It is time to forgive WOTC and get back onboard.

[billd91]

no, for one much of it isn’t theirs to begin with, for another when they came up with the OGL the fact that others could / would build businesses around it very much was part of the plan and anticipated

How was the D&D IP not theirs?

 

[glass]

I don't follow. Words don't mater, actions matter.
They already put the SRD onto the CC. It's done. Words are irrelevant.

You may only care about the 5e SRD, but not everyone is you. It is probably the part of this whole things I care about the least. I care about the OGL, and all the other WotC SRDs, and the vast oceans of OGC beyond that. Their CC maneuver does nothing for any of that!

(Except possibly put it under greater threat down the line, by putting people like you on their side rather than mine.)

How was the D&D IP not theirs?

The IP is definitely theirs (the vast majority of it anyway). The question is how much of D&D is IP at all, and the answer is almost certainly "less than WotC would like". Hence its being in their interests for it not to be tested in detail.

 

[Cergorach]

How was the D&D IP not theirs?

Is an Orc, Dwarf or Elf an IP that's owned by TSR/WotC? Many, many things in D&D were just 'stolen' from others, which in turn 'stole' them from someone else. Only very specific implementations of D&D TSR/WotC could claim as their 'own'.

You could replace the word 'stolen' by 'inspired' to get the same point across, but this better represents the claim to said IP.

Imho D&D's main strength AND weakness is it's generic implementation. This easily allows people to make their own worlds or use existing worlds made by TSR/WotC.

I think one of the main issues at TSR/WotC was that many of their products that you kind of needed to run a campaign that you didn't think up yourself were not really profitable: Adventures, non-standard campaigns, non-standard source books, etc. That is pretty much the business reason for the OGL/SRD, letting others do the (for WotC) unprofitable stuff, while keeping D&D the main RPG for every imaginable product. We saw that when WotC licensed out Dragon and Dungeon magazine and eventually stopped that completely. And the very limited amount of Adventures for the 3E/3.5E run.

The 'problem' for WotC was that eventually the people making the 'unprofitable' also started making the profitable stuff, doing that better then WotC did, eventually moving to making their own core rule books, thus no longer needing the core D&D books. Pathfinder is probably the best example, but there are so many more. Monte Cook Games for example is another good example that eventually created such a positive following that it moved completely away from D&D and started making their own universes and game systems. The same goes for Green Ronin and quite a few others...

WotC didn't learn at all from 4E and tried to put the genie back into it's bottle with the OGL 1.1 shenanigans and they did that at a point of time when they were already getting an absolute crapton of negative press from their MtG side of the business. How management didn't see this coming a mile off I'm still unsure of. On one hand they rolled their decision back and apologized with the CC version of the SRD, on the other hand I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop...

 

[Scribe]

Is an Orc, Dwarf or Elf an IP that's owned by TSR/WotC? Many, many things in D&D were just 'stolen' from others, which in turn 'stole' them from someone else. Only very specific implementations of D&D TSR/WotC could claim as their 'own'.

You could replace the word 'stolen' by 'inspired' to get the same point across, but this better represents the claim to said IP.

Imho D&D's main strength AND weakness is it's generic implementation. This easily allows people to make their own worlds or use existing worlds made by TSR/WotC.

Yep. If Wizbro wanted to pitch that they have their own IP, they would be going back and looking at their own history (FR, DS, Planescape) and not disavowing it and stating there is no canon other than 5e.

 

[darjr]

I don't follow. Words don't mater, actions matter. They already put the SRD onto the CC. It's done. Words are irrelevant.

Actions do matter. This is the SECOND time WotC the corporation has tried shenanigans like this. When i hear they have a commitment to the OGL for the new versions of the core books I'll take a look.

 

[darjr]

There was a growing murmuring of old hats from TSR/WotC including but not limited to the likes of Jennell Jaquays, going over the things in D&D and explicitly citing where they came from outside of TSR and WotC. That slowed down with the dump of the SRD into CC, but didn't really stop.

 

[Maxperson]

They did have the intention to do it eventually since they did it. People yelled and they did it.

This is semantics. It's clear from @TheAlkaizer's context that he was saying that they didn't have the intention to do it from the beginning. They technically(and technically is the best kind of correct) had to have the intention to do what they did after we revolted, but they clearly did not have that intention at the outset.

They talked about breaking promises, planned to break promises, but they did not attempt to break promises or break any promises.

This is false. They had lawyers write the new OGL and deauthorization. That's an attempt to break the promise. That we intercepted their attempt to score a touchdown and possession changed, does not mean that they did not make the attempt.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm not seeing at particularly vile. Cap'n Kobold's first paragraph is pretty much right on the money. I might quibble about the characterization of them trying to reel back some of the rights on their territory - it struck me more like a hostile eviction of the squatters (I'd bet Hasbro considers them leeches) in favor of more constrained and tenuous tenants.

The whole depiction of 3PP as squatters is what was the main issue there. WotC invited everyone in to live on that property and promised that they could always live there rent free. That's the opposite of squatting.

 

[darjr]

This is semantics. It's clear from @TheAlkaizer's context that he was saying that they didn't have the intention to do it from the beginning. They technically(and technically is the best kind of correct) had to have the intention to do what they did after we revolted, but they clearly did not have that intention at the outset.

This is false. They had lawyers write the new OGL and deauthorization. That's an attempt to break the promise. That we intercepted their attempt to score a touchdown and possession changed, does not mean that they did not make the attempt.

@ECMO3 Also there are accounts that they had the software ready to go. Accounts that they had video tutorials with actors filmed and already in the can.

Also they gave a presentation of a sweat heart deal in 2022 to a select group of 3pp.

They had a confirmed deal with Kickstarter along side the leaked deal. Leaked by the person at Kickstarter that signed the paperwork.

 

[Maxperson]

Good faith gesture? I think those are some rose-colored glasses. From the corporate perspective, I'd bet that, at best, it was certain degree of enlightened self-interest because they fully believed that it would drive the sale of core rulebooks more than spawn competitors that used the system really innovatively in ways that didn't require core D&D rulebooks like Mutants and Masterminds.

The fact is, Ryan Dancey pitched it with two different motivations to different stakeholders in D&D. It would entice content creators to make D&D-based stuff and grow the D&D brand and WotC's market - the corporate owner pitch. And it would free the 3e rules and anything else derivable from the SRD from IP limbo if anything like TSR's fate befell D&D's owner. Whichever pitch you prefer and latch onto depends on which side you belong to. But the fact is he set expectations at both ends.

I guarantee, nobody expected a Paizo to rise and threaten WotC dominance in the D&D sphere in traditional game shops. Nobody expected a Paizo to be able to drive a million unit selling D&D sphere computer game. Particularly not when D&D, as a property, wasn't in IP limbo due to the financial collapse of its owner. Not even Ryan Dancey. Paizo didn't even expect it until they were forced into that position in order to survive.

Paizo was not a problem for them. Or else they'd have tried this during 4e in order to shut Paizo down. What WotC just did was an attempt to control 5e(minor goal) and much more importantly, gain full control over the VTT arena(major goal). The older editions were just collateral damage and not a target of WotC.