D&D 5E Don't Throw 5e Away Because of Hasbro

[Faolyn]

The image was largely created by video games and historical incidents when the company was run by people long dead.

Nope. As I said above, have been hired by companies like Amazon and Starbucks in very recent years to spy on workers who are trying to create unions. I believe that's illegal, and even if it's not, it's IMO morally wrong.

Who should they have hired? They were trying to track down what they believed was stolen property. Shutting down his site would have been even more vindictive and harmful. I have to ask again did you actually listen to the podcasts?

Is it more vindictive and harmful, really? The Pinkertons aren't even a detective company anymore--they specialize in security. According to wikipedia, "The company now focuses on threat intelligence, risk management, executive protection, and active shooter response." This is repeated on their own website. All their services are security-related and threat management. Not tracking people down or finding stolen items.

If you'll pardon the gamist language, The Pinkertons are way above Dan Cannon's CR. They're specced for "situations in which violence may occur" not "talking to a guy who legally bought cards that were released a bit early and showed them off online."

Did WotC think that this YouTuber was potentially a violent man? Are his videos half talking about MtG and half showing off his guns or mad kung fu skills?

Or was WotC hoping that the Pinkerton's reputation for being union-busting leg-breakers would make Mr. Cannon immediately hand over the cards and count his lucky stars that they didn't get violent?

 

[Faolyn]

Well, that sort of makes sense, right? A lot of the antagonism comes from people who are fans of D&D "the way it was before", and would prefer to have their preferred style of play as the current marketed one.

Really? I haven't seen that at all. And speaking for me and my entire table, we liked 5e a lot.

 

[AlViking]

Nope. As I said above, have been hired by companies like Amazon and Starbucks in very recent years to spy on workers who are trying to create unions. I believe that's illegal, and even if it's not, it's IMO morally wrong.


Is it more vindictive and harmful, really? The Pinkertons aren't even a detective company anymore--they specialize in security. According to wikipedia, "The company now focuses on threat intelligence, risk management, executive protection, and active shooter response." This is repeated on their own website. All their services are security-related and threat management. Not tracking people down or finding stolen items.

If you'll pardon the gamist language, The Pinkertons are way above Dan Cannon's CR. They're specced for "situations in which violence may occur" not "talking to a guy who legally bought cards that were released a bit early and showed them off online."

Did WotC think that this YouTuber was potentially a violent man? Are his videos half talking about MtG and half showing off his guns or mad kung fu skills?

Or was WotC hoping that the Pinkerton's reputation for being union-busting leg-breakers would make Mr. Cannon immediately hand over the cards and count his lucky stars that they didn't get violent?

Asking again, have you actually listened to the streams where the person it happened to said the whole thing has been blown out of proportion?

 

[Umbran]

They never considered breaking the law in any way since the ogl was not actually a license and was never enforceable. Even if they had enacted the new version there's no reason to believe it would have been legally binding since the original ogl was more of a gentleman's agreement to not bother suing everybody like tsr threatened back in the day. I spent a couple minutes looking it up and Part 3: The Damage Done by the Otherwise Ineffectual Open Gaming License #DnD #copyright #iplaw #ogl has a detailed explanation better than I can give of the legalese side of things. Short version is that nobody has ever established whether or not you can legally protect game rules and the ogl did not do that.

Hey, @AlViking and @mamba - allow me to perhaps clear this up before the two of you get into it too nastily.

I think the problem is in the bit I bolded, above. It contains a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of the OGL - the OGL was not there to "protect game rules".

Please excuse me if the following seems pedantic - we have to be specific to clear up the confusion here.

Normally, all publications are automatically protected by copyright. Copyright protects the specific expressions found in the publication. If anyone wants to use the specific wording you used, they must come to you to get permission - a license - to use the material.

Now, copyright does not cover logic, systems, or processes. Those forms of intellectual property require a patent, and the D&D rules have never been patented. Technically, if someone found a way to completely restate the logic of D&D rules and the processes of play, without using any of the original verbiage, they could do so and publish the result. But, doing that is a right pain in the tush, and pretty much nobody wants to try it, because it means abandoning the shared language all the players have.

The OGL was a way to grant license not to "rules", but to the particular and specific text of the SRD. It was a way for other publishers to get access to the specific expression without having to contact WotC and negotiate a special deal to do so. The OGL was offered such that so long as you followed its (pretty darned simple) strictures, your license was automatically granted, no questions asked. It was crafted so that, if you wanted to, you could just copy whatever specific SRD text you wanted, in whole or in part, and fold, spindle, and mutilate it as you saw fit.

As such, it was and is very much a license. And it wasn't trying to do anything that licenses can't generally do. The OGL was always about the specific expression. Don't let anyone's fancy talk fool you otherwise.

 

[gban007]

Asking again, have you actually listened to the streams where the person it happened to said the whole thing has been blown out of proportion?

It was blown out of proportion, with a lot of false information overstating what occurred/ straight misinformation, which the person responded to.
Nonetheless, WOTC still hired Pinkertons, that is a fact, and I think people are fine to have a problem with who WOTC chose to use.

 

[AlViking]

Hey, @AlViking and @mamba - allow me to perhaps clear this up before the two of you get into it too nastily.

I think the problem is in the bit I bolded, above. It contains a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of the OGL - the OGL was not there to "protect game rules".

Please excuse me if the following seems pedantic - we have to be specific to clear up the confusion here.

Normally, all publications are automatically protected by copyright. Copyright protects the specific expressions found in the publication. If anyone wants to use the specific wording you used, they must come to you to get permission - a license - to use the material.

Now, copyright does not cover logic, systems, or processes. Those forms of intellectual property require a patent, and the D&D rules have never been patented. Technically, if someone found a way to completely restate the logic of D&D rules and the processes of play, without using any of the original verbiage, they could do so and publish the result. But, doing that is a right pain in the tush, and pretty much nobody wants to try it, because it means abandoning the shared language all the players have.

The OGL was a way to grant license not to "rules", but to the particular and specific text of the SRD. It was a way for other publishers to get access to the specific expression without having to contact WotC and negotiate a special deal to do so. The OGL was offered such that so long as you followed its (pretty darned simple) strictures, your license was automatically granted, no questions asked. It was crafted so that, if you wanted to, you could just copy whatever specific SRD text you wanted, in whole or in part, and fold, spindle, and mutilate it as you saw fit.

As such, it was and is very much a license. And it wasn't trying to do anything that licenses can't generally do. The OGL was always about the specific expression. Don't let anyone's fancy talk fool you otherwise.

I think the ogl was a good idea and much better than TSR's approach and the proposed changes were stupid for many reasons. I'll leave it up to the lawyers to argue about whether or not it was legally enforceable from now on if it ever matters.

 

[mamba]

allow me to perhaps clear this up before the two of you get into it too nastily.

agree with everything you wrote, just did not address it because it felt like a tangent to what the two of us were discussing

 

[mamba]

I'll leave it up to the lawyers to argue about whether or not it was legally enforceable from now on if it ever matters.

I doubt it will ever matter, now that the OGL issue has been settled by 'popular vote'. With the release into CC, revoking the OGL no longer helps WotC advance it's goals from back then

 

[Faolyn]

Asking again, have you actually listened to the streams where the person it happened to said the whole thing has been blown out of proportion?

Have you read anything I wrote? I'm not talking about whether or not they attacked or intimidated him. I'm talking about WotC employing them in the first place.

As I said before, I don't care if these particular agents were the nicest, most polite people in the history of the universe and the incident was delightful and everyone had tea and cakes. It was still a terrible idea for WotC to hire them.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

You’re describing a fantasy image of the Pinkertons straight out of urban myth. This is 2025 not Red Dead. I’ve known many people who work in security and your associating them with leg-breaking goons is also pretty unpleasant. In his video the streamer described them as very nice and polite. So you don’t need to ‘even if’ it.

A product that isn’t released yet appears on a YouTube channel by an unknown guy saying he’s got hands on something by accident. Of course they’re going to react and try to find out why. I’ll let you into a secret… managers for large companies are not crime fighters. They’re not PI’s. I’m also not sure why you think hearing from a lawyer, or having your YouTube account demonitised is less frighting. That’s the nuclear option.

The Pinkerton's issue was another example of hyper-vigilant overreach.

People mobilize "their side" by making hyperbolic "horrible human" assertions so people understand what side they should be on given their political leanings.