How long do we wait for WoTC to speak?

[Grendel_Khan]

Yeah that's increasingly my feeling. Kind of seems like it's 50/50 odds at this point between:

1) WotC largely backs down, Paizo was just being quiet because they were the primary negotiators.

2) Paizo announces it has a new agreement with WotC, can continue to publish PF indefinitely, will now also be making books for 5E, and suggests we all cheer for them and look away as Kobold et al are lead to the slaughter.

This video with Erik Mona, specifically at the 20 minute mark, strongly suggests that Paizo was not aware of any of this until late last month, and is still trying to figure out what to say—but that they'll have a major announcement. He's also clearly not happy about any of it.

 

[reelo]

Paizo announces it has a new agreement with WotC, can continue to publish PF indefinitely, will now also be making books for 5E, and suggests we all cheer for them and look away as Kobold et al are lead to the slaughter.

Oh at this point I think the Kobolds are seen as the spokespeople of a Resistance, I think they might be on to something ...

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

1) WotC largely backs down, Paizo was just being quiet because they were the primary negotiators.

So far it was my take.

I'm pretty sure CR will try to position Darrington Press as the new Kobold Press as the big purveyor of 3PP materials for 5/.5 D&D. The crew of CR looks so friendly and all that, I have a hard time imagining them taking a hard stance against something. I can see Mercer shouldering the uncomfortable task of being the ''cant we just all get along, please'' guy, stuck between two communities.

 

[Nikosandros]

In 2003, they did the first distancing from the OGL (and 3e) be releasing 3.5e.

Why do you consider 3.5 as being more distant from the OGL? WotC released an SRD for 3.5.

 

[Art Waring]

As I wrote in another thread, and as you also noted, he left WoTC in 2002. He now works for a competitor.

While I have now reason to trust his general honesty (and, again, I appreciate the solid that he did for the TTRPG community!), we all tend to have our own rose-colored glasses on when we review history, especially the stuff we are not as familiar with.

TLDR; he was laid off just after Hasbro folded in WoTC and they were no longer autonomous; I don't think think he has anything valuable to say about Hasbro's legal or commercial considerations after that.

You are being pretty dismissive of someone who has been in the industry for decades, has nothing to gain either way from speaking the truth on the subject, and actually isn't out to paint wotc as the bad guy at all if you just watch the interview.

But I get the feeling that you have an opinion about him that you are unwilling to change without even hearing it from him how it went down. If you are not willing to hear his side of the story then you are unable of coming to an objective conclusion about the subject, because every perspective should be accounted for, especially if they were there and saw it happen.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I am from the Boston area. It was a joke about social class (Harvard is a pretty blue blood, Boston Brahmin school)

Q. How do you know someone went to school at Harvard?

A.

Spoiler

Oh, don't worry. They'll tell you soon enough.


....at an old firm, one of my friends used to call this the "H Bomb." You'd be talking to someone, and they'd always steer the conversation to where they went to school. And then they'd feign modesty ... "Oh, you know, just a school in the Boston area. Across the river."

Until you "forced" them to tell you.

Anyway, I kid. While not the sole indicator of quality, the difficulty in getting into the T10 Law Schools (YHS etc.) is the reason why it's usually a decent indicator of some kind of quality, and why they are taken up by BigLaw and Federal Clerkships.)

 

[S'mon]

Not going to speak for that poster, but to me, it's not so much "Harvard" as any Ivy League school, in the sense that, especially people in the legal profession who make a big deal about graduating from them, tend to be of a certain type, and let's just say the OA people are acting true to form.

I'd just like to mention that my law degree is from Oxford.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Hasbro has never supported the OGL. People within the subsidiary, WoTC, have.

I can certainly believe Hasbro itself hasn’t been a fan of the license, and we have seen earlier attempts to get D&D away from such an open contract with 3pp. But I think in terms of what the intent of the license was, Dancey is a reliable source and I also think this is the first real move we have seen that suggests Hasbro believes it can nullify the license. Prior to that any move they have made has been to work around it (I.e. a different license for new editions but no claims that the old one was no longer valid).

 

[Greg Benage]

Everything the OA people have said basically seems to be "We think it's totally cool and rad for a corporation to do this!".

I maybe haven't caught up on all the "OA" stuff and have never heard of them until now, but, while they apparently disagree on the legalities, they don't seem to disagree with our hero, Ryan Dancey, on the ethics. Ryan was rather matter-of-fact in that interview yesterday that the decision-makers at Wizards and Hasbro are "good people" and that they're just making a business decision (whether that business decision is good or bad) that they think will return the greatest value for Hasbro shareholders.

I know that some here look at statements like "value for shareholders" and their brains print out "murder all the baby seals," but I have absolutely no difficulty seeing this from the perspective of the Wizards C-suite folks. While he admits it's speculative, I think Ryan's analysis of the situation is spot on. It's basically the position I was adopting here last week, before all the leaks made it clear just how many baby seals were being murdered. I totally get their need to reclaim control of their IP as part of their business strategy (ONE BEEEELION DOLLARS). These people want to be successful, they want to keep their own jobs, and they think this decision is necessary to reach the company's goals as a business. And as Ryan said in that interview, "people lose their jobs every day." It's not a Wizards executive's place to worry about the graphic designer's job at Kobold Press.

The problem from my perspective is that I'm not a Hasbro employee or shareholder (unless fractionally as part of an index fund). I'm a customer. I don't care about their jobs or their business strategy or their future profits or any of it, except insofar as they produce stuff that entertains my friends and me. And considering all that, I'm left with a single thought:

If they're willing to do this to all of them, what are they planning to do to me?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I can certainly believe Hasbro itself hasn’t been a fan of the license, and we have seen earlier attempts to get D&D away from such an open contract with 3pp. But I think in terms of what the intent of the license was, Dancey is a reliable source and I also think this is the first real move we have seen that suggests Hasbro believes it can nullify the license. Prior to that any move they have made has been to work around it (I.e. a different license for new editions but no claims that the old one was no longer valid).

Oh, I agree that this is the first attempt by Hasbro to go nuclear. Which is why I suspect that they have been plotting this out for a while.

The only thing that would truly shock me at this point is to learn that this was some sort of mistake on Hasbro's part, or poorly considered. Which is why, despite the community being in an uproar, I don't know that they're likely to back down. But I've been wrong about many things before, so we'll see!*


*Who's going to see Titanic? We all know how it ends!