mearls: Thought #1

Mearls (

mearls) wrote,
@ 2005-12-20 18:57:00

Thought #1
Here was my original thought.

PDF publishing hurts innovation, particularly for d20. Rather than use the Internet as a medium to spread concepts and test ideas, the RPG industry has instead turned it into a massive shopping center. The impulse for widespread collaboration, sharing, and improvement, precisely the sort of factors needed for an open source movement to take root and produce useful results, have been undercut by the rush to sell PDFs.

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	brand_of_amber 2005-12-21 03:18 am UTC (link)
	You know, I did a .pdf product or two. And yet I agree, at least in part. Of course, I also sometimes think similar thoughts about the ENTIRE RPG industry (especially after reading your year in review post) so I may not be your typical reader. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	xiombarg 2005-12-28 07:01 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, I'd like for him to amplify on this point, particularly in terms of how PDFs are different from print products in this respect, especially when it comes to d20. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	cpxbrex 2005-12-21 03:20 am UTC (link)
	Why? I mean, you assert it but I'd like to see more reasoning behind it because my thoughts are, basically, that the PDFs might be how the collaboration and sharing that leads to improvement work. Y'know. People write a bunch of PDFs, and they get circulated around, and the best ideas find their way into the next generation of material. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	Nope. gamehawk 2005-12-21 03:38 am UTC (link)
	Used to be, all the amateurs ran around sharing ideas. Then that became "indie," and you got sneered at if you hadn't actually published something, therefore everything went into a PDF (at the least) and you had to buy it to see it. Sure, most of it's inexpensive, but you get nickel-and-dimed to death trying to keep up. Barrier to entry, and all. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Nope. -

cpxbrex, 2005-12-21 03:45 am UTC

Re: Nope. -

xiombarg, 2005-12-28 07:02 pm UTC

yeloson
2005-12-21 03:48 am UTC (link)

This seems more like a common practice of the industry carried over to new technology rather than a new behavior.

"Let's rush out a product, without really playtesting it or analyzing how it works at the table, without even looking to see what anyone else might have done before, and get it out, now, now, now!"

A godawful number of print products are like that, all pdfs did was make it easier and cheaper to do so.

And, as far as the collaboration, it's really hard because as you pointed out on ENWorld, we've got a hobby that believes rules are bad, which makes it really hard A) get an accurate assessment of what actual rules are in play and how those work and B) for people to really be able to judge for themselves what those mean to them in play.

For instance, someone out there right now is probably campaigning that "When you make Elves' ears 3.5 inches long, everyone has more fun!"

On the other hand, folks who do come with that basis for understanding rules in play, seem to have no problem cross-pollinating ideas regardless of their medium.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	eyebeams 2005-12-21 08:12 am UTC (link)
	And, as far as the collaboration, it's really hard because as you pointed out on ENWorld, we've got a hobby that believes rules are bad . . . Begging your pardon, but could you back that up? Because that sounds like design that's 7-10 years out of date. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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yeloson, 2005-12-21 06:15 pm UTC

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eyebeams, 2005-12-21 06:27 pm UTC

(no subject) - (Anonymous), 2005-12-22 05:55 am UTC

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misuba, 2005-12-24 07:58 am UTC

sppeterson
2005-12-21 03:59 am UTC (link)

I suspect a fair number of people think that the best way "to spread concepts and test ideas" is via a "massive shopping center".

I'm not sure how you would test this theory, but I think what evidence we have doesn't bode well for it. Restricting to d20, prior to the mini-explosion of the PDF industry we had a fair number of fan sites and personal web-pages where people mostly just tossed up their D&D house rules, often rather incomplete.

One thing the PDF market does is give an incentive for people to put their notes together into usuable format before sending it out.

Also, it seems that we have a lot more stuff pushing the d20 envelope in minor or extreme ways, and these are coming via PDF: point buy characters, mythic tropes in d20 gaming, chase systems, alternate campaign styles, rules for honor as a trackable power, and much more. And all this in just about 3 years.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	adamjury 2005-12-21 04:22 am UTC (link)
	Although I agree with the first part of your premise, and would tend to believe that d20 actually /hurt/ fan-sites for d20 and other games, a lot of the material you listed in the last paragraph have been supported in more than PDF format -- chase rules in Spycraft, the Mythic Visas series from Green Ronin, point based characters in BESM d20. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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nellisir, 2005-12-21 04:46 am UTC

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sppeterson, 2005-12-21 04:56 am UTC

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nellisir, 2005-12-21 05:09 am UTC

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adamjury, 2005-12-21 05:15 am UTC

nellisir
2005-12-21 04:56 am UTC (link)

I think it's less the pdf publishing industry per se, than the possessive & profit-oriented traditional business mentality that many (pdf) publishers develop. That mentality, which is logical and understandable from a business standpoint, does not comfortably square with the "open source MOVEMENT" ideology. I believe the two CAN be reconciled, but it's not simple. Furthermore, as sppeterson points out below, I think pdf publishing has really helped bring online material "into the spotlight", as it were, and make the widespread collaboration possible.

I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently.

(Reply to this)

planesdragon
2005-12-21 05:17 am UTC (link)

PDF publishing hurts innovation, particularly for d20.

I don't think that PDF publishing hurts innovation in RPGs in general or d20 in particular. If you're not OGL/d20, a PDF doesn't do you any good because it's a question of getting the Big Name to let you put your New Thing out at all. Which of course still happens, in PDF, even with the most non-open game companies out there -- it just can never become more than a hobby.

What really hurts innovation is the Big Name's abject refusal to take the ideas of the little guy and force their own ideas to beat them out. We don't see Wizards publishing "Elements of Magic" when they want to have a new system of magic, and unless you happen to argue for it from the inside and make a special arrangement, "Iron Heroes" isn't ever going to be put into D&D.

Now, holding out until one can get a buck from one's work certainly has hurt the collaborative nature of the game. But that's a bar to the community growing, not to innovation itself.

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(Anonymous)
2005-12-21 05:22 am UTC (link)

What do you expect. It's a glass ceiling the RPG business. Failed writers, the ones fired from WotC are given free-lance jobs when they need money. It shouldn't be WotC's fault that those ex-employees are unemployable elsewhere. Dragon magazine gives 9 to 5 writers their spaces. Those spaces should be going towards new writers, not Monte Cook, not Wesley Crusher.

I say good to all the PDF writers. I just wished established writers would put up more free game ideas. Why couldn't Iron Heroes have been written on livejournal?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	(Anonymous) 2005-12-21 05:24 am UTC (link)
	The only thing bad about PDF material is when it's keeping crummy writers or companies alive. Put them out of their misery. (Reply to this) (Parent)

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mouseferatu, 2005-12-21 07:45 am UTC

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eyebeams, 2005-12-21 08:10 am UTC

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mouseferatu, 2005-12-21 08:12 am UTC

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eyebeams, 2005-12-21 08:42 am UTC

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mouseferatu, 2005-12-21 09:26 am UTC

What I mean - (Anonymous), 2005-12-22 05:19 am UTC

Re: What I mean -

jdigital, 2005-12-23 11:51 pm UTC

Re: What I mean -

king_ghidorah, 2006-04-26 03:34 am UTC

(Anonymous)
2005-12-21 05:49 am UTC (link)

Your comment ignores the other thing that is needed for an open-source movement to take root: the project originators have to take the community ideas back into the main project.

Other than the scorpion folk in MM II, how many OGC items has WOTC brought back into D&D? I can't think of many. In a lot of ways, WOTC treats the OGL a lot more like Microsoft's Shared Source license than like an open source license: here's our stuff, but don't change it because we won't use it.

And, thinking about it, we're also seeing the other major phenomenon of open source when the primary producer isn't listening to the community: the project fork. There's tons of "D20 but better" out there now, and they're gathering their own momentum. True20, M&M, Spycraft, etc. all offer things that WOTC doesn't, and won't, even though they could have.

--Chris Tavares

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	snarg 2005-12-21 02:50 pm UTC (link)
	Other than the scorpion folk in MM II, how many OGC items has WOTC brought back into D&D? Unearthed Arcana had a bunch of open content from other sources in it, if memory serves me right. (Reply to this) (Parent)

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thesleech, 2005-12-22 05:54 am UTC

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xiombarg, 2005-12-28 07:13 pm UTC

eyebeams
2005-12-21 08:09 am UTC (link)

While it's tempting to think of Open Source as all about the spirit of volunteering, that's not quite so. Common toolsets used to drive commercial packages make Open Source useful. The talented amatuers that are glorified in places like the Linux community can't write documentation anybody can read and can't understand user-friendliness or even, for that matter, what regular people use computers for. Plus, their individual contributions are much smaller than they appear since they are often based on extending applications first developed for the sake of filthy lucre. It sounds mean to say, but people who do it for compensation really are better than people who don't, 90% of the time.

Open Source is also driven by practical need, and this is where D20 falls down. The only systems Wizards didn't release were the ones that typical players soften the most*. D&D was released as a complete game, not as a set of core tools to bootstrap one's own work on. And in fact, early sentiment was that extending the core systems into something other than D&D was bad, because it, too, violated the ideal of a community working on a common thing.

Because all D&D oriented D20 books are in a sense extraneous and all non-D&D-orinted books fragment the community, there is no incentive to work together. I either want you to buy my widget for D&D or buy D20 Eyebeams, because I can't make a dime, otherwise. Anything that more broadly supports D&D has about 1-2 years before it hits WotC's release cycle, so there's no economic incentive to provide broad third party supplementation for D&D. Just short-lived widgets.

Unfortunately, the viability of widgets when widget-making is cheap means that everybody wants to try. And it means that people who aren't really interested in compensation get involved. And they suck 90% of the time.

What some of the sentimental talk about this also forgets is that this isn't a charity. It's a business relationship (albeit at times a miniscule one) with a multimillion dollar company and a globally-recognized brand. Why, pray tell, is the onus on the .pdf guy to be less selfish? It's not in his (or my) interest. Better-developed products that enter common fandom need room to grow, not a fire under their feet where they know that Wizards will take up that niche and they need to sell as much as they can, first.

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	benlehman 2005-12-21 08:59 am UTC (link)
	It's an interesting point. I don't know whether it's right or not, yet (having not made a survey of the d20 PDF market), but it certainly is interesting. I need to think about it for a week or so, and maybe buy some RPGnow PDFs, before I can seriously respond. My only initial reaction is that the same argument could be applied to paper publishing. yrs-- --Ben (Reply to this)

chadu
2005-12-21 09:25 am UTC (link)

I don't know about d20, I don't care about game-writing as an open source movement, and I don't purchase many d20 products or PDFs, but elsewhere in the PDF publishing industry, I see a decent amount of innovation in systems, subsystems, settings, and game-relevant discussion.

By being utterly unconcerned with d20 and thus dealing with a smaller information pool, am I seeing less noise and thus more signal, even if the ratio of signal-to-noise is the same between "all of gaming" and "all of gaming sans d20"? That's entirely possible.

CU

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eddyfate
2005-12-21 01:53 pm UTC (link)

Might as well toss POD in there as well, as that's a similar case of "publishing without market forces to promote quality."

I agree that a large percentage of PDF/POD publishing chokes out good designers with bad copy, but I'm not necessarily sure it hinders or hurts innovation. I know that I take pains to try to stay on top of at least a couple dozen new designs each year, which is much easier for me to do in a PDF market.

(Reply to this)

spkelley
2005-12-21 02:44 pm UTC (link)

I have never been into purchasing PDFs but I am sure there is some stuff out there that is better than others.

One thing that surprises me, with OGL, is that anyone feels that they can do up a d20 supplement, put it into PDF and think they're stuff is gonna be profitable. So I can see the issue regarding innovation. But why do these people think they should charge for their product and not release it for free download? Ok, so some people say that they need to eat and earn a living, but the software open source industry is not like that. I would love to write up adventures, make them generic in principle, and then release them on my site for free. I would do it as a side thing, because i have a crappy, normal job, but do it for various reasons.

I would think the OGL is set up to allow sharing of ideas and using those ideas, but I dont see that as much as I'd like.

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	brand_of_amber 2005-12-21 03:32 pm UTC (link)
	"I would love to write up adventures, make them generic in principle, and then release them on my site for free. I would do it as a side thing, because i have a crappy, normal job, but do it for various reasons." Why don't you? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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spkelley, 2005-12-21 04:36 pm UTC

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xiombarg, 2005-12-28 07:14 pm UTC

	jrients 2005-12-21 03:34 pm UTC (link)
	Mearls, do you have an alternative structure in mind that could replace the PDF marketplace, some arrangement that would encourage the collaborative efforts you desire? (Reply to this)

wordwill
2005-12-21 05:37 pm UTC (link)

" Rather than use the Internet as a medium to spread concepts and test ideas, the RPG industry has instead turned it into a massive shopping center."

Communist. You use these absolute arguments to get the kids all riled up, don't you, Mike? First, PDF publishing is not "the Internet." Neither is it "massive."

Second, are you arguing that marketplaces cannot spread concepts or test ideas? I find fault with that theory. Certainly, I'll agree that the low barrier to publishing for PDFs may have hurt the free fan-support network for d20, but I think casting such a wide net over the argument is almost meaningless. "The RPG industry," Mike? Meaning whom? Every lone-wolf fan who tries to charge a buck for his prestige class instead of giving it away for free on his website?

As has been said above, what is Wizards doing to use the Internet as a medium to spread concepts and ideas? It gives away short adventures online? Innovative trail-blazing, to be sure. Isn't Wizards using the Internet as a marketplace, too? Sure it is.

Positioning the marketplace opposite a forum for thought is another rhetorical trick. Yes, a lot of the PDF material for sale either isn't worth the money being charged for it or should be given away to attract eyes and prove its worth in a build-up to saleable products. That's an error that individual, would-be publishers make, not "the RPG industry." The ease of internet publishing under the OGL has created an illusion that the difference between formal (dare I say professional?) products is whether or not they are for sale. The truth is that the difference is whether or not they are bought.

An item's cost is just its cost, it is not worth or value. This inability of the customer to tell wheat from chaff in the market hurts the business of the hobby, not the presence of the market itself. The failure of many publishers (and vendors, even moreso!) to separate themselves from the sickly, ugly and weak apples in the barrel has the consumer afraid to sample any for fear of getting something rotten. That's what creates the quality confusion, and that's what hurts the hobby.

I'm sure the innovation is going on out there. I'm sure I'm missing a slew of great ideas for d20 gaming in the mess of PDF products being peddled on the likes of RPGNow, but I'm not going to drop my dimes and hope I get a good one.

-Will

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	sporks5000 2005-12-21 07:06 pm UTC (link)
	Ouch. So what steps can be taken to rectify this before it's too late? (Reply to this)

bob_goat
2005-12-21 07:15 pm UTC (link)

Well that is the danger with the creation of barriers around IP in any market, which is what is happening with the PDF publishing market. It is just following the path of every other creative market that came before. Things start all creative and salon style, but then someone starts to make money, and everyone gets real protective of their shit cause they fear someone will steel their ideas and either take credit or make money with it. However, the bright side of it is that there will be pockets of salon style groups interested in collaboration, sharing, and improvement...

(Reply to this)

By publishing I assume you mean "for sale publishing"

memento_mori
2005-12-22 02:54 am UTC (link)

I disagree, mainly because PDF publishers (for the most part) are hacks who churn out the same-old same-old (read: my kewl house rules for playing half-dwarf elfs!) in the hopes of making money. These people don't get it.
They're not innovators. And yeah, this includes the "My Life with Trollbabes in the Vineyard" copycat crowd.

Now, I do think everyone would benefit from a free-flowing exchange of ideas...maybe a WikiPedia-esque compendium of d20 (and other?) material? GikiPedia?

Don't look at me, I have PDF's to sell.

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	Re: By publishing I assume you mean "for sale publishing" eyebeams 2005-12-23 07:25 am UTC (link)
	Make sure to rename "Strength," "Rage," to look more arty! (Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: By publishing I assume you mean "for sale publishing" -

jdigital, 2005-12-23 11:13 pm UTC

(Anonymous)
2005-12-22 06:03 am UTC (link)

I think that PDFs are a fabulous medium. I just wouldn't expect anyone to actually pay money for one if I made one, or why any game designer thinks he warrants being paid for them if he is not capable of producing a game profitable enough to make it as a print game.

On the other hand, as long as there are people out there of the mind to pay for a PDF, more power to those who make them. Capitalism in action, baby... aka "there's a sucker born every minute".

RPGPundit

http://www.xanga.com/RPGpundit

(Reply to this)

jdigital
2005-12-24 08:46 pm UTC (link)

Well, free, open-source and commercial are three different models.

In the commercial model, good writing is encouraged by the profit a good writer earns, and poor writing is discouraged by the costs of an endeavour which does not sell enough to break even. In the free model, quality is not as assured but the goodwill generated by giving away material for free encourages other people to do the same, with diamonds often found in the ensuing rough. The open source model is a free model, but you are encouraged to improve existing material instead of making your own, or in addition to it, thus gaining many of the benefits of the free model but with improved quality.

PDF publishing has a lower cost than print publishing, which means that the minimum limit of quality is much lower. The incentive for publishing quality material is lower too, since it's difficult to preview a PDF before purchase like you can do with a book in a shop. The result is that the PDF market, while fairly bustling, is not necessarily of commercial quality.

Ideally, I would like to see more of the PDFs distributed as free material, which would be feasible if the OGL wiki got going and publishers offered their old material to the project in order to drum up goodwill toward their newer projects. After all, PDFs tend to sell the majority of their number upon release, and after a few months will sell relatively few copies.

Of course, much material that is made, is only made because the author was motivated by the money made from the PDF. Without the PDF market, some of that content would have instead been free, but the rest of it would never have been made in the first place.

The idea of open-source collaborative D&D is another tricky one. If a person would write without being paid, perhaps they would only do so if they would gain recognition for it and could be assured of the integrity of their material. If I make a monster or spell, I'm all open for constructive criticism on it and I'd love it if people started using my material in their games, but I don't know if I'd be as happy about giving up my rights by putting it on a wiki. If it'd mean letting someone edit my work (perhaps adversely) and would mean I didn't get to have my name attached to it, I don't know if I'd be so happy about it.

I wonder if there should be a Livejournal community for D&D writing.

(Reply to this)

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