Hasbro/WotC has crossed the Trust Thermocline

[Dire Bare]

At that time for me it was the begin of my personal erosion of trust. They promised something (old settings) and released something completely different. Then other issues in the quality of other releases and now this OGL scandal. You quoted one post of mine without considering the previous one. Please, consider the whole thing.

I think many fans are conflating two different things, that work together in tandem to pull them away from WotC as customers.

One, is WotC making decisions on the direction of D&D that are NOT a violation of trust, but simply don't align with what SOME customers want out of D&D. WotC never "promised" to release all the classic settings first before adapting Magic settings to the game. Never. You may have wanted that to happen first, but it wasn't a promise or a breach of trust. Still, if WotC isn't putting out products you want, your enjoyment is being "eroded".

Quality issues CAN be a breach of trust, but quality is subjective. A book you might think poor quality, I might think is awesome. Most of WotC's books have been well received by fans overall, the biggest gripes within the online community recently have been over the format of the Spelljammer release, with feelings it was an attempt to charge more for less content.

There are a lot of smaller events that actually WERE breaches of trust, that have brought WotC closer and closer to this "thermocline of trust". I posted a list of past WotC actions that bothered me up in post #59.

 

[mamba]

The very act of creating a new edition helps with that.

not if it is backwards compatible, which this one is

To be clear, I'm not saying that it would have been impossible for them to make a state-of-the-art VTT and suite of digital tools for 5e. However, they're obviously going in a different direction.

they are, all I am saying is that there is no reason to, and you seem to agree here…

 

[CapnZapp]

Comparisons with physics stuff are misplaced - physics and chemistry react according to predictable laws of physics.

But there's nothing of the sort here. Humans don't operate according to scientific laws.

Instead the comparison risks drawing the focus away from what's truly important:

The OGL's value lay in the trust. Not the legal protections. Now that trust is gone, and nothing WotC can realistically do will bring it back. But not because of some law of physics.

 

[Greg Benage]

The OGL's value lay in the trust. Not the legal protections.

That was very much the opposite of my experience as a publisher (well, VP of Product Development for a publisher).

 

[CapnZapp]

That was very much the opposite of my experience as a publisher (well, VP of Product Development for a publisher).

No, I mean the value is in you trusting WotC not to sue you, a trust generated by you feeling confident you not being sued. Not because of any legal precedent or court statements.

Now that trust is gone, regardless of whether the OGL will actually change or not.

 

[Greg Benage]

Now that trust is gone, regardless of whether the OGL will actually change or not.

I don't know if you're tying yourself into knots on the "trust" thing, or if I'm just failing at reading comprehension. The "value" of the OGL was in the contractual rights conferred by the legal document. That has been "devalued" by Wizards' efforts to revoke it. If, tomorrow, Wizards releases a 1.0b that adds the word "irrevocable," the value will be restored. It may not be Paizo or Kobold Press or MCDM or whatever, but publishers will line up to leverage that value and publish content for D&D.

 

[overgeeked]

I don't know if you're tying yourself into knots on the "trust" thing, or if I'm just failing at reading comprehension. The "value" of the OGL was in the contractual rights conferred by the legal document. That has been "devalued" by Wizards' efforts to revoke it. If, tomorrow, Wizards releases a 1.0b that adds the word "irrevocable," the value will be restored. It may not be Paizo or Kobold Press or MCDM or whatever, but publishers will line up to leverage that value and publish content for D&D.

I don't think that will work. Because there's nothing stopping WotC from simply biding their time and altering the OGL again later on. That's the trust the other poster is talking about. We know they want to kill the OGL. That's not likely to change. They could let it stand another 20 years or kill it tomorrow. The fact that they might kill it tomorrow puts publishers in a monumental bind and puts their businesses at risk. The margins are already small enough that most publishers would err on the side of not risking their entire business in trusting WotC to not do this again in 6 months or a year.

Publishers have to trust WotC to not pull the rug out from under their feet. Publishers now know with 100% certainty they cannot trust WotC to leave the rug alone. The trust is gone. So publishers will no longer use the OGL. They will likely either skirt copyright where they can by publishing compatible adventures or they will switch to the ORC. Several publishers have already said that's exactly what they're doing. All because they can no longer trust WotC to leave the OGL alone.

 

[Dausuul]

Wotc further saw dnd as a "lifestyle brand."

And they're right about that -- it is a lifestyle brand. What they failed to reckon with is that being a lifestyle brand cuts two ways. Yes, it can engender tremendous customer loyalty. But it also means that customers can get absolutely furious if you mess with things that they view as essential.

Moreover, in this case, there is the issue that the D&D brand is not synonymous with the Wizards brand in the minds of the community. Wizards is the steward of D&D, not the creator of it; a distinction which was reinforced in the 4E era when a lot of people decided WotC had failed in its stewardship, and decamped for Pathfinder. Because of this, Wizards does not automatically benefit from customer loyalty to D&D and can in fact be hurt by it.

 

[CapnZapp]

I don't know if you're tying yourself into knots on the "trust" thing, or if I'm just failing at reading comprehension.

Okay so let me try to make it simple.

People on the interwebs discuss the OGL. Can WotC revoke it? Are their changes legal? Will people contest it in court?

All these questions completely miss the point.

The point is that the trust is gone. This trust came from a belief (now shattered) that WotC wouldn't do this.

Whether they actually can do this is completely beside the point. Whether they backtrack or weasel or apologize-not-apologize is completely beside the point (and worthless as long as they insist on retaining the right to make future changes).

All because the trust is gone.

Just about the ONLY action they can take to "save the OGL" would be to turn it over to EFF. Or legally connect it to a truly open license such as Creative Commons. Or something - I am not a lawyer. Permanently (perpetually, irrevocably, you name it) giving up all their rights to the open source movement somehow.

Anything short of that will fail. Again not because of any particular legal wrinkle.

But because the trust is gone.

I really don't know how to explain it simpler than this, so if you still don't comprehend my language, we will just have to leave it - this is my final attempt.

Cheers

 

[Muso]

One, is WotC making decisions on the direction of D&D that are NOT a violation of trust, but simply don't align with what SOME customers want out of D&D. WotC never "promised" to release all the classic settings first before adapting Magic settings to the game. Never. You may have wanted that to happen first, but it wasn't a promise or a breach of trust. Still, if WotC isn't putting out products you want, your enjoyment is being "eroded".

Quality issues CAN be a breach of trust, but quality is subjective. A book you might think poor quality, I might think is awesome. Most of WotC's books have been well received by fans overall, the biggest gripes within the online community recently have been over the format of the Spelljammer release, with feelings it was an attempt to charge more for less content.

There are a lot of smaller events that actually WERE breaches of trust, that have brought WotC closer and closer to this "thermocline of trust". I posted a list of past WotC actions that bothered me up in post #59.

Now I understand better what you mean, thanks. In fact I think the erosion of trust or at least how much one appreciates a certain product is very subjective. Your list in message #58 is somewhat similar to mine but somewhat different. Precisely for subjective issues of personal stories and different origins. In Italy, for example, the translation of the manuals into Italian had been entrusted to a company (Asmodee through GaleForce9) in which the historical translators of D&D work and who have translated all the past editions starting from AD&D2E. They were doing a great job. At some point the WoC revoked Asmodee's license and decided to publish their own translations of the manuals. The quality of the translations has plummeted to embarrassing levels. Despite the protests of the whole community we only got very vague standard answers and the release of errata that did not cover all the issues entered. Things like that in the Monster Manual beholder is translated as "beholder" and in other manuals it is translated as "onnivedente" (that can be roughly translated as "all-seeing"), in some manuals the bugbear is translated as in past editions, i.e. "bugbear", while in others it is called "urgoblin ". This is just to give a few small examples. But this has caused a significant erosion of trust in the Italian public.
Going back to the topic of the topic, I think a lot of people had their confidence eroded in different ways but not yet to the point where they passed a certain threshold. This OGL scandal has overstepped many who were only partially disgruntled. Indeed, the WoC behaved as if it wanted to saw the branch it is sitting on.