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.

 

[Ovinomancer]

All money is speculative, but not everything that is speculative is money.

Um, okay? I never made such a claim, so what are you refuting, here?

Cryptocurrency is not money - it's not built to be money.

It absolutely is. I don't even know how this can be claimed. I can exchange it for goods and services. I have to report it's use to the IRS.

Cryptocurrency is built to be gold. Or more realistically, cryptocurrency was intended to be gold but is actually more like baseball cards. It's a speculative enterprise not a currency. People are trying their darndest to make it an actual currency but it's still too hard to spend by design and that's a huge flaw in the system. It's like trying to pay for your dinner with baseball cards.

No. Gold is a commodity, and crypto is nothing at all like a commodity. It's a currency. That it has a speculative aspect, and that this is the primary way many are engaging with it doesn't change it. This is like saying a baseball isn't a baseball if I'm using it as shot in a cannon. It's still a baseball. Crypto is a currency, it's money, and is most often used as money. Speculation on crypto is a red herring -- it has nothing at all to do with what it is.

Look, this is very odd. I agree that there are large problems with cryptocurrency, and I don't invest (at all and never have) and I'm not interested in investing because of the problems I see. They're useless for buying groceries, for instance. Their volatility make them extremely suspect as a place to park money or even, sometimes, to engage in large transactions because of the large swings in value. I'm not a fan, at all. But I'm also not going to make stuff up about crypto or agree with wild accusations of how evil/morally bad/terriblewrong they are. There's plenty of good reasons to dislike crypto, to criticize crypto, and especially to get after NFTs that don't involve the kind of arm waving wild claims of evil that are being tossed around in this thread.

 

[Umbran]

They aren't anonymous, they're pseudonymous.

I'm not going to engage with your nitpick. When the dominant use of the platform seems to be money laundering and other crime, because of the anonymity of the users, I don't buy that this is a "transparent" platform.

And yes, law enforcement solves crime through the platform, but not because it is super-easy and transparent, but because law enforcement is often about following the money, and the money is going to crypto.

 

[Umbran]

It absolutely is. I don't even know how this can be claimed. I can exchange it for goods and services. I have to report it's use to the IRS.

The IRS wants to know about lots more than "money", because financial status is dependent on much more than liquid cash. Stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, various bundled financial packages are all reported. So reporting it to the IRS doesn't speak to it really being money.

 

[Ulfgeir]

Techdirt.com have an article comparing Web3 and the useage of Cryptocurrencies, Blockchains, and NFTS to the .COM-bubble...
Can We Compare Dot-Com Bubble To Today's Web3/Blockchain Craze?

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm not going to engage with your nitpick. When the dominant use of the platform seems to be money laundering and other crime, because of the anonymity of the users, I don't buy that this is a "transparent" platform.

1) it's not a nitpick. There's a huge difference. It's like social security numbers -- these are pseudonymous. Once I've paired you to one, I can track it's use directly to you. This is not possible with anonymous transaction. Cash transactions, with traditional currency, are anonymous. That's why laws of countries implement required reporting of cash transactions over certain amounts -- they're there to remove that anonymity and make tracking such transactions possible.

2) your claim about the primary use of cryptocurrency is woefully wrong. Embarrassingly so. It's fairly trivial to look up how crypto is largely used, and I just quoted above the reported statistics for the percent of transactions related to crime. It's very small indeed. You need to reorient to a different set of facts from the one you assume. Crypto has loads of problems, but this isn't it.

And yes, law enforcement solves crime through the platform, but not because it is super-easy and transparent, but because law enforcement is often about following the money, and the money is going to crypto.

You've stated something that's a rather banally obvious thing -- cops investigate crime, so if crime is happening, cops investigate. This doesn't support, at all, your assertion that crypto had features that make tracking illicit use easier than traditional currency. It does. Silk Road was brought down via analysis of the blockchain, and very successfully as well. They're still recovering money from Silk Road as they follow up on small paths -- $1 billion just last year recovered from Silk Road investigations, all aided by better tools for analyzing the blockchain. Tools that don't exist for traditional currencies. In fact, tracking traditional currencies is only enabled by additional required reporting on transactions, and these are needed because traditional currencies are otherwise untraceable. You're running on assumption, here, and it's not serving you well.

Again, there's lots of good reasons to dislike crypto. I don't like it. But this doesn't justify sloppy and inaccurate statements about how crypto works. It's not all bad -- almost nothing is all bad. It has some serious problems, that appear insurmountable to me (volatility and transaction processing time/cost are the real killers), but this doesn't give leeway to just make stuff up about it. Let's deal with how it actually is rather than an imagined villain.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The IRS wants to know about lots more than "money", because financial status is dependent on much more than liquid cash. Stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, various bundled financial packages are all reported. So reporting it to the IRS doesn't speak to it really being money.

I'm not even sure how to engage with this. Are you arguing that cryptocurrency isn't currency, or just throwing out a lot of chaff hoping that it won't be noticed that you didn't actually show anything that says cryptocurrency isn't actually a currency.

 

[Mistwell]

Yet Mistwell has only replied refuting people with criticism about NFTs, cryptocurrency, or the blockchain. And Mistwell also made a point of implied that I was talking about NFTs when they were talking about cryptocurrency despite the fact I have been very clear which I am referring to at any one time.

Anyway, here's the post I made about 15 hours prior to Mistwell's reply where I talked about the typical pattern of talking with supporters of cryptocurrency and NFTs.

Why are you replying to me but talking about me in the third person?

Here is Nate Silver this morning on the topic, which struck me as accurate:

"Is there any particular reason why everyone on the timeline is mad about crypto again? Is it just the ads? BAYC? Getting very ‘nouriel roubini in 2015’ vibes everywhere...People aren't reacting to the technology, they're reacting to the people they associate with the technology since everyone has to get divided into teams, and left-of-center political/social commentators have mostly decided that people into crypto are the Wrong Kinds of People."

You appear to be fitting that description. You seem to have decided I am "the Wrong Kinds of People" and are not even willing to talk directly to me anymore and think I can be handwaived as some "group all people who disagree with me together and dismiss them all as they're all identical." It's not just rude, it's deeply elitist.

For example, take how you just tried to set me up. First you said, "You must first persuade me to like Cryoto by refuting why I dislike Crypto!" to which I replied "No I don't I don't care that you don't like Crypto I just care that you act like I can't like Crypto without being some scammer". And then you replied to that with a "See! I said earlier people who defend Crypto won't ever actually refute any points!" as if you had just made some point. No, you didn't make any point, you just posited a circular argument, and ended it with dismissive snark.

 

[Gradine]

Look I enjoy 538 as much as the next stats nerd, but when anyone calls on Nate Silver as a judge of the modern zeitgeist things have gone hilariously wrong.

I'm not saying it's as bad as, say, quoting Neil DeGrasse Tyson tweets in an argument about film criticism, but I'm not not saying that, either

 

[Jd Smith1]

The IRS wants to know about lots more than "money", because financial status is dependent on much more than liquid cash. Stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, various bundled financial packages are all reported. So reporting it to the IRS doesn't speak to it really being money.

Ah, no.

The IRS tracks income, solely. Income means all sources, including but not limited to, interest, dividends, fees, sales, wages, benefits, and royalties, but only income, ie, money.

I pay my Federal taxes quarterly due to my various income streams, and that means four discussions with my CPA a year. So while I don't claim a detailed understanding of the current US Tax Code, I can say with complete accuracy that all the IRS tracks is money.

Now, when petitioning for deductions based upon losses and gains, an individual tax entity or his or her tax consultant can bring up the relative values of investments as evidence, but it is still a matter of income (ie, money).

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Sorry, but for anyone who actually care about, you know, what the law says-

The IRS treats "virtual currencies" (aka, crypto) as property. You know- like a stock, or gold, or like your house, or like a lot you bought to bury the bodies of the people that keep playing bards. In other words, like any investment, you have to pay the gains (or get credit for the losses) when you move to sell it. That goes back to 2014. It's not new.

So all this "IRS treats it just like cash, because that's all the IRS does" is not true. Which ... is obvious, right?

I think all of these vague, and incorrect, nitpickings were identified early in the thread by @Abstruse