So, let's review:
Author of article writes about Gripnr, a project somehow involving blockchain/NFT's and 5e. How this will work and what it will do? The author has no idea as the company isn't prepared to release the details of its plans yet. So most of the article is rampant speculation and outright supposition, where the author describes a business model she just makes up out of whole cloth -- because she doesn't actually know a goddamned thing about it.
The author then engages in rampant speculation about the project, makes naughty word up about what it does and doesn't do -- and then some here quote it as gospel. This is why we have laws about commercial libel and why it is highly actionable.
Same author LIBELS the company and LIES about how the company's employees are being paid -- and as that fits into your pre-conceived notion of this all being a grift, many here lap it up.
The Lead Designer, who I've known for many years as an ethical and remarkably outspoken RPG designer, posts here in response. He says No, they are not paying me in NFTs - they are paying me in dollars and very well, too, thank-you-very-much.
He tells you he has been a senior designer at both WotC and Paizo. 3.x, 4e, Star Wars: SAGA, PF1 and PF2? He's had a major hand in every one of the designs of those games (some or all of which we have all played) and he says the company behind Gripnr is legit and treats its employees well and pays them well, too -- and he's not making a grift, he's making a RPG based on the 5e SRD, details to follow.
Some then attack the designer for not disclosing, you know, FACTS about the game which haven't been released yet, nor about the business model and how NFT applies to it. Not that the lack of facts seemed to have disturbed them in the least in the preceding 5 pages of comments.
o_0
If you are a right-thinking person, you should be shaking your head right now by page 6 of this naughty word thread.
Look, do I think NFTs are almost entirely a scam? Yes I do. Do I think crypto is, similarly, almost entirely a misplaced used of technology that should actively be regulated into oblivion? Yes I do. Does that mean Gripnr falls within that same arena. Likely, yes. Not because of the people involved, but in spite of them.
That's the nature of blockchain in the current milieu, but it is not inevitable that must be so. Because of SRM's involvement, I will keep an open mind, for now.
For God's sakes, let them finish the design of the actual product, and let those details roll out before you judge it. All the rest is just vicious sophistry masquerading as informed critique.