Roxxy
2013-12-28, 04:23 AM
This isn't a thread for fighting another battle in the edition war. What I'm curious about is how much the switch from OGL to GSL was a factor in splitting the game into two large camps. Granted, Pathfinder was going to exist in some form or other no matter what, since many players happened to enjoy 3.5 quite a bit, but I've heard many Pathfinder players reference the large amount of support of third party publishing and existence of a free SRD as reasons they like this system. In my own case, the OGL was the deciding factor in why I chose Pathfinder. I stuck with the system mainly because of the way the Paizo community is setting up. Things like being able to ask irrelevant questions and have developers respond and a very chatty and helpful attitude on the Paizo forums have kept me a fan. I can't speak for the WOTC forums, because I haven't been there in years. I'm wondering how much of an effect switching to the GSL had on the edition split, and whether retaining the OGL with 4E could have had a large effect on sales of Pathfinder and 4E. I'm also wondering how much an effect the attitudes of the Paizo and WOTC company forums and customer support had. Basically, I'm wondering how much of the edition split was caused by external factors and not the mechanics of the editions.