D&D General Why Mike Mearls left D&D, an interview by Ben Riggs.

[Imaro]

I think WotC was more concerned with things like the example of Solasta, a videogame that took and usd the 5e rules for free... sold 596k units and made gross revenue in the range of 13.9m. I think it's silly to think WotC was primarily concerned with smaller rpg publishers, 3pp or even streaming groups. They're investing alot in digital tools, videogame licensing and media... it makes more sense that this was what they were worried about.

 

[humble minion]

What he described to me was more of a mistake than ineptitude to me, but I guess it is a bit of semantics

Ineptitude and malice are not mutually exclusive, to be fair.

I think WotC was more concerned with things like the example of Solasta, a videogame that took and usd the 5e rules for free... sold 596k units and made gross revenue in the range of 13.9m. I think it's silly to think WotC was primarily concerned with smaller rpg publishers, 3pp or even streaming groups. They're investing alot in digital tools, videogame licensing and media... it makes more sense that this was what they were worried about.

There was a clause in the nuOGL that explicitly stated that the licence was not applicable to electronic products beyond static pdfs. If WotC had only been interested in suppressing digital tools and video games from 3pp, that would have sufficed and they could have left it there and the nuOGL would have been pretty much one paragraph. They didn't. They ALSO stacked the prohibitive royalty arrangement and opening your company's books to WotC snoops whenever they wanted and all sort of other ludicrous demands on top. It was those other clauses that make it undeniable to me that they were targeting the bigger 3pp producers.

I'm sure they wanted to hit the video game makers etc as well, but that wasn't the end of the story.

 

[Imaro]

Ineptitude and malice are not mutually exclusive, to be fair.


There was a clause in the nuOGL that explicitly stated that the licence was not applicable to electronic products beyond static pdfs. If WotC had only been interested in suppressing digital tools and video games from 3pp, that would have sufficed and they could have left it there and the nuOGL would have been pretty much one paragraph. They didn't. They ALSO stacked the prohibitive royalty arrangement and opening your company's books to WotC snoops whenever they wanted and all sort of other ludicrous demands on top. It was those other clauses that make it undeniable to me that they were targeting the bigger 3pp producers.

I'm sure they wanted to hit the video game makers etc as well, but that wasn't the end of the story.

No one said it was... I'm sure seeing things like this happen and realizing there could be other ways in10 years of utilizing the 5e rules that they hadn't conceived of had them looking for a comprehensive solution as opposed to being behind the curve everytime something new popped up. That said these were sent out for feedback... so we'll never know what the final ask would have been.

 

[darjr]

A scenario.

Critical Role with Larian Studios funded by Amazon.

 

[TiQuinn]

A scenario.

Critical Role with Larian Studios funded by Amazon.

Sounds great!

 

[mamba]

I think WotC was more concerned with things like the example of Solasta, a videogame that took and usd the 5e rules for free... sold 596k units and made gross revenue in the range of 13.9m. I think it's silly to think WotC was primarily concerned with smaller rpg publishers

they set the threshold at 750k gross, if they were just concerned about the big guys they could have set it at 5M or so

EDIT: and video games were excluded entirely

 

[DEFCON 1]

I imagine there is a very wide gap beings the executives at Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, and the designers that were working directly on the D&D product (and someone like Mike, who had been directly on the product for a while although wasn't currently at the time.) In fact, I have to imagine that people like Mike, Jeremy, Chris et. al. are probably closer conceptually to all of us and the 3rd party users of the OGL than they are to the executives of the corp. So anything any of them say on the matter is probably more like what all of us regular folk on the outside believe things to be than any sort of parroting of corporate speak (with perhaps just a tinge of extra knowledge merely from hearsay through the halls.)

So Mike's thoughts on the matter are slightly more informed than a lot of us... but he doesn't seem to have any real knowledge of the behind-closed-doors talk that the money people at WotC/Hasbro were going over and what they thought would get taken with their ideas. So I don't think any claim can be made that Mike's trying to shine the shoes of the WotC/Hasbro executives when he says what he says... he just doesn't know the true story of what they were thinking (just like we don't.)

 

[Imaro]

they set the threshold at 750k gross, if they were just concerned about the big guys they could have set it at 5M or so

EDIT: and video games were excluded entirely

Yes or they could have set it at 500k or 10m or 250k or 15m... the point was they were looking for feedback on it... again, it was not finalized, not ready to be signed.

 

[Parmandur]

Basically, he describes it more as ineptitude than malice.

I mean, that makes sense, and is how it seemed to me at the time.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Yes or they could have set it at 500k or 10m or 250k or 15m... the point was they were looking for feedback on it... again, it was not finalized, not ready to be signed.

"Hey, we have this proposal here that will essentially destroy your business if it goes into effect, what do you think about it?"

If this genuinely was a sincere request for feedback, then WotC's NuOGL process was even more incompetent than I thought. No amount of tweaking would have made the NuOGL viable and fair, and this should have been obvious to WotC before the first draft was written.