Game makers stage mass exodus from <em>Dungeons & Dragons</em>’ “open” license
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RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRacha
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Well, if I had to put it out there, changing the licensing to make it look like a "valuable" resource to sell. Hence, it could be that Hasbro has some "trimming" of its portfolio in the future, or making for a target to be bought.
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Sadly the vocal aspects aren't necessarily the entirety of the D&D fanbase. Most D&D players don't know what the OGL is or even that this controversy exists. Seeing a rather well-polished D&D movie with big names attached makes them giddy and they're absolutely going to see it when it comes out.
I would, too, if I weren't going to boycott it because I'm more online than those people are.
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In almost all my circles, the move to Pathfinder is complete. The damage has been done.
For what it's worth, I was working on my own RPG system which I basically did because I was concerned about the future of the d20 and OGL, so the chilling effect was always there at least since TSR was bought. I hate being proven right.
For what it's worth, I was working on my own RPG system which I basically did because I was concerned about the future of the d20 and OGL, so the chilling effect was always there at least since TSR was bought. I hate being proven right.
Hasbro has been overextending itself into multimedia production by acquiring eOne and maybe it's not going so well for them.
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The original announcement was their first failed death save. The “we win too” in their postponement press release was their second.
Not looking good for them.
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This is, literally, international news now - CNBC, The Guardian, CBC, even (sigh) Fox News have all run stories about the OGL controversy in the past few days, just to name a few. If you play Dungeons and Dragons, you're aware of it.
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Oh, I don't know... every played Shadowrun 3E?
My only experience with Shadowrun was one of the videogame versions--I think it was Dragonfall. I enjoyed it.
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I wish that were true but I'm seeing people on Reddit of all places still asking what the OGL is and what the big deal is.
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My wife, who has never played and refers to it as one of my "nerd games," even asked me what was going on with D&D.
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Hack-n-Slash
Ars Legatus Legionis
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That was not my intent, nor did I write that way to give that impression - and my "actually oppressed minority groups" friends (three of them) who I ran the contents of the post past before posting didn't read it that way.
But, OK, as obviously some people have read it that way, then I unreservedly apologise for causing that impression.
FTR my intent was to draw attention to, as Graylshaped put it (and way better than I did), the "tarring people with the same brush" aspect of the ongoing hostility (as you yourself have shown) towards a group of people who don't deserve it just because some people who can be classified within that group do bad things.
I'm not defending the WotC/Hasbro people for what they've done / are doing - I don't like what they're doing to the hobby I've been involved with and loved for over 40 years.
I used the first three statements in my list (as I did all the others) as a form of rhetoric to make a point. Should I have left those three off the list? Perhaps. But would people have been caused to move outside their comfort zones to examine their prejudices in this particular subject had I not? Again, perhaps, but I have my doubts.
In the end people will (hopefully) reflect on their views towards regarding the actions of individuals as the actions of groups and vice-versa - and while some people may not like having their views and preconceived ideas challenged, nether-the-less I have a right to voice my objections to comments I find distasteful and to ask people to stop making those comments (particulalry when they are not true when being generalized), just as others have the right to voice their objections to comments they find distasteful - including this one.
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That's actually perfect. People might not understand the intricacies of what OGL is or what it means - heck, a lot of the people in this thread don't either - but they ARE aware something is happening enough to look into it further.
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Dragonfall and the other 2 (Returns and Hong Kong) are pretty close to SR3 - they were done by the original creator(s) of Shadowrun, and the 3rd Edition is the one they got "right".
The thing with SR, and SR3 in particular, is the sheer amount of dice you needed to roll for some of the more advance actions, especially when you were playing an experienced character - hence the comment when talking about never having too many dice.
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I go a little bit later and use Rules Cyclopedia era D&D, which is the last incarnation of TSR D&D published in 1991 (a couple years after AD&D 2e was released). It covered everything in the first four rule sets of BECMI, leaving out the Immortal rules that (AFAIK) got very little use anyway. I find D&D to be more comprehensive in its rules than AD&D, and the Rules Cyclopedia covers all the gameplay I'm interested in within a single volume so that I don't need multiple rulebooks and have to go digging for a Companion set to make a druid or Master set for a mystic when all the other classes are in Basic.
And yeah, a lot of retroclones have looked at B/X or BECMI or the RC as their inspiration.
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My AD&D DM manual has lost its spine, but retains a battered cover. The player's handbook is in better shape. I think one of my brothers "borrowed" the Monster Manual and Deities and Demigods forty years ago. I admit my 3.5 books have probably never been opened--I think I bought them as a gift for my nephews at one point, but they weren't interested at the time. As things turned out, now in their thirties, they play regularly.
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I'm not sure the "it's a few noisy troublemakers" line passes the giggle test, when there have been 40,000 + DnD beyond cancellations.
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Just want to pop in and say that WotC did not roll a Nat 1. What they did was ask the DM to do something so incredibly dumb even after the DM asked if they were sure. Then the DM said, alright, you'll need a Nat 20 to succeed. Roll with disadvantage.
WotC obviously did not roll double 20's.
Just absolutely bonkers. All WotC had to do was continue to make D&D Beyond into a better system with the move to the rules version. If they really wanted to be greedy without completely screwing up, they could have just said that the new version doesn't fall under the OGL, just like all those 5e WotC supplements don't fall under the OGL.
There was probably a way forward for WotC to expand their user base of D&D Beyond and increase net revenue without the OGL shenanigans.
WotC obviously did not roll double 20's.
Just absolutely bonkers. All WotC had to do was continue to make D&D Beyond into a better system with the move to the rules version. If they really wanted to be greedy without completely screwing up, they could have just said that the new version doesn't fall under the OGL, just like all those 5e WotC supplements don't fall under the OGL.
There was probably a way forward for WotC to expand their user base of D&D Beyond and increase net revenue without the OGL shenanigans.
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A few people upstream were asking questions along the lines of "how stupid did they have to be to think this would work?" or "what were they thinking?"
I guess you've never been in a corporate board meeting before....oh man, let me tell you. This isn't surprising in any form or fashion to me. You get these executives that come in, and everything has to be about money. I don't work in software or gaming; I work in the industrial world, but to these people everything has to be monetized.
Everything to them is so transactional.
Business in general, at least in the industrial world that I've been in that last 20 years, has become extremely transactional. Every little damn thing has to be charged for. Pretty soon, they're going to hook up a breathing monitor to me and charge the customer for every breath I take when I'm on the phone with them (that's sarcasm, but it almost isn't). Things that were business courtesies before, are now revenue streams.
The people who think like this, they never put themselves in the customer's shoes, or if they do, then they don't think like the typical customer - or they lie to themselves about what they would tolerate. It's more about what the customer can tolerate, rather that what makes them happy.
I see this a lot in large companies, but it's carrying over into medium size business, too. Every so-called wannabe CFO read The Rockefeller Habits or went to Gazelle training, and now thinks we need a shit ton of meetings (I'm sorry - "huddles") and there needs to be a metric and KPI for everything. It's extremely toxic, turns off customers, and puts us customer-facing employees in the middle.
The problem for customers is now 95% of the industry is becoming like this, because god knows we have to squeeze every penny out of every revenue stream. So now they can't really go anywhere that's not this transactional. I hate this as both an employee and a customer. I'm so glad the community rejected them on this BS. It gives me a little hope.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
I guess you've never been in a corporate board meeting before....oh man, let me tell you. This isn't surprising in any form or fashion to me. You get these executives that come in, and everything has to be about money. I don't work in software or gaming; I work in the industrial world, but to these people everything has to be monetized.
Everything to them is so transactional.
Business in general, at least in the industrial world that I've been in that last 20 years, has become extremely transactional. Every little damn thing has to be charged for. Pretty soon, they're going to hook up a breathing monitor to me and charge the customer for every breath I take when I'm on the phone with them (that's sarcasm, but it almost isn't). Things that were business courtesies before, are now revenue streams.
The people who think like this, they never put themselves in the customer's shoes, or if they do, then they don't think like the typical customer - or they lie to themselves about what they would tolerate. It's more about what the customer can tolerate, rather that what makes them happy.
I see this a lot in large companies, but it's carrying over into medium size business, too. Every so-called wannabe CFO read The Rockefeller Habits or went to Gazelle training, and now thinks we need a shit ton of meetings (I'm sorry - "huddles") and there needs to be a metric and KPI for everything. It's extremely toxic, turns off customers, and puts us customer-facing employees in the middle.
The problem for customers is now 95% of the industry is becoming like this, because god knows we have to squeeze every penny out of every revenue stream. So now they can't really go anywhere that's not this transactional. I hate this as both an employee and a customer. I'm so glad the community rejected them on this BS. It gives me a little hope.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
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Fancy Internet Person
Ars Praefectus
You'd think the best way for them to grow their userbase would be to look at barriers to entry for new players playing and DMing D&D.
My impression is that people see the 3 book set as daunting and believe that the rules are complicated and difficult.
The company has the power to improve both the reality and the reputation of D&D along those lines.
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I'm also failing to understand how this impacts the average player. WotC can't stop you from using the physical items in your own possession. They cannot force a subscription or a rule change to items you physically own. I understand the implication of this being akin to the Warcraft modders who dropped support when Activision/Blizzard wanted to absorb rights to their modded creations via the new licensing. Assuming this would hurt smaller tabletop companies, why can't they just adopt their own license, drop any D&D branding / specific IP, and then repackage everything as "D&D -compatible" to make it legally kosher?
I sure there is something I'm fundamentally not aware of or missing here... for example is D&D now generally played online somehow? That's the only way I can make sense of the subscription fee threat to players.
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Historically, that's a great way to get sued. Hasbro may or may not win such a suit, but they can afford to bring a suit where most third-party producers can't afford to defend against a suit.
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Fancy Internet Person
Ars Praefectus
D&D is regularly played online now.
There's been a pandemic for the last 3 years.
Even before that, online play was growing in popularity because it was a nice way for friend groups that no longer lived in the same place to keep playing.
The demand for royalties and changed licensing terms also threatened to reduce the availability of new adventures and add-ons from third party companies. That reduces the availability of new books for players.
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While this may be a hot take, the biggest barriers to entry are the expectations created by pop culture D&D stuff. Outsiders look at stuff like Critical Role and Stranger Things and expect that level of polish and drama from a Wednesday-night pick-up Adventurer's League game run by some rando doing effectively free labor. It also affects the DMs who see things like CR and assume that they're doing a poor job because they can't do a million different voices or only use dry-erase mats instead of intricate terrain or have grand designs for their campaign.
The PHB/MM/DMG can be daunting, but nothing craters interest like watching Matt Mercer's voice acting in action on Twitch, then driving to your LFGS to hear Randy the Claims Adjuster tell you in a flat monotone that your Level 2 Rogue got killed by a Bugbear in one swing. I don't even watch CR (I've tried, but it feels hard to get into someone else's game when you have your own), but I feel like it's had an overall negative impact.
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The average player gets affected by the availability of things to do. Lots of new game modules have been made by third parties (I own a whole campaign setting based on birds and a book with a bunch of different taverns in and some neat kind of Pokemon-esque rulesets.) There are modules, adventure hooks, stories, artifacts, spells, and such all made by third parties with D&D's permission thanks to how the OGL worked. These third parties have breathed more life into D&D and made the game one where the fans really do build it to be the best it can be.
The new OGL threatens to lock all that down - makes it so the only source from which you can get anything is from WotC. They would probably drip-feed stuff to the players, making them more expensive, and adopting some severely anti-consumer practices to force you to spend more money - the DDB leaks ($30 a month for some tiers, locking down homebrew, etc.) proved that if they can find a way to monetize what used to be free, they will.
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I love Matt Mercer but I think the popularity of Critical Role damaged the hobby more than he expected it would.
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I think they'll totter along, but if they wanted to try and regain some of their market dominance they'd probably have to adopt the ORC license for all OGL properties. Then people might be comfortable retaining d20 as their core system, and D&D would still be the "home settings" for d20.
(Legal-approved corporatese apology optional.)
I kinda doubt they will, though.
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I would consider it a net positive. I'm much more interested in D&D (er rollplaying games - do we need a new name for these?) after listening to their episodes.
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Fancy Internet Person
Ars Praefectus
That's probably too hot a take for reality.
I doubt that CR or Dimension 20 or other highly produced AP games drove away any significant number of players who would have otherwise taken up D&D as a hobby.
Certainty not a greater number than it brought in to the hobby.
I don't watch or listen to CR (or Dimension 20) either, but actual play streams have really brought people into the hobby in a way that surprised me.
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I think that it shows "the mundanes" that roleplaying isn't just sweaty nerds sitting around in the dark fondling their dice bags.
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Perhaps I wasn't clear, my point is that they come in for a session or two, realize that they aren't going to get Matt Mercer at their table, then drop out. One could consider that "bringing people in" in the sense that they crossed the line into actually showing up for a game or two, but there's definitely a "Paris Shock Syndrome" that comes from seeing what most ground-level D&D actually is.
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[cranky grognard] Only because those dang CRPGs came around and made it so RPG was no longer an adequately descriptive acronym. [/cranky grognard]
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Fancy Internet Person
Ars Praefectus
That's still too hot a take.
Even if 90% of those folks bounce off it completely, the 10% who remain would represent an incredible growth in the hobby.
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I think "hot take" is still giving it too much credit. It wasn't that long ago where the cultural space Dungeons and Dragons existed in was "that game nerds play", the eighties satanic panic, and a failed movie and cartoon. The fact it is what it is now is due in large part to stuff like Critical Roll.
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It can be a net positive while also damaging the hobby. Too many DMs expected to be a Matt Mercer clone, trying to force themselves to develop stories when they can't, to make voices when they can't, to build elaborate set pieces when they shouldn't, and so on. Some players get angry when their DM isn't like Matt Mercer. Just picking up Lost Mines of Phandelver and running through it with your (as Hiro said above) flat monotone makes people drop the hobby or try to find a different DM.
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Fancy Internet Person
Ars Praefectus
Critical Role also showed that women and girls can and do play TTRPGs.
There were some really bad realities and perceptions on that score for a long time, and CR did a fair bit to change that.
(Here's hoping the gatekeeping, broken stairs, harassment, and officially-pubished misogynistic content are all in the past.)
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I've been GMing a Shadowrun 3E campaign for more years than I care to think about, and my normal minimum dice bag is 64d6 (8d6 in eight different colours)Oh, I don't know... every played Shadowrun 3E?
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Let's not overstate the situation. Every activity--every single one--has a stick/bounce ratio. When I studied Aikido, we knew that January would be busier than any other month because of New Year's Resolutioners. Of the five newbies we'd get, maybe one would stick around. Now, maybe we were a terrible group. Maybe Aikido just wasn't a good fit for the bouncers. Maybe Steven Segal made them think Aikido was something that it wasn't. There are a ton of variables. We practiced in good faith and tried to be welcoming.
However, if the general stick/bounce ratio is 1/5, and a movie called The Aikido Kid doubled our newbie count, we'd still double our stick numbers for the month. Not every DM is Matt Mercer, not every play is a Broadway spectacular, and not every person you date is a supermodel. That doesn't mean that the big shots are responsible for people leaving RPG groups, not doing theater, or breaking up with their significant other.
The other benefit of something like Critical Role has been the normalization of the hobby. Kids get made fun of less for participating. The products are more widely available. People are more likely to give it a try. These are all net positives.
However, if the general stick/bounce ratio is 1/5, and a movie called The Aikido Kid doubled our newbie count, we'd still double our stick numbers for the month. Not every DM is Matt Mercer, not every play is a Broadway spectacular, and not every person you date is a supermodel. That doesn't mean that the big shots are responsible for people leaving RPG groups, not doing theater, or breaking up with their significant other.
The other benefit of something like Critical Role has been the normalization of the hobby. Kids get made fun of less for participating. The products are more widely available. People are more likely to give it a try. These are all net positives.
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You should be a little more specific here. Gary Gygax has more than one son and only one of them made those remarks. (Specifically it was Earnest Gary Gygax, Jr.) The Quora question "Why has TSR Games distanced itself from Ernie G. Gygax Jr.?" and top answer provide a very illuminating explanation.
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Fancy Internet Person
Ars Praefectus
(Tongue in cheek)
It's shown that D&D is also for the theater kids, for the improv nerds, for the jugglers, the unicyclists, and the anime nerds too!
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