Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

Wizards sort of back tracking. As with all things take with a pinch of salt big enough to melt the Arctic.

So much for other systems getting love
But this is probably a blessing, now dndtards will be less interested in shitting up other systems
 
Wizards sort of back tracking. As with all things take with a pinch of salt big enough to melt the Arctic.

I'm going to take a harder look, I'm going to assume there's somehow they're going to be bait and switch.

I'm stunned by this. It's not just CC, but CC-BY. And OGL 1.0a, your choice. It's not sort of backtracking, it's more than the revolting peasants were revolting over.

That's not the outcome I expected. I would not be surprised if Cao gets caught up in the layoffs at this point.

I'm carefully optimistic as I process this.
My 2 cent speculation:
Executives force Kyle to push new OGL through. Who ever is driving the push is warned that this will be unpopular, executive says "Its a legal document who will really give a fuck?" - they discover the answer is "lots of nerds & business partners"
As the skewering commences, green light is given to "completely cuck the fuck out" and reigns given to the naysayers to attempt to unfuck themselves as hard as possible.
Its also very likely someone explained to them the difference between the OGL and an IP licensing agreement.

This is also for SRD 5.1; my guess is that SRD6 a-coming, yo with less generous licensing.
(Which is completely, 100% within their rights)

Maybe they will do another smart move and buy Roll20.

Edit: I'd really like to see previous editions of the SRD also released under CC-BY, and OGL 1.0a handed to a non-wizards entity, but unless gotchas are found, they did a success. I got nothing to be mad about right now, other than the fact they tried it in the first place.
 
This is also for SRD 5.1; my guess is that SRD6 a-coming, yo with less generous licensing.
(Which is completely, 100% within their rights)
That's all it is, really.

"Oh, we'll allow people to make 5e content unimpeded forever! Have fun, my children!"

Followed immediately by:

"Look, everybody! It's One D&D/6e! We're not doing physical releases because those are polluting and bad for the environment! So subscribe to DND Beyond to have full access to all the new books from the comfort of your own phone! It's the new hotness, with perfect balance and fantastic, all-inclusive character options! You'd be a fool not to play it, and it's fully compatible with 5e! Oh, what's that? You want to publish content using the 6e label? By all means, just sign here. Oh, pay no mind to the lines in the contract saying we reserve the right to accuse you of insulting a tranny in 1989 and then take all your intellectual property for ourselves! It's all just legal mumbo-jumbo, we would never do that!"

And once they have their new edition out they'll do their hardest to completely smother other VTT platforms. Revoke/refuse to renew Roll20/Foundy/FantasyGrounds' D&D licensing deals, crack down harder on sharing websites, pressure chat and social media services like Discord to start deleting servers due to piracy, etc, etc. Hasbro wants a ton of money very quickly, and the only way they can make D&D generate that much money is to push everybody as aggressively as possible towards their subscription system.
 
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I'm going to take a harder look, I'm going to assume there's somehow they're going to be bait and switch.


My 2 cent speculation:
Executives force Kyle to push new OGL through. Who ever is driving the push is warned that this will be unpopular, executive says "Its a legal document who will really give a fuck?" - they discover the answer is "lots of nerds & business partners"
As the skewering commences, green light is given to "completely cuck the fuck out" and reigns given to the naysayers to attempt to unfuck themselves as hard as possible.
Its also very likely someone explained to them the difference between the OGL and an IP licensing agreement.

This is also for SRD 5.1; my guess is that SRD6 a-coming, yo with less generous licensing.
(Which is completely, 100% within their rights)

Maybe they will do another smart move and buy Roll20.

Edit: I'd really like to see previous editions of the SRD also released under CC-BY, and OGL 1.0a handed to a non-wizards entity, but unless gotchas are found, they did a success. I got nothing to be mad about right now, other than the fact they tried it in the first place.
CC-BY was a worryingly good decision - its as open as you can via Creative Commons get without hamstringing the ability for anyone to make money on their products.

I'm not sure what can be released of the d20 SRD onto a CC license without having to cancel OGL 1.0a, and that's been shown to be a hard no with the community, but I suppose they could do 4th because few people would care about that license but nixing that right now is poking the bear when it's finally calming down a bit.

OGL to a private entity isn't really a necessary issue.

White box/Basic/1st/2nd/BECMI is a convoluted can of worms that I'm not sure is worth untangling.

It's hard to me to care about what goes on with whatever One D&D ends up being, it's too woke and even more tied to the CalArts art that I don't like at all and this is like the 4th iteration of it. I've got what I need in 5th - a modernized 1st edition. My go to systems for non- high fantasy games are on either their own, bespoke open license or the creator has passed away using IP from another deceased person and nothing will ever be added because exactly two people have had access to it and the estate is more closed off than Tolkien's was under Chrstopher.

This, actually irrevocably this time, met my demands, especially the fucktarded morality clause. They can do what they will with 6th, that's not changing long accepted licensing after the fact. Maybe it will be awesome and I will move to it and will only have to replace the stupid species thing with race again. D&D is entirely cribbed from Middle Earth and stating somewhat true to the source when the writer is no longer with us to change anything is a matter of respect, even if the estate sent its lawyers after Gygax over the supposed plagiarism.

I filled out the survey expecting to be given the finger again like with OGLs 1.1, 2.0, and 1.2. It was kind of tough because I was so pissed, and that was as a 40 year player who had dealt with the Lorraine Williams era of evil behavior. I'm grateful they actually were listening, finally, and it wasn't another lie. It couldn't have been fun for the D&D team, who do care, watching their product being raped by the Farmville dude.

I'm happy for them to make money, I just don't like being lied to by dickheads like Cao. This isn't like Magic where it's a huge base 10 years beyond sunk cost fallacy who will consoom everything no matter what, but there should be some respect given to a core base who have been very loyal through some very low points with terrible business practices.
 
That's all it is, really.

"Oh, we'll allow people to make 5e content unimpeded forever! Have fun, my children!"

Followed immediately by:

"Look, everybody! It's One D&D/6e! We're not doing physical releases because those are polluting and bad for the environment! So subscribe to DND Beyond to have full access to all the new books from the comfort of your own phone! It's the new hotness, with perfect balance and fantastic, all-inclusive character options! You'd be a fool not to play it, and it's fully compatible with 5e! Oh, what's that? You want to publish content using the 6e label? By all means, just sign here. Oh, pay no mind to the lines in the contract saying we reserve the right to accuse you of insulting a tranny in 1989 and then take all your intellectual property for ourselves! It's all just legal mumbo-jumbo, we would never do that!"

And once they have their new edition out they'll do their hardest to completely smother other VTT platforms. Revoke/refuse to renew Roll20/Foundy/FantasyGrounds' D&D licensing deals, crack down harder on sharing websites, pressure chat and social media services like Discord to start deleting servers due to piracy, etc, etc. Hasbro wants a ton of money very quickly, and the only way they can make D&D generate that much money is to push everybody as aggressively as possible towards their subscription system.

From what I understand:
A sizeable portion of investors were asking "What the ever loving fuck did you do?" as this hit the mainstream news and news of massive cancelations of D&D beyond. This caused Hasbro higher ups to find people inside wizards who were against the changes to say "how do we unfuck this?" and the answer was to basically give up no more than they already had given up. As good of a decision as this is was, remember that it hasn't cost Wizards anything (5.1SRD) that is hadn't already cost them. They have technically lost some rights to the SRD5.1 via CC-BY but but that is already a write off since D&Done is where all their energies are going.

The thing is I think 6E might run into 4e problems where the community might not want to switch and Wizards will have limited leverage to make them. That's why at launch 6E will be 5E compatible on launch, but will include a roadmap for microchanges.
That's why they were trying to legally scare everyone into signing the NGL;
Not only does it stop you from releasing new 5e content under perpetual license so people can't just stay in their comfy 5e ruts, but when Wizards changes "Race" to "Preferred Gender Identity" they can say to all publishers "Update all your modules to use only Xe/Xer pronouns or its deauthorized and you 30 days pull it from the market"

The endlessly iterative nature, the "RPG as a service" of 6e is a utterly fucktarded nightmare of an idea. And the only thing stopping Wizards from realizing it is the fact publishers can look at the 6e NGL, decide this is utter dogshit, and keep pumping out 5e content. They are trying to make sure the switch to 6e doesn't create another "Pathfinder" scenario - how things were supposed to go, 5e would be a dead brand by the time Wizards started twisting the scews and making big changes.

tl;dr:
Remember that the goal of the NGL is to kill 5e and force everyone to 6e, while also killing any competing VTT or tools sites. That's very clearly still the plan, they just need to find another way to make it happen, so expect shennanigans once the coverage dies down.

CC-BY was a worryingly good decision - its as open as you can via Creative Commons get without hamstringing the ability for anyone to make money on their products.

I'm not sure what can be released of the d20 SRD onto a CC license without having to cancel OGL 1.0a, and that's been shown to be a hard no with the community, but I suppose they could do 4th because few people would care about that license but nixing that right now is poking the bear when it's finally calming down a bit.

the OGL1a and CC-BY are not mutually exclusive (as 5.1SRD release shows). They are allowing both, you just publish under your preferred license.
Honestly I'd like to see 3e and earlier just CC0'd. (and I guess 4e but the 4e SRD is dogshit)

OGL to a private entity isn't really a necessary issue.

Being they already tried to cancel it, I don't think that any future WotC management will be any smarter or more trustworthy.
While the attempt had no legal standing it, you'd still potentially need to fight WotC/Hasbro's legal team, and they have nothing but billable hours. They should CC-BY everything.

White box/Basic/1st/2nd/BECMI is a convoluted can of worms that I'm not sure is worth untangling.

[ ... ]

I'm happy for them to make money, I just don't like being lied to by dickheads like Cao. This isn't like Magic where it's a huge base 10 years beyond sunk cost fallacy who will consoom everything no matter what, but there should be some respect given to a core base who have been very loyal through some very low points with terrible business practices.

anything before 2e is simple enough, and devoid of copyrightable content (since they made everything generalized when they ripped off Tolkien) that its pretty much just game rules and thus easy to rewrite and then fall squarely into SCOTUS protected territory.
When you get into the C of BECMI is when the IP starts to be very difficult to unspool.

I will keep going back to the Golden Goose analogy over and over.
They had a great and mutually beneficial relationship with creators. They gave up practically nothing they didn't already have to give up, and in return got a a huge community of creators to support their product. Everyone including WotC was benefiting.
and they burned it, not because they were losing money but because they thought they could screw everyone over and make more.
 
And once they have their new edition out they'll do their hardest to completely smother other VTT platforms. Revoke/refuse to renew Roll20/Foundy/FantasyGrounds' D&D licensing deals, crack down harder on sharing websites, pressure chat and social media services like Discord to start deleting servers due to piracy, etc, etc. Hasbro wants a ton of money very quickly, and the only way they can make D&D generate that much money is to push everybody as aggressively as possible towards their subscription system.
So corporate suicide 2: Electric Boogaloo

I'm not sure what can be released of the d20 SRD onto a CC license without having to cancel OGL 1.0a, and that's been shown to be a hard no with the community, but I suppose they could do 4th because few people would care about that license but nixing that right now is poking the bear when it's finally calming down a bit.
For SRD, who the hell knows. But most of content for 3.5e that wasn't released under the OGL. Most books outside of the DMG, PH, Unearthed Arcana, and Psionics are straight up not in the SRD at all, which means a good chunk of the classes, prestige classes, races, spells, etc. aren't in the SRD.

@Ghostse
Remember that the goal of the NGL is to kill 5e and force everyone to 6e, while also killing any competing VTT or tools sites. That's very clearly still the plan, they just need to find another way to make it happen, so expect shennanigans once the coverage dies down.
That's probably still the goal, but even they have to realize that they've screwed the pooch on that. Everyone will be watching them like hawks now, they've irreparably damaged their relationship with other publishers and their audience. Any moves to try to screw everyone over will get signal boosted to high heaven at this point.
 
That's probably still the goal, but even they have to realize that they've screwed the pooch on that. Everyone will be watching them like hawks now, they've irreparably damaged their relationship with other publishers and their audience. Any moves to try to screw everyone over will get signal boosted to high heaven at this point.
I think you're giving the average normie too much credit and the average corporate worm too little. They learned their lesson, and won't repeat the same fuckup.

In two weeks, the average normie will have forgotten all about this.

The 6e license release will be preceded with buying off reporters and community shills/"""""influencers""""""" to publish prostate-massaging articles & post ball-gargling youtubes about how great this license will be for everyone and how its unfair to allow VTTs to make money off WotC's hard work, and how they are working super hard to make sure no one offends trannies and how all these offensive concepts like "exoticism", "having fun" and "not giving WotC a 25% cut" are the products of wrong-thinking straight white men and need to be removed to allow inclusion and diversity.
Follow this with twitterati "uncovering" a bunch of Cringe Coomer or Stormer 5e content; this "exposure" will allow astroturfed tranny & nigger 'demand' for Wizards to do something about this horrible situation where wrong thinkers are allowed to roam free. Wotc will respond with "Our hands are tied! We did what the community wanted and left the OGL intact! But we've been working super hard and now 6e will ensure Trannies are safe in 6e. Play 6e! The only reason you wouldn't like the NGL is you are a racist transphobe." Anyone who tries to raise concerns about licensing will be shouted down as an Anti-vaxxer & climate denier.
 
I'll save my opinions till they actually release all this shit. They haven't replaced any of the people who have the mindset that caused this. They haven't changed up any leadership. They haven't announced any new directions. Just vague promises.

I'll wait until they actually release the update.

Because until then, they're fucking lying.

How do you know?

Their lips are moving.
 
I'll save my opinions till they actually release all this shit. They haven't replaced any of the people who have the mindset that caused this. They haven't changed up any leadership. They haven't announced any new directions. Just vague promises.

I'll wait until they actually release the update.

Because until then, they're fucking lying.

How do you know?

Their lips are moving.

SRD5.1 released under CC-BY is legit.

But again other than the fact Wizard's can't even TRY to reneg on this, there is effectively zero difference to the version released under the OGL.
And as you said, zero people have been fired or reassigned. See my previous post for how I expect they'll try to weasel out for SRD6
 
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@Ghostse Your perpetually updated 5.5e sounds suspiciously like the old 1d4chan 6e article that i cant find only twisted to be fake and gay/
 
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So I'm assuming 6E/1DnD is going to come out with a new OGL then instead of them trying to retroactively do shit.

Cuz they really want to one-up the 4E fuckup.
Hope turning DnD into an MMO was worth it, collect the 20 bear asses and don't pass Go.
 
So I'm assuming 6E/1DnD is going to come out with a new OGL then instead of them trying to retroactively do shit.

And if they'd have just done that from the get-go, there wouldn't have been any significant backlash.
Sure 6E would have flopped because their licensing terms were dogshit so like 4e virtually no 3rd parties were going to actually release content because of how bad it was. But they wouldn't be getting a public dragging, and have systems and creators fleeing the D&D ecosystem.
 
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I imagine this just means that they've emptied their Paizo warehouse, and the books are headed for shelves of game stores, but it signals a pretty big uptick in demand. Granted, it could just be Redditors who will never touch the game and just want to feel like they're doing something, or Paizo fudging the numbers a bit to make WotC sweat, but it's funny nonetheless.
apparently the stores are picked clean with no info when they'll get new stuff. given that paizuri isn't that big I doubt they had that many books to begin with. even if it was all performative, it might still bring some over for not being the mess that is 5e. "I just bought the book, might as well read it", and then imagine what could happen when he likes it and finally has something to compare 5e and WOTC's business model to.

I think you're giving the average normie too much credit and the average corporate worm too little. They learned their lesson, and won't repeat the same fuckup.
that's what they said after 4e, yet here we are.

dnd might be way too big, but enough normies must have jumped ship (even if it's only temporary) to walk back most of the shit they tried to pull. if it was only "a disgrunted few" like shills tried to have you believe the last weeks that would've never happened (plus getting squeezed from the other end once it hit mainstream media). and as I said before it's not just ignorant normies getting bent over like in videogames, this goes all through DMs which usually know what's up and are gonna take their players with them.
 
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5e is yesterday's news, releasing it and backing off on shitty licensing costs them nothing, especially since nobody was biting on their hopeful 25% cut in the first place. They're going to focus on unfucking their reputation in the short term, then bring out 6e with a completely locked down non-license and hope the normies switch to it when Critical Role and paid YouTubers hawk it 24/7.

Which honestly would've been my plan from day one if I'd been running their shit. A new version is a golden opportunity to corner the market and set up new contracts; it's still baffling to me that they made a transparent move to dick people over for the edition that's on the way out instead of just waiting a few months. It wouldn't have required any murky legal attempts to cancel the established license or made them look like Captain Planet villains.
 
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that's what they said after 4e, yet here we are.
TBF they didn't fuck up in the exact same way as they did with 4e. With 4e they just released the SRD4 as a useless design standards document - they wanted to force everyone in licensing agreement to get control of the brand after some of the spicier 3e content.

6e they actually tried to go after existing and get in position to halt any 5e content once 6e released.

Which honestly would've been my plan from day one if I'd been running their shit. A new version is a golden opportunity to corner the market and set up new contracts; it's still baffling to me that they made a transparent move to dick people over for the edition that's on the way out instead of just waiting a few months. It wouldn't have required any murky legal attempts to cancel the established license or made them look like Captain Planet villains.

The issue is if you let 5e stay around, you risk a "Pathfinder" scenario when you start making significant changes.
Before the huge disruption of 4e, Paizo was just another module publisher until they took advantage of the 4e split to create Pathfinder, and other writers hopped on board for the less onerous OGL licensing with a playable SRD to reference; a lesson WotC applied when they released 5e.
 
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5e is yesterday's news, releasing it and backing off on shitty licensing costs them nothing, especially since nobody was biting on their hopeful 25% cut in the first place. They're going to focus on unfucking their reputation in the short term, then bring out 6e with a completely locked down non-license and hope the normies switch to it when Critical Role and paid YouTubers hawk it 24/7.

Which honestly would've been my plan from day one if I'd been running their shit. A new version is a golden opportunity to corner the market and set up new contracts; it's still baffling to me that they made a transparent move to dick people over for the edition that's on the way out instead of just waiting a few months. It wouldn't have required any murky legal attempts to cancel the established license or made them look like Captain Planet villains.
I assume to not have 6e launch overshadowed by all the backlash., and get everyone up to speed beforehand so they can start producing stuff. remember it wasn't even meant to really break until companies were on board the day they had set their marketing stream, until someone leaked it. they were probably also trying to get them to agree while riding high on the 5e wave, who knows what the world looks like next year, while trying to avoid to create another paizo.
 
I think you're giving the average normie too much credit and the average corporate worm too little. They learned their lesson, and won't repeat the same fuckup.

In two weeks, the average normie will have forgotten all about this.
I've said it once, I'll say it again: NORMIES DON'T MATTER. Normies don't buy a majority of the books, and normies are not the ones who signal boosted WoTC screw up in the first place. It was DMs, gaming Youtube channels, and corporate partners who got the word out on this latest fuck up. Normies are told what to care about by influencers. They are who matter in this equation, not normies. Normies just go with whatever is popular.

The 6e license release will be preceded with buying off reporters and community shills/"""""influencers""""""" to publish prostate-massaging articles & post ball-gargling youtubes about how great this license will be for everyone and how its unfair to allow VTTs to make money off WotC's hard work, and how they are working super hard to make sure no one offends trannies and how all these offensive concepts like "exoticism", "having fun" and "not giving WotC a 25% cut" are the products of wrong-thinking straight white men and need to be removed to allow inclusion and diversity.
Follow this with twitterati "uncovering" a bunch of Cringe Coomer or Stormer 5e content; this "exposure" will allow astroturfed tranny & nigger 'demand' for Wizards to do something about this horrible situation where wrong thinkers are allowed to roam free. Wotc will respond with "Our hands are tied! We did what the community wanted and left the OGL intact! But we've been working super hard and now 6e will ensure Trannies are safe in 6e. Play 6e! The only reason you wouldn't like the NGL is you are a racist transphobe." Anyone who tries to raise concerns about licensing will be shouted down as an Anti-vaxxer & climate denier.
You are giving WoTC far more power than they actually have. If they had that much ability to influence popular opinion, this most recent controversy would never have happened. WoTC aren't going to be able to simply brainwash people into magically sucking their cock. And they almost certainly don't bother to try to pay off most influencers, other than their pet muppets at Critical Role. Nobody has that much power and Hasbro doesn't care that much.

The issue is if you let 5e stay around, you risk a "Pathfinder" scenario when you start making significant changes.
Before the huge disruption of 4e, Paizo was just another module publisher until they took advantage of the 4e split to create Pathfinder, and other writers hopped on board for the less onerous OGL licensing with a playable SRD to reference; a lesson WotC applied when they released 5e.
At this point, we beyond this. The lesson to take from 4e is that the onerous licensing bullshit just doesn't work in the long run. Instead, they tried to bootstrap it to an already open system, and we got the current controversy. If they try to do a 4e again, after they've already fucked up, a new Pathfinder scenario is inevitable because that's just the nature of the beast when you go from an open system back to a closed one. Its practically assured at this point. I, mean, what else do you expect to happen when you tell all the companies producing content for your system to just fuck off? They don't magically go away.
 
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I've said it once, I'll say it again: NORMIES DON'T MATTER.
Let me rephrase.
This absolute cucking under came because the backlash hit the MSM and investors were starting to ask questions. This only got traction because normies started to care. It doesn't matter if normies are big customers or not.

You are giving WoTC far more power than they actually have. If they had that much ability to influence popular opinion, this most recent controversy would never have happened. WoTC aren't going to be able to simply brainwash people into magically sucking their cock. And they almost certainly don't bother to try to pay off most influencers, other than their pet muppets at Critical Role. Nobody has that much power and Hasbro doesn't care that much.
It didn't happen because they didn't care to make it happen.
"Its a legal document, we're making anyone who looks at thing sign an NDA, who is going care?"
It costs millions to get a bunch of influences to signal boost shit. And remember Wizards is part of Hasbro. This fuck up has gotten everyone's attention.
 
It didn't happen because they didn't care to make it happen.
"Its a legal document, we're making anyone who looks at thing sign an NDA, who is going care?"
It costs millions to get a bunch of influences to signal boost shit. And remember Wizards is part of Hasbro. This fuck up has gotten everyone's attention.
Hasbro isn't going to spend millions of dollars to signal boost D&D, period. It just doesn't make enough money to justify it. If any influencers would even accept the money to signal boost WoTC at this point, considering the danger it presents to their credibility.

Let me rephrase.
This absolute cucking under came because the backlash hit the MSM and investors were starting to ask questions. This only got traction because normies started to care. It doesn't matter if normies are big customers or not.
And the only reason they started to care is because DMs, companies, and influencers did first. If they didn't care, then normies wouldn't have cared. And this would have gained no traction at all.
 
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