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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dungeonosophy" data-source="post: 8930823" data-attributes="member: 6688049">At least three (likely) outright lies:1. "the document was made public we had already abandoned a lot of the things that were problematic because the feedback we were getting we just hadn't published that update yet"Given the very short timeframe from the date the document was leaked, until the planned deadline for 3PP publishers to sign on (or have their villages razed to the ground), this does not ring true.Define "a lot of." "A lot of" could be punctuation changes.2. "from [...] a fan perspective [it may seem] that nothing actually changed until the decline in D&D Beyond subscriptions; like "that can't be a coincidence surely!"; well it it also can [be a coincidence] because it takes a long time to actually modify a legal document when you have a lot of stakeholders it you can't turn on a dime and so it can't it actually couldn't have been turned around in response to the decline in subscriptions because that would have been too fast it would have been too short a time period for a corporation our size to pull that off with a legal document with a bunch of stakeholders um and so we were already working on that document before the folks who decided to stop subscribing decided to stop doing that it's the main reason that we weren't ready."This is likely to be an outright lie.Look: His and their salaries depend on stopping the D&D Begone movement. This is not a court of law. Words which imply that "it can be a coincidence" can be inwardly "meant" to actually mean "co-incide", so that there's technically no lie.In any case, Three Black Halflings are not the FBI or Federal Securities Commission. Brink is empowered and coached to say certain things which disempower and deflect the momentum of D&D Beyond cancellations. Whatever it takes.The phrase "it takes a long time to modify a legal document" for "a corporation of our size to pull that off" does not ring true. It sounds like a mixed “awe-inducing” (we are BIG and lawyered) + “humble admission” (gee, we’re a big corporation).3. "I honestly don't know who contributed to the unsigned statement before I started posting[.]"That is unlikely. Picture the WOTC office environment, and the news-making repercussions of that announcement. It is not easy to imagine that he does not know. Even if the rest of his statement is true (that he didn't know of the announcement until it was posted), it is very likely that he and others in WOTC management (at all levels) asked around, to find out what the heck was going on, and who wrote these news-making words. He may be defining "know" in the casuistic sense of "officially know", and in the pragmatic sense of: "know and be able to tell you without losing my job." Which, in the everyday sense, would be a lie.Look: any name attached to that infamous gaslighting statement would have their career ruined for a decade or more. It is almost certainly a firm internal policy to not reveal who the "anonymous" "committee" is...and they may very well include among them a high-powered lawyer / law firm, who could sue for slander or breach of confidentiality.Again, it's not like Brink is being interviewed by the FBI. Outside of a "federal case", folks in these business positions define "know" in whatever way matches the strategy which is demanded by the one who signs the paycheck (and thus the house-payment, childrens' college tuition, etc.).What does the phrase "contributed to" really mean? It could very well mean: "I cannot or will not confirm the name of literally every person who was officially involved in 'contributing to' the unsigned statement. In other words, I cannot or will not list the names who made up the 'committee' of persons in the room when the statement was crafted, the name of the typist, and the webmaster who put the statement up. Or at least, it's my job to say I don't know, and to not ruin their careers by saying their name(s)."Note: Later he refers to that statement as being drafted by "committee." It is very likely he informally knows who was in the "committee." Even if he, by policy: "does not know."Since according to Brink, the "committee's" bumbling was the chief inspiration/reason for him stepping up to serve as a personalized voice of WOTC. One does not step up to serve as a community punching bag without knowing who and what got one into this position. Brink is likely getting paid 'hazard pay' for this sacrificial role! I'm also not saying that Brink isn't doing his job in a courageous-ish way. A person can take courageous action within a business context and still be mixing strategically disempowering lies with powerful, revelatory, empathy-evoking truths.The rest of the statement may be true: "and [Brink] saw it the same time we did. He was not happy with it."Mixing an untruth with a powerful, empathetic truth is a technique.***Of course I am not in a position to say 100% whether these three statements are true or false. I am saying that it is reasonable to suggest they are examples of strategically crafted words (i.e. outright lies), which are intentionally blended with empathy-evoking truths.***Lastly, in regard to the supposed fear of Facebook Metaverse and Disney...this sounds to me like a total fabrication, just to turn the audience's view toward an even larger "corporate scare." Like: "See, we're not a big bad corporation...we were afraid too! We were afraid of these even bigger corporations! Look!"And since Brink isn't accusing FB and Disney of doing anything "wrong", those companies don't care whether Brink uses their names in his "scary" story. It may be true that WOTC execs may have "talked about" the FB and Disney concerns at one time or another. But that does not preclude the execs being actually primarily motivated by the factors which appear more obvious to a reasonable observer, including such reasonable observers as former VP of WOTC, Ryan Dancey. In other words: clear the field of all TRPG "competition", take all their stuff, lock all d20 companies into an eternal taxation scheme which will stifle the arising of any mid-sized entity (such as Paizo)...in addition to the VTT stuff, which apparently motivated Chris Cao.However, if those "fears" were actually any factor, it shows an astounding ignorance of what a pencil & paper tabletop RPG actually is, and what the actual ecosystem is which sustains that...and how we could not care less whether FB or Disney made a RPG based off the d20 system!If some higher-up's fears of FB and Disney were true, it reminds me of how a Hasbro lawyer during the 3E era convinced WOTC not to take the offered Middle-earth license and make a Middle-earth d20 RPG, out of (an eccentric and unreasonable) fear of WOTC being targeted by the government as a monopoly. (!) Sometimes company lawyers and execs strangely champion their own eccentric scary "pet cause" just to justify the importance of their job.Clearsighted leadership sees through this sort of shtuff! (Though it may be a total fabrication.)</blockquote>

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