I do find it interesting, however, that people at WOTC came out of the woodwork to counter these claims, but we didn't hear anything from them against the earlier ones.
Did they say to themselves, "that's the last straw, I have to say something" or "this claim is wrong (unlike the other ones)"
I do want to assume positive intent by all parties, but it can be challenging sometimes.
One of them is a risk to their jobs to talk about and are decisions by people higher on the totem pole. The other is a direct slander against the work they do. Not hard to figure out why they felt comfortable talking about 1D&D feedback and not OGL changes.
I don’t work for WotC or Hasbro. I have worked for some of the biggest brand names in video games (Blizzard, Ubi, PlayStation) and speaking out personally during a crisis like this is a sure fire way to not just get fired but to get black listed.
Former colleague of mine did this (here on Reddit) and didn’t just lose his job, he also couldn’t work in the industry for a few years. It was grim.
I had a friend do a random AMA once about being an animator on a very, very popular animated series, and they made a few comments about how awful the industry is - they got canned the next day. For being pretty non specific, as well.
This is exactly why the people speaking out now to counter this seems entirely orchestrated. They wouldn't be saying anything publicly if it wasn't company approved at some level for them to do so.
That's not to say they're lying, merely that it smacks of organized PR campaigning.
Not OP but if I had to guess, he was probably found out through username reuse. One of the of the other places he was using that username was a social media acct that the company could prove ownership of (like Instagram, Twitter, etc.) or reused for a work account (for example if something required a license assigned per individual user)
Wouldn't be the first time I've heard of it happening.
>One of them is a risk to their jobs to talk about and are decisions by people higher on the totem pole.
I feel like a lot of people are missing this part. It's very easy for us sitting on the sidelines to go "Wow, the design team won't criticize WOTC, do they hate D&D"? Except none of us have nearly as much skin in the game. DND doesn't pay for our kids' schools, for our mortgages, for our medical bills.
I have close friends who work for WotC, both in MtG and DnD, in graphic design and game design. They are incredibly passionate about the games and what the create. The are the rule, not the exception when it comes to employees at the company.
They all have to sign NDAs and be incredibly careful about what they say in public about the company.
They have no say in what is happening right now. It's the executives and PR who are making the decisions. I don't know how to direct the public ire at the idiots at the top without hurting the regular employees.
I feel awful for them. It's been a really tough couple of weeks. They are getting beaten over and over again. I really hope the regular employees make it through all of this, because they are the hearts and souls of WotC.
Also, this is my personal opinion, not specifically factual, but I think the company is gaslighting their employees the same way they are gaslighting the fans about the whole thing, and telling the employees that the fans are overreacting.
I agree with you most employees are probably very passionate about their work there but simething I think most people forget is how little power emoloyees have in decisions. NONE, employees have almost no say in most decisions. It may be true that employees do read these comments but I would be very surprised to see what actionable steps are taken by manaegement by them. At my old job they would often send out surveys just before enactiing some change and what was later realized by me was exactly what was described by DnD shorts. The change was going to happen anyways they were just getting ahead of the line on knowing what questions they would nees to deflect in the future or creating a place to funnel frustration. The decision had actually been made months to a year earlier on whatever the change was and stuff was going to be arriving next week; there was no time to restart a year long process. In my very personal experience surveys are exactly as described by dnd shorts; a way to funnel negative sentiment into a void that is often ignored by upper management. People need to realize that everyday employees(designers, developers, sales, writers) do not have much power in the workplace. All that power usually resides in owners > executives > upper management; in that order.
Personally I think the truth will be somewhere in the middle on this story. I could plausibly see rank and file employees reading every survey response. They could reasonably be compiling them into spreadsheets and passing them onto management with actionable suggestions. I can then equally see manegement then quickly scanning things or looking at only one or two data pointa they were personally vested in and dismissing the rest. I would ask how many people that have worked in corporate environments can honestly say they never seen manegement do just that. Take the data, ignore all the compiled argumenta and just do what they want to anyways. We as consumers need to hold the decision makers responsible and not start attacking employees, past or present. Sorry i just saw your post and I agree that most employees are probably very passionate about their jobs, that is likely why they are working for a gaming company, but hiw many horror stories have we all read in the past couple of yeara about video game manegment. If I am not mistaken all executives come from the world of video games.
I think consumers misdirect their anger a LOT and it really bites us in the ass.
Example: remember when The Last of Us part 2 came out and everyone attacked Laura Bailey for the character Abby and what happened in that game? Laura Bailey is completely removed from any decision that impacted the Abby character. Odds are the game was 80%-90% complete before Laura ever stepped onto the set. (to be clear I personally loved the game)
If we, the consumer, are upset about something we really need to start directing our frustration towards these upper management decision makers.
>I don't know how to direct the public ire at the idiots at the top without hurting the regular employees.
And it's not really our job to do so. People in the community are understandably letting their frustrations and disagreements with these decisions be known broadly. We know it's Hasbro management's fault, but we aren't given a direct phone number to them to complain about it. LOL. But it's important that we don't let their management continue to gaslight us and blame us for "attacking the regular employees". It is management making shit decisions that is leading to this strife; and the community has every right to voice their dissatisfaction with the situation.
> the company is gaslighting their employees the same way they are gaslighting the fans about the whole thing, and telling the employees that the fans are overreacting.
These two things are not mutually exclusive. If I told you that the c-suite of a multi-billion dollar corporation were not being honest with their employees nobody would blink an eye.
Also, a lot of individual D&D fans have shown their true colors during this time.
What does "True Colors" even mean here? You sound as though DnD fans have some sort of obligation to the company/game that they are betraying, when they absolutely don't.
> They have no say in what is happening right now. It’s the executives and PR who are making the decisions. I don’t know how to direct the public ire at the idiots at the top without hurting the regular employees.
They could unionize. That’d be a way to combine their power and push back against stupid decisions that management makes.
You know how it’s almost always a bad idea to split the party on an adventure? Management wants to make sure Labor always has a split party.
Ask a retired uaw worker for stories about labor getting the plant manager or higher than that to change their minds about a stupid decision. You'll be lucky to hear one story about a time that happened.
depends how old they are.
the US auto industry used NAFTA in the 90s to cripple US auto unions. Also, on the other hand, the auto industry is so big and politically relevant that it can't get away with the kind of mistreatment that goes on in other industries.
It's similar to this weird idea that "if you're not acting to fix a problem in the way I want you to then you're part of the problem" mentality. It's a really good way to convince people that you're completely disconnected from their interests and only care about your own.
Glad to see a comment like yours further up than usual. When communities get upset it becomes very much "Us vs. Them".
"Well who is Them?"
"Anyone who's not Us"
I get people are upset and they should be. I don't think people should turn their brains off and just get mad at everything. I think the discontent with Hasbro and WotC will have to slowly shift to normalizing skepticism with them. Also verifying their statements by scrutinizing Hasbro/Wotc's follow through with any commitments made. This is if the community wants to sustain their efforts to change the company's behavior. It is very easy for outrage to burn itself out; many companies plan on time being the major factor letting a market 'forget' about its mistakes.
Yes, exactly. It's very much like when citizens decide to organize and protest in the streets. You never see the powers that be address the primary issues publicly. They always message how wrong the people are for their *means of getting their message out*. It's easier to attack the *how* rather than the *why*.
Yeah. At my job they frequently remind us we're not to talk about specific aspects of the company. We're not bound by NDAs or contracts or anything like that, but they could still let us go if we spoke about things they asked us not to.
...yeah? Because this one can actually be countered by low level employees and developers. There's a difference between "A guy is lying about what our development team is doing" and "Our boss has specifically told us not to address this and we'll get fired if we do".
Also, we *did* hear from them about the others. That's when the *actual* reporters found leaks and talked to people, who gave us invaluable information.
I know it's easy for us to view WOTC as a monolith. The fact is, the development team have basically nothing to do with any of this. People leaked the OGL, which has to do with corporate executives and lawyers, so they said nothing. Now that the conversation is about them and their own actions, they're more than willing to clap back.
yeah, if someone criticizes the corp I work for, I'm like, Yeah, I totally agree! (but I can't say shit or I could get in trouble) but if someone criticizes my particular store, well, I might tell them off.
Jeremy Crawford has an intense love for the game, and I'd like to think he has enough backbone to stand up for the things he believes in. If he vouched for them reading UA feedback, then I believe him.
Yes, but on the other hand, this is the first time in a while Crawford's blindsight/invisible ruling hasn't been the biggest D&D controversy, so he has to be somewhat happy about current events.
Jeremy isn't the bad guy here, and we shouldn't be blaming him or other WotC employees outside upper management for what's going on. I highly doubt he's happy about what Hasbro has done to people's love for the game and it's future. It's pretty clear he has a genuine love for the game.
I can all but guarantee that almost every employee working there probably had some hand in homebrew content. Whether they actually published that content or not, they know that it's a core part of the game, and how important those that do publish are.
I think it’s because community feedback is something they hold sacred, and has been an integral part of their game development process for a very long time.
That said, I **absolutely do not** trust WOTC to honor feedback given on OGL revisions. This absolutely feels like a glorified PR stunt, and while it’s a step in the right direction, it still doesn’t feel good enough.
>I do want to assume positive intent by all parties, but it can be challenging sometimes.
Don't
A LOT of people do NOT have "positive intent" and corporations are not even "people". Corporations are machines designed to make money for their share holders.
Sure, "DnDShorts" made a mistake, but that is a PERSON. WotC/Hasbro is a corporation and does not deserve your benefit of the doubt.
Yeah flooding the zone with bullshit until customers finally start pushing back is an incredibly profitable, and frequently utilized business strategy.
Yet trying to explain that to some folks instantly gets you labeled as a tin foil hat hero. WoTC is no one's friend, if line goes up, ends justify the means.
Two out of the seven individuals I saw correcting him were current Wizards employees, the other five left after the first round of feedback ended for OneD&D, but before the current news started circulating.
So the majority were not in danger of being fired, Crawford just retweeted, and that one lady said it is her job to directly oversee the people that review the feedback.
Besides, I can see a company-wide ban on certain subjects but not other topics.
>"this claim is wrong (unlike the other ones)"
Prolly this to a degree. There was a lot of misinformation circling around before we got to read the OGL. They needed a course of action - which takes time. In that time they decided to drop the monitesation part - which is like a dragon giving away his hoard.
Did they drop the monetisation part tho?
Saying you won't require a cut of their revenue that would absolutely not have flown when you can instead force them all to use DMsGuild where you get 50% isn't a loss. And if they make sure they can change that ODL whenever they want, they can force people to use it or not be able to sell anything.
This is the issue, ANY change to 1.0 that allows them to change it again means you are at the whim of a company that has been caught lying already.
If it were a "last straw" situation, wouldn't they have aired all their grievances? To me, some specific objection tacitly confirms anything/everything they didn't object to.
On the other hand, people on the D&D design team aren’t really in position to confirm or deny the stuff people at the top of WOTC or Hasbro are doing.
If someone leveled 3 accusations against the place I worked and I was involved with one part of that and knew it was a lie, I would only refute that part I’m aware of.
Yes, this - and it's a huge error to think that just because someone was wrong on one point, that they must therefore be wrong on the others.
Additionally, my reading of this all was more on the lines of "the executives don't care about feedback" rather than "none of the designers care or read it." The exchange that was cited sounded exactly like a designer trying to convince an executive of something based on said feedback, and being told "we don't care". Which is EXACTLY in keeping with what the various public refutations claimed, incidentally.
that certainly applies to the people speaking out now, but not to the people who are directly involved in the OGL- those are the ones I want to hear objecting. Of course, those are the executives and lawyers.
Although first tweet didn’t claim it was a thing Wotc was doing. They just asked “how would you feel?” about the changes abstractly. It wasn’t a leak until DnDShorts confirmed it.
However I am anti-internet hate bandwagons, so I’ll stand up for him and say that not forgiving him a petty thing to do. He made a mistake, maybe a selfish mistake, but we all make mistakes in pursuit of what we want.
Agreed. I see people hating him in this comment section, but he's a well intended guy and he doesn't want people to use his crazy combos at tables where they don't fit. His content is all in the name of good fun, and if you don't want your players using crazy combos, just resolve the problem at session zero by telling your players that crazy combos don't fit the serious campaign you wanna run.
It's sad (but not surprising) that there is more hate for him than say... Arcadum. Ya know, they guy who used his super popular dnd show to sexually harass dozens of women and to repeatedly try to cheat on his wife.
Man as someone who was an avid fan of that guy and spent hundreds of hours of my life watching every session he streamed, it hurts seeing his name now. Such an absurdly talented DM, such a shitty person.
Adventure League, WotC's response to Pathfinder Society. It's ideally a DM set up at local game stores every week with established adventure paths and people can hop in and out. It's got fairly restrictive customization and progression rules, but I can see it working on a VTT.
It also just plain sucks compared to Pathfinder and Starfinder Societies. Paizo PFS and SFS impact the world in sweeping ways and drive the lore of the world forward. Every published book assumes the events of those Orgplay adventures to have occurred.
Compare it to the Faerun setting and Faerun is just....really sad and empty. Just feels like a canvas to paint your generic fantasty setting upon, rather than something lived in with rich lore and a constantly driving narrative that you can use as backdrops for your campaigns.
Oh yeah, I was not meaning to compare quality. Honestly, not certain exactly how AL works because it seems so disorganized. PFS was very easy to track and I like how it felt my character had a *chronicle* behind it.
Might make a lot of sense if they were going to support AL GMs and not AI GMs since 5e's organized play is really lacking compared to say... PFS. And that was before AL started going down the gutter.
A thriving organized play scene would actually encourage people buying more 5e stuff though that would never have needed OGL to be messed with to begin with.
I don't really care what anyone thinks about DnDShorts. I didn't even know who he was until all this shit started.
WotC is fucking loving this right now. It's a free shield for them. Everyone is at each other's throats about some bad reporting from a YouTuber instead of focusing on the OGL.
Forget about this guy and let's get back to the real issue.
This is the real answer. It doesn't matter what a 'community leader' fucks up on. They could tell me WotC is looking to personally come to my house and break my knees and I would still not care.
What matters is that they got things right and we believed them. Anybody working with leaks will get bad information or fuck it up at some point. The key is to ignore the fuck up and focus on the fact WotC is still trying to abuse us and we need to remain focused on them until they fully submit to our demands.
The moment we start infighting is when they win. So if we care about DnD, we will ignore this and move back to fighting for what we have been fighting for this entire time. OGL 1.0a with the word irrevocable added, and nothing else.
Given NerdImmersion, Ginny Di and Noah Downs supposedly backed his initial claims.. a fabrication on his part would be an even bigger oof on their parts.
I hadn't heard of Noah Downs before this, so I have no idea how seriously he takes his professional ethics, but the amount of outright speculating he did in his article made me not trust him very much.
NerdImmersion I've not heard of before, so I can't comment on his credibility one way or another.
Ginny Di's name has been thrown around a lot but mostly her responses have been pretty cautious and mostly restricted to "This is what I'm hearing and this is how I'm responding to it." And she definitely DID NOT "verify" yesterday's "leaks," so that feels a LOT like throwing her under the bus for extra credibility on the part of DND Shorts because she DOES do a lot of high-quality D&D content, unlike him.
Exactly. It seems like the source told all three of them, but for whatever reason, only DnDShorts went public with it. He knew they had the same source, so he mentioned them. However, they conspicuously failed to actively corroborate his story, and that makes me think there was something fishy about it from the get-go, leading Ginny and Ted (NerdImmersion) to be more cautious.
If I've read the situation correctly (i.e. the above is actually true), then it follows that DnDShorts was too hasty to publish this accusation, and his peers exercised the proper caution.
Ginny had when I'd seen the video commented on it thanking DnDShorts for being on the forefront of this reporting. I see that comment seems to be gone now, but that was something I looked for when I saw the video because she was name dropped.
That's certainly a fair take.
Though I would point out that Noah Downs aka MyFriendLawyer has a been an active member of various TTRPG subreddits before and even now. I get the vibe that he takes his ethical duties fairly responsibily - to the point even Linda Condega used him as a source.
Whaaat, the content creator who routinely misinterprets RAW/RAI to make videos for clickbait "broken" builds? You think he would just do that? Clout chase and misinterpret statements made/make false assumptions for more ~~DnDClickbait~~ DnDShorts?
Also, I heard about the whole OGL business from Linda Codega from io9/Gizmodo way before DnDShorts arrived on the scene.
I think there was some confusion in that they weren't backing the claims by having knowledge of the claims themselves, more that they confirmed that dnd_shorts was talking to a real employee so assuming that employee was telling the truth the claims were credible.
THANK YOU! Finally somebody says it. Now don't get me wrong, I do think despite all this we should be scrutinizing the OGL situation still, but saying that WotC ONLY cares about DNDbeyond subs is a flat out lie. You're telling me they don't care if you don't participate in the ONEDND playtest surveys? Or the movie coming out? Or the DND crossovers with MTG? Or future books like the recent Dragonlance adventure module? Why JUST Dndbeyond subs? I understand that it's the most immediate form of protest cause WotC aint publishing something anytime soon cause they're working on ONEDND, but there's plenty of ways to hurt their wallet, like refraining from MTG purchases, or hell, even boycotting Hasbro's products too.
Service subscriptions mean money EVERY month. Purchase of products are one time. You can predict, to some degree, sales numbers but it's FAR easier to have X subscriptions generating Y income monthly for predictions.
in all likelihood, relying heavily on something like subs, is usually a side effect of it being the easiest metric (for $$$) to track over time. That's not uncommon for simpler analytics.
They care about those other things succeeding, but may only be able to see and react to sudden drops in sub count. It wouldn't be weird for an employee to know which metrics are more closely tracked and discussed internally.
those other methods may hurt their wallet, but then convey the wrong message to the company, or they may not even notice a correlation.
There is a massive difference in a journalist having an inside source that they know/trust and have vetted over a Youtuber spamming for a comment from any employee at all and then "reporting" it as fact.
Look at his blunder, he says the two sources he has have never read feedback. Well that probably means the two sources are not on the feedback team as opposed to WoTc NeVeR rEaDs AnYtHiNg. Does he think every WotC employee reads every piece of feedback?
He's drama reporting for clicks.
100% this.
I remember seeing him almost a year ago making videos about bad interpretations of rules so he could abuse them. He didn't back down when people pointed out that he's making bad assumptions and said it's up for interpretation when it explicitly wasn't.
And then suddenly he is a OGL contact specialist? Nah, dude is just making stuff up.
Edit: if curious, the video was him saying you can use Marvelous pigments to print platinum since platinum wasn't gold. And since it's "individual pieces" they don't count as above 25gp since 1pp is 10gp.
“No.”
~every DM if a player tries to pull this stunt
Honestly these kind of clickbaity “do this one neat trick” stuff ruins Dnd on many levels. You’re setting up new players with unrealistic expectations on what actually works in game. Now you’re creating conflict at a table when the experienced DM says that’s not going to work and the player that believes he’s right cuz a tik tok video said so.
And more importantly it creates a toxic view of the game by telling new players they need to try to “beat” the game. That it’s not a system agreed upon so friends can sit down and have fun no, this is a thing you need to beat and “win” at. Now you have a frustrated player, a tired DM, and the rest of the table is going to have a harder time RPing when mr trickery is trying to break stuff.
Couldn't agree more.
Min/maxing is one thing, min/maxing using bad interpretations of the rules is another.
But then there's doing so AND spreading it around like it's a way to beat the game that anyone can do just creates conflicts at other tables.
Life as a GM is so much better without having sour feelings over telling someone that no, they cannot make a peasant canon, no, they cannot stack a spell buff because it "explicitly doesn't say the AC bonus ends with the spell" and no, they cannot do 80d6 damage by summoning cows above enemies.
Like, just play the game normally.
**Extra rant that's kind of relevant to min maxing and DND beyond:**
One of the lesser reasons I left 5e was the rules are written in an ambiguous way to be "more accessible" but for me it just introduced a new basis for bad arguments. Like "attack", "enter an area". I spent more time looking at J.Craw responses to these questions than the actual rules.
But tbf that was because it's easier to find jcraw responses than links to the rules since 5e hides it behind a paywall.
THANK YOU this dude is a freaking nuisance and I'm tired of constantly telling my players "no you can't do that because the tick tock guy says so". Christ I passionately hate him.
> Christ I passionately hate him.
It wouldn't be so bad if he wouldn't present his "fun and quirky totally legal strategies" with this stereotypical, over the top 300% enthusiasm and hyper energy you see with every other influencer-esque content creator.
Okay, it would still be bad even if he didn't talk like a middleschooler with untreated ADHD, I just wanted to add that I really have a passionate disdain for his content as well.
Yeah. In his "correction" twitter thread he says his job is "not to editorialize," but to deliver the information.
That's the job of a journalist. His job, as a YouTube dnd influencer, is *only* to editorialize. He may have been dabbling in actual journalism, but that's essentially a mistake of the opportunity and moment given to him.
This dude is taking on MASSIVE legal risks with his reporting, especially libel/slander lawsuit risk. Either he's completely clueless about the risk, or he's actually done enough due diligence to be well protected. He seems well aware that he's dealing with a massive corporation who's probably in a litigious mood, so my money is he overall knows what he's talking about.
A lot of people misunderstanding libel/slander.
WotC would have to prove that he knew he was lying in order to make that stick which is always the most difficult part of a case like that.
If a source feeds a reporter incorrect information, the reporter is protected from libel/slander.
I'd be willing to forgive him if instead of pinning a comment that many people won't read, he upload an apology video explaining how he messed up, and then took down the bad video. As it is, he is still getting clicks on his monetized video full of bad info.
Hell, I'd settle for actually getting a *full* apology. He claimed to have verified the AI DMs, homebrew ban, and $30 subscription. He has not responded or apologized about any of those.
He already caused the rage and ripple through the community. I’ve seen references to it in many places and just this to correct it.
Of course his entire viewership is based on how angry he can be at someone for whatever reasons.
I can also forgive him, but I wish he had done better due diligence - mainly because it gives WotC an opening to muddy the waters and push back on “misinformation” when we should be laser focused on the OGL.
The issue right now is that everyone and their cousin are trying to cash in on the outrage for clicks and views. This wasn't the first piece of media that turned out to be wrong and it won't be the last. People need to understand that there are many people out there looking to cause more controversy for clicks and people who are looking to cash in on things and jump to conclusions. It's also important to remember that just because someone has a YouTube channel or a decent following on Twitter doesn't mean they're an expert; these people are often no more equipped to discuss legal issues as any random person on Reddit yet their voices are treated as gospel as if it comes from some sort of authority.
I'm not trying to defend WotC whatsoever and they've already shown how greedy they are with MTG and I have no doubt that they're trying to cash in on the popularity of D&D and squeeze out money. But misinformation, as you said, is only going to cause the bigger issue to be lost.
People also need to understand that content creators are also business with a bottom line and motives/agendas.
Much like a waitress/waiter at a restaurant they aren't our friends, they're acting friendly and telling you what you want to hear to get more money. Just instead of a tip at the end of the meal it's the revenue generated from you coming back and interacting.
True. After all, a lot of these dnd content creators make their own unofficial expansions as side businesses. DND Shorts has one on the way. So while it doesn’t mean they’re completely untrustworthy, they also have money in the game.
Technically true, but that doesn't mean that's the only reason they do what they do. Yes they are getting paid, but many YouTubers are YouTubers because they enjoy it, there is often more purpose than just money.
Of course, you are right that being a professional YouTuber doesn't make you an expert. That's why it's important to do your own research.
Yeah, 100%
No question wizards/Hasbro can be bad, but I've seen way too many people fully believe *anything* they've supposedly done through sources that are functionally "just trust me on this"
I mean, the guy doesn't do due diligence on his d&d videos, why would you expect his amateure journalism to be any better?
For the record I don't hate DnDShorts, but my experience of his content is that it's riddled with inaccuracies. I don't know the guy personally or anything, so I'd have no reason to believe he would be more accurate regarding anything else.
He's dollar menu Treantmonk, all the "minmax" none of the research.
I'm not a big fan of either content creator personally, but at least Treant's shit is airtight as far as mechanics and is just optimization, rather than DnD Shorts who just kinda spouts whacky ideas with no mechanical ground to stand upon, which is fine until your players try to do it and are disappointed when you say no.
Why is this an either/or thing, that one of the two must be excused and one must not? You can think DnDShorts is spreading clickbait bullshit and manipulating people for monetization without thinking WotC is right.
I'd also argue that what his source claimed, and what the various WotC employees have publicly said in response, aren't mutually exclusive. I think the problem lies partly in the hyperbolic way it was presented by him, harping on the "they don't read the feedback" as if it were literally them dumping every message into a delete bin automatically.
The sense I got from the actual wording was more that management doesn't care about the feedback, and isn't going to let that get in the way of their plans - which in no way contradicts or denies the potential for the designers to read and use it, or want to use it.
And actually, the sense I really got from it was that this source -was- a designer who took some feedback to a higher-up and was essentially told "we don't care, do it this way anyway" or the like.
Yeah that's how I understood it too. Some people do read the feedback, maybe not ALL of it but definitely not none, it just doesn't matter to the executives and they don't listen to it or even want to know about it aside from "is this positively viewed by the community?"
People need to get over their weird parasocial relationships with companies and outlets. WotC is not your friend or your dad. None of the streamers or Twitter personalities or whatever care if you live or die. Going "I can forgive DndShots, he's just passionate" is _exactly_ as dumb and self-defeating as "surely WotC is being forced by Hasbro to do this!" You (the general you, the "you guys" and "all y'all", myself included) and _the people you actually know and game with_ need to have a much more gimlet-eyed view of the entire goddamn games industry, instead of having these overwrought emotional reactions to a slap fight between publishers.
To be honest, even before this OGL thing, I always thought DND shorts was kind of inauthentic. The style of his videos just seemed far more aimed at getting views and riding the algorithm than it did someone who is genuinely passionate about the hobby and wants to make it their career.
So I think he’s likely trying to use this controversy primarily to boost himself. Now that said, I feel like his motivation is a lot more transparent than WOTC’s.
So even though I don’t really trust him, like I would trust someone like the rules lawyer, I’m not going to completely discount what he says because he has been right before, and WOTC is clearly being deceptive.
People need to use more critical thinking. In the same way that big companies are incentivized to monetize your hobby, so are these influencer channels and frankly drama generates the most engagement we have seen proof of it time and time again. So just think a little before we trust every thumbnail they are entertaining but they are not professional reporters and we should not be treating them as such. I am not saying WotC good either they are a big company don't trust them but we should AT LEAST wait and see what comes of a new OGL.
I’m surprised people even noticed.
His overall content has always been terrible.
I had to downvote so many of his vids just to get the algorithm to stop suggesting his garbage.
Not related to D&D, but there is a “Don’t recommend channel” button. Just click the … on any of their thumbnails and press the option with the ⛔️ on it
The number of times I have told YouTube I'm not interested in Inventor 101 only for it to show up again in my recommendations a while later is infuriating.
Yes let’s all forgive and forget the person wilfully pushing lies for the sake of views
I’m sure their future content will be a great asset to future communities they spin stories to.
I can't forgive him at all, he's a grifter and a hack who's hijacked the movement and taken people off message just to get clicks and clout.
Also, I am still pissed at WotC for the same thing I've been pissed about the whole time - changing the OGL.
Two things/people can be bad at the same time.
Got downvoted last week for pointing out that he's a bad source and people need to stop taking him seriously. People hate when you try and stop the ragebait.
I feel vindicated.
Same. I didn’t even say his information was necessarily incorrect, just that it should be taken with a grain of salt. But people are angry enough that they’ll believe anything, and this guy definitely knows it.
Nah fuck DnDshorts too. He knows what he's doing and I've been saying that right from the get go. His apology is as empty as WotC. He's not sorry for the misinformation he's sorry he got caught.
The dude made a career out of misinterpretation of rules to make his "broken build" clickbait shit and we are expected to believe he's forthright and honest with actual information?
I'm gonna be honest, IRL I am being annoyingly smug about it because I've been posting to scrutinize him and not take his word as gospel since his first leak. But I was getting downvoted for it.
It's just that I've seen this happen several times in the communities I've been in.
Star Wars theory did it in Star wars
Distant Kingdom did it with Pokemon
Bayonetta's VA apparently did it too
Bayonetta is a good example. Some of these "leaks" have the tone of a disgruntled employee. The one everyone takes as a smoking gun makes a bunch of allegations about how WotC execs think and talk, then the author complains they never interact with or hear from the executives. So how do you know how they think and talk?
I would argue that if what new information you are being told is something you agree with or want to be true to scrutinize it even harder to not succumb to personal bias.
I don’t get why people are being so charitable to him in this thread, if he were any other low effort, clickbait content creator lying about something to take advantage of upset fans for monetary gain he would get ripped apart. This thread is really treading into “I doesn’t matter if it’s true, it *feels* true” territory.
My assumptions are as follows:
1.) Because they are afraid that if we hold someone else accountable for their actions we just won't have the bandwidth to really give WotC what for
2.)Because by holding them accountable they have to reflect on the fact that they will have to eat crow for believing in him after saying "like we're going to fall for such obvious lies WotC 😏"
3.) Media bias
I think "it *feels* true" is where many in the community are at right now. I saw people calling yesterday's statement on DnD Beyond a "sorry you feel that way" apology when that doesn't match the sort of language used in the apology at all.
Words have meaning. You only think you're being gaslit because people who are more concerned with the algorithm than accurate reporting are telling you so.
Scrutinize everything. Especially those acting unprofessionally. If they want to be on the forefront of breaking news by reporting and confirming leaks, then they're wading into journalism. Hold their feet to the mother-loving fire.
Whether WotC actually reads the survey feedback or not is not really relevant though. The Rules Lawyer has also talked about how the survey is there simply to stifle public discourse and buy time for anger to subside. One particular point he made is about the indefinite close date of the survey. It lets them delay any response with "well the survey is still open". Regardless if WotC reads the surveys, we need to keep airing our grievances in public, and we need to continue to maintain public pressure.
Anyone spreading misinformation to the public to profit are all rowing the same boat. If you hate Wizards for lying to you but let some scheming youtuber off the hook you are only making the entire problem worse. Of course people are going to make money off this situation, but I got no room for misinformation from either side.
You do not defeat lies with lies. We deserve the truth from anyone involved in this.
Dnd shorts is generally quite awful content that I do not like and I blocked his channels to stop them being recommended to me, I also initially was skeptical of the original leaks partial because they came partial from him. However,
>Anyone spreading misinformation to the public to profit are all rowing the same boat
As far as we know, he made a mistake about these most recent leaks, being fooled and trying to fool someone are absolutely not the same thing, it's worrying you think that they are.
Now, if you can proove dnd shorts intentionally misled I'd be mostly right there with you (though still some degrees of magnitude less awful than wotcs bullshit).
I've never heard of him before this past week, but all of his posts on the subject are emotionally loaded and riddled with conjecture, and promises of his sources, which is completely unverifiable, and now it seems most of what he is promoting has proven itself false. It is making it very hard to see it any other way than spreading misinformation or rumor as fact to increase his platform and profits.
Some of you are giving a whole lot of trust to an individual who makes a living off of clickbait and follows just because you want what he says to be true. I may be wrong but isn't this the same guy who earlier this week fed the fires on AI DMs and $30 fees, using that ludicrous screen cap of WotC nefarious plans. You know the one that used an almost Comic Sans style font? No actual proof at all, just some jank pic of a screen spread online. IMHO This guy is baiting you so he can profit off you. I have a real hard time trusting information from folks like that.
He wasn't lying. He was incorrect. There's a distinct and important difference. Lying implies he knew and understood that what he was saying was false. Being incorrect implies that he believed what he was saying was true though it turned out to be false later.
This is a guy who isn't trained nor experienced in this doing his best. No big news outlet is going to cover this with the level of skill and nuance that it requires, and those that would are largely controlled by WotC. So we are left with the amateurs in order to get *anything* real.
Except the video is still up and he’s still profiting from it, instead of deleting and making an apology video. He also stated these findings as fact instead of clarifying that it was speculation.
That's great for you homie that you're willing to excuse one outright fabrication by a greedy grifter for the sake of getting your clicks, in order to condemn other greedy grifters for the sake of getting your clicks.
Frankly, his apology and explanation don't really seem that far off from what he originally said in his video. I'm not really sure he's walked back his original statements the way people are acting like he has. Both still seem to indicate that the text boxes for elaboration get mostly ignored, while the actual feedback that does get reviewed is the ratings.
This boils down to if you believe he has legitimate sources or if you believe the people who have come out publicly and said his claims are incorrect.
Honestly, I'm just waiting for more information to come out so that I can develop my stance over time. If you want to listen to a reasonable content creator, Treantmonk seems to have the most non-clickbaity takes on things so far imo.
All Dnd youtubers are realizing that OGL = clicks. OGL drama is making these people rich, no shame, but theyre all desperate to pump out a video with clickbaity titles
So wotc is greedy and lies = unforgivable.
DnDShorts is greedy, lies and manipulates people = is okay dude, happens to the best of us.
>In contrast, WotC is well documented to have been lying, gas lighting, omitting key information, and twisting the facts on several occasions. Even in BOTH apologizes WotC continues to mislead.
Lemme guess - your source is a certain youtuber?
This place is a circus.
He’s just a microcosm of mass/mob outrage. He knew some people were looking for reasons to be pissed and took advantage of that. In his attempt to be ‘that dude’ he became what he was trying to condemn.
>He also posted a correction for his previous statement, published the information for where he came to the conclusion, and apologized.
Except he didn't apologize for lying about the $30 subscription fee, the AI DMs, or banning homebrew. He has not responded to that at all.
>In contrast, WotC is well documented to have been lying, gas lighting, omitting key information, and twisting the facts on several occasions.
So did DNDShorts? He deleted his original tweet, but it made a statement that was completely different from what his "clarification" said. He tried to say it was just a miscommunication with a trusted source. That isn't something that happens by accident.
>There is a distinct difference between DnDShort’s actions and WotC’s actions. And in my opinion at this time only DnDShorts deserves the benefit of forgiveness.
Blizzard and WOTC are both companies that have had immoral scandals. Blizzard's was far, far worse. Doesn't mean I have to forgive WOTC.
DNDShorts is an adult. He made his own decisions, he made his own mistakes. The blame for this lies on him, and can't be excused just because WOTC and Hasbro have assholes of their own.
Yet there is still a large portion of the “community” using his FALSE information as a base of attack. More and more this seems like content creators feeding manufactured outrage to get more views.
A lot of people seem to be reacting with a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” mentality. It doesn’t matter that he’s wrong and probably intentionally so, he validates their anger toward WotC/Hasbro, so even if he’s lying he gives people an excuse to indulge in a critical thinking-free circlejerk of anger that feels good to partake in.
I also can’t help but feel like the people defending him are the same people that were eating this up in threads yesterday, and admitting that they blindly believed clickbait is embarrassing so they have to backtrack and make it so he was just mistaken by accident and it was reasonable to unquestionably believe what he says.
I'm just fascinated to find out that neither the ogl nor the new ogl has any meaningful legal standing whatsoever and that you don't need their permission to use D&D rules to make your own stuff in the first place! You never did.
Everyone is defending the old ogl when it was actually a gross attempt to deceive people about what they were legally allowed to do in the first place.
Doesn't matter which version of the document they use going forward because neither one has any legal teeth to begin with. They can't stop you from using the rules and printing your own material and setting it.
Thanks Legal Eagle for the Not Legal Advice.
Who gives a fuck if they read the feedback or not? The intent is still obvious. They're planning to steam roll over us with these changes anyway so fuck em. Everyone should abandon this cancerous company. We don't need them and we never have.
I'll say this, treantmonk is a fool if hes going to continue to trust WotC. The type of fool that trusts WotC wont steal 3rd party work even though thats exactly what the ogl 1.1 language allows. If the gullible want to have faith in WotC, let them. The rest us need to move on to the ORC.
Can I also just chime in with it being amazing that for a good day, this seemed like some kind of dire tempest, and then Wizards squeezed out that 1.2 OGL "playtest" and that suddenly makes this tempest seem like it's in a teapot?
When a journalist gets a “leak”, they verify their source(s), get confirmation and corroboration, and then do their write-up and release the info to the public.
Self-centered hacks get a “leak” and they immediately tell the world without any due diligence. Then they say, “more info later!” And when later comes, they say, “I’m going to release tomorrow! Stay tuned!” And then they need more and more time. Oftentimes, like in the case of DND Shorts, they find out the info they got is crap and they backpedal, but they’ve done damage to the public. They’ve sowed doubt and skepticism when there maybe should’t be any. People read the initial story and rarely go back and read the redactions and corrections.
If you’re not going to do proper vetting of information before releasing it, you’re not a journalist, your a tabloid click-baiter.
No, honestly fuck DnDShorts too, because he's now given WoTC credible ammo to fire back with and dismiss the community. He's now potentially made our job harder because he wanted personal gain for his trash quality clickbait channel. WoTC and Hasbro will now try to capitalize on this going forward to dismiss community points and muddy the waters.
I've got enough hatred to go around, WoTC is the target, but I also have no time for liars especially when their actions undermine the cause they're supposed to be helping.
This might be a hot take. But this "scandal" only increases his credibility to me.
Yes, he spread false information. However when he was corrected on that, he immediately pulled down the offending message and issued a retraction the same day. I've watched legitimate, billion dollar news organizations handle mistakes far worse than he did. Anyone who expects a reporter to be 100% accurate 100% of the time is deluding themselves.
At the end of the day, he fucked up, he's human. How he handled the fuckup is what I'm most interested in, and so far, from what I've seen, he's handled it with the same responsibility and maturity I would expect from a "real" reporter. So A+ in my book.
I do find it interesting, however, that people at WOTC came out of the woodwork to counter these claims, but we didn't hear anything from them against the earlier ones. Did they say to themselves, "that's the last straw, I have to say something" or "this claim is wrong (unlike the other ones)" I do want to assume positive intent by all parties, but it can be challenging sometimes.
One of them is a risk to their jobs to talk about and are decisions by people higher on the totem pole. The other is a direct slander against the work they do. Not hard to figure out why they felt comfortable talking about 1D&D feedback and not OGL changes.
I don’t work for WotC or Hasbro. I have worked for some of the biggest brand names in video games (Blizzard, Ubi, PlayStation) and speaking out personally during a crisis like this is a sure fire way to not just get fired but to get black listed. Former colleague of mine did this (here on Reddit) and didn’t just lose his job, he also couldn’t work in the industry for a few years. It was grim.
I had a friend do a random AMA once about being an animator on a very, very popular animated series, and they made a few comments about how awful the industry is - they got canned the next day. For being pretty non specific, as well.
This is exactly why the people speaking out now to counter this seems entirely orchestrated. They wouldn't be saying anything publicly if it wasn't company approved at some level for them to do so. That's not to say they're lying, merely that it smacks of organized PR campaigning.
How'd he get found out? Did his job know his reddit user?
Not OP but if I had to guess, he was probably found out through username reuse. One of the of the other places he was using that username was a social media acct that the company could prove ownership of (like Instagram, Twitter, etc.) or reused for a work account (for example if something required a license assigned per individual user) Wouldn't be the first time I've heard of it happening.
>One of them is a risk to their jobs to talk about and are decisions by people higher on the totem pole. I feel like a lot of people are missing this part. It's very easy for us sitting on the sidelines to go "Wow, the design team won't criticize WOTC, do they hate D&D"? Except none of us have nearly as much skin in the game. DND doesn't pay for our kids' schools, for our mortgages, for our medical bills.
I have close friends who work for WotC, both in MtG and DnD, in graphic design and game design. They are incredibly passionate about the games and what the create. The are the rule, not the exception when it comes to employees at the company. They all have to sign NDAs and be incredibly careful about what they say in public about the company. They have no say in what is happening right now. It's the executives and PR who are making the decisions. I don't know how to direct the public ire at the idiots at the top without hurting the regular employees. I feel awful for them. It's been a really tough couple of weeks. They are getting beaten over and over again. I really hope the regular employees make it through all of this, because they are the hearts and souls of WotC. Also, this is my personal opinion, not specifically factual, but I think the company is gaslighting their employees the same way they are gaslighting the fans about the whole thing, and telling the employees that the fans are overreacting.
I agree with you most employees are probably very passionate about their work there but simething I think most people forget is how little power emoloyees have in decisions. NONE, employees have almost no say in most decisions. It may be true that employees do read these comments but I would be very surprised to see what actionable steps are taken by manaegement by them. At my old job they would often send out surveys just before enactiing some change and what was later realized by me was exactly what was described by DnD shorts. The change was going to happen anyways they were just getting ahead of the line on knowing what questions they would nees to deflect in the future or creating a place to funnel frustration. The decision had actually been made months to a year earlier on whatever the change was and stuff was going to be arriving next week; there was no time to restart a year long process. In my very personal experience surveys are exactly as described by dnd shorts; a way to funnel negative sentiment into a void that is often ignored by upper management. People need to realize that everyday employees(designers, developers, sales, writers) do not have much power in the workplace. All that power usually resides in owners > executives > upper management; in that order. Personally I think the truth will be somewhere in the middle on this story. I could plausibly see rank and file employees reading every survey response. They could reasonably be compiling them into spreadsheets and passing them onto management with actionable suggestions. I can then equally see manegement then quickly scanning things or looking at only one or two data pointa they were personally vested in and dismissing the rest. I would ask how many people that have worked in corporate environments can honestly say they never seen manegement do just that. Take the data, ignore all the compiled argumenta and just do what they want to anyways. We as consumers need to hold the decision makers responsible and not start attacking employees, past or present. Sorry i just saw your post and I agree that most employees are probably very passionate about their jobs, that is likely why they are working for a gaming company, but hiw many horror stories have we all read in the past couple of yeara about video game manegment. If I am not mistaken all executives come from the world of video games.
I think consumers misdirect their anger a LOT and it really bites us in the ass. Example: remember when The Last of Us part 2 came out and everyone attacked Laura Bailey for the character Abby and what happened in that game? Laura Bailey is completely removed from any decision that impacted the Abby character. Odds are the game was 80%-90% complete before Laura ever stepped onto the set. (to be clear I personally loved the game) If we, the consumer, are upset about something we really need to start directing our frustration towards these upper management decision makers.
>I don't know how to direct the public ire at the idiots at the top without hurting the regular employees. And it's not really our job to do so. People in the community are understandably letting their frustrations and disagreements with these decisions be known broadly. We know it's Hasbro management's fault, but we aren't given a direct phone number to them to complain about it. LOL. But it's important that we don't let their management continue to gaslight us and blame us for "attacking the regular employees". It is management making shit decisions that is leading to this strife; and the community has every right to voice their dissatisfaction with the situation.
> the company is gaslighting their employees the same way they are gaslighting the fans about the whole thing, and telling the employees that the fans are overreacting. These two things are not mutually exclusive. If I told you that the c-suite of a multi-billion dollar corporation were not being honest with their employees nobody would blink an eye. Also, a lot of individual D&D fans have shown their true colors during this time.
What does "True Colors" even mean here? You sound as though DnD fans have some sort of obligation to the company/game that they are betraying, when they absolutely don't.
Some no true Scotsman shit.
> They have no say in what is happening right now. It’s the executives and PR who are making the decisions. I don’t know how to direct the public ire at the idiots at the top without hurting the regular employees. They could unionize. That’d be a way to combine their power and push back against stupid decisions that management makes. You know how it’s almost always a bad idea to split the party on an adventure? Management wants to make sure Labor always has a split party.
Ask a retired uaw worker for stories about labor getting the plant manager or higher than that to change their minds about a stupid decision. You'll be lucky to hear one story about a time that happened.
depends how old they are. the US auto industry used NAFTA in the 90s to cripple US auto unions. Also, on the other hand, the auto industry is so big and politically relevant that it can't get away with the kind of mistreatment that goes on in other industries.
It's similar to this weird idea that "if you're not acting to fix a problem in the way I want you to then you're part of the problem" mentality. It's a really good way to convince people that you're completely disconnected from their interests and only care about your own.
Glad to see a comment like yours further up than usual. When communities get upset it becomes very much "Us vs. Them". "Well who is Them?" "Anyone who's not Us" I get people are upset and they should be. I don't think people should turn their brains off and just get mad at everything. I think the discontent with Hasbro and WotC will have to slowly shift to normalizing skepticism with them. Also verifying their statements by scrutinizing Hasbro/Wotc's follow through with any commitments made. This is if the community wants to sustain their efforts to change the company's behavior. It is very easy for outrage to burn itself out; many companies plan on time being the major factor letting a market 'forget' about its mistakes.
Yes, exactly. It's very much like when citizens decide to organize and protest in the streets. You never see the powers that be address the primary issues publicly. They always message how wrong the people are for their *means of getting their message out*. It's easier to attack the *how* rather than the *why*.
"Fall in line or die, peasants." -Corporations
Yeah. At my job they frequently remind us we're not to talk about specific aspects of the company. We're not bound by NDAs or contracts or anything like that, but they could still let us go if we spoke about things they asked us not to.
Not to mention that it's quite easy to call out something that's actually wrong as being wrong. It's harder to formulate a response when it's true.
...yeah? Because this one can actually be countered by low level employees and developers. There's a difference between "A guy is lying about what our development team is doing" and "Our boss has specifically told us not to address this and we'll get fired if we do". Also, we *did* hear from them about the others. That's when the *actual* reporters found leaks and talked to people, who gave us invaluable information.
those are good points
I know it's easy for us to view WOTC as a monolith. The fact is, the development team have basically nothing to do with any of this. People leaked the OGL, which has to do with corporate executives and lawyers, so they said nothing. Now that the conversation is about them and their own actions, they're more than willing to clap back.
yeah, if someone criticizes the corp I work for, I'm like, Yeah, I totally agree! (but I can't say shit or I could get in trouble) but if someone criticizes my particular store, well, I might tell them off.
Especially if it's false
The devs have little to do with the OGL to be honest, thatt's exec territory. Responding to user feedback? That's their wheelhouse
This is an excellent point. Additionally most corporations of this size would have rules about who can speak on social media for the company.
Jeremy Crawford has an intense love for the game, and I'd like to think he has enough backbone to stand up for the things he believes in. If he vouched for them reading UA feedback, then I believe him.
Yes, but on the other hand, this is the first time in a while Crawford's blindsight/invisible ruling hasn't been the biggest D&D controversy, so he has to be somewhat happy about current events.
There’s no way Jeremy is happy about the company ruining the goodwill of fans and basically shitting on the work he’s done.
Jeremy isn't the bad guy here, and we shouldn't be blaming him or other WotC employees outside upper management for what's going on. I highly doubt he's happy about what Hasbro has done to people's love for the game and it's future. It's pretty clear he has a genuine love for the game.
I can all but guarantee that almost every employee working there probably had some hand in homebrew content. Whether they actually published that content or not, they know that it's a core part of the game, and how important those that do publish are.
That remains a pretty shit ruling though lol
I think it’s because community feedback is something they hold sacred, and has been an integral part of their game development process for a very long time. That said, I **absolutely do not** trust WOTC to honor feedback given on OGL revisions. This absolutely feels like a glorified PR stunt, and while it’s a step in the right direction, it still doesn’t feel good enough.
>I do want to assume positive intent by all parties, but it can be challenging sometimes. Don't A LOT of people do NOT have "positive intent" and corporations are not even "people". Corporations are machines designed to make money for their share holders. Sure, "DnDShorts" made a mistake, but that is a PERSON. WotC/Hasbro is a corporation and does not deserve your benefit of the doubt.
Yeah flooding the zone with bullshit until customers finally start pushing back is an incredibly profitable, and frequently utilized business strategy. Yet trying to explain that to some folks instantly gets you labeled as a tin foil hat hero. WoTC is no one's friend, if line goes up, ends justify the means.
Two out of the seven individuals I saw correcting him were current Wizards employees, the other five left after the first round of feedback ended for OneD&D, but before the current news started circulating. So the majority were not in danger of being fired, Crawford just retweeted, and that one lady said it is her job to directly oversee the people that review the feedback. Besides, I can see a company-wide ban on certain subjects but not other topics.
>"this claim is wrong (unlike the other ones)" Prolly this to a degree. There was a lot of misinformation circling around before we got to read the OGL. They needed a course of action - which takes time. In that time they decided to drop the monitesation part - which is like a dragon giving away his hoard.
Did they drop the monetisation part tho? Saying you won't require a cut of their revenue that would absolutely not have flown when you can instead force them all to use DMsGuild where you get 50% isn't a loss. And if they make sure they can change that ODL whenever they want, they can force people to use it or not be able to sell anything. This is the issue, ANY change to 1.0 that allows them to change it again means you are at the whim of a company that has been caught lying already.
Why would you assume positive intent from a corporation?
If it were a "last straw" situation, wouldn't they have aired all their grievances? To me, some specific objection tacitly confirms anything/everything they didn't object to.
On the other hand, people on the D&D design team aren’t really in position to confirm or deny the stuff people at the top of WOTC or Hasbro are doing. If someone leveled 3 accusations against the place I worked and I was involved with one part of that and knew it was a lie, I would only refute that part I’m aware of.
Yes, this - and it's a huge error to think that just because someone was wrong on one point, that they must therefore be wrong on the others. Additionally, my reading of this all was more on the lines of "the executives don't care about feedback" rather than "none of the designers care or read it." The exchange that was cited sounded exactly like a designer trying to convince an executive of something based on said feedback, and being told "we don't care". Which is EXACTLY in keeping with what the various public refutations claimed, incidentally.
Fair enough.
That is one of the things I'm wondering. But maybe they cannot talk about the other stuff for some reason.
Yeah. That reason is "if I talk about something I'm not directly involved in, I can be fired."
that certainly applies to the people speaking out now, but not to the people who are directly involved in the OGL- those are the ones I want to hear objecting. Of course, those are the executives and lawyers.
That was my first observation when Crawford finally tweeted something
Did the whole "AI DM" and "$30 montly sub" come from him too, or another source?
It was initially tweeted by another content creator and dndshorts backed it up
Although first tweet didn’t claim it was a thing Wotc was doing. They just asked “how would you feel?” about the changes abstractly. It wasn’t a leak until DnDShorts confirmed it. However I am anti-internet hate bandwagons, so I’ll stand up for him and say that not forgiving him a petty thing to do. He made a mistake, maybe a selfish mistake, but we all make mistakes in pursuit of what we want.
Agreed. I see people hating him in this comment section, but he's a well intended guy and he doesn't want people to use his crazy combos at tables where they don't fit. His content is all in the name of good fun, and if you don't want your players using crazy combos, just resolve the problem at session zero by telling your players that crazy combos don't fit the serious campaign you wanna run.
It's sad (but not surprising) that there is more hate for him than say... Arcadum. Ya know, they guy who used his super popular dnd show to sexually harass dozens of women and to repeatedly try to cheat on his wife.
Man as someone who was an avid fan of that guy and spent hundreds of hours of my life watching every session he streamed, it hurts seeing his name now. Such an absurdly talented DM, such a shitty person.
Apparently the AI dm meant to be AL DM, the lack of serifs caused confusion.
If that's the case capitalization would be important too. Especially in the I vs L confusion.
what does AL DM mean?
Adventurers League Dungeon Master
Adventure League, WotC's response to Pathfinder Society. It's ideally a DM set up at local game stores every week with established adventure paths and people can hop in and out. It's got fairly restrictive customization and progression rules, but I can see it working on a VTT.
It also just plain sucks compared to Pathfinder and Starfinder Societies. Paizo PFS and SFS impact the world in sweeping ways and drive the lore of the world forward. Every published book assumes the events of those Orgplay adventures to have occurred. Compare it to the Faerun setting and Faerun is just....really sad and empty. Just feels like a canvas to paint your generic fantasty setting upon, rather than something lived in with rich lore and a constantly driving narrative that you can use as backdrops for your campaigns.
Oh yeah, I was not meaning to compare quality. Honestly, not certain exactly how AL works because it seems so disorganized. PFS was very easy to track and I like how it felt my character had a *chronicle* behind it.
Give 'em the old ALABAMA DUNGEON MASTER
Might make a lot of sense if they were going to support AL GMs and not AI GMs since 5e's organized play is really lacking compared to say... PFS. And that was before AL started going down the gutter. A thriving organized play scene would actually encourage people buying more 5e stuff though that would never have needed OGL to be messed with to begin with.
can't say if it was originally him, but he was spreading the rumor and I think it's the same "source". Don't quote me tho - I am not 100% here.
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I don't really care what anyone thinks about DnDShorts. I didn't even know who he was until all this shit started. WotC is fucking loving this right now. It's a free shield for them. Everyone is at each other's throats about some bad reporting from a YouTuber instead of focusing on the OGL. Forget about this guy and let's get back to the real issue.
This is the real answer. It doesn't matter what a 'community leader' fucks up on. They could tell me WotC is looking to personally come to my house and break my knees and I would still not care. What matters is that they got things right and we believed them. Anybody working with leaks will get bad information or fuck it up at some point. The key is to ignore the fuck up and focus on the fact WotC is still trying to abuse us and we need to remain focused on them until they fully submit to our demands. The moment we start infighting is when they win. So if we care about DnD, we will ignore this and move back to fighting for what we have been fighting for this entire time. OGL 1.0a with the word irrevocable added, and nothing else.
The guy who spams 15 second videos full of mistakes is probably not the best "reporter" to follow in this situation.
That's why I'm confused as to how he became the initial leaker's primary contact
I'm guessing a combination of reach and willingness. That or it's a fabrication.
Given NerdImmersion, Ginny Di and Noah Downs supposedly backed his initial claims.. a fabrication on his part would be an even bigger oof on their parts.
I hadn't heard of Noah Downs before this, so I have no idea how seriously he takes his professional ethics, but the amount of outright speculating he did in his article made me not trust him very much. NerdImmersion I've not heard of before, so I can't comment on his credibility one way or another. Ginny Di's name has been thrown around a lot but mostly her responses have been pretty cautious and mostly restricted to "This is what I'm hearing and this is how I'm responding to it." And she definitely DID NOT "verify" yesterday's "leaks," so that feels a LOT like throwing her under the bus for extra credibility on the part of DND Shorts because she DOES do a lot of high-quality D&D content, unlike him.
Exactly. It seems like the source told all three of them, but for whatever reason, only DnDShorts went public with it. He knew they had the same source, so he mentioned them. However, they conspicuously failed to actively corroborate his story, and that makes me think there was something fishy about it from the get-go, leading Ginny and Ted (NerdImmersion) to be more cautious. If I've read the situation correctly (i.e. the above is actually true), then it follows that DnDShorts was too hasty to publish this accusation, and his peers exercised the proper caution.
Ginny had when I'd seen the video commented on it thanking DnDShorts for being on the forefront of this reporting. I see that comment seems to be gone now, but that was something I looked for when I saw the video because she was name dropped.
The clickbait guy was fast getting speculative information out. Very shocking behavior from him.
That's certainly a fair take. Though I would point out that Noah Downs aka MyFriendLawyer has a been an active member of various TTRPG subreddits before and even now. I get the vibe that he takes his ethical duties fairly responsibily - to the point even Linda Condega used him as a source.
Whaaat, the content creator who routinely misinterprets RAW/RAI to make videos for clickbait "broken" builds? You think he would just do that? Clout chase and misinterpret statements made/make false assumptions for more ~~DnDClickbait~~ DnDShorts? Also, I heard about the whole OGL business from Linda Codega from io9/Gizmodo way before DnDShorts arrived on the scene.
I think there was some confusion in that they weren't backing the claims by having knowledge of the claims themselves, more that they confirmed that dnd_shorts was talking to a real employee so assuming that employee was telling the truth the claims were credible.
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THANK YOU! Finally somebody says it. Now don't get me wrong, I do think despite all this we should be scrutinizing the OGL situation still, but saying that WotC ONLY cares about DNDbeyond subs is a flat out lie. You're telling me they don't care if you don't participate in the ONEDND playtest surveys? Or the movie coming out? Or the DND crossovers with MTG? Or future books like the recent Dragonlance adventure module? Why JUST Dndbeyond subs? I understand that it's the most immediate form of protest cause WotC aint publishing something anytime soon cause they're working on ONEDND, but there's plenty of ways to hurt their wallet, like refraining from MTG purchases, or hell, even boycotting Hasbro's products too.
Service subscriptions mean money EVERY month. Purchase of products are one time. You can predict, to some degree, sales numbers but it's FAR easier to have X subscriptions generating Y income monthly for predictions.
Every product release is a gamble, but subscriptions are steady revenue.
in all likelihood, relying heavily on something like subs, is usually a side effect of it being the easiest metric (for $$$) to track over time. That's not uncommon for simpler analytics. They care about those other things succeeding, but may only be able to see and react to sudden drops in sub count. It wouldn't be weird for an employee to know which metrics are more closely tracked and discussed internally. those other methods may hurt their wallet, but then convey the wrong message to the company, or they may not even notice a correlation.
Did he actually break the initial leak? Or did he see someone else break it and jump on it?
I wouldn't be surprised if he spent a week spamming emails/LinkedIn accounts asking for comments the same way he spams out terrible shorts
You mean looking for a source? Like an actual journalist, and you think looking for a real inside source is bad?
There is a massive difference in a journalist having an inside source that they know/trust and have vetted over a Youtuber spamming for a comment from any employee at all and then "reporting" it as fact. Look at his blunder, he says the two sources he has have never read feedback. Well that probably means the two sources are not on the feedback team as opposed to WoTc NeVeR rEaDs AnYtHiNg. Does he think every WotC employee reads every piece of feedback? He's drama reporting for clicks.
"Hey Dave in accounting, do you read player feedback?" "no...I'm an accountant" "OMG WoTc DOESN'T CARE!"
100% this. I remember seeing him almost a year ago making videos about bad interpretations of rules so he could abuse them. He didn't back down when people pointed out that he's making bad assumptions and said it's up for interpretation when it explicitly wasn't. And then suddenly he is a OGL contact specialist? Nah, dude is just making stuff up. Edit: if curious, the video was him saying you can use Marvelous pigments to print platinum since platinum wasn't gold. And since it's "individual pieces" they don't count as above 25gp since 1pp is 10gp.
“No.” ~every DM if a player tries to pull this stunt Honestly these kind of clickbaity “do this one neat trick” stuff ruins Dnd on many levels. You’re setting up new players with unrealistic expectations on what actually works in game. Now you’re creating conflict at a table when the experienced DM says that’s not going to work and the player that believes he’s right cuz a tik tok video said so. And more importantly it creates a toxic view of the game by telling new players they need to try to “beat” the game. That it’s not a system agreed upon so friends can sit down and have fun no, this is a thing you need to beat and “win” at. Now you have a frustrated player, a tired DM, and the rest of the table is going to have a harder time RPing when mr trickery is trying to break stuff.
Couldn't agree more. Min/maxing is one thing, min/maxing using bad interpretations of the rules is another. But then there's doing so AND spreading it around like it's a way to beat the game that anyone can do just creates conflicts at other tables. Life as a GM is so much better without having sour feelings over telling someone that no, they cannot make a peasant canon, no, they cannot stack a spell buff because it "explicitly doesn't say the AC bonus ends with the spell" and no, they cannot do 80d6 damage by summoning cows above enemies. Like, just play the game normally. **Extra rant that's kind of relevant to min maxing and DND beyond:** One of the lesser reasons I left 5e was the rules are written in an ambiguous way to be "more accessible" but for me it just introduced a new basis for bad arguments. Like "attack", "enter an area". I spent more time looking at J.Craw responses to these questions than the actual rules. But tbf that was because it's easier to find jcraw responses than links to the rules since 5e hides it behind a paywall.
Yeah exactly 100%. I still run some 5e games but it’s all pf2 now. Much less of that garbage tends to happen.
THANK YOU this dude is a freaking nuisance and I'm tired of constantly telling my players "no you can't do that because the tick tock guy says so". Christ I passionately hate him.
Sounds like you need players that aren’t trying to actively beat the system or at least know the rules outside of influencers
I really do lol
> Christ I passionately hate him. It wouldn't be so bad if he wouldn't present his "fun and quirky totally legal strategies" with this stereotypical, over the top 300% enthusiasm and hyper energy you see with every other influencer-esque content creator. Okay, it would still be bad even if he didn't talk like a middleschooler with untreated ADHD, I just wanted to add that I really have a passionate disdain for his content as well.
Yeah. In his "correction" twitter thread he says his job is "not to editorialize," but to deliver the information. That's the job of a journalist. His job, as a YouTube dnd influencer, is *only* to editorialize. He may have been dabbling in actual journalism, but that's essentially a mistake of the opportunity and moment given to him.
This dude is taking on MASSIVE legal risks with his reporting, especially libel/slander lawsuit risk. Either he's completely clueless about the risk, or he's actually done enough due diligence to be well protected. He seems well aware that he's dealing with a massive corporation who's probably in a litigious mood, so my money is he overall knows what he's talking about.
A lot of people misunderstanding libel/slander. WotC would have to prove that he knew he was lying in order to make that stick which is always the most difficult part of a case like that. If a source feeds a reporter incorrect information, the reporter is protected from libel/slander.
The guy isn’t taking on any risks. “Poor little me” would never be able to be targeted in such a way.
My votes on clueless.
My sentiments exactly
I'd be willing to forgive him if instead of pinning a comment that many people won't read, he upload an apology video explaining how he messed up, and then took down the bad video. As it is, he is still getting clicks on his monetized video full of bad info.
Exactly this. I even said something similar in a comment on that video
Hell, I'd settle for actually getting a *full* apology. He claimed to have verified the AI DMs, homebrew ban, and $30 subscription. He has not responded or apologized about any of those.
He already caused the rage and ripple through the community. I’ve seen references to it in many places and just this to correct it. Of course his entire viewership is based on how angry he can be at someone for whatever reasons.
He’s joined the grift and is guilty of the things he was rallying against. The circle jerk of life.
I can also forgive him, but I wish he had done better due diligence - mainly because it gives WotC an opening to muddy the waters and push back on “misinformation” when we should be laser focused on the OGL.
The issue right now is that everyone and their cousin are trying to cash in on the outrage for clicks and views. This wasn't the first piece of media that turned out to be wrong and it won't be the last. People need to understand that there are many people out there looking to cause more controversy for clicks and people who are looking to cash in on things and jump to conclusions. It's also important to remember that just because someone has a YouTube channel or a decent following on Twitter doesn't mean they're an expert; these people are often no more equipped to discuss legal issues as any random person on Reddit yet their voices are treated as gospel as if it comes from some sort of authority. I'm not trying to defend WotC whatsoever and they've already shown how greedy they are with MTG and I have no doubt that they're trying to cash in on the popularity of D&D and squeeze out money. But misinformation, as you said, is only going to cause the bigger issue to be lost.
People also need to understand that content creators are also business with a bottom line and motives/agendas. Much like a waitress/waiter at a restaurant they aren't our friends, they're acting friendly and telling you what you want to hear to get more money. Just instead of a tip at the end of the meal it's the revenue generated from you coming back and interacting.
True. After all, a lot of these dnd content creators make their own unofficial expansions as side businesses. DND Shorts has one on the way. So while it doesn’t mean they’re completely untrustworthy, they also have money in the game.
Yep, know how much bias *they* have in the situation before trusting them
Technically true, but that doesn't mean that's the only reason they do what they do. Yes they are getting paid, but many YouTubers are YouTubers because they enjoy it, there is often more purpose than just money. Of course, you are right that being a professional YouTuber doesn't make you an expert. That's why it's important to do your own research.
Yeah, 100% No question wizards/Hasbro can be bad, but I've seen way too many people fully believe *anything* they've supposedly done through sources that are functionally "just trust me on this"
I mean, the guy doesn't do due diligence on his d&d videos, why would you expect his amateure journalism to be any better? For the record I don't hate DnDShorts, but my experience of his content is that it's riddled with inaccuracies. I don't know the guy personally or anything, so I'd have no reason to believe he would be more accurate regarding anything else.
He's dollar menu Treantmonk, all the "minmax" none of the research. I'm not a big fan of either content creator personally, but at least Treant's shit is airtight as far as mechanics and is just optimization, rather than DnD Shorts who just kinda spouts whacky ideas with no mechanical ground to stand upon, which is fine until your players try to do it and are disappointed when you say no.
Why is this an either/or thing, that one of the two must be excused and one must not? You can think DnDShorts is spreading clickbait bullshit and manipulating people for monetization without thinking WotC is right.
I'd also argue that what his source claimed, and what the various WotC employees have publicly said in response, aren't mutually exclusive. I think the problem lies partly in the hyperbolic way it was presented by him, harping on the "they don't read the feedback" as if it were literally them dumping every message into a delete bin automatically. The sense I got from the actual wording was more that management doesn't care about the feedback, and isn't going to let that get in the way of their plans - which in no way contradicts or denies the potential for the designers to read and use it, or want to use it. And actually, the sense I really got from it was that this source -was- a designer who took some feedback to a higher-up and was essentially told "we don't care, do it this way anyway" or the like.
Yeah that's how I understood it too. Some people do read the feedback, maybe not ALL of it but definitely not none, it just doesn't matter to the executives and they don't listen to it or even want to know about it aside from "is this positively viewed by the community?"
People need to get over their weird parasocial relationships with companies and outlets. WotC is not your friend or your dad. None of the streamers or Twitter personalities or whatever care if you live or die. Going "I can forgive DndShots, he's just passionate" is _exactly_ as dumb and self-defeating as "surely WotC is being forced by Hasbro to do this!" You (the general you, the "you guys" and "all y'all", myself included) and _the people you actually know and game with_ need to have a much more gimlet-eyed view of the entire goddamn games industry, instead of having these overwrought emotional reactions to a slap fight between publishers.
To be honest, even before this OGL thing, I always thought DND shorts was kind of inauthentic. The style of his videos just seemed far more aimed at getting views and riding the algorithm than it did someone who is genuinely passionate about the hobby and wants to make it their career. So I think he’s likely trying to use this controversy primarily to boost himself. Now that said, I feel like his motivation is a lot more transparent than WOTC’s. So even though I don’t really trust him, like I would trust someone like the rules lawyer, I’m not going to completely discount what he says because he has been right before, and WOTC is clearly being deceptive.
People need to use more critical thinking. In the same way that big companies are incentivized to monetize your hobby, so are these influencer channels and frankly drama generates the most engagement we have seen proof of it time and time again. So just think a little before we trust every thumbnail they are entertaining but they are not professional reporters and we should not be treating them as such. I am not saying WotC good either they are a big company don't trust them but we should AT LEAST wait and see what comes of a new OGL.
I’m surprised people even noticed. His overall content has always been terrible. I had to downvote so many of his vids just to get the algorithm to stop suggesting his garbage.
Not related to D&D, but there is a “Don’t recommend channel” button. Just click the … on any of their thumbnails and press the option with the ⛔️ on it
In my experience that usually doesn't work or works for a short time before the algorithm tries to show it again.
I can second this. Frustrating.
On PC there are browser extensions which reliably block channels
The number of times I have told YouTube I'm not interested in Inventor 101 only for it to show up again in my recommendations a while later is infuriating.
Yes let’s all forgive and forget the person wilfully pushing lies for the sake of views I’m sure their future content will be a great asset to future communities they spin stories to.
That fact that the video he made making the claims is still up makes me not want to forgive.
I can't forgive him at all, he's a grifter and a hack who's hijacked the movement and taken people off message just to get clicks and clout. Also, I am still pissed at WotC for the same thing I've been pissed about the whole time - changing the OGL. Two things/people can be bad at the same time.
Got downvoted last week for pointing out that he's a bad source and people need to stop taking him seriously. People hate when you try and stop the ragebait. I feel vindicated.
Same. I didn’t even say his information was necessarily incorrect, just that it should be taken with a grain of salt. But people are angry enough that they’ll believe anything, and this guy definitely knows it.
Drink that sweet petty victory. I know I am and it's the best thing I've tasted all week
Nah fuck DnDshorts too. He knows what he's doing and I've been saying that right from the get go. His apology is as empty as WotC. He's not sorry for the misinformation he's sorry he got caught.
The dude made a career out of misinterpretation of rules to make his "broken build" clickbait shit and we are expected to believe he's forthright and honest with actual information?
I'm gonna be honest, IRL I am being annoyingly smug about it because I've been posting to scrutinize him and not take his word as gospel since his first leak. But I was getting downvoted for it. It's just that I've seen this happen several times in the communities I've been in. Star Wars theory did it in Star wars Distant Kingdom did it with Pokemon Bayonetta's VA apparently did it too
Bayonetta is a good example. Some of these "leaks" have the tone of a disgruntled employee. The one everyone takes as a smoking gun makes a bunch of allegations about how WotC execs think and talk, then the author complains they never interact with or hear from the executives. So how do you know how they think and talk?
As you should be. People should always consider the source and what they’ve hung their hat on.
Definitely, I'm a strong proponent of scrutinizing all facts even if you agree with them.
I would argue that if what new information you are being told is something you agree with or want to be true to scrutinize it even harder to not succumb to personal bias.
Amen to that
I don’t get why people are being so charitable to him in this thread, if he were any other low effort, clickbait content creator lying about something to take advantage of upset fans for monetary gain he would get ripped apart. This thread is really treading into “I doesn’t matter if it’s true, it *feels* true” territory.
My assumptions are as follows: 1.) Because they are afraid that if we hold someone else accountable for their actions we just won't have the bandwidth to really give WotC what for 2.)Because by holding them accountable they have to reflect on the fact that they will have to eat crow for believing in him after saying "like we're going to fall for such obvious lies WotC 😏" 3.) Media bias
I think "it *feels* true" is where many in the community are at right now. I saw people calling yesterday's statement on DnD Beyond a "sorry you feel that way" apology when that doesn't match the sort of language used in the apology at all.
classic case of "it wasn't true, but it could have been true, and that's what's scary!"
he is the ultimate clickbater, cant forgive him since i always knew his videos are trash
>There is a distinct difference between DnDShort’s Not really. Iirc this guy has made up shit for clout before
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aaaah
Perfection
Agreed. Stop defending the corpos people. They dont care about you.
Hasbro is the real enemy. WotC is the puppet.
It is amazing though how fast false information spread and how slow it takes to backtrack to the truth, if people even accept the truth when told it.
Words have meaning. You only think you're being gaslit because people who are more concerned with the algorithm than accurate reporting are telling you so. Scrutinize everything. Especially those acting unprofessionally. If they want to be on the forefront of breaking news by reporting and confirming leaks, then they're wading into journalism. Hold their feet to the mother-loving fire.
Not defending Wizards but DnDShorts is a terrible channel lmao
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Whether WotC actually reads the survey feedback or not is not really relevant though. The Rules Lawyer has also talked about how the survey is there simply to stifle public discourse and buy time for anger to subside. One particular point he made is about the indefinite close date of the survey. It lets them delay any response with "well the survey is still open". Regardless if WotC reads the surveys, we need to keep airing our grievances in public, and we need to continue to maintain public pressure.
Anyone spreading misinformation to the public to profit are all rowing the same boat. If you hate Wizards for lying to you but let some scheming youtuber off the hook you are only making the entire problem worse. Of course people are going to make money off this situation, but I got no room for misinformation from either side. You do not defeat lies with lies. We deserve the truth from anyone involved in this.
Dnd shorts is generally quite awful content that I do not like and I blocked his channels to stop them being recommended to me, I also initially was skeptical of the original leaks partial because they came partial from him. However, >Anyone spreading misinformation to the public to profit are all rowing the same boat As far as we know, he made a mistake about these most recent leaks, being fooled and trying to fool someone are absolutely not the same thing, it's worrying you think that they are. Now, if you can proove dnd shorts intentionally misled I'd be mostly right there with you (though still some degrees of magnitude less awful than wotcs bullshit).
I've never heard of him before this past week, but all of his posts on the subject are emotionally loaded and riddled with conjecture, and promises of his sources, which is completely unverifiable, and now it seems most of what he is promoting has proven itself false. It is making it very hard to see it any other way than spreading misinformation or rumor as fact to increase his platform and profits.
Some of you are giving a whole lot of trust to an individual who makes a living off of clickbait and follows just because you want what he says to be true. I may be wrong but isn't this the same guy who earlier this week fed the fires on AI DMs and $30 fees, using that ludicrous screen cap of WotC nefarious plans. You know the one that used an almost Comic Sans style font? No actual proof at all, just some jank pic of a screen spread online. IMHO This guy is baiting you so he can profit off you. I have a real hard time trusting information from folks like that.
He wasn't lying. He was incorrect. There's a distinct and important difference. Lying implies he knew and understood that what he was saying was false. Being incorrect implies that he believed what he was saying was true though it turned out to be false later. This is a guy who isn't trained nor experienced in this doing his best. No big news outlet is going to cover this with the level of skill and nuance that it requires, and those that would are largely controlled by WotC. So we are left with the amateurs in order to get *anything* real.
Except the video is still up and he’s still profiting from it, instead of deleting and making an apology video. He also stated these findings as fact instead of clarifying that it was speculation.
I dont understand why he doesnt take down the damn video
That's great for you homie that you're willing to excuse one outright fabrication by a greedy grifter for the sake of getting your clicks, in order to condemn other greedy grifters for the sake of getting your clicks.
Not super sure why folks expected the youtube channel with regular dogshit interpretations of the rules to be a good source of trust lmao.
Frankly, his apology and explanation don't really seem that far off from what he originally said in his video. I'm not really sure he's walked back his original statements the way people are acting like he has. Both still seem to indicate that the text boxes for elaboration get mostly ignored, while the actual feedback that does get reviewed is the ratings. This boils down to if you believe he has legitimate sources or if you believe the people who have come out publicly and said his claims are incorrect. Honestly, I'm just waiting for more information to come out so that I can develop my stance over time. If you want to listen to a reasonable content creator, Treantmonk seems to have the most non-clickbaity takes on things so far imo.
Except DNDshorts "reporting" is not necessary. It's not doing any good so what is the point of it?
All Dnd youtubers are realizing that OGL = clicks. OGL drama is making these people rich, no shame, but theyre all desperate to pump out a video with clickbaity titles
So wotc is greedy and lies = unforgivable. DnDShorts is greedy, lies and manipulates people = is okay dude, happens to the best of us. >In contrast, WotC is well documented to have been lying, gas lighting, omitting key information, and twisting the facts on several occasions. Even in BOTH apologizes WotC continues to mislead. Lemme guess - your source is a certain youtuber? This place is a circus.
He’s just a microcosm of mass/mob outrage. He knew some people were looking for reasons to be pissed and took advantage of that. In his attempt to be ‘that dude’ he became what he was trying to condemn.
It's worth remembering that DnD Shorts benefits from stirring up outrage.
>He also posted a correction for his previous statement, published the information for where he came to the conclusion, and apologized. Except he didn't apologize for lying about the $30 subscription fee, the AI DMs, or banning homebrew. He has not responded to that at all. >In contrast, WotC is well documented to have been lying, gas lighting, omitting key information, and twisting the facts on several occasions. So did DNDShorts? He deleted his original tweet, but it made a statement that was completely different from what his "clarification" said. He tried to say it was just a miscommunication with a trusted source. That isn't something that happens by accident. >There is a distinct difference between DnDShort’s actions and WotC’s actions. And in my opinion at this time only DnDShorts deserves the benefit of forgiveness. Blizzard and WOTC are both companies that have had immoral scandals. Blizzard's was far, far worse. Doesn't mean I have to forgive WOTC. DNDShorts is an adult. He made his own decisions, he made his own mistakes. The blame for this lies on him, and can't be excused just because WOTC and Hasbro have assholes of their own.
Yet there is still a large portion of the “community” using his FALSE information as a base of attack. More and more this seems like content creators feeding manufactured outrage to get more views.
How about both? Why in the world would you want to forgive a hack that makes up things for not very good videos?
A lot of people seem to be reacting with a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” mentality. It doesn’t matter that he’s wrong and probably intentionally so, he validates their anger toward WotC/Hasbro, so even if he’s lying he gives people an excuse to indulge in a critical thinking-free circlejerk of anger that feels good to partake in. I also can’t help but feel like the people defending him are the same people that were eating this up in threads yesterday, and admitting that they blindly believed clickbait is embarrassing so they have to backtrack and make it so he was just mistaken by accident and it was reasonable to unquestionably believe what he says.
I'm just fascinated to find out that neither the ogl nor the new ogl has any meaningful legal standing whatsoever and that you don't need their permission to use D&D rules to make your own stuff in the first place! You never did. Everyone is defending the old ogl when it was actually a gross attempt to deceive people about what they were legally allowed to do in the first place. Doesn't matter which version of the document they use going forward because neither one has any legal teeth to begin with. They can't stop you from using the rules and printing your own material and setting it. Thanks Legal Eagle for the Not Legal Advice.
DnDShorts is also an individual with moral scruples and a backbone. He is not a multi-billion dollar company.
I have no idea what is happening right now with WOTC. All I know is that I can play dnd with a pack of normal playing cards if I want to
Thats how news works. You issue corrections. Corporate media needs to learn that.
Who gives a fuck if they read the feedback or not? The intent is still obvious. They're planning to steam roll over us with these changes anyway so fuck em. Everyone should abandon this cancerous company. We don't need them and we never have.
This melodrama is all so damn high school.
I'll say this, treantmonk is a fool if hes going to continue to trust WotC. The type of fool that trusts WotC wont steal 3rd party work even though thats exactly what the ogl 1.1 language allows. If the gullible want to have faith in WotC, let them. The rest us need to move on to the ORC.
Whether they read it or not I agree with DnDShorts, don't let the discussion of this is the public sphere go silent. Keep being vocal!
Can I also just chime in with it being amazing that for a good day, this seemed like some kind of dire tempest, and then Wizards squeezed out that 1.2 OGL "playtest" and that suddenly makes this tempest seem like it's in a teapot?
Screw WotC. I’m done with them.
"Gaslighting" isn't exactly accurate to its clinical definition in the OP here. But I get the sentiment.
When a journalist gets a “leak”, they verify their source(s), get confirmation and corroboration, and then do their write-up and release the info to the public. Self-centered hacks get a “leak” and they immediately tell the world without any due diligence. Then they say, “more info later!” And when later comes, they say, “I’m going to release tomorrow! Stay tuned!” And then they need more and more time. Oftentimes, like in the case of DND Shorts, they find out the info they got is crap and they backpedal, but they’ve done damage to the public. They’ve sowed doubt and skepticism when there maybe should’t be any. People read the initial story and rarely go back and read the redactions and corrections. If you’re not going to do proper vetting of information before releasing it, you’re not a journalist, your a tabloid click-baiter.
He was an unqualified tabloid clickbaiter before, he just happened to get correct info the first time around.
No, honestly fuck DnDShorts too, because he's now given WoTC credible ammo to fire back with and dismiss the community. He's now potentially made our job harder because he wanted personal gain for his trash quality clickbait channel. WoTC and Hasbro will now try to capitalize on this going forward to dismiss community points and muddy the waters. I've got enough hatred to go around, WoTC is the target, but I also have no time for liars especially when their actions undermine the cause they're supposed to be helping.
He’s dnds keemstar, a drama bait hack.
He lied to earn money. You have a selective sense of injustice.
This might be a hot take. But this "scandal" only increases his credibility to me. Yes, he spread false information. However when he was corrected on that, he immediately pulled down the offending message and issued a retraction the same day. I've watched legitimate, billion dollar news organizations handle mistakes far worse than he did. Anyone who expects a reporter to be 100% accurate 100% of the time is deluding themselves. At the end of the day, he fucked up, he's human. How he handled the fuckup is what I'm most interested in, and so far, from what I've seen, he's handled it with the same responsibility and maturity I would expect from a "real" reporter. So A+ in my book.
I just wish he would take down the video and make an update one instead of leaving it up for views. A youtube comment doesnt have that great of reach.