On Wed, 9 Aug 2006, The Sigil wrote: > Enlightened > self-interest would push most publishers together to adopt the same > bug-fixes? > > It will NEVER happen. One of the "talking points" that had everyone excited > about the OGL was that we were likely to see a whole bunch of rules and > ideas, and the best ones would quickly be adopted and become "the standard" > among third-party publishers, and possibly among WotC/D&D play as well. > That never even came close to happening. > > Why not? Three factors. > > First, the OGL's "viral Section 15 - but nowhere else - credit requirement" > made it impractical to do so without creating ever-bloating Section 15's. > > Second, publishers were very ambiguous with their OGC designations, making > picking out and reusing the OGC something of a legal liability minefield > that nobody wanted to brave. > > Third (and in my view most importantly), too much OGC came along as > "crippled" > > In other words, self-interest among many publishers killed the truly > sterling potential of the OGL to create a dynamic, legitimate alternative to > D&D.
But these three points would only be important if 1) publishers were truly afraid of long Section 15s (and having produced some doozy's for some companies, I know that Section 15 fear didn't stop some folks), and 2) and 3) the crippled or ambiguous OGC also happened to be the best OGC, and that publishers found it impossible to work with each other (openly or behind the scenes) to clarify issues, both of which are debatable points at best. I think stronger points are 4) the fact that WotC didn't legitimize the best OGC by incorporating the really good third-party stuff in official D&D books, and 5) the fact that no matter what the third-party D20 publishers did alone or en masse, there was always D&D out there selling 10 to 100 times better than any of their own efforts and managing to ensure that anything the third-party publishers did was just a drop in the big bucket. If D&D were to disappear without a trace, that would leave the field open for the remaining D20 publishers to do something about problem 5, but if D&D stays around but morphs into a form that precludes third-party participation I think the situation gets worse, not better. Spike Y Jones _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list Ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
