OGL 1.2 survey is now live

[Azzy]

I wasn't trying to say it was trying to address that (at least I don't think so, I just got from taking my dog to the emergency vet because of an accidental poisoning so I don't really remember what I was responding to, nor do I really care).

I hope your pupper is okay.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But so many people here won't even accept that anymore or a reversion to how things were two months ago.
They don't just need to preserve the 1.0a OGL but provide reparations of some kind. The poster I was responded wanted nothing less than multiple firings of key executives.

I just want them to stop it and not do it again.

 

[raniE]

The biggest tabletop rpg Kickstarter, by the way, was for Avatar Legends, the roleplaying game, not for a D&D product. The only 1 million dollar plus D&D Kickstarter was to fund a book AND Matt Colville twitch streaming his campaign. Edit: a few more million dollar rpg kickstarters have appeared over the last few years it appears, several of them not connected to D&D.

Exalted Funeral/Necrotic Gnome did raise 772,956 dollars just reprint their Old School Essentials books (and some more adventures) last year though. That’s an OSR game, and they’re coming up to close to a million dollars on kickstarter just to reprint stuff.

 

[raniE]

Pretty much everything @FormerLurker is writing is wrong, and it’s just geared to get people to stop pressuring WotC. The only reason they would care about that is if the pressure was actually doing something, otherwise why bother trying to talk people out of it if it isn’t going to work?

 

[FormerLurker]

Pretty much everything @FormerLurker is writing is wrong, and it’s just geared to get people to stop pressuring WotC. The only reason they would care about that is if the pressure was actually doing something, otherwise why bother trying to talk people out of it if it isn’t going to work?

Why do they care?
It's either because they're not monsters who want to make people happy or they want to make as much money as possible and don't want to lose customers. Pick the option that fits your level of cynicism.

Personally, I think it's a mix of both. Plus... WotC is doing this for positive PR. They know after the bashing they took from they press they sacrificed the optional "wish list" of clauses and launched this survey, knowing most D&D fans are neutral on the subject and will just see the positive changes. So they can hold up the results of the survey and declare they're following the will of most players and responded to criticism, and take a win in the press.

They've backpedaled two or three times now, and each time they've changed everything BUT deauthorizing the 1.0a OGL. That seems to be where they draw the line. So it comes down to whether or not they'll give up on sales to 50,000 people out of their estimated 13.7 million players (or 0.36%) OR if they'll abandon their plans to protect D&D. Even if you think 10x as many people will leave the game over this in protest, that's still only a drop of 3%, for a game that has been experiencing double-digit growth for the last decade.
If the <3% leave... They tried their best. It's acceptable losses.

Focus on the aspect of the fight you can win. Make the 1.2 OGL excellent. The fight over the 1.0a is already over.

 

[Justice and Rule]

The biggest tabletop rpg Kickstarter, by the way, was for Avatar Legends, the roleplaying game, not for a D&D product. The only 1 million dollar plus D&D Kickstarter was to fund a book AND Matt Colville twitch streaming his campaign.

There are, actually, more than you think. Shannon Applecline details them in his year-end posts, and you can see that there is a jump from 2020 to 2021 and 2022. But in those, you can still see that 5E has a good amount of spots, it is not at all just 5E. Really, it seems like pandemic helped the RPG market as a whole grow, given that you see plenty of other RPGs on those lists.

 

[raniE]

No @FormerLurker, “they” meant “FormerLurker”. I have no clue what your gender is, so you get they as a pronoun. Why does @FormerLurker care? They don’t think boycotting Hasbro is going to make any difference, but they also seem desperate for us not to it.

 

[raniE]

There are, actually, more than you think. Shannon Applecline details them in his year-end posts, and you can see that there is a jump from 2020 to 2021 and 2022. But in those, you can still see that 5E has a good amount of spots, it is not at all just 5E. Really, it seems like pandemic helped the RPG market as a whole grow, given that you see plenty of other RPGs on those lists.

Ah, there we go. Hadn’t looked at the numbers for a while it seems. Still, Avatar comes out on top.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Ah, there we go. Hadn’t looked at the numbers for a while it seems. Still, Avatar comes out on top.

Oh most definitely. But if you go back to 2019, you can see that most 5E Kickstarters were not making nearly that much. It's only been recently that we've seen more consistently-high Kickstarter hauls, and that travels across the entire industry. Look at Delta Green: the original kickstarted for $360K in late 2015, then got a set of books for The Labyrinth for $150K in 2018. While I know the original books are popular, when they kickstarted The Conspiracy in 2021, it goes for $510K. Clearly during the pandemic people just became interested in RPGs, and I think we should not just associate such growth with just 5E, nor should we think that them losing market share will cause the market itself to collapse.

 

[FormerLurker]

No @FormerLurker, “they” meant “FormerLurker”. I have no clue what your gender is, so you get they as a pronoun. Why does @FormerLurker care? They don’t think boycotting Hasbro is going to make any difference, but they also seem desperate for us not to it.

First, because it fills up the conversation with useless whining.
If you want to boycott then actually do so. Go to the Pathfinder forums or go talk about another game. You can't boycott and leave D&D and still be involved in the conversation. Make a choice: are you in or are you out.
And if you're in, then provide useful and constructive discussion about the survey and how to improve it. Accept—albeit reluctantly—the loss of the old license and instead work to make the new license better.

Second... because I actually care about the hobby and 3rd Party Publishers.
Improving the new license helps them and gives them the best terms.
And as I've outlined before, boycotting WotC and D&D just hurts 3PP by reducing their sales. You're not going to buy Flee Mortals or support the kickstarter to Kobold Press's Deep Magic 2 if you're not playing D&D. If you go off and play Fantasy Age or Vaesen or Lamentations of the Flame Princess you're also no longer supporting the 3PP that everyone was worried about when the OGL was threatened.