D&D General NFTs Are Here To Ruin Dungeons & Dragons

CleverNickName

Limit Break Dancing
The grift is strong with this one. From this article on Gizmodo:

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From the article:

The first time that Patrick Comer tweeted about tabletop roleplaying games was in October 2021. He asked, “Who are hands down the best DND character illustrators out there?” He got one response.

That same month, an unassuming Twitter account was created: @gripnr. Its bio describes Gripnr as “a Web3 company building 5e TTRPG on-chain.”

If this has you confused, you’re not alone.

Gripnr is a company currently being built by Revelry, a New Orleans-based startup studio. Brent McCrossen, a managing director at Revelry, is the CEO of Gripnr; Patrick Comer is the president and head of product. That product, which nobody outside of the company has seen yet, is a digital platform meant to allow fans of the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons to roleplay using NFTs indicative of Player Characters (NFT-PCs), and then save the details of their gameplay adventures on the blockchain, increasing the complexity and value of the NFT. They call this a “play-to-progress” system.

If you’re still baffled? Join the club.


In short: Gripnr will sell you a pregen character, which you will play in their adventures and level it up on the blockchain. Then you sell it for profit. Even without the letters N, F, and T flapping in the wind, the article describes numerous other red flags:
  • No details about the way their game will work
  • No specifics about where the money actually goes.
  • Everyone working on the project is being paid in Gripnr NFTs.
  • No actual certification of achievement, just the typical line on an NFT receipt. They are selling "an experience," not a product.
  • No structures to protect the community from "bad actors," or people who rig a game to make money.
  • Incentivizing the dubious game structure of "railroading." Characters need to get to a certain amount of value, quickly, so that the holder can cash out.
  • Operating on the assumption that people who play D&D will even want to purchase a pregen character.
  • Their stated goal -- "to provide a way for underserved creators to find blockchain success" -- is not even listed as a priority until Phase 8 of their plan.
Gripnr plans to reveal their protocol at the end of 2022.
 
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CleverNickName

Limit Break Dancing
So what happens with the NFT if the character dies?

Even leaving all grift aside, this seems like a terrible idea.
I think this is why the article mentioned "railroading." If the character dies, it loses value...so characters will be conveniently resilient. If the character doesn't find enough treasure, it loses value...so characters will be conveniently wealthy. And so on.
 

Jer

Legend
Supporter
Thanks - I hate it. Taking the "pay someone to grind your character" from MMORPGs and applying it to D&D? Wut?

  • No details about the way their game will work, no specifics about where the money actually goes.
The money goes into their pockets, of course.

  • Everyone working on the project is being paid in Gripnr NFTs.
The answer to the question "what could be worse than a company paying wages in company scrip?"

  • No actual certification of achievement, just the typical line on an NFT receipt. They are selling "an experience," not a product.
The experience of playing someone else's character? Thanks but I can write-up Drizzt Do'Urden myself if I want to do that.

  • No structures to protect the community from "bad actors," or people who rig a game to make money.
Feature not a bug! How would the money go into their pockets if those protections were in place?

  • Incentivizing the dubious game structure of "railroading." Characters need to get to a certain amount of value, quickly, so that the holder can cash out.
Or the even more dubious game structure of "making a high level character and pretending you've advanced it through play". Because why actually play a character through those levels to sell them if you can just make up stories about their exploits and pretend like you played a game? (Bonus - you can use the same stories for a whole party of characters - make 6-8 characters at a time that way!)

  • Operating on the assumption that people who play D&D will even want to purchase a pregen character.
I think it's more operating on the assumption that people who buy NFTs would think that people who play D&D would want to do that. These grifts are all about taking money from people who want to buy NFTs for their resale value - con them and you have a market.

  • Their stated goal -- "to provide a way for underserved creators to find blockchain succss" -- is not even listed as a priority until Phase 8 of their plan.
Because "exploiting creators to put money into our own pockets" didn't focus group well as part of Phase 1.
 

Oofta

Legend
Here's a visual aid for those who don't understand how the NFTs will generate money as the PC's level up. It's pretty technical, but you start out with a pre-gen PC, level up, get items and then as you level up the items well be sold. How do they gain value? Well the diagram shows it better:
miracle.jpg
 







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