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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Benjamin Olson" data-source="post: 8902615" data-attributes="member: 6988941">I think the fundamental problem is that, particularly in this era of corporate induced government hostility to the public domain, copyright law makes no real dispensation for something passing into a broader cultural tradition. The rightsholder continues to have a legal right to fully control and capture the profits of their IP, no matter how much they are freeriding on a larger cultural movement. You never gain an ownership stake in the things that shape your life, no matter how much your emotional attachment makes you feel like and sometimes behave like it belongs to you in some part. If D&D as a folk tradition happens to be tied to D&D as a brand owned by Wizards of the Coast, then legally Wizards of the Coast does not become the steward of a thing bigger than themselves, they instead have just won the IP lottery and feel entitled to cash in. And figuring out new ways to cash in is a marvelous way for an ambitious executive to distinguish themself.Which is all to say that there is such a thing as too big for any game that is still considered some corporation's sole intellectual property. Should another comparable monolith ever arise in the ttrpg space, hopefully it is open source, managed by a non-profit, or otherwise not at its core some (potentially someday) creepy corporation's sole property.</blockquote>