D&D 5E Will you continue to give WotC D&D your $$$

[Micah Sweet]

I felt more than one concern is conflated into the second option, but I chose it because to me the first option is to me an unnecessarily black and white position.

On the one hand, I think there are possible future OGL versions that could even be improvements on the original. And on the other hand, I think if Hasbro just said - look, going forward it's our IP and we want a walled garden - then they would just be making a commercial decision not dissimilar or any more immoral than any company that decides to ringfence its IP. If they were to try and revoke the OGL, there are versions of that, that might be fair and equitable to those who have relied on it.

And on the other hand, my view is not really as simplistic as - doesn't affect my table, will give money to a corporation if I like their product regardless of what they do. But on that, there is a long list of things I will not sustain a company from my own pocket to do, and licensing shennanigans are pretty far down that list. Commercial conflicts are not the same as criminal conflicts, and typically amoral rather than immoral.

Other than adding the word "irrevokable", what would be an improvement to the 1.0a?

 

[mellored]

I like what I see in the playtest so far.

So yea.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm glad the poll included IF THEY MAKE SOMETHING I LIKE... (which I highly doubt at this point, but maybe they will surprise me).

Sure, I'll still buy their stuff then. I got into a discussion with a player yesterday about all this. He's with many of you about stopping the corporate monster, etc. but frankly it is their property, so why shouldn't they receive a royalty form others who use it to make money themselves?

Because it wasn't part of the perpetual contract they agreed to.

 

[Velderan]

Because it wasn't part of the perpetual contract they agreed to.

And this was even supported in the FAQ they had on their site:

7. Can't Wizards of the Coast change the License in a way that I wouldn't like?

Yes, it could. However, the License already defines what will happen to content that has been previously distributed using an earlier version, in Section 9. As a result, even if Wizards made a change you disagreed with, you could continue to use an earlier, acceptable version at your option. In other words, there's no reason for Wizards to ever make a change that the community of people using the Open Gaming License would object to, because the community would just ignore the change anyway.

I honestly wouldn't have a problem with the scrapped OGL 1.1 if they didn't try to mess with any existing OGL/SRD arrangements and let publishers decide for themselves if the new terms worked for their business or not. I thought they looked pretty bad, but if a publisher agreed with me and didn't like them they could have just said "nope" and followed the FAQ's advice of just using the license that worked for them. The leaked 2.0 FAQ doesn't seem to completely close the door on OGL1.0a being a questionable at best path forward and they really need to address that to have a chance at winning my business back.

I can't stress this enough, they could go with a GSL scenario again and I'd be fine with that choice because they're not trying to take back previously offered terms that they went out of their way to say we can't take this back if we wanted to. 1D&D is their property to do what they want and if they went the GSL route and even locked everything behind DDB I'd still consider buying into it if I liked what they offered. Build a better mousetrap, don't go around trying to sabotage every other company's mousetraps.

 

[Umbran]

My position does not fit neatly into your binary choice.

And, "until the suits are gone" is basically "until D&D stops making any money".

 

[JediSoth]

After discussing it with my group, I've canceled my D&D Beyond subscription and have decided to not purchase any more D&D materials from Wizards of the Coast or the DM's Guild (3PP publications from DriveThru RPG are still OK, though). We'll lose the convenience of being able to update the characters in Foundry from D&D Beyond, but we can just do it manually and help the players who are less familiar with the process when they need assistance.

We'll keep playing the current D&D campaign until it's conclusion (which I'm going to actually wrap up early because I'm getting tired of doing all the prep and such), then move on to a different system. We almost always play a different system after a D&D game wraps up, so this is nothing new. What will be new is investigating a different fantasy RPG to play AFTER the next game, as WotC's OGls shenanigans have poisoned the well for several of us.

Who knows? Maybe we'll feel differently in several months. We've not swore off D&D forever, per se, but we're all a little more open to trying alternate fantasy RPGs (and we've already played DCC, The One Ring, and Blades in the Dark, but always came back to D&D because it was easier than investing in and learning a whole new system; that's the bit that's changed).

 

[bedir than]

They fire all the people currently in charge and bring in gamers to run things?

To be clear, all evidence points to only one person in the D&D upper chain of command not being a gamer.

One of the strikes against Cocks taking over Hasbro was that he's a gamer. The guy that's now Head of Studio? Gamer. Head of D&D brand, Nathan Stewart? Gamer.

Gamers are making these decisions.

 

[Velderan]

To be clear, all evidence points to only one person in the D&D upper chain of command not being a gamer.

One of the strikes against Cocks taking over Hasbro was that he's a gamer. The guy that's now Head of Studio? Gamer. Head of D&D brand, Nathan Stewart? Gamer.

Gamers are making these decisions.

I probably wasn't clear enough, but the people currently running the show are business people who apparently have played games thus people calling them suits. I've seen people say we need a Gygax type figure that's a gamer first and foremost. Considering the job he did managing the business aspect, I'm fine with a suit who understands the game industry running things. I want a healthy company that can continue to push the game in different directions, like how DDB was a key focus on the direction of the game from all accounts.

 

[Parmandur]

This makes me think I should look at Free League's books (I see they have a bundle on Humble right now), are they particularly well-presented in terms of explaining rules, setting, etc.?

Vaesen is the only book of theirs that I have, and it is gorgeous and well written. Fun "Monster of the Week" style game set in a version ofnw9th century Scandanavia where all the folk tales are true. The art is by a top line Swedish artist who puts out a bunch of big old school illustration books.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I'm not happy with certain decisions being ruminated upon, but I will admit I'm surprised that people are this outraged over the OGL situation when I'm more concerned with other potential ideas to monetize D&D.

I just bought the Aspect of Tiamat miniature (the smaller one, not the plastic statue), plan to buy at least three of the new books that have been announced, and eagerly anticipate seeing the D&D movie day one.

I will say I've never subscribed to D&D Beyond, but that's because I only buy physical media if I have a choice and have never seen a good reason to use the service.

It's not exactly easy to find a gaming group and I still meet a surprising number of people my age or younger who know next to nothing about D&D, the NY far most well known TTRPG. Switching to a different system, to me, might as well be synonymous with never playing a TTRPG again (or at least very rare one shots).