4 ms·

> not major corporations to use for their own commercial and promotional purpose. Who are they referring to here? Paizo? Green Ronin? These are not major corpo

> not major corporations to use for their own commercial and promotional purpose. Who are they referring to here? Paizo? Green Ronin? These are not major corporations. Video game companies, movies, tv producers, etc., aren't using the SRD mechanics, and they'd have to license the name and lore elements anyway, as they weren't covered under OGL. Who are these mysterious, sinister major corporations they were fighting against? $750k in revenue is not the cutoff for a major corporation. Their new license targeted like, 5 person shops.

SQueeeeeL 4y ago
This just reeks of desperate MBA energy who, instead of trying to develop their own products and IP further, just see that Critical Role is selling a lot of merch and desperately want to rent seek on it. This is probably Hasbro slitting the stomach of the goose trying to get the golden eggs. They had essentially infinite long term revenue of people buying D&D rulebooks (myself and many of my friends included). Now most people in the community know the fundamental integrity of WotC is compromised by suits and feel slighted, tabletop RPGs is just too small of a space to get away with shady business. Personally I'm never buying a WotC product again.
trynewideas 4y ago
> Who are they referring to here? Paizo? Green Ronin? These are not major corporations. Video game companies, movies, tv producers, etc., aren't using the SRD mechanics, and they'd have to license the name and lore elements anyway, as they weren't covered under OGL. Who are these mysterious, sinister major corporations they were fighting against? I have at least one theory on that. - In the middle of all this OGL mess, WotC also cancelled a raft of unannounced video games. Their in-house D&D games this most recent cycle so far were either flops or revivals. - At almost the same time, Hasbro and Wizard CEOs were hyping to investors the potential for "the kind of recurrent spending you see in digital games" in non-DM D&D players that comprise 80% of the market but a minority of spending. What's the primary RPG merch for players today? Custom or specialized dice, customized minis, folios — stuff that's hard to manufacture at scale while keeping high profit margins. Wizards wants to move them into higher-margin, video-game-like digital spaces, especially virtual tabletops. So Hasbro buys D&D Beyond outright in April and announces in August an Unreal-powered 3D VTT, and the D&D One next-edition rules set/marketplace, which OGL 1.1/2.0 was meant to support. Whatever the hook in D&D One toward monetizing non-DM players is meant to be,* it'd attract competitors in the space beyond the current batch of VTTs and niche publishers. An OGL 1.0a-licensed ruleset could facilitate well-backed companies to build their own D&D One-compatible clones using non-Wizards settings. Companies with experience putting out D&D-ruleset multiplayer games. Companies like Beamdog, acquired in April 2022 by a subsidiary of Embracer Group, who's rolling in settings and IPs that would be delightful to play. Yeah, that door's already open with D&D Beyond/5E/OGL 1.0a, and Embracer doesn't need OGL hooks to enter the market. But from Hasbro's perspective, why on earth would they leave that door open? * Wizards already has a long-running framework for systematically dispensing durable rewards to players that could easily go lootbox-a-like if moved to digital: the Adventurer's League, their organized play program (which ironically, like the OGL, also has roots in a Ryan Dancey invention). Paizo runs their own long-running organized play system, Pathfinder Society, which drives quite a lot of Paizo business. Scenarios are distributed almost exclusively online, and Society GMs have the popular option to run games entirely online via VTT or even play-by-post. Wouldn't it be neat if the new OGL also gave Wizards a way to legally challenge its existence by claiming that makes Pathfinder Society a digital product that requires a license? If Pathfinder Society isn't a digital product, then what's D&D One?
- kneebonian 4y ago
  This is here I think hits the nail on the head. As soon as they annouced that 1D&D would be an online only subscription based affair I knew they were trying to move to a VG, subscription based, pay to play model where the margins are high, the cost is low, and the labor is cheap. That's when I realized I never wanted to support them again.
joecot 4y ago
They're specifically targeting Critical Role. It's a serial youtube and twitch series of professional voice actors playing D&D together, with Matt Mercer as the DM. They've been running since 2015, and they're massively popular. Millions of people watch who never play D&D, but also many more people started playing D&D because of the show. It's had such an effect that some long time players complain that newer players expect the game to be like it's on the TV show and they can't agree on playstyle anymore. But the point is, Critical Role is a behemoth in the RPG space now, and while their popularity helped massively increase D&D's popularity, they're also making buckets of money. Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro get none of that money, though they certainly gained more revenue from the free advertising of their game. Hasbro got greedy. This entire gambit was about coming for some of that money, not really about other publishers at all. And that gambit backfired massively, and drove tons of creators and fans to other games.

SQueeeeeL 4y ago

This just reeks of desperate MBA energy who, instead of trying to develop their own products and IP further, just see that Critical Role is selling a lot of merch and desperately want to rent seek on it. This is probably Hasbro slitting the stomach of the goose trying to get the golden eggs. They had essentially infinite long term revenue of people buying D&D rulebooks (myself and many of my friends included). Now most people in the community know the fundamental integrity of WotC is compromised by suits and feel slighted, tabletop RPGs is just too small of a space to get away with shady business. Personally I'm never buying a WotC product again.

trynewideas 4y ago

> Who are they referring to here? Paizo? Green Ronin? These are not major corporations. Video game companies, movies, tv producers, etc., aren't using the SRD mechanics, and they'd have to license the name and lore elements anyway, as they weren't covered under OGL. Who are these mysterious, sinister major corporations they were fighting against? I have at least one theory on that. - In the middle of all this OGL mess, WotC also cancelled a raft of unannounced video games. Their in-house D&D games this most recent cycle so far were either flops or revivals. - At almost the same time, Hasbro and Wizard CEOs were hyping to investors the potential for "the kind of recurrent spending you see in digital games" in non-DM D&D players that comprise 80% of the market but a minority of spending. What's the primary RPG merch for players today? Custom or specialized dice, customized minis, folios — stuff that's hard to manufacture at scale while keeping high profit margins. Wizards wants to move them into higher-margin, video-game-like digital spaces, especially virtual tabletops. So Hasbro buys D&D Beyond outright in April and announces in August an Unreal-powered 3D VTT, and the D&D One next-edition rules set/marketplace, which OGL 1.1/2.0 was meant to support. Whatever the hook in D&D One toward monetizing non-DM players is meant to be,* it'd attract competitors in the space beyond the current batch of VTTs and niche publishers. An OGL 1.0a-licensed ruleset could facilitate well-backed companies to build their own D&D One-compatible clones using non-Wizards settings. Companies with experience putting out D&D-ruleset multiplayer games. Companies like Beamdog, acquired in April 2022 by a subsidiary of Embracer Group, who's rolling in settings and IPs that would be delightful to play. Yeah, that door's already open with D&D Beyond/5E/OGL 1.0a, and Embracer doesn't need OGL hooks to enter the market. But from Hasbro's perspective, why on earth would they leave that door open? * Wizards already has a long-running framework for systematically dispensing durable rewards to players that could easily go lootbox-a-like if moved to digital: the Adventurer's League, their organized play program (which ironically, like the OGL, also has roots in a Ryan Dancey invention). Paizo runs their own long-running organized play system, Pathfinder Society, which drives quite a lot of Paizo business. Scenarios are distributed almost exclusively online, and Society GMs have the popular option to run games entirely online via VTT or even play-by-post. Wouldn't it be neat if the new OGL also gave Wizards a way to legally challenge its existence by claiming that makes Pathfinder Society a digital product that requires a license? If Pathfinder Society isn't a digital product, then what's D&D One?

kneebonian 4y ago
This is here I think hits the nail on the head. As soon as they annouced that 1D&D would be an online only subscription based affair I knew they were trying to move to a VG, subscription based, pay to play model where the margins are high, the cost is low, and the labor is cheap. That's when I realized I never wanted to support them again.

joecot 4y ago

They're specifically targeting Critical Role. It's a serial youtube and twitch series of professional voice actors playing D&D together, with Matt Mercer as the DM. They've been running since 2015, and they're massively popular. Millions of people watch who never play D&D, but also many more people started playing D&D because of the show. It's had such an effect that some long time players complain that newer players expect the game to be like it's on the TV show and they can't agree on playstyle anymore. But the point is, Critical Role is a behemoth in the RPG space now, and while their popularity helped massively increase D&D's popularity, they're also making buckets of money. Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro get none of that money, though they certainly gained more revenue from the free advertising of their game. Hasbro got greedy. This entire gambit was about coming for some of that money, not really about other publishers at all. And that gambit backfired massively, and drove tons of creators and fans to other games.