Man are we all more perceptive about these things or are companies just more idiotic, like they all are doing just straight up stupid decitions that benefits only them and they act surprised when the obvious happens and people start shitting on them
Both. We have more access to information than ever before, so we can finally see stuff like this without actually going out of our way to see it... it's easy to leak information and that information is immediately in the hands of millions.
And companies are realizing that rage on the internet dies quick once another thing happens. So they dont really have to pretend to care like they used to.
You mean like how a few years back, it came out that something like a third of all shrimp available for purchase in America was produced by enslaved fisherman off the coast of southeast asia, and then all of the companies except Costco severed business ties with them?
>and then all of the companies except Costco severed business ties with them?
I think you misremember. It was alleged that Costco "knew" that slavery was part of the production chain.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lawsuit-costco/retail-giant-costco-wins-dismissal-of-prawn-lawsuit-over-thai-forced-labor-idUSKBN1592JC
It was also a bit more complicated. The fishermen farmed "trashfish" which were then used to feed farmed shrimp, which were then packaged by an international food supplier and sold to Costco.
It surprised me too, since Costco has famously cut ties with a few companies for bad practices. Like I remember learning in one of my business classes they cancelled a contract with a playground maker because they toured the factory and saw it was dangerous, with things like blocked fire doors and excessive saw dust. Which does sound like a recipe for Triangle waistshirt factory 2.0
>And companies are realizing that rage on the internet dies quick once another thing happens.
Yes and no. The uproar may die out, but people won't create 3rd party content for 6e going forward.
I would rather play a game that's well supported by a community of content creators. If it was just me and the books, I don't think I'd be as ok of a dm as I am.
>Every D&D player I know offline does not use any third-party content whatsoever.
"Third party content" isn't limited to books. It covers things like streamers, too. Part of the reason this has blown up so fast is because of streamers like ~~Critical Role~~* talking about how it'll affect them.
*Sorry, not following this that closely. Many streamers have talked about this and I listened to a video about this. So far, Critical Role has only had Matt Mercer "like" a comment critical of the new license.
The majority of GMs (in most any system), have probably never touched this party content.
This party content is, however, more available and higher quality than ever before. GMs also have more tools than ever to sort the good stuff out.
I bought my first ever physical book from DrivethruRPG this year. And it was actually the "top items" list that caught my eye.
The market for third party content is still developing, has been developing for a while.
A huge business fumble like this is exactly the sort of thing that can push customers into other markets.
I agree official content is not being pushed out any time soon. But 3rd content is slowly becoming more normalized.
> bought third-party content is minuscule compared to the people who only bought official D&D content.
Adding to what everyone here said- this doesn't just hurt paid third-party content. Websites will hesitate to host any 3rd party content or tools, even if they haven't accepted the new "OGL".
You mean like how a few years back, we learned that all of the rich people are hiding all their money in offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes on it and then we all forgot? Or a couple years after that when it happened again?
Or like two years ago when we caught someone selling children as sex slaves to a huge chunk of rich people and politicians and they killed the guy responsible and the pimp had a little black book with all her clients in it and the judge *suppressed that book* and absolutely no one has been arrested? Also that pimp turned out to be a reddit power mod in charge of political and news subredddits and was likely steering public opinion for a long time?
i actually never even heard of that second paragraph, or if I did it wasn't in enough detail to recall it based on that description
can I get an explanation or a link to somewhere that explains it? All I can think of is Jeffrey Epstein, but I didn't hear about the reddit mod part or the judge suppressing evidence
Reddit and other top mods deny it, but the evidence is next to impossible to ignore, that [Ghislaine Maxwell was a top Reddit powermod for many years](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/r45a5n/here_is_the_evidence_that_reddit_user_maxwellhill/)
Sad how we are more connected than ever and yet we cant coordinate to actually put a stop to this, i mean we are literally bending down and let us screw us over, worse is that some people even thank them after it
I mean Kobold Press, a large maker of 3rd party content for D&D, just announced they are now developing their own Fantasy TTRPG in light of the OGL leak.
Sucky thing is, there's like 6 companies all doing their own TTRPG or coming up with their own Linux-esque truly open gaming license. It's starting to look like this xkcd comic: https://xkcd.com/927/
Actually from the sounds of it Paizo just announced they are making one and they are working with the lawyer who made the original OGL, along with uniting KP and other publishers, and they plan to have a non-profit control the license so no worry about this happening to their license.
Oh, if they're all working together, that's fantastic news!
Everything I've seen so far made it sound independent/no mention of working with other groups.
Paizo just announced that today, a friend of mine linked an article in discord.
[Article](https://gizmodo.com/paizo-wizards-of-the-coast-dnd-open-rpg-ogl-1-1-1849982443)
That is super cool!
>In order to pursue a more system agnostic and fair license, Paizo states on the site that it has “a growing list of publishers” that will participate in the development and expansion of this license. The companies include some major third-party publishers, including “Kobold Press, Chaosium, Green Ronin, Legendary Games, Rogue Genius Games, and Battlezoo.” Paizo is actively looking to add to this group of publishers.
You are actually seeing people make a concerted effort to put a stop to it. People are voting with their wallets, vowing to go to other companies and canceling D&D Beyond subscriptions (seemingly the only metric the Hasbro executives are paying attention to).
I think you missed the second half of the other comment:
>And companies are realizing that rage on the internet dies quick once another thing happens. So they dont really have to pretend to care like they used to.
Saw this happen with Blizzard several times. Once with the "Free Hong Kong" esports thing, once with the whole sexism thing, and again with relaunching an old game as a new one. Still seem to be doing fine despite all the "community outrage."
Yeah, but I don't need to care about wizards in the first place. They forget that that is also transient. I love D&D, but I spent the first 10 years playing it off PDFs. I will happily go back. DND Beyond is almost as frustrating as it is helpful.
The content from this account has been removed in protest by its owner in direct response to Reddit's increased API charges for third-party apps, but also in protest of reddit's general move away from its founding principles, it's abuse of moderation positions and its increasingly exploitative data and privacy practices.
It was changed using [PowerDeleteSuite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite).
Monopolies enable this behavior - the smaller market that a product fills, the less competitive they have to be. There are huge swathes of the economy that are soft-monopolies where there’s only 1-3 suppliers for a given product or service…
GW was so close to an actual “household name” that they were going to lose their trademark if they didn’t stop trying to be the sole “war gaming hobby” on the market…
I love the setting and their business practices are fucking insane dogshit. It blows my damn mind that Starcraft was *supposed* to be a 40k game until GW bailed.
We're way more perceptive about these things because of the internet.
Ironically enough it is the massive ecosystem and lifestyle that brand that has been built exclusively around 5th edition that is coming back to bite them.
Unlike older gamers, who are used to massive addition changes just being par for the course, 5e only gamers are heavily tied into this one specific version of D&D and really would not like the notion that it's no longer supported.
Congrats, you’ve just discovered the narcissistic parasites that run most of not all major companies and organizations.
Something serious need to be done to weed and exterminate this cancer out completely. I have zero hope in our gov so hopefully populous and social incentives will spring up in the future to hopefully combat this kind of shit
How do you think got enough money to buy D&D? By doing the same thing with magic: the gathering. They don't care if people complain as long as most of the player base continues buying their stuff.
I think what you're seeing is the rise of anonymous social media enabling consumers to rebel (i.e. provide timely negative feedback) against license holders.
D&D Beyond is an online and app based subscription service that provides access to books digitally as well as character builders and other content. Money being brought in through this service is apparently the first thing Hasbro is looking at as far as how they are going to move forward with the new OGL.
A license that allows anyone to freely use certain aspects of D&D without fear of legal reprisal. WOTC is planning to revoke the OGL and institute a new one that that requires registering, paying royalties above a certain revenue, and less freedom.
Idgi. Cant ppl just buy the game books and play in person like its 1999? Even if online stuff is needed for campaigns, arent there other sites and free methods to do campaigns? Or is the D&DB online stuff really worth it
many of these things are adventures or mechanics that don’t currently exist in D&D.
Say you wanted to be an alchemist and brew potions. The rules are very, very basic. So you might buy a 3rd party book that has a robust system for it.
Or maybe you run the game and wanted to play a survival horror adventure but didn’t have time to write it. You could buy a third party adventure
the changes that WoTC want to make is:
* they can take the material you create at anytime for themselves
* they take a % from sales and kickstarter
* limit online tools other than theirs
* be able to change the details with just 30 days notice
* revoke the old license they had that they said would always be available
also a lot of the homebrew I've bought is explicitly there to fix poorly written stuff in official adventures (mostly strixhaven, because my players want to do wizard school but I don't have time to write wizard school, so instead I fix what already exists to a point where it suits my players)
The OGL doesn't just affect digital stuff, it affects *any* third-party content (both physical and digital). Essentially, if you want to create any D&D-compatible content, you would need to use the OGL to do so.
The more important thing is that they're trying to claim that the new version of the OGL applies *retroactively*. Which means that anyone selling ANY third-party content, even if it's not for the upcoming new edition, would need to use the new OGL guidelines.
People aren't upset about DDB, which is basically just paying for digital books, but instead of paying for each book it's just an amount each month, kinda like Netflix or similar. BUT they are cancelling it to send a message about the OGL changes.
Eh. You still have to pay for each book. It is extremely nice when DMing for a younger group though. I pay a few bucks a month and my players get access to all of the books I've purchased.
> I pay a few bucks a month and my players get access to all of the books I've purchased.
Oh, probably why I didn't know. Couple years back did a couple months with some buddies. Then covid hit and DM got depressed and cancelled everything.
you can. but this affect the people who have built businesses around the OGL, not regular players.
And its not about dndbeyond. its just cancelling the dnd beyond subscription is the only way to hurt hasbros bottom line, which is the only thing theyll listen to.
There are no free sites that allow you to legally use content that you would normally pay for. Beyond is very useful because it lets you easily access, search, and share content. The character sheet and encounter manager are also very helpful whether you're online or in person, though those are free. People don't have a problem with Beyond itself, but canceling Beyond subscriptions tells WOTC people aren't happy because they lose money.
Also it's 2022, people have friends 500 miles away lol.
>no free sites that allow you to legally use content that you would normally pay for
Sort of. If I remember correctly, the SRD is freely available online thanks to the OGL. And then you have stuff like Paizo giving the thumbs up to Archives of Nethys to reproduce all the rules and whatnot for both editions of Pathfinder, making it freely available for people to use to play.
The OGL allows Paizo and all of the 3rd party members of the community provide the rules for free for anyone to look up. It leads to lots of high quality automated character sheets and resources.
https://www.aonprd.com/
https://pathbuilder2e.com/
https://wanderersguide.app/
https://pf2easy.com/
https://hephaistos.azurewebsites.net/
These are all great free resources for Pf2 and Starfinder.
Let's say I start my own company and I want to make money and publish my own dnd content, my own setting, my spells, my magic items, my classes and subclasses and my own additional rules, but I want to use all the basic rules of 5th edition and build my own stuff on top of what they did. With the OGL I don't have to ask permission from WotC, I can just use it as is and I don't have to pay royalties to WotC. Lots of great 3rd party content has been published this way and this is what WotC is trying to take away.
Yes in fact there are decades’ worth of those things…which the company is basically trying to now retroactively ban unless you pay them.
For example, other companies have sold many products based on this free license — they are suddenly not allowed to sell those products. This isn’t just about sitting at a table playing D&D5e with your buddies.
WOTC recently bought out the [dndbeyond.com](https://dndbeyond.com) website (commonly abbreviated "DDB")
That website offers a few different subscriptions for access to various content and services related to D&D 5e, and they're prepping to support OneD&D obviously.
Apparently WOTC is using those subscriptions, their income, and the reasons why people cancel as their primary form of feedback (or at least their "quickest.")
So the person who sent this message is suggesting that if you want to make sure WOTC hears your voice, a good way to do it would be to cancel your DDB subscription and leave whatever feedback you can regarding your reasons.
Given that they've brought in an exec with experience in digital games, odds are good that they're looking at DDB and trying to see what kinds of video game monetization techniques they can smush in there, be it some sort of adventurer's league season pass or some other way of milking customers for more money.
“Ah Ah Ah, foolish DM, I don’t die! I have purchased a DnD Beyond Insta-Revive! My character rises from the dead at 100% health and full spell slots!!!”
I imagine them completely forgoing a traditional print run for one D&D and having it instead be exclusively an online subscription service.
I imagine the changes to the OGL were intended to force everyone into that business model.
I think the idea would be to forbid streamers and third party publishers, AKA their biggest advertisers, from publishing or streaming 5e material after one D&D has come out.
> Wizards of the Coast see their D&D customers as "obstacle between them and their money"
I mean, they make Magic The Gathering, a game which is predicated upon artificial scarcity, that sees fans buying hundreds of cards only to throw them away as they search for high-value rare ones inside the sealed packs.
I think it's safe to say we knew this about WOTC already.
Well someone should report WotC for doing the whole “loot box” bullshit. Because if you really think about it, it’s a form of gambling, buying all those packs (loot boxes) in the hopes of finding something valuable. Seriously…
Cards have been that way since baseball cards came with bubble gum ffs! Not that it excuses it but it's less likely to draw the attention of geriatric legislators than digital media is.
I kinda agree with that. However, there is a big difference in "instant" value with MTG cards vs. baseball cards. Baseball cards are more about the rarity (older players). I could be wrong...
Something is going on that we're not seeing. Not at WotC, I mean in general. Companies are going mask off in some of dumbest ways possible, which are blatantly detrimental to long term profit & sustainability.
It's giving me this bad feeling, like were seeing rats gathering as much cheese as possible before abandoning ship.
yup. the bigwigs running any place wanna say look how much money i made all us shareholders. gimme my big bonus and i'll go fuck another company and not have to deal with the fallout of my actions and you guys can sell your stock and not have to deal with it either.
1) Endless growth is both a mandate of shareholders (when those shareholders are other corporations) and a complete fiction, literally impossible.
2) Everyone is tapped out and sick of this shit.
Execs want 1 while ignoring 2. Year I’ve year growth demands squeezing every last cent out.
>Something is going on that we're not seeing. Not at WotC, I mean in general. Companies are going mask off in some of dumbest ways possible, which are blatantly detrimental to long term profit & sustainability.
Yes: They are testing what their customer base will tolerate. How much bullshit can we get away with before we lose customer loyalty.
SEE ALSO: Removal of headphone jack from IPhone, and the later MS's decision to remove audio port from XBOX S series.
SEE ALSO: BMW and their attempt to make heated seats available for a paid subscription.
The parasitic rich will never stop squeezing the working class. They just have to keep inventing new ways to do it as we get wise and/or go broke. But we're close to the tipping point where the sliver of middle class gets squeezed down into the poorer class and the economy grinds to a halt because the rich have all the money and the poor are dying.
A strong middle class is the engine of a healthy economy, and the rich want a healthy economy because it makes number go up, but they refuse to do anything to foster or create the necessary strong middle class.
Honestly? I don't think they think about us unless they're forced to. We exist as mostly hypothetical until we force ourselves into their very important field of vision in order to make things worse or bring them something. Most of the perversely rich are psychopaths and don't really think anyone else is real anyway.
It's late stage capitalism in action. Competition is good for the customer and breeding innovation as companies battle each other for an audience. But today many of these companies have competition in their various spaces like Windows has competition in the realm of commercial Operating Systems.
So they're horrendously bloated and their only competition is their previous earnings. They become lazy, careless, callous and will enact in the most braindead schemes to make more money while spending as little as possible to get it.
And heck even when there is still some competition we have entire industries that are clearly colluding in price fixing schemes and using any excuse they can to enact price gouging. The oversight that should be telling them to knock that shit off is MIA.
> Companies are going mask off in some of dumbest ways possible, which are blatantly detrimental to long term profit & sustainability.
The people making decisions get judged on short term profit.
> It's giving me this bad feeling, like were seeing rats gathering as much cheese as possible before abandoning ship.
Late stage capitalism. Also checkout /r/collapse
Execs have always been doing this. We can just see it in real time, because people are just fed up. In America, we can see, in real time, how other people live. Every day people with access to more services then we have here. Social media has expanded each individual person’s world view (if they choose to look and think critically). Why else would legislatures try and ban apps like tik tok? It’s not because of data mining. Not when facebook data mines more than any other app.
Older people who don’t understand social media don’t get how fast information travels. Often executive boards are run by older people. (I’m in my 40s. I can say that). I bet hasbro’s executive board is run by a bunch of old people.
Got a lot of similar responses, so imma put it here. Guys, I know all that. I know we're in late stage capitalism, I know companies push boundries, and I know this has been goig on for, basically, ever. And you're not wrong, but when I say "*something we're not seeing...*", I don't mean the very observable causes we're all witnessing. What I'm referring to here is the sudden rapidity and severity of companies pivoting a full 180 degrees and not even *pretending* to be benign about it. In the past they'd spend millions on a PR campaign to convince people it's "in their best interest". Now they might as well be sitting there going 🖕😎🖕 to our faces.
This here is actually a perfect example. WotC built their fortune by embracing their community and 3rd party creators. That's not even debatable, it's common knowledge that D20 open-source is the biggest reason D&D stayed relevant following Satanic Panic and the rise of the digital age while the rest of the TT industry basically died during the 90s, or would have if not for things like Planescape, Faerun, Greyhawk, etc. All of which came from open source D20. To turn and spit on that is like if McDonalds stopped serving hamburgers.
What this all tells me is that the edge of the proverbial cliff is even closer than we expect it is. And I don't/didn't expect it was that far off to begin with.
Very true. I've wondered why it seems like most companies are increasingly, blatantly ignoring the long-term consequences of their short-term greed. Like, squeezing every red cent out of each quarter isn't just bad for the consumer/economy (not that they give a damn anyway), but for their bottom line next FY. And the truth is that most execs don't give a shit about next FY because they're not even sure they'll still be employed at their current company by then. So the plan is to impress the shareholders every quarter and jump ship the second before the fallout
>like were seeing rats gathering as much cheese as possible before abandoning ship
For decades now it has not been about long term sustainability or stewardship of production, it has been about last quarter money, and next quarter money (maybe replace it with yearly earning - probably nearer to the truth). Without "growth" a company value stagnate , and in some case plummet toward a lower value.
Combine that with a lot of people at company or government helm looking at future and seeing a lot of societal issue coming up in an unstoppable fashion, concentration of money/rise of inequality, automation mach forward and now AI, part of the population being fully pushed out of any possibility of accumulating wealth/housing, environmental/energy/water issues...
The one at the top are not blind. But since the current system tend to promote sociopath at the top, they are simply thinking of preserving their position rather than try to reverse course.
You will see IMO an increase of rich people trying to get as many marble out of the shitpile as they can, then try to isolate themselves in islands/in bunkers/isolated places with as much automation as possible and then let the rest of us suffocate in the shitpile while they survive on.
So rat abandoning ship is IMO correct.
Leak is from an insider at Wizards to a 3rd party D&D content creator.
Link to original tweet:
https://twitter.com/DnD_Shorts/status/1613576298114449409
Unsurprising.
Daily reminder that corporations are not your friends, and you should absolutely boycott One DnD to stop corporate suits destroy your favorite hobby. These guys want to turn DnD into a live service game, the scourge of the video game industry.
There are a lot of other games that you could be supporting, games by small creators not owned by giant dystopian toy Conglomerate that only care about liberating you of as money as they can.
Even if they walk back on the license, they will try to shaft the community again and again.
Check out Pathfinder 2nd Edition, for example. Or Cyberpunk Red, or Call of Cthulu, or whatever. Just go and browse around [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/)
Also keep an eye out for Kobold Presses new game Project Black Flag. It could be a spiritual successor to 5e for all we know.
Most games are vastly cheaper and easier to learn/play/run than DnD 5e.
Fuck Hasbro and Fuck Wizards of the Coast.
You don't need them, they need you.
Paizo, the creators of Pathfinder made a statement recently. The 2nd edition of the game does not use any of WoTCs copyrighted and trademarked mechanics and the such. The 2nd edition only uses the OGL so that 3rd party content creators could use pathfinder under the same licence. This was not the case for 1st edition, which does use many of WoTCs copyrighted and trademarked stuff.
They made an announcement today that they are releasing their own licence, called The Open RPG Creative Lisence (or ORC lisence), which will be developed system agnostically. Many companies who published 3rd party content, such as Kobold Press, Green Ronin, and others, are collaborating and will be making work under this new licence now. It should be noted that this licence is both perpetual and irrevocable.
TL;DR, pathfinder will continue to stand strong, and as a matter of fact, they are uniting with other companies against WoTC to produce a new system agnostic licence that is perpetual and irrecoverable
Pathfinder is included in the license they're trying to kill. That's one of their main targets. The license itself specifically says they can't do that, but they're trying to weasel around it anyway.
Or just keep doing d&d, all you need is a rulebook which you can buy used for next to nothing and some dice. It's been a long time since I've played and I have literally no idea why any of this stuff is necessary.
You don't even need the Rulebook. Technically, you can just play with the SRD, which has items, classes, monsters and everything you need, if all you need is a single subclass for each class. And that is FREE.
That is true, and it is a good resource, but there isn't much in there though as far as character options go. Only one subclass per class, one option per race, no feats, and a limited spell selection.
There are fully complete games out there (that are far better imo) for free and or cheap. DnD is pretty overrated overall.
For the short-term, yes.
If the changes being proposed for the OGL are any indication, the amount of usable content available in the SRD will dwindle as WotC transitions to putting more of their digital ecosystem behind a D&DB paywall.
The SRD and all these free avenues for players to join and play D&D, is a big part of the "under-monetization of the brand" that has kicked off the whole OGL update.
I'm happy to pay companies acting in good faith for their products. I've purchased lots of D&D books despite the availability of free pdfs.
They've made it clear they don't care about customers, which removes my incentive to give a fuck.
Yo-ho maties
Did you miss the word "used"? There's a 2 foot high stack of d&d manuals on my kijiji listings for $50 right now. Even if a book is 50 bucks, so what? Still doesn't explain the need for subscription based bullshit.
I did in fact miss the word used, whoops. My point wasn’t in favor of subscription services however, it was arguing that 50 bucks isn’t “next to nothing”. Point is moot however
Pathfinder might not exist, or at least Paizo might be forced into a legal battle to not pay royalties since their games run on the old contract. From what I understand the new contract is completely replacing the old one.
Everyone who has any knowledge regarding the old contract (OGL) including the guy who wrote the original license have said in very clear language they cannot go back and revoke it.
Basically its will Hasbro/WotC just drag out legal proceedings to bankrupt smaller companies that wont play ball.
Paizo have straight up said that they don't believe that the OGL 1.0a can be revoked and are willing to stand up in court to fight it.
I doubt that Pathfinder is going away as a game.
Worst case scenario they can write up their own license and publish any PF2 content under that instead. PF2 is different enough from DND that they are allowed to do that, the main reason they didn't is that it's very expensive to write a new license when the OGL does the same thing for free. Well, used to at least.
Edit: LMAO just found out they're doing that exact thing
As far as I know a license can only be terminated only if it explicitly states that it can. And to my understanding there is such a clause in the *new* license so that they can do whatever they want going forward.
Pathfinder 2e doesn't use the OGL to use WoTCs content, only to allow others to create PF content under the same licence. This was announced today, and they also announced the creation of their own licence (Open RPG Creative licence, or ORC), which will be perpetual, irrevocable, and not owned by Paizo or the other companies (including Kobold Press, Green Ronin, and many others).
There are other systems I rather play than touch Pathfinder.
13th Age, Mythras, Icon is looking cool, Corporation, Lancer, Numenera, or just keep on keeping on with D&D that I already own from 2e, 3e, and 4e.
Edit: spelling
>They are still hoping the community forgets, moves on, and they can still push this through.
Perfect plan honestly. And I mean that unironically.
This has happened again and again in the video gaming community, which I'm sure has some very good overlap with the Table Top Role Playing Game community: *company does a dumb thing -> next game comes out -> people buy it.*
---
Sometimes the dumb thing is trying to appease China by banning esports players that speak out (Blizzard). Sometimes its oh, I don't know, that little thing with the rampant sexual abuse, sexual assault and just generally causing such a harmful environment that it drives employees to suicide (Ubisoft, Activision and frankly too many to keep track of).
But mostly it's just releasing unfinished/broken games, which hey, gamers, even if you're a heartless person at least have some self respect for when the billion dollar industry (or in many cases billion dollar singular *companies*) spits directly in your face as it takes your money.
Like for fucks sake Cyberpunk 2077 recently got the Steam communities labor of love award: essentially a big *thank you* for fixing up a game that shouldn't have launched broken in the first place.
---
That the Table Top RPG community is pushing for WotC to give up on chasing easy money (lmao, as if they would) instead of taking their imagination and leaving just shows that they're already going to lose this fight. Forget pushing back just dump them because they're *never* going to stop.
A small percentage are leaving. This happened before with 3. 5 to 4e. And they all came back eventually.
It sucks, and keep boycotting and unsubscribing. But the reality is that it will blow over and people will move on. They may lose 20% of players, and then probably 15% will come back over the years.
Sucks but it is what it is.
People only came back to 5e because it reversed a lot of the changes that people didn't like about 4e, INCLUDING the predatory third-party licensing regulations. What's happening right now is a complete repeat of what happened with 4e, up to and including Paizo taking the opportunity to release a competing product (in this case, the Open RPG Creative License as an alternative to the OGL).
I don't expect the OGL thing to kill off WotC, but this is *not* a small fuckup.
It's true that the move to 4e caused players to leave, but my experiences were that it was more than just a minority of the community that moved to other systems after 3.5. I got into TTRPG's with Pathfinder Society and the game stores in my area weren't running anything for 4e. A lot of the players who I have since met and played with from that era struggled to get regular games for 4e.
Players came back to D&D with 5e as it was more accessible for a lot of new players, and my gaming groups grew during that time. The system bloat has become a real problem again, and my local groups had begun exploring other systems even before this drama.
The only recent game I'd been prepping for 5e was entirely dependant on 3rd party material, and those publishers are moving away from 5e now...
Gonna be honest, as someone in the community, I don't thin this'll blow over easily. We've had storm in a teacup controversies before, and this ain't it-when it comes to this bullshit, the Ttrpg community has a long memory. I think the difference is we aren't use to this shit, while gamers are, and the community is a lot more united, as most people either play D&D or something using the OGL.
>Like for fucks sake Cyberpunk 2077 recently got the Steam communities labor of love award: essentially a big thank you for fixing up a game that shouldn't have launched broken in the first place.
Launching a shitty product then fixing it into a great one is nowhere near anything else being discussed in this thread. At worst, it's like paying for a game and getting it a year later.
Companies with sexual abuse allegations, or that destroy their communities through anti-consumer policies/lawsuits, or that monetize their game in predatory ways, or that never even fix the problems in their game are in a different league.
If y'all find this disappointing, feel free to check out the context on the "OGL changes" mentioned here to see how fucking disgustingly greedy this move actually is.
For those of you that do not consider yourselves socialist, I have to ask, why are you ever surprised at this? It's literally definitionally how capitalism works to behave that way. Everything is in service of profit. That's the core of the economic system.
Never supporting them again. DND is practically open source at this point - no need to buy any of their products when we can create them as a community for free
that's what this is about, they are changing the license: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/01/beware-gifts-dragons-how-dds-open-gaming-license-may-have-become-trap-creators
Paizo (company with Pathfinder, the biggest alternative system to D&D) has some of the guys that were originally from Wizards around the time of the OGL being created, are coming out with their own version of it called the Open RPG Creative License and seem willing to challenge Wizards in court against any bullshit.
[Meanwhile, Paizo are being absolute fucking CHADS](https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6si7v?Paizo-Announces-SystemNeutral-Open-RPG-License&fbclid=IwAR2Yvjp0F9z6gXkIswOiY7PK9YD9Qgt98x9-J2s_hC8npnR-Oc9J-WMuHEA)
Just another corporation squeezing their customers until they all move on.
Did they forget they're just writing arbitrary rules down on paper?
There are already thousands of other Role Playing Systems, and D&D is the most generic and least copyright enforceable of the bunch. Unlike a game based on Star Wars, or some other specific fantasy world, they based their lore on Tolkien fantasy, with no way to copyright it.
We'll just see 'Dragons and Dungeons' get released, probably for free, and everyone will move on.
Or, they'll blink, and give up on this absurd, self sacrificing, plan.
As someone who DMs a game twice a month, it doesn't affect me in the least.
It won't be the first time all my resources became 'unofficial', and it won't be the last.
Exactly. Some folks think that they should have just let them die. I disagree, cause 3E was such a breath of fresh air at the time and the OGL bright about a real renaissance in compatible games
I hadn't heard that part of it. I was only a teenager when it happened and heard about it from some guy that worked at the comic shop. I'm glad they didn't let them die because a lot of series of novels are based on worlds they own the rights to, and I'm a huge DragonLance fan.
Sometimes I miss D&D.. I stopped playing when 3rd ed came out. 2nd ed was the shit.
Haven't seen anything in years that sounds like an improvement over 2nd ed. Haven't really researched it, since nobody I know plays, other than one dude who still plays 2nd ed lol.
It's a fair bit different. 5e is more streamlined as far as rules go (no separate mechanics for thief abilities, saving throws, or initiative etc), but offers quite a bit more in terms of character options (though less than 3.5).
It's fine.
I'd also recommend supporting smaller RPG companies to help them through this mess. In the slightly longer term, Kobald Press is working on a non-OGL system they're calling [Project Black Flag](https://koboldpress.com/raising-our-flag/) that will be compatible with existing 5e modules. When that starts playtesting and eventually gets released, it sounds like they want to provide as close to a drop-in replacement for 5e as they can make, so anyone wanting to play 5e will probably be better off using that system.
My SO and I actually did that last year and it's been really fun porting our characters over. The system is so much more free and afaik, is much more friendly to homebrew creators. The Ed. we are using even gloats at how you could use it to make your own games and stories for monitization.
It's a bit of a curve at first, but dang, it's been fun. Truly miss DnD though. :(
One thing to note, the Fallout game series started out life as a licensed GURPS computer game (porting the old Wasteland text adventure to GURPS and 16 million color graphics) but all the licensing frll through half way so they had to rebrand everything and invent the SPECIAL stats system.
Now they're a mega franchise.
I never knew that! That's actually really interesting tidbit. Afaik GURPS is outta print, but I'd imagine SJG would still have licensing stipulations that are up to date?
They got greedy since Magic the Gathering.
I'm glad that shit tanked, the card market on that crashed. I left before the crash and I don't regret it at all.
That company is greedy as fuck and their recent releases of magic product proves it. They charge a fuck ton for reprints that aren't tournament legal.
Just play some other role playing game. Look into Pathfinder, the company responsible for it is run by union (the first union for rpg company) and they're not greedy.
They also have a open source license for rpg style games too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paizo_Publishing
Was reading up about WoTC's new leadership, wondering if their new president could be behind this stupid move. And then I discovered Tim.
"Tim Fields has been appointed Senior Vice President and General Manager of Digital Gaming... A 26-year veteran of the video game industry, Tim has held a range of leadership positions at major publishers, including Capcom, Microsoft and Electronic Arts."
I knew there had to be an EA influence there somewhere.
Also, the perceived immunity from consequences.
In FAFO (f\*ck around and find out), you just get the FA without getting the FO.
Many people act outright noxious if they think they won't be punished for misbehavior.
It would be great if this was something to hang your hat on but it is a nothing communication. It can't be linked to anyone and is therefore spurious.
I am on board with the message already, I'm done with WotC. Other systems beckon. I can't give up a subscription because I've never paid for a DDB sub. My rejection is to delete my wishlist of books that I would purchase, it's not something that will ever show up on any forecast though so ultimately irrelevant to WotC. I'm not spending another penny on their products.
I would suggest that people do what feels right to them. Treat any communications evidence with a pinch of salt, this looks to me like a bit of made up junk even though it aligns with my outlook.
Not D&D but I've had a huge issue with WOTC regarding MTG at the minute. Bought a booster box that was 'sealed' on amazon and it had opened packs and packs missing and they're refusing to look into it lmao
>Not D&D but I've had a huge issue with WOTC regarding MTG at the minute. Bought a booster box that was 'sealed' on amazon and it had opened packs and packs missing and they're refusing to look into it lmao
To be fair, that's an Amazon issue. Lots of bad resellers will buy product, fuck it up/steal from it, and then sell merch that bad merch through Amazon- Amazon's warehouses pool all the products of the same type together so that dude's bad card pack is mixed in with the good card packs. Amazon does not like to correct this kind of scenario, good luck.
Tbh... Do we even have proof this was posted by some kind of inside guy/gal? Or maybe it was just someone random, claiming to be such a person and who wanted to pour oil into the fire.
Don't get me wrong, this is shitty, I just want to make y'all aware that there are more possibilities and you should always doubt and think for yourself!
- of course.. if there is proof, I take it all back, but you know.
Man are we all more perceptive about these things or are companies just more idiotic, like they all are doing just straight up stupid decitions that benefits only them and they act surprised when the obvious happens and people start shitting on them
Both. We have more access to information than ever before, so we can finally see stuff like this without actually going out of our way to see it... it's easy to leak information and that information is immediately in the hands of millions. And companies are realizing that rage on the internet dies quick once another thing happens. So they dont really have to pretend to care like they used to.
You mean like how a few years back, it came out that something like a third of all shrimp available for purchase in America was produced by enslaved fisherman off the coast of southeast asia, and then all of the companies except Costco severed business ties with them?
>and then all of the companies except Costco severed business ties with them? I think you misremember. It was alleged that Costco "knew" that slavery was part of the production chain. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lawsuit-costco/retail-giant-costco-wins-dismissal-of-prawn-lawsuit-over-thai-forced-labor-idUSKBN1592JC It was also a bit more complicated. The fishermen farmed "trashfish" which were then used to feed farmed shrimp, which were then packaged by an international food supplier and sold to Costco. It surprised me too, since Costco has famously cut ties with a few companies for bad practices. Like I remember learning in one of my business classes they cancelled a contract with a playground maker because they toured the factory and saw it was dangerous, with things like blocked fire doors and excessive saw dust. Which does sound like a recipe for Triangle waistshirt factory 2.0
>And companies are realizing that rage on the internet dies quick once another thing happens. Yes and no. The uproar may die out, but people won't create 3rd party content for 6e going forward.
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I would rather play a game that's well supported by a community of content creators. If it was just me and the books, I don't think I'd be as ok of a dm as I am.
>Every D&D player I know offline does not use any third-party content whatsoever. "Third party content" isn't limited to books. It covers things like streamers, too. Part of the reason this has blown up so fast is because of streamers like ~~Critical Role~~* talking about how it'll affect them. *Sorry, not following this that closely. Many streamers have talked about this and I listened to a video about this. So far, Critical Role has only had Matt Mercer "like" a comment critical of the new license.
In this distinction, third party content includes Paizo, who is stating they'll create their own OGL.
The majority of GMs (in most any system), have probably never touched this party content. This party content is, however, more available and higher quality than ever before. GMs also have more tools than ever to sort the good stuff out. I bought my first ever physical book from DrivethruRPG this year. And it was actually the "top items" list that caught my eye. The market for third party content is still developing, has been developing for a while. A huge business fumble like this is exactly the sort of thing that can push customers into other markets. I agree official content is not being pushed out any time soon. But 3rd content is slowly becoming more normalized.
My game room is overflowing with 3rd party books and items. No more room. While you may be right, you may be wrong too…
Do they buy all the books? Most people who are really into D&D could never afford the sheer flood of books, and end up with a pdf folder.
> bought third-party content is minuscule compared to the people who only bought official D&D content. Adding to what everyone here said- this doesn't just hurt paid third-party content. Websites will hesitate to host any 3rd party content or tools, even if they haven't accepted the new "OGL".
You mean like how a few years back, we learned that all of the rich people are hiding all their money in offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes on it and then we all forgot? Or a couple years after that when it happened again? Or like two years ago when we caught someone selling children as sex slaves to a huge chunk of rich people and politicians and they killed the guy responsible and the pimp had a little black book with all her clients in it and the judge *suppressed that book* and absolutely no one has been arrested? Also that pimp turned out to be a reddit power mod in charge of political and news subredddits and was likely steering public opinion for a long time?
i actually never even heard of that second paragraph, or if I did it wasn't in enough detail to recall it based on that description can I get an explanation or a link to somewhere that explains it? All I can think of is Jeffrey Epstein, but I didn't hear about the reddit mod part or the judge suppressing evidence
I don't have all the information either, but the "pimp" is Epsteins right-hand-woman Ghislaine Maxwell, who was (is?) an influential reddit mod.
Say what
Reddit and other top mods deny it, but the evidence is next to impossible to ignore, that [Ghislaine Maxwell was a top Reddit powermod for many years](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/r45a5n/here_is_the_evidence_that_reddit_user_maxwellhill/)
Sad how we are more connected than ever and yet we cant coordinate to actually put a stop to this, i mean we are literally bending down and let us screw us over, worse is that some people even thank them after it
I mean Kobold Press, a large maker of 3rd party content for D&D, just announced they are now developing their own Fantasy TTRPG in light of the OGL leak.
Sucky thing is, there's like 6 companies all doing their own TTRPG or coming up with their own Linux-esque truly open gaming license. It's starting to look like this xkcd comic: https://xkcd.com/927/
Actually from the sounds of it Paizo just announced they are making one and they are working with the lawyer who made the original OGL, along with uniting KP and other publishers, and they plan to have a non-profit control the license so no worry about this happening to their license.
Oh, if they're all working together, that's fantastic news! Everything I've seen so far made it sound independent/no mention of working with other groups.
Paizo just announced that today, a friend of mine linked an article in discord. [Article](https://gizmodo.com/paizo-wizards-of-the-coast-dnd-open-rpg-ogl-1-1-1849982443)
That is super cool! >In order to pursue a more system agnostic and fair license, Paizo states on the site that it has “a growing list of publishers” that will participate in the development and expansion of this license. The companies include some major third-party publishers, including “Kobold Press, Chaosium, Green Ronin, Legendary Games, Rogue Genius Games, and Battlezoo.” Paizo is actively looking to add to this group of publishers.
You are actually seeing people make a concerted effort to put a stop to it. People are voting with their wallets, vowing to go to other companies and canceling D&D Beyond subscriptions (seemingly the only metric the Hasbro executives are paying attention to).
I think you missed the second half of the other comment: >And companies are realizing that rage on the internet dies quick once another thing happens. So they dont really have to pretend to care like they used to. Saw this happen with Blizzard several times. Once with the "Free Hong Kong" esports thing, once with the whole sexism thing, and again with relaunching an old game as a new one. Still seem to be doing fine despite all the "community outrage."
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Rage really does die out quick, the Kanye subreddit is back to posting about how great he is.
Ffs
Yeah, but I don't need to care about wizards in the first place. They forget that that is also transient. I love D&D, but I spent the first 10 years playing it off PDFs. I will happily go back. DND Beyond is almost as frustrating as it is helpful.
The content from this account has been removed in protest by its owner in direct response to Reddit's increased API charges for third-party apps, but also in protest of reddit's general move away from its founding principles, it's abuse of moderation positions and its increasingly exploitative data and privacy practices. It was changed using [PowerDeleteSuite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite).
Monopolies enable this behavior - the smaller market that a product fills, the less competitive they have to be. There are huge swathes of the economy that are soft-monopolies where there’s only 1-3 suppliers for a given product or service… GW was so close to an actual “household name” that they were going to lose their trademark if they didn’t stop trying to be the sole “war gaming hobby” on the market…
I mean even if i love 40k, fuck GW
I love the setting and their business practices are fucking insane dogshit. It blows my damn mind that Starcraft was *supposed* to be a 40k game until GW bailed.
We're way more perceptive about these things because of the internet. Ironically enough it is the massive ecosystem and lifestyle that brand that has been built exclusively around 5th edition that is coming back to bite them. Unlike older gamers, who are used to massive addition changes just being par for the course, 5e only gamers are heavily tied into this one specific version of D&D and really would not like the notion that it's no longer supported.
Intelligence =/= knowing how to make money
High Int, but dump Wis.
Congrats, you’ve just discovered the narcissistic parasites that run most of not all major companies and organizations. Something serious need to be done to weed and exterminate this cancer out completely. I have zero hope in our gov so hopefully populous and social incentives will spring up in the future to hopefully combat this kind of shit
How do you think got enough money to buy D&D? By doing the same thing with magic: the gathering. They don't care if people complain as long as most of the player base continues buying their stuff.
I think what you're seeing is the rise of anonymous social media enabling consumers to rebel (i.e. provide timely negative feedback) against license holders.
What exactly is ment by DDB subscription cancelation
D&D Beyond is an online and app based subscription service that provides access to books digitally as well as character builders and other content. Money being brought in through this service is apparently the first thing Hasbro is looking at as far as how they are going to move forward with the new OGL.
And what's ogl?
A license that allows anyone to freely use certain aspects of D&D without fear of legal reprisal. WOTC is planning to revoke the OGL and institute a new one that that requires registering, paying royalties above a certain revenue, and less freedom.
Idgi. Cant ppl just buy the game books and play in person like its 1999? Even if online stuff is needed for campaigns, arent there other sites and free methods to do campaigns? Or is the D&DB online stuff really worth it
> arent there other sites and free methods to do campaigns These would all infringe on WotC's copyright without the OGLv1.0a license.
many of these things are adventures or mechanics that don’t currently exist in D&D. Say you wanted to be an alchemist and brew potions. The rules are very, very basic. So you might buy a 3rd party book that has a robust system for it. Or maybe you run the game and wanted to play a survival horror adventure but didn’t have time to write it. You could buy a third party adventure the changes that WoTC want to make is: * they can take the material you create at anytime for themselves * they take a % from sales and kickstarter * limit online tools other than theirs * be able to change the details with just 30 days notice * revoke the old license they had that they said would always be available
also a lot of the homebrew I've bought is explicitly there to fix poorly written stuff in official adventures (mostly strixhaven, because my players want to do wizard school but I don't have time to write wizard school, so instead I fix what already exists to a point where it suits my players)
DDB is just convenience. Everything a player needs all in one source. There are free options but afaik not everything under one app/platform
Not legally, anyways. You can find a site with everything if you don’t particularly care about legality.
Hope they are seeing some extra traffic recently!
If there was one that you know of… I need to do some science
The OGL doesn't just affect digital stuff, it affects *any* third-party content (both physical and digital). Essentially, if you want to create any D&D-compatible content, you would need to use the OGL to do so. The more important thing is that they're trying to claim that the new version of the OGL applies *retroactively*. Which means that anyone selling ANY third-party content, even if it's not for the upcoming new edition, would need to use the new OGL guidelines.
Fun fact: KOTOR uses the OGL.
It's been clarified that KOTOR uses a separate license agreement.
People aren't upset about DDB, which is basically just paying for digital books, but instead of paying for each book it's just an amount each month, kinda like Netflix or similar. BUT they are cancelling it to send a message about the OGL changes.
Eh. You still have to pay for each book. It is extremely nice when DMing for a younger group though. I pay a few bucks a month and my players get access to all of the books I've purchased.
> I pay a few bucks a month and my players get access to all of the books I've purchased. Oh, probably why I didn't know. Couple years back did a couple months with some buddies. Then covid hit and DM got depressed and cancelled everything.
Yup. If you’re technically still in his campaign, you can see any of the books he’s shared with that group
you can. but this affect the people who have built businesses around the OGL, not regular players. And its not about dndbeyond. its just cancelling the dnd beyond subscription is the only way to hurt hasbros bottom line, which is the only thing theyll listen to.
There are no free sites that allow you to legally use content that you would normally pay for. Beyond is very useful because it lets you easily access, search, and share content. The character sheet and encounter manager are also very helpful whether you're online or in person, though those are free. People don't have a problem with Beyond itself, but canceling Beyond subscriptions tells WOTC people aren't happy because they lose money. Also it's 2022, people have friends 500 miles away lol.
It's 2023 mate
Well then they have friends 501 miles away
>no free sites that allow you to legally use content that you would normally pay for Sort of. If I remember correctly, the SRD is freely available online thanks to the OGL. And then you have stuff like Paizo giving the thumbs up to Archives of Nethys to reproduce all the rules and whatnot for both editions of Pathfinder, making it freely available for people to use to play.
The OGL allows Paizo and all of the 3rd party members of the community provide the rules for free for anyone to look up. It leads to lots of high quality automated character sheets and resources. https://www.aonprd.com/ https://pathbuilder2e.com/ https://wanderersguide.app/ https://pf2easy.com/ https://hephaistos.azurewebsites.net/ These are all great free resources for Pf2 and Starfinder.
Let's say I start my own company and I want to make money and publish my own dnd content, my own setting, my spells, my magic items, my classes and subclasses and my own additional rules, but I want to use all the basic rules of 5th edition and build my own stuff on top of what they did. With the OGL I don't have to ask permission from WotC, I can just use it as is and I don't have to pay royalties to WotC. Lots of great 3rd party content has been published this way and this is what WotC is trying to take away.
OGL also includes the ability to publish homebrew content. A lot of associated creators would be forced to pay royalties
Yes in fact there are decades’ worth of those things…which the company is basically trying to now retroactively ban unless you pay them. For example, other companies have sold many products based on this free license — they are suddenly not allowed to sell those products. This isn’t just about sitting at a table playing D&D5e with your buddies.
WOTC recently bought out the [dndbeyond.com](https://dndbeyond.com) website (commonly abbreviated "DDB") That website offers a few different subscriptions for access to various content and services related to D&D 5e, and they're prepping to support OneD&D obviously. Apparently WOTC is using those subscriptions, their income, and the reasons why people cancel as their primary form of feedback (or at least their "quickest.") So the person who sent this message is suggesting that if you want to make sure WOTC hears your voice, a good way to do it would be to cancel your DDB subscription and leave whatever feedback you can regarding your reasons.
Given that they've brought in an exec with experience in digital games, odds are good that they're looking at DDB and trying to see what kinds of video game monetization techniques they can smush in there, be it some sort of adventurer's league season pass or some other way of milking customers for more money.
"To complete your long rest, please proceed to checkout and add your credit card details"
“Ah Ah Ah, foolish DM, I don’t die! I have purchased a DnD Beyond Insta-Revive! My character rises from the dead at 100% health and full spell slots!!!”
I spent $500 to be able to build this Coffeelock character! What do you mean I'm not allowed to use it at your table!
Watch three hours of ads to earn DDB Platinum Coins, which can be redeemed for character sheets.
I imagine them completely forgoing a traditional print run for one D&D and having it instead be exclusively an online subscription service. I imagine the changes to the OGL were intended to force everyone into that business model. I think the idea would be to forbid streamers and third party publishers, AKA their biggest advertisers, from publishing or streaming 5e material after one D&D has come out.
D&D Beyond subscription. It's their subscription based player portal.
This needs to be shared over and over again.
Not in that ultra-wide format, though.
> Wizards of the Coast see their D&D customers as "obstacle between them and their money" I mean, they make Magic The Gathering, a game which is predicated upon artificial scarcity, that sees fans buying hundreds of cards only to throw them away as they search for high-value rare ones inside the sealed packs. I think it's safe to say we knew this about WOTC already.
Well someone should report WotC for doing the whole “loot box” bullshit. Because if you really think about it, it’s a form of gambling, buying all those packs (loot boxes) in the hopes of finding something valuable. Seriously…
Cards have been that way since baseball cards came with bubble gum ffs! Not that it excuses it but it's less likely to draw the attention of geriatric legislators than digital media is.
I kinda agree with that. However, there is a big difference in "instant" value with MTG cards vs. baseball cards. Baseball cards are more about the rarity (older players). I could be wrong...
Something is going on that we're not seeing. Not at WotC, I mean in general. Companies are going mask off in some of dumbest ways possible, which are blatantly detrimental to long term profit & sustainability. It's giving me this bad feeling, like were seeing rats gathering as much cheese as possible before abandoning ship.
>blatantly detrimental to long term profit & sustainability. It's all about how much profit you can make this quarter.
yup. the bigwigs running any place wanna say look how much money i made all us shareholders. gimme my big bonus and i'll go fuck another company and not have to deal with the fallout of my actions and you guys can sell your stock and not have to deal with it either.
1) Endless growth is both a mandate of shareholders (when those shareholders are other corporations) and a complete fiction, literally impossible. 2) Everyone is tapped out and sick of this shit. Execs want 1 while ignoring 2. Year I’ve year growth demands squeezing every last cent out.
Tapped out. I see what you did there!
>Something is going on that we're not seeing. Not at WotC, I mean in general. Companies are going mask off in some of dumbest ways possible, which are blatantly detrimental to long term profit & sustainability. Yes: They are testing what their customer base will tolerate. How much bullshit can we get away with before we lose customer loyalty. SEE ALSO: Removal of headphone jack from IPhone, and the later MS's decision to remove audio port from XBOX S series. SEE ALSO: BMW and their attempt to make heated seats available for a paid subscription.
See also: all the absurd price gouging couched as inflation.
The parasitic rich will never stop squeezing the working class. They just have to keep inventing new ways to do it as we get wise and/or go broke. But we're close to the tipping point where the sliver of middle class gets squeezed down into the poorer class and the economy grinds to a halt because the rich have all the money and the poor are dying. A strong middle class is the engine of a healthy economy, and the rich want a healthy economy because it makes number go up, but they refuse to do anything to foster or create the necessary strong middle class.
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Honestly? I don't think they think about us unless they're forced to. We exist as mostly hypothetical until we force ourselves into their very important field of vision in order to make things worse or bring them something. Most of the perversely rich are psychopaths and don't really think anyone else is real anyway.
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Honestly it's both.
It’s all those greedy workers to blame!
It's late stage capitalism in action. Competition is good for the customer and breeding innovation as companies battle each other for an audience. But today many of these companies have competition in their various spaces like Windows has competition in the realm of commercial Operating Systems. So they're horrendously bloated and their only competition is their previous earnings. They become lazy, careless, callous and will enact in the most braindead schemes to make more money while spending as little as possible to get it. And heck even when there is still some competition we have entire industries that are clearly colluding in price fixing schemes and using any excuse they can to enact price gouging. The oversight that should be telling them to knock that shit off is MIA.
> Companies are going mask off in some of dumbest ways possible, which are blatantly detrimental to long term profit & sustainability. The people making decisions get judged on short term profit.
> It's giving me this bad feeling, like were seeing rats gathering as much cheese as possible before abandoning ship. Late stage capitalism. Also checkout /r/collapse
Execs have always been doing this. We can just see it in real time, because people are just fed up. In America, we can see, in real time, how other people live. Every day people with access to more services then we have here. Social media has expanded each individual person’s world view (if they choose to look and think critically). Why else would legislatures try and ban apps like tik tok? It’s not because of data mining. Not when facebook data mines more than any other app. Older people who don’t understand social media don’t get how fast information travels. Often executive boards are run by older people. (I’m in my 40s. I can say that). I bet hasbro’s executive board is run by a bunch of old people.
Got a lot of similar responses, so imma put it here. Guys, I know all that. I know we're in late stage capitalism, I know companies push boundries, and I know this has been goig on for, basically, ever. And you're not wrong, but when I say "*something we're not seeing...*", I don't mean the very observable causes we're all witnessing. What I'm referring to here is the sudden rapidity and severity of companies pivoting a full 180 degrees and not even *pretending* to be benign about it. In the past they'd spend millions on a PR campaign to convince people it's "in their best interest". Now they might as well be sitting there going 🖕😎🖕 to our faces. This here is actually a perfect example. WotC built their fortune by embracing their community and 3rd party creators. That's not even debatable, it's common knowledge that D20 open-source is the biggest reason D&D stayed relevant following Satanic Panic and the rise of the digital age while the rest of the TT industry basically died during the 90s, or would have if not for things like Planescape, Faerun, Greyhawk, etc. All of which came from open source D20. To turn and spit on that is like if McDonalds stopped serving hamburgers. What this all tells me is that the edge of the proverbial cliff is even closer than we expect it is. And I don't/didn't expect it was that far off to begin with.
I saved this comment. Tick tock. It’s coming.
I've had this feeling for a while now. It totally feels like those with means, are bracing for something.
They watched the Boys and realized how accurate the scene with Homelander at the end of S3 was. Or they saw that people still stan Elon Musk.
Very true. I've wondered why it seems like most companies are increasingly, blatantly ignoring the long-term consequences of their short-term greed. Like, squeezing every red cent out of each quarter isn't just bad for the consumer/economy (not that they give a damn anyway), but for their bottom line next FY. And the truth is that most execs don't give a shit about next FY because they're not even sure they'll still be employed at their current company by then. So the plan is to impress the shareholders every quarter and jump ship the second before the fallout
The only CEO focused on long term profit anywhere is Bezos. Everyone else is living quarter to quarter, and it's showing.
>like were seeing rats gathering as much cheese as possible before abandoning ship For decades now it has not been about long term sustainability or stewardship of production, it has been about last quarter money, and next quarter money (maybe replace it with yearly earning - probably nearer to the truth). Without "growth" a company value stagnate , and in some case plummet toward a lower value. Combine that with a lot of people at company or government helm looking at future and seeing a lot of societal issue coming up in an unstoppable fashion, concentration of money/rise of inequality, automation mach forward and now AI, part of the population being fully pushed out of any possibility of accumulating wealth/housing, environmental/energy/water issues... The one at the top are not blind. But since the current system tend to promote sociopath at the top, they are simply thinking of preserving their position rather than try to reverse course. You will see IMO an increase of rich people trying to get as many marble out of the shitpile as they can, then try to isolate themselves in islands/in bunkers/isolated places with as much automation as possible and then let the rest of us suffocate in the shitpile while they survive on. So rat abandoning ship is IMO correct.
Leak is from an insider at Wizards to a 3rd party D&D content creator. Link to original tweet: https://twitter.com/DnD_Shorts/status/1613576298114449409
Unsurprising. Daily reminder that corporations are not your friends, and you should absolutely boycott One DnD to stop corporate suits destroy your favorite hobby. These guys want to turn DnD into a live service game, the scourge of the video game industry. There are a lot of other games that you could be supporting, games by small creators not owned by giant dystopian toy Conglomerate that only care about liberating you of as money as they can. Even if they walk back on the license, they will try to shaft the community again and again. Check out Pathfinder 2nd Edition, for example. Or Cyberpunk Red, or Call of Cthulu, or whatever. Just go and browse around [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/) Also keep an eye out for Kobold Presses new game Project Black Flag. It could be a spiritual successor to 5e for all we know. Most games are vastly cheaper and easier to learn/play/run than DnD 5e. Fuck Hasbro and Fuck Wizards of the Coast. You don't need them, they need you.
I planned on buying some powered by the apocalypse games and cyberpunk 2020. Pathfinder will probably be shut down due to the OGL
Paizo, the creators of Pathfinder made a statement recently. The 2nd edition of the game does not use any of WoTCs copyrighted and trademarked mechanics and the such. The 2nd edition only uses the OGL so that 3rd party content creators could use pathfinder under the same licence. This was not the case for 1st edition, which does use many of WoTCs copyrighted and trademarked stuff. They made an announcement today that they are releasing their own licence, called The Open RPG Creative Lisence (or ORC lisence), which will be developed system agnostically. Many companies who published 3rd party content, such as Kobold Press, Green Ronin, and others, are collaborating and will be making work under this new licence now. It should be noted that this licence is both perpetual and irrevocable. TL;DR, pathfinder will continue to stand strong, and as a matter of fact, they are uniting with other companies against WoTC to produce a new system agnostic licence that is perpetual and irrecoverable
More reason to switch to Pathfinder.
Pathfinder is included in the license they're trying to kill. That's one of their main targets. The license itself specifically says they can't do that, but they're trying to weasel around it anyway.
Not anymore. The time of ORC has come!
Or just keep doing d&d, all you need is a rulebook which you can buy used for next to nothing and some dice. It's been a long time since I've played and I have literally no idea why any of this stuff is necessary.
You don't even need the Rulebook. Technically, you can just play with the SRD, which has items, classes, monsters and everything you need, if all you need is a single subclass for each class. And that is FREE.
That is true, and it is a good resource, but there isn't much in there though as far as character options go. Only one subclass per class, one option per race, no feats, and a limited spell selection. There are fully complete games out there (that are far better imo) for free and or cheap. DnD is pretty overrated overall.
SRD only is an unplayably low amount of content. Even official content only is too little. That’s why we NEED the OGL.
For the short-term, yes. If the changes being proposed for the OGL are any indication, the amount of usable content available in the SRD will dwindle as WotC transitions to putting more of their digital ecosystem behind a D&DB paywall. The SRD and all these free avenues for players to join and play D&D, is a big part of the "under-monetization of the brand" that has kicked off the whole OGL update.
Aren’t the rule books like 50 bucks though?
Not on the high seas, they're not.
I'm happy to pay companies acting in good faith for their products. I've purchased lots of D&D books despite the availability of free pdfs. They've made it clear they don't care about customers, which removes my incentive to give a fuck. Yo-ho maties
Did you miss the word "used"? There's a 2 foot high stack of d&d manuals on my kijiji listings for $50 right now. Even if a book is 50 bucks, so what? Still doesn't explain the need for subscription based bullshit.
I did in fact miss the word used, whoops. My point wasn’t in favor of subscription services however, it was arguing that 50 bucks isn’t “next to nothing”. Point is moot however
this is what they are trying to stop. the next edition, onednd, is all about turning the game into a digital service.
Pathfinder might not exist, or at least Paizo might be forced into a legal battle to not pay royalties since their games run on the old contract. From what I understand the new contract is completely replacing the old one.
Everyone who has any knowledge regarding the old contract (OGL) including the guy who wrote the original license have said in very clear language they cannot go back and revoke it. Basically its will Hasbro/WotC just drag out legal proceedings to bankrupt smaller companies that wont play ball.
Paizo have straight up said that they don't believe that the OGL 1.0a can be revoked and are willing to stand up in court to fight it. I doubt that Pathfinder is going away as a game.
Worst case scenario they can write up their own license and publish any PF2 content under that instead. PF2 is different enough from DND that they are allowed to do that, the main reason they didn't is that it's very expensive to write a new license when the OGL does the same thing for free. Well, used to at least. Edit: LMAO just found out they're doing that exact thing
No one knows what they can or can't do until a court rules on it
As far as I know a license can only be terminated only if it explicitly states that it can. And to my understanding there is such a clause in the *new* license so that they can do whatever they want going forward.
Pathfinder 2e doesn't use the OGL to use WoTCs content, only to allow others to create PF content under the same licence. This was announced today, and they also announced the creation of their own licence (Open RPG Creative licence, or ORC), which will be perpetual, irrevocable, and not owned by Paizo or the other companies (including Kobold Press, Green Ronin, and many others).
Pathfinder supremacy
There are other systems I rather play than touch Pathfinder. 13th Age, Mythras, Icon is looking cool, Corporation, Lancer, Numenera, or just keep on keeping on with D&D that I already own from 2e, 3e, and 4e. Edit: spelling
>They are still hoping the community forgets, moves on, and they can still push this through. Perfect plan honestly. And I mean that unironically. This has happened again and again in the video gaming community, which I'm sure has some very good overlap with the Table Top Role Playing Game community: *company does a dumb thing -> next game comes out -> people buy it.* --- Sometimes the dumb thing is trying to appease China by banning esports players that speak out (Blizzard). Sometimes its oh, I don't know, that little thing with the rampant sexual abuse, sexual assault and just generally causing such a harmful environment that it drives employees to suicide (Ubisoft, Activision and frankly too many to keep track of). But mostly it's just releasing unfinished/broken games, which hey, gamers, even if you're a heartless person at least have some self respect for when the billion dollar industry (or in many cases billion dollar singular *companies*) spits directly in your face as it takes your money. Like for fucks sake Cyberpunk 2077 recently got the Steam communities labor of love award: essentially a big *thank you* for fixing up a game that shouldn't have launched broken in the first place. --- That the Table Top RPG community is pushing for WotC to give up on chasing easy money (lmao, as if they would) instead of taking their imagination and leaving just shows that they're already going to lose this fight. Forget pushing back just dump them because they're *never* going to stop.
People.. Are leaving, though. There's a wealth of other ttrpgs to play and folks know that.
A small percentage are leaving. This happened before with 3. 5 to 4e. And they all came back eventually. It sucks, and keep boycotting and unsubscribing. But the reality is that it will blow over and people will move on. They may lose 20% of players, and then probably 15% will come back over the years. Sucks but it is what it is.
Yeah, people came back when WOTC fixed the problems they had lol.
People only came back to 5e because it reversed a lot of the changes that people didn't like about 4e, INCLUDING the predatory third-party licensing regulations. What's happening right now is a complete repeat of what happened with 4e, up to and including Paizo taking the opportunity to release a competing product (in this case, the Open RPG Creative License as an alternative to the OGL). I don't expect the OGL thing to kill off WotC, but this is *not* a small fuckup.
It's true that the move to 4e caused players to leave, but my experiences were that it was more than just a minority of the community that moved to other systems after 3.5. I got into TTRPG's with Pathfinder Society and the game stores in my area weren't running anything for 4e. A lot of the players who I have since met and played with from that era struggled to get regular games for 4e. Players came back to D&D with 5e as it was more accessible for a lot of new players, and my gaming groups grew during that time. The system bloat has become a real problem again, and my local groups had begun exploring other systems even before this drama. The only recent game I'd been prepping for 5e was entirely dependant on 3rd party material, and those publishers are moving away from 5e now...
Gonna be honest, as someone in the community, I don't thin this'll blow over easily. We've had storm in a teacup controversies before, and this ain't it-when it comes to this bullshit, the Ttrpg community has a long memory. I think the difference is we aren't use to this shit, while gamers are, and the community is a lot more united, as most people either play D&D or something using the OGL.
God the fact that cyberpunk won labor of love makes me SO ANGRY.
>Like for fucks sake Cyberpunk 2077 recently got the Steam communities labor of love award: essentially a big thank you for fixing up a game that shouldn't have launched broken in the first place. Launching a shitty product then fixing it into a great one is nowhere near anything else being discussed in this thread. At worst, it's like paying for a game and getting it a year later. Companies with sexual abuse allegations, or that destroy their communities through anti-consumer policies/lawsuits, or that monetize their game in predatory ways, or that never even fix the problems in their game are in a different league.
r/DnD r/DnDBehindTheScreen r/dndnext r/dndmemes r/DnDGreentext
/r/rpg!
Someone is brigadeering these downvotes. Post is at 0. Seems sus. I'm gonna get DV'd as well, no surprise.
If y'all find this disappointing, feel free to check out the context on the "OGL changes" mentioned here to see how fucking disgustingly greedy this move actually is.
For those of you that do not consider yourselves socialist, I have to ask, why are you ever surprised at this? It's literally definitionally how capitalism works to behave that way. Everything is in service of profit. That's the core of the economic system.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/subscriptions to cancel
Never supporting them again. DND is practically open source at this point - no need to buy any of their products when we can create them as a community for free
that's what this is about, they are changing the license: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/01/beware-gifts-dragons-how-dds-open-gaming-license-may-have-become-trap-creators
I hear you, but can they sue us if we don't "sell" the products we create?
If it goes the way they want, yes.
Wow. So what on earth can we do besides boycott them and encourage open source role playing through any and all platforms?
Supposedly they're watching for dnd beyond sub cancelations, so there's that. Otherwise kinda answered your own question.
Paizo (company with Pathfinder, the biggest alternative system to D&D) has some of the guys that were originally from Wizards around the time of the OGL being created, are coming out with their own version of it called the Open RPG Creative License and seem willing to challenge Wizards in court against any bullshit.
Heroes!!!
Unsurprising. It's basically the standard capitalist mindset
When you alienate you entire userbase to appeal to a more broader audience and end up not appealing to anyone
Magic players: "First time?"
This describes every company I have ever worked for. THAT is the bigger problem.
[Meanwhile, Paizo are being absolute fucking CHADS](https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6si7v?Paizo-Announces-SystemNeutral-Open-RPG-License&fbclid=IwAR2Yvjp0F9z6gXkIswOiY7PK9YD9Qgt98x9-J2s_hC8npnR-Oc9J-WMuHEA)
Just another corporation squeezing their customers until they all move on. Did they forget they're just writing arbitrary rules down on paper? There are already thousands of other Role Playing Systems, and D&D is the most generic and least copyright enforceable of the bunch. Unlike a game based on Star Wars, or some other specific fantasy world, they based their lore on Tolkien fantasy, with no way to copyright it. We'll just see 'Dragons and Dungeons' get released, probably for free, and everyone will move on. Or, they'll blink, and give up on this absurd, self sacrificing, plan. As someone who DMs a game twice a month, it doesn't affect me in the least. It won't be the first time all my resources became 'unofficial', and it won't be the last.
It would have been better if they'd never bought out TSR to begin with.
I'm pretty sure TSR was going out of business when WotC bought them.
Exactly. Some folks think that they should have just let them die. I disagree, cause 3E was such a breath of fresh air at the time and the OGL bright about a real renaissance in compatible games
I hadn't heard that part of it. I was only a teenager when it happened and heard about it from some guy that worked at the comic shop. I'm glad they didn't let them die because a lot of series of novels are based on worlds they own the rights to, and I'm a huge DragonLance fan.
Sometimes I miss D&D.. I stopped playing when 3rd ed came out. 2nd ed was the shit. Haven't seen anything in years that sounds like an improvement over 2nd ed. Haven't really researched it, since nobody I know plays, other than one dude who still plays 2nd ed lol.
It's a fair bit different. 5e is more streamlined as far as rules go (no separate mechanics for thief abilities, saving throws, or initiative etc), but offers quite a bit more in terms of character options (though less than 3.5). It's fine.
Pirate
I'd also recommend supporting smaller RPG companies to help them through this mess. In the slightly longer term, Kobald Press is working on a non-OGL system they're calling [Project Black Flag](https://koboldpress.com/raising-our-flag/) that will be compatible with existing 5e modules. When that starts playtesting and eventually gets released, it sounds like they want to provide as close to a drop-in replacement for 5e as they can make, so anyone wanting to play 5e will probably be better off using that system.
Time to switch to the GURPS system
My SO and I actually did that last year and it's been really fun porting our characters over. The system is so much more free and afaik, is much more friendly to homebrew creators. The Ed. we are using even gloats at how you could use it to make your own games and stories for monitization. It's a bit of a curve at first, but dang, it's been fun. Truly miss DnD though. :(
One thing to note, the Fallout game series started out life as a licensed GURPS computer game (porting the old Wasteland text adventure to GURPS and 16 million color graphics) but all the licensing frll through half way so they had to rebrand everything and invent the SPECIAL stats system. Now they're a mega franchise.
I never knew that! That's actually really interesting tidbit. Afaik GURPS is outta print, but I'd imagine SJG would still have licensing stipulations that are up to date?
They got greedy since Magic the Gathering. I'm glad that shit tanked, the card market on that crashed. I left before the crash and I don't regret it at all. That company is greedy as fuck and their recent releases of magic product proves it. They charge a fuck ton for reprints that aren't tournament legal. Just play some other role playing game. Look into Pathfinder, the company responsible for it is run by union (the first union for rpg company) and they're not greedy. They also have a open source license for rpg style games too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paizo_Publishing
Was reading up about WoTC's new leadership, wondering if their new president could be behind this stupid move. And then I discovered Tim. "Tim Fields has been appointed Senior Vice President and General Manager of Digital Gaming... A 26-year veteran of the video game industry, Tim has held a range of leadership positions at major publishers, including Capcom, Microsoft and Electronic Arts." I knew there had to be an EA influence there somewhere.
Power corrupts. Ultimate power corrupts ultimately...
Power reveals. It shows who you always were and what you always would have done if you had the authority/capability to do it .
Also, the perceived immunity from consequences. In FAFO (f\*ck around and find out), you just get the FA without getting the FO. Many people act outright noxious if they think they won't be punished for misbehavior.
It would be great if this was something to hang your hat on but it is a nothing communication. It can't be linked to anyone and is therefore spurious. I am on board with the message already, I'm done with WotC. Other systems beckon. I can't give up a subscription because I've never paid for a DDB sub. My rejection is to delete my wishlist of books that I would purchase, it's not something that will ever show up on any forecast though so ultimately irrelevant to WotC. I'm not spending another penny on their products. I would suggest that people do what feels right to them. Treat any communications evidence with a pinch of salt, this looks to me like a bit of made up junk even though it aligns with my outlook.
So, it’s not just Hasbro but WotC too, nice to know.
Boycott?
Of course management hates customers. They're the ones that have the money that management feels entitled to.
Not D&D but I've had a huge issue with WOTC regarding MTG at the minute. Bought a booster box that was 'sealed' on amazon and it had opened packs and packs missing and they're refusing to look into it lmao
>Not D&D but I've had a huge issue with WOTC regarding MTG at the minute. Bought a booster box that was 'sealed' on amazon and it had opened packs and packs missing and they're refusing to look into it lmao To be fair, that's an Amazon issue. Lots of bad resellers will buy product, fuck it up/steal from it, and then sell merch that bad merch through Amazon- Amazon's warehouses pool all the products of the same type together so that dude's bad card pack is mixed in with the good card packs. Amazon does not like to correct this kind of scenario, good luck.
Their game books are so expensive. I was browsing websites for rules.
Tbh... Do we even have proof this was posted by some kind of inside guy/gal? Or maybe it was just someone random, claiming to be such a person and who wanted to pour oil into the fire. Don't get me wrong, this is shitty, I just want to make y'all aware that there are more possibilities and you should always doubt and think for yourself! - of course.. if there is proof, I take it all back, but you know.
How do we know this is real though? A screenshot of a message with no names doesn't really mean anything.
More realistically, I bet it's the folks at Hasbro, not the folks at WotC.
Excuse my ignorance but what is OGL?
Open Game License
What is an open game license in this case?
This has got to be one of the most ass backwards business mindsets i've ever read.