Can WotC be forgiven?

[S'mon]

Part of their "lifestyle brand" strategy has seemingly been to talk about dnd as a "community." To this end they've used influencers to introduce products and do actual plays at their dnd live events (or whatever they're called).

And I think very few former D&D Influencers will want to take the opprobrium of being officially associated with D&D, now. By and large these people are not mercenaries doing it for the clicks & cash; they are our fellow RPG nerds, cosplayers, and fans. And many are part of the 3PP ecosystem themselves.
(a) They are just as genuinely upset as the rest of us, often moreso.
(b) While money talks, it's not in their financial interest to be associated with WoTC now.

 

[Yaarel]

Man, I barely know who Bob Dylan is.

 

[S'mon]

Yeah, because all that free advertising, 3PP, Indy, Patreon, Kickstarter, all that attention that funneled into D&D?

Yeah that was a terrible thing for Wizards.

They seem to think so!

Personally I run Paizo stuff and OSR and other 3PP stuff with 5e rules, far more than I run WoTC-published adventures. Every time I do that it encourages my players to buy PHBs and DnD Beyond subscriptions, as Dancy intended. Somehow WoTC thinks that's a bad thing.

 

[Zardnaar]

They seem to think so!

Personally I run Paizo stuff and OSR and other 3PP stuff with 5e rules, far more than I run WoTC-published adventures. Every time I do that it encourages my players to buy PHBs and DnD Beyond subscriptions, as Dancy intended. Somehow WoTC thinks that's a bad thing.

I'm running Midgard die lack of 5E FRCS.

 

[Branduil]

For me, I'll only "forgive"(in the sense of being willing to buy their products again) WotC if they put all their old edition SRDs and the OneD&D SRD into ORC. That's what it would take at this point.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Do you really think a commercial publisher is going to release their back catalogue and current works for free?

Nope. Though I think technically that is going much further than what I was asking for. I merely meant the core systems and mechanical terminology, not the literal length and breadth of every possible concept and story. So, for example, if I wanted to write an RPG that used the terms "Paragon Path" and "Epic Destiny," that would be permitted, but having an ancient war between the dragonborn kingdom of Arkhosia and the tiefling kingdom of Bael Turath would probably not be permitted.

Even with that qualification, however, your core point remains correct. I find my proposal almost totally unbelievable, in fact. If WotC made every past edition's core mechanics open game content, I would be genuinely and thoroughly shocked.

Because at this point, I'm going to need to be genuinely and thoroughly shocked if WotC wants to earn forgiveness quickly and fully. There may be other, longer roads to forgiveness, but this would be the fast and dramatic one, a show of unequivocal good faith.

My expectation is that WotC will dig themselves deeper for the next six months to a year, and when they finally realize that they are making things even worse, they will fumble for another six months to a year making half-arsed, half-hearted, insincere, hollow gestures and platitudes toward doing better and changing their ways. When these efforts don't pay off either, there will be a period of silence as the new corporate leadership will be pressured to resign and given a golden parachute. Then new leadership will come in, at which point it becomes difficult to predict how things will advance from there. By that point, ORC will almost certainly be complete and will have galvanized the 3PP scene, and WotC/Hasbro will be wary of the optics of a nasty fight in the courts (if they didn't jump on such a suit immediately, that is, back during the "dig themselves deeper" phase.)

 

[Horwath]

 

[pemerton]

My expectation is that WotC will dig themselves deeper for the next six months to a year, and when they finally realize that they are making things even worse, they will fumble for another six months to a year making half-arsed, half-hearted, insincere, hollow gestures and platitudes toward doing better and changing their ways. When these efforts don't pay off either, there will be a period of silence as the new corporate leadership will be pressured to resign and given a golden parachute. Then new leadership will come in, at which point it becomes difficult to predict how things will advance from there. By that point, ORC will almost certainly be complete and will have galvanized the 3PP scene, and WotC/Hasbro will be wary of the optics of a nasty fight in the courts (if they didn't jump on such a suit immediately, that is, back during the "dig themselves deeper" phase.)

If people were confident WotC wouldn't sue over ORC, then they would have no reason not to keep using the OGL 1.0/1.0a, would they?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If people were confident WotC wouldn't sue over ORC, then they would have no reason not to keep using the OGL 1.0/1.0a, would they?

I honestly don't know!

 

[Aldarc]

Even large organizations can learn and change. It is hard, but it can happen.

Honestly, this is a learning time for Hasbro. They recently realized that their real money wasn't in typical consumer products, but in WotC's products, and they rearranged to work with that.

But, prior to this, Hasbro's major money came from pretty impersonal sales of low-meaning products to people who don't think about them much later - while there are certainly people who are really into Monopoly, most sets get bought, played a few times, and then end up in a closet.

WotC's products and success, though, are based in the engagement of fandom, and repeated sales of products into that fandom.

Which means Hasbro has little concept of a cheesed-off fandom.

From that perspective, any errors made by Hasbro leaning in are entirely understandable bumbling of folks who are ignorant, and probably not listening to those with experience.

Hasbro has operated the IPs for GI Joe, Transformers, and My Little Pony for how long now? Like 35+ years? I'm certain that they have the concept of a cheesed-off fandom. I believe that they even talk about the unforeseen backlash to the death of Optimus Prime (and other transformers) in Transformers the Movie.