Science fiction, fantasy, & horror - web design, graphic design, interactive media development by greententacles
2008-11-21 GMT
Science fiction, fantasy, & horror - web design, graphic design, interactive media development by greententacles
2008-11-21 GMT
Back in the Bad Old Days when TSR's executives were busy running their premier product line, Dungeons and Dragons, into the ground, the company had what could best be described as a hate/hate relationship with its fans.
During the early 1990s, the company flooded the market with slipshod product in a desperate attempt to drive up sales. No doubt there were a few diamonds to be found among the waves of sludge pouring out of TSR's offices, but who wanted to go wading through that noxious deluge to find them?
At the same time as they were producing mountains of what could best be described as kah-kah, the bigwigs at TSR were zealously guarding their intellectual product rights. Early on, this meant that they banned other gaming magazines from publishing adventures or content based on its popular D&D RPG (or any of its other product lines).
But as the 1990s arrived, and the net began to explode, TSR continued its policy, but this time began targeting its fans. Like a snake eating its own tale, it's draconian web policy prevented fans from posting any information relating to Dungeons and Dragons on their own web sites. At the same time they declared that they owned any content that was derivative of D&D (which, based on U.S. copyright, was true), and established an atmosphere in which gamers were afraid to post their home-grown D&D materials to a web site. Similarly, TSR's holy war proved to be the last straw for many frayed fans, who decided to turn to other, less legal-minded gaming companies.
Rather than see the fan-generated content as something that promoted the company's core product, TSR saw it as a threat. Soon, even diehard fans were hard-pressed to defend the company's policies, and it surprised no one when the company went bankrupt.
Wizards of the Coast, flush with a fortune earned from the Magic: The Gathering craze, stepped in and bought TSR. It resurrected the company, and quickly implemented a far more fan-friendly online policy. This new policy let publish their D&D and other WotC-related gaming creations online without fear of retribution, with the caveat that they not publish the content for profit.
In 2000, this more enlightened approach evolved to the next level with the release of Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition. At the core of 3E was a radical new concept: the d20 'open source' gaming system. Under this system, folks are free to produce their own products based on the core-rules outlined in D&D 3rd Edition. You heard right -- fans can actually take all that home-grown content they have lying around, fire up their desktop publishing software, and publish their own products under the d20 'open gaming' license. They can't use the D&D name, they can't decide to publish new Forgotten Realms or Star Wars adventures, and they can't re-print the original rules, but if they use the d20 license, they can publish their own worlds.
Wizards of the Coast is hardly being altruistic about this. They want to sell product, and they realize the best way to do that is to get as many people using their rules as possible. It's the Player's Handbook that makes Wizards the most money, and everything else that they -- or anyone else -- publishes drives sales of those books (especially the PHB). Wizards stated goal is to dominate the RPG market by providing the industry with a core-set of rules to rally around.
And it looks like it's working.
Since the release of the D&D 3E Player's Handbook at August's Gen Con 2000, there has been a steady stream of 3E compatible products released by other companies. The very first of these was Terror in Freeport, a d20 module released back at Gen Con by Green Ronin.
The Sword Sorcery's Creature Collection, a Monster Manual type product that gives DM's hundreds of new beasties to throw at their players, and has been compared favorably to the classic Fiend Folio D&D monster book from the early 1980s.
Others have followed. Sword and Sorcery's parent company, Necromancer Games, has gone old-school with its '3rd edition rules, 1st edition feel' games aimed at those who long for the classic modules of old, like Against the Giants and Tomb of Horrors. Eden Studios has created its Odyssey line of d20 products, and Troll Lord Games is releasing its own d20 products.
Even mainstream RPG companies are coming on board; Chaosium announced they are planning a one-shot d20 Call of Cthulhu book, Pinnacle Games is planning a d20 Deadlands conversion.
All of this is great news for the industry.