Tag Archives: GSL

The Economics of Open Gaming – An Open Letter To WotC

Posted on March 29, 2008 | 6 comments

Why Open Gaming Is Good For Business

The OGL was largely single-handedly responsible for reviving the RPG industry overall and it and 3e took D&D from a bankrupt and largely irrelevant position back to its current state of RPG primacy and pop-culture relevancy.

Let me note something about real world economics. A healthy market sector means more for everyone. My IRL company has been posting record revenues for many consecutive quarters. Our stock took a big hit lately. Why? Because our major competitors posted big losses. This cast the entire sector in a bad light. Doing well in a bad sector isn’t any better than doing poorly in a good sector, and is arguably worse, to investors.

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WotC Rethinking Open Gaming

Posted on March 29, 2008 | 3 comments

In a post on the ENWorld boards, a WotC rep says that they’re still reviewing the basic premises behind the GSL.  Has Paizo’s Pathfinder RPG play scared them into thinking that any degree of openness isn’t the way to go?

To me, this is one of the largest decisions that Wizards could make regarding D&D 4e.  The prior OGL was a huge moment in gaming and helped catapult D&D back to the top from being a bankrupt and irrelevant little thing.  In my opinion, any decision to go back on it would be both stupid and ultimately harmful to D&D/WotC.  I’ve played D&D a long time and would love to keep playing it.  Even if 4e has retarded stuff in it, I can houserule it, heck, publish my own “nonretarded” variant, and keep going.  If they choose to make it not open however – then I won’t bother, I’ll go with Pathfinder or something else exclusively.

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The New Open Gaming License Is Revealed – Kind Of

Posted on January 9, 2008 | 1 comment

Well, I’m glad they finally got around to letting third party publishers know how they’re going to be able to stay in business.  There’s a couple unfortunate things about this, however. 

1.  The $5000 fee.  That’s a lot of money for a RPG publisher.  This effectively prices out everyone except the very largest third party companies.  I’m not sure why – I can see them wanting to keep it out of the hands of “dude in his garage” but that’s steep.  And it’s only for a couple months of lead time, so the publishers would need to be making more than $5k profit on their 4e product(s) in that time to make it worthwhile. 

2.  The community standards.  I worry about this one, especially with some of the frankly candyass things some of the Wizards have said lately, like leaving out half-orcs because of the “disturbing implications of their creation.”  Where do they plan to draw the line?  Just the Book of Erotic Fantasy (which did lose its d20 license)?  How about the d20 version of Macho Women With Guns?  Some of the recent Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path episodes have definitely been R rated.    

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