Hello, I am lawyer with a PSA: almost everyone is wrong about the OGL and SRD. Clearing up confusion.

[Reynard]

I'm not as sure about the commercial implications for WotC. I'm not denying that there are some sales made by them that are driven/supported by 3PP materials, but I have doubts about how big this is as a proportion of the overall recent growth of D&D.

If Hasbro wants to "win back their IP rights" is this really directed at Paizo's present position? Or any other 3PP? Or at controlling further growth that they envisage flowing from the anticipated success of the movie? To me, it makes more sense as a future-oriented concern than vindictively trying to destroy the present ecosystem.

I think they want to make sure they define what D&D is in the marketplace since they intend on leveraging the brand effectively. It isn't that WotC doesn't want 3PP support, they just want to control it. And if the big 3PP companies they are courting go along, they will.

 

[pemerton]

I think D&D's success is to a large extent goodwill-dependent, unlike the success of Microsoft Windows. I do think D&D's recent success benefitted directly from 3PP support, but more than that they benefitted from community goodwill from 2014 onwards.

No one is obliged to play D&D or buy D&D product, the way we may feel obliged to use Microsoft Windows (or Apple). I feel they are salting their own fields in a way they don't seem to understand. It's like how many companies care about comments on Twitter and media sites from 'thought leaders'; the atmosphere created by a relatively small group flows downstream to the general mass of consumers.

Maybe.

But I'm not sure if the relevant "thought leaders" are Paizo-philes or Critical Role. If WotC haven't reached some sort of understanding with Critical Role (and similar performers who seem to provide a huge outreach function), that would seem to be a major mis-step.

 

[S'mon]

Maybe.

But I'm not sure if the relevant "thought leaders" are Paizo-philes or Critical Role. If WotC haven't reached some sort of understanding with Critical Role (and similar performers who seem to provide a huge outreach function), that would seem to be a major mis-step.

I don't think they have. Matt Mercer seems to have indicated he's not happy.
I was actually thinking primarily of mainstream gaming media coverage, which seems uniformly hostile to WoTC.

 

[mamba]

And it's this that has me wondering about the timing. If lawfare is the intended process for the "revoke it" idea, what is the reason as to why WotC is no longer discussing it?

who says they aren’t?

It was intended for release on January 4, and if they had already committed to that view, there isn't a reason I can see for the delay in discussion.

much more 3PP and fan pushback than they anticipated

PR reasons maybe? But if lawfare was already the intended, the PR ramifications would have already been prepared beforehand. Incompetence is always an option (Glass Onions), but it really seems to me beyond incompetent to have not run a "how's this going to affect our PR" before releasing such an industry-changing announcement.

I am sure they ran some kind of analysis, that doesn’t mean it was close to accurate

 

[Reynard]

I don't think they have. Matt Mercer seems to have indicated he's not happy.
I was actually thinking primarily of mainstream gaming media coverage, which seems uniformly hostile to WoTC.

Mercer is going to have to test the wind carefully. The relationship between CR and D&D is a weird circular one. Years ago, CR brought people to D&D. But more recently I bet D&D brought people to CR. And as I understand it, CR fans skew older than most new D&D fans - 30-ish rather than late teens. I don't recall where I read that, though, so I won't plant a flag on it. In either case, knowing what percentage of his fans will follow him anywhere will be really important if he chooses to drop D&D for idealistic reasons.

 

[jgbrowning]

who says they aren’t?


much more 3PP and fan pushback than they anticipated


I am sure they ran some kind of analysis, that doesn’t mean it was close to accurate

Somehow I managed to say the opposite of what I meant. sigh Sorry about that!

I meant to say is, "If lawfare is the intended process for the "revoke it" idea, what is the reason as to why WotC is still discussing it?"

ie. if they had already decided that nuking-it-all was the plan they were going with when they'd created the NoOgl, there's no reason for them to be delaying now.

joe b.

 

[mamba]

Somehow I managed to say the opposite of what I meant. sigh Sorry about that!

I meant to say is, "If lawfare is the intended process for the "revoke it" idea, what is the reason as to why WotC is still discussing it?"

ie. if they had already decided that nuking-it-all was the plan they were going with when they'd created the NoOgl, there's no reason for them to be delaying now.

joe b.

you are still saying the same thing and my answer is still the same

They delay because there is more pushback than they expected. 3PPs rather get rid of the OGL and rework their products than signing on to the new one, while customers threaten to boycott D$D or even everything Hasbro. Right now that looks like the downside is larger than the upside, or at a minimum larger than they expected, so they are reevaluating

 

[pemerton]

I don't think they have. Matt Mercer seems to have indicated he's not happy.

That strikes me as a miscalculation - though @Reynard's post at 275 is interesting. (I've got no independent knowledge about any of those details.)

I was actually thinking primarily of mainstream gaming media coverage, which seems uniformly hostile to WoTC.

How influential is that? I'm a fairly serious RPGer and have only encountered that stuff a few times when linked to on ENworld. But I may be out of touch!

 

[jgbrowning]

you are still saying the same thing and my answer is still the same

They delay because there is more pushback than they expected. 3PPs rather get rid of the OGL and rework their products than signing on to the new one, while customers threaten to boycott D$D or even everything Hasbro. Right now that looks like the downside is larger than the upside, or at a minimum larger than they expected, so they are reevaluating

Ah, I see. Yes, we do differ there. I'd expect that all of those responses are something that anyone with a modicum of foresight would have fully anticipated before deciding upon something as significant as a lawfare "revoke the OGL" decision. I assume that all of these downsides would have already been fully weighted and found short-term compared to the reclamation of the IP they were seeking to "un-open."

But, I am fully acceptant to the belief that I am attributing far more wisdom, foresight, and market knowledge than is actually present in the decision makers at WotC.

joe b.

 

[Art Waring]

Alexander Macris of Autarch has a very grim post on therpgsite WOTC, SRD, Gettin' Lawyerly

I wish you were right, but unfortunately I believe you are wrong.

By the misfortune of having studied law, I have a wide network of attorneys in my contacts. I already consulted with one of the top IP lawyers in the United States about this issue and the situation is grim. The attorney I spoke to is personally familiar with Hasbro and he said that Hasbro's litigation war chest is absolutely huge and they are out for blood. He said to expect them to litigate to win back their IP rights with a courtroom battle lasting 3-4 years. I asked him if I could fight back with a $100,000 GoFundMe and he literally laughed. He said it would cost $500,000 simply to get through pre-trial motions and $2-3M to see it through to completion. Hasbro will utterly bury any opponent in motions. The expense alone makes it impossible for anyone at all to fight this except the likes of Paizo. He stressed this over and over in the call: It doesn't matter how good my argument is because I will never get to make that argument. I'll be bankrupt before then.

Moreover, Wizards doesn't even need to litigate. It just needs to persuade Kickstarter and DriveThruRPG that the bread is buttered on their side. Then they can simply have my game, Pundit's game, anyone's game they don't like, shut off from the crowdfunding and distribution we need to be viable. They can do the same on YouTube, just as music companies and Nintendo do, on anyone they want to tread on. We already know how platforms behave in the face of corporate bullies. It will happen in our industry, too, if we're not careful.

I asked what my options were, given this dire situation, and he said "try not to let them notice you." Well, they've already noticed me. "Release anything you can before the new license drops." Well, what about my future product? "Never use the OGL and SRD again in the future and hope they don't care enough to sue you anyway."

The attorney I spoke to is a gamer, has impeccable credentials, and is a trusted friend of 20 years; he has no reason to lie to me or dissuade me. So, based on the advice of the best expert I know, I believe the situation is quite dire. I wish it were a case of crying wolf, but there is literally a wolf and it's here to feast.

I wish I had better news but that's the cold splash of water I got in my face yesterday.

If this is accurate, it implies WoTC-Hasbro really are set on the nuclear option, and that they would rather destroy the 3PP ecosystem created by the OGL than see it continue to use 'their IP'. I think this would destroy the RPG industry as we know it and set things back to something more like the 1990s. The reputational damage to WoTC would be even greater than what TSR suffered. I think the actual economic effect on WoTC would be almost as devastating as that suffered by their victims. The parrallel of Russia's invasion of Ukraine comes to mind.

And here I was trying to stay at least a little bit optimistic about things. This deal keeps getting worse all the time...