Potential Positive Outcomes of the OGL Fiasco (+)

[MichaelSomething]

With D&D being THE game, it brought people with conflicting desires together. This forum is full of the battles where these desires collide.

If the defacto monopoly D&D has is broken, people could go play the game that best suits their desires instead of having to fight to change D&D it into what they want.

 

[mellored]

D&D has gotten a lot of free press.

Lots of people who might of thought the hobby was dead, or never heard of it, now knows it is still a thing.

 

[Minigiant]

I am not so sure a diaspora to other games will be as positive a development for the community as folks may think, in the long term.

Yeah the smaller games don't have the marketing and monetary owner to keep an influx of new players and money. WotC's D&D is what gets people into TTRPGS and allow them to swap to lesser known games.

A eventual but sad net positive is that many RPGs will fade and the survivers might pick up the refugees to pump up the publishers to the point that they can be an entry point instead of siphoning off D&D entry point.

 

[bloodtide]

Well, a big PLUS is people might start to play OTHER RPGs.

D&D is great, but it's only a fantasy combat adventure, but does not do a lot of things well.

The players get all excited to play a dark game where they are scoundrels.

BUT all the players REFUSE to play anything EXCEPT D&D 5E. So they make their combat heavy characters that have Stealth. Then we play the game....and, well, it's not as much "Fun" as the players hopped.

Many a D&D like me would say "Guys, the Blades in the Dark game is MADE for this type of game. Lets use it." And the players just say "We must only play D&D 5E".

Getting 'new' players that have only ever played D&D 5E, to try Call of Cthulhu, Traveler, Scum and Villainy, Shadowrun, Star Trek Adventures, and Paranoia was near impossible...

.....not now, though

 

[Negflar2099]

I agree with what others have said. Diversity in this hobby is a good thing, and if nothing else this mess has prompted more games to come out. Love that.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

So solely taking the "accentuate the positive" approach:

1) Without the OGL/SRD, it's very likely that people will work out that they can make very D&D-like RPGs without problems. Either will sue one company, maybe take them out, but will be forced to show the hard limits of their IP (copyrights, trademarks), or WotC will be too afraid of that and associated extreme bad press (which wouldn't be a one-off it'd come back every time something happened with the case - it'd basically be the OJ Simpson trial but for D&D, and people like io9 would probably be reporting on developments/arguments weekly), and definite loss of some copyrights/trademarks, which will essentially show people can do what the hell they want so long as they stay away from the most obvious WotC stuff.

This will free up the 3PP market in the longer-term.

2) ORC will probably become the default share-alike licence for TTRPGs, and will actually be protected, unlike the OGL.

3) People will increasingly discover RPGs outside of D&D. I disagree with anyone saying this isn't a long-term positive. In the short term, it might be a negative, but in the longer term, it'll make RPGs much more likely to survive as they'll be diverse. If say, 40m people are playing RPGs now, and 30m of them are playing D&D, then even if say, only 25m people were playing, but they were playing a much more diverse selection of RPGs, I think it's more likely that TTRPGs would continue exist in a real way in say, 2040 or 2050, than if the 40m situation, where it's very possible D&D would basically vanish for some reason or another (not least some kind of boneheaded decision by whoever owns the IP then), leaving a lot of people really scrambling in a way that is likely to see a lot more of them fall out of playing RPGs.

Destruction of d20 die as primary generator of RNG.

Yes let us pray.

Not many of us praying for this but good god I wish it was gone for everything but combat/saves at the least.