So the D20 system "is old." What should I replace it with?

In return, it (probably) saved the industry.

I admit, I'm probably overstating the matter to some degree, and I admit that I'm a bit biased by my love of the most successful result of the OGL (Pathfinder). The influence the OGL is undeniable, both good and bad, but my viewpoint is probably skewed somewhat.

I doubt that. It may have helped, a little, in that it made it simpler to market RPGs, but I think, overall, consolidation was a bad strategy in those market conditions.

Eh, there's arguments both ways. If a single company is failing, tough shit. Others will happily buy your IP for pennies on the dollar, as has happened in every industry, continually, throughout human history. However, if and entire industry is failing, sometimes the only way to save it results in consolidation. The ones capable of saving themselves will do so by whatever means they deem necessary. Some smaller players may become collateral damage in the process, others will die on their own unwillingness or inability to adapt, and the survivors will pick up the pieces when the dust settles.

In this specific instance, WotC survived by publishing the OGL. White Wolf survived by flooding their corner of the market with a billion edge products to cater to the every possible niche audience they could. Palladium simply sued everyone they could find. Chaosium survived as they always have by using public domain IP as their fuel, and a fanatically devoted player base that loves that IP. West End folded immediately prior to all of this, and the Shadowrun IP seems to change hands so often I can never keep track of who owns it at any given time. I'm pretty sure that covers most of the major players of the time that are still around in one form or another.

Also bear in mind that other gaming industries were collapsing at the same time. The tabletop industry lost pretty much everything except 40k and Fantady, though new games were pretty quick to fill those voids. Card games probably have the highest failure rate of any gaming industry subtype (citation needed), and that era saw the rise and fall of many many many games due to a variety of factors, with MtG being the ever-present victor in that arena.

The place where tabletop games can always outcompete video games is in their endless creativity and variety.

I partially agree with you. Both physical and electronic games have their limitations unique to their respective media, but there's a huge indy boom ongoing within video games right now too, thanks to Humble Bundle, Steam (and Greenlight), and Kickstarter.

As /u/kzielinski says- DriveThru RPG and Kickstarter brought that to the front. I'll add that the growing community of online tabletops is the other key part of reviving the industry, since it solves the difficult problem of finding local players.

I completely agree with you here. Electronic distribution and access to venture capital have enabled a vast number of people to release products that would not otherwise exist 15 years ago.

At best, the OGL was a hibernation phase. It may have kept tabletop gaming from dying, but it wasn't exactly living either.

You may be right. I mentioned earlier that I might be overstating the OGL's role in the survival of the industry. I do think that the industry would have survived in fashion without it. However, I do still think that the recovery would have been much slower without it.

//I also hate the D20 ruleset, but that's its own long rant.

Ha, that is a different story entirely. I have no special love for the system, even though Paizo has probably done the best that could be done with it, IMO. I play with d20 more often than other systems, but that's largely due to the preferences of my regular group moreso than any strong preference on my part. I prefer level-less systems, myself.

/r/rpg Thread