Poll
Question:
All other things being equal, when deciding what RPG products I will purchase, I give products that contain Open Game Content...
Option 1: ...more consideration than products with no Open Game Content.
votes: 5
Option 2: ...the same consideration as products with no Open Game Content.
votes: 11
Option 3: ...less consideration than products with no Open Game Content.
votes: 1
Option 4: ...I don\'t know what you mean by \
votes: 0
That last line is supposed to read "I don't know what you mean by Open Game Content"
Note that "all other things being equal" means that the products you are comparing have content of equal quality!
If anyone knows how to make a poll work properly on the WotC boards, feel free to post this same poll over there. WotC may find the results of a poll like this useful.
I give them equal consideration. Quality of content is my only true deciding factor. Whether or not it's OGL doesn't matter to me too much, because I'll use whatever I want anyway ;) I just won't post non-OGL stuff on the 'net.
Please not that the poll says "all other things being equal." That means that we're talking about two products whose content is equally useful!
I honestly don't notice or care when I buy something. all I've ever purchased has been from WoTC anyway, regardless of it's content. However, with my entrance into the world-building community, I have come to see how OGC affects my life. and it really isn't pretty, I could just shoot wizards right now for having yuan-Ti as PI...
There's never been two products that were exactly equal except for the Open Game Content. Obviously, any open game content in a hypothetical book A makes it better to some extent than a hypothetical book B which is EXACTLY equal to book A except for the open gaming content. But how much is open gaming content worth to ME, as opposed to an OGL publisher? Not enough for me to realistically let that affect my purchase. Except in hypothetical world, where that might be the ONLY difference between two books.
(actually, arguably book B would have to be slightly lighter, since it saved some ink by not printing the OGL license.)
I can't imagine a time when someone decided against buying a book because it contained OGC. Unless they were really, really hoping to exclusively license the material.
If there is a choice, and quality is equal, OGL all the way!
One reason not to buy a book that contains OGC might be that you could most likely also legally download it from the net for a mere fration of the cost of buying the book.
Still, while I applaud anyone for publishing their crunch as OGC, as a reader it really has little value for me, so as for buying the books I vote "don't care" (the second option).
Turin
Quote from: TúrinOne reason not to buy a book that contains OGC might be that you could most likely also legally download it from the net for a mere fration of the cost of buying the book.
I doubt that - few people will bother with carefully extracting the Open Gaming Content and removing all Product Identity from a book just to create a downloadable version of the OGC material.
Personally, I don't really watch out for books with OGC material. But this is because I frankly consider most rules material boring - it is setting material and other general gaming advice and ideas that interest me first and foremost.
QuoteI doubt that - few people will bother with carefully extracting the Open Gaming Content and removing all Product Identity from a book just to create a downloadable version of the OGC material.
Well, really, that is a problem for wizards--they're much more likely to have that happen to them than other publishers. (re: www.d20srd.org )
(I know i've not yet bought the xph, nor will i--for i am Cheap and it is available online.)
For some reason, though, it seems like it's not kosher to rip & publish the free content of small-time publishers, even if it would be technically legal.
I mirror branface.