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System Design and ownership


Nightshade

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It doesn't honestly matter that much to most of them unless they have evergreens; and that's uncommon in the RPG marketplace. Really successful OGL standalones have typically already carved out their own market (M&M and its kin come to mind); less successful were usually transient phenomena anyway. The only issue is with companies that have kept doing nothing but D20/OGL products coattailing on D&D or D20 Modern, and there haven't been that many of those that have had a long lifespan anyway. Those that have have plenty of time to try and work out a new business model. If they only could make a living doing OGL/D20, chances are they weren't really competitors in any meaningful sense with WOTC anyway; they were probably symbionts.

I'm not saying there's not a few people who might not have been sapping some WOTC revenue stream that will be effected by this, but I'd be _very_ suprised if most of those who go under were really harming WOTC in any meaningful way.

Right now, I don't think there are many companies, if any, that are hurting WotC in any meaningful way. That was the purpose and success of OGL. Prior to that other companies were hurting TSR. White Wolf was pulling off what Chaosium was supposed to do with AH.

I wonder what niches like M&M will do when 4ed edtion comes out. Switch to 4th or stick with 3.5? Plus most people who play a niche also play the core D&D rules too. So if a new non-OGL D&D game comes out I think there will be customers who drop the niche and stay with D&D. I think it will all depend on how many people like a 3rd party line better than D&D.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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I wonder what niches like M&M will do when 4ed edtion comes out. Switch to 4th or stick with 3.5? Plus most people who play a niche also play the core D&D

Most of those have progressively been evolving away from the D20 standard anyway; M&M already has significant differences from D&D or D20 Modern, so there's no reason for it not to just go its own way.

rules too. So if a new non-OGL D&D game comes out I think there will be customers who drop the niche and stay with D&D. I think it will all depend on how many people like a 3rd party line better than D&D.

I don't, because most of the ones who have been following the real OGL games have already bought into games that aren't that much like D&D anymore; as an example, people coming in from D&D to True20, while it shares many concepts, have to actively unlearn some things; M&M 2e this is even more so (it doesn't have hit points for example, and attributes do not affect your attack or defense bonuses).

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I suppose that when 4th edition comes out we'll see which way the chips scatter. Perhaps M&M will continue on down it's current path, or perhaps it will update itself to 4th edition.

Is there any d20/D&D OGL based RPG that didn't update to 3.5 rules when they came out?

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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I suppose that when 4th edition comes out we'll see which way the chips scatter. Perhaps M&M will continue on down it's current path, or perhaps it will update itself to 4th edition.

The designer and publisher have already said they have no interest in doing so. It's almost be--irrelevant, since most of the changes we know about involve things that don't exist in M&M, like classes.

Is there any d20/D&D OGL based RPG that didn't update to 3.5 rules when they came out?

I don't believe Spycraft did; M&M sort-of did, but only the parts that were relevant to its design (mostly some minor things about skills). Most of those games were usually not as far along on diverging from standard D20 at that point anyway (M&M was in process of going to a new edition anyway, for example).

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