It is time to forgive WOTC and get back onboard.

[ThorinTeague]

While WotC has made some key steps just to repair completely avoidable damage,

Yeah, one of the things that's so crazy about this whole hurricane is how profoundly unnecessary all this was.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

You strike me as a person who perhaps struggles with empathy.

Speaking of empathy.
People at WotC who just want to design their game. People who worked on the movie out of love.
People who were just happy to see a D&D movie.
I am also empathizing with 3pp who were hurt and had 3 terrible weeks.

There are very few people I am not empathizing with.
The deciders at WotC who all that was a good idea. Maybe I have even a little sympathy for some of them, because maybe they thought it would be best for D&D to disallow bigotry...

So why do you think some people are worth your empathy and some are not?

Here is a tweet I found, that underlines my sentiment:

 

[gweinel]

"Forgive"??? Not for me. I can not forgive a corporate who brought chaos in the ttrpg just to make more money while at the same time would destroy many smaller companies in order to "crush" competion. Their intentions are still there. This kind of thinking is hard-coded in companies like Hasbro. They will try it again in the future, thats for sure.
Having said that, as Ryan Dancey said, the DnD workers who fought this war from inside have my deep respect.

 

[Morrus]

You strike me as a person who perhaps struggles with empathy.

How about this... I empathize with the children in the Congo who were and still are used as laborers by companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft to mine cobalt ... I do struggle to empathize with those who might have had the OGL 1.0a taken away but ultimately didn't... So please continue to tell me what type of person I perhaps am...

Do you know why the textile industry wants children working on manufacturing clothes?

It's because they can reach their hands into the machines without having to turn them off.

Best

This thread is going off the rails. Drop that subject, please.

 

[Branduil]

I think you have a point there, but only in as much as everyone co-operated because the 900lb gorilla needed to be taken down and nobody was big enough to do it by themselves. If you don't have a 900lb gorilla to create that level of threat, you don't need the entire community to deal with it when it acts up.

The idea of the RPG hobby needing a 900lb gorilla so we can all be scared of it and pull together against it feels a bit strange.

I revoked the OGL 1.0a 35 minutes ago

 

[Wade Kemper]

It seems to me that a lot of people who are still mad and hold a grudge even after WOTC backed down and reversed course were just waiting to pounce on them anyway.

I hope you find what you're looking for in another game, but I love 5e and I appreciate WOTC for what they've done with the corpse TSR delivered to them (Yes, even 4e was fun!)

Long live TTRPGs!

 

[Aldarc]

It seems to me that a lot of people who are still mad and hold a grudge even after WOTC backed down and reversed course were just waiting to pounce on them anyway.

I hope you find what you're looking for in another game, but I love 5e and I appreciate WOTC for what they've done with the corpse TSR delivered to them (Yes, even 4e was fun!)

Long live TTRPGs!

I will probably always be wary around a person who brandishes a lethal weapon in my direction regardless of whether they used the weapon against me or decided not to. This is why many 3pp are looking at other licenses like CC or ORC. Not everyone feels as safe in WotC's "safe harbor" anymore. It's not about wanting to pounce on WotC; instead, it's about not wanting to risk being pounced on.

 

[SteveC]

For me, this gets back to where it was before this whole kerfuffle: how different is the next edition going to be? What's happened has made a significant impact on the game, though, as many companies who's product I like were starting to design their own systems that are 5E compatible. Will that actually still happen?

The reason I ask that is because if 6E is more of a 5.5/5.25E, where there are minor changes, but you can still use 5E books/classes/spells I can just pick one of the many 5E clones and use that. What's more, I can use it on Foundry or Roll20 and just ignore what WotC is doing entirely. Maybe I'll pick up an expansion book here or there if it interests me, but unless WotC changes their publishing model, how many would that actually be? There will have to be something really interesting in 6E in terms of rules to make me adopt it.

The funny thing was, before this all happened, I expected I would pick up the 6E PHB just to be up to date, and if my group was going to use the VTT, I'd get a sub to that as well. Now, unless there's something really new and different (which WotC has said isn't the plan) I can just use whatever 5E product that launches from a third part company.

I think this is the textbook definition of a pyrrhic victory at this point.

 

[embee]

My uncle once explained to me "The Trust Glass."

Imagine a glass of water. You can put water in and take water out. But, if the glass is ever empty, it will break. That is trust.

WOTC emptied out the Trust Glass.

 

[Bravesteel25]

I am astounded and completely applaud their final decision. However, that doesn't just wipe away what they tried to do, they attempted to create a walled garden within the D&D Beyond ecosystem for OneDND while simultaneously turning everything outside of those walls into a nuclear wasteland. They messed up, they let the cats out of the bag, and now those cats are transforming into an Orc horde.

Granted, anyone that has played RPGs for a long time knows that there is plenty of awesome stuff outside of the D&D/OSR space, it's just this generation's chance to find out about all these cool games.

Aside: I sincerely wish Edge Studios would get off their collective behinds and start producing some Star Wars stuff!

 

[Umbran]

It seems to me that a lot of people who are still mad and hold a grudge even after WOTC backed down and reversed course were just waiting to pounce on them anyway.

Emotional states and emotion-based assessments do not generally go away instantaneously.

Expect some people to be mad for a long time, and to have positions based on that for the rest of their lives.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm talking pure facts... nothing actually changed. I'm not the one debating what might've, could've been.

If a close friend of yours tries to shoot you and misses, then says they are really sorry and sells their gun, nothing has actually changed. You are alive and unharmed. He no longer has the gun. Are you just going to immediately forgive your friend because he got rid of the gun?

 

[Micah Sweet]

What does "get on board with WotC" mean in this context?

 

[UngeheuerLich]

My uncle once explained to me "The Trust Glass."

Imagine a glass of water. You can put water in and take water out. But, if the glass is ever empty, it will break. That is trust.

WOTC emptied out the Trust Glass.

Are you sure that analogy is correct... Maybe you mean: if the glass breaks, it will become empty and cannot be refilled anymore...

 

[Maxperson]

Speaking of empathy.
People at WotC who just want to design their game. People who worked on the movie out of love.
People who were just happy to see a D&D movie.
I am also empathizing with 3pp who were hurt and had 3 terrible weeks.

There are very few people I am not empathizing with.
The deciders at WotC who all that was a good idea. Maybe I have even a little sympathy for some of them, because maybe they thought it would be best for D&D to disallow bigotry...

So why do you think some people are worth your empathy and some are not?

Here is a tweet I found, that underlines my sentiment:

This is a lot of assumption on Dancey's. He's assuming that people inside WotC fought for this and it wasn't a numbers game to upper management. Maybe it happened. Maybe it didn't. Even if some in WotC disliked this, and I fully believe that there are, upper management who makes these kinds of decisions is just a few people and there's a good chance that none of those who disliked it were in that small group.

 

[Maxperson]

It seems to me that a lot of people who are still mad and hold a grudge even after WOTC backed down and reversed course were just waiting to pounce on them anyway.

Yep! Absolutely! I have been waiting 23 years for WotC to do exactly this just so I could have a reason to pounce on them. It's about time! I was beginning to think that they'd never do anything this bad.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

This is a lot of assumption on Dancey's. He's assuming that people inside WotC fought for this and it wasn't a numbers game to upper management. Maybe it happened. Maybe it didn't. Even if some in WotC disliked this, and I fully believe that there are, upper management who makes these kinds of decisions is just a few people and there's a good chance that none of those who disliked it were in that small group.

Yes. I think so. But those below are those whose jobs are cut if we boycott forever.
And the higher ups, even when thrown out will get a lot of money to comfort themselves...

So I think, stopping the boycott for the time being is sending the right signal.

So overall, I "forgive WotC", which does not mean I do forgive every person in WotC right now.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

when your dog jumps up on you and gets mud on your work clothes, it’s not fun.

It’s in the dog’s nature to do it when excited. But it’s also on the dog owner to train the dog. Or accept the mud.

No value judgment from me—-I advocate we train the dog and shape behavior. It could happen again but maybe not for a while.

A business that is publicly traded will push to make a profit and the bigger the better. We are not talking about exploding ford pintos here.

But as a community, we yelled at the dog and it got down. There is nothing for me to forgive. WOTC is a dog. It does dog stuff. And if it craps in my shoe enough…nah I get that.

If it bites my kids—-then it may have to get another home. But the home is not going to be my headspace. Produce what I like, I buy. Don’t and I won’t. Muddy my pants and “get trained.”

 

[Maxperson]

Yes. I think so. But those below are those whose jobs are cut if we boycott forever.

Oh, absolutely. There are two reasons why I really dislike boycotts. The first is what you just mentioned. If we boycott say Chick-fil-A for reasons, we're only hurting those below who weren't responsible and need the jobs to feed their families. We can't hurt the corporation since the corporation will just eliminate jobs and/or reduce hours to compensate for any losses, if there are any losses which brings me to the second point. Boycotts usually just earn the corporation extra money. You're giving the corporations tons of free publicity and those on the other side of the issue will make a point of repeatedly buying over a short period of time from whoever you are boycotting.

Boycotts almost always backfire. That's why even at the height of this fiasco, I only ever said that I would not be buying unless they fully fixed things and made the 3PP safe. I never called for others to do it.

And the higher ups, even when thrown out will get a lot of money to comfort themselves...

Yep.

So overall, I "forgive WotC", which does not mean I do forgive every person in WotC right now.

This is where we depart. I can buy things from the company without forgiving it for what was done. It's going to take significantly more for me to forgive them for this. And I will never, ever trust them.

 

[Bix and Box]

What did they actually do? What actually changed?

"Your honor, the police stopped my client from murdering his wife. So no crime was committed. He ended up doing nothing, and nothing actually changed."