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

[Matt Thomason]

I have tried to stay away from "will you continue to play" questions, because they don't really seem to have any relevance. I bought those books, they're mine, how I feel about WotC today has zero bearing on whether I continue to enjoy my gaming library. I have had previous issues with other publishers, and that has not affected my feelings at pulling games made by them off a shelf to play.

But this question actually does ask something relevant. Its about whether I will let money flow in a me-to-them direction.

My current intent is not to spend anything on D&D until I am confident (as confident as I was this time last year, at least) that any works released (both existing and future) under the terms of OGL 1.0a will not be the target of WotC lawsuits. Even should they achieve that, I do not feel I will be spending as much on it in the future as I would have, as my funds are not limitless and I have a greater incentive now to explore more options. So I could estimate that depending on their next move, I will be spending between 50-100% less than I have in the past with them.

Due to my long-time love of HeroQuest, I have already accepted I will not be able to extend this to Hasbro products as a whole. Yes, even though it was likely Hasbro that forced this rather than WotC. I am human, do not ask me to make sense on this.

It is entirely possible that WotC still manage to release something in the future that is just so must-have, and that enough time has passed that I'm not as mad at them as I am now, that I give in and get it, even if they pull OGL 1.1 back out of a hat unchanged and name it OGL 3.0. Again, I am only human.

 

[haakon1]

Will 7th edition be called TwoD&D? Based on tradition, it’ll be the recovery from 6e wars, be on OGL 1.0a, and bring the game to new players in Gen AA & AB, but be so successful its corporate owners - I’m guessing WalMart? Chevron? - mess it all up going to 8e.

Man, 8e and its license saying they’re coming to your home and tearing up your old character sheets, it has me slightly upset, but not enough to cancel my holo subscription.

 

[guachi]

I also wouldn't go so far as to call this a boycott. I'm just a customer who has been becoming increasingly disenchanted for a few years who is now taking the final step.

I bought vast amounts of D&D stuff from 2015-2018 including loads of older TSR stuff from ebay, lots of DMs Guild pdf reprints of old stuff, new DMs Guild releases from 3rd parties, and a number of hard backs. In the last few years I, too, have become disenchanted. Not with D&D but with the releases I was seeing. Partly it's that once you have a lot the newer stuff has to compete with it but also because I just don't think it was that good.

So, for me, not buying anything more is a final step rather than a mad dash to the exit.

 

[Mistwell]

We know that DDB took a hit, we don't know by how much or how many people would have renewed before their current subscription expired. The PHB is still #115 in sales on Amazon (I checked earlier, I was curious) which means it's still selling roughly 9,000 per month. It's a bit down from December, but that's to be expected. In comparison the PF 2E PHB is #1,109 or about 2,000 per month.



I agree.

I don't see PF 2e at #1109, where are you seeing that?

This is the link I use for them and I see no rankings anymore for it.

 

[Malmuria]

But this idea that they want to shut everyone else down? Why would they?

They want to prevent another pathfinder 1e situation.

Could they do all these terrible things people keep talking about? I guess. I see no reason to believe they will.

The terrible thing they are doing is revoking OGL 1.0.

In addition, it sounds like they did listen and have changed, it seems that anything current or published within 6 months after OGL 2.0 will be able to use 1.0a.

sounds like you are in agreement with: "Second, you’re going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They won—and so did we."

 

[cbwjm]

Actually, thinking about it, there are some currently released books that I'm thinking of buying physical copies which I've previously bought digitally (digital was great for the covid years, though i suppose i could have also ordered physical copies from one of my local game stores). I still need to pick up Tasha's, spelljammer, and maybe Fizban's (though as much as I like dragons, that book just wasn't as good as I thought it would be). Maybe that ravenloft book as well.

 

[David Britten]

left

 

[clearstream]

But I stand with those comrades who refuse to accept and support the corporate boot-heel stamping on our faces forever.

Or at least, those who are fussy about whose boot gets to stamp on their faces, forever.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Free League make RPGs for adults. The themes, art and writing are designed for adults to do in-depth and morally complex roleplaying. Path Finder and D&D are pitched at 13 year old boys. The art is cartoonish, the morality is black and white and the rules are combat focussed.

Ahhh that takes me back.

This is the sort of ludicrous hyperbolic partisan sneering that was such a feature of the early '90s discussion of RPGs. You could literally just replace Free League with, say White Wolf, R. Talsorian, even FASA, and just drop this into a forum from 1994 and it'd have fit right in.

People who post this stuff never seem to consider for even one second the optics of doing so.

 

[Aldarc]

What does Free League do that's so good? I haven't read their stuff--or, honestly, any Pathfinder stuff, so I don't know the differences between them.

My experience is mostly with Vaesen, Forbidden Lands, and The One Ring 2e and soon Dragonbane. I have read a number of people here talk about Alien, Coriolis, and Tales From the Loop, and their reports for those games are consistent with my respective experiences with mine. Free League makes high quality physical products. Great box sets. The art tends to be top notch and appropriate. The books have good layout, design, etc. and are easy to read. I honestly can't think of a bad Free League product. So I think that their reputation has a lot to with their consistency in making solid products more than anything else.