>Richard Stewart wrote: > Lizard wrote (in quotes): > > "FUDGE and Fuzion were examples of well-designed game systems released > under open or semi-open licenses prior to the D20 SRD. Neither can be > called a commercial success. The D20 market exists because there's > something worth taking out of the open pool that provides an incentive > to put stuff in." > > I could not disagree more. D20 exists to A) support a major publisher's > product line B)give said publisher access to a great (theoretically) > wealth of new derivative designs without having to spend resources getting > them. WotC is NOT the great crusader for open gaming. They are a > corporation that NEEDS to make money. We can see that in the D20 v3.0 L.
While d20 certainly exists to support Wizards, its access to vast amounts of derivative designs without resource costs isn't an issue. How many designs have you seen Wizards use? The d20 publishers themselves can't keep up with the various designs at this point from the sheer number of publishers; I can't imagine Wizards' R&D staff going through every product looking for good material to use (though I know they read through some of them; they are gamers after all). WotC's driving force to utilize d20 publishers lies in its inability to meet the demands of the gaming marketplace on a small scale. There are large segments of product development (adventures, for instance) that are just not profitable enough for Wizards to pursue due to its costs for doing business. The d20 revolution has certainly met that demand (too much in many cases), but it has kept Dungeons & Dragons players happy, and kept them in the gaming system. That keeps the network intact, and that's where Wizards earns its money. D20 works best for Wizards when publishers focus on the small scale elements that Wizards doesn't pursue. Expansion materials for Psionics, for instance, are one element that Wizards would undoubtedly like to see more publishers working on, since it keeps players using psionics happier and thus driving sales of Wizards' core books. I think Wizards becomes less happy with the license when it sees publishers pursuing interests that are counter to its own. The miniatures business is one example of this, and you're seeing changes in the license to reflect WotC's desire to protect itself. Such changes make the license less 'open' than we'd like it, but it doesn't diminish the fact that the license grants us access to millions of D&D players. Good Gaming! Jim Butler, President Bastion Press, Inc. http://www.bastionpress.com _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
