D&D General NFTs Are Here To Ruin Dungeons & Dragons

[Professor Murder]

I fully believe that they're watching, but that they would realistically go forward with it, that I seriously doubt. Hasbro has a good thing going with WotC, and crypto is contentious at best (as this thread clearly shows). It would be high risk for indeterminate reward, which would fall somewhere along the spectrum between an idiotic and an utterly ruinous business decision. I honestly don't think that this is something we need to be seriously concerned about. This company wants to sell characters for approx $300 a pop. Are you realistically concerned that their business model will be successful, because I'm not.

I will always trust that greed has no limit but what it can get away with. NFTs are contentious, yes. Good. People responding with rage is that very contention. Rage on.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Energy production is finite. To manage its impacts on our planet, we need to not only increase renewables on the supply side, we need to do all we can to decrease usage on the demand side. If a NFT company builds a solar farm to power its NFT farm, that solar farm could have been built to contribute to more essential/efficient energy needs.

Rape, while a loaded word to many, is a legitimate term to use in this case. Dictionary.com gives the third definition of the word rape is "an act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; [synonyms]: despoliation; violation [example usage]: the rape of the countryside."

Energy production is technically finite. In practice, we've tapped only a tiny fraction of what is possible with renewables.

Sure, if a company builds a solar farm to power their crypto farm, they COULD have built that solar farm and fed it to the grid. Would they have though? Almost certainly, NO! They would have no incentive to do so, and to think otherwise is just wishful thinking. Do I wish we lived in a world where companies lived up to ethical and moral obligations and just built solar farms because they're necessary for the survival of the planet? Of course! Is that the world we actually live in? Unfortunately, it obviously is not.

The solar industry (as well as other industries focused on renewables) still have a lot of room for growth. That growth helps drive down costs, which in turn increases adoption of the technology. There is a saturation point where that stops being true, but we're nowhere near it. More demand for the renewable energy industry would likely be a very good thing for the planet.


Just because a word has more than one meaning does NOT make those meanings equivalent or even analogous. The original quote that I responded to which the quote you quoted was in response to was not referring to the meaning defined as "despoilation".

 

[Rabulias]

Even with a pure profit mindset, I don't see this working. Assuming, a pure profit motivation to drive this, the price one can charge for higher level characters will be dampened as their profit potential will be less than a new character. Say a 1st level starts at $300, a 10th level one at $500, and a 20th level at $1,000 (hypothetical numbers for illustration purposes). Why buy the $500 one, work it up to 20th level and sell for $1,000 ($500 profit), when you can start at 1st and work up to 20th and sell for $700 profit?

With this in mind, it will be harder to sell higher level characters, pressuring their prices down, making this unattractive to those motivated to hyperprofit off these things. Now if their world and adventures are the draw, and justify the cost, this might be a good thing to keep the profit hunters away, but it is still a price barrier for many people in the world. If they really have a great world to play in, cut costs by ditching the NFT/blockchain aspects, lower the price to get started, and make up the difference with volume. They could even partner with existing VTT companies to widen their audience.

 

[Faolyn]

Your response seems either predicated on a misunderstanding or wishful thinking.

If a company builds a solar farm to power their crypto farm, then those renewables would absolutely not have been there and been used for other things without the crypto farm. They built the solar farm to power the crypto farm. No crypto farm means that they likely would have had no incentive to build the solar farm.

Of course, now you might object on the grounds of what good are those renewables doing if they are being guzzled up by the crypto? Which is a fair objection, insofar as it goes. However, greater adoption fuels greater industry, driving down costs and fueling ever greater adoption.

When I was a kid, solar panels were so inefficient and expensive, that my dad (a very intelligent engineer) scoffed at the idea that there would ever be widespread adoption. Yet, thanks in large part to government subsidies, the industry was able to advance and today I live in a house that has solar panels (which actually produce more energy than we consume, though I admit that it does not mean that our energy use is entirely clean).

I agree that the buying of energy credits is something of a shell game, and I'm far from a fan of crypto. That said, I think that there is a possibility (if not the probability) that some good might come of them. Although, that could very well be wishful thinking on my own part.

OK, I can't say I'm all that knowledgeable about the mechanics here, but... it seems to me it'd be unlikely that a crypto farm is going to either lead or inspire research into better solar panels, and while I'm sure they'd use a lot of panels, I don't think that they'd use so many as to count as "greater adoption." And it's also unlikely that they would be producing excess energy that other people can buy, on the grounds that they would likely just expand their business to use up any excess electricity they produce. So at most, they'd be neutral.

 

[darjr]

Cmon. They are not doing this for the sake of the fate of the rest of us? Not to even mention the climate. If so they’d just forget the whole thing and move on. It’s so absurd that abandonment of crypto is the very best thing they could do to help with the climate.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

After reading the article again, I realized what this thing is.

It's just a really bad MMO.

That's it. That's all it can be. Because in any given adventure the PCs have to go into the dungeon and kick down every single door and kill every monster and grab every piece of loot. If they don't, they're missing out on levels and loot that supposedly convert to real-world value.

What if the group finds a way to sneak past the ogres in one area?

Unacceptable. Leaving money (XP) on the table.

What if they made a deal with the head priest of the temple of the snake god, for inside info about a totally different, more lucrative dungeon to raid, in exchange for leaving this one early?

Again, that's leaving money on the table, and also the DM can't improvise basically anything, because the amount of XP and loot that's available has to be finite and carefully monitored, or else all tables wouldn't be balanced, and DMs would be able to make it rain on their groups, or at the very least go easy, likely for a cut of the profits.

So the DM isn't really a DM, but a dealer at a casino, bound by similar rules, with their own paid position on the line.

That means there are no story hooks, no surprise narrative branches, no creativity, no incentive to roleplay (we are on the clock here, people!), no alternate interpretations of spells or magic weapons or monster powers.

It's an MMO with no graphics, incredibly slow combats, but worst of all, everything comes with the stink and panic of making money. You couldn't come up with a more nightmarish take on railroading if you tried.

 

[Fanaelialae]

OK, I can't say I'm all that knowledgeable about the mechanics here, but... it seems to me it'd be unlikely that a crypto farm is going to either lead or inspire research into better solar panels, and while I'm sure they'd use a lot of panels, I don't think that they'd use so many as to count as "greater adoption." And it's also unlikely that they would be producing excess energy that other people can buy, on the grounds that they would likely just expand their business to use up any excess electricity they produce. So at most, they'd be neutral.

I think you misconstrued what I was saying.

I did not claim that they would lead or (directly) inspire better solar panels. Nor was I making a claim that any single, solitary crypto farm could make such an impact upon an industry. And never did I make any claim whatsoever about them generating excess electricity (in fact, I literally stated that any electricity they generated would "[be] guzzled up").

The idea is about economics of scale. Let's just assume for a moment that the majority of crypto farms decided to fuel their farms using renewables. Maybe a new law gets passed mandating it, or it's simply that the optics of crypto get so bad that it's a borderline necessity; doesn't actually matter why. That would cause a surge of demand for renewables, flooding the renewables market with money. This in turn would encourage growth of the renewables market, bringing costs down. Which in turn, would encourage adoption by non-crypto-farmers. Which in turn fuels more growth, and (potentially) innovation.

One of the issues with the renewables industry is that a lot of the money fueling the industry is from government subsidies and incentives. That limits the growth to what the government is willing to earmark for it. And, don't get me wrong, it has helped. When I was a kid, you almost never saw solar panels unless you were visiting NASA or something. Now I live in a town where I think as many as 33% of the houses have them. Unfortunately, that isn't the case for the rest of my state. Elsewhere, even being generous, it's probably closer to 5%.

Don't get me wrong. There's a lot that can go wrong. Even with the government subsidies, greedy business that were allegedly promoting renewables, did a lot to actually give them a bad name. However, a large influx of money flowing into the renewables industry would almost certainly do significant overall good for both the renewables industry and, by extension, the environment.

 

[Mort]

After reading the article again, I realized what this thing is.

It's just a really bad MMO.

That's it. That's all it can be. Because in any given adventure the PCs have to go into the dungeon and kick down every single door and kill every monster and grab every piece of loot. If they don't, they're missing out on levels and loot that supposedly convert to real-world value.

What if the group finds a way to sneak past the ogres in one area?

Unacceptable. Leaving money (XP) on the table.

What if they made a deal with the head priest of the temple of the snake god, for inside info about a totally different, more lucrative dungeon to raid, in exchange for leaving this one early?

Again, that's leaving money on the table, and also the DM can't improvise basically anything, because the amount of XP and loot that's available has to be finite and carefully monitored, or else all tables wouldn't be balanced, and DMs would be able to make it rain on their groups, or at the very least go easy, likely for a cut of the profits.

So the DM isn't really a DM, but a dealer at a casino, bound by similar rules, with their own paid position on the line.

That means there are no story hooks, no surprise narrative branches, no creativity, no incentive to roleplay (we are on the clock here, people!), no alternate interpretations of spells or magic weapons or monster powers.

It's an MMO with no graphics, incredibly slow combats, but worst of all, everything comes with the stink and panic of making money. You couldn't come up with a more nightmarish take on railroading if you tried.

Well, it's essentially organized play - but with a for profit angle/motive.

Organized play can work well, Adventurer's league and pathfinder society have been doing it for years and Living Greyhawk was a thing long before that.

But the for profit angle? I can't see that going well at all! Can you imagine a group of players fighting over stuff their characters find because the stuff might have RW value? Yuck!

Now that's just pure speculation. Perhaps they'll do something similar to adventurer's league where, at the end of the adventure, everyone can have a copy of the stuff found in the adventure. But considering one of the selling points is "unique stuff" I doubt that's the route they'll take.

There are just SO MANY red flags, and that's even outside the NFT, Crypto stuff.

That said, I'm approaching 20 posts in this thread, obviously I'm kind of interested to see where this goes.

 

[darjr]

 

[Faolyn]

The idea is about economics of scale. Let's just assume for a moment that the majority of crypto farms decided to fuel their farms using renewables. Maybe a new law gets passed mandating it, or it's simply that the optics of crypto get so bad that it's a borderline necessity; doesn't actually matter why. That would cause a surge of demand for renewables, flooding the renewables market with money. This in turn would encourage growth of the renewables market, bringing costs down. Which in turn, would encourage adoption by non-crypto-farmers. Which in turn fuels more growth, and (potentially) innovation.

I think these are two separate things, though.

I think that even if every crypto-farmer turned to renewables, all that would end up doing is encourage people to buy more crypto (at least, it would encourage people who are interested in it but don't want to do be involved because of the environmental cost, which renewables would mitigate). I don't really think people would say "Huh, it looks like Bob's House o' NFTs has solar panels, maybe I should get them too."

Also, my--admittedly not in-depth--research indicates that at least some crypto farms are claiming to already be using renewables to one degree or another. Whether they actually are (or are just lying about it) is another matter, but if they are, then... they haven't been responsible for creating a noticeably huge demand.

And since they require so much electricity, they want it cheap, and it's highly unlikely they'll switch to 100% renewables unless mandated--and it's also unlikely that governments are going to mandate that 100% renewables just because of crypto.