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Pen & Paper Roleplaying Central => Pen and Paper Roleplaying Games (RPGs) Discussion => Topic started by: Lawbag on November 29, 2011, 12:53:21 PM

Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Lawbag on November 29, 2011, 12:53:21 PM
Whilst its clear that the Swine and the Forge have harmed internal perceptions of gaming, instead I put it to you that the OGL and subsequent glut of D20 games and products did more harm to RPG than good, even more so than the damage that the Forge did.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: crkrueger on November 29, 2011, 12:57:04 PM
You gotta at least say WHY.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Lawbag on November 29, 2011, 01:08:36 PM
Reason...

The Indie publishing industry 'created' by the Forge is considered by those in the know to have splintered the RPG industry unnecessarily and pushed back the industry's perception by years. But I believe because of the Forge's very nature, independent, none of the games it ever published received exposure beyond a few thousand gamers at best, and sales would be even less, and for those who actually played them even less again. (I think we all own some quality games that we'll never play.)

With the advent of the internet (and the collective moronic mutual masturbation that is the Forge), anyone with an idea (good or bad) can publish their RPG and give it away or sell it as they see fit.

Using the thin veneer of respectability of OGL any hack or amateur could publish a product that makes a mockery of any intended seal of approval, thereby exposing their inconsistent outputs to far more gamers than the Forge could ever dream of.

Suddenly any person with Microsoft WORD and a PDF writer could suddenly release a module or a supplement and they did. The sheer volume of publishers who appeared over the life of D20 was phenomenal, matched only by their disappearance the moment the OGL disappeared.

D20 homogenised the RPG industry. We witnessed painfully inadequate and pointless d20 versions of already existing successful RPGs whilst at the same time good games and ideas were shoehorned into the d20 ruleset without regard for a worthwhile fit. It gave anyone an easy entry into becoming a RPG game designer, substituting games design for a ready set of gaming tools, it was supposed to remove barriers to making new games, but instead removed hurdles that enabled the idea-bereft to release games with no substance.

OGL and d20 compatibility was meant to be a badge of honour, a sign that there was something good inside. This couldn't be further from the truth.

Nintendo learnt this to their detriment in the early 1990s with their SNES Console. The console became home to some of the worst examples of licensed games glut, all of which bore Nintendo's proud Seal of Approval. In reality all the seal meant was the game wouldn't crash and was 100% compatible with the SNES rather than some dodgy knock off.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Grymbok on November 29, 2011, 01:16:54 PM
I agree that D20 damaged the industry, but I disagree on why.

Between 1974 and 1999, all D&D editions had significant mechanical overlap. You could buy any D&D supplement/adventure and use it with your preferred version of the rules with minimal changes. D20 broke that, and 4e broke it again.

That meant that unlike other boxed game perennials like Monopoly or Scrabble, parents can't go out and buy "the game I used to play when I was your age", because that version of the game doesn't exist anymore.

Also, anyone who wasn't interested in the new versions of D&D was cut off from the mainstream of the hobby (which is what eventually lead to the OSR).
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: estar on November 29, 2011, 01:23:11 PM
Quote from: Lawbag;492517
Using the thin veneer of respectability of OGL any hack or amateur could publish a product that makes a mockery of any intended seal of approval, thereby exposing their inconsistent outputs to far more gamers than the Forge could ever dream of.

Suddenly any person with Microsoft WORD and a PDF writer could suddenly release a module or a supplement and they did. The sheer volume of publishers who appeared over the life of D20 was phenomenal, matched only by their disappearance the moment the OGL disappeared.


God forbid the benighted masses should actually publish something. Only properly trained writers should be permitted to release roleplaying game material.

Also your facts are wrong the Open Game License hasn't been discontinued. The d20 trademark license has.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: estar on November 29, 2011, 02:01:13 PM
On a more serious note, the RPG industry weakened because the second great fad period wound down during the 3.5 era. It plummeted to a lower level because of increased competition for gaming dollars. To wit



The competition for leisure time is only going to get worse. RPGs will collapse to a lower level and then be sustained at that level because of low capital cost of print on demand, and the internet. Basically what happened to Hex and counter wargames but on a slightly larger scale.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: trechriron on November 29, 2011, 02:02:27 PM
This whole idea is bunk.  Also, old - tired - beaten - dumb.

1)  The Forge and Indie games did not fracture the industry.  People who like Story Games/Indie Games bought them and played them. Those that didn't, kept playing their game of choice or found other games to play that met their needs. Nothing was fractured. People play the games they like. You didn't lose any players because of an Indie game.

2)  Yes, any "Yahoo" can publish an OGL game.  Doesn't mean everyone is going to buy it. The "D20 Glut" worked out the same way most free markets do. The cream of the crop made sales and stuck around, the rest died off or disappeared. The most significant impact the glut had was on retailers who bought piles of stuff that later didn't sell. This is the same risk EVERY retailer deals with regarding products. It sucks sure, but you can recover if you are agile and savvy.

3) The InterWebs people like us represent a fraction of the actual market. All this debate and arguing had little to no impact on most gamers.  If you visit your local FLGS and ask about common memes here like "swine" and "Indie" and "d20 glut" most people will look at you cross-eyed.  "Huh?" will be a common response.

Neither Indie Games nor the d20 Glut have had a fraction of the impact on our "industry" as the general downturn in the economy. People are spending less money because generally they have less money and/or are saving up for emergencies and/or helping out friends/family who are struggling, etc. Less spending cash = less sales = downsizing and slower production.

Period.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: daniel_ream on November 29, 2011, 02:13:36 PM
I agree with Lawbag on this one, although I think it was the combination of PDF publishing and the OGL that did it.

Let's leave quality aside for a moment, although I think that's really what did in the d20 market.

Before open game licenses, if there was customer demand for a product on, say, ships and sailing in D&D, there was only one place to get it: TSR.  Prospective writers had to submit their proposals, TSR would select the stuff they liked, assign an editor and a product lead, and you'd eventually have a product.  Good quality or bad, playtested or no, there was one book.  All the potential market for such a book went into one place.  All subsequent books only had to be compatible with that one book.

With PDF publishing and the OGL, any schlub could produce such a book.  I own at least eight third-party 3.5 books on ships and the sea (and three just on airships).  None of them are compatible with each other mechanically.  And then there's Stormwrack, which came along at the end.  Regardless of quality, the market's been diluted by a glut of products on the same topic.  Each publisher is getting a fraction of the profit a single publisher would have, and thus it's harder for any of them to produce a quality book, as talent costs money.

Worse, old third-party products no longer vanish to moldy basements and eBay when the initial print run sells out; they hang around in PDF form forever, competing not just with the current official Ships and Sailing book and each other, but with any future Ships and Sailing book that might get published.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Benoist on November 29, 2011, 02:21:18 PM
Quote from: Lawbag;492511
Whilst its clear that the Swine and the Forge have harmed internal perceptions of gaming, instead I put it to you that the OGL and subsequent glut of D20 games and products did more harm to RPG than good, even more so than the damage that the Forge did.
I could not disagree more.

First, before d20 the hobby was dying in my neck of the woods. d20 brought back D&D, and the hobby along with it, as far as I'm concerned.

Second, non-gamers don't give a flying fuck about the "d20 glut" or any of those inbred industry concerns. What they do care about is when a game is a pretentious, pseudo-intellectual, fucked up affair that is no fun to play when they sit at the table. Ergo, the Forge and before it, the embryos of story-everything in various role playing games, did more harm to the hobby than d20.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Garnfellow on November 29, 2011, 02:23:43 PM
The thesis is shit from top to bottom. POD and PDF publishing were coming to the RPG industry with or without the OGL. The hoi polloi were always going to be self-publishing their games and variants on games, and for that matter they always have. As long as RPGs have existed so have amateur labors-of-love, photocopied fanzines, cheap ass knock-off products, and so on.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: daniel_ream on November 29, 2011, 02:50:31 PM
That's true, Garnfellow, but without an open license the trademark owners always had the option of cease and desist letters.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: estar on November 29, 2011, 03:00:58 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.


Garnfellow wasn't talking about people violating copyright. Back in the day people managed to publish products without trampling over the major publishers copyrights. PDF and PoD will make it even easier.

If the d20 SRD was never released under the OGL, likely Fudge or similar open RPGs would have a slightly bigger hit and generate a slew of publishing efforts.

Likewise, with the GNU License and Creative Commons out there likely one of the older RPGs would have been republished under an open license and ignite a mini-boom. As it worked out the World's Most Popular RPG, D&D, did at the right time and sucked the oxygen out of the room for other open systems.

Now that the d20 boom waned other open systems are getting more attention notably Fate.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: TristramEvans on November 29, 2011, 03:27:04 PM
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.


AFAIK, the general public still thinks RPGs = D&D, and that it's either a game for antisocial geeks or devil-worshipers, depending on how far south in the Statess one asks.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: arminius on November 29, 2011, 03:36:56 PM
I don't think either the Forge or the OGL has seriously harmed the overall hobby, although the Forge has harmed critical analysis while also encouraging it (by drawing attention to it) in ways that might bear fruit over time.

I agree with Rob when points out the increased competition for attention.I've argued the same thing, adding in vastly expanding sources of entertainment such DVDs and streaming media.

The other problem, if it is one, is lack of major critical fora--trend setters who have enough sway to guide large amounts of the gaming population toward the best materials. Maybe I'm projecting, but I feel like the miniatures community has a much stronger consensus on the contemporary "canon", which will allow a newcomer to quickly avoid stuff that's either inherently mediocre or just not popular enough to be viable.

Back in the day, this role was provided by magazines like Dragon, The Space Gamer, and Different Worlds. Some of them were house organs (like Challenge) and that's okay, too.

These days the closest things I can think of are Story Games and the various old school fora. There are also the generalist boards, including this one and RPG.net. But many of these are dominated by flavor-of-the-month consumerism rather than the sort of discourse which provides evidence that actual gaming is going on.

Fight on! and Knockspell might also provide some of this function but I don't think they have very high profiles outside of the communities that spawned them.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: arminius on November 29, 2011, 03:38:12 PM
Oh, and I think there may be something to Pundit's thesis that whenever D&D stumbles, the whole hobby suffers.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Bedrockbrendan 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.
.


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.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Skywalker 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.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Garnfellow 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.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: TristramEvans 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.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: JDCorley 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.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Justin Alexander 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).
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Kyle Aaron 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
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Aos 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).
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: David R on November 29, 2011, 08:00:41 PM
WTF is Simian Combat ?

Regards,
David R
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: estar 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.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: David R 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.

Regards,
David R
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: TristramEvans 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.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: crkrueger 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.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Aos 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.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: RandallS 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".
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Bloody Stupid Johnson on November 29, 2011, 10:51:21 PM
Quote from: Lawbag;492511
Whilst its clear that the Swine and the Forge have harmed internal perceptions of gaming, instead I put it to you that the OGL and subsequent glut of D20 games and products did more harm to RPG than good, even more so than the damage that the Forge did.

Quote
Playing: Nothing
Running: Nothing
Planning: pathfinder amongst other things


Hang on...you play Pathfinder, but you think the OGL is evil?

I suppose it might be arguable that the need to escape 3rd party reproducibility was one of the big drivers behind the huge rebuild of the D&D system between 3E and 4E and hence something behind the eternal flamewars.

Oh, and on the 70s RPGs list, not sure if I'd count Monsters! Monsters! as a separate game, it basically just uses the regular T&T rules.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Peregrin on November 29, 2011, 11:16:39 PM
Quote from: Lawbag;492517
Nintendo learnt this to their detriment in the early 1990s with their SNES Console. The console became home to some of the worst examples of licensed games glut, all of which bore Nintendo's proud Seal of Approval. In reality all the seal meant was the game wouldn't crash and was 100% compatible with the SNES rather than some dodgy knock off.

Reality check.  Nintendo single-handedly saved the console-game industry from the glut (and actual crash in the 80s) with that seal.  

If you think there was a "glut" during the NES and SNES era, it was nothing compared to the shitfest of horrible, unplayable shit that came out in the 80s.

Not that I think it's even comparable to d20 -- I don't think there are many similarities at all, really, considering how much easier it was to slap a d20 on your game than it was to get a Nintendo seal.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Kyle Aaron on November 30, 2011, 12:05:03 AM
Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;492752
Oh, and on the 70s RPGs list, not sure if I'd count Monsters! Monsters! as a separate game, it basically just uses the regular T&T rules.

There are heaps of borderline calls like this. OD&D vs B/X D&D vs AD&D1e, how about all the editions of Traveller? And then is Fantasy Hero a different game to Star Hero? If base rules + different setting with rules for that different setting counts as a different rpg, then GURPS has made about 200 rpgs. And today it's even more complicated, because what about the retroclones?

It gets pretty muddled. But however you want to split things up categorically, the point remains: this hobby was founded by incompetent amateurs. We should embrace this fact. After all, every GM who made their own setting and house rules is... an incompetent amateur.

The roleplaying game hobby was founded and is carried on by incompetent amateurs. This is what makes it GREAT.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Bedrockbrendan on November 30, 2011, 04:55:34 AM
Quote from: CRKrueger;492724
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.


This I do agree with. My impression of 4e is they built it around a gamist approach (i've even seen some 4e fans praise it for doing so). I think previous editions made much more balance things out (mechanics were important but so was flavor and so was believability) and with 4e they adopted the focused design approach of places like the forge.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Claudius on November 30, 2011, 04:56:17 AM
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.

You say this as if it was a bad thing.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Claudius on November 30, 2011, 05:02:57 AM
Quote from: CRKrueger;492724
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.

Great point. Your typical gamer knows nothing about the Forge, but a lot of game designers do. The Forge, for better or worse, has had an impact, if indirectly, on the hobby. Not as much as d20 or Vampire, but it's there.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: TristramEvans on November 30, 2011, 05:50:53 AM
Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;492752
Hang on...you play Pathfinder, but you think the OGL is evil?



Coffee everywhere. LMAO.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: David R on November 30, 2011, 06:01:41 AM
Quote from: RandallS;492751
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".


RPG forums are not reality. They are participatory theme parks.

Regards,
David R
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: TristramEvans on November 30, 2011, 06:12:29 AM
Quote from: David R;492800
RPG forums are not reality. They are participatory theme parks.


QFT. I never browse TheRPGsite without stopping by and picking up a funnel cake first.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Bedrockbrendan on November 30, 2011, 06:15:34 AM
Quote from: Peregrin;492754
Reality check.  Nintendo single-handedly saved the console-game industry from the glut (and actual crash in the 80s) with that seal.  

If you think there was a "glut" during the NES and SNES era, it was nothing compared to the shitfest of horrible, unplayable shit that came out in the 80s.

Not that I think it's even comparable to d20 -- I don't think there are many similarities at all, really, considering how much easier it was to slap a d20 on your game than it was to get a Nintendo seal.


Just going by memory here but I think you are right about the 80s part of it. Before NES came out you either had atari, coleco or intellivision (and the big problem with those devices was they broke ALL THE TIME), if I recall. When NES came out it was a major shift and I distinctly remember the quality of games going way up (though there was a lack of some of the more experimental games you had on the older systems).

I never really noticed any glut. What I did notice was NSES was a little late to the party and that Genesis ended up being the more popular system (at least where I lived). I really don't think it was the quality of games that drove genesis sales (since I found NSES games to be just as, if not more, well done).

As for d20, I am not convinced it harmed the hobby or the industry. The d20 boom was a great time to be a gamer (though it did get old after a while and it is nice now to have more non-d20 games on the market again). If you played 3E there was a product for every conceivable need. Sure the quality varied, but even junk products yielded some value in my experience. The only problem with the d20 boom was if you didn't like 3E or if you just wanted a little more variety.
Title: OGL vs The Forge - Random musings
Post by: Claudius on November 30, 2011, 06:59:29 AM
Despite being a detractor of D&D, d20, and all that, I find it very hard to believe that d20 damaged the industry or the hobby.