>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> For those of you planning to sell some sort of gaming product based
>on
>D20 and the OGL... how do you plan on staying afloat in a soon to be
>saturated market?
>
> Clearly, WotC will benefit from the new focus on their PHB,
>trademarks,
>etc... , but what will you have to offer the gaming community that they
>can't
>get for free on a fan run web site?
>
I feel that most for profit sites will have to offer a level of quality that
is not seen on free or fan sites. This is not to say that free/fan sites
can't be quality but there are a lot of sites out there that just don't have
the professional look and feel.
I know that my own site will offer some free products and that will
hopefully generate interest in the stuff we sell. But as the chief editor I
will not publish anything that doesn't look like it could be sold on a shelf
next to the PHB. That includes whatever I write.
Hobby designers, and I'm not trying to be inflammatory, do not have to worry
about making the money so they are free to throw any old thing on their
web-sites. If you want to compete in the gaming market then you have no such
option. And if you do take the option you won't be around long.
Just using 2e as an example, there were many things about those rules that I
would not or could not use. Free sites did offer some solutions but were
required to be free due to TSrs policies. Had the situation been then what
it is now I think much of that quality content would be published as for
profit products.
There's also the fact that many free sites offer personalized rules that not
everybody finds appropriate. House rules and developing campaign settings
are the most common thing that you see. With for profit publications the
content has to be complete, playtested, and not require much, if any,
alteration of the existing game. Free sites usually don't take these things
as a major consideration and have all manner of rules that don't meet that
criteria.
I'm being pretty general here, there are many free sites out there that I
have found to be valuable resources. But, as I said above, I bet a lot of
that stuff wouldn't have been free had the situation been different.
Sedge
io Spam, jail Shub-niggurath
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