The thing that's being constantly overlooked is that TSR had been bought by WotC, 2nd edition was basically down the drain, as well as D&D. Most people I knew at the time, back in France, and I'm talking 1998/1999, thought D&D was DEAD.

You want an opinion? If WotC had not gone for the OGL and 3rd ed had not been what it was, then D&D - at least as a commercial product, a brand - would be DEAD today. 3rd ed incorporated enough elements to please different types of gamers and play styles, at least at its inception, and the OGL provided a bridge for the aficionados to become part of the game and create, produce adventures and game materials themselves, which created a chain reaction that tremendously helped in making it, and the d20 system with it, the uncontested top dog of the 2000s.

That's an amazing comeback story. Saying otherwise is IMO pure revisionist crap.

And if you want more opinion about it, I think that WotC abandoning the OGL and wanting to put back the lid on the box was completely retarded on their part. And I mean it: not just a bad decision, or mistaken judgment, because there was an entirely broken strategy behind it, there were multiple mistakes that took place while unfolding this strategy, such as pulling Dragon and Dungeon from Paizo, putting all your eggs in the same basket and betting on DDI while the previous track record of WotC was ABYSMAL in regards to electronic platforms and products, and so on, so forth.

It was RETARDED. As in "what the FUCK where they thinking?!" retarded. To me, IMO, etc.

Quote from: Benoist;685172... the OGL provided a bridge for the aficionados to become part of the game and create, produce adventures and game materials themselves, which created a chain reaction that tremendously helped in making it, and the d20 system with it, the uncontested top dog of the 2000s.

But they could have created a license that gave them a good deal of what made D20/OGL good for the hobby, without giving away the store in the way that the OGL did.

Quote from: Benoist;685172And if you want more opinion about it, I think that WotC abandoning the OGL and wanting to put back the lid on the box was completely retarded on their part. ...
It was RETARDED. As in "what the FUCK where they thinking?!" To me, IMO, etc.

100% correct!

Once Pandora's box was opened there was no going back.

They should have come out with a simplified/streamlined OGL based rules set for 4e. (basically what they say they are doing with Next)

And they should not have cut Pazio off at the knees by pulling the dungeon/dragon license. If anything I would have tried to bring them closer into the official D&D fold...

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Quote from: Jaeger;685173But they could have created a license that gave them a good deal of what made D20/OGL good for the hobby, without giving away the store in the way that the OGL did.

When dealing with an hypothetical instead of history you can come up with a lot of "what-ifs" and "maybes". I for one seriously doubt that anything short of the OGL as it was would have accomplished the same marketing traction for D&D 3rd edition, the d20 System and Wizards of the Coast, precisely because it gave an initial confidence to third-party publishers that the license was open, perpetual, irrevocable, with the freedom to designate Product Identity as desired and on a case-by-case basis, etc.

Still aside from "what-ifs" and "maybes", the history of the D&D game shows clearly that D&D CAN make another comeback as it did in the early 2000s. Accounting for the fact that the OGL is now a reality of the market WotC has to deal with, one way or the other, I think the honchos behind 5th ed should consider actually banking on the open gaming strategy again, that is, explicitly, to create a 5th edition SRD and make it OGL again to set up the conditions for this comeback. Otherwise, WotC/D&D will keep fighting against itself in the form of its "evil twin" Paizo/Pathfinder who will still profit from the OGL Wizards let down in the recent past. That latter strategy would be a losing strategy, in my mind.

Bottom line: if WotC wants to be top dog again, and is not content with the #2 spot on the market, it has to make 5th ed/Next OGL. No ifs nor buts.

I'm betting on some sort of open license.  So much, in fact, that I've been working on my "old school" super dungeon designed for Next.  Barring they completely change the core of the game (which I doubt), I'll only have to do minor tweaks to stats and such.

I have to agree with benoist, wotc getting rid of ogl, after we had all basked in it for nearly a decade was a bad idea. About as smart as selling a 4% milk that tasks like skim. We had ogl for so long and knew what we lost by its removal. EVERYTHING was d20 fom 2000-2008. Compare that with previous years, especially the 90s, where D&D almost fell to games like Vampire.

It seems to me that the OGL was a pretty good move at the time but it creates the problem that if your next edition is a significant change to the previous one, you have in effect created your own competition. The RPG industry and D&D in particular is based on significant changes through new editions. Unless the plan is to make DDN some sort of final edition evergreen rules set, I very much doubt that they will go OGL again.

Ultimately it's a good short term move but probably a bad long term one.

Quote from: soviet;685194It seems to me that the OGL was a pretty good move at the time but it creates the problem that if your next edition is a significant change to the previous one, you have in effect created your own competition. The RPG industry and D&D in particular is based on significant changes through new editions. Unless the plan is to make DDN some sort of final edition evergreen rules set, I very much doubt that they will go OGL again.

Ultimately it's a good short term move but probably a bad long term one.

Not sure I agree that is what the industry is built on. I think a transition similar to previous ones would not have presented a problem. Publishers were prepared to make that transition with them. It was both the radical break that 4E made from 3E and the terms of the new licese that caused publishers to go their own way.

Quote from: Jaeger;685009If they never released the OGL to begin with, all the headaches that went along with stupidly abandoning it would never have existed...

If they had never released the OGL to begin with, they also wouldn't have reaped all the benefits that came with it.

Quote from: soviet;685194It seems to me that the OGL was a pretty good move at the time but it creates the problem that if your next edition is a significant change to the previous one, you have in effect created your own competition.

The reality is that any reboot edition of an RPG that isn't the result of deep and clear-cut dissatisfaction in the fanbase will split the fanbase, often with a significant proportion or even a majority of your existing customers simply staying with the old edition.

I think 4E would have been nearly as disastrous for WotC even if Pathfinder didn't exist: Those customers would have simply stayed with 3E and disappeared from the market.

The argument could be made that, without the OGL, WotC wouldn't have felt the need to do a massive reboot edition for 4E (in order to break ties with the OGL). But that takes us pretty far out along a chain of imaginary scenarios.

Quote from: Haffrung;685122Problem is, for every Necromancer Games, there were two or three smaller outfits filling the market with shit. Retailers got pissed off and stopped carrying all 3rd party material, because they didn't want to be left holding the bag with 400 cheap adventures churned out by the likes of Goodman Games.

First: Goodman Games is actually one of the success stories of the third party market. You appear to be confusing your personal opinion of product quality for market analysis.

Second: I agree. A lot of game retailers were absolutely horrible at inventory management. As a consumer, I really don't care. If you are incompetent at the basic skills of running a retail business, you shouldn't be running a retail business. The idea that we need to save crappy game stores doesn't have much traction with me.

Third: As a consumer, the shit is irrelevant. There are more than enough tools for me to separate the cream from the chaff. The only thing I care about is the good stuff and there's a lot more of that as a result of the OGL... which, in turn, results in me playing more of the core game.

QuoteThere's a reason that Paizo buries the web pages for its third-party 'partners'.

By "bury" you mean "link to them from the Pathfinder homepage?

A lot of your commentary here seems to have a serious disconnect from reality.

Quote from: Benoist;685172The thing that's being constantly overlooked is that TSR had been bought by WotC, 2nd edition was basically down the drain, as well as D&D. Most people I knew at the time, back in France, and I'm talking 1998/1999, thought D&D was DEAD.

You want an opinion? If WotC had not gone for the OGL and 3rd ed had not been what it was, then D&D - at least as a commercial product, a brand - would be DEAD today. 3rd ed incorporated enough elements to please different types of gamers and play styles, at least at its inception, and the OGL provided a bridge for the aficionados to become part of the game and create, produce adventures and game materials themselves, which created a chain reaction that tremendously helped in making it, and the d20 system with it, the uncontested top dog of the 2000s.

That's an amazing comeback story. Saying otherwise is IMO pure revisionist crap.

I think that this is absolutely correct.  It is not that D&D was a dead system when 3rd edition D&D came out but that there was a lot of draft away from the system.  I often forget just how much I liked 3.0 D&D and how little of the later problems were present at the beginning.  For levels 1 to 6/10 or so, the system is really sharp; issues arise later but by the a ton of interesting adventuring has been done.  

But pulling momentum behind their product was key to getting people to try it out.  And the OGL certainly created a lot of excitement.  Heck, in the run up to 4E, a lot of companies were hoping on jump on the new edition release with updated product.  

Other games with solid mechanics (GURPS, RUNEQUEST, HERO, ROLEMASTER) were not able to make this jump back into the limelight.  So the OGL may well have been essential.  Given that, the decision to leave it the way that they did might not have been the most optimal strategy possible.

Y'know, I wonder how 4E would have done if they had just branded 3E as "Basic D&D" and 4E as "Advanced D&D" while keeping the OGL.  Marketing could have stopped a lot of the schism.

I disagree that the OGL was a big part of the success of 3E. Fact is, most of the huge demographic who had been part of the early 80s boom had drifted away from RPGs altogether in the 90s. The release 3E coincided with a different life stage of that huge cohort, and the widepsread mainstream publicity for the game prompted a lot of them to give D&D a try again. Combine that with the new generation of M:tG players who seized on the customization and optimization potential of 3e, and you have WotC's customer-base for 3e.

Anyone who thinks the OGL was a bad idea is wrong.  It had an amazing effect.  It was a great long-term strategy.  

But it was holding a tiger by the tail.  When you find yourself in that position, don't let go.  

Wizards of the Coast abandoned their position as the 'main producer' of quality content when they abandoned 3.x.  As a member of the 'core audience' of 3.x, I was deeply offended by every aspect of the conversion.  As a long-time subscriber to Dragon and Dungeon, yanking the licenses was unforgivable.  Replacing a print product with an electronic only product - even worse.  I like 'dead tree products'.  I don't mind having a PDF in addition to my print products, but I like gaming books.  4th edition with the heavy emphasis on electronic media was all kinds of bad - if I wanted to play with a computer, I could play Neverwinter Nights.  

Trying to bury 3rd edition considering the OGL made it a 'forever' product was a mistake.  It reeks of hubris.  They mistook enjoyment of the game for loyalty to WotC.  They weren't big enough to kill the edition they had given life to.  Thinking they were was their mistake.  

But if they continued to support the OGL, or even CONTINUE it with 4th edition, they likely would have continued to be successful.  3rd party publishers didn't support 4th edition because the license was terrible - they had no choice but to become competitors.  

If 4th edition were a better game and they had done this a few years later when 3.x was really losing it's shine, even then it might not have worked.  But as it was, it was retarded.  But the OGL - that was brilliant.

I think you are spot on Deadgm

Quote from: Jaeger;685169Do not give away your money making IP so that others can use it to compete against you in the long run.

You say that like it's an absolute Law of Business. It's not.

Companies license IP all the goddamn time. Constantly. To competitors, even. People who make products that directly compete with their own.

Patent Pools, for one. Enter MP4.

Technical standards, for another. Enter FRAND. (The "R" means "reasonable".)

Companies license IP all the time. All it takes is them benefitting from the exchange. Which WOTC did.

Quote from: Jaeger;685009If they never released the OGL to begin with, all the headaches that went along with stupidly abandoning it would never have existed...

And if I never bought a car, all the headaches that went along with crashing it would never have happened.

Therefore one should never, ever buy cars. Or any kind of vehicle. Or a stove. Or couch. Or fall in love. Or get married. Or get a job.

Something bad might happen, which would never have happened otherwise. So doing it must be a bad idea.

(BTW, have you seen YOLO?)

Look, just because you drove drunk and crashed your car doesn't mean buying it was a bad idea. I'd argue that, just maybe, it was the drunk driving to blame, not the car. Especially when you got so much benefit from the automobile for nearly a decade.

Quote from: Jaeger;685169Do not trust-bust your own market share monopoly.

So, using your specific definition of smart — helping to establish a monopoly — the OGL wasn't smart. But that's not a definition I'd ever agree with. (For various reasons, taking us far beyond the immediate question.)

Since we have completely different definitions, we can never settle the question. Agree to disagree?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;685416I think you are spot on Deadgm

Indeed.

JG