The 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Open Gaming License is available, kinda. It will officially be available in June, but serious publishers can spend $5,000 to get a copy now. I so want one. There's been some criticism that it has taken so long, but I honestly don't see the problem.
Wizards of the Coast is acting like a business, a regular publisher, instead of the head of an industry. Many small publishers rely on them for their livelihoods and need access to the OGL to create product timed for the June release and almighty Gencon. I'm not really sure what WOTC can do other than to make an announcement of the upcoming version with the product already in hand. They were still working on the rules for the core books in October.
In other news, we're having a big role-playing sale at the store, lots of Wizards of the Coast D&D books that were previously excluded from consideration. Looking at our sales records of non D&D books, many of the on-sale books sold well in 2006 and just stopped selling in 2007, even before the 4th Edition announcement. Games that took a dive in 2007 include Mutants & Masterminds, Shadowrun, Runequest and Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. Those games aren't dead, it was just clear by sales patterns that new games weren't getting started, with much of the back list gathering dust. The decline in RPGs seems to extend beyond the 4E announcement.
On the positive side, small press role-playing has taken off, and many one-shot titles have done well. Cthulhutech sold out and I'm waiting for more copies. Battlestar Gallactica was a hit for fans, but that demand was satisfied pretty quickly and it's probably not being used for a game. Customers eagerly await the new Traveler by Mongoose and The Dresden Files by Evil Hat. This is small potatoes, with sales of all of those hot books mentioned paling in comparison to a good month of D&D releases, something I haven't seen in a year.
