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Dec 8, 2012 -- 9:59AM, Maxperson wrote:

At least pathfinder kept people interested in D&D.  If those people had gone to other games, 5e would be far less likely to succeed.

Did it, or did it confirm that DnD could not change anymore past the 3.5 OGL before enough people would reach for the tar and feathers?  One of the real problems I see with Pathfinder and the OGL it's based on (and for the record I am a big fan of the OGL in principle...always have been) is that it's essentially frozen the game.  You can't try anything really new because if you do, too many people will reject it, and the OGL means that those people will always be able to play DnD anyway without you.

-Polaris

Dec 8, 2012 -- 10:07AM, The_Jester wrote:

Dec 8, 2012 -- 9:58AM, Polaris wrote:

Dec 8, 2012 -- 8:35AM, The_Jester wrote:

I doubt it would have helped 4e had there been no OGL or PF. Just not having a D&D option wouldn't have meant people would swap to 4e. There wasn't the OGL after the release if 2e, but that didn't stop people not switching. 
It would have likely fragmented the audience more, with people playing houseruled 3e or smaller side games. AGE might have done better.

Of course it would have.  Sure some people didn't switch after 1e went to 2e or 2e went to 3e, but by and large the new edition survived and thrived, and many of the holdouts wound up switching in the end.  Why?  There was no place else to go!

Had the OGL not existed, then Pathfinder and Paizo's use of it could not have legally existed.  That would have presented the 3.5 holdouts with two choices:  Switch to fourth and give it an honest try, play something completely different, or stop playing at all.  Chances are most would have slunk back in and started playing 4e.

Does that mean 4e would have been a roaring success without the OGL?  Maybe or maybe not.  I think not because I don't think ANY RPG could meet Hasbro's corporate sales goal, but 4e would had to deal with competeting against a version of itself and with holdouts that no longer had to switch in order to continue to play DND.

BTW, this effect was completely anticipated and planned for when the OGL was first written.  The Wotc of 2000 wanted to insure that no one corporation could kill DnD like TSR nearly need.  They also wanted to make sure that any one company could only go so far in changing DnD before it 'wasn't DnD' and the fans left it.  Unfortunately Wotc forgot it's own lessons and completely misunderstood the nature of the OGL and it's implications.  Paizo did not.

-Polaris

4e started with solid sales, and Pathfinder wasn't released until a year after 4e came out (excluding the beta). The problem was not people not trying 4e, the problem was people trying and then leaving. Many returned to 3.5e and many went to the other systems that are out there. But the overwhelming majority likely gave 4e a try and many said "no thanks".

There are really four choices (you mention three): Switch to fourth, play something completely different, stop playing at all OR continue playing older editions. Which is pretty much what Pathfiner is. Without Paizo, everyone would have just made and used their own house rules, possibly with widely distributed yet technically illegal house rule compilations. 


The real question is not would 4e have been a success without the OGL (likely not) but would 3e have been such a success without the OGL? The answer is the same. Likely not. We might not have even had 4e without the OGL. 

I do address your "fourth" choice.  The bottom line is that this is the first time in RPG history that edition holdouts (and yes they always exist) could continue to play and be fully supported.  In general without such support, those that wish to continue to  play DnD will come back to the newest edition.  The dynamic of prior edition changes makes that perfectly clear. 

-Polaris