The D&D thread

Arbitrary · Jan 12, 2023

Arden said:
We believe that any interpretation that the OGL 1.0 or 1.0(a) were intended to be revocable or able to be deauthorized is incorrect, and with good reason.

We were there.

View attachment 452791

Basically, yeah. I remember back when the OGL was first introduced back during 2000 and knew quite a few game designers at the time. No one was worried that if they launched a version of their system converted for d20 that WotC was going to deauthorize the existing OGL and implement a new one that gave them powers such as

B. You own the new and original content you create. You agree to give us a nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, sub-licensable, royalty-free license to use that content for any purpose."

because everyone on all sides agreed that wasn't possible. "Won't you fuck us?" asked the creators and WotC guaranteed them that they couldn't. No one thought it could be a thing until Hasbro hired Cynthia Williams to boost revenue like she had done for XBox Live and Amazon. DnD is "under-monetized" and she likes using lawyer muscle so here we are. I wonder how many people in the industry still have legal correspondence with WotC and eventually Hasbro on this exact subject. Of course we can't fuck you!

Grabbit Allworth · Jan 12, 2023

I commend Paizo for doing something, but I'm going to have to hold my nose and close my eyes to get in bed with them because they're more woke than WotC is. In PF2e, they went full-retard with pronouns, were first to abandon the 'sin' of "race," banned the words Golem and Phylactery for 'cultural appropriation,' and even got rid of any reference to "blinding" because it was "ableist."

The TTRPG space is policed by a bunch of objectively mentally-ill windowlickers that expect the other 97% of us to accept their warped clown-world reality.

Arden · Jan 12, 2023

Time for the IP lawyers to make some money

Arden · Jan 12, 2023

For the record, I have no issue with WoTC/Hasbro trying to make money. I have a game system myself that I hope to publish one day, and I would definitely like to make money with it. That said, there are lots of ways to monetize and make money. WoTC has chosen the worst way possible by trying to go back on their word to take from the work of others, rather than innovate themselves.

They let people build on their foundation for more than 20 years, and now they want to try and pull the rug out from everyone for a cash grab? It's not just greedy, it's lazy and shitty. Make money, sure, but don't do it by fucking over your loyal community who has built on your system in good faith all of these years. I'm guessing that they are assuming 99% of their player base won't be financially affected by this, so they figured everyone would just shrug. Clearly they miscalculated.

I hope they spend twice as much in court battles as they hoped to earn with this bullshit.

Qhue · Jan 12, 2023

I agree that they have a right to make money, but they went completely lawyer-mad with this stuff. Too focused on believing they were entitled to everyone else's stuff than they were on making their own product. There is no reason why they couldn't have made Roll20 or Foundry and really set themselves up as a Steam-like commerce focal point providing a platform and storefront while taking a modest royalty....but that's not what they did. The sheer scope of their cash grab just makes it clear that they thought all these smaller publishers were a bunch of hillbilly yokels they could fleece and its very not cool.

Had they just kept their heads down and launched their new VTT with One D&D and tried to shift people to using D&D Beyond and paying a monthly fee to access D&D resources I think they would have been very successful, but that wasn't aggressive enough for this new Amazon woman they brought on and they are paying the price for their failure.

Kriptini · Jan 13, 2023

Grabbit Allworth said:
I commend Paizo for doing something, but I'm going to have to hold my nose and close my eyes to get in bed with them because they're more woke than WotC is. In PF2e, the went full-retard with pronouns, were first to abandon the 'sin' of "race," banned the words Golem and Phylactery for 'cultural appropriation,' and even got rid of any reference to 'blinding' because it was "ableist."

The TTRPG space is policed by a bunch of objectively mentally-ill windowlickers that expect the other 97% of us to accept their warped clown-world reality.

Sure but it's a better game from a mechanics perspective and you can just homebrew and 3pp anyways.

Ome · Jan 13, 2023

Eve and the forbidden fruit all over again.

Urlithani · Jan 13, 2023

Grabbit Allworth said:
I commend Paizo for doing something, but I'm going to have to hold my nose and close my eyes to get in bed with them because they're more woke than WotC is. In PF2e, the went full-retard with pronouns, were first to abandon the 'sin' of "race," banned the words Golem and Phylactery for 'cultural appropriation,' and even got rid of any reference to 'blinding' because it was "ableist."

The TTRPG space is policed by a bunch of objectively mentally-ill windowlickers that expect the other 97% of us to accept their warped clown-world reality.

The good news is that their new OGL will be system neutral, so other companies can put up SRD's for their system that can be enjoyed. I'm sure there will be someone out there that puts out something non-woke.

Maybe the makers of FATAL will put up an SRD under the license.

Grabbit Allworth · Jan 13, 2023

Arden said:
For the record, I have no issue with WoTC/Hasbro trying to make money. I have a game system myself that I hope to publish one day, and I would definitely like to make money with it. That said, there are lots of ways to monetize and make money. WoTC has chosen the worst way possible by trying to go back on their word to take from the work of others, rather than innovate themselves.

They let people build on their foundation for more than 20 years, and now they want to try and pull the rug out from everyone for a cash grab? It's not just greedy, it's lazy and shitty. Make money, sure, but don't do it by fucking over your loyal community who has built on your system in good faith all of these years. I'm guessing that they are assuming 99% of their player base won't be financially affected by this, so they figured everyone would just shrug. Clearly they miscalculated.

I hope they spend twice as much in court battles as they hoped to earn with this bullshit.

I don't have a fundamental issue with WotC trying to create more revenue streams from one of their flagship products either but, as you pointed out, it's the way they're going about it and one of the most insidious ways they're fucking 3PP is by wanting to claim ownership of anything that is created using the OGL.

Fuck. That. Noise.

*edit* fixed auto-correct fuckery

Dr.Retarded · Jan 13, 2023

Nice vid about the Paizo response.

Qhue · Jan 13, 2023

An Update on the Open Game License (OGL)

Although we are not yet able to release the OGL at this time, we would like to update you on how things are developing, and the goals we have in mind fo...

www.dndbeyond.com

About as close to an unconditional surrender as one might expect from a billion-dollar corporate entity

Koushirou · Jan 13, 2023

Some pure copium here:

Second, you’re going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They won—and so did we.

Qhue · Jan 13, 2023

The initial reaction is exactly what you might think -- a mixture of qualified approval and disbelief :

" Blog posts are not legally binding. I can say whatever i want in a press release, anything. Until we see an actual license document----nothing has changed."

They do seem to realize they fucked up, but it is yet to be seen if they are genuinely remorseful (as they assert in the blog post) or if they just regret they got caught. Either way it is gonna be a LONG road to forgiveness and redemption...if even that is possible.

Drinsic · Jan 13, 2023

I'd say a good chunk of damage is already permanent, regardless of the backpedaling. The fact that they tried it is all you need to know. My group's been looking to give P2E a shot for a while anyways, this was a good push to get over the edge. Plus, there's tons of other systems we've been meaning to try out.

Grabbit Allworth · Jan 13, 2023

I knew without a shred of doubt that WotC was going to pull the "hate and discrimination" card as part of the justification for the new OGL, but it's nothing more than an empty excuse that the woke sycophants will see as misdirected good intentions. Anything that doesn't support the 'message' is verboten.

This disclaimer is attached to venues that sell older material:

We (Wizards) recognize that some of the legacy content available on this website does not reflect the values of the Dungeons & Dragons franchise today. Some older content may reflect ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice that were commonplace in American society at that time. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. This content is presented as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed. Dungeons & Dragons teaches that diversity is a strength, and we strive to make our D&D products as welcoming and inclusive as possible. This part of our work will never end.

Arbitrary · Jan 13, 2023

There's no royalties in the new OGL which is why a few days ago Kickstarter was patting themselves on the back for negotiating down the 25% Hasbro wanted from projects over a certain figure to 20%. You'll still own your work which is why in the leaked draft we included

See, it says you own your stuff.

Arden · Jan 13, 2023

Haven't done a deep dive, but at first glance it seems like Wizards is doing what they should have done in the first place: put some protections in place for proprietary content going forward, but leave 3rd party content engineered under the previous ogl alone.

100% guarantee you there were people at Wizards who said that this is what they should have done in the first place and those people were roundly ignored. Hope they feel some vindication

Qhue · Jan 13, 2023

Its refreshing that the consensus is : fuck you

Most people seem to be content with their decision to ditch DnDBeyond. Now the onus is on Hasbro to actually create a world class virtual table top for One D&D in order to compete and I guarantee they will not manage to do it. Then they will have to decide which of the existing VTTs they cough up money and buy which will be, at the very least, egg on their face. I would be shocked if that Amazon woman they hired a year ago doesn't 'chose to explore new opportunities' sometime in the next few weeks.

j00t · Jan 14, 2023

Qhue said:
Its refreshing that the consensus is : fuck you

Most people seem to be content with their decision to ditch DnDBeyond. Now the onus is on Hasbro to actually create a world class virtual table top for One D&D in order to compete and I guarantee they will not manage to do it. Then they will have to decide which of the existing VTTs they cough up money and buy which will be, at the very least, egg on their face. I would be shocked if that Amazon woman they hired a year ago doesn't 'chose to explore new opportunities' sometime in the next few weeks.

Yeah, it'd nice if they stopped being pretend transparent and actually backed up their stupid "we rolled a nat one" statement.

Failing checks actually make some of the best story moments so I'd love to see them own this and move forward from it in a positive way. In all seriousness, Im not one of the townsfolk with torches and pitchforks, this is the perfect opportunity to regain a huge amount of faith with the community.

But I doubt it

sukik · Jan 14, 2023

I don't see how any creators would trust their OGL going forward. They've shown what they really want. Its just a matter of time before they try it again.

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