D&D 4th Ed vs. Open Gaming

I'm no expert in this subject, but mxyzplk has written a good summary of the issues affecting open gaming and the upcoming release of 4th Edition D&D. The open licensing associated with the 3rd Edition spawned a number of successful 3rd parties and add-ons that made the system far greater than it might have been otherwise. I've attached his writeup on the subject below, and you should really read it if you are interested in D&D, Gaming, or trying to apply 'Open' licenses to things besides code.

mxyzplk writes "Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast shocked the role-playing game industry today by announcing that anyone wanting to publish material for the new Fourth Edition of D&D, expected out in June of this year, must forgo open licensing entirely as part of their new Game System License.

With the launch of the third edition of the popular game eight years ago, Wizards had sponsored an open licensing scheme. This license, called the Open Gaming License, or OGL, was a kind of open source license designed for game publishers. The result was an explosion of third party game companies supporting D&D and establishing their own game lines. Many of these companies became quite large and successful, notably Paizo Publishing, Green Ronin Publishing, and others.

Now, however, Wizards has stated that any company hoping to publish products for their new edition must agree to discontinue any currently open licensed products and produce no further open products at all — Dungeons & Dragons related or not. A number of companies had leveraged the OGL for their independent games, for example the pulp game Spirit of the Century.

In response to questions about this policy, Scott Rouse, D&D Brand Manager for Wizards of the Coast, says that "We have invested multiple 7 figures in the development of 4e so can you tell me why we would want publishers to support a system that we have moved away from?"

It seems to me that this is the equivalent of Microsoft telling people "If you want to make and sell software for Windows Vista, you can't make and sell any Linux/open source software!" Since this is a small niche market without the visibility of a Microsoft, this play to muscle out competition by making them choose "between us and open licensing" will probably succeed. Some other game companies are rebelling; Paizo Publishing, for example, has declared their intent to move forward with the open-licensed previous version, essentially 'forking' the Dungeons & Dragons code base. But small gaming companies are small indeed, and Wizards of the Coast is owned by Hasbro (a recent development likely not unrelated to this change of heart)."

Comments

Is this even legal?

[brennanw]

I'm not a lawyer so as far as I know this *is* legal, but... how can it be? How can your license forbid someone from using another license for a different product? Aren't antitrust laws that specifically forbid that?

Re:Is this even legal?

[Deathdonut]

The thing they should be worried about is splintering their currently (mostly) consoladated customer base, not legality.

How is this different from:

"If you want to work here, you can't compete with us."

or

"If you want the free Pepsi soda fountains, you can't sell Coke products."

They obviously want to sell 4e products and encourage the transition. This may be an overly ambitious plan and somewhat of a strongarming tactic (hard to say for a product that's not even remotely monopolistic), but it's certainly legal.

Scott Rouse (The Rouse) commented on their motivation recently:

We have invested multiple 7 figures in the development of 4e so can you tell me why we would want publishers to support a system that we have moved away from?

This is not spite, malice or some evil scorched earth policy. Yes, we want people to make 4e books and stop making 3.x. Does that surprise you?

Viva la Revolution?

[PresidentEnder]

Everything I hear about 4e (subscription access to web content, big monster-type race, "WoWification") seems bad. This seems worse. I hope the independent publishers respond by sticking to 3.5e.

Re:Viva la Revolution?

[Sentry21]

It's strange... pretty much all the negative things I've been hearing are people on the forums who've never played it and only know what's been told to them, but who form negative opinions based on what they assume people mean (and we've seen a lot of uproar about things that were never actually said).

Conversely, every review I've read by people who've actually played it, and everything I've heard from the people I know who are playtesting it right now, has been overwhelmingly positive, to the point where I have no question in my mind about wanting to switch over to 4e as soon as is possible.

Go figure.

Re:Viva la Revolution?

[Planesdragon]

Conversely, every review I've read by people who've actually played it, and everything I've heard from the people I know who are playtesting it right now, has been overwhelmingly positive, to the point where I have no question in my mind about wanting to switch over to 4e as soon as is possible. People who have actually played it fall into three camps.

1: The people who wrote it.

2: People who went to a convention just to play it.

3: Folks who have NDAs, that limit what they can say.

What part of this audience makes you think it's a fair metric for how good the game actually is?

Re:Viva la Revolution?

[deathy_epl ccs]

That simple... because the geek community has a very major issue with fanboyismm, and those that go to geek conventions are demonstrating a particularly strong fanboy streak in general. It doesn't really take coercion to get it, but I still wouldn't trust their opinions in this matter.

What do people mean by "WoW-ish?"

[Lanu2000]

I've heard this argument a lot about 4E. But no one really gives examples as to what they mean. Here you at least say that everyone is assigned to a role of tank/healer/cannon, but couldn't that be said for 3.x and 2E as well? They just didn't explicitly say it in those versions.