A couple of things:
1) The best part about all this 4th Edition license hullaballoo: Watching people who obviously have no idea what the hell they’re talking about “debate” issues of copyright, licensing and publishing. Even better: Publishers publicly committing to the license (and the 5K fee), without having seen the terms of said license yet. Fucking PRICELESS.
2) Best line about the primaries that I’ve seen all day: “As the exit polls have shown, the Democratic primary is turning into a battle between the people that pay for Social Security and those that collect it. “
“As the exit polls have shown, the Democratic primary is turning into a battle between the people that pay for Social Security and those that collect it. “
Awesome.
#2
I dunno…. I’m still giggling over Dowd’s “In a weirdly narcissistic way, she was crying for us.”
1) Having incredibly strong opinions on stuff you don’t understand is every person on the internet’s sacred right. Informed opinions are for n00bs.
2) O.M.G.
Maybe I missed it. Did anyone other than Goodman commit to the license already?
Necromancer.
Ah, of course!
Well, Clark has been a 4E booster for a while. Maybe he knows something I don’t know.
I doubt that very much. He was on the conference call with me on Monday — he was already committing at that point, even before they had gotten around to answering all of our questions.
I think we can just chalk this up to “high enthusiasm”….if we’re being kind.
I’d be more inclined to call it a desperate gamble.
Necromancer was making noises not long about about getting out of the gaming biz entirely. I figure they’re looking at this as a make-or-break opportunity. They’ve never branched out like some companies, they have D&D or they have nothing. So either they make a big splash by being one of the first out the door with support for the new edition, or they take the 5 grand as a loss and find a new hobby (supposedly the principals have pretty lucrative day jobs).
And, best as I can recall, Goodman is also in the D&D or nothing boat. So it’s probably similar reasoning that made them commit.
They both have to support D&D (regardless of the license) or close down (or at least massively revise their entire business model), so it probably makes sense, if they can afford it, to at least make the best of it by being at the front of the pack.
And just because they announced they’d be going ahead with the early release option doesn’t mean they can’t change their minds after they see the new OGL, if it’s a complete deal-breaker. A little bad PR at that point would likely be the least of their problems.