For those that don't know...

I'm going to fill in the details that I am aware of concerning the WotC licensing moves, and in turn why I am of the mind to leave d20 altogether. I could put a bunch of links in here and make this look like a typical Blog's blog entry. Not my style, though. I'm just going to lay out the info I am aware of mention where I remember running into parts of it and leave you, the reader to do your own footwork to confirm or discredit my information.

I have, for those that have been following, writing on here about my plans to publish under 4e when they get things finalized and what not. Even paying the $5000 licensing fee they were 'bouncing around' for a little while was being considered as a possibility, but that has all recently changed.

I should note that the official license for 4e still has not been released... I think it will still be a little while longer and it may not be seen till the SRD itself is released, and I'm going to elaborate on what I think is the hold up.

Wizards of the Coast are giving up the OGL. No more Open Gaming License content. Instead they are looking at releasing a new license that will allow them to more easily modify it whereas the OGL is persistant and they can only do so much to change it and nothing to discontinue it. This would really scare me as a publisher, because it means that they could decide, after I been publishing for a while, that they don't like me anymore and could find ways to retract my permission to publish. This to me is scarrier than the idea that all my content might be stolen under the OGL, and that was the original scare when it came out... but this is still not getting to the core of what is going on.

Whether it is official or not, the word has been put out in interviews and the like, most notably over on ENworld, that there will be some sort of exclusivity clause in the new license that will forbid anyone publishing 4e content to publishing any OGL content. Now, since this announcement I have heard no comfirmation not denials to the legitimacy if the information. This to me says it's accurate but they don't want to talk about it, and no doubt with good reason.

There are already publishers in the industry back peddling from publishing in 4e... They are no longer interested because they have too much at stake already in 3.5 to risk closing down stop and starting all over in 4e and that's what it looks like is going to be required - If you publish for 4e, you can't even sell already published products in 3.5 or possibly any OGLed game system. Until the fine print is released just how far they plan to push the exclusivity isn't clear. What is clear is that they have decided to give up on their past and bank everything on the success of 4e.

Where this rubs me wrong is in many ways. I think it is a very bad move. I believe they are shooting themselves in the foot with it, and it has upset me enough that I am willing to not only backpeddle out of publishing in 4e, but I'm ready to give up d20 altogether, as this license will suddenly create holes in the 3.5 content available on the market if it's as bad as it sounds like it will be.

So why are they still floundering then? Well, obviously because of the reaction. Whole game systems are being rushed out the door, built on the OGL licensed material of 3.5 and designed to compete rather than work with 4e rules. This is the reaction they should have expected. They will breed far more competition for them with this move than friends. It's a move that is going to fragment the industry and create a lot of bad blood between other companies and WotC. I know that I for one am no longer interested in doing any work with them.

The unofficial word on WotCs own boards are less clear on the details of the upcoming license than the news elsewhere is. They are still supposedly meeting weekly to hammer out the final details before they actually publish the license. I sure as hell expect they are. If they are smart, they will be rethinking it algother and getting ready to make an apology to the industry as a whole for the previous information, but I seriously doubt that is going to happen.

Regardless of what WotC does at this point, I'm already feeling burned enough by this that I emailed WotC myself and expressed my attitude and what's more answered their question of why they should support a system they are moving away from. Seems my email was enough on point that it will be in the stack reviewed at their next pow-wow, but at this point I'm not sure if even an apology would make me want to go back to thinking about publishing in 4e... As far as I am concerned, what info I have heard has shown me enough of WotC's true colors under the Hasbro banner that I don't like them as a company anymore and they join the ranks of White Wolf and Steve Jackson Games of being game companies I would rather never work with or near and both of them burned me as a play tester and not just a player.

We'll have to see what finally comes of this mess, but regardless, I've started working on the TAGE introductory material and frankly, unless I hit a point of writer's block that brings the project to a sudden halt, I'm not planning to go back to d20 now. I really wanted to be doing TAGE all along, but typically am hampered by Writer Block that I am certain revolves around confidence issues I have. Well, right now, at this point, confidence is no longer a factor in my motivation to get it out. At this point I no longer care if it's not 100% perfect in every way, as long as I can feel it is better than d20 and at least on par with the styles of rule systems it will more directly compete with. Really, that is the source of most of my writer's block and have the same problems with my art - I just want to fix it and fix it and fix it until there is nothing at all wrong with it anymore, and I learned a long time ago in art classes (despite my difficulty in accepting it) that there just comes a point in most creative projects where it just cannot get any better without making it worse, because it will never be perfect and it is just time to call the piece done. Well, 20 years of working on TAGE, my upset at WotC has been the final nudge I needed to just call my game system done and get it into a publishable format.

Meanwhile, good luck on your future, WotC but I'm no longer certain I will have any part in it. I have already been unsold on getting my 3 set when they come out in June, and most of the 3.5 purchases I am still interested in (and hope continue to remain on the market) are published by companies other than WotC. The prospect of being able to publish in it got me back into 3.5 and I don't see any reason to stop playing it now, but I don't need 4e. There are Plenty of better gaming systems out there.