Quote from: thedungeondelver;682918Gary's name (...) would infringe on TSR IP.

Wow. That's even more ridiculous...

Quote from: Lynn;682974They are not unique in this regard. It happens all the time.

They've done a lot of screwed up stuff but they're not as bad as GW.

Nobody is as awful as GW except for perhaps late mid-90s TSR.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;683157They've done a lot of screwed up stuff but they're not as bad as GW.

Nobody is as awful as GW except for perhaps late mid-90s TSR.

GW will send actual Space Marines to your house to give you a kicking if you forget to include the trademark symbol whenever you say Space Marine.

And late TSR was fabulously crooked.

Ah yes, the infamous Space Marine (TM).

I feel nicely liberated by GW selling their licences and sticking to the games I don't really play that much any longer. I can ride their ugly arses all they deserve.

Quote from: jeff37923;682523You know, in the area of RPGs, WotC has made a habit of creating their own market competition and giving them a head start by alienating their customers in the process.

WotC shot themselves in the foot with the OGL.

Releasing the OGL was an stupid move of nuclear proportions, and they are starting to feel the fall out.

If they hadn't made that idiotic move then pathfinder wouldn't be here and the osr  people would still be using out of print books.

4e would have been just another version of the 2nd edition disaster, and they could more or less recover with a decent follow up edition.

Quote from: Jaeger;683598WotC shot themselves in the foot with the OGL.

One could argue — and I will — that they shot themselves in the foot by releasing a game with only a tangential relationship to anything that had gone by the name D&D previously. (And making a number of shitty decisions in concert with that, like "everything is core" and Spellplague.)

One could also point out that they made a shit-ton of money off 3e D&D, in large part due to the OGL.

In any case, the OGL is responsible for allowing the current gaming renaissance to foster. What vitality there is in the hobby is mainly due to OGL-derived games. Even were it bad for WOTC, it was great for gaming.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;683617One could also point out that they made a shit-ton of money off 3e D&D, in large part due to the OGL.

OGL was great for the good third party guys - totally arguable how/if that translated into official 3e sales though.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;683617In any case, the OGL is responsible for allowing the current gaming renaissance to foster. What vitality there is in the hobby is mainly due to OGL-derived games. Even were it bad for WOTC, it was great for gaming.

And that's my point, if I were in charge of WotC I could give a fuck about gaming outside D&D.

WotC hurt themselves in the long run with the OGL , which has allowed competitors to come into existence that otherwise wouldn't, diluting the D&D brand.

Yes 4e was dumb, but fixable with a new edition.

OGL is never going away. Which is not good for WotC's bottom line long term.

Now I don't play D&D, so I could give a fuck what happens to WotC.

OGL was just an obviously bad pure business move from the start. You don't create your own competition by giving away your money making IP for free. So Stupid.

Personally I'm curious to see what pazio's response to 5e will be once it hits the market. Because with OGL hanging out there they could make a very close competitor again...

Quote from: JonWake;683276And late TSR was fabulously crooked.

Ah yes...late TSR.

"If you put something D&D up on CompuServ or Prodigy or GEnie, it belongs to US!"

Quote from: Jaeger;683634OGL was great for the good third party guys - totally arguable how/if that translated into official 3e sales though.

The presence of a wide variety of supplemental materials — modules, campaign settings, rules supplements — absolutely helped drive sales of D&D. WOTC themselves (and employees at the company) said so.

Supplements were instrumental in the sales of 3e, and it was the botched 3.5 transition that cratered the marketplace, which had negative consequences for WOTC. Then there was the botched transition from the OGL to that other license, and the shitty decisions made in making and marketing 4e.

To blame the OGL for all of the ill effects of a decade of bad decisions is a mistake, IMHO.

Quote from: Jaeger;683634WotC hurt themselves in the long run with the OGL , which has allowed competitors to come into existence that otherwise wouldn't, diluting the D&D brand.

Let's be clear here. According to my best understanding of the pertinent laws (IANAL), people could always "clone" D&D.

You can't copyright mechanics or systems. I could publish a clone of D&D, with the exact same mechanics (but all new text), and it'd be untouchable under US law.

In fact, D&D clones have always existed. Palladium was a D&D clone. Did the success of Palladium and Rifts destroy TSR... or was it TSR's own bad business decisions?

WOTC hurt themselves with many decisions, the OGL not among them.

The only thing WOTC can do to cloners is to sue.... and they'd be in the wrong, according to the law. The lawsuit would be devastating to the small-time person, but it'd be baseless. (Yes, baseless suits are effective, if reprehensible.)

What the OGL did (in effect) was to officially announce that WOTC wouldn't wrongfully sue anyone making a D&D clone, so long as you abided by it's restrictions. It was nice of them, but not legally necessary.

Now, how does a promise not to wrongfully sue someone constitute either brand dilution or brand suicide?

Quote from: Jaeger;683634And that's my point, if I were in charge of WotC I could give a fuck about gaming outside D&D.

"I don't care about how many people play RPG's. No matter how many do, my sales will always remain robust and growing."

Shortsighted, to say the least.

A healthy D&D is good for the hobby and industry. Conversely, a healthy hobby is good for D&D.

Quote from: Jaeger;683598WotC shot themselves in the foot with the OGL.

Releasing the OGL was an stupid move of nuclear proportions, and they are starting to feel the fall out.

If they hadn't made that idiotic move then pathfinder wouldn't be here and the osr  people would still be using out of print books.

4e would have been just another version of the 2nd edition disaster, and they could more or less recover with a decent follow up edition.

It remains to be seen that they can recover with D&D Next, and without the OGL, there would be no Paizo Pathfinder, which means the hobby's business as a whole would be even more in the tank than it is, since the previous flagship brand is no longer well-thought of and needs a serious rehabilitation, which would be even more crucial (and more chancy) if we didn't have Pathfinder as a counter-example.

JG

PS: How was AD&D 2nd Edition a bigger "disaster" than 4E?

Quote from: Jaeger;683598WotC shot themselves in the foot with the OGL.

WotC shot themselves in the foot by making third edition incompatible with what have came before. Everything since then has been chasing short term profits (sales spikes from making your existing customers buy the core books again by releasing a new incompatible edition) at the expense of longer term sales (by fracturing the the player base they reduce the potential market for future products).

Had WotC been prepared to treat D&D like a board game instead they would definitely be making more money per year from it now, and might even be ahead for the whole time they've owned it by now. And with a D&D basic set always in print, the hobby would have been better off too (they could even have done themed D&D sets they way they do for Monopoly and Risk - Simpsons D&D anyone?).

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;682901Wasn't that the reasoning why TSR was able to go after Gary Gygax's Dangerous Journeys, a game that couldn't possibly be seen as a copy/re-engineering/clone of AD&D?

I'd love to see a D&D movie about the actual creation of the game, and the legal battles that followed it's success. That's a far more interesting story.

Quote from: Grymbok;683770Had WotC been prepared to treat D&D like a board game instead they would definitely be making more money per year from it now, and might even be ahead for the whole time they've owned it by now. And with a D&D basic set always in print, the hobby would have been better off too (they could even have done themed D&D sets they way they do for Monopoly and Risk - Simpsons D&D anyone?).

Themed D&D basic sets seems to be a glaring omission. In a sane world second- and third-tier game companies wouldn't have the LOTR RPG licence, or even the Game of Thrones RPG licence - it'd be Wizards all the way baby, with the work of the designers mainly being to load the sets in question with cool subsystems and supplements to cover distinctive aspects of the IP in question (for instance, a noble house management system for the Game of Thrones RPG).

Quote from: Ladybird;683821I'd love to see a D&D movie about the actual creation of the game, and the legal battles that followed it's success. That's a far more interesting story.

The "Jobs" treatment - for "Gygax". Id like to see that too.

Quote from: Jaeger;683598WotC shot themselves in the foot with the OGL.

Releasing the OGL was an stupid move of nuclear proportions, and they are starting to feel the fall out.

If they hadn't made that idiotic move then pathfinder wouldn't be here and the osr  people would still be using out of print books.

The idiotic move was pulling the Dragon and Dungeon licenses from Paizo, which motivated them to make Pathfinder. That put Paizo into the position of either fold or do something new. I heard this directly from Lisa Stevens and Eric Mona at a Paizocon.