From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of John Kim
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2000 2:08 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [Open_Gaming] "Open" Debate
<< Um, this is failing to weight the work that goes into your
efforts. i.e. WotC puts in a mostly one-time effort of writing the
OGL and D20 system license. After that point, they spend nothing,
while you and many people like you spend loads of time crafting
your module. You then release your module. For the hours that
you put into it, I am fairly certain that your module is very poor
pay. However, WotC gets their 0-1 PHB (if you believe that, and
I'm not sure I do) virtually for free. >>
That is the nature of intellectual property: effectively ALL the work
happens before the very first sale, and only a miniscule fraction of the
work happens as part of ongoing sales. If you did your up-front work well,
you have a vast number of low-effort follow-on sales. That justifies
investing a lot into the up-front work. Now, under OG, WotC has found a way
to let me leverage their work and increase my sales potential while
increasing theirs. Everybody wins.
As for the 0-1 PHBs... Well, clearly Wizards is hoping that some of us have
a far larger impact than that. But right now, my own conscious plan is to
target my marketing at folks who already have and enjoy the system and
simply want new material.
<< I don't have much inside information on the market, but my
impression is that adventure modules will often *lose* money for
a big company -- i.e. with any decent pay, the hours spent writing
them are often more than the profits returned. >>
Absolutely, if Ryan's research is any indication. They're willing to let us
assume the risk to prove them wrong, and willing to help us do it.
<< On the other hand, if you are set on writing adventure modules
anyway, then I agree that it may well be a benefit to you to make it
a part of the D20 SRD. >>
See, that's exactly my situation. Almost against my better judgement
(because it sounds like so much fun!), I am being drawn into a game design
effort for a new genre. Were we not leveraging D20, the effort involved in
crafting decent base rules would make the effort obviously more than I can
spare right now. With D20 as our base, I can delude myself that I have time
for what remains. (And just so you know: since it will be chock full of new
rules, it WILL have a lot of new OGC released. That doesn't change my basic
contention that there is value in works without new OGC.)
Martin
-------------
For more information, please link to www.opengamingfoundation.org
