IMO, it doesn't make much sense to produce a "Black Flag Rulebook" until the existing 5e one becomes hard to find. At that point, you want one just to make sure there's something for new players to keep the game going.
Yes, agreed. But we know the smaller "they" is still there, and to be honest, I feel for them. Must be a hard place to be in. I do wonder if we're going to see an exodus at some point. Probably not, as they've still got it pretty good, but it could happen.
Correct. Which is why the "de-authorize the OGL 1.0a" stuff emerged. It will go nowhere in the end -- and we will be back with a 6e that, consequently, isn't really compatible with 5e - but it looks like it mostly is for marketing purposes. The designers of 6e will be tasked with breaking it just enough that it won't actually work well with 5e.
except for revoking that OGL
They still have DMs Guild which does exactly what they want without the OGL - full control over content, a very high cut, locking products into their platform. Basically a textbook predatory contract, but it seems to attract quite a high number of creators who just want to produce things for their favourite settings (just like all those other DTRPG community programmes).
Well, it will be D&D so it stands to reason people interested in D&D will start there. People new to the scene won’t know about all this nonsense leading up to it.
That’s the one that baffles me. Their official content is no where near as good as 3PP and they literally cannot keep up with the output of all the 3PP out there. So their players will quickly tire of the trickle of substandard dreck they get access to on their platform. Unless WotC’s big hope was either everyone signed on or everyone went out of business and came to them asking for jobs.
I don’t think it is. It’s not even a good short-term plan. Alienate the community. Ask outrageous prices. And produce a tiny trickle of at best mediocre content. I don’t see the up side here.
Right, which is why they’re trying to do that.
