TTRPGS, Blockchains, and NFTs

When Kickstarter announced recently that it would be investing in blockchain-based infrastructure, there was widespread backlash. Blockchain technology is environmentally damaging and is of limited use. Creators such as Possum Creek Games (Wanderhome) announced their intentions to move off Kickstarter, while companies such as Chaosium and Wizards of the Coast continue to express interested in non-fungible tokens, digital items which exist on a blockchain.

While I'm writing this article, I do need to point out that I'm not a great person to do so; my understanding of blockchains, NFTs, cryptocurrencies, and related technologies is very, very limited and my attempts to get a handle on the subject have not been entirely successful. I'm sure more informed people will post in the comments.

What the heck is an NFT (& what does it mean for digital artists)

What is a non-fungible token (NFT)? In this graphic designer's guide to NFTs, we explore how Non-Fungible Tokens work in the context of digital art and how you can start turning your digital creations into sought-after NFTs.

dribbble.com

Kickstarter is not the only tabletop roleplaying game adjacent company delving into such technologies. Call of Cthulhu publisher Chaosium announced in July 2021 that it was working with an NFT company to bring their Mythos content to a digitally collectible market, with specific plans to sell two different models -- the Necromonicon and a bust of Cthulhu -- from the Cthulhu Mythos; and while things went quiet for a while, last week the company tweeted that 'We have more - lots more -- to drop... when the Stars are Right." A Facebook statement from Chaosium's CEO appeared on Twitter talking more about the decision.

D&D producer Wizards of the Coast said in April 2021 that it was considering NFTs for Magic: The Gathering. More recently, an email from WotC's legal representatives to a company planning to use NFT technology in conjunction with M:tG cards, alleging unlawful infringement of its IP, indicated that WotC was "currently evaluating its future plans regarding NFTs and the MAGIC: THE GATHERING cards" but that "no decision has been made at this time."

On Twitter, ErikTheBearik compiled Hasbro/WotC's involvement with NFTs so far.

Gripnr is a '5e based TTRPG NFT protocol' with Stephen Radney-MacFarland (D&D, Star Wars Saga Edition, Pathfinder) as its lead game designer. OK, so that's about as much of that as I understand!

Some company in the TTRPG sphere have taken a stand. DriveThruRPG stated that "In regard to NFTs – We see no use for this technology in our business ever." Itch.io was a bit more emphatic:

A few have asked about our stance on NFTs: NFTs are a scam. If you think they are legitimately useful for anything other than the exploitation of creators, financial scams, and the destruction of the planet the [sic] we ask that [you] please reevaluate your life choices. Peace. [an emoji of a hand making the “Peace” symbol]

Also [expletive deleted] any company that says they support creators and also endorses NFTs in any way. They only care about their own profit and the opportunity for wealth above anyone else. Especially given the now easily available discourse concerning the problems of NFTs.

How can you be so dense?

NFTs -- non-fungible tokens -- and blockchains have been dominating the news recently, and with individuals and companies taking strong stances against them, it's fair to ask why. The environmental impact of the technology has been widely documented - it's inefficient, and the need for blockchains -- a sort of decentralized ledger -- to have multiple users validate and record transactions makes it very energy intensive. In an era when climate change is having more and more devastating effects around the world, use of such technologies attracts considerable backlash.

Other ethical concerns regarding NFTs specifically is that the purchaser of an NFT is not actually purchasing anything, and the value for the digital 'token' they've purchased is speculative. When you buy the NFT of a piece of art (for example) you don't own the art itself; you only own a digital token associated with the art. The whole concept is likened to a 'house of cards' or a 'scam' by its critics.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

CNBC.com - Dastardly Ducks

NFTs can and are being used for evil. Can they also be used for good? Or, just a neutral way to share digital art?

In the form they currently exist, probably not. Almost certainly not the latter, because NFTs don't "share" anything; they are just ledgers and links with no other internal content. You still need actual data sources (whatever the links point to) in order to share anything. Sort of like how the number "5"--or indeed the entire list of natural numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.--does not by itself communicate anything, you need other structures to indicate actual meaning. (Hence why one proposed means for showing "hey, this is a signal from an intelligent being and not just some random physical phenomenon!" is to give the list of prime numbers up to some value, usually in binary, because long lists of primes are highly unlikely to occur in nature but are easily reproduced by artificial means.)

Let me put the "probably not usable for good in its current state" thing this way: if we went digging into the history of the tulip bulb thing, or the subprime mortgage crisis, or a handful of other things, is it possible for us to find a few cases where the net result was positive for a person or a family? I would say yes; in fact, I would be deeply shocked if genuinely 0 ordinary people came out of the subprime mortgage thing with more than they started with. Even something as utterly awful as the Great Depression almost certainly did actually benefit a small number of ordinary people at least early on, while it was still just a speculative bubble. (The systemic problems caused by the unwise practices of the day were a lot harder to avoid.)

The problem is, NFTs are not yet at the "system of problems that affect everyone who use them" stage. They are at the "rampant unwise practices that can still have positive consequences" stage. That's a big part of why critics are so vocal and so tired of mild-seeming statements about how it "could be used for good" or "isn't inherently a scam" etc. Because that's exactly the justification that has been used, time and time again, rephrased in various ways. "There's no problem with having no minimum wage--no company would be stupid enough to ruin their own future by not paying their workers enough to keep them!" (As our current so-called "labor shortage" shows, that's emphatically not the case.) Or, "Banks can be trusted even if they only keep a small fractional reserve on hand. As long as people don't behave like idiots, nothing will go wrong and we'll be able to do so much more with the money we lend out. Everything will be fine." Or, "Yes, we're giving house loans to people at high risk of default, but it's fine, property always goes up in value no matter what, because there's only finite land and a growing population! We'll always make more money in the end, so a few dud loans won't hurt us." Etc., etc., etc. This process isn't new, isn't even modern.

Again, this does not mean that SOME folks can't dip in their toes, make some (relatively) legitimate money, and leave. That happened with the tulip bulbs, it happened with the Dot Com Bubble, and I'm sure it will happen with whatever the next speculative economic craze will be. Likewise, it does not mean that digital ledgers and verifying claims via (decentralized) cryptographic records is useless or the like. Such tools may prove extremely useful if, for example, we begin to change to a world where most contracts are digital rather than physical, which could support a so-called "paperless society" more easily. (I doubt we'd truly abandon paper, but digital ledgers could certainly reduce the amount we use.)

But in the form NFTs currently take, where their implementation depends on unswerving creator honesty (since your "receipt" only points to a link, which could always be changed), eternal support of (usually) third party hosts (since your "receipt" has a link, not actual data, and link rot is a serious issue), ballooning processing costs (since proof-of-work is excessively wasteful by competing "after" the work is done rather than "before"), and the extreme ease of predatory practices (as others have said, this technology is utterly sodden with unnecessary jargon that makes it easy to misunderstand and easy to "defend" from "inaccurate" criticism)...no, I don't see them being good for the world, I don't even see their good impact being more than a single-digit percent of their overall impact.

The whole point of NFTs is to create scarcity out of things that are inherently not scarce, such as data, in order to extract value from folks who would want that scarce thing. There is a relatively straightforward argument for why that is, of its own merits, at least adjacent to scams: it is inherently saying, "yeah, I know you could breathe boring old air anywhere, but this is Bio-Active* OxyPlus™, guaranteed* to have scientifically-tested** Ener-Fuel Technology™ in every breath, featuring a verified collection of trace gases to Maximize Performance*!! Breathe Fresh® today!"
*These claims not verified by the FDA. Bio-Active OxyPlus™ is not intended to examine, diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease. If you suffer one or more hypoxic episodes while using this product, discontinue use immediately and consult a physician. Breatheasy Co. and its parent company, Eudaimonia Enterprises LLC, disclaim any and all liability for your use of this product outside of stipulations in the Safe Handling and Usage Guide, available wherever fine Breatheasy Co. products are sold. Offer not available in Saskatchewan.
**Scientific testing performed by Eudaimonia Laboratories, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Eudaimonia Enterprises LLC. Results published in the Journal of Aerobiological Chemistry, which may be available upon request from FullFlourish Scientific Publishing, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Eudaimonia Enterprises LLC.

Is it possible for a well-meaning person to make money for honest, sincere goals by selling homeopathic products? Yes. Does this make homeopathy anything less than flagrant pseudo-science exploiting the ignorance of others and the ease with which humans fall into fallacious thinking? No. Homeopathic products may help put food on a starving child's plate. Doesn't make them any less dubious, nor provide even the smallest shred of evidence that homeopathy "can be used for good." NFTs, at least in their current form, look a hell of a lot like homeopathy, and not very much like (say) nuclear energy, where there are clearly bad applications but also applications that, while tricky and requiring high responsibility, can be very good IF, and ONLY if, handled with appropriate care and caution.

 

[aramis erak]

We have another thread with folks swearing off Chaosium products until they walk back their foray into NFTs mentioned in the OP. I just don't get the upset. I'm not going to be purchasing any NFTs anytime soon, but I don't have a problem with companies like Chaosium or WotC exploring the market. If folks out there want to buy digital artwork and collectibles, I have no problem with companies and artists catering to those demographics.

It's really quite simple: the typical RPG consumer expects most of the industry to not engage in toxic behavior. And a large chunk are willing to boycott those engaging in or endorsing toxic behavior. A smaller subset are willing to boycott for mere failure to condemn toxic behavior.

Many consider NFTs an obvious scam. And willfully engaging in scamming is considered toxic by many. (Me included.) How toxic? Varies. Me boycotting WotC is non-significant. Chaoisum? might cost them a few products (KAP 6E core, KAP samurai version). Us all boycotting them?

Most won't boycott WotC - various reasons - and it would take a huge or a very visible boycott to get them to notice. And they're considered pretty evil by many already. And a big enough boycott would trigger HasBro to simplyu shut down D&D as a line.

Chaosium, however... A serious boycott could hurt them. Badly.

Now, some companies/independents are noted for toxic behavior, or have fans that ignore their toxicity... But most of us want to patronize companies that appear to share our values. Boycotts and emailing campaigns are the best method.

 

[Umbran]

Yes. Opinions are set. That is a thing that happens when people learn things and form opinions. What is visibly disingenuous is a claim that one just wants things explained and claims to have no dog in the race and gets defensive when their claim of having no opinion of their own on the issue is nakedly false. If you had no opinion, why would changing anyone else's matter?

Mod Note:
With the site owner and a moderator active in the thread, making insulting personal insinuations against folks in the discussion was... a remarkably unwise move on your part.

Be better, please.

 

[aramis erak]

But in the form NFTs currently take, where their implementation depends on unswerving creator honesty (since your "receipt" only points to a link, which could always be changed), eternal support of (usually) third party hosts (since your "receipt" has a link, not actual data, and link rot is a serious issue), ballooning processing costs (since proof-of-work is excessively wasteful by competing "after" the work is done rather than "before"), and the extreme ease of predatory practices (as others have said, this technology is utterly sodden with unnecessary jargon that makes it easy to misunderstand and easy to "defend" from "inaccurate" criticism)...no, I don't see them being good for the world, I don't even see their good impact being more than a single-digit percent of their overall impact.

It is quite possible for a blockchain to contain data, not just a ledger; a ledger is, after all, just data. It ups the energy costs, data costs, and requires (essentially) paying for chain storage space.

Essentially, the first widely adopted blockchain-like data sharing was BitTorrent... which has been sharing pirated IP for a decade+... (and occasionally, legit distribution, especially of large opensource projects.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It is quite possible for a blockchain to contain data, not just a ledger; a ledger is, after all, just data. It ups the energy costs, data costs, and requires (essentially) paying for chain storage space.

Essentially, the first widely adopted blockchain-like data sharing was BitTorrent... which has been sharing pirated IP for a decade+... (and occasionally, legit distribution, especially of large opensource projects.

I mean...I did explicitly say "in the form NFTs currently take," as in, it could possibly be done differently, it just isn't right now. But frustrating to be given a "well actually..." when I intentionally accounted for such a possible difference of implementation in the future.

Though even that has its serious faults. Because you can't revoke the past chain, only amend it, there are...certain awful things out and about, permanently encoded into certain blocks put there, that cannot be deleted. Objectively vile stuff, which can be tricky to deal with depending on the specific implementation. If noting existing on the ledger can ever be edited or deleted, just amended by later things, then anyone who can trace the chain back to a block containing something legitimately awful can always access that legitimately awful thing, so long as that blockchains keeps operating. And this can have extremely serious legal consequences if those legitimately awful things have laws against their distribution or possession.

Also I'm 99% certain torrents are not blockchain...they don't actually use permanent ledgers, which is the whole point of blockchain. Otherwise ANY peer-to-peer communication is "blockchain," which doesn't seem accurate at all.

 

[aramis erak]

There is one valid use for NFTs: proof of license. DRM.
An NFT is a 3rd party verifiable proof of purchase of digital rights.

The current US legal situation about most IP is summed up in the "first sale" principle: The author is only entitled to profit from the initial sale of licensed IP on a given media. (There are exceptions and interesting caselaw; IANAL, IANYL...) Generally, software is also under the first sale doctrine - the license attaches to the media unless otherwise explicitly licensed; sell the media, and the license goes with.

NFT's, being transactable, 3rd party verifiable, and resistant to tampering, provide a clean answer to the IP licensing. Store title and track checksum, and license, and you can transfer your license to some piece of software... First Sale Doctrine meets DRM...

The problem is that that's still scam-like... because it only works while the chain's severs continue to operate. Most blockchains will NOT be distributed across userbases like BitCoin; they'll be across authentification servers... and should those go down, first sale doctrine be damned, everyone's stuff from the chain is toast.

Also I'm 99% certain torrents are not blockchain...they don't actually use permanent ledgers, which is the whole point of blockchain. Otherwise ANY peer-to-peer communication is "blockchain," which doesn't seem accurate at all.

You missed a word: "-like"

Blockchain is an evolution from bit torrent. It's a decentralized, peer to peer, ledger and data sharing and distribution. It even has authentication of transactions (checksums by block, file, and torrent).
What it lacks is prior transaction records and permanence.

Youtube documentarian Cold Fusion ( Dagogo Altraide) explains the links well.

 

[darjr]

It’s worse than you don’t own anything.

Blockchains, by their very nature, have to be public and copyable. So I could clone a block chain and sell the “rights” ti those tokens to other people.

This has actually happened multiple times. And will keep happening.

It’s a scam all the way down.

 

[Umbran]

So far, no one has convinced me that NFTs are inherently scams (not that it's anyone's responsibility to do so).

Dire Bare has left the discussion, but I want to take a stab at noting why there's a scam here anyway.

NFTs for digital artwork are a scam simply because they increase the cost to the buyer without adding any value, without informing the buyer of the fact.

NFT, as a technology, does nothing for digital art that is not handled better, more cheaply, and with less environmental impact than traditional technologies do. If Chaosium wants to sell digital art, they can do it better without NFTs.

In addition, among those who do not understand the technology, there is an impression that it being an NFT adds value to the purchase, and people are willing to pay more based on this unfounded perception. Reliance on ignorance to charge the customer more is known as "scamming" the customer.

Now, for the most part, the people who are offering and dealing in NFTs are not actually writing the code for the systems supporting the NFT technology. They make partnerships, and hire people to set up systems for them. So, when considering, say, Chaosium, there are two possibilities:

1) They know the NFT doesn't really do anything useful, but the letters mean they can jack up the price of art. If so, they are scamming.
2) They are ignorant of this, but someone has sold them on how NFTs are great ways to get revenue - and whoever is setting up the technology for them is not telling them of how it is a scam, but taking their money. In this case, Chaosium is another victim of the scam, being used as a tool by the scammer up the line.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

When you buy an NFT, you do not buy the actual artwork. That's important. You buy a unique token that is associated with a digital file. However... the digital file the token refers to is not necessarily unique!

"NFT ledgers claim to provide a public certificate of authenticity or proof of ownership, but the legal rights conveyed by an NFT can be uncertain. NFTs do not restrict the sharing or copying of the underlying digital files, do not necessarily convey the copyright of the digital files, and do not prevent the creation of NFTs with identical associated files."

That bolded bit is why they are a scam. An artist can create a digital artwork, and sell you an NFT for it. And you think you have something unique, but they can then sell NFTs for a million other copies of the exact same file. The only unique thing is the token, not the art it refers to.

Indeed, if people are made to think they are buying a unique token associated with Mona Lisa, and they just buy one of an infinity of tokens associated with Mona Lisa, this is a scam (exactly as passing a copy of a painting for the original is). If people were informed that they are just buying a token that is related to a copy of Mona Lisa an infinity of which can be created by just, say, copying the file in another folder, then it's stupid to buy it, but wouldn't be a scam anymore than selling 100$ a glass of tap water would be. If I understand correctly, most NFT sellers aren't clear about that (or outright lying about the "scarcity" of the token they create), because if they were clear, nobody would buy NFT in the first place? And some people aren't just buying them as a speculative investment, but because they think they are trading a scarce ressource derived from a unique artwork, that isn't unique at all.

Thank you for making it clearer.

 

[Ulfgeir]

Well, no. The point of using an NFT, and the blockchain under it, is that it isn't a central database. It is a distributed database. The difference being - if there's one central database, then really, your ownership is only as good as your trust of the people who own and control the central database. Blockchain makes the database public, not subject to any singular owner or controller. And not just publicly accessible - the database actually exists distributed out among the machines of the various people who use the blockchain.

I should have bolded the part "in most cases". In the case here with Chaosium and VeVe, then VeVe certainly did not need to use blockchains, as their "collectables" is only available inside their app if I understand it correctly.

When we are talking about digital ownership, your ownership is only good as long as the plattform the digital object is hosted on exists and they decide to honor your claims, regardless if they use a centralised database or a a public distributed one. My opinion is that Blockchains and NFTs in many cases is a solution in search of a problem. And it is a solution that comes with a new set of problems of its own.