Augury

I made a follow up post last week about some thoughts on D&D 4th Edition. Though 4th Edition is still speculative at this point, there have been a bunch of developments of late in the D&D world that lend credence to the idea that maybe, sometime, possibly in the near future, a 4th Edition will be released. Indefinite enough? I hope so.

So what do I mean by shakeups?

Back when 3rd Edition came out, Wizards of the Coast began farming out some of its material to other companies. The 2nd Edition days had left the D&D brand with a lot of neat settings, stuff like Ravenloft, Planescape, Spelljammer, Dark Sun, and so on. And while most of these settings were unique and interesting in their own ways, there’s obviously no way to support so many niche worlds (or at least, not do so and still turn a profit — generic splatbooks are probably better sellers than campaign-setting specific books)

Ravenloft was initially farmed out to White Wolf, publishing under the Sword & Sorcery brand.* DragonLance was farmed out to Margaret Weis productions. I don’t really understand the Oriental Adventures/Rokugan situation, so I won’t even speculate there. Dark Sun wasn’t supported at all.

*Details of some relationships might be incorrect. I don’t make it a point to care too much about the minutiae of who-is-what-and-how.

So sometime last year, Wizards took back the rights to Ravenloft from White Wolf and published their own “Expedition to Castle Ravenloft” module. Interesting. Wizards has mentioned that they are more interested in publishing adventure modules of late than they were initially. I consider this a good thing — I’m pretty darn sick of splatbooks whose sole purpose is to give powergamers more and more options to obsess over. An adventure, at the very least, gives some context for all of that to exist within. In fact, I think I’d prefer it if prestige classes and the like were only published in adventure modules, to reinforce the idea that Prestige Classes are not just super-classes but things that are earned through deeds or membership with organizations.

Sorry, I started to ramble. Anyway, now we hear news that DragonLance’s contract with Margaret Weis publishing isn’t being renewed.

And then we hear news that Wizards’ contract with Paizo Publishing, the makers of the iconic Dungeon & Dragon magazines, isn’t being renewed either.

What the heck is going on? It’s like Wizards is taking everything back in-house. A lot of people speculate that the reason for this move is in preparation for 4th Edition. Even though I’m betting we’ll see 4th Edition by 2010, at the latest, I’m not convinced these moves are specifically for 4th Edition. Wizards has been coyly mentioning a so-called “Digitial Initiative” (details are sketchy) whereby they presumably intend to create a system for distributing a lot of content online. It sounds kind of intriguing, but I wonder how successful something like that will be. Publishing a ton of content online will be problematic if anyone can copy and paste your content and give it away on their own website, or change the flavor text and pass it off as their own content (thus pretty much eliminating any hope of policing the behavior).

Some interesting notes from ENWorld:

2) The decision was made more than a year ago.

3) Content has not yet been decided.

4) Some Dragon/Dungeon features and columns will continue.

5) Accounts will be user based; payment options without credit cards will be available; content will be “previewable” before purchase.

6) Content will be released in frequent small bursts and then collected together.

7) DRAGON and DUNGEON, as brands, will continue to exist; implication being that this doesn’t replace the magazines, it’s the evolution of them.

8) Hardcopy compilation is a part of the plan.

9) Freelancers will still be used.

The real question I have, which I think will determine the success or failure of Wizards’ new venture, is whether the purpose of cutting off all of these contracts is to try and put the power, so-to-speak, in developing content into the hands of gamers around the world, via the Digital Initiative, or whether the goal is to try and consolidate Wizards’ assets and content and gain immediate control over how players interact with the material that they will be regularly publishing? Because I’m very supportive of the OGL and attempts to bring an Open-Source mentality into gaming, so to speak. But I think any so-called “Digital Initiative” whose purpose is not to explicitly democratize the creation and publication of content is going to fail, as it runs counter to the genius/madness and power of the Internet. The trick is always to harness that in productive ways, not to act like you can treat an online-distributed PDF as a magazine and maintain the same relationship with customers, as if the two are interchangeable. They’re not and never will be.