites.  Companies like TSR & WotC were still figuring out how to deal with the internet.

I sold one article to Dragon, (and had 3 rejected) around the time 3e was announced (Gen Con 1999; the only Gen Con I've ever been to.  My article was in the issue that was on sale that month.)  The switch to 3e more or less killed my ambitions of writing for Dragon (I had to learn the system first), but the OGL opened up another avenue that hadn't been possible before.  I was conflicted about it - I felt, and still feel, that the 3e publishing market has had a negative effect on the quantity and quality of free material - and decided that rather than sequester my campaign material and house rules against the possibility of one day publishing it, I'd put them on my own website with the OGL, for free.  The intent was to develop other material for publishing, plus answering open calls, etc, etc. (again, never really worked out or followed through - I sent a few magic weapons properties to Bastion Press for Arms & Armor that got accepted, but otherwise I didn't submit anything anywhere.)

Not sure if that made sense.  Basically, I always viewed "generic/publishable" and "house campaign/free" material as two separate tracks, and both were affected by the OGL.


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## Nellisir (Oct 5, 2013)

pemerton said:


> The OGL is not an obscure marketing tool. It is a royalty free licence to your IP, which - for a publishing company - is one of your most valuable assets.



Does WotC see more value in D&D as an RPG, or in the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Magic The Gathering, etc, etc?  I'd guess the latter, and WotC does not need to release any of that under the OGL.


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## Mark CMG (Oct 5, 2013)

DEFCON 1 said:


> I really think that anyone who was here during that time would agree that the amount of time, energy, and anger spent on ripping WotC a new one for the "badwrongfun" and the removal of the PDFs far, far outweighed the time, energy, and thankfulness people have had towards WotC for changing their stances on both of those point.





Hard to win back lost customers even in ideal circumstances.




DEFCON 1 said:


> (. . .) I just don't see how changing their stance on the OGL would really have any substantive impact on people's attitudes towards WotC (. . .)





The advantage is in the support from other publishers who didn't, themselves, lose the goodwill of customers WotC lost and how those 3PP can potentially drive those customers back toward the core line offered by WotC.


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## Morrus (Oct 5, 2013)

Mark CMG said:


> Hard to win back lost customers even in ideal circumstances.




I think you underestimate the fickleness of us gamers.  If we're one thing, we're fickle.  Our ability to transfer allegiance en masse overnight is legendary.  Our ability to not see that about ourselves is equally legendary.


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## Mark CMG (Oct 5, 2013)

Morrus said:


> I think you underestimate the fickleness of us gamers.  If we're one thing, we're fickle.  Our ability to transfer allegiance en masse overnight is legendary.  Our ability to not see that about ourselves is equally legendary.





Perhaps.  Or maybe as human beings we just look for reasons to forgive?  Using the OGL for 5E seems like it would give many the rationale the need to try it.


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## Morrus (Oct 5, 2013)

Mark CMG said:


> Or maybe as human beings we just look for reasons to forgive?




Have you met the internet?  If anything, it's shown us that we're really not nice people (as a race).


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## Mark CMG (Oct 5, 2013)

Morrus said:


> Have you met the internet?  If anything, it's shown us that we're really not nice people (as a race).





No doubt that groups of people can do wicked things (and the Internet can amplify this effect) but individuals look for ways to be good because there is a chemical reaction in the brain that feels like a reward.  It's largely why the message board reputation system works so well, because it feels good to give, and that feeling in turn assists in keeping us, as a community, less aggressive with one another.


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## Morrus (Oct 5, 2013)

Mark CMG said:


> No doubt that groups of people can do wicked things (and the Internet can amplify this effect) but individuals look for ways to be good because there is a chemical reaction in the brain that feels like a reward.  It's largely why the message board reputation system works so well, because it feels good to give, and that feeling in turn assists in keeping us, as a community, less aggressive with one another.




This is an entirely different discussion (and it might be a great one to start in the OT forum) but I disagree very much.  I feel the internet has provided a lens, and we can finally see how unpleasant most of us actually are.  People *like* hurting each other. And the minority that doesn't looks on, bewildered, and uncomprehendingly.  We're not a nice species (not that any species is, in truth).

On the flip side, the generosity of people is also showcased.  I know I've been priveleged to benefit from that, and I'm personally in a fortunate position.  But I think that, although they often support, on balance the intrawebs attack more than they support; and usually without information.  The web is more concerned with its power, its ability to "punish", than whether that punishment is just.

Hey, I'm interested in this discussion.  It has piqued me. I don't think it belongs in this thread though - fancy starting a thread in the Media Lounge about it?  Having been 'public' on the web for 14 years (that's longer than most websites),  I've been on BOTH sides of this several times over.  I know how en-masse generosity and punishment feel. It's definitely a subject I have an insight into.


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## Mark CMG (Oct 5, 2013)

Morrus said:


> This is an entirely different discussion(. . .)





I think it is tangentially related but far enough removed that I see you point in wanting to steer back to a tighter conversation here.




Morrus said:


> (. . .) fancy starting a thread in the Media Lounge about it?





Please do or just cull these posts from here to such a thread, or quote or recap them if you like.


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## Mistwell (Oct 5, 2013)

I think Fett would be highly interested in hearing how this group is made less aggressive by participating in this community.  Yeah, this conversation should continue.


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## Nellisir (Oct 5, 2013)

Morrus said:


> This is an entirely different discussion (and it might be a great one to start in the OT forum) but I disagree very much.



I'm not going to start a new thread, but I disagree that people like hurting each other, or that most of us are "unpleasant".


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## Morrus (Oct 5, 2013)

Nellisir said:


> I'm not going to start a new thread, but I disagree that people like hurting each other, or that most of us are "unpleasant".




Historically, we've been very mean to each other. We war with and oppress each other all the time. I think we're getting better, but we still do it - a lot!

And the news here right now is about how a major newspaper (I say 'a' but I hear it's the biggest one in the world) is profiting from saying mean things about a politician's deceased father. 

Individually, we can be great. But as a while, humanity seems to be pretty unpleasant to itself!


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## Zireael (Oct 5, 2013)

Nellisir said:


> Does WotC see more value in D&D as an RPG, or in the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Magic The Gathering, etc, etc?  I'd guess the latter, and WotC does not need to release any of that under the OGL.




Agreed. The settings' details are Product Identity, after all.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Oct 6, 2013)

Morrus said:


> Individually, we can be great. But as a while, humanity seems to be pretty unpleasant to itself!




The way I see it, both individual and aggregate human behavior covers a spectrum from awful to awesome.  There is no situation so bad that that individuals can't make worse.  And sometimes, its can be quite humbling to see how a community comes together.


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## Umbran (Oct 6, 2013)

Morrus said:


> Individually, we can be great. But as a while, humanity seems to be pretty unpleasant to itself!




Well, humans are kind of geared to divide the world into Us and Them.  And any of Them, are fair game, it usually seems.



Dannyalcatraz said:


> And sometimes, its can be quite humbling to see how a community comes together.




See above.  A community is an Us.  It is great when a community comes together, but not surprising.  When one community sticks its collective neck out for another community, however, is a remarkable event.  Would that it were not so remarkable.


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## Kobold Stew (Oct 6, 2013)

Morrus said:


> I think you underestimate the fickleness of us gamers.  If we're one thing, we're fickle.  Our ability to transfer allegiance en masse overnight is legendary.  Our ability to not see that about ourselves is equally legendary.




Is this actually the case? Of people who post on boards, perhaps. But generally? I'm not so sure. And even here, the very fact that we're debating this, and maintaining hope for 5e, is that we're not fickle. There's something about "D&D" that isn't being met by other games, and that we want in our play or in our imaginations. 

The OGL was a magnificent tool for building and perpetuating a player base that recognized the realities of the internet. By abandoning it, WOTC demonstrated that they misunderstood what it was they controlled (and the existence and success of Pathfinder demonstrates that). [I won't draw the inverse conclusion, that its absence from 4e was a primary component in its reduced success, though I expect that's valid too.] The OGL could even be appropriated for other non-d20 systems (cf. pre-Core FATE games). But in the end, it's just a tool (for marketing, product development, and online interface).

Perhaps gamers will transfer allegiance legendarily for one thing or another, but that doesn't stop loyalty to a particular game idea -- and among fantasy RPGs, the gold standard has always been D&D.


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## S'mon (Oct 6, 2013)

Cyberen said:


> Concerning legal advice : IANAL, but people could consider first publishing in non Anglo Saxon countries. For instance, french droit d'auteur...




IMO it was wise to first publish OSRIC in the UK not USA, but I wouldn't particularly  
advise first publishing in Civil Law nations; their legal systems don't give nearly as much weight to contracts, and the OGL is a contract. They're much more concerned with fairness and 
good faith, which could include eg "this is what WoTC _intended_" as opposed to "this is what 
WotC _actually did_". English law both upholds contracts and tends to interpret ambiguous terms in standard form contracts against the party who wrote the standard term, ie WoTC for the 
OGL. English law also generally does not have punitive damages, and loser usually pays 
winner's costs, making vexatious litigation unwise.


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## Kobold Stew (Oct 11, 2013)

On the subject of licensing, a limited third-party product license has been floated for Numenera, here. 

IANAL, but the guy who wrote this is:



> As many of you know, I am a lawyer and a game publisher. I frequently help out gamers and game publishers with legal issues, including dealing with licenses. So, I had more than a few people ask me my thoughts about the #Numenera license from +Monte Cook 's Games. I've seen it get some conversation elsewhere. +Rob Donoghue has a thoughtful post on the matter over on the +Evil Hat Productions blog (http://walkingmind.evilhat.com/2013/10/08/numenera-licensing/), and there's a robust discussion of it on the Ninth World fansite (http://theninthworld.com/thoughts-numenera-licensing/). I posted some brief comments on twitter last night and quickly realized that I needed to expand on that a bit as they could easily be taken in the wrong light. So, here goes:
> 
> For starters, I'm only addressing the legal issues. I have no issue with the license as a matter of policy. I think it is well crafted to accomplish what Monte is looking to do, i.e., foster a healthy fan-based community. I understand the basis the various elements of the license, e.g., the $50 fee, the sales cap, the crowdfunding restriction, etc. I should also mention that I have the utmost respect for Monte both as a publisher/designer and, more generally, as a person. Some of my earliest publishing work was playing in Monte's sandbox. Indeed, my very first publication, Poisoncraft, included conversion notes for Monte's then-Arcana Unearthed (which, by the way, had its own, similar license).
> 
> ...


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## Mistwell (Oct 11, 2013)

Kobold Stew said:


> On the subject of licensing, a limited third-party product license has been floated for Numenera




Why is this in a 5e thread?


----------



## Kobold Stew (Oct 12, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> Why is this in a 5e thread?




Seriously? It's a thread explicitly about the possibilities for the OGL or a related license for 5e. Here is the latest word on exactly that for a similar and competing product. If you are not interested, simply ignore.


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## Mistwell (Oct 12, 2013)

Kobold Stew said:


> Seriously? It's a thread explicitly about the possibilities for the OGL or a related license for 5e. Here is the latest word on exactly that for a similar and competing product. If you are not interested, simply ignore.




It's not a competing product, it's not similar, and it's not OGL related.  Numenera is excluded from this forum.  Morrus already started this same topic over in the  forum that's for Numenera discussion.  Go here to discuss the Numenera license: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?345782-Numenera-s-Limited-License.


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## Nellisir (Oct 14, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> It's not a competing product, it's not similar, and it's not OGL related.  Numenera is excluded from this forum.  Morrus already started this same topic over in the  forum that's for Numenera discussion.  Go here to discuss the Numenera license: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?345782-Numenera-s-Limited-License.



Since we don't know that a 5e license, if one even ever exists, will use the OGL at all (and I suspect it won't), looking at contemporary legal licenses issued by people in the RPG industry, particularly those who are intimately familiar with the OGL, d20 license, and GSL, is IMO perfectly valid in this thread. It's an insight into the concerns Monte Cook has about the OGL, and how he is dealing with them.
 If you want to look at nothing but the OGL...well, it's a short conversation.


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## Mistwell (Oct 14, 2013)

Nellisir said:


> Since we don't know that a 5e license, if one even ever exists, will use the OGL at all (and I suspect it won't), looking at contemporary legal licenses issued by people in the RPG industry, particularly those who are intimately familiar with the OGL, d20 license, and GSL, is IMO perfectly valid in this thread. It's an insight into the concerns Monte Cook has about the OGL, and how he is dealing with them.
> If you want to look at nothing but the OGL...well, it's a short conversation.




It was a detailed point by point critique of that particular wording of that particular license by an attorney from a blog.  It really REALLY had no baring on this discussing.  How you phrase a particular sentence (when Monte didn't use an attorney to draft the initial one, and the initial one was just a test by him anyway) is not relevant to this discussion.  If you want to get into that level of detail about that license, go to the thread about the license in the appropriate forum.

You'll note it didn't aid any discussion here. Nobody is looking at that blog post and saying "Wow great point, the choice of law provision from Monte's tentative non-finalized quasi-license from his non-D&D non-OGL game doesn't have a choice of law clause, that means D&D Next will....?"


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## Nellisir (Oct 14, 2013)

Mistwell said:


> You'll note it didn't aid any discussion here. Nobody is looking at that blog post and saying "Wow great point, the choice of law provision from Monte's tentative non-finalized quasi-license from his non-D&D non-OGL game doesn't have a choice of law clause, that means D&D Next will....?"




I found the post useful and more relevant to the topic of the thread than your "thread police" posts, which certainly aren't a great boon to discussion.  So, who's the pot and who's the kettle?  Morrus reads this thread; if he thinks it's off-topic, he'll deal with it.  Or click on the report post button.


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## Umbran (Oct 14, 2013)

*Arguing about whether or not it is relevant doesn't exactly advance the thread, guys.  

Official ruling:

1) It is relevant, as an example of another license.  If you're going to sit around speculating, some examples of what exists and can be done are relevant.  Not that WotC is listening to *your* speculations, as they have a legal team and all that which trump any messageboard duffer about tenfold...

2) It is irrelevant, insofar as line-by-line dissection of legal language is useful to real lawyers, and perhaps actual publishers, but useless to the rest of the world, however hip the author is trying to make it sound.

Thus - discussing the general structure of Numenera's license as an example of possibilities is fine.  But discuss the spirit of the license, please, and leave the letter of the law to the professionals.

Thanks, all!*


----------



## Umbran (Oct 14, 2013)

*Arguing about whether or not it is relevant doesn't exactly advance the thread, guys.  

Official ruling:

1) It is relevant, as an example of another license.  If you're going to sit around speculating, some examples of what exists and can be done are relevant.  Not that WotC is listening to *your* speculations, as they have a legal team and all that which trump any messageboard duffer about tenfold...

2) It is irrelevant, insofar as line-by-line dissection of legal language is useful to real lawyers, and perhaps actual publishers, but useless to the rest of the world, however hip the author is trying to make it sound.

Thus - discussing the general structure of Numenera's license as an example of possibilities is fine.  But discuss the spirit of the license, please, and leave the letter of the law to the professionals.

Thanks, all!*


----------



## carmachu (Oct 14, 2013)

The problem is many 3pp companies are going to be VERY skittish over doing products via 5th OGL or not, given how the last round of OGL discussions and methods were used in 4e, and frankly the lackluster and short run 4e had. I mean at this point would you jump onto 5th and take real chances or run with something proven that is much easier to produce 3pp for like pathfinder or other?


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## Morrus (Oct 14, 2013)

carmachu said:


> The problem is many 3pp companies are going to be VERY skittish over doing products via 5th OGL or not, given how the last round of OGL discussions and methods were used in 4e, and frankly the lackluster and short run 4e had. I mean at this point would you jump onto 5th and take real chances or run with something proven that is much easier to produce 3pp for like pathfinder or other?




Any serious publisher is simply going to do what benefits them most, and will evaluate risks and potential reward as best they can. Any serious 3PP publisher would also be an idiot to completely dismiss third party support for 5E out of hand at this stage. Speaking for ENP, we'll likely write for both if the licensing environment works for us.


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## dmccoy1693 (Oct 15, 2013)

Morrus said:


> Any serious publisher is simply going to do what benefits them most, and will evaluate risks and potential reward as best they can. Any serious 3PP publisher would also be an idiot to completely dismiss third party support for 5E out of hand at this stage. Speaking for ENP, we'll likely write for both if the licensing environment works for us.



 What he said.


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## carmachu (Oct 19, 2013)

Morrus said:


> Any serious publisher is simply going to do what benefits them most, and will evaluate risks and potential reward as best they can. Any serious 3PP publisher would also be an idiot to completely dismiss third party support for 5E out of hand at this stage. Speaking for ENP, we'll likely write for both if the licensing environment works for us.



Any serious publisher is going to look around in 2014 and realize the game is very fractured edition wise. Its not 2000 OGL era nor is it even 4e time. Depends on the market, but at this time I'm not seeing a ton of rah rahs for 5th. Especially coming on the heels of a bitter short run of 4e.


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## Mistwell (Oct 19, 2013)

carmachu said:


> Any serious publisher is going to look around in 2014 and realize the game is very fractured edition wise. Its not 2000 OGL era nor is it even 4e time. Depends on the market, but at this time I'm not seeing a ton of rah rahs for 5th. Especially coming on the heels of a bitter short run of 4e.




Nothing you said contradicts what Morrus said.

For what it is worth, I am seeing a whole lot of enthusiasm for 5e (I'd say more than I saw for 4e).  But, obviously we each have different experiences.  Morrus fairly comprehensive tool that tests what people are talking about shows that 5e, at least last I saw it, was the #1 game people were talking about, with Pathfinder #2.  So I suppose that has some meaning.


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## Zireael (Oct 21, 2013)

People are talking about 5e because it's not yet out.

And about OGL - any news from WotC?


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## Hussar (Oct 21, 2013)

I highly doubt you're going to hear anything this year.  Even if they're shooting for Gen Con release next year, I don't think they're looking too hard at licenses before next spring.  My gut prediction anyway.


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## billd91 (Oct 21, 2013)

Hussar said:


> I highly doubt you're going to hear anything this year.  Even if they're shooting for Gen Con release next year, I don't think they're looking too hard at licenses before next spring.  My gut prediction anyway.




And even if they are looking at licensing now, which they might be, Hasbro will hem and haw over it in committees and be late with it like they were with 4e. So, despite the fact that lessons should have been learned with the 4e licensing experience, I expect there to be no indication that they've learned anything significant.


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## Hussar (Oct 22, 2013)

billd91 said:


> And even if they are looking at licensing now, which they might be, Hasbro will hem and haw over it in committees and be late with it like they were with 4e. So, despite the fact that lessons should have been learned with the 4e licensing experience, I expect there to be no indication that they've learned anything significant.




That, of course, presumes that they consider the OGL to be a good thing.  They may have learned that every single time they license out the product, they get screwed, so, I can't really blame them for being gun shy.  Whether it's movie rights, digital media rights or OGL rights, they've gotten bitten in the ass every single time.


----------



## billd91 (Oct 22, 2013)

Hussar said:


> That, of course, presumes that they consider the OGL to be a good thing.  They may have learned that every single time they license out the product, they get screwed, so, I can't really blame them for being gun shy.  Whether it's movie rights, digital media rights or OGL rights, they've gotten bitten in the ass every single time.




They bit themselves in the ass with the GSL. They couldn't get their  together in time for their own deadlines and burned their most enthusiastic third party supporters.


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## Hussar (Oct 22, 2013)

billd91 said:


> They bit themselves in the ass with the GSL. They couldn't get their  together in time for their own deadlines and burned their most enthusiastic third party supporters.




Fair enough.  But, the OGL allowed another company to take the millions of dollars they spent on creating and marketing a game and use that investment to build a competing company that has become a major competitor.  The OGL was never intended for that I'm thinking.


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## darjr (Oct 22, 2013)

Hussar said:


> Fair enough.  But, the OGL allowed another company to take the millions of dollars they spent on creating and marketing a game and use that investment to build a competing company that has become a major competitor.  The OGL was never intended for that I'm thinking.




Actually I think that yes it was.

It was part of the bargain the OGL makes with customers. Customers could buy an OGL game knowing that if support dried up from the primary company somebody could step in.

If the primary first party company jumped the shark then players could keep playing the game they've invested so much in, secure in the knowledge that somebody could come along and build support products for them. Customers could buy an OGL product knowing that they had a safe haven for producing things for their friends and customers on a large or, as is often the case, very small scale.

It was a bargain intended to keep the primary company either keeping on keeping on with the game, or a largely compatable game or allow someone to step into that spot if they no longer wanted to support it.

As far as I know it was part of the sales pitch and marketing.


----------



## Wicht (Oct 22, 2013)

Hussar said:


> Fair enough.  But, the OGL allowed another company to take the millions of dollars they spent on creating and marketing a game and use that investment to build a competing company that has become a major competitor.  The OGL was never intended for that I'm thinking.




As I recall, the creative minds behind the OGL explicitly said it was part of the purpose: allowing a competitor to pick up the pieces if WotC should ever drop the ball. I suspect they might have thought that date a bit further in the future than it was, but yeah, it was very much a reason for the license being what it was.


----------



## Hussar (Oct 22, 2013)

Umm, no.  The point was that if WOTC ever went out of business, then someone else could pick up and keep going.  They didn't want another situation like when TSR went out of business and then no one could publish anything D&D because of copyright issues.  

I highly, highly doubt that the point of the OGL was to create primary competition for WOTC.


----------



## Mistwell (Oct 22, 2013)

Hussar said:


> Umm, no.  The point was that if WOTC ever went out of business, then someone else could pick up and keep going.  They didn't want another situation like when TSR went out of business and then no one could publish anything D&D because of copyright issues.
> 
> I highly, highly doubt that the point of the OGL was to create primary competition for WOTC.




Yeah I agree with Hussar.  It was not intended to create a strong competitor for WOTC, it was intended as a firewall against WOTC stopping publishing D&D. It backfired, for a variety of reasons, but it did backfire.


----------



## billd91 (Oct 22, 2013)

Hussar said:


> Umm, no.  The point was that if WOTC ever went out of business, then someone else could pick up and keep going.  They didn't want another situation like when TSR went out of business and then no one could publish anything D&D because of copyright issues.
> 
> I highly, highly doubt that the point of the OGL was to create primary competition for WOTC.




Perhaps not, but I also think the initial plan was to not retreat from the OGL like WotC did with 4e and the GSL (and most of 3.5's splatbooks, for that matter). Had they really made 3e a progressive game with an OGL-fueled update every so often, incorporating ideas from 3rd party users of the OGL and evolving the game rather than clamping down on their own content, creating a follow-up game as a substantial departure, and licensing it under a regime hardly any self-respecting 3rd party company would follow, I doubt we'd be playing Pathfinder now. WotC wasn't burned by the OGL, Paizo, and the other 3rd party companies who use the license - they burned themselves with it by failing to support it and then moving away from it.


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## Hussar (Oct 22, 2013)

Just as a point of history, virtually no WOTC content made it into the OGL, 3.5 or 3e.  

As another point, the OGL was not a means by which WOTC should start giving free advertising to 3pp by including 3pp material in their products.  I mean, WOTC spent millions more dollars on D&D than any single 3pp ever did.  What possible advantage is there for WOTC to include 3pp material in their books?

Look, the presumption here is that 3pp material was hugely popular and made a big difference for gamers.  I don't believe that it did.  When the biggest selling 3pp material sold maybe 10-15000 copies, it just wasn't big enough for WOTC, where WOTC sells tens of thousands of copies of almost every book it publishes.  

The only people who would benefit from WOTC putting out OGL material is the 3pp, not WOTC itself.  The 3pp just didn't reach enough people to even consider it.  Never minding the huge mess that 3pp made of OGL material for years all by themselves - books with broken OGL for example were hardly a rare find.

I bought OGL material.  I did.  I bought more than I bought WOTC material.  But, I'm under no illusions as to the fact that I'm a very small minority here.  

But, this isn't going to go anywhere.  I look at Pathfinder and see the primary reason to not have an OGL.  WOTC is spending tens of millions of dollars developing 5e.  There is no benefit to allowing 3pp to piggyback on that.  There just isn't, IMO.  3pp will never generate enough revenue for WOTC to justify allowing them access the way the OGL did.  

There are just too many examples of licensing burning them in the end.


----------



## I'm A Banana (Oct 22, 2013)

If we're going to talk about what the point was intended to be, we may as well quote the mastermind himself: 



			
				Ryan Dancey said:
			
		

> The logical conclusion says that reducing the "cost" to other people to publishing and supporting the core D&D game to zero should eventually drive support for all other game systems to the lowest level possible in the market, create customer resistance to the introduction of new systems, and the result of all that "support" redirected to the D&D game will be to steadily increase the number of people who play D&D, thus driving sales of the core books. This is a feedback cycle -- the more effective the support is, the more people play D&D. The more people play D&D, the more effective the support is.




So this is kind of how he sold it to the internal stakeholders: get as many people in the RPG hobby as possible playing D&D, and then expand the RPG hobby, and D&D wins. 

By that logic, WotC shot itself in the foot by moving away from the OGL. If Dancey's idea of network externalities being a tremendous force on the sales of D&D are correct, then it was even self-evident: D&D will make less money if it's not open, because less people will bother to buy the core books, because the game won't be as appealing to them, because WotC isn't publishing what they need, because it's just not reasonable for WotC to publish everything everyone needs.

....and then there's this bit:



			
				Ryan Dancey said:
			
		

> The purpose of the OGL was to act as a force for change. In that sense I think it is an unquaified success.




And there's this bit, the bit I think   [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] 's talking about:



			
				Ryan Dancey said:
			
		

> I also had the goal that the release of the SRD would ensure that D&D in a format that I felt was true to its legacy could never be removed from the market by capricious decisions by its owners. I know just how close that came to happening. In 1997, TSR had pledged most of the copyright interests in D&D as collateral for loans it could not repay, and had Wizards of the Coast not rescued it I'm certain that it would have all gone into a lenghty bankruptcy struggle with a very real chance that D&D couldn't be published until the suits, appeals, countersuits, etc. had all been settled (i.e. maybe never). The OGL enabled that as a positive side effect.




And possibly, what I think    [MENTION=221]Wicht[/MENTION] was referencing,  this from '06, though it seems to be from a message board post that may no longer exist:



			
				Ryan Dancey? said:
			
		

> With so much of the 30+ year legacy D&D game in the SRD, I believe it is impossible to ever make a game that would be accepted by the fans as "D&D" without it being possible to alter whatever is necessary to make the Open Game version of D&D compatible with whatever product is being currently sold as "D&D" by WotC. A game divergent enough to break that legacy with the SRD is simply not going to be tolerable to anyone vested in the D&D player network. Such a radical break would almost certainly result in a 3rd party version of the game, published under a new brand name, becoming the de-facto inheritor of the D&D player network externality, coming into direct competition with whatever faux "D&D" product is being marketed, and probably crushing it.




Crushing it may be overstating the case a bit (Pathfinder's clearly a big success, but it's not as clear if 4e's been a constant struggle or just kind of a struggle), but his prediction certainly seems to follow the arc of 4e's life-cycle.

And then that mischievous scamp Erik Mona chimed in:


			
				Erik Mona said:
			
		

> I think leaving the door open for someone to publish a "more D&D" version of D&D called something else was part of Ryan's secret plan all along.




So, Ryan Dancey may have had a stake in making the 3e version of D&D *THE* version of D&D in the minds of anyone, regardless of what company held the reigns. Since the OGL has been a feature of the top-selling fantasy RPG since the OGL's debut (aside from the first few months of 4e), there may be some wisdom there. 

....kind of makes me want to go work for the guy over at Goblinworks....


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## billd91 (Oct 22, 2013)

Hussar said:


> Just as a point of history, virtually no WOTC content made it into the OGL, 3.5 or 3e.




And that's WotC failing at the OGL. Right there.



Hussar said:


> As another point, the OGL was not a means by which WOTC should start giving free advertising to 3pp by including 3pp material in their products.  I mean, WOTC spent millions more dollars on D&D than any single 3pp ever did.  What possible advantage is there for WOTC to include 3pp material in their books?
> 
> Look, the presumption here is that 3pp material was hugely popular and made a big difference for gamers.  I don't believe that it did.  When the biggest selling 3pp material sold maybe 10-15000 copies, it just wasn't big enough for WOTC, where WOTC sells tens of thousands of copies of almost every book it publishes.
> 
> The only people who would benefit from WOTC putting out OGL material is the 3pp, not WOTC itself.  The 3pp just didn't reach enough people to even consider it.  Never minding the huge mess that 3pp made of OGL material for years all by themselves - books with broken OGL for example were hardly a rare find.




What does WotC get out of it? A progressively evolving game that gets better over time and stays evergreen.



Hussar said:


> But, this isn't going to go anywhere.  I look at Pathfinder and see the primary reason to not have an OGL.  WOTC is spending tens of millions of dollars developing 5e.  There is no benefit to allowing 3pp to piggyback on that.  There just isn't, IMO.  3pp will never generate enough revenue for WOTC to justify allowing them access the way the OGL did.
> 
> There are just too many examples of licensing burning them in the end.




See, I look at Pathfinder and say "Thank you, Ryan Dancey, for making it possible for a company to keep a palatable D&D alive when WotC drops the ball." And for that matter, if Pathfinder weren't putting up such a fight, I'm not so sure WotC would be putting so much effort into D&D Next.


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## Hussar (Oct 22, 2013)

> See, I look at Pathfinder and say "Thank you, Ryan Dancey, for making it possible for a company to keep a palatable D&D alive when WotC drops the ball." And for that matter, if Pathfinder weren't putting up such a fight, I'm not so sure WotC would be putting so much effort into D&D Next.
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ible-Publishers-Involved/page28#ixzz2iQnGsJGz




Well obviously.  But, that's basically saying, "Well, I like X, therefore X must be true."  WOTC dropping the ball is your opinion, not an actual fact regardless of how often it gets repeated.  Some of us actually, believe it or not, prefer 4e to Pathfinder, meaning that for us, there was no ball dropping whatsoever.

However, the fact that 4e is doing well enough on its own to allow the company to spend 2 years not releasing a single new product (outside of novels of course) points to a product that didn't do quite as badly as some believe.  I mean, could Paizo, on the strength of Pathfinder, stop releasing any new material for the next two years and develop Pathfinder 2.0?  Do you believe that?  Does anyone?  

Anyone who isn't actually personally invested in 3e being the One True Game, can't help but to look at the situation and see that WOTC created it's own competition.  Every single licensing venture that D&D has engaged in has come back to haunt them.  Every single one.  

Thinking that Next is going to have an OGL is a pipe dream.  It will never, ever get past Hasbro's lawyers or marketing department.  It's wishful thinking, but, honestly, I know where I'd lay my money.  It would be great if 5e was open like 3e.  That would be fantastic.  I would love it.  I honestly would.  Get me some Scarred Lands back, maybe another World's Largest Dungeon and fill up my book collection with lots of other goodies.  Fantastic.

Not going to happen.  IMNSHO of course.


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## wedgeski (Oct 22, 2013)

billd91 said:


> See, I look at Pathfinder and say "Thank you, Ryan Dancey, for making it possible for a company to keep a palatable D&D alive when WotC drops the ball."



"palatable"..?

You could also look at what he did and read it as: Guys, it's my way or the highway. 3E or nothing. And by god, I'll blow this fanbase apart before I let any future editions sully what I've created!

I'll always be grateful for what Dancey and Adkison achieved in rescuing D&D and creating a game and ecosystem which I played and loved for a decade, but they created a time-bomb that blew up in WotC's face in 2009, long after the two of them had made their money and left for greener pastures (some of which happen to be in Paizo's back yard).

And now people are actually expecting Wizards to do it all over again? I just don't see it happening.



> And for that matter, if Pathfinder weren't putting up such a fight, I'm not so sure WotC would be putting so much effort into D&D Next.



Absolutely agree! Pathfinder's ferocious quality will inspire WotC to better things and we'll all benefit from that.


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## Morrus (Oct 22, 2013)

Hussar said:


> Just as a point of history, virtually no WOTC content made it into the OGL, 3.5 or 3e.




I assume you mean the SRD; and  it's got the whole core rules of D&D 3.5 in it!


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## I'm A Banana (Oct 22, 2013)

billd91 said:
			
		

> See, I look at Pathfinder and say "Thank you, Ryan Dancey, for making it possible for a company to keep a palatable D&D alive when WotC drops the ball."






			
				Hussar said:
			
		

> Well obviously. But, that's basically saying, "Well, I like X, therefore X must be true." WOTC dropping the ball is your opinion, not an actual fact regardless of how often it gets repeated.




Unless the dude said it, yeah?



			
				Ryan Dancey said:
			
		

> I also had the goal that the release of the SRD would ensure that D&D in a format that I felt was true to its legacy could never be removed from the market by capricious decisions by its owners




I mean, it sure seems to me, from his actual statements, like one of Dancey's goals was to make sure that D&D was not able to be dragged in any one direction by any one company: that it at least "a" D&D that met Dancey's personal needs would be not part of any one company, so even if WotC "dropped the ball" in one way or another, a version of D&D would live on. 



			
				Hussar said:
			
		

> However, the fact that 4e is doing well enough on its own to allow the company to spend 2 years not releasing a single new product (outside of novels of course) points to a product that didn't do quite as badly as some believe.




If you're into reading tea leaves like that, you could just as easily say that the company only selling legacy product for 2 years shows that they think there's more money in reprinting 2e, 3e, 1e, and OD&D than in printing any more 4e sourcebooks. But basically, D&D's financial position is opaque. One can't say it's been a rousing success any more than one can say it's been a colossal failure. It kind of seems to maybe be a little troubled to me (For the first time, another game is outselling it in the official channels, and 4e kept trying to reinvent itself), but there's a lot of unknowns in play, too (DDI subs could be HUGE! and what may be more important, RELIABLE!), so that could be an inaccurate perspective. 



			
				Hussar said:
			
		

> Thinking that Next is going to have an OGL is a pipe dream.




I'm not usually one to interrupt a good soapboxin', but I think it'd be a little crazy to imagine it's not an influencing element. Clearly WotC doesn't like the OGL at some level, but change is almost always forced on an institution from outside competition and need. The fact that Pathfinder is so huge is something they need to address. Numenera might be a problem down the road, too. The OGL largely did what its principle architect set out to do with it: it made D&D the dominant market force (at least until D&D abandoned the OGL, possibly), and let people make D&D-style games regardless of what WotC does. The OGL is still there for them to plug into if they want, and it still promises all the things that Dancey promised (and appears to me to have been mostly right about) back in '02. It's not something I think the invested parties are dismissing out of hand, even if it's not exactly something they'd go with now.


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## Nellisir (Oct 23, 2013)

Ryan Dancey said:
			
		

> The logical conclusion says that reducing the "cost" to other people to publishing and supporting the *core D&D game* to zero should eventually drive support for all other game systems to the lowest level possible in the market, create customer resistance to the introduction of new systems, and the result of all that "support" redirected to the D&D game will be to steadily increase the number of people who play D&D, thus driving sales of the core books. This is a feedback cycle -- the more effective the support is, the more people play D&D. The more people play D&D, the more effective the support is.





Emphasis mine.  I think this is where things went a bit off the rails for WotC.  The OGL didn't force 3pp to support the core D&D game.  It allowed them to branch off of it.  Whether or not the $$$ diverted away from D&D by the branched games were greater or less than the $$$ generated by incoming players is not something we can answer, though.


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## ThirdWizard (Oct 23, 2013)

Nellisir said:


> [/COLOR]Emphasis mine.  I think this is where things went a bit off the rails for WotC.  The OGL didn't force 3pp to support the core D&D game.  It allowed them to branch off of it.  Whether or not the $$$ diverted away from D&D by the branched games were greater or less than the $$$ generated by incoming players is not something we can answer, though.




The OGL d20 SRD did put a huge emphasis on the d20 system development during 2000-2010 or so, though. So much so that publishers who might have otherwise made new games or supported non-d20 systems went for the ease of developing for OGL games, which is mostly, but not exclusively, d20 based. This swing the market decidedly toward d20, which D&D was the center point of. The absence of D&D from the OGL has, I think, been one of the (many) reasons we're seeing more indie games now, as publishers who might have otherwise gone to d20 during those years are branching out.

D&D being in the center of the d20 movement, despite the fact that they didn't monetize every OGL game that came out, was still a giant boon for them. It kept d20 familiar and it kept D&D in the conversation.


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## Nellisir (Oct 23, 2013)

I'm not sure that what you said contradicts anything I said.  However...


ThirdWizard said:


> ...So much so that publishers who might have otherwise made new games or supported non-d20 systems went for the ease of developing for OGL games...



This strikes me as an assertion that feels good, but doesn't actually have much evidence behind it.  We can look at the companies that supported d20, but I'm not sure we can say what they would have done if there were no OGL or d20.  (The only instances of this that leap out as obvious are Legend of the Five Rings and Swashbuckling Adventures.  Possibly Weird West/Weird Wars.)


----------



## Hussar (Oct 23, 2013)

Morrus said:


> I assume you mean the SRD; and  it's got the whole core rules of D&D 3.5 in it!




We were talking about WOTC splat books.  Which don't have OGL in them.  Bill91 commented that not including WOTC material in the SRD was somehow a 3.5 thing.  It was much earlier than that.  Other than the Epic Level Handbook and the Unearthed Arcana, what other WOTC book made it into the SRD (outside of core of course)?


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## Hussar (Oct 23, 2013)

And, let's not forget, that virtually no one was producing 3pp material for D&D by about 2006.  There were maybe what, half a dozen companies publishing anything for 3e?  There were considerably more who had taken the SRD and the OGL and gone off to do their own thing completely divorced from WOTC or D&D.  

You could make a pretty decent case that games like Mutants and Masterminds have more to do with WOTC dropping the OGL with 4e than anything else.  The idea was that people would come to D&D from outside games, but, there's little or no evidence that that was ever true.  People went from D&D to other d20 games, or went straight to other d20 games.  How many people started playing d20 variants and then moved into buying D&D?

How many 3.5 PHB's does Pathfinder sell?  How many 3.5 Monster Manuals does Pathfinder sell?  How is WOTC drawing any benefit whatsoever from Pathfinder?  After all, Pathfinder is using the license that is supposed to directly benefit WOTC.

The existence of 4e and the GSL doesn't change that.


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## Stormonu (Oct 23, 2013)

Hussar said:


> Other than the Epic Level Handbook and the Unearthed Arcana, what other WOTC book made it into the SRD (outside of core of course)?




Expanded Psionics and I *think* the rules for making gods out of Deities and Demigods.


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## billd91 (Oct 23, 2013)

Hussar said:


> We were talking about WOTC splat books.  Which don't have OGL in them.  Bill91 commented that not including WOTC material in the SRD was somehow a 3.5 thing.  It was much earlier than that.  Other than the Epic Level Handbook and the Unearthed Arcana, what other WOTC book made it into the SRD (outside of core of course)?




Don't try to read more into what I've said than is there. WotC included the 3.5 core books, Unearthed Arcana, Epic (I think) and psionics. And that's pretty much it once 3.5 came around. Hardly any 3.5 era splat book material is in there, as I said, but that doesn't mean I'm implying that 3.0 era splat books made it into the 3.0 SRD. I may give the 3.0 era splat books little notice since they were ultimately superseded by the 3.5 ones and don't retain much of my attention but I'm making no implication that they were in the SRD.

WotC retreated from including their material in the SRD. Full stop. They failed to make most of their non-core material OGL. They failed to make the OGL work for them to the degree it could have worked.


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## billd91 (Oct 23, 2013)

Hussar said:


> How many 3.5 PHB's does Pathfinder sell?  How many 3.5 Monster Manuals does Pathfinder sell?  How is WOTC drawing any benefit whatsoever from Pathfinder?  After all, Pathfinder is using the license that is supposed to directly benefit WOTC.
> 
> The existence of 4e and the GSL doesn't change that.




Does it even make sense to talk about PF in those terms? WotC had already put themselves in a position to not benefit from someone else publishing OGL stuff before Pathfinder was on the scene. PF was created to fill that very gap. That said, it sounds like WotC's 3e reprints did some brisk business. So how exactly did Pathfinder hurt WotC's OGL benefits? I doubt you can really quantify that. It might even be that PF's presence in the market helped keep some people's appetite going for 3e, thus helping the sales of the reprint.


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## Morrus (Oct 23, 2013)

Hussar said:


> The idea was that people would come to D&D from outside games, but, there's little or no evidence that that was ever true.  People went from D&D to other d20 games, or went straight to other d20 games.  How many people started playing d20 variants and then moved into buying D&D?




I don't know; how many did?

I've never heard that theory before - that wasn't the idea at all.  The idea was never that people would start with other games and then move to D&D.   The idea was that D&D was well-supported by third-party publishers via use of the OGL and - crucially-  the d20 STL, and thus an attractive prospect from the outset - which it was.  And that the d20 logo would create a large player network of people who knew the core rules to the game - which it did.



> How many 3.5 PHB's does Pathfinder sell?  How many 3.5 Monster Manuals does Pathfinder sell?




Well, none.  The game isn't in print.  But that minor witticism (yeah, I know, I won't give up my day job) aside, see my answer below.



> After all, Pathfinder is using the license that is supposed to directly benefit WOTC.




Pathfinder's an outlier, though.  And Pathfinder isn't great because of the OGL; it's great because it's produced by an excellent company made of people who know what they're doing. 

Don't get me wrong.  I understand your line of reasoning, and I don't fully disagree.  Pathfinder is based on the OGL; Pathfinder has the largest market share right now; therefore the OGL is bad for WotC.  I get it; I'm sure that plenty of folks at WotC see it exactly that way, too.  I've made that same argument in one of the millions of copies of this conversation that have taken place on these boards. 

IMO the difference is that Dancey etc. assumed that users of the OGL would need the d20 STL (the logo license) to make an impact - and at first that was true. The d20 STL prevented creation of a complete game; no character generation meant that the 3.5 core rulebooks were required by every single third-party product.  But the d20 STL was withdrawn (and the logo had lost its luster by then, anyway, and companies' own product lines names started to assert themselves as the dominant branding, making the logo less and less vital each year), so OGL-only products started to matter.  And those could be complete games.  Not many did what Pathfinder managed, though.



> The existence of 4e and the GSL doesn't change that.




Sorry; I've gotten a bit lost along the way.  What doesn't it change?

WotC's entire strategy during that time - not just 4E and the GSL - helped contribute to Paizo's decision to launch the Pathfinder RPG.  Crucially, the cancellation of the DRAGON and DUNGEON licenses were a hammer blow which forced Paizo to completely change direction.  While I can't speak for them, from what I've heard them say, that was the biggest factor.  Lisa Stevens:

Our license for publishing _Dragon_ and _Dungeon_  was due to expire in March 2007, and this meeting would be the first  step toward negotiating a renewal of that contract. It took a while to  find a time that fit everyone's schedule, and we finally had to resort  to meeting by phone rather than face-to-face. On May 30, 2006 at 2 pm, I  had a conference call with Wizards, and it was during this call that  they let me know that they had other plans for _Dragon_ and _Dungeon_;  they wouldn't be renewing the license for the magazines. I personally  don't remember much of my reaction, but after the call, I brought Erik  in to my office and told him the news, tears streaming down my face.  (Read Erik's recollection of this major event below.)

  We always knew that this might be a possibility. That was, after all,  one of the main reasons we had been building the other parts of our  business: so we wouldn't be caught unprepared if the unthinkable were to  happen. But I don't think any of us ever really thought that this was  much more than a remote possibility. _Dragon_ and _Dungeon_  were finally firing on all cylinders and were enjoying critical acclaim  that hadn't been seen in years. So this news struck us to the core. In  one meeting, the last large chunk of the company that we started not  quite four years before was going away. We were numb. How the heck were  we going to cope with this? Frankly, it seemed impossible at the time.

  I have to give Wizards of the Coast a lot of praise for how they  handled the end of the license. Contractually, they only needed to  deliver notice of non-renewal by the end of December 2006; without the  extra seven months' notice they chose to give us, I'm not sure that  Paizo could have survived. Wizards also granted our request to extend  the license through August 2007 so that we could finish up the Savage  Tide adventure path. This gave us quite a bit of time to figure out how  we were going to cope with the end of the magazines. It would have been  very easy for WotC to have handled this in a way which would have  effectively left Paizo for dead—all they would have had to do was follow  the letter of the contract. Instead, they treated us like the valued  partner we had been, giving us the ability to both plan and execute a  strategy for survival. For that, I will always be thankful.

  The news caused us to kick our plans for other product lines into a  higher gear. In fact, before even two hours had elapsed, we'd already  scheduled an offsite meeting at my house. We knew that the key to our  survival beyond _Dragon_ and _Dungeon_ hinged upon our mastery  of creating adventures, particularly Adventure Paths. So we started to  plan for what would end up being one of the most shocking announcements  in the history or RPG gaming... but that tale will have to wait until  the 2007 blog!
​


----------



## wedgeski (Oct 23, 2013)

That piece you quoted led me to track down the Paizo blogs that retraced the history of the company. Fantastic reading. For anyone else who might not have read it before, you can find the whole series here.


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## Hussar (Oct 24, 2013)

billd91 said:


> Does it even make sense to talk about PF in those terms? WotC had already put themselves in a position to not benefit from someone else publishing OGL stuff before Pathfinder was on the scene. PF was created to fill that very gap. That said, it sounds like WotC's 3e reprints did some brisk business. So how exactly did Pathfinder hurt WotC's OGL benefits? I doubt you can really quantify that. It might even be that PF's presence in the market helped keep some people's appetite going for 3e, thus helping the sales of the reprint.




Morrus answered this for me.  The point of OGL material was to keep people playing D&D.  Which was great for WOTC.  

But, as Morrus says, Pathfinder is a complete game.  Pathfinder doesn't sell 3.5 PHB's.  It does not drive anyone to play 3.5 D&D.  Which is what each and every OGL product was meant to do.  Even though WOTC might not be supporting 3.5 D&D, what difference does that make?  The point is, the OGL failed to do what it was supposed to do - namely sell 3.5 PHB's.  

Does anyone actually think that the purpose of the OGL was to force WOTC to print a single version of D&D in perpetuity, never changing or altering the game?  Even if 4e had been as open as 3e, do you really think it would be a great deal more popular than it is now?  Considering most people are turned off of 4e because of the game itself, not because of the OGL (that might be another nail in the coffin, but hardly the first one that people point to), do you really think an OGL style license would have saved 4e?

Does anyone think that the OGL really has that much power?


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## darjr (Oct 24, 2013)

Hussar said:


> Does anyone actually think that the purpose of the OGL was to force WOTC to print a single version of D&D in perpetuity, never changing or altering the game?  Even if 4e had been as open as 3e, do you really think it would be a great deal more popular than it is now?  Considering most people are turned off of 4e because of the game itself, not because of the OGL (that might be another nail in the coffin, but hardly the first one that people point to), do you really think an OGL style license would have saved 4e?
> 
> Does anyone think that the OGL really has that much power?




I don't think it was meant for WotC to print 3.5 for ever. But it was a bargain with it's customers that it wouldn't jump the shark, and if it did there was an escape hatch.

I think Paizo knew they were going to survive and possibly thrive as a company when they saw the conversion rate of Dragon/Dungeon subscribers to their Adventure Paths. From what I understand that level of conversion surprised them. It wasn't the success of the Pathfinder game that sealed their survival as a company, though I'm sure it's success hasn't hurt, it was the number of AP subscribers.

From what I understand, Paizo fully intended to go 4e at that time. All they needed was the license issues cleared up, an OGL would have been perfect. I know that Paizo has said that 4e just doesn't fit with what they wanted to do, but if it was OGL they could have printed supplemental material that could have made it so. They could have printed it knowing that the OGL bargain was in place. The GSL didn't give them that, so they had no choice but to do something else, something other than support 4e.

Part of 4e's problems was a lack of great adventures early on, and a lack of knowledge about the good ones later on, Paizo making adventures for 4e would have made a huge difference.

I was running a ton of 4e at the time and looking over my shoulder at the AP's. The conversions of some of them, while great, just weren't enough.


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## darjr (Oct 24, 2013)

Also I think the OGL has helped WotC more recently, other that with the reprints. I think that the OGL really helped the OSR as part of the industry. I think WotC gets more sales on dndclassics then they would have if it wasn't for OSR OGL clones and the new interested it garnered.


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## Hussar (Oct 24, 2013)

Honestly, I think Morrus has the bottom line here:



			
				Morrus said:
			
		

> Don't get me wrong. I understand your line of reasoning, and I don't fully disagree. Pathfinder is based on the OGL; Pathfinder has the largest market share right now; therefore the OGL is bad for WotC. I get it; I'm sure that plenty of folks at WotC see it exactly that way, too. I've made that same argument in one of the millions of copies of this conversation that have taken place on these boards.
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ible-Publishers-Involved/page30#ixzz2ic8E6WXu




And it's the part about "plenty of folks at WOTC see it exactly that way too", that, to me, seals the fate of a 5e OGL.  Again, don't get me wrong.  I'd love to see a 5e that was open.  But, I honestly don't think it's going to happen.  The difficulties trying to have an OGL and a DDI for one is going to be a huge impediment, and the second big stumbling block is the success of Pathfinder.

I just can't see how any company would give away the millions of dollars in development that WOTC's sinking into 5e (and it is millions of dollars) when there is a significant chance that doing so will give rise to another Paizo ten years down the line.


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## darjr (Oct 24, 2013)

I have to agree that WotC very probably isn't going OGL with 5e. I think if they were it would have been announced already.


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## Zardnaar (Oct 24, 2013)

An OGL that expires in 5 or 10 years time would seem to work while avoiding another PF.


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## billd91 (Oct 24, 2013)

darjr said:


> I have to agree that WotC very probably isn't going OGL with 5e. I think if they were it would have been announced already.




I think that's probably a correct assessment. But my concern is that WotC and their Hasbro legal handlers will screw up the licensing again like they did with 4e. They don't need to make Next OGL, but they should generate a fairly permissive license *early* to encourage involvement and not burn the 3rd party producers they have like they did with 4e's GSL debacle. If they don't, they'll either have another edition without much adventure or other support at launch time or they'll have to be ready with a bunch of internally written adventures.


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## I'm A Banana (Oct 24, 2013)

Hussar said:
			
		

> The point of OGL material was to keep people playing D&D.




And by the standards of the architecht of the OGL, that's exactly what's happening. 4e, with the fluff changes and the rules changes, was dubbed "not D&D" by a not-insignificant section of the potential audience, and they went to Pathfinder, because Paizo was publishing what was, to them, more authentic D&D. 

Publishing D&D wasn't solely within the bounds of WotC anymore (okay, they have access to the logo, but the rules of the game weren't solely theirs). It was in the hands of anyone who wanted to use the SRD.

So from the perspective of "keeping people playing D&D," Pathfinder's success makes a lot of sense -- it's "more D&D" to the core audience than 4e is. Which is largely as Dancey expected 4e to go.


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## Hussar (Oct 24, 2013)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> And by the standards of the architecht of the OGL, that's exactly what's happening. 4e, with the fluff changes and the rules changes, was dubbed "not D&D" by a not-insignificant section of the potential audience, and they went to Pathfinder, because Paizo was publishing what was, to them, more authentic D&D.
> 
> Publishing D&D wasn't solely within the bounds of WotC anymore (okay, they have access to the logo, but the rules of the game weren't solely theirs). It was in the hands of anyone who wanted to use the SRD.
> 
> So from the perspective of "keeping people playing D&D," Pathfinder's success makes a lot of sense -- it's "more D&D" to the core audience than 4e is. Which is largely as Dancey expected 4e to go.




While I agree that this is 100% true, I'm thinking that it's probably not a very good selling point for trying to get WOTC to go OGL with 5e.  Giving away D&D isn't going to win WOTC any friends in the boardroom.

But, I do agree that I hope they get some sort of licensing thing going, and going soon, to let other publishers get in on the published adventures scene.  Here's hoping.


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## I'm A Banana (Oct 24, 2013)

Hussar said:


> While I agree that this is 100% true, I'm thinking that it's probably not a very good selling point for trying to get WOTC to go OGL with 5e.  Giving away D&D isn't going to win WOTC any friends in the boardroom.




Totally. I think there's some good boardroom cases for going OGL -- among them the prospect of capturing the level of market saturation that during 3e, when _everything_ had a d20 version. And that the real money is in IP and brand anyway, and a bigger audience helps cement those concepts more deeply and serves as a proving ground. 

But those are up against boardroom cases against it, including the fear of loss of "ownership" (which is actually a benefit, but short-term thinking wouldn't see it that way) and since businesses tend to be conservative and about the short-term solution, it's an uphill battle. 

I mean, really, if they want everyone to be playing some version of 5e, they should make it OGL, since then everyone probably will be playing some version of 5e. And then if they set up an OGL store that they make a little cut off of every transaction, and curate like the Apple app store? You might be looking at getting a _big_ slice of that pie of people who might not even ever by a PHB.


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## Gadget (Oct 24, 2013)

billd91 said:


> I think that's probably a correct assessment. But my concern is that WotC and their Hasbro legal handlers will screw up the licensing again like they did with 4e. They don't need to make Next OGL, but they should generate a fairly permissive license *early* to encourage involvement and not burn the 3rd party producers they have like they did with 4e's GSL debacle. If they don't, they'll either have another edition without much adventure or other support at launch time or they'll have to be ready with a bunch of internally written adventures.




I think they screwed up the licensing earlier than that.  Many 3rd party publishers were burned by 3.5 and realized that it wasn't exactly a great thing that WOTC could shoot the horse out from underneath them like that and abandoned the d20 System License (remember that? The license that actually depended on the PHB?) for the OGL and made their own system.  That arguably left even the benefit of 3rd parties driving core book sales behind, save for those writing adventures.  But adventures were viewed as tricky and having narrow profit margins (One of the reasons WOTC wanted 3rd parties was to not have to do 'small margin' adventure products) until Piazo figured out the Adventure Path model and even that is hard to do well without the great business acumen and creative talent that Piazo has.   

It may be that Licensing is possible in today's climate with a more Apple 'App Store' type model, with WOTC managing the brand and IP as mentioned above, but I don't see a return to an OGL like environment being viable.


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## Zireael (Nov 10, 2013)

Is there any news about any license for 5e?


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## dmccoy1693 (Nov 14, 2013)

Zireael said:


> Is there any news about any license for 5e?



Nope.


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## Pramas (Nov 14, 2013)

Boy, this thread is taking me back...


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## Weather Report (Nov 14, 2013)

Creepy, as yet, the X edition crowd are trying to bully, due to defensiveness..please stop.


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## Tom Strickland (Nov 19, 2013)

My hope in this era of increased alternative marketing and funding     approaches is that more works of art will make it to those customers who find     them most appealing. There should be numerous small, agile, creative     publishers who can make a living, improve and experiment over time,     and keep the genres thriving. Consolidation of these many-varied     ("niche") markets and smaller publishers into a handful of mega-vendor communities and products with centralized control     would be--by definition--stifling, and unlikely in any event with modern social and     economic capabilities intact and changing/improving over time. The "creative     forces" must have a rich, varied, and spacious environment in which to thrive.

     (With nods to communications, software and operating     system market realities) Any massively influential RPG publisher     could consider spinning off a rules group to work on an "open     standard" (platform) to address and design a rich, flexible,     consistent framework which allowed for all manner of profitable     adaptations. As with many tech standards, market forces would reward     vendors that standardized upon vetted, quality specifications--in     this case, for how to simulate abstract, imaginative experience using math, probability,     or other approaches. It would not preclude doing something     different, but would rather increase interoperability for those who     did not want to reinvent the wheel or even tweak the smallest     mechanic--but instead paint a picture, or offer a new or variant     mechanic whose relation to the known whole was better understood for     its wider audience and greater familiarity.

     Our very interesting experience here on this forum at a Web site on     the Internet is based upon numerous underlying previously-set  standards which     allowed interoperability and also competition while consistently     improving the underlying standard cores over time. There are  numerous physical servers and components, operating systems, bulletin  board applications, ISP's, etc...all sharing the same core Internet and  World Wide Web to produce over millions of unique social and content  experiences--and despite the shared standards (nevertheless implemented  as various independent infrastructures and coded behaviors), who can  doubt that the big players still have the largest portals and subscriber  bases even though there exists "equal" potential to publish sites on  the net? [Because, of course, they leverage talent, assets, SEO,  advertising, branding, loyalty, etc. to differentiate themselves and  grab market share.] 

Think how much     more could be achieved in RPG's by building upon "open"/"standard"     descriptions and rules. Those who wanted to go far afield would not be     prevented. And yet, those who wanted to contribute and profit from     working in a well-known system would be able to without     fees--including participating in committees to shape those core game     platforms. The massive publishers would gain all of the proven advantages for     standardization, and would still enjoy tremendous (but not zero-sum)     competitive advantages when marketing and selling content for the     open standards, but would have a more consistent and increasing     market overall by establishing familiar and common expectations for     the platform on which new content should be delivered. They will     analogously produce the blockbusters delivered over the net, while     indies will have their audiences too. If they instead used     proprietary delivery systems, or video formats, such lack of     standardization would undermine profitability and perhaps even     viability, as more tech-standard/compatible vendors grabbed market     share.

     I say: be a leader in providing open standards for rules, and excel     (profit-wise) separately by providing settings, software, physical     products, media, etc. that are built upon such community-supported     collaborative efforts. This will repair what was "fractured" without     preventing ongoing (decentralized) innovation and diversity because it will reduce the     inherent confusion in the description--the language if you will--of     how to enjoy structured (rules-based) role-play, and thereby draw     greater numbers of discriminating consumers into the market: enough     for the existing greats and many more of the minor publishers to     thrive and grow.


=================================
 Update: A thought occurred to me that one useful approach to a  D&D open standards initiative would be to have the initial and/or  other working groups retroactively adding the 1E, 2E, 3.xE, and 4E  established rules and text/descriptions. Then existing and new systems  (incl. “retro clones”) could indicate clearly with which standard–and  also any exceptions/omissions–their works complied.

 Additionally, branching systems could offer formal/standardized annotations indicating differences.

 One clear advantage to such a codex would be the ability for gamers  (consumers) [for fun] and also publishers [for profit] to offer  compliant versions of their content both up AND down the version  hierarchy/tree. This would optimally occur as each discrete/cohesive  “system” was announced and published as complete.

 This is, of course, meant to imply a more welcome (layperson legal  perception), widespread (inclusive of many interested parties) and  easier capability to translate new and existing works, beyond what  already has happened, and does happen.


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## Zireael (Nov 22, 2013)

> One clear advantage to such a codex would be the ability for gamers   (consumers) [for fun] and also publishers [for profit] to offer   compliant versions of their content both up AND down the version   hierarchy/tree. This would optimally occur as each discrete/cohesive   “system” was announced and published as complete.




I agree - after all, D&D N was supposed to be the edition "to end all"


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