OGL 1.2 survey is now live

[Stormonu]

Personally, I hope they naughty word up enough to cause enough of a backlash to make the D20 System/PF1E have a resurgance.

It seems to already be happening, but with PF2 though.

 

[Maxperson]

I wrote pretty much the same, but in the last comment I added that I've loved D&D since 1985 and thanked the person(s) who are collating the comments.

I might have thanked a bot, hopefully they'll remember this after the Great AI Uprising...

 

[FormerLurker]

The problem there is … they need us. Customers is where they get their money. If they don’t actually make people happy, they’re gone. Hasbro wanted more money from D&D. I think they’ll be lucky to get out of this making slightly less.

They need the customers. Where or not we're representative of the customers is another issue.
We're probably not. Kickstarters for 3rd Party products only sell to people in the thousands while millions play D&D. 50,000 people unsubscribed to DnDBeyond, but that's likely a single percentage point of subscribers and numbers they might make up in six months.

The question is if enough people will respond to this survey with "keep the OGL 1.0a" and how many people will respond to this survey compared to the playtest surveys. (I.e. how many people actually care.)
Based on sales numbers of the book on Amazon, this doesn't really seem to be affecting the money WotC is making and is mostly bad PR and a very vocal minority.

The question is really whether it's worth it for WotC to win us back. If it's too hard and our demands are too high they'll just write us off.

 

[mamba]

The question is really whether it's worth it for WotC to win us back.

No idea, I guess we will see

If it's too hard and our demands are too high they'll just write us off.

I can live with that, I am pretty much ready to write them off too

 

[Aspirinsmurf]

The question is really whether it's worth it for WotC to win us back. If it's too hard and our demands are too high they'll just write us off.

Paizo and 1,500 other publishers are in discussions with their lawyer already. I could see a class action lawsuit coming out of that. Not a good move for WotC, I'd say. They need to significantly sweeten the deal, and they need to start acting in good faith. But even then, nobody will believe them if they just suddenly switch to being honest. They're proven liars now. If they fire the people responsible, it might serve to restore enough trust to get negotiations going. But I'm afraid the responsibility here goes all the way up to the Hasbro board of executives.

 

[Imaculata]

I covered a lot of the points addressed here. Fundamentally, my message was "Leave the OGL 1.0a and anything released under it alone, and you can maybe stanch the flow. And whoever in your org thought this was a good idea was wrong in a way that has perhaps permanently damaged the game."

And permanently damaged the IP, and destroyed several years of trust from their customers.

Unless they completely walk this back, and leave the OGL 1.0a in place, then I expect them at some point to sneak more stuff into their new OGL. They'll wait till the current rage has cooled down, and then quietly sneak some more stuff in under the radar. They have shown their true intentions, tipped their hand. They have lost my trust.

 

[FormerLurker]

Paizo and 1,500 other publishers are in discussions with their lawyer already.

Um.... no. 1,500 publishers agreed to consider publishing under Paizo's license when it's released. Not all are consulting lawyers.

I could see a class action lawsuit coming out of that. Not a good move for WotC, I'd say.

Maybe.
But Paizo isn't going to sue just to get brownie points with gamers. They were likely willing if the 1.0a was revoked and they couldn't keep selling content under it. If they can keep selling their old content and back catalogue and have 6-12 months to re-release their core rules and new books under the OGL 1.2 or ORC then they'll do that instead of suing.

They need to significantly sweeten the deal, and they need to start acting in good faith. But even then, nobody will believe them if they just suddenly switch to being honest. They're proven liars now. If they fire the people responsible, it might might restore enough trust to get negotiations going. But I'm afraid the responsibility here goes all the way up to the Hasbro board of executives.

They've sweetened the deal repeatedly. They made the base rules Creative Commons. They removed the royalties clause and declaring income and virtually every other aspect of the proposed license.
There's nothing that would appease some people short of blood.

But my point was, the unhappy people are a small, tiny minority and if many can't be appeased WotC will just shrug and barely notice the imperceptible drop in their income.
Compared to the fans they lose during 3.5e or 4e this is nothing.

 

[Alzrius]

They've sweetened the deal repeatedly. They made the base rules Creative Commons. They removed the royalties clause and declaring income and virtually every other aspect of the proposed license.
There's nothing that would appease some people short of blood.

I don't think that "drop your unethical and questionably-legal push to revoke/de-authorize the OGL v1.0a" can reasonably be equated to "blood."

 

[see]

The DnD Beyond FAQ about the OGL 1.2 mentions this:

Will additional content be added to the Creative Commons license and OGL 1.2?

Yes. We are looking at adding previous edition content to both the CC and OGL 1.2. We wanted to get this into your hands for feedback ASAP and focused on 5.1, but look for more content to be included throughout these discussions.

That doesn't address the actual problem of using existing OGL 1.0a-licensed Open Game Content, because most existing Open Game Content regardless of edition wasn't created by WotC, and thus is beyond WotC's ability to add to the Creative Commons.

 

[Aspirinsmurf]

Um.... no. 1,500 publishers agreed to consider publishing under Paizo's license when it's released. Not all are consulting lawyers.

If you wanted to quickly establish lines of communication with as many aggrieved parties as possible, how would you do it? Paizo could have just written their own license on their own and released it for their own products.

Of course, it's good PR for them to do it like this too. I just don't think that it was the only motivation. In fact, they've already stated that they will defend OGL 1.0(a) in court if it comes to it.

From their press release: "While we are prepared to argue that point in a court of law if need be, we don’t want to have to do that, and we know that many of our fellow publishers are not in a position to do so."

You make what you want of that.