Origins, short form, part 3

[drcpunk]

I woke up very achy, but motion, water, and ibuprofen helped. I got to North Market, where I solved the problem of choosing a bread by describing what I wanted it for and asking the sellers to recommend a bread for me.

I did more shopping, finding Qin at half price. I preordered Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity. As I told mnemex, I was naughty, but not frivolous.

I still don't understand why the d20 stuff has to be destroyed, but I did not attempt to save any of it today.

Lori Piper's 1 pm Unknown Armies game had a single opening, so I called ebartley, who was delighted to generic into it. It was a lot of fun.

The 8 pm Nobilis larp was a blast. mnemex and ebartley were in it, as were a lot of folks I met over the last few days. Within five minutes, there was impassioned debate. And, I got to play Saffron Crawford, aka Death.

We're packed. My backpack is heavier than I'd like, but I'll see if I can adjust it tomorrow.

Comments

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

I still don't understand why the d20 stuff has to be destroyed, but I did not attempt to save any of it today.

OK, obviously I'm missing something. What's going on? Like physically destroying the old d20 books?

[jl8e]

There's aclause in the license for doing stuff for 4th ed that says you can't also be selling the 3.5 stuff. (Or so I'm told -- haven't looked at the license, and not sure on the details.)

This means that the people planning to do 4th ed stuff are looking to dump their inventory.

[zrealm.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

This is actually kind of smart of WotC - to use a carrot and stick approach to getting the major D20 publishers to convert over to 4E, as opposed to just unlaterally telling them they can't sell 3.5 stuff anymore (unlike the OGL, the D20 license is not really truly open).

For all the ills to the world Ryan Dancy did and for all the things he got wrong, he really was a marketing genious - the D20 license and OGL were one of the smartest moves for WotC since they bought TSR.

[mneme]

That's not it, actually.

Or rather, yes, if you're planning on doing 4E stuff, you need to stop doing 3.5 OGL stuff, but that's not where the fire sale comes from; they can take their time dropping the OGL stuff.

However, the D20 license is another matter entirely. Unlike the OGL license, it's revocable -- and since they're switching away from an OGL license and trying to "encourage" people to switch over to the new game, Wizards is revoking it. Which means that after...I think it's December... publishers that still have D20 stock will have to pulp it, whether they chose to come out with 4E stuff or no.

[mneme]

It was, but that does put into some question the new approach -- which unlike the OGL license (which was non-revocable) or the D20 license (which required a few months before any revocation took effect), the GSL is changable or revocable at will, and takes effect immediately.

Meaning that publishers who follow Wizards to 4E are much more at the mercy of Wizards' good intentions.

[jl8e]

Ah.

Mostly what it means is that Titan Games will have a metric buttload of surplus D20 stuff.

[mneme]

Pretty much, yeah.