For those who may not have heard yet, Scott Rouse (the D&D manager at this time) has said: "There will be the OGL and Wizards D&D products period. No d20 STL (tiered or otherwise) to be even more clear." Check out this thread for more: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=211378&page=1&pp=30
On one hand, I'm a bit sorry to see it go, but on the other hand, did it stand for quality anymore? People have enough "d20" product to last until the end of time. Now, d20 publishers will have to somehoe distinguish their products from the pack if they still want to be paired in the consumer's mind with D&D (unless, as Scott mentions in that thread, WotC does include a usable compatibility phrase with the OGL). Eh, in any case, I'm glad that I kept the d20 logo off of Tricky Owlbear products so far. :)
3 comments:
Yeah, D20 wasn't exactly a selling point lately, but it was better than nothing for print products.
Hopefully The Owlbear can either get enough brand recogntion on its own or get in on some sort of publisher created branding when it decides to release a print product.
I really hope they do the compatibility wording since it will start getting pretty silly without it.
I'm curious to see how it affects the print publishers. Because I don't think this affects consumers at all. But I do think it affects distributors ... and, in terms of sales, they may be more important.
Distributors got warned off of the d20 logo after a while because most of the early 3.0 stuff was crap. Hence, the d20 logo itself got soiled, and distributors became wary of it.
I'm just not sure how savvy distributors are when it comes to OGL. (Impressions Advertising is definitely savvy, but I don't know one way or the other about others.) I don't know if a 'usable compatibility phrase" is enough to indicate to them that the products are definitely compatible with D&D 4.0 ... and they're less likely to purchase and stock printed books if they don't know that.
Interesting that it won't be tiered. I'd heard rumors to the contrary ... but that was at GenCon, so I'm sure things changed. (And, of course, they were only rumors.)
Personally, I hope it cuts down on print products so my wallet will have a chance to stop bleeding. :) Professionally, I feel that the window of opportunity for me to get into print products is closed (at least from the freelancer perspective). And that's fine. 3rd edition allowed me to get my feet wet in the publishing waters and do the book that I wanted to do (Temporality).
I can't say whether or not distributors are savvy (or store owners for that matter) about the OGL or any compatibility references they *might* put into the license in the future. It's still way too early to predict anything so I'm not going to get excited about it.
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