You Don’t Have To Leave Wolfy Behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' Your Companions Level Up With You!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 9575072" data-attributes="member: 907">Wizards can't profitably make small-fry stuff. Everything they do has to be at least reasonably big, and appeal to a wide audience.But there are still people out there who would want more niche stuff. A book of weapons based on cardinal virtues and deadly sins? A book about the culture of river-traveling halflings? A 6th level adventure exploring an underwater temple? These are all ideas that potentially could lead to profitable books, but nowhere near profitable enough for Wizards. So the original idea of the OGL was "Hey, you guys do that stuff." It makes that stuff available for those who want it, without having Wizards spending time and effort on it.The original concept also had the d20 System Trademark License as a companion to the OGL. The STL allowed people to indicate D&D compatibility using the "d20 System" logo as well as writing "Requires the use of the D&D Player's Handbook", at the cost of following a whole package of much stricter rules – you couldn't redefine certain game terms, and you couldn't include rules for character generation (you could have a class description, but not the rules that explain what a class is and what you do with it). It was believed that this would keep most of the d20 stuff aimed at supporting D&D rather than doing Pathfinder-type stuff. There were some experiments in doing standalone d20-based RPGs without using the d20 logo, such as Spycraft, Arcana Unearthed, and Mutants & Masterminds, but those never made a dent in D&D's sales, and the prevailing idea was "Hey, if there's a d20 supers game out there, that will mean that D&D players looking for a supers game will play that, and when they want to play fantasy again they'll come back to D&D. If there's no d20 supers game, they will look elsewhere, and once they start doing that it'll be harder to get them back." And as for competing in the fantasy genre, I believe the prevailing idea was "I'd like to see them try."The STL was a casualty of 4e, and even when Wizards opened a limited 5e under the OGL they never reintroduced the STL. Perhaps because in the years since, Pathfinder had shown that if you had built enough of an audience, you could do without it because people will flock to the Pathfinder name just as much as to the d20 System logo.</blockquote>

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