recent Ryan Dancey quote about SRD and OGL

danbuter · November 28, 2010, 07:23:41 PM

There were also some amazing D20 products that would never have seen the light of day, otherwise. But some people only want to focus on the negative.

Drohem · November 28, 2010, 07:24:38 PM

Quote from: The_Shadow;420718I don't buy into the glut-as-disaster narrative.

I don't either.

Aos · November 28, 2010, 07:25:41 PM

and only BRP purists think that CoC d20 was a disaster. I don't even like d20, and I can see the excellence of it.

ggroy · November 28, 2010, 07:27:53 PM

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;420713Had D&D (TM) been killed off in 1997, the retro-clone movement might have started a decade earlier.

Gamers like to create game material. d20's OGL channeled the creative urges of gamers, it did not make them creative.

Troll Lord Games was working on their own D&D-style system back in 1999-2000, before 3E D&D was released.

They released snippets of the system in three non-d20 modules they released in mid-2000. (The Mortality of Green, Vakhund, The Fantastic Adventure). The system looked a bit like a simplified version of AD&D with an ascending AC.

ggroy · November 28, 2010, 07:32:15 PM

Quote from: danbuter;420719There were also some amazing D20 products that would never have seen the light of day, otherwise.

Midnight, Scarred Lands, Dungeon Crawl Classics, etc ...

Daedalus · November 28, 2010, 07:54:48 PM

Quote from: ggroy;420715Wonder if this had more to do with people just burning out on d20, after 7-8 years.

It probably was a little bit of both. It's good that the whole thing shifted back to many games being created with systems that were a fit for the game.

If more games had moved to D20 or the who D20 movement had continued I would have ended up leaving the hobby.

Daedalus · November 28, 2010, 07:58:36 PM

Quote from: The_Shadow;420718I don't buy into the glut-as-disaster narrative. So people created some crap products, then their customers wised up and only the better producers survived? That's capitalism in action and it's a good thing.

Don't buy it if you wish, but I have talked to many game stores who were careful buying d20 products because of the glut and my local game stores still have a bunch of that product.

One was smart enough to sell it at 50% off just to get rid of it and free up space. Personally I think they should do it again just to get rid of the rest of the d20 crap.

This is a good topic and even prompted me to write a blog post about it. I am glad it was mentioned

Daedalus · November 28, 2010, 08:02:09 PM

Quote from: danbuter;420719There were also some amazing D20 products that would never have seen the light of day, otherwise. But some people only want to focus on the negative.

Disagree with this. With electronic publishing becoming more and more popular they would eventually have come out. Maybe instead of D20 using a system that was a better fit for it.

And pointing out negatives about it doesnt mean I am focusing on them, any more then you covering your ears and going "NAH, NAH, NAH" doesn't magically make them disappear as if they didnt happen.

Garnfellow · November 28, 2010, 08:08:12 PM

Yeah, add me to the chorus of people who think the glut-as-disaster narrative is largely bullshit. The d20 glut that people seem to decry, such as it was, was largely limited to 2001-2003 and generally confined to only two companies: Fast Forward Entertainment and Mongoose.

Those companies turned out large numbers of fairly low quality product during that boom period, but they were outliers -- and even then Mongoose produced several decent books amidst the crap.

The market responded accordingly, and FFE died and Mongoose evolved.

ggroy · November 28, 2010, 08:15:36 PM

Quote from: Daedalus;420732It probably was a little bit of both. It's good that the whole thing shifted back to many games being created with systems that were a fit for the game.

If more games had moved to D20 or the who D20 movement had continued I would have ended up leaving the hobby.

I came back to rpg gaming, shortly after 3.5E was released and the d20 bubble was already in the process of deflating. (I previously took a 15+ year hiatus away from rpg games). At first I wasn't really aware of what the d20 bubble was about, other than seeing tons of books with the d20 logo in the bargain bins at some gaming stores. At the time, I picked up a lot of d20 modules from the bargain bins for $4 a pop (or less).

It was only later when I found out what happened and how much stuff was produced over 2001 -> 2004. It had sort of an eeriness where even established rpg companies were cranking out d20 books (ie. White Wolf, Chaosium, Pinnacle, Atlas, Alderac, etc ...).

estar · November 28, 2010, 08:20:09 PM

Quote from: Daedalus;420707People like him don't surprise me, since the rise of the internet the "freeloader culture" has become a problem. Everyone thinking that everything should be free, the problem is in the real world that doesn't work so well.

Seems to me there bunch of folks making a good living off of linux and d20.

ggroy · November 28, 2010, 08:23:49 PM

Quote from: Garnfellow;420736Those companies turned out large numbers of fairly low quality product during that boom period, but they were outliers -- and even then Mongoose produced several decent books amidst the crap.

The market responded accordingly, and FFE died and Mongoose evolved.

Mongoose probably saw the writing on the wall and was smart enough to branch out to something else (ie. non-d20), like Runequest and later Traveller.

ColonelHardisson · November 28, 2010, 10:26:39 PM

Quote from: Garnfellow;420736Yeah, add me to the chorus of people who think the glut-as-disaster narrative is largely bullshit. The d20 glut that people seem to decry, such as it was, was largely limited to 2001-2003 and generally confined to only two companies: Fast Forward Entertainment and Mongoose.

Those companies turned out large numbers of fairly low quality product during that boom period, but they were outliers -- and even then Mongoose produced several decent books amidst the crap.

The market responded accordingly, and FFE died and Mongoose evolved.

And another part of the problem was that many shop owners, for various reasons, didn't do much research into which companies were producing shit, and ended up not stocking much of anything d20 after trying to stock everything for the first year or two. I commonly saw shitloads of those FFE hardbacks and the endless Mongoose class and monster books crowding shelves of the shops I frequented, while the higher-quality stuff like that of Green Ronin and Necromancer was lost in the shuffle. I recall discussing the relative quality of this stuff, but the shop owners I spoke to either didn't care or didn't put much weight in my opinion, or both.

John Morrow · November 28, 2010, 11:41:54 PM

Quote from: estar;420741Seems to me there bunch of folks making a good living off of linux and d20.

Yes, but the question that the board of a company like Hasbro that owns WotC and the D&D trademark are going to ask is how much does Linus Torvalds make off of Linux and how much does WotC/Hasbro make off of d20? From a charitable perspective, it's nice if other people make money off of d20 but Hasbro isn't a charity. Had it panned out that the OGL grew the D&D audience to the benefit of Hasbro, I'm sure they would have stuck with the OGL.

John Morrow · November 28, 2010, 11:47:17 PM

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;420713Gamers like to create game material. d20's OGL channeled the creative urges of gamers, it did not make them creative.

While I agree with your basic point, the gifts that the OGL (and Ryan Dancey) gave the role-playing hobby were (A) a lot of D&D intellectual property into the open domain so that people could use it without fearing a lawsuit and (B) a robust open document license that is commercially friendly and easy to use. There were games released as "free" and "open" before the OGL (e.g., Fudge) but all of them had licenses that made it preferable for publishers to not risk using them. Dancey purposely made sure that the OGL made using OGL material safe for publishers so they'd use it.