It seems like WotC has come up with a way of getting rid of the OGL. First they tried to kill it by making a version of D&D, 4e, that was so different, you couldn't use the OGL really to cover it. That didn't work out too well, but Paizo sure was appreciative. :cool:
Then they come up with the DM's Guild. You lose a 15-25% margin over what you could do via the OGL, but you get access to most of their IP. Want to make your own Priest classes for each of the Forgotten Realms gods and get paid for it? No other way to do that before besides spending lots of money and time negotiating with WotC.
Now you have the same thing with MgT. You lose a larger cut and get access to the Third Imperium. You always wanted to publish your 450 page epic campaign to prevent the fall of the Solomani? Now you can. No approval needed, no money spent up front. What you lose is only getting 50% of the sales instead of 60-75% of the sales.
Obviously, for the guys publishing their own stuff that only relies on the system and not the IP, it would be suicide to post your stuff up on DM's Guild or TAS, and OBS, WotC or Mongoose don't make that explicit enough.
But, getting rid of guys like Gypsy Games through slow strangulation is the whole point of the exercise.
- New system, so the old one isn't compatible.
- New license, so anything other than the OGL or CCP is gone.
- New marketplace, where the brand identity you've worked so hard to cultivate is gone.
These OBS "Community Content Programs" are there for three things...
- So you can make some money by promoting the larger companies' brand and IP through content creation - essentially it's a marketing and market share plan.
- Get rid of the smaller companies that do their own thing with generic systems and don't need the Brand/IP of the larger companies.
- Have OBS partner with so many companies under these CCP agreements that new startup pdf websites like TableTopLibrary.com will have a much harder road.
Now I don't think Monte Cook or Margaret Weiss ever had an OGL for their systems, so they're not trying to get the money from OGL publishers "back to where it belongs", but the CCP model is troubling, because more and more companies are now going to have a choice of releasing via OGL or CC and essentially getting nothing, letting other people make money off their systems, or going with the OBS CCP and get 25% of all community content.
CCP is meant to be the OGL killer.