I am currently browsing through DriveThru and I'm noticing a serious disparity in the amount of 3PP for PF vs. the 3PP stuff for 4e. It has got me to thinking, was Ryan Dancey and the 3e crew correct when they made the OGL? Is the amount of 3PP helping to push PF up and the relative dearth of 3PP for 4e hurting it comparitively? I realize this will be all uneducated speculation, but I'm curious if other folks are thinking the same things as I am. Oh, and this isn't really about which is "better" either. Just one how the openness (or lack thereof) towards the 3PP might be helping or hindering each.

With the 3PP, you are putting your intellectual rights into the hands of WotC. No thanks!

The question is, does allowing (and encouraging) 3rd Party material help promote your game. I think it obviously does, in the case of Pathfinder, and in 3e before it- it created and defined an entire new thing (a PDF marketplace).  Because the one thing gamers might like more than collecting games and possibly playing them is writing their own contributions.

So it's like a cycle: Buy a game, play it, than create for it. And that fit perfectly for a while- that was the booming PDF market. For some people it's still great. I am pretty sure it isn't like it used to be, but some people are going to say it is just the same.

Comparing 4e's presence in the PDF-market might be a little misleading; they intentionally left PDF-land. However there is 3rd party 4th edition support support in an unlikely place.

3PP thrives when it produces material that's attractive in its own right and covers a nichê that the license holder doesn't seek to cover himself and never will.

The italicized bit is where it gets tricky for any 3PP publisher. How can you put out material that's at once vastly attractive to a sufficient size of the customer segment AND have the warranty that your material will never be superseded by stuff the license holder decides to put out in the wake of your product's success?

I've seen it happen with all editions. Necromancer Games' "Tome of Horrors" for D&D 3.0 filled a real need for 1st edition monsters not in the original 3.0 MM. They were promised by WotC that there'd never be overlap. Fast foward only a little time, and you got WotC releasing Fiend Folio and Monster Manual 2.
Contemporary parallel: Pathfinder's Bestiary 2 has somewhat stolen the thunder from Necromancer re-releasing their Tome of Horrors for PF.

Or consider again the 'Advanced Player's Handbook' or whatnot that was released in mid 2008 for D&D 4E - provided classes and races that were kept out of the PHB 1 at 4E's release. Again, forward a couple of months to 4E's official PHB 2 and suddendly no one would want to buy the 3PP covering the same area.
Contemporary parallel: 'Psionics Unleashed' is currently the best selling 3PP product for Pathfinder. You type in "Pathfinder" or even (!) "roleplaying" at amazon.com right now, and it will land an early hit. But to the bargain bins it will go once Paizo releases their own Psionics Handbook. Sure, they've no release date announced as of yet, not even that it's in the work. Still, I think it's inevitable Paizo will do it, given the demand for the product.

When the only way to avoid such situations is to create nichê material that the license holder wouldn't want to copy, you got a pretty tough situation, I think. Or you're looking at extremely small print runs and modest amibitions. Some of my favourite 3PP stuff, like Raggi's monster creator, Jeff Rient's almanach of retro stupid, or Rob Conley's sandbox booklets, are of that variety. But these are all extremely small scale, and not the 3PP enterprise of 2001.

To bring this all down to the question in the OP: somehow lack of 3PP for 4E is helping it to keep control over the main product line. But offerings like Gamma World should have come out in 2008, and at vastly greater proportions than they did in 2010. I mean, the 4E base engine could have been propagated much more widely, and that would have been achieved by a solid 3PP rather than WotC.

One big elephant in the room for 4E 3PP, is that they cannot get their crunchy stuff into the DDI character builder.  (At least not officially).

When I was previously DMing 4E games, I allowed just about any player characters which can be created by the DDI character builder.

I told the players they were welcome to use 4E 3PP books for chargen if desired (ie. Goodman, Mongoose, XRP, etc ...).  It turned out nobody was interested in doing so.  If it wasn't in the DDI character builder, they were simply not interested at all.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;475225T

Comparing 4e's presence in the PDF-market might be a little misleading; they intentionally left PDF-land. However there is 3rd party 4th edition support support in an unlikely place.

This is kinda related to what I'm asking as well. Has that choice hurt them in the long run? Would 4e be even more popular than it is if they had left the pdf/3PP arena more open and unrestricted?

Quote from: ggroy;475237One big elephant in the room for 4E 3PP, is that they cannot get their crunchy stuff into the DDI character builder.  (At least not officially).

Very good point in 4e's case, and a decent reason to restrict the 3PP I suppose. It still leaves me wondering of PF would be as big as it is if it did not have such a robust 3PP library as I well remember the d20 explosion in the wake of their embracing of the 3PP market. Combined with the older, yet mostly compatible, d20 3PP library, PF has a huge variety of supplemental material to support it. I can't help but think that it helps quite a bit with PF's popularity. It leaves me wondering what 4e's potential could have been if they had been more open about 3PP contributions.

Quote from: Sigmund;475247This is kinda related to what I'm asking as well. Has that choice hurt them in the long run? Would 4e be even more popular than it is if they had left the pdf/3PP arena more open and unrestricted?

I know that the 2000's era D20 everything goes market wasn't highly regarded. Wizards wanted people to produce adventures (specifically not crunchy stuff, not character building stuff), and they got..sort of everything else. New game systems, new permutations, the Quintessential etc series. Even though those were some of the best things to come out (I liked the Monsters Handbook, and the Goodman book on airships myself) there was a lot of grumbling throughout the hobby (if you can recall..) about the "D20 glut"

As far as I can tell-abandoning the pdf market may not have been the most profitable move, but it did do what they wanted, which was preserve their specific vision for D&D. 4e 3rd Party exists today in the form of vetted DDI articles and this massive adventure archive, not PDFs. These are produced by that same cycle of player-participants, but you'll notice nobody can actually turn a buck out of them independently anymore.

(Dragon articles pay about $360 or so, depending. Living Realms adventures are now produced on a volunteer basis).

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;475255I know that the 2000's era D20 everything goes market wasn't highly regarded. Wizards wanted people to produce adventures (specifically not crunchy stuff, not character building stuff), and they got..sort of everything else. New game systems, new permutations, the Quintessential etc series. Even though those were some of the best things to come out (I liked the Monsters Handbook, and the Goodman book on airships myself) there was a lot of grumbling throughout the hobby (if you can recall..) about the "D20 glut"

As far as I can tell-abandoning the pdf market may not have been the most profitable move, but it did do what they wanted, which was preserve their specific vision for D&D. 4e 3rd Party exists today in the form of vetted DDI articles and this massive adventure archive, not PDFs. These are produced by that same cycle of player-participants, but you'll notice nobody can actually turn a buck out of them independently anymore.

(Dragon articles pay about $360 or so, depending. Living Realms adventures are now produced on a volunteer basis).

I remember the d20 glut quite clearly, and despite the grumbling, everyone was playing d20 games. Naturally, you get lots of junk with the gems, but the point was, d20 was where it was at, and players could (and still can) buy d20 games and material for any and every genre that might interest them. It allows for a huge variety of styles and approaches and I'd venture to say most groups can find published material to fit their tastes in the PF/d20 library, where 4e is much narrower in it's range of published approaches to the FRPG game experience. I can't help but think this continues to hold 4e back a bit and simultainiously shove PF a bit more into the limelight. I understand that there are many other factors involved as well, but as I started I got to thinking about this from just browsing around. PF/d20 has become this huge universal system that will allow a vast array of styles and approaches, including genre mash-ups and gonzo stuff. Or, it can be taken as much narower. It's the flexibility that the 3PP have added to the mix that I think is helping PF succeed, along with it's high quality. Folks can spend the same on either PF or 4e and they're going to get more for their money with PF, which is another benefit of the 3PP/pdf market. The PF might not be as high quality as the 4e stuff, but then again it might depending on what's chosen. It has to be helping keep PF up there with 4e in popularity. I have not gotten into either game, so this might be a late-coming revelation for me compared to some of ya'all. I have basic products for both games, but not loads of stuff for either.

Quote from: danbuter;475221With the 3PP, you are putting your intellectual rights into the hands of WotC. No thanks!

You are not giving Wizards your IP anymore than you did under the OGL. In fact since there is no sharing provision you have to give less away under the OGL. However you are risking them yanking the license at anytime shutting down your 4e line. If you did a print run, your books are now unsellable. Although you could pull a KenzerCo and sell your stock on ebay like they did with Hackmaster.

Quote from: Sigmund;475217Is the amount of 3PP helping to push PF up and the relative dearth of 3PP for 4e hurting it comparitively?

First Pathfinder has little choice to be under the OGL as it is based on the d20 SRD.

Most gamers will restrict themselves to buying the "name" brand. For 3.5 that was Wizards, and for Pathfinder it is Paizo. The perception of most is that third party materials are crap. Third party publishers in today's market have to work to build their reputation in order to get sales.

Where being able to make a D&D 3.5/Pathfinder compatible product a win is that the author doesn't have to develop a complete RPG on his own. This also reduces competition for Paizo in the short run.

In the long run a publisher is better off with their own RPG to allow more control over the fate of their product line. Someday the Pathfinder license will sunset requiring you to either cease sales or spend extra work to reformat your layout to remove any logos. If the company has that many products and still has sales then likely they have the base needed to successfully launch an RPG.

This was the situation with Paizo when Wizards sunset the d20 license and D&D 3.X. They already had the reputation from their Pathfinder line of adventures and support products and the technical expertise from publishing Dragon/Dungeon.  So when Wizards made 4.0 completely different from 3.X Paizo was in the position to cater to the existing 3.5 customer base.

Paizo succeeded in competing with D&D 4.0 because of product excellence. And just as important is that D&D 4.0 doesn't have the legs to hold the gamer's interest compared to D&D 3.5. This is mostly due to the fact that Wizards treating D&D 4.0 more as a tactical wargame in their organized play and published adventures.  The cycle of interest on a plot heavy wargame is much shorter than on a RPG.

That a wealth of 3.5 wanna bes didn't appear and diluted Paizo's efforts is due to Paizo's continued support of the OGL. Anybody who wanted to continue to support 3.5 or get into support 3.5 naturally gravitated to Paizo.

A contrasting example is that of Castles & Crusades. They only embraced as much of the OGL as they were required to. Nor they fully emulated the system (AD&D) of their intended audience. While one of the more successful vendors, they are not a dominate player in the retro-clone market the way Paizo is for 3.5.

Before Necromancer realized that they would be risking IP(in Clark's opinion), I was all set to be buying another edition of their stuff...  as that wasn't available, WotC lost some profits as I didn't buy the MM and DMG new but waited and snagged them used.

Quote from: estar;475284First Pathfinder has little choice to be under the OGL as it is based on the d20 SRD.

Most gamers will restrict themselves to buying the "name" brand. For 3.5 that was Wizards, and for Pathfinder it is Paizo. The perception of most is that third party materials are crap. Third party publishers in today's market have to work to build their reputation in order to get sales.

Where being able to make a D&D 3.5/Pathfinder compatible product a win is that the author doesn't have to develop a complete RPG on his own. This also reduces competition for Paizo in the short run.

In the long run a publisher is better off with their own RPG to allow more control over the fate of their product line. Someday the Pathfinder license will sunset requiring you to either cease sales or spend extra work to reformat your layout to remove any logos. If the company has that many products and still has sales then likely they have the base needed to successfully launch an RPG.

This was the situation with Paizo when Wizards sunset the d20 license and D&D 3.X. They already had the reputation from their Pathfinder line of adventures and support products and the technical expertise from publishing Dragon/Dungeon.  So when Wizards made 4.0 completely different from 3.X Paizo was in the position to cater to the existing 3.5 customer base.

Paizo succeeded in competing with D&D 4.0 because of product excellence. And just as important is that D&D 4.0 doesn't have the legs to hold the gamer's interest compared to D&D 3.5. This is mostly due to the fact that Wizards treating D&D 4.0 more as a tactical wargame in their organized play and published adventures.  The cycle of interest on a plot heavy wargame is much shorter than on a RPG.

That a wealth of 3.5 wanna bes didn't appear and diluted Paizo's efforts is due to Paizo's continued support of the OGL. Anybody who wanted to continue to support 3.5 or get into support 3.5 naturally gravitated to Paizo.

A contrasting example is that of Castles & Crusades. They only embraced as much of the OGL as they were required to. Nor they fully emulated the system (AD&D) of their intended audience. While one of the more successful vendors, they are not a dominate player in the retro-clone market the way Paizo is for 3.5.

History aside (I remember it well), I think what you are saying then is yes, it is helping PF and hindering (comparatively) 4e.

Quote from: Sigmund;475302History aside (I remember it well), I think what you are saying then is yes, it is helping PF and hindering (comparatively) 4e.

It is helping PF, but 4e issues are of it's own doing. I think 4e would be suffering even if it had an OGL component because 4e's issues are largely presentation not rules.