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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SlyFlourish" data-source="post: 9207919" data-attributes="member: 54840">Don’t get me wrong, nothing they can do now is as bad as trying to revoke the OGL – maybe trying to revoke the CC but that’s crazy talk.Consolidating power in D&D Beyond isn’t anywhere near as dangerous as revoking the OGL.But companies trying to earn back $150 million can try lots of things we don’t want to squeeze more money out of us. If the number of D&D and 5e players plateaus or dwindles, we might see all kinds of shenanigans to increase shareholder value.What are the real practical risks? This is a fantastic question. Here are some thoughts.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Our players only want to use stuff in Beyond and toss aside hundreds of awesome character options available elsewhere.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Our players expect everything in Beyond is allowed at our games and anything not in Beyond doesn’t exist.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Critical features never get implemented but we just live with it and the whole game suffers.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Being on Beyond or not becomes a new way for WOTC to gatekeep the 5e community. Publishers and customers feel like only those blessed to be on Beyond are “real” publishers and thus demotivates other creators from making things.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Players become so used to Beyond that they can’t imagine and don’t want to play 5e without it.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">WOTC treats Beyond as the official source for the rules even beyond the printed books. They change things all over, sometimes not even telling us where they’ve done so, so that we can’t trust our printed books to be the “official” rules. To quote Zuul from Ghostbusters, there is no D&D. Only Beyond.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The whole 5e community ends up treating 5e like every other video game where a central publisher controls everything and we must hope they steer things the way we want instead of us realizing we can take this game anywhere we want without their permission.</li> </ul>I could probably keep going. It’s a good thought provoking question, that’s for sure.</blockquote>

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