From: Alexander P. Macris
> This is my first real posting on this forum,
Please send future messages in plain text.
> Everyone with experience in the game industry knows that supplements
> drive revenues
99% of what "everyone knows" about the game industry is wrong.
We make more money from sales of our core rulebooks than any other product
we publish, both in terms of raw revenue, and net profit.
Most of our competitors make more profits on core books than they do on any
other product they sell - unfortunately they don't sell enough core books
every month to break even, so they have to constantly produce supplements
that sell in a constantly decreasing volume to provide cash flow.
The D&D business was once driven by sales of one boxed set, three core
rulebooks, a new hardback book once every two years, and three or four
modules a year that cost less than $10, plus subscriptions and advertising
from Dragon magazine. During those years, D&D made more money in terms of
topline revenue and bottomline profit than it has managed to eke out in the
fifteen or more years since, despite years like 1994 where TSR produced more
than 100 new D&D tabletop RPG products.
> If everyone plays D20, demand for supplements that use D20 goes up.
If everyone plays D20, those people will create a network effect that will
tend to sell an ever increasing number of core rulebooks to an audience of
newly acquired gamers.
> It also makes sense for us, game designers and gamers. We would benefit
> from a universal standard for rpgs, we benefit from interoperability.
> The benefits are all the greater if the system is commodified;
Here I agree with you completely.
> universally available, widely understood. Ideally, it should be given
> out for free.
I think it should be free (as in speech), but not free (as in beer). A
company that adds value in the form of production values, examples, context,
support, marketing, etc. should expect to charge for their distribution and
consumers will perceive that added value and be willing to pay. But I could
see a time when the core rules are freely (as in speech and beer) available
provided enough value could be extracted from the sale of service and
support to the player network to cut the umbilical to the product itself.
> one that does not include the spell lists, magic items, monstrous
> bestiaries, and other familiar data from D&D.
It will include all that and more.
> But if that's the case, what is WOTC offering?
A really swell full color hardback book for US$20.
> What WOTC should have done--the "correct" open gaming approach--would
> have been to release all of 3rd edition D&D as open source.
That's an interesting opinion. Tell you what. You write me a US$10mm check
every year for the next five years, and I'll stop selling 3E PHBs.
> WOTC's real strength lies in its branded product lines and enormous
> font of world source material
Branded generic tolkienesque fantasy product lines, yes as in "Dungeons &
Dragons Players Handbook". Branded product lines as in "this month's new
campaign setting" - eh, not so much. Down that path lies the madness of 2E
that killed TSR.
> So where does that leave us, the Open Gaming community?
You will have an unprecedented ability to create and sell content using the
most popular RPG system ever published, plus any other systems anyone
chooses to use in this format, plus any additional content contributed by
fellow travellers. You can copy, modify and distribute that material
without paying anyone a fee, without asking anyone for permission, and you
will be passing forward to the recipients of your work a license which
preserves for them the same fair and free terms you yourself benefited from.
A damn sight better situation that that which existed prior to this effort.
Ryan
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For more information, please link to www.opengamingfoundation.org
