TTRPGS, Blockchains, and NFTs

When Kickstarter announced recently that it would be investing in blockchain-based infrastructure, there was widespread backlash. Blockchain technology is environmentally damaging and is of limited use. Creators such as Possum Creek Games (Wanderhome) announced their intentions to move off Kickstarter, while companies such as Chaosium and Wizards of the Coast continue to express interested in non-fungible tokens, digital items which exist on a blockchain.

While I'm writing this article, I do need to point out that I'm not a great person to do so; my understanding of blockchains, NFTs, cryptocurrencies, and related technologies is very, very limited and my attempts to get a handle on the subject have not been entirely successful. I'm sure more informed people will post in the comments.

What the heck is an NFT (& what does it mean for digital artists)

What is a non-fungible token (NFT)? In this graphic designer's guide to NFTs, we explore how Non-Fungible Tokens work in the context of digital art and how you can start turning your digital creations into sought-after NFTs.

dribbble.com

Kickstarter is not the only tabletop roleplaying game adjacent company delving into such technologies. Call of Cthulhu publisher Chaosium announced in July 2021 that it was working with an NFT company to bring their Mythos content to a digitally collectible market, with specific plans to sell two different models -- the Necromonicon and a bust of Cthulhu -- from the Cthulhu Mythos; and while things went quiet for a while, last week the company tweeted that 'We have more - lots more -- to drop... when the Stars are Right." A Facebook statement from Chaosium's CEO appeared on Twitter talking more about the decision.

D&D producer Wizards of the Coast said in April 2021 that it was considering NFTs for Magic: The Gathering. More recently, an email from WotC's legal representatives to a company planning to use NFT technology in conjunction with M:tG cards, alleging unlawful infringement of its IP, indicated that WotC was "currently evaluating its future plans regarding NFTs and the MAGIC: THE GATHERING cards" but that "no decision has been made at this time."

On Twitter, ErikTheBearik compiled Hasbro/WotC's involvement with NFTs so far.

Gripnr is a '5e based TTRPG NFT protocol' with Stephen Radney-MacFarland (D&D, Star Wars Saga Edition, Pathfinder) as its lead game designer. OK, so that's about as much of that as I understand!

Some company in the TTRPG sphere have taken a stand. DriveThruRPG stated that "In regard to NFTs – We see no use for this technology in our business ever." Itch.io was a bit more emphatic:

A few have asked about our stance on NFTs: NFTs are a scam. If you think they are legitimately useful for anything other than the exploitation of creators, financial scams, and the destruction of the planet the [sic] we ask that [you] please reevaluate your life choices. Peace. [an emoji of a hand making the “Peace” symbol]

Also [expletive deleted] any company that says they support creators and also endorses NFTs in any way. They only care about their own profit and the opportunity for wealth above anyone else. Especially given the now easily available discourse concerning the problems of NFTs.

How can you be so dense?

NFTs -- non-fungible tokens -- and blockchains have been dominating the news recently, and with individuals and companies taking strong stances against them, it's fair to ask why. The environmental impact of the technology has been widely documented - it's inefficient, and the need for blockchains -- a sort of decentralized ledger -- to have multiple users validate and record transactions makes it very energy intensive. In an era when climate change is having more and more devastating effects around the world, use of such technologies attracts considerable backlash.

Other ethical concerns regarding NFTs specifically is that the purchaser of an NFT is not actually purchasing anything, and the value for the digital 'token' they've purchased is speculative. When you buy the NFT of a piece of art (for example) you don't own the art itself; you only own a digital token associated with the art. The whole concept is likened to a 'house of cards' or a 'scam' by its critics.

 

[Abstruse]

I read a hypothesis the other day that the rise of weird investments these days (like cryptocurrency and NFTs) is related to the way the current economy strongly benefits those who are already rich. The TL;DR version is that the richest are so flush with cash that the investment opportunities in traditional areas (like the stock market) can't really absorb that sort of money, so instead they go looking for other places to invest.

So this is complicated and it's a topic I don't claim to fully understand myself, so grain of salt on this explanation...but what's going on right now is that federal interest rates are 0%. That means that the traditional places to keep your money aren't good values. When the interest rate was higher than zero, you could put your extra money in government bonds or CDs or savings accounts and, in a decade or two, you'd get back that much money plus a lot more from the compounding of the interest. With rates at 0%, there's no incentive to do that. However much money you put in is how much you get out, which makes it a bad investment because natural inflation is going to mean you technically get back less than you put in.

So the wealthy are looking for other places to park their money. And to be clear, we're talking about their extra money after they buy their fifth vacation mansion and the yacht so big it has a pool with its own, smaller yacht. If you've seen the memes online of "If Insert Billionaire Here spent Insert Really High Dollar Amount Here a day every single day since Insert Historical Event Here, he'd still be a billionaire", we're talking about all that extra money. This is the money that they don't care if it grows and don't need to spend it on anything, it's money they want to sit there and not do anything dangerous and just slowly grow over time.

Now with interest rates at 0%, the most obvious place to put that money is the stock market. Except some companies have started doing really weird things that make this not a good idea. I mean the stock market is always volatile, but there are some stocks that are considered good long-term investments. You don't hear a lot about them because the day-trader types and the media that caters to them don't care about "constantly performs to expectations nothing more nothing less", they want the high-risk high-reward stuff. But even THOSE stocks have had problems as one considered a venerable "solid investment" was AT&T. Which decided "The telecom interesting is boring, let's be the new Netflix instead!" then bought a bunch of media companies including HBO and had no idea what to do with them because, well, they're a telecom company not a media production company. Because of their buying spree, they're not seen as a solid investment anymore. Everybody needs a phone and phone service, but not everybody wants to go see Insert DC Movie You Personally Dislike Here so when it flops, it affects stock prices. This means a lot of people who have a lot of money to park are now side-eyeing all these companies that used to be solid investments in case they might decide to do something to get exponential growth that then might blow up in their faces.

And that's when they start looking for other places to park their money. Real estate, art auctions, commodities like gold or silver, stuff like that. They're buying stuff that has no real value for them just because it's worth money. They buy entire highrise buildings and don't lease them out because they don't care about being landlords, they just want to park their money somewhere. They buy gold and silver and platinum and just let it sit in vaults because they don't want to sell it to jewelers or electronic companies that need it to make stuff. They don't even look at the art they buy, they just buy it then "lend" it to galleries with massive insurance policies on them in case some bored security guard decides to draw googly eyes on their $1 million piggy bank (yes, that happened).

So what if you could buy something that has a high value that won't take up any space and doesn't need to be managed? Well then let me tell you about NFTs! Then they give a spiel that sounds like a late-night commercial for Colombo Collectible Plates. "The value will only go up!" When you're a billionaire, investing $50 million in something that might or might not be a stable investment isn't a big deal, but it's a HUGE deal for people who need $50 million in capital for their pyramid scheme.

And to play both sides, the same people selling NFTs as solid, non-volatile investments are also selling businesses on NFTs as the "next big thing" they don't want to miss out on, talking up all the huge gains and sewing fear of missing out in executives trained for business who don't understand technology whatsoever but are in charge of massive tech companies. "This is the new trend so we must follow it or we'll be left behind!" because tech companies are on the other end of the investing spectrum from those other stocks because their entire ecosystem is based on constant quarter-over-quarter growth. So these companies rise fast and fall fast and there's a constant fear among the executives they're standing on crumbling ground so they have to move onto the next big thing before it's the next big thing. And right now, they're being sold that NFTs are the next big thing.

If you want to know how all this is based around the federal interest rate, the current tanking of crypto prices coincided with a drop in the stock market, both of which came on reports that the FOMC was considering raising the federal interest rate. Not they'd done it, not that they decided to do it, but just even them just thinking about maybe doing it was enough to cause a crash. Because it means all these rich people can buy bonds and CDs and the like again instead of putting their money in stocks and commodities and everybody who lives on that volatility wants to cash out before everyone else can cash out and tank all the prices.

So yeah, the TL;DR: Saving bonds suck now, so all the rich people are buying anything they can that might be valuable instead because they have too much money and not enough to spend it on.

 

[J.Quondam]

Sometimes I really hate being stuck in this timeline.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Sometimes I really hate being stuck in this timeline.

Coming on to Enworld and learning that there is a TTRPG maker that is interested in NFTs...

 

[Staffan]

So this is complicated and it's a topic I don't claim to fully understand myself, so grain of salt on this explanation

Thank you. That was a far more cogent explanation than my own vague recollection of twitter and blog posts that sounded like they knew what they were talking about.

 

[darjr]

 

[cthulhureborn]

Someone used the older SRD of BRP and made a free Cthulhu game. Looking it up, it was called Open Cthulhu, now called Cthulhu Reborn, apparently. Chaosium went after them like rabid dogs and got several forums to block their content. It was entirely ugly.

Hi, I'm the publisher of Cthulhu Reborn .... just wanted to point out one small thing. We are separate from the group of fine folks who created Open Cthulhu. Yes, we wrote a bunch at the time about that system (and Chaosium's reaction to it) on our blog, but the Open Cthulhu SRD was someone else's creation.

Since then, however, we HAVE taken the lessons from that whole debacle and created some all new SRDs which go under the name Cthulhu Eternal. These navigate the intricacies of D100 OGL inheritance in a different way than Open Cthulhu. FWIW the excellent German folks who created the FHTAGN RPG last year did exactly the same (via the same pathway as us).

That minor point aside ... we are in violent agreement with the general anti-NFT stance voiced by many people in this thread. We wouldn't touch them (not even with a large bhole).


Dean (from Cthulhu Reborn)

 

[overgeeked]

Hi, I'm the publisher of Cthulhu Reborn .... just wanted to point out one small thing. We are separate from the group of fine folks who created Open Cthulhu. Yes, we wrote a bunch at the time about that system (and Chaosium's reaction to it) on our blog, but the Open Cthulhu SRD was someone else's creation.

Since then, however, we HAVE taken the lessons from that whole debacle and created some all new SRDs which go under the name Cthulhu Eternal. These navigate the intricacies of D100 OGL inheritance in a different way than Open Cthulhu. FWIW the excellent German folks who created the FHTAGN RPG last year did exactly the same (via the same pathway as us).

That minor point aside ... we are in violent agreement with the general anti-NFT stance voiced by many people in this thread. We wouldn't touch them (not even with a large bhole).

Dean (from Cthulhu Reborn)

I appreciate the correction. Thank you.

 

[Abstruse]

Okay, so this popped up on my Twitter feed from Dan Olson (the guy who made the video linked way at the start of the thread) in reference to a DAO minting NFTs based on Magic: The Gathering cards:


The image is from their mission statement:

This is absolutely hilarious, but requires a bit of knowledge to understand why.

A DAO which stands for "Decentralized Autonomous Organization" and is hard to describe but it's basically a way to pool cryptocurrency together into a single account like contributing to a pot for a single goal, the most famous was the recent purchase of a copy of the filming bible for Darren Aronofsky's cancelled adaptation of Dune. Then said, because they bought the book, they were going to sell scans of the book as NFTs and make their own movie based on Dune not understanding that buying a book, no matter how rare, does not give you the copyright of the book. Like just because I have a first printing of Deities & Demigods on my shelf doesn't mean that I now own Dungeons & Dragons.

So this DAO wants to "bring the concept of sound money to the Magic economy--" because every game store on the planet doesn't exist apparently "--so players can trust the scarcity of their investments." It's a collectible card game. The cards are already scarce. There was an auction last year for an Alpha Black Lotus that sold for over $500,000 and people are constantly complaining about the Reserve List. This isn't even a solution looking for a problem, this is a solution looking for a problem that already has a solution.

But my favorite line is this one:

In the long run, I think there's a chance we can buy the Magic brand from Wizards of the Coast.

This was posted the same week that Hasbro released its annual financial report showing that Wizards of the Coast made up 72% of the company's operating profit. And these guys think they're just going to buy Magic: The Gathering. I'm not saying it's impossible for Hasbro to sell M:TG. Highly unlikely since it's propping up the company right now, but possible. But it would cost tens of billions of dollars because you'd not only be buying what the brand is worth right now but all future profits the brand would generate. And when you're talking hundreds of millions in profits a year, that's a lot of future profit you're trying to buy off them. Oh, and Hasbro would want real-world actually-existing dollars, not "this public ledger says I own a bunch of these digital tokens that are worth real money because I and a couple thousand other people say so." Normally my go-to analogy for buying and selling real-world items using cryptocurrency is "Imagine trying to pay for your tab in a restaurant using Magic: The Gathering cards, then having to explain to the disinterested waiter what Magic: The Gathering is and how the cards are totally worth more than the bill", but that doesn't work because it's the company that makes Magic: The Gathering cards!

 

[darjr]

Those DAO folks?

Wow! Scam, all the way down.

I dunno if those folks were delusional, just didn't know, or where lying through their teeth to prop up "value".

which is the one of the central problems with dealing with many of these folks.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

And it was a good post, with excellent (and hilarious) examples. Honestly, best post in the thread so far.

It convinced me that the tech is wild and unregulated, and a perfect playground for scammers. But it did not convince me that the tech is, by it's nature, a scam. That all NFTs are scams.

Of course, the US dollar and all other currencies in use, including metal based ones like gold are scams too.