Was the OGL a bad idea?

[alvordian]

By bad idea, I mean bad for WOTC/Hasbro.

I believe in open source, and am glad for the OGL since it allowed the Old School Renaissance to take off.

I realize the OSR is small potatoes compared to 4e, but Pathfinder is also out there as a competitor.

So do you think WOTC regrets the OGL?

[Finarvyn]

I don't think it was a bad idea. Just a few thoughts off the top of my head, in totally random order......

1. It gave a lot of other publishers a chance to create D&D materials which were compatible with the Hasbro product line at the time. This actually gave 3E (and now 4E) more exposure. Also, the WotC/Hasbro products tend to have more money pumped in for development, and thus have a more polished look with "better" artwork. Official products tend to look nicer than some of the off-brand publishers, and this has to help sales somewhat for the "real thing".

2. I suspect that the Old School Renaissance is much smaller than we'd like to believe. We see a lot of it because we hang out in the right places, but sales of S&W, LL, and other retro clones probably pale when compared to sales of 3E and later 4E. The mainstream D&D player may not even know that most of these products are out there.

3. The OGL may have made it possible for OSRIC, S&W, and other retro clones to exist, but I'm sure pirated versions of older editions were out there and continue to be out there. My point is that even without the OGL, many of the same gamers who play Old School games would have found a way to play them anyway. Most people I know tend to play older editions more than they play the actual clones. Or, they mine the clones for "house rule" ideas.

Anyway, I've heard it argued both ways. I'm glad that the OGL is out there, but I'm not sure how much of an actual impact it has had on Hasbro's sales figures.

[apeloverage]

Presumably they regretted it, because they didn't create a similar license for 4th edition.

But then they apparently had problems with people not taking up the 4th edition license, so maybe they've changed their minds back again.

In response to Finarvyn; I think a lot of D&D players don't know that OD&D exists, let alone that there's a clone of it.

[blissinfinite]

Mar 3, 2010 22:32:37 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

The mainstream D&D player may not even know that most of these products are out there.

Actually, I find that to be quite true.

[greyharp]

I think the original idea was rather insidious. It encouraged third party companies to produce stuff for WotC D&D, when they may have instead done so for other systems. Everyone wanted to get in on the act and WotC could seemingly only benefit in the process - people had to buy the rules to play the supplements. They perhaps didn't forsee the clone side of things, but like Fin, I think the clone movement has had little or no impact on WotC and its market. In the meantime its been manna from heaven for we old school types.

[coffee]

I think the original idea was that players could play any game, in any genre, without having to "change" rulesets.

I just also think that changing rule sets changes the mindset as well, so it isn't a bad thing. I know I looked at Top Secret a lot differently that I did AD&D. They were both from TSR, and they were both good games, but they were different animals entirely. That's why I never bought into the whole "d20 system" thing -- I just played D&D.


Whether it was ultimately good for WOTC or not, who can say?

[apeloverage]

I remember wondering why TSR didn't have a single system for all its games (this was before d20, it was probably in response to GURPS).

[chgowiz]

I also think that at the time the OGL was announced, it was considered trendy and cutting-edge to be "open source" as Linux was really breaking into the conventional awareness and the other OSR (open source revolution) was getting rolling. When I first heard of the OGL, I wondered if it was a cynical attempt by WotC to ride that way.

Now I see it had a much different effect and I'm glad they did it.

[alvordian]

I've recently thought about the pen and paper rpg in the light of the failing newspaper industry. D&D is basically an idea- rules and people are only going to buy rules once. To keep costs down WOTC stopped doing creative stuff that lost money like adventures or settings and sort of licensed their name to others.

With that in mind, the OGL was a good idea since it would theoretically drive consumers to your main IP the core books. Others would make adventures and settings (which WOTC more less abandoned in the 3e era) and make profit profit profit.

But I think things went south when the third party guys got a little too successful. That left WOTC with just adding more rules-splatbooks, or refining the Forgotten Realms. And when they exhausted those avenues, and didn't or couldn't produce anything new, the revised the game to 3.5 and repeated the process.

I'm just wondering if it was a good idea badly executed or a bad idea that should have been done differently.

I'm by no means a WOTC basher. D&D is the hobby for good or bad, so I want it to survive. Although its good to know some form of the game wouldn't completely disappear if WOTC went belly up tomorrow.

[thegreyelf]

Actually, I think the bad idea was making 4e and NOT keeping an open content system in place. It's no secret that while 4e is selling well, it's nowhere near the juggernaut that 3.x was. They were banking on a new edition selling like hotcakes, as they generally do, and at first it looked like it would--first print of the 3 cores sold out before it even shipped. Then sales just slumped off. I've spoken to FLGS owners here who are at their wits' ends because 3.x kept them in business and 4e just isn't moving those kinds of numbers.

I think it's because WotC alienated a lot of people by first canceling the wildly popular 3rd edition (after promising it would not happen before 2011 at the earliest), and then closing their 4th edition game.