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

[UngainlyTitan]

I am a fan of alternate history and even came up with some stories of my own. Alternative History and it related sibling Future History starts with a single point of departure (PoD), a single what-if. The best alternative history stories or those who are able to weave a story or history out of a single PoD.

Before we proceed I want to stress while I put some thought into the numbers, they are a wild-ass guess. My point is to outline a process, you and other can use to arrive at a possible answer of a question like yours. A lot of folks are afraid that what we see folks will not be enough. This is one way of figuring out what you think the situation is at. Thus point to what needs to happen to change it.

I have my guess, but it is overshadowed by the realization that we are in an unprecedented situation. Thanks to the internet and 23 years worth of experience working publishing and sharing for D&D by so many people, I don't have anything but a wild-ass guess to go by. Like so many, I am feeling my way through using whatever I have at my disposal. Sometimes I have success but mostly it is a lot of "wait and see". I am guided by the fact I feel that open-content gaming is the way to go for the hobby and industry. That we benefit more by sharing than by sticking to walled gardens. That this has to be accomplished voluntarily not by coercion hence my preference for licenses that require credit but does not require share-alike.

The Hypothetical
So for our future history let's take as our PoD, that Wizards drops things like the financial requirement but keeps the draconian IP requirements. Those licensing requirements are also a spearpoint for a much harder line on anything D&D related. They start issuing strategic Cease and Desists and DMCA notices to create a climate of fear around anything remotely D&D related in terms of mechanics even if it is something simple as a stat block. In our hypothetical, the line Wizards draws is other systems like Mythras, Savage Worlds, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, etc are not touched.

Within weeks we have a publishing environment where risks with publishing for D&D has skyrocketed to the point that all but the most ornery or have nothing to lose fight on. Within the year, in our hypothetical, Wizards sues these folks, putting the smallest out of business, and offering a modified deal to the larger ones, or just a buy-out offer that is good enough to make one go "Why I am putting up this fight?"

In this situation, by the end of the first year, it has been demonstrated you can't publish without undue risk for D&D unless you submit to one of their draconian IP programs (OGL 2.0, DM's Guild, etc.)

Next you need to characterize the hobby community. The first split is between those who deal with something D&D related or not. The folks who don't deal with D&D will drop the OGL 1.0a and a bunch of new licenses will appear. Other than that their release schedule would continue. The hobbyists who play those systems will still have the same availability of material as they enjoyed before in the OGL era. There is a small group of folks involved in non-D&D system that would be irritated by the loss of access to the OGL 1.0a. (Cepheus, Legends, etc.)

For those who play or publish anything D&D related what are their options? Here where things get fuzzy as we are in uncharted territory. We do know however some of the factors that could impact the course of future events.

• We have a large body of folks who are experienced at publishing or sharing material for D&D related systems,
• These individuals had success in doing the above at several different budget levels. Ranging from a hobby publisher who only releases once or twice a year, like myself, to a traditional publisher with print runs and distribution like Paizo.
• We have group of hobbyists who like what these publishers publish.
• However, this group of hobbyists is very fragmented and in that respect mirrors what happens in the non-D&D world.
• We have a group of hobbyists who are engaged in social media, ranging to those who just occasionally chat to those, like Critical Role managed to make a career out of engaging the hobby through social media.
• We have a large group of publishers whose works are trapped the DM's Guild program.
• We have a group of hobbyists who engage in Organized Play, and Organized Gaming like conventions.
• We have the vast majority of the hobbyist who just are here to play or referee.
• We also another group of hobbyists who like to read role-playing material.

In this hypothetical, any group that doesn't impact Wizard's bottom line would be not be holding any cards (to use the phrasing of your post). This hypothetical is about Wizards successfully creating a legal climate of fear and managing in a few cases making it stick (C&D, settlements, etc.). A precedent setting lawsuit is not in the card deck in this hypothetical.

So what then? What are the hobby's options. Then it will hinge on enough people who are Wizard's customers saying no. What would that look like? The broad categories of responses will be

• Will continue to play tabletop roleplaying using other systems
• Will cease being involved in tabletop roleplaying
• Will continue as Wizard's customers or participate in Wizard's IP program.

Another is that the groups that I listed in the first bullet list can be divided into two broad categories

• Those who deal directly with Wizard's related content. Buying Wizard's products, participating in the DM's Guild, using the various Wizards SRDs 'as is'
• Those who deal with material related to D&D like the DCC RPG, the OSR, and so on. But otherwise are not customer of Wizards or supports Wizard's products directly.

Now to the "How to make a prediction" party.

You take the Responses and take guess to the percentages that apply to each group.

For example, is it reasonable to assume that for those who deal directly with Wizards the following hold true after that first year?

• 70% will continue as Wizard's customers or participate in Wizard's IP program.
• 10% will cease being involved.
• 20% will jump to or create other systems

Is it reasonable to assume that for those who deal with just D&D-related system do the following after that first year?

• 10% will become Wizard's customers or participate in Wizard's IP program.
• 20% will cease being involved.
• 70% will jump to or create other systems.

Last you have to decide the proportion of D&D hobbyists are those who most directly deal with Wizards and those who mostly deal with D&D related content. I feel the percentage of those who deal directly with Wizards is rather high around 70% to 80% of all D&D hobbyists.

So if we are talking 1,000,000 active D&D hobbyists (using a round number here) applying my guess to the percentage above then we are talking

580,000 people remaining or becoming WoTC customers
120,000 people quitting tabletop all together.
300,000 people moving onto other systems

Finally, I can't stress this fits the very definition of a wild-ass guess.

This hypothetical is too black and white. I like 5e and my players are likely to stick with 5e. That said I have a lot of material that I would like to use, I do not have firm future purchase plans but I reserve the right to purchase future WoTC product. I also reserve the right to purchase non Wizards product even for non-D&D or even non d20 systems.
I think there will be more crossover buying if only because the current controversy may drive a lot of the social media influencers to expand outside the D&D niche and to be honest this would be good for the hobby overall.

There are other issues that your hypothetical does not address.
How many new people play D&D because that is what they have head of? It is the big well known brand? - the Network effect, it easy to find a game.

How many stay with D&D because of the "OGL support". That is the essence of Ryan Dancy's ecosystem argument. That having a open licence encourages third parties to work in the D&D ecosystem and that retains players that would otherwise drift to other systems or leave due to the lack of innovation from WoTC.
Here it will be genuinely interesting to watch the games produced under the new licence. To see if the 3rd party support grows a particular brand.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My guess would be that WoTC's actions have already cost them more than $85 million in future revenue, by tainting their brand and alienating their customers. Especially because they don't seem to realise that this will have long term impact.

They're probably playing the "Oh, that's just the online community, they don't matter that much" card in their heads. While its possible to overstate how much impact the Twitter sphere and other places have, underestimating the reach of online communities does you no damn favors, either.

I have seen it suggested elsewhere that WoTC are actively trying to alienate their current customer base (along with eliminating the 3PPs) Games Workshop style, to get rid of them, bring in a new fresh customer base, and create a true walled garden akin to WH40K, completely separate from the RPG community - "the D&D hobby" instead of "the RPG hobby". The D&D VTT would then be akin to GW's game stores as a controlled place to play (I mistyped that as 'pay'). If that worked it would negate the financial impact of the current damage. I don't think it will work though.

Its really hard to see how it could.

 

[Parmandur]

So you're conflating a bunch of different people here. I'm going to call two people out in fact, hopefully they're cool with that - @Oofta and @Parmandur have both maintained, as far as I know, that 5E's success was primarily or entirely a reflection of the quality of 5E, certainly more than structural market factors, and both of them, and correct me if I'm wrong guys, maintain most people are not going to stop playing D&D as a result of the OGL stuff.

I can only speak for myself, I think for "most" a lot depends on what WotC actually ends up doing. Sufficient backtracking might leave a lot of people permanently angry in absolute terms (tens of thousands), but probably totally missing most players.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Honestly I think people vastly overestimate the impact of the ogl. But then again I’m hardly batting a thousand in accuracy lately so what do I know?

You really are here, man. Its much more visible how important it is if you come from the Pathfinder community or one of the other publishers who did what looked like the good idea at the time of using it as a tool for entirely non-D&D based games.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think there was ever a majority opinion re: 5E's quality being more important than structural factors, I think it's more like most people didn't care, and 5E is was clearly a "good" quality RPG in terms of rules, and a very high quality one in terms of physical/artistic qualities of the materials (relative to the rest of the industry - albeit there has been some amazing catching up on that side in the last 2-3 years).

I've gone on record as saying that nothing I've seen of 5e has impressed me with its rules quality (which is not the same, to make clear, as saying its terrible) even within the D&D and offshoots sphere. But my standards here are mine and somewhat specific, and based partly on not considering a lot of D&D standards particularly good design in the first place, so they were going to have to hit other areas really well to get me to think particularly positively of the design.

That said, structural factors can't explain everything, and its entirely probable that my requirements in this area are a minority (though I think when you get into people who really care about rules rather than people who just don't want them to annoy them, that's far more debatable), and its clear they're doing something right here. The only time I tend to get into it is when people start getting into what I consider the circular argument of rules quality/people liking the game, or being too casual about the influence those structural features have.

 

[Catolias]

Yes, I'm surprised. They don't seem to have realised where the real value of the D&D brand lies. Just from a purely self-interested perspective, either they are surprisingly ignorant, or surprisingly malevolent. And of course they have openly lied and invented a fake history re the OGL - "It was never meant to..."

I'd be even more surprised if their strategy actually worked. Who knows. But I'm pretty sure they are proceeding from a position of incompetence + malice, not 4D chess. The battle may not always go to the competent & the virtuous, but I feel that's the way to bet.

Someone on another thread (sorry can’t remember where or who) highlighted a public statement by C Williams who referred to as D&D players as fans. Their post made the observation that this term fundamentally misunderstood their customer base. This is because fans are unthinking purchasers of anything produced by, in this case, WoTC.

So, I agree that WoTC is not ignorant or malevolent, they may have simply progressed with changing the OGL and 1D&D on the basis of bad market analysis of who their customers were, what they wanted and how to draw them more toward dependence on WoTC.

 

[pemerton]

WotC has shown us their priorities, and what they actually think of the people who play the game they think they own.

Is anyone surprised? WotC is a large commercial enterprise whose goal is to make money from its two main brands/product lines.

Yes, I'm surprised. They don't seem to have realised where the real value of the D&D brand lies. Just from a purely self-interested perspective, either they are surprisingly ignorant, or surprisingly malevolent. And of course they have openly lied and invented a fake history re the OGL - "It was never meant to..."

I'd be even more surprised if their strategy actually worked. Who knows. But I'm pretty sure they are proceeding from a position of incompetence + malice, not 4D chess. The battle may not always go to the competent & the virtuous, but I feel that's the way to bet.

Just to make it clear what I'm not surprised about:

As I've posted, I don't have a strong view on the commercial rationality of what WotC is doing. I'm not as confident as you and some other posters that it's medium-to-long term irrational.

But my remark about being surprised was directed to "what they actually think of the people who play" D&D. I'm not at all surprised that they see those people as a source of revenue, either directly - by buying books, subscribing to online services, and purchasing branded goods which return a royalty back to WotC - or indirectly, as "promoters" of the brand who thereby lead to others engaging in the same sorts of transactions.

In abstract terms, this is what Weber predicted about organisations like WotC in work he published around a century ago. In more concrete terms, it seems to have been fairly apparent for at least the past 20 years when it comes to D&D, and longer than that in the context of M:tG.

On the RPG side, the earliest critique I know of WotC-style commercialisation of RPGing is this (which dates from 1999, ie around the time WotC purchased D&D): The Forge :: The Nuked Apple Cart

It's also seemed clear to me that Paizo's commercial model is lifestyle/consumption-based at least since I read this post in 2011: A reason why 4E is not as popular as it could have been

This sort of lifestyle/consumption-based commercial model depends upon the company flattering its customer-fans (which we see WotC doing in its "apology" re OGL 1.1). When it works well, the flattered experience it as a genuine interpersonal relationship. But in my view that doesn't actually make it one.

 

[S'mon]

This sort of lifestyle/consumption-based commercial model depends upon the company flattering its customer-fans (which we see WotC doing in its "apology" re OGL 1.1). When it works well, the flattered experience it as a genuine interpersonal relationship. But in my view that doesn't actually make it one.

It's also seemed clear to me that Paizo's commercial model is lifestyle/consumption-based

Oh yeah. Indeed. They just put a lot more effort into it!

 

[Hussar]

And this is what I take issue with. You are basically saying might makes right. Forget about laws, morals, ethics, damage done to others, no, focus on the bottom line..

You think that I’m arguing that this is right? Seriously?

That is very much not the case.

I’m not arguing about the morality of this at all. I’m simply pointing out that in the great rush that we might be running off a cliff. Like I said I’m SCARED about this idea. I most certainly do not want it to be true.

I’m saying that if WotC is purely focusing on the bottom line, and their bottom line isn’t being affected as much as people are assuming, then all the back and forth about “doing the right thing” doesn’t matter.

 

[mamba]

Yes you. Prior to January 2023, it was reasonable to assume that the situation that existed for 23 years would continue. Especially in the wake of what happened with 4e and the GSL.

Now you can't and as a result the old OGL is dead. If it survives all this it's only use if you want to remix older material.

You are missing the point @pemerton and I were making. You said switching to ORC is fine because the license protects the 3PPs. Well guess what, so did the OGL, yet here we are.

The ORC will be no better at protecting anyone than the OGL was/is, it's a license, not a terminator. If everyone just runs for cover as soon as a corporation wants to take their ball home, then it offers zero protection. Doesn't matter whether that is from WotC today or potentially Paizo tomorrow.