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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9412340" data-attributes="member: 8461">In a tabletop context, no they can't. But in terms of content on the VTT? They might not be able to stop something that happens in the course of play as it's happening, but they can absolutely review and curate anything users make.I would say no, but it's not up to me. WotC's attitude in regards to questions like this could charitably be described as "hit or miss" with regards to putting the interests of the consumer above their own goals of monetizing their content to the maximum extent possible.You literally can. I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise; WotC's ability to curate content isn't going to be subject to any sort of review or appeals process. If they decide that you're doing something they don't like, then it's too bad for you, regardless of how nonsensical their actions might seem.Hence the problem with operating on a platform where WotC has both unilateral oversight and a desire to monetize their content to the fullest.That honestly doesn't seem like a concern of theirs, beyond anything short of another DDB boycott.I don't know what you mean about "immense capability," since at this point they're still struggling to get everything off the ground. In this regard, they don't seem especially more competent than they are in anything they've attempted in the last two years, or with regard to a lot of their technical ventures going even further back.Again, look at their track records. Trying to kill the OGL was a manifestly bad idea, and yet they went through with it anyway.Your ability to know the future, in terms of how all people everywhere will react for absolute certain, is quite the superpower.And your assuming that it won't be doesn't make it true. So tag, you're it.And yet you seem certain that it will be comparably open to other finished VTTs.No, your assumption about what I'm referring to is flawed in this regard, as I've never once mentioned the skill system in this context.Which is relevant how? Or is this a sly reference to the AI DM thing?Leaving aside that you've repeatedly gotten what's in my mind wrong, if the skill system is something that the VTT presents as being less interactive than other systems, then I'd posit that it's not going to be as enticing for players (particularly new players). Of course, you're the one assuming they won't try to make some sort of A/V reaction to skills being used, which strikes me as odd. You don't need to animate "conversations" to apply some sort of visual indicator to a character that's been frightened, for instance. Which would be meta-game in the extreme, but I doubt WotC would care.See above. If you make an intimidate check, would it really be that hard for the VTT to, say, play a small clip of a scream as a character is shaded blue and vibrates slightly? I think not, since that's far more easy to render than something to animate a completely custom spell.Precisely. Which is why you'll likely have less instances among new players of their PCs giving carrots to horses or other particular interactions like that. Instead, you'll likely get specified animations not unlike those used for spells. Which will likely serve to equate skills with (low-level) spells in the minds of players, in terms of their breadth of applicability, narrowing the range of imaginative play with regard to the uses of skills.No, that's not where my logic leads. It's more likely that animal handling will be made ancillary, receiving less and less attention over the course of future releases, and as a consequence made more and more irrelevant.Which has a not-inconsiderable chance of leading to my logic, which is that it becomes less relevant as a skill over time, so it sounds like you're agreeing with me.I'm not sure why you're talking about "upset," as I've been talking about the constriction of the breadth of imaginative play as a consequence of certain options being (unintentionally) disincentivized as a course of other options being played up by the VTT.You forgot to add "or lose business to," there.Your emoji didn't work; see the issue with not knowing how to perform even simple technical functions?Not really; see below.I'm not sure why you think this is notable, since there's no guarantee on how expansive that will be or when precisely it will come out.The "entire set"? So you think that the next SRD is going to have everything in the Core Rulebooks? Because that would be a huge change from the 5.1 SRD.They don't need to release another new edition to do that; an anemic SRD and a bunch of supplements work just as well.Yes, mostly in the presumption that they need to release an entirely new edition after this 5.5 one to do what you're saying.Is that why 5E has been so successful? Because that seems like an odd thing to say was the key to its success.They also declared the OGL was perpetual, and then played word games to try and do an end-run around that promise, so the idea that we'll never see a new edition strikes me as highly implausible.And yet they're replacing their current with with a sort-of-new-edition-but-not-really. So their commitment to not replacing or changing things going forward seems to be undercut by them changing things going forward.And we saw how much they wanted to walk that one back during the OGL debacle; it was only after a community revolt that they promised to release the 5.5 game under the CC, I'll note, and even then there are the problems outlined above.The same environment as them trying to close the OGL in the first place, and offering weak concessions only after the community forced them to stop. I don't know why you think that means they've had a change of heart.This strikes me as a rather stringent binary, though I'll note that the latter possibility seems entirely probable, given their number of missteps to date. Even then, I think the execs are the people who can take the least credit for the successes of 5E, as the designers and developers almost seem to be working against them.I'll note again that declaring how something will be "only after" five years have passed is quite the declaration of how the future will unfold. At least I keep saying that I'm speculating.Which would seem to run entirely counter to WotC's current strategy of monetization via standardization and top-down control.Which is a good summary of what they want to do: "keep everything," as in, all to themselves. I'm just pointing out how that's not necessarily good for the community. Remember, we're the obstacles between them and "their" money.You mentioned "songs and videos" with regard to "creativity of the community" insofar as the content on the VTT goes. So unless you think that people are going to be posting comics on there, this is quite the tangent.Which isn't really here or there with regard to the VTT, save for a rather broad showcase of how WotC's primary goal is to generate money, and that the idea of "making money = providing quality" seems at best orthogonal to what they're doing now. A "recurrent spending environment" isn't something that speaks to how good something is, and there's no reason to assume that's implied.Not really, certainly not to the extent that you're angry.Which strikes me as a reasonable concern for how the medium will shape the community, particularly with regard to new players.Which leaves aside the "play" portion of "imaginative play," i.e. the play is taking place within the context of playing the game.Cool. But unless they're doing that while actually playing sessions of D&D (or some other game) on a VTT, that's not really relevant to this discussion. You're not able to quote a single instance of me saying that the VTT will stop people from writing songs or recounting sessions, just that it runs the risk of narrowing the scope of imaginative play (during the course of play).Which is good, because those aren't what we're talking about.And how many of those are created (or consumed, for that matter) on a VTT? Because otherwise this is turning into an even greater digression than I thought.And if you think that the VTT is going to kill Kraken Week, then you're wildly misunderstanding what I'm saying, though at this point that's par for the course.As usual, you're misstating my position.See above. You've completely twisted what I'm saying into something else entirely. I've never once touted the idea that using a VTT will somehow rob people of any ability to express themselves.In conjunction with their actions over the last few years, don't forget.And this is where you've gone off the rails; I've said before that the VTT will (unintentionally) disincentivize going beyond what it does well, and that this has the potential to hurt imaginative play among people for whom that becomes the standard mode of engagement. Nothing more.See above. If encourages the perception that if it's not something you pay for (or isn't something worth paying for), it's not something used in the course of play.Because the issue of the rules are only one aspect of what I mentioned earlier, wherein it's the engagement with the VTT itself that brings up the aforementioned concern."Creative and unlimited play" isn't a mechanic, and so isn't something they can't program into the VTT, which means it can't incentivize that unto itself.Which has contents which can be incentivized.This "broad range" is necessarily narrower than the scope of imaginative play, even where it comes to devising your own rules.I'm sure they'll do "something" with it, but that the "something" will also be sure to take into account how well it can be presented in a digital environment.Oddly, this sounds like a conspiracy theory in and of itself. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" /></blockquote>

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