Hasbro will never sell Wizards of the Coast, or Dungeons & Dragons. If they can't make any money on 5e, they might shelve it for ten years and then try again, but they'll never ditch it entirely.

As far as the OGL goes: it was the 2nd greatest thing to ever happen to the hobby.

Quote from: Skywalker;581723WotC definitely benefitted from the OGL in the early years of 3e. However, without a plan for what came next, it was a shortsighted benefit for WotC as history has proven.

As I said above, WotC putting the genie back in the bottle was definitely a mistake. But it would have caused a lot less harm had the OGL (the hole) not happened.

They never stopped benefitting from it.  But they absolutely needed to continue making good product.  

Their biggest deficiency - adventures.  3.0 had a complete series of adventures, but 3.5 only had 'super modules', and they came pretty late.  

I think if they had really supported the OGL with their ongoing releases, it would have continued to pay dividends.  Compatibility of products was a big selling point in 3.5, but as WotC continued to release more and more material that could not be supported by third parties (such as in adventure modules) it makes it harder and harder for DMs to use the new material.  If DMs can't use it, you get only players using it, and then it just feels like 'munchkinism'.  If you never meet an NPC villain that is a scout, it's hard to see that as a legitimate PC class.  

That's really where I think they made their mistake.

Quote from: Skywalker;581723WotC definitely benefitted from the OGL in the early years of 3e. However, without a plan for what came next, it was a shortsighted benefit for WotC as history has proven.

I'm sure Ryan will be along shortly to disabuse you, but this is flat wrong. From inception, WotC openly articulated a long-term vision for the OGL. One element, for example, was that winning mechanics or improvements developed by 3rd parties would be rolled back into the core d20 system.

Now this plan, like any plan, probably would not have stood without significant revision over the years. But we'll never know, because it was never really implemented. As management within WotC changed, the plan for the OGL changed and the company steadily retreated from the original vision, until you eventually ended up with a closed 4e.

So the problem wasn't that WotC didn't have a plan for what came next with the OGL. The problem was the plan wasn't followed, and the people who made that call really didn't seem to understand the OGL.

The big mistake WotC made was to release an OGL without a standard substructure.  I thing grandfathering in D&D legacies like AC and HD was a mistake too if they ever wanted a functional generic game, they only work in the narrow, narrow context of D&D and didn't even make sense in the context of 3e.  Crappy design work there as I've always said.

But I'm beating a dead horse or a dead whore house or something.

The substructure issue's the big problem though.  D&D's been proving that crappy game design can win in the marketplace for fourty years now.  There needed to be standard limits that couldn't be violated if you wanted to produce OGL material.  Instead what we got was lots of horribly unbalanced classes and feats from not only third party publishers but WotC themselves.

Bearing in mind of course that I believe D&D's core game is fundamentally brilliant for what it was designed to do and that the implementation found in all the editions has been the real problem.

Quote from: David Johansen;581775The big mistake WotC made was to release an OGL without a standard substructure.  I thing grandfathering in D&D legacies like AC and HD was a mistake too if they ever wanted a functional generic game, they only work in the narrow, narrow context of D&D and didn't even make sense in the context of 3e.  Crappy design work there as I've always said.

But I'm beating a dead horse or a dead whore house or something.

The substructure issue's the big problem though.  D&D's been proving that crappy game design can win in the marketplace for fourty years now.  There needed to be standard limits that couldn't be violated if you wanted to produce OGL material.  Instead what we got was lots of horribly unbalanced classes and feats from not only third party publishers but WotC themselves.

Bearing in mind of course that I believe D&D's core game is fundamentally brilliant for what it was designed to do and that the implementation found in all the editions has been the real problem.

I see that you also have your own retroclone.  Care to share with us the brilliant part of D&D you retained and what crappy parts you excised?

Wow this thread is way off track!

The current version is a neo-clone really, what can I say, everyone was doing it last year

Originally it was as much an attempt to illustrate what the core of D&D is for the sake of debate rather than an attempt to compete in the retro clone market.  It just goes to show how far I'll go to make a point.  As for what I kept* and what I dropped it's easy enough to take a look for yourself.

Sadly, it didn't revive any great love of D&D in me.  It works well for what it was intended to do but isn't much use for anything else.

*Just to summarize, attributes, race, class, experience points, levels / hit dice, vancian magic, armor class, saving throws.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;581456I'm not so sure about the 'first' time part.  Judges Guild offered materials with the D&D logo in the 70's and early 80's that was widely accepted as part of D&D.

That's true, but things changed very quickly after that.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Skywalker;581565A hole dug for them by the OGL.

Only in the sense that they were seen as trying to reject it and shut down their previous openness. They violated the ancient and sacred rule we all learned as children:"No Take-backs".

RPGPundit

Quote from: RSDancey;581568If this were true, why hasn't Paizo^2 emerged and produced Pathfinder^2 to do to Pathfinder what Pathfinder did to Dungeons & Dragons?

Why was D&D 3.5 able to convert many (most?) of the 3e players?  It faced competition from many, many other games with very similar rules?

I think that MMOs did far more to hurt D&D than the OGL did (well, to be honest I don't think the OGL hurt D&D at all, in fact I think it was critical to its renaissance).

But Wizards of the Coast dug their own hole, starting with the day they said "we are not working on 4th edition" when they were, followed by the day they said "we will not announce 4th edition this year" when they knew they would, and capped off when they said "there will be an Open Game license for use with 4th edition" when they were clearly unwilling to create one.

Everything after that was just post script.

That's absolutely right.  Fortunately, I think now they're trying very hard to make amends.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Endless Flight;581737Hasbro will never sell Wizards of the Coast, or Dungeons & Dragons. If they can't make any money on 5e, they might shelve it for ten years and then try again, but they'll never ditch it entirely.

I've heard this as well, and would put forward that with a company as big as Hasbro is, the opportunity cost in not making the sale is pretty small.

From what little I can find online, Hasbro hasn't ever sold any IP, and only seldom even licenses it out.

Quote from: RPGPundit;582022That's absolutely right.  Fortunately, I think now they're trying very hard to make amends.

They should make amends by creating an SRD for 4th edition and releasing it under the OGL v 1.0a.  The game is effectively commercially dead, so there's no economic harm that could come to Wizards.

And they should commit to releasing an SRD for D&D Next under the OGL v1.0a too, and then keep that commitment.   I haven't seen or read anything that looks like it couldn't be reverse engineered anyway under existing OGL Open Game Content so there's no genie to put back into a bottle but it would be a show of good faith.

RyanD

Quote from: mcbobbo;582211From what little I can find online, Hasbro hasn't ever sold any IP, and only seldom even licenses it out.

They sold Lincoln Logs and the new company turned it into a healthy little business.  Everyone involved at Hasbro was tarred as idiots.  They'll never make that mistake again.

Quote from: RSDancey;582298They sold Lincoln Logs and the new company turned it into a healthy little business.  Everyone involved at Hasbro was tarred as idiots.  They'll never make that mistake again.

This sounds interesting, did Lincoln Logs break the threshold that Hasbro typically wants their toy line to sell at under K'nex stewardship?

Quote from: RSDancey;582298They sold Lincoln Logs and the new company turned it into a healthy little business.  Everyone involved at Hasbro was tarred as idiots.  They'll never make that mistake again.

If my Google-fu is to be trusted they licensed the product in 1999, and must have decided it's working, since in February they announced:

K'NEX BRANDS And HASBRO Announce TINKERTOY® Licensing Partnership And 2012 Product

Quote from: RSDancey;582296They should make amends by creating an SRD for 4th edition and releasing it under the OGL v 1.0a.  The game is effectively commercially dead, so there's no economic harm that could come to Wizards.

And they should commit to releasing an SRD for D&D Next under the OGL v1.0a too, and then keep that commitment.   I haven't seen or read anything that looks like it couldn't be reverse engineered anyway under existing OGL Open Game Content so there's no genie to put back into a bottle but it would be a show of good faith.

RyanD

We still don't know what they're position on Next will be.  I don't think there'd be much point in creating an SRD for 4e, because its pretty obvious not enough people like it to make any product for it.

Its kind of irrelevant anyways, since you don't need an SRD to make 3rd party products.

RPGPundit