D&D General Are You Seriously Planning to Stop Playing and/or Running D&D Over The Recent OGL Developments?

[overgeeked]

The stuff 3PP put out is miles ahead of any official stuff. The 3PP keep the rickety boat of D&D afloat. I will stop supporting WotC. I won’t play or run whatever edition of official D&D is currently in print as that could cause others to support WotC. I will not promote or recommend them or their products. I will support 3PP. My interests are largely in the OSR. So those are the products I will buy and the creators I will support. The hobby is bigger than WotC. It’s long past time we reminded them of that.

 

[fjw70]

I won’t stop playing. There is nothing coming up from WotC that I am super excited about so not buying anything in the near future. We will see how thing are later. If I don’t decide to switch to 6e I am perfectly happy with 5e that have bought already.

 

[Mallus]

I wasn’t planning on subscribing to One D&D anyway. Their fancy 3D virtual tabletop doesn’t offer my group anything we need. I’ll continue to play in the game where the DM bought the 5e books in Beyond last year so he could share with the majority of the group who were new to 5e and didn’t own physical copies.

If WotC fails to renew their deal with Roll20, we switch to another VTT without the convenience of Roll20’s 5e automation.

Then maybe next campaign we switch to something lighter, like pre-3e D&D or a PbtA game. At this point, the odds WotC/Hasbro receive any more of my money become slim.

I’ve been playing D&D far longer than Hasbro has been involved (as a lot of us here have). Their current mishandling of the brand isn’t going to change that. The rules aren’t the game, and WotC under Hasbro certainly aren’t D&D.

 

[Osgood]

I find the while OGL situation shameful and disappointing, but at the end of the day, (a) I really like 5E (and so far I like most of what I've seen from the play test) and (b) I really don't care for most of the other games out there that I've tried (PF2 in particular landed with a major thud for me). So, I'm sticking with D&D.

We've still yet to see an official response, so it's up to WotC to decide whether I buy the bare minimum of products, or just about everything.

As a side note, I also really like D&D Beyond. I fined it very useful for planning and running games. I canceled my sub to make a statement--knowing full well I'll have access until August with my annual subscription. Unless they double down on their OGL plans, its pretty likely that'll I'll re-subscribe before then.

 

[Xamnam]

I'm still waiting to see what this 2.0 version of the new license looks like. If the leak is accurate, and doesn't have any major unmentioned drawbacks, that's likely to restore my energy for participating in the playtest.

If the playtest goes well, and I by and large like the changes they make, then I'm probably going to pick up the new PHB eventually.

I had zero interest in paying money for DDB/VTTs before all of this, and that's only strengthened.

I want the Planescape books to be good for the sake of Planescape, but I'm not optimistic there. Likewise, I would need to be wildly impressed by the reception of anything they put out in the future before I even considered it, given their recent output.

 

[M_Natas]

I will play my d&d games, but not spend anymore money on it, unless WotC change their evil corporate ways in a way that I believe.

 

[Oofta]

I wasn’t referring to the poll results. I was referring to all the comments from people clarifying that while they aren’t going to stop playing, they are going to stop giving WotC money. I seem to be one of the only ones here still willing to do that.

You aren't the only one. I'll continue to play, I'll continue to pay for DDB because I enjoy the game and DDB makes my life as a DM easier. If they come out with products that interest me I'll buy them. I only have a few 3rd party supplements anyway and most are from DmsGuild which is under a different license.

I think the OGL has likely been bad for D&D and the industry as a whole and was always unnecessary. You can't patent game rules, WOTC can't copyright rolling a dice and adding some numbers to determine success even if the die that they roll is a D20. I accept that WOTC is not my friend, nor do they care about me as an individual. They are a corporation and the main difference between most corporations is how good their PR department is. On a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is unintentional harm and 10 is jacking up the price for a medicine that people need to survive by 600% or knowing full well that your product could disrupt life as we know it and spreading disinformation and lies to counter what you know is true for decades? What WOTC is doing doesn't even rank a 5.

I have absolutely no issue with WOTC getting money back from companies making a millions of dollars a year riding on their coattails. I have no problem with them taking other people's ideas when everyone else is relying on theirs*. I do disagree with the timeframe and retroactive nature of the change (which is likely not enforceable legally) and I think the approach is a mistake. At the very least they should have given a much longer timeframe for compliance with the new OGL and grandfathered in existing products. But if I stopped spending money on companies that did things I disagree with or was actually a for-profit company trying to make a buck, I'd have a lot of money because I couldn't spend it anywhere. If I had any money to spend of course because I've spent a lifetime working for soulless corporations.

We also have to remember that this policy still hasn't officially been released. It's likely to be challenged in court if released as outlined in the leaks. Even if the new OGL goes into effect, you still can't copyright basic game rules so alternative rules that are effectively the same will still be published.

In the meantime I enjoy the game too much to stop playing. I've investigated or dabbled in a few other systems over the years, but none of them work for me as well as D&D does.

*In most cases WOTC could take your ideas already and the odds of them directly copying anything approaches 0 anyway.

 

[avaz]

Nope. 5E has been a ton of fun for my family. Easy to explain rules and good family time.

 

[Velderan]

The poll is a bit overly simplistic, so I didn't vote but....

Do I plan to stop playing D&D? Not immediately. We're finishing up a campaign and then I'm running another 5e campaign we've had planned so that'll likely take us through 2023 at least. On the side, I've tossed out the idea of revisiting either B/X or 2e with long-time friends outside my usual table that I played 2e with years ago and they're interested in something less frequent than my weekly 5e group so there's that too. My DDB sub is cancelled for renewal, but it's paid through October so there's plenty of time for WotC to change direction and for me to decide if I'm comfortable giving them my business again. NGL though, that's going to take a lot because I was already starting to feel some serious reservations about WotC as a company after the $999 MTG anniversary set announcement.

In the meantime, I won't be buying any WotC or Hasbro products (licensed or otherwise) so they're really just hurting themselves the longer they drag this out. As others have noted, I have invested literally thousands of dollars into D&D between books and minis so me not wanting to give WotC money doesn't make all that unusable somehow. It also doesn't block me from continuing to buy stuff for my hobby, between WizKids non-D&D licensed stuff, Reaper minis, and niche things I've bought off Etsy like status rings for minis. Some of the 3PP stuff I've bought to use for 5e is actually system generic, like many of Nord Games products. If I want to continue with 5e, it's not going to be that hard to do so. And if ultimately something better comes along, minis and worldbuilding books migrate incredibly well to different systems so we'll see.

 

[Scottius]

Yep, already have. No more WOTC purchases. I'll still support third party publishers who are putting out books already in the pipeline but my groups have switched off 5e.