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I'm a big fan of Marshal Law so my favorite Ray thing is definitely Underground, but yeah Ray's been doing good stuff for a long time now.

coughs in 2008 collaterized debt obligations Joking aside, to your broader point, there is nuance there. I'm not saying there are no long term-investments made by anybody in late-stage capitalism or whatever. It's just that in the quest for endless growth demanded by shareholders we've sort of...

If D&D were still owned by a privately owned company, I think we can safely speculate that the pressure to revoke the OGL, claw back more things from system identity, squash potential competition etc wouldn't be as great. I don't think anybody is arguing that it's a 100% certainty, but yeah...

Oh, okay. Well, we'll consider that settled then.

Wanna bet your business on that? I wouldn't. Not counting the OGL debacle, there is also the 3.0-->3.5 rug pull that alot of publishers still remember too. Generally speaking, it's not good business to have your business depend on the largesse of a corporation. Especially one with an already...

The fundamental problem is that Hasbro is a public company. Old school Keynesian economics would dictate that people/entities generally make decisions that are in their long-term self interest. This however did not really take into account the pressures of entering the capital markets. How many...

I can't imagine trying to untangle that onion of nested OGC some of these small publishers built upon. You'd have to hire forensic accountants or something. It would be an absolute nightmare. That threat is still there. Releasing the SRD in Creative Commons does nothing to protect people who...

I would love to see their balance sheet. It's alot of spray and pray but they have nice production. But I don't see most of their catalog, both board games and RPGs, with a few exceptions, moving a ton of units. They kind of just came out of nowhere, with what, Achtung Cthulhu and and were...

I agree with everything you've said here. But it doesn't stop them from bankrupting you if they want to. It's not zero risk is all I'm saying.

I know for some friends of mine, this was a big issue. They came from a place where achieving total system mastery rewarded you with a substantially better character at the table. Which, if you have a wider array of "valid" or useful things to do at the table than everybody else that equates to...

Re-reading 4E right now and I'm a known Reynolds hater. But whatever, it doesn't make the game unplayable or hard to play. But I'm weird with my art. If it were up to me it'd be all like, Brom, DiTerlizzi, Otus, Mulligan, Kovacs, Easley etc. The problem with art direction for a game line is...

I think that's pretty universal. I remember one of the first things I would hear when discussing 5E, when it was new, was people saying they could see themselves playing most classes (with a couple exceptions, Warlock etc) all the way to level 20 without needing/wanting to multiclass. To be...

Very true. But as we learned during the OGL debacle, in practice, where the rubber meets the road; not so much. Everyone told WotC you can't revoke the OGL, it says so right there. But before they blinked for PR and shareholder reasons they were just betting that nobody would fight them over...

Yeah, I played that. It was on Gamepass I think and it was pretty great! Big time Turtles in Times vibe.

I mean, I guess. I would probably just have them working together and have the lawful evil organized ones operate differently than the chaotic ones. Sort of like the difference between Beebop and Rocksteady vs Foot Clan ninjas. Like they are different but working towards the same goal and just...

Not really germane to the article, but I always found the whole Blood War conflict between, a like, really arbitrary distinction? Like they don't have more in common than they don't?

To a degree that's true. But it still was the huge gorilla in the room before that. I remember game stores being chock full of AD&D 2E stuff in like, 97,98 and 99. And that was when TSR wasn't publishing much of anything.

I'm one of those who detests the idea of Anime Fighting Magic fighters, but as you level and fight more and more powerful foes, that just breaks down. They can't simultaneously be just a built dude with a sword and doing huge chunks of damage to an elder dragon at the same time. At the end of...

Yeah, their ultimate goal will be achieved anyway by just getting a critical mass of players on DDB. That's a marketplace they completely control, and if they can get those users to not be interested in anything that doesn't offer DDB integration then their goals are achieved regardless. That's...

For example, to use the Tal'Dorei book from that show you like, you would need to own the core rules for 5E. I can use the Tales of the Valiant monster book with 5E. The idea is you can remove the expense for supporting the game, for segments you don't fee like making or think aren't worth it...