Quote from: Sigmund;475217I 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.

I think the real key to the success of 3E and then PF is the availability of high quality adventure support material. A large supplement market (driven by OGL support) is secondary, but also important.

Here's some raw anecdote:

During the years of 3E I frequently thought about running other games. You know how many long-term non-D&D campaigns I've run since 2000?

0. Zip. Nada.

Why? Because there was always some awesome adventure or campaign track that I wanted to adapt and run and play with. I basically never run anything as-written -- but whether it was Ptolus or the Banewarrens or Rappan Athuk or Age of Wyrms or Maiden Voyage or Freeport, there was always some rich source text that I wanted to tear apart, re-imagine, adapt, and expand. It kept me engaged with the system and it kept me running the system. It still keeps me running the system.

Paizo is doing a great job of providing this high-quality adventure material. Having a large, strong network of 3PP support is just icing on the cake, frankly.

To put it another way:

90% of everything is crap. 90% of everything else is merely good (but nice to have around). But that still leaves you with 1% of greateness.

Looking at RPGNow right now, PF has 1100 products. Plus another 5200 3E products. That gives you 60+ great products -- the type of products that get you enthused about rounding up a group of players and rolling some dice.

4E has less than 300. Maybe call it 350 if you count everything WotC has published. So that's... 3-4 great products.

The problem is self-evident.

These are not the only ways in which Pathfinder/Paizo are decimating 4E/WotC, but they are significant pieces of the puzzle, IMO.

Quote from: Windjammer;475233Contemporary 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.

Your search results are being customized. I'm not getting that result. Psionics Unleashed is not among the bestselling PF products at RPGNow. And it's only #12 among PF products at DriveThru.

With that being said, you're generally correct. One of the biggest failures of the early OGL was that:

(1) WotC's new "evergreen" products, which should have extended the range of the system, were instead poorly designed duds. (This included psionics, epic levels, and deity-level play.)

(2) Where the game was extended in interesting directions, the material wasn't added to the SRD. Which meant that 3PP couldn't support it.

In retrospect, I think each of those evergreen products needed a better playtesting cycle (so that they didn't suck) and they needed an immediate barrage of support from WotC in order to create actual, playable material so that people would actually start playing in psionics-oriented campaigns, epic-level campaigns, deity-level campaigns, and the like. (Epic is a tough sell in any case, because most people want to level up into it and very few people ever do. But the other two could easily have supported completely original campaigns getting booted up.)

D&D 3.x/d20 System/OGL/Pathfinder is the OGL/SRD (Open Game License).

D&D 4.x/d20 system/OGL is the GSL/SRD (Game System License).

EN World published a short analysis of what some gamer-laywer said the GSL said.  Pretty much every section was "You can play in our sandbox but if we don't like you we can kick you out."

WotC went and terminated/let run out every license out there for any kind of TSR/d20 material. Code Monkey for data sets, White Wolf for Gamma World/Ravenloft/Etc. Kenzer&Co for Hackmaster (1st/2nd ed plus KoK having the D&D logo on it).

4th ed has it's followers, but unfortunately for WotC more stayed with 3rd ed than moved to 4th, with quite a few moving back from 4th after Pathfinder came out. Pathfinder is like Saga Edition with revised spells and stuff.

4th ed doesn't give the options to totally mix/match and abuse classes/feats/etc for so many things to create some horrid bastard of insanity that many players enjoy. At least not here where I live.

Quote from: estar;475315It 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.

I get ya, and for myself I don't disagree with you, but I still think that a small part of it is the lack of 4e 3PP support compared to PF. The 3PP can create options for folks that the main publisher either doesn't think of or isn't interested in. More options means a game that's more usable to a greater variety of play-styles.