--- "Martin L. Shoemaker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Such a term could very possibly put the entire
> D20-as-Open-Game concept at
> risk of being cancelled.
Is it still at risk, after all these months?
> But! If Blah-Blah becomes a well-known euphemism for
> D20 and thus a
> well-known euphemism for "compatible with D&D", that
> means these directly
> competitive products will be more aggressive
> competitors for the core books.
> That will also mean that there is little to no
> incentive to release under
> the D20 STL: the only significant benefit --
> everyone knowing your product
> is compatible with D&D -- can be had without all the
> restrictions. Suddenly,
> the number of D20 products will plummet, replaced by
> Blah-Blah products.
There has been this risk from the beginning, no? In
fact, it has been there since before OGL and D20,
because there has always been the risk, albeit a slim
one, that someone would successfully produce a line of
wildly popular "compatible with" products that
competed directly with WOTC's own campaign settings
and generic modules. There has always been the risk
that such a company would come up with a product line
that would gain wide recognition as being compatible
with D&D. There have been such products on the market
for years, of course, but they never managed to
establish a brand identity that made it clear that
they were D&D-compatible. My point is that because
this risk has already existed, why let it become a
show-stopper now? Furthermore, developing the brand
recognition of a D&D work-alike, even with a big
community of contributors behind it, to the point that
any kid in a game store will know that the logo means
that the product is D&D-compatible, is a huge uphill
battle. D20, on the other hand, is something that
Wizards is actively pushing, and the logo _already_
means something to people. A new brand faces a really
tough battle, even if it's understood in an under the
table kind of way that it's compatible with D&D. How
could this connection be easily established in the
public's mind without truly inviting the wrath of
Wizards down on the developers' heads? I suppose the
developers could start some kind of huge word-of-mouth
campaign on the Internet, but that won't reach
everyone. The kid who wanders into the local gaming
store looking for some adventure modules doesn't
necessarily read this list, or Usenet, or the message
boards at WOTC, or any other common forum where
developers could talk up their product. The
developers could, I suppose, start a massive
advertising campaign in gaming stores and in gaming
mags, being careful not to say anything that would get
them sued, and if they had a good bit of money, they
might have some success. WOTC and all of the other
gaming companies face the risk every day that some
extraordinarily well funded company will enter the
market and take a lot of market share. I don't think
that OGL and the availability of the SRD under the OGL
expose WOTC to any more risk than they face already.
There is no way to eliminate the risk that the
competition will put a hurtin' on you unless you get
rid of all competition.
> And why should we care about Wizards' perspective?
> Because they can still
> cancel at this time. Right now, Ryan is very
> encouraged by the number of
> people who are bending over backwards to follow the
> rules as they release
> products. But if they got nervous that they were
> going to give away their
> IP, they could change direction in about five
> minutes. They could even do it
> with (relatively) minimal PR fallout: pull the OGF
> web pages, then privately
> contact each D20 producer with published material
> and arrange a
> favorable-but-traditional license for their existing
> products, and discuss
> licenses for products currently in production.
> Nobody would lose big on the
> products they have already produced, and Wizards
> would be secure in knowing
> that their market share was protected.
I hope my questions and comments aren't seen as an
attempt to get around the rules. They aren't. I want
to understand what the rules are so that I can
_follow_ them, not break them. The last thing I want
is a lawsuit, and if I understand the rules, I can
reduce the likelihood that I will get into legal
trouble. The conversion utility I want to write is
not meant as a threat to WOTC or to any other game
company. It is simply a recognition that there are
some consumers who don't play Game Company ABC's core
game and never will but who might be interested in
buying Game Company ABC's other products. Consumers
are often reluctant to buy supporting products from a
game system they don't use because they know it can be
a pain to convert them. As I've said before in this
thread, the real threat, in my opinion, to the hobby
is a shortage of experienced DMs. Without DMs, there
are no games. Both experienced and newbie DMs need a
diverse diet of material to support their campaigns,
and in my view, making more products [and a wider
variety of products] accessible to DMs helps the
hobby. DMing is very time-consuming, as I'm sure you
all know, and many DMs simply cannot afford to spend
the time either converting the NPCs and monsters by
hand or re-doing them from scratch in their native
systems.
Neal
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