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Author Topic: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings  (Read 2438 times)

Bedrockbrendan

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OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
« Reply #15 on: November 29, 2011, 03:48:33 PM »
Quote from: TristramEvans;492578
Is the Forge or any of the games that came out of it even a blip on the rader of the consciousness of anyone who isn't already heavily into the gaming hobby? I can't imagine that it's influenced public perception of RPGs whatsoever.
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I think the forge is something that even most gamers don't know about. My experience is only gamers who spend a good deal of time online (in forums like this) have even heard of the forge or GNS. In fact I've asked a number of my gaming friends if they are familiar with GNS and most say no. I doubt non-gamers encounter it much.

Skywalker

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OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
« Reply #16 on: November 29, 2011, 04:02:45 PM »
In my neck of the woods, Indie RPGs are almost as popular as mainstream and it has been instrumental in bringing a lot of new people into the local community here. Its only anecdotal but FWIW I think its clear that the Forge has been benefical here.

I think D20 and OGL did that too in a slightly different way, in blurring the lines of the hobby's most popular RPG and allowing greater movement between game styles.

On saying that the impact of the Forge is pretty much historical now. The community is larger and everyone gets on, even with their different game choices (and perhaps even because of them). FWIW a LARP resurgence is the current local development and it is bringing a lot of new people into the existing community. Sure, the community is diversifying but its also growing.

Garnfellow

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OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
« Reply #17 on: November 29, 2011, 06:11:24 PM »
Quote from: daniel_ream;492562
That's true, Garnfellow, but without an open license the trademark owners always had the option of cease and desist letters.


Sure, but savvy publishers have always found ways to produce compatible materials even without open licenses. See, for example, every gaming magazine ever published and not named Dragon, or Kenzer's 4e offering made pointedly without the GSL.
 

TristramEvans

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OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
« Reply #18 on: November 29, 2011, 06:51:49 PM »
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;492597
I think the forge is something that even most gamers don't know about. My experience is only gamers who spend a good deal of time online (in forums like this) have even heard of the forge or GNS. In fact I've asked a number of my gaming friends if they are familiar with GNS and most say no. I doubt non-gamers encounter it much.


That's been my overall experience as well.
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JDCorley
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OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
« Reply #19 on: November 29, 2011, 07:20:52 PM »
It should also be noted that the Forge, at the time, was very hostile to OGL/d20 stuff. It was firmly classified as "not indie".  So if d20 harmed the hobby it was despite "the Forge"'s best efforts.

By the way, neither of them harmed the hobby, so pretty much thread over.

Justin Alexander
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« Reply #20 on: November 29, 2011, 07:30:32 PM »
Quote from: Lawbag;492517
OGL and d20 compatibility was meant to be a badge of honour, a sign that there was something good inside.


Nope. Not true.

And once you realize that, it doesn't take much to figure out why everything else your posted was nonsense.

Looking at actual market figures (where available) and my own knowledge of several local game shops, I think ti's fairly clear that (a) the OGL/D20 was a net boon to the industry right up until (b) WotC released 3.5 and rendered tons of inventory obsolete.

The latter might not have been so devastating if WotC hadn't told everyone that 3.5 was going to be backwards compatible with 3.0. Publishers took that at face value and continued producing material. Game stores took it at face value and continued stocking mateiral (which was, of course, the reason WotC lied about it). The result was that everyone got hung out to dry.

This wasn't the first time WotC did this to game store owners. Do some poking around and you can see how they completely torpedoed the industry during the early days of Magic by changing their order fulfillment policies without telling anyone before they were going to do it.

Of course, this could have been mitigated (in both cases) if more game store owners actually knew how to manage their inventory. But, sadly, that has never been the case.

Which isn't to say that there wasn't crappy D20 material being produced. Of course there was. (There were even companies like Pinnacle games that publicly said that D20 sucked, that their D20 products sucked, and yet they flooded the market with them anyway.) That's just irrelevant. 90% of everything is crap, but I don't care: I only care about the amount of good stuff that's being produced. And the D20/OGL is responsible for about 95% of my gaming over the past decade because of the tremendous amount of high quality material that was produced (and is still being produced).

The second big mistake was Star Wars D20, which created a template for creating D20 games that was 100% wrong in almost every conceivable way. The industry followed that template and the result was a lot of incredibly crappy games.

The third big mistake was that WotC failed to follow their original business plan (which was to pull in high quality material through the OGL, standardize it, and then push it back out as part of the SRD). When WotC abandoned that plan, there was no push for standardization beyond the core rules. That meant the market couldn't grow; it just spasmed. The fact that it was such a huge success despite WotC's best efforts to stifle it, ignore it, abandon it, and then kill it is a testament to how successful the OGL was (and is).
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Kyle Aaron

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OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
« Reply #21 on: November 29, 2011, 07:47:08 PM »
Quote from: Lawbag;492517
Suddenly any person with Microsoft WORD and a PDF writer could suddenly release a module or a supplement and they did.

That's not a bad thing. That's how the industry started, except with mimeographs. Let's face it, the first editions of games in the 1970s were amateurish. Rules were scattered randomly across the text and contradicted each-other, hugely obvious and necessary things were missing from the rules, the illustrations were crap, and so on. This is true of OD&D, RQ, Traveller, and a stack of other games from the 1970s... and later. It's even more true of the other games we've forgotten. From 1971 (Chainmail) to 1979 inclusive, John Kim lists 45 different rpgs (I'm just counting 1st editions, with D&D Basic/AD&D being a borderline call). Most of us will know at most 5 of them.

1971   Chainmail
1973   Dungeons and Dragons
1975   Tunnels and Trolls
1975   En Garde
1975   Empire of the Petal Throne
1975   Boot Hill
1975   The Complete Warlock
1976   Uuhraah!
1976   Bunnies and Burrows
1976   Starfaring
1976   Metamorphosis Alpha: Fantastic Role-Playing Game
1976   Monsters! Monsters!
1976   Knights of the Round Table
1977   Bifrost
1977   Chivalry and Sorcery
1977   Traveller
1977   The Fantasy Trip
1977   Superhero 2044
1977   Flash Gordon and the Warriors of Mongo
1977   Space Quest
1977   Star Patrol
1978   Adventures in Fantasy
1978   Dungeons and Dragons,  Advanced
1978   Starships and Spacemen
1978   The Complete Warlock
1978   Simian Combat
1978   The Infinity System
1978   John Carter, Warlord of Mars
1978   Legacy
1978   High Fantasy
1978   Age of Chivalry
1978   Gamma World
1978   Once Upon a Time in the West
1978   What Price Glory?!
1978   RuneQuest
1978   Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier
1978   Realm of Yolmi
1979   Buccaneer
1979   Heroes
1979   Mortal Combat
1979   Commando
1979   Ysgarth
1979   Villians and Vigilantes
1979   Crimson Cutlass
1979   Gangster!


We forgot the other 40 or so for a reason.

The 1980s had 227, the 1990s had 3419. If any of us can off the top of our heads name more than one in ten of them I'll eat my copy of the AD&D DMG.

Then when these authours got successful they fell victim to the Successful Authour Bloat. Ever notice that in any series of novels, the later ones are longer than the earlier ones? That's because when an authour is new, the editor goes through and viciously cuts out the crap. When an authour's pooular and successful, the authour tells the editor to fuck off. Thus blather, cf Wheel of Time, or AD&D1e.

The entire rpg industry was FOUNDED by incompetent amateurs. We need more of 'em. Most of what is produced is crap. That's alright, we need the crap. It's the rocks we crush up to find the gold within.

Edit: corrected figures for 1st eds only
« Last Edit: November 29, 2011, 08:38:55 PM by Kyle Aaron »
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Aos

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OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
« Reply #22 on: November 29, 2011, 07:56:55 PM »
Why is Bifrost on that list so many times?

Also, I think I've played about 10 of those (B&B and T&T only once each, though).
You are posting in a troll thread.

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David R

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OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
« Reply #23 on: November 29, 2011, 08:00:41 PM »
WTF is Simian Combat ?

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David R

estar

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OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
« Reply #24 on: November 29, 2011, 08:04:16 PM »
Quote from: David R;492707
WTF is Simian Combat ?

Regards,
David R


Simian Combat
    1st ed by Marshall Rose, Norman Knight (1978) Avant-Garde Simulations Perspetives
    A sci-fi RPG inspired by the Planet of the Apes movie series. PC's can be Apes, native Humans, Mutants or Astronauts. The system concentrates on combat and campaign battles.

David R

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« Reply #25 on: November 29, 2011, 08:06:02 PM »
Quote from: estar;492710
Simian Combat
    1st ed by Marshall Rose, Norman Knight (1978) Avant-Garde Simulations Perspetives
    A sci-fi RPG inspired by the Planet of the Apes movie series. PC's can be Apes, native Humans, Mutants or Astronauts. The system concentrates on combat and campaign battles.


:jaw-dropping: Ok. I. Need. This. Game.

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TristramEvans

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OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
« Reply #26 on: November 29, 2011, 08:10:49 PM »
Quote from: estar;492710
Simian Combat
    1st ed by Marshall Rose, Norman Knight (1978) Avant-Garde Simulations Perspetives
    A sci-fi RPG inspired by the Planet of the Apes movie series. PC's can be Apes, native Humans, Mutants or Astronauts. The system concentrates on combat and campaign battles.



HOLY CRAP!

there's a word in Douglas Adam's book "The Meaning of Liff", the definition of which is: the instant between finding out that a product exists to knowing that you must own it. I don't recall what that specific word was, but I'm living it right now.
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crkrueger

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« Reply #27 on: November 29, 2011, 08:45:58 PM »
Most people don't know about the Forge true, but game designers do.  Forge thought had an impact both on 4e D&D as well as WFRP3, and at least in my opinion, both games suffered severely from that influence.

The OGL, it's still going with Pathfinder as well as Legend.  Any time you lower the barrier to entry you get more chaff then wheat, but the fact that so many game companies hitched their wagon to the D20 license means it did revitalize the industry even if the bubble did burst.
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Aos

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OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
« Reply #28 on: November 29, 2011, 08:49:25 PM »
Quote from: CRKrueger;492724
 Any time you lower the barrier to entry you get more chaff then wheat.


The barrier to entry has always been low in RPGs and there has never, ever been a shortage of chaff- not even for a minute.
You are posting in a troll thread.

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RandallS

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OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
« Reply #29 on: November 29, 2011, 10:45:03 PM »
Threads like this one always confuse me. I see many posts talking about "the hobby" when as far as I can tell they are really talking about "the industry."

 To me, "the hobby" is PLAYING RPGs, not publishing RPGS or selling RPGs ("the industry"). While the OGL version of D&D might have somehow hurt "the industry", I can't see how they hurt "the hobby" given that the OGL and the glut of OGL material published did not affect anyone's ability to play whatever RPG they wanted to play. Therefore, it did no damage to "the hobby" that I can see. Likewise, The Forge did not damage "the hobby".
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