WotC WotC President Cynthia Williams Resigns

Lmao You're going to straight-face tell us all that the loss of Kobold Press and Paizo wasn't damaging? Okay, sure. And by that logic, I suppose that Paizo's putting out their ORC was just a way to help boost WotC's bottom line.

_Michael_ said:

How many smaller content creation companies left after the OGL debacle? Kobold Press and Paizo left, two of the biggest content creators, and then Paizo even created it's own ORC rules as a direct challenge to the supremacy of WotC in the RPG market.

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Left how? Kobold still creates compatible material and Paizo never did... whether Paizo or Kobold use the OGL or ORC (or CC) does not really matter much

Creating the ORC is not challenging anything, all it does is cut ties with the OGL

_Michael_ said:

WotC might survive, but it's not clear that Dungeons & Dragons as we know it will.

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yes it will, or at a minimum whatever kills it eventually will be unrelated to the OGL debacle

_Michael_ said:

content creation companies will be that much more hesitant to create content for WotC after this,

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there is zero indication of that, also that is what the CC SRD is for

Oofta said:

Based on other responses, it still wouldn't matter, once a mistake is made there can be no forgiveness.

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It's obviously not accurate to claim that. Loads of people were in the process of moving to other systems or the like didn't, and 3PP stuff which would have moved away if WotC hadn't taken drastic action, didn't. And WotC stopped being a laughingstock among all of nerd-dom (and I do mean all of nerd-dom, it was far beyond TT RPGs - it was being discussed in places where basically no-one or like 3% of people play TTRPGs), and people started saying stuff like "Yeah, they screwed up, but at least they set things right and are going to do more good stuff, they're not all bad!". If anything unapologised/unfixed MtG stuff has more of a "negative aura" around WotC than the OGL 2.0 since the CCBY SRD.

This apparent hand-wringing idea that WotC are some smol bean lonely outcast orphan who everyone is meanly hating on is just rather funny. It should be funny to you too, but I guess you're too invested in this idea of WotC as "victims" or something? Or am I misunderstanding your position entirely, thanks to the vagaries of the English language and the classic "two nations divided by a common language"? Am I 100% out of whack? Like just wildly misunderstanding? It does happen!

WotC are a big company who screwed up, and for the most part, were forgiven. Obviously people who started processing like making new games are continuing them, and obviously a certain amount of damage is not short-term recoverable simply because people were so alarmed by WotC's behaviour. It's not even a forgiveness thing. If someone threatens your livelihood in an outburst, and you go work with someone else, you may well "forgive" them, but you don't go back and work with them - you might in distant future but once bitten twice shy and that isn't a "forgiveness" or "mean-ness" thing, that's sanity.

I will say, if WotC never did the SRDs for the other D&Ds, that will be forgotten by the greater nerd-o-sphere UNTIL the moment WotC screws up big again, at which point it will come up as "Oh remember when they said they were going to do that thing, and then didn't?" and any future promises of fixes will be untrusted. But it does mean it's safe to be on the backburner for a while.

dbolack said:

Nothing. Those goalposts are in the back of a speeding earth-mover.

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Good lord, really? This is over-dramatic fainting couch material and nonsensical. Also earth-movers are really not very fast. I'm not sure they do "speeding". But who am I to argue with poetry?

Burnside said:

It could be. It's certainly a shot you might call if you were a more or less total outsider with a background in protecting corporate IP, and no real knowledge or understanding of how and why D&D didn't die in 1998-2000 and eventually flourished into the renaissance years of 5E.

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it could also not be, Cox could have set that in motion and him being her boss ensures she won’t kill it (or even know why she should defend the OGL, as you wrote)…

My point is not that it is impossible for her to have done it, it is that we do not know either way

_Michael_ said:

Lmao You're going to straight-face tell us all that the loss of Kobold Press and Paizo wasn't damaging? Okay, sure. And by that logic, I suppose that Paizo's putting out their ORC was just a way to help boost WotC's bottom line.

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To WotC and/or the Dungeons and Dragon trademark? Absolutely. ORC was enlightened self-interest.

_Michael_ said:

Doesn't wash. She is the company, and the face of it. If she says something, it's the same as the company saying it.

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I disagree, she is not the company and she still answers to Hasbro either way. There is an official stance and the individual stance is not going to get communicated

_Michael_ said:

And the CC mess is just more proof of WotC's monopolistic intent.

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you are losing me here…

_Michael_ said:

Lmao You're going to straight-face tell us all that the loss of Kobold Press and Paizo wasn't damaging? Okay, sure. And by that logic, I suppose that Paizo's putting out their ORC was just a way to help boost WotC's bottom line.

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What do you mean by the "loss" of those companies?

You can now buy Kobold Press products on DNDBeyond. That's how far they're running away from WotC.

Oofta said:

The number of customers that ever cared about the OGL is small. The number that still care is a smaller. The number of people that care about changing the OGL for older versions is smaller yet. The number of people who would change their mind? A rounding error.

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Citation needed.

One thing that watching online discussion of this industry over the past few decades has taught me (including with how wide the reach of the OGL fiasco wound up being) is that forum posters citing how large they think certain subgroups are typically has zero actual evidence behind it other than their personal anecdotal experience (at best).

Ruin Explorer said:

Good lord, really? This is over-dramatic fainting couch material and nonsensical. Also earth-movers are really not very fast. I'm not sure they do "speeding". But who am I to argue with poetry?

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Yeah. They don't. But they are obvious, very loud, and difficult to ignore.

Look, I recognize that part of the problem here is that because people feel betrayed ( whether that is a reasonable or appropriate thing in the OGL rug yanking is an entirely different conversation ) but one has to recognize that people who feel betrayed rarely feel like they can be made whole even after excessive reparations and all requests being met. Not all goalpost moving is intellectual dishonesty. But there is plenty of that as well.

The vast majority of people who are still dissatisfied with WotC's solution to their very poor OGL decision will be until they decide not to be, no matter what further actions are taken.