Gizmodo: Dungeons & Dragons Has Burned Up All the Goodwill

[Jer]

More than that, there are now D&D players who are parents who have never played an RPG without the OGL existing (assuming they didn't start 3E when they were four years old or something, which would be unusual, to put it mildly). So they're dressing their kids in "zero-level human" onesies and giving them stuffed owlbears and mimics to play with.

This is absolutely right but my existential dread about my own crippling mortality didn't want to go that far and have to grapple with the consequences of that thought

WotC is taking real aim at D&D as a lifestyle/identity, at the very time they should be bolstering that.

Ironically I'm sure that's a part of what they thought they were doing. I think that's a part of their morality clause around their new licensing schemes - they want to control what D&D is and how it's perceived.

 

[overgeeked]

Ironically I'm sure that's a part of what they thought they were doing. I think that's a part of their morality clause around their new licensing schemes - they want to control what D&D is and how it's perceived.

They’ve certainly done that. It’s not perceived well.

 

[Greg Benage]

It felt like this article leaned heavily into righteous advocacy.

That's who they are. This was their tweet a day before they received the leak.


While I share their perspective and biases for the most part, I do wish the information had been leaked to a more objective news source. I wish we had gotten some real investigative journalism, rather than only publishing the leaks and transcribing publisher statements. Then again, I guess what we got did the trick and I really don't want to get into "ethics in game journalism" territory.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

While I share their perspective and biases for the most part, I do wish the information had been leaked to a more objective news source. I wish we had gotten some real investigative journalism, rather than only publishing the leaks and transcribing publisher statements. Then again, I guess what we got did the trick and I really don't want to get into "ethics in game journalism" territory.

Unfortunately, there really isn't anyone in the RPG journalism space who does that. You have book writers, but they work on a vastly different time frame and often don't have even the journalistic support system that Gizmodo provides, which matters more than one might think.

There were more robust outlets in the past -- including io9/Gizmodo before several rounds of guttings by their owners -- but there isn't anyone left with the kind of profile to get stuff done. Ars Technica would tackle this with seriousness, but they're seen by fewer gamers than io9 is, and part of the motivation for this leak was to get as much publicity about what WotC was up to as possible. And I don't think mainstream outlets would have jumped on this until someone like Gizmodo had already explained the issue in a way that non-geek editors could understand.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The online community is only a part of the true D&D fandom, but this is the part of the market they wanted to sell us their digital products. Our opinion is too important to be ignored. Teorically we are who should want to buy their future products. They have to worry if our opinion may cause a serious damage to the prestige of the company.