D&D 5E I'll make my own Fifth Edition.

[Mercurius]

If D&D was stewarded by an artist-owned-and-directed collectivity which was imbued with love of the game as its primary purpose, and which economics-wise, was devoted to providing a modest livelihood, then nearly all of the WotC-layoffed designers could still be working there.

When I read this, the thought came to me that there are really three major levels:

1. The top-down, corporate model - which is what we see with Hasbro > WotC > D&D, and is pretty much the default model in the world right now.

2. The small company run by folks deeply invested in what they are producing - which is what we see with Paizo and TSR pre-Blume brothers: a game company run by gamers.

3. A profit-sharing collective. I don't know if this exists much in the world yet, but Alvarado St. Bakery comes to mind, which is worker owned (according to Wikipedia, the average long-term worker makes $65-70K a year).

The spectrum is obvious - from top-down, shareholder structure to a collectivity of workers, artists, etc. I would hope that we're moving more towards the latter, but it seems to be a push and pull, and the government is still largely invested in the former.

But that's politics! I think in the realm of RPGs it is very possible to not only take the 2nd approach (it has and is being done) but I don't see why not the third. Presumably it is being done on small scales, but the question for me is, at what point in growth does it get difficult to maintain that approach? Alvarado does it so I don't see why Paizo or a Hasbro-free WotC couldn't.

But therein lies the problem: WotC is not Hasbro free. The story of "small company run by folks who love what they do sold out to big corporation" is an oft-repeated story. We can blame none other than the heroic savior of D&D himself, Peter Adkison - although I'm sure there's a story there (will have to pull Designers & Dragons off the shelf).

I'm reminded of the story of a health food store chain in Portland, OR back in the 90s - Nature's Fresh Northwest. They were thriving, beloved by the community, but were ambitious. They decided to sell themselves to GNC, who promised that they would keep their autonomy but have the benefit of corporate money. Well GNC promptly sold them to a nationwide competitor, Wild Oats, and then many of the long-term Nature's folks quit and formed New Seasons Markets, which is now wildly successful, making Portland one of the only (perhaps only) large city in the US that's health food market isn't dominated by Whole Foods (who bought out their main competition, Wild Oats).

Anyhow, the moral of the story is this: Don't sell yourself to any corporation. It is never worth it. AND, don't give up - start again. In a way, this is what Paizo did.

I can tell you now, as someone who has been involved in what you describe as a "Free culture" does not work. It has multiple inherent problems.

Hasn't worked doesn't mean cannot work. If we look at American history we can see two general trends that seem mutually exclusive but have somehow existed together: The rich get richer and richer, but people become more and more free. It may even be that the former indirectly stimulates the latter through reaction (not intention!). But again, let's not be so jaded and fed up that we don't continue to try to expand the boundaries of what is possible. For that DnDPhilmont should be applauded, encouraged even.

1. Most people ignore "Donate" buttons, while demanding the developers implement/fix their personal want.

Yes, but this can be changed. Most people won't donate, but public radio works, by and large. So too could a "public domain" collective of RPG designers.

2. Kickstarter has demonstrated a limit to the number of people willing to donate, there is risk in donating and many people simply will not do it. Of the people who do participate, most think it is a pre-order, not a donation.

...

4. It facilitates scamming. Kickstarter has a lot of problems with this already, someone throws together a bunch of concept art, gets the pledges, and then "it didn't work out". Socialized game development would be even worse, as I said earlier, just rapidly generate a ton of drek with no real effort, take money.

Exhibit A.

The saga of James Maliszewski, better known for his blog Grognardia, is a rather curious case. While on the surface it looks like a case of "taking the money and running" ($48K), I'm not so certain that is it. But it remains an unsolved mystery.

3. Socialized game development disincentivizes developers and artists. If everyone is paid equally, then the most talented are severely undercompensated and the least talented are severely overcompensated while they do the minimum necessary to be paid. A talented developer or artist can make substantially more going into some other industry than they would in a socialized system. It's the current video game industry problem, extremely long hours, comparitively low pay, and the most talented people simply go work in another industry for 50% more money and a normal work week.

I don't buy this, which is rather "20th century thinking" with regards to motivation - as if the main source of creative motivation is money. Most game designers do it first and foremost out of love; most are bright people and could make more money in other industries. But the reason they design games is that they love doing it. It is more along the lines of what Abraham Maslow calls the need for self-actualization - fulfilling one's (creative) potentials as an authentic, deep need that has nothing to do with more basic survival needs.

5. If game developers can't make game development their full time job, then capitalism is working properly. Either their product doesn't have much appeal, appeals only to a very niche market, or is of poor quality. Socializing it won't change anything. If 5 developers cannot make a living developing 5 games alone, they cannot make a living by sharing the revenues of those 5 games either. Which means...

Survival of the fittest, I get it. This is why modern capitalism is essentially Darwinian at heart. I'd like to see us move into the 21st century, however. There are other ways.

6. Your whole plan is definitely socialism. The only way your plan works is if there is 1 developer making a ton of money, and you take that money from him and give it to the other 5 people so they can make a living generating low-appeal products. The moment that 1 developer leaves because you've taken away all of his reward your whole system caves. It only works if that 1 developer is willing to not receive the rewards his efforts generated. There's very, very, very few people who will do this.

I'm reminded of Obama's critics who would throw the word socialism out there like it was akin to bestiality or demon-worship (all this despite the fact that Obama is very much a corporatist!).

Anyhow, not to get political here, or try to convince anyone of the validity of some elements of socialism, but simply to point out that there are possible ways that integrate the best of capitalism and socialism, and that I think companies like Alvarado St. Bakery are doing so.

Also, the main reward for any creative endeavor should be the creation itself. Very few artists (in the broadest sense of the word) are successful when their primary motivation is money - or rather, that's when "art" becomes "entertainment" and loses its vitality.

7. Your plan also sounds like the Cable TV bundle problem. If I want to watch HBO, I have to subsidize 200 channels of stuff I will never watch. Ultimately, for me it becomes more cost effective to just wait for the blurays and not have Cable TV. For others it is more cost effective to just torrent the 1 show they watch instead of paying for the 200 channels they don't watch. People are very resistant to subsidizing products they don't want or use.

Right - and the reason this is, is entirely because of the corporatist model that DnDPhilmont is objecting to - because of the hegemonic monopolies of companies like Comcast, Time-Warner, Verizon, Netflix, etc.

I'm not saying his solutions are the right ones, but I do agree with what he's protesting against - and at least he's trying!

 

[Dungeonosophy]

I can tell you now, as someone who has been involved in what you describe as a "Free culture" does not work. It has multiple inherent problems.

1. Most people ignore "Donate" buttons, while demanding the developers implement/fix their personal want.

2. Kickstarter has demonstrated a limit to the number of people willing to donate, there is risk in donating and many people simply will not do it.

I'm not saying that Donate buttons and Kickstarter are the end-all and be-all of Free Culture funding. It is a glimmer. Obviously some people do donate. That's the thing about Free Culture. People are free to contribute or not, according to their whim.

Of the people who do participate, most think it is a pre-order, not a donation.

I'm not experienced enough in Kickstarter myself, yet I wonder whether really "most" people who contribute to a donation-based Kickstarter are so confused they thought they were buying something.

3. Socialized game development disincentivizes developers and artists. If everyone is paid equally, then the most talented are severely undercompensated and the least talented are severely overcompensated while they do the minimum necessary to be paid. A talented developer or artist can make substantially more going into some other industry than they would in a socialized system. It's the current video game industry problem, extremely long hours, comparitively low pay, and the most talented people simply go work in another industry for 50% more money and a normal work week.

Though technically, the word is fine, you're using the word "socialized" as a scare word. All kinds of entities are "socialized" in some sense or another—a human family, a basketball court, even a conventional business corporation is a "social organism", in the sense that individual human beings band together to do something more and better than could be done alone as a single individual.

"Socialized", in the sense of "state socialism", destroys the individuality. Yet it is not impossible for a free cultural or economic association to be both individualized and co-operative.

4. It facilitates scamming. Kickstarter has a lot of problems with this already, someone throws together a bunch of concept art, gets the pledges, and then "it didn't work out". Socialized game development would be even worse, as I said earlier, just rapidly generate a ton of drek with no real effort, take money.

Rygar, you're pretty skillful at saying exactly why things are best staying just the way they are. I imagine before Kickstarter was invented in 2009, if you'd heard of it, you could've given a list of seven logical reasons why it would never work, or would only barely work.

Yet even given your bad experiences with crowdfunding, you and I both could truthfully name several RPG offerings which simply would not exist if Kickstarter hadn't initiated a new way.

5. If game developers can't make game development their full time job, then capitalism is working properly. Either their product doesn't have much appeal, appeals only to a very niche market, or is of poor quality. Socializing it won't change anything. If 5 developers cannot make a living developing 5 games alone, they cannot make a living by sharing the revenues of those 5 games either.

Same with Hasbro and Paizo? How's it sound to say:

"If the various individuals who make up the D&D brand team cannot, as single individuals, make a living making their own separate games, then they cannot make a living by sharing the revenues of the collective efforts as part of the Hasbro social entity."

An artist/designer-owned association or guild is essentially a "benefit-corporation" with different values (placing "love of the game" first), different social aesthetics (one person's "corporation" is another's "association"), and a more equitable and fraternal pay scale.

Which means...

6. Your whole plan is definitely socialism.

If you mean "statist socialism", it's simply not true that my plan involves socialism. If you mean that my plan only addresses the social/communitarian/co-operative aspect, without addressing the individualistic/creative/personal aspect, that's also not true. If you mean that I'm striving to find a way to open up a Third Golden Age of game design to be economically supported through freely-given creativity and mutual support, then my plan is "social." In that sense, my whole plan is definitely about both "socialism" and "individualism".

The only way your plan works is if there is 1 developer making a ton of money, and you take that money from him and give it to the other 5 people so they can make a living generating low-appeal products. The moment that 1 developer leaves because you've taken away all of his reward your whole system caves. It only works if that 1 developer is willing to not receive the rewards his efforts generated. There's very, very, very few people who will do this.

I'm not talking about a bunch of random people being compelled by the state to share their stuff. I'm talking about an association of published, established game designers and artists who already respect each others' work, banding together to make an associative counterpart to Hasbro, with the Mondragon Association as a model. Even The Economist magazine, which is the leading voice of your perspective, admits that Mondragon does some things right.

7. Your plan also sounds like the Cable TV bundle problem. If I want to watch HBO, I have to subsidize 200 channels of stuff I will never watch. Ultimately, for me it becomes more cost effective to just wait for the blurays and not have Cable TV. For others it is more cost effective to just torrent the 1 show they watch instead of paying for the 200 channels they don't watch. People are very resistant to subsidizing products they don't want or use.

I feel the same way about Hasbro. That's one reason I'm resolved to skipping over 5E for now.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

From conversing with my EN World fellows, I have amended and clarified my resolve.

I went back and edited my OP.

Instead of this:

"I've resolved to refrain from buying a single Hasbro product until D&D is freed into the public domain of Free Culture."

I say:

"I refrain from buying a single Hasbro product until the degree of Openness of the rules system is revealed in early 2015. My decision then will hinge on whether it is Open enough for me to invest my interest and coin in this system. Public Domain is the most unequivocably Open."

 

[Mercurius]

Free Culture stuff

All of which sounds good, which I support in principle - although am skeptical will come out about any time soon, except in little bits and pieces. But I agree that "the glimmerings won't glow brighter unless they are consciously stoked" and applaud you for stoking them.

Time = Life. I'm not saying that's bad that, in our current way of life, authors treat their books as just another commodity to be bought and sold. But in a free cultural sector, creators are paid not so much "for the time they put into their creations", but paid because they are fruitful and inspiring, and because of their personal connection with the audience of patrons (such as kickstarter).

Yes, I think this is a key differentiation - and something I said in response to Rygar, using Maslow's "self-actualization" need as a guiding light.

Besides that, I only advocate that artists/creators freely de-commoditize their work, as a voluntary action toward realizing a Free Culture.

It is an interesting, radical idea - and one I will consider if and when I get to the point of trying to publish my novels-in-progress.

That said, I do like the idea of being paid for what I love to do - simply so that I can do more of what I love to do.

But free the SRD anyway, otherwise 5E will be handicapped and this edition will consist only of Hasbro works, plus contracted Hasbro works, plus fan works, plus a few things from third parties that are deftly written to be implicitly compatible with 5E (Goodman games "Fifth Edition" adventures). That's no Golden Age. That's just a slightly more liberal, slightly less constricted version of the Fourth Edition era.

I don't mean to be a downer, but if were a betting man it would be on this. I just don't see any major revolutionary thinking coming out of a company overlorded by Hasbro. I hope to be proven wrong!

 

[variant]

That's a good point. However, the Free Culture, Creative Commons, Open Source movement didn't exist yet in the 1970s.

In our decade, there are now things which have come into being which wouldn't have existed if it weren't for the Free Culture movement; for example: Linux, all the 3E-based RPGs such as MnM and Pathfinder (the d20 System and OGL weren't bought or sold), and Wikipedia. Others could name more.

It'd be like saying in the year 2000: "Wikipedia makes no sense. If it wasn't for profit, Encyclopedia Britannica and Microsoft Encarta wouldn't exist today." (Encyclopedia Britannica and Microsoft Encarta stuck to the corporate profit model, and now barely exist.)

The OGL was intentionally modeled on the GNU open software license, which is part of the Free Culture movement. Now Free Culture advocates are aiming for complete, voluntary decommodization of cultural services and cultural objects into the Public Domain.

Without profit we wouldn't have Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, nor the consoles to play them on. There wouldn't be Vampire the Masquerade, Shadowrun, nor GURPS. We wouldn't have fictional novels like A Song of Ice and Fire and all the various games based off the series. The Hobbit would be collecting dust in his son's closet and the countless things that followed it wouldn't exist. We wouldn't have most of the medical technology and medicines to cure and vaccinate against some of the most deadly diseases.

Linux is pretty much the epitome of what you want, a clunky, hard to operate operating system that can only attempt to model their ideas off of their professionally designed competition. It is what the entire open source concept has mostly been about: taking designs and concepts that have been designed by companies and trying to create free versions of them.

So yes, there's Linux, but we wouldn't have Mac OS nor Windows and without them your average person wouldn't have a computer which means the internet as we know it wouldn't exist.

Wikipedia is the absolute worst example. It is filled with inaccuracies and misinformation and all of it continues to be perpetuated because people actually think it's a reliable source.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

The conventional way to do that is to just pay artists well for their work. Like WotC does!

The conventional way is great, but isn't quite "ensuring." Nothing in a free market is sure because everything is open to negotiation. "Ensuring" implies governmental force.

 

[Chaos Disciple]

D&D 5th Edition I'll make my own Fifth Edition.

Hi DnDPhilmont

Great thread

I got good news and bad news.

First the good news:
Game rules are already public domain so you can do what ever you want with them.

Now the bad news:
The publishing industry loves its Intellectual Property and will never give it away (and I think its a little rude to ask)

If you intend to create your own "publication" and join the "publishing industry" you should try to understand how they operate and respect their ways (copyrights, TM, OGL etc.)

Personally I enjoy designing games because the rules are already completely free to use, and can be expressed in so many different ways, plus I wouldn’t want any "industry" as stewards of public domain (dingo watch the baby and all that)

Also, if you take the time and learn how to easily recognize the difference between Intellectual property (as in a copyright protected work), and public domain (as in a game rule, mechanic, process, system, etc.), you might notice that everything you really want is already free


CD

 

[Dungeonosophy]

When I read this, the thought came to me that there are really three major levels:

1. The top-down, corporate model - which is what we see with Hasbro > WotC > D&D, and is pretty much the default model in the world right now.

2. The small company run by folks deeply invested in what they are producing - which is what we see with Paizo and TSR pre-Blume brothers: a game company run by gamers.

3. A profit-sharing collective. I don't know if this exists much in the world yet, but Alvarado St. Bakery comes to mind, which is worker owned (according to Wikipedia, the average long-term worker makes $65-70K a year).

The spectrum is obvious - from top-down, shareholder structure to a collectivity of workers, artists, etc.

Yes, that's an apt word: a spectrum. I'm only talking about a kind of game enterprise which is one step more "intentional" than the relatively encultured, designer-oriented examples such as Paizo or Green Ronin. I'm not speaking abstractly. Though I haven't started a game company yet, me and a circle of friends have pooled all our income for the past two years.

I don't buy this, which is rather "20th century thinking" with regards to motivation - as if the main source of creative motivation is money. Most game designers do it first and foremost out of love

Dan Pink's book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us is all about this. For example, he describes how Google's productivity has risen from giving designers a chunk of paid time to work on whatever they wish. Here's a summary: "He demonstrates that while carrots and sticks worked successfully in the twentieth century, that’s precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today’s challenges. In Drive, he examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose"

Also, the main reward for any creative endeavor should be the creation itself. Very few artists (in the broadest sense of the word) are successful when their primary motivation is money - or rather, that's when "art" becomes "entertainment" and loses its vitality.

Well said. That's the way I felt about the vitality of 4E relative to 3.0E.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Hi DnDPhilmont
Great thread

Hi Chaos Disciple. I've got a lot out the response. You guys have stimulated my imagination and will.

The publishing industry loves its Intellectual Property and will never give it away (and I think its a little rude to ask)

I'm not here to bow and scrape. It's not a tragedy to express clearly and freshly what conditions I genuinely perceive would bring a Third Golden Age of pencil & paper tabletop roleplay.

I wouldn’t want any "industry" as stewards of public domain

No one and everyone is steward of humanity's Public Domain. As it stands under the national law, Hasbro is the steward of the D&D brand and the D&D Worlds. I am striving, in a little way, to evoke a change in thinking which would enhance the already, in some ways, admirable quality of this stewardship. Believe me, I know it's likely that Hasbro will lumber along in a predictable mindset, and make the 5E era only a slightly more lively era than the 4E GSL era. In that case, all power to Pathfinder, 13th Age, and the other enculturated, lively iterations of D&D which will continue to flourish.

everything you really want is already free

Perhaps you're right. Those are wise words to close with.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

3 elements should be 2 more than needed to shut it down. This isn't the place to wax political.

I'm neutral in regard to closing the thread. I've gotten a lot of inspiration from it--thanks to everyones responses, both pro and con. I now have a better understanding of where people are coming from. I'm grateful for that.

I admit that the political element is one-third of this thread, and since the tradition of this community is no discussion of the political/legal/rights life in regard to D&D, and since I respect EN World community tradition, I myself second the call for the thread to be closed.

I like the administrators of EN World, and have no beef with them.

I'm okay with letting it drop, or moving to PM or Circvs Maximvs. I need to get rolling on my game prep for tomorrow night anyway.

Shane Henry (DnD Philmont).