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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 8887177" data-attributes="member: 2067">Someone, somewhere, in the 2e era, said "I wish D&D was more popular." And then a finger curled on a monkey's paw.Getting rid of the OGL has obviously been on their radar for a while (the GSL!), because HAS is a large, publicly-traded company, and the OGL is a significant, non-standard thing for companies to deal with (thank you Ryan Dancey). Even if they go back on this, expect this again whenever OneD&D version 2 or whatever comes around and they want to sell you a few more core rulebooks. It's not just individuals running the company, it's the fundamental ethos of running "a Brand." Typically, you want to control it. You want to fully monetize it. That's what your Board expects, that's what your investors expect, that's how you keep yourself in enough funbux to afford the 12th-largest mansion in your gated subdivision or whatever. The logic of owning an IP is that it only makes sense if you can get people to send you money to engage with it. You. Not your competitors. Not those kids with that new media streaming show. Not someone making plushies. YOU.5e didn't try to blow up the OGL when it launched, and now I do kind of wonder what magic helped that happen. Maybe D&D was too small within Hasbro back then to worry about "fully monetizing." Maybe there were some internal defenders. Maybe it was just a better point in the economic cycle. <a href="https://www.polygon.com/23458064/magic-the-gathering-overprinting-hasbro-stock-downgrade" target="_blank">Maybe Bank of America didn't just crater the stock last quarter because you're trying to "fully monetize" your card game</a>. I'd love to know. It'd be mighty ironic if the OGL's presence in 3e and 5e were more a result of 2e and 4e not making enough money (and so the creators of 3e and 5e had more freedom to try new things), only for the popularity of those editions to lead 4e and 6(ish)e to try and extract more value via silly, controlling licenses that actually wound up hampering them significantly. This proposed 1.1 license is awful in a lot of ways, and if it's a reasonable representation of what some folks within WotC want for the game (which it seems to be!), it's not a great sign for the next 3-7 years, IMO.Prepare to be Fully Monetized, my fellow Brand Consumers.</blockquote>

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