What's Past is Prologue: Understanding the OGL Licensing Controversy in Light of the 3e/4e Transition

billd91

Not your screen monkey (he/him)
Yeah that's the interesting thing here - I'll be honest, when I heard about 1D&D having a playtest and so on, I expected to see a bunch of "OH YEAH!" ideas and "Of course! Why didn't we think of that sooner! D'oh!" as well as of course some "HELL NO".

But it's mostly been "Huh, kinda cool I guess", "Well it's an improvement, technically" and "That just doesn't seem particularly good". It's hard to care strongly about it. Especially as the only solidly "kinda cool" stuff I've really seen are things like the race/species changes, which would be trivial to backport to 5E.

At least with 3E and 4E there was some exciting stuff, whether you hated it or loved it. 1D&D a lot of it looks like change for the sake of change, combined with some minor improvements and minor questionable choices. Especially as the most potentially controversial and exciting change of recent years was actually fully negotiated before 1D&D, the ditching of default racial attribute bonuses.
See, for me, this is partly what an edition change should be for a successful version of the game. Incremental improvements here and there to collect the things you've learned to do better. A major shift is just a good way to risk losing customers on an unproven hope to gain more. It may be fodder for a separate game, optional module, whatever. Gambling on a major shift without something really forcing you to do so or being at such a low trough you've got little to risk strikes me as irresponsible.
This, to me, would be especially true for an edition timed for an arbitrary release date - a 50th anniversary - rather than hard data about sales in decline. I would have been perfectly willing to shell out money for a 50th anniversary D&D, very similar to 5e. For one thing, the art would be new, organization of the materials would (hopefully) be improved, and my current books are 10 years old and showing their wear.

...until they effed over their supporting ecology of 3rd party publishers, resources, and the thousands of people that will affect.
 

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TwoSix

Unserious gamer
Even Apple doesn't take 25%.
True, but I don't think the plan is to encourage more products so they can make royalty money. I think the plan is to discourage development of products outside of the products that plug in cleanly into D&D Beyond.

Any product that doesn't use D&D Beyond isn't neutral, it's actively detrimental to selling D&D Beyond subscriptions. Because any customer that has a favored product that can't be used in D&D Beyond carries the possibility of switching to another form of play (analog, other electronic products, etc) that wouldn't require a D&D Beyond subscription.

I think they're willing to suffer the pain of a negative backlash in 2023 to clear the decks and hope that people are more interested in the new shiny coming in 2024. Maybe not, I'm sure we'll find out. But seeing analog 3pp Kickstarters and such as possible stumbling blocks to greater D&D Beyond adoption sure seems logical to me.
 

Dausuul

Legend
True, but I don't think the plan is to encourage more products so they can make royalty money. I think the plan is to discourage development of products outside of the products that plug in cleanly into D&D Beyond.

Any product that doesn't use D&D Beyond isn't neutral, it's actively detrimental to selling D&D Beyond subscriptions. Because any customer that has a favored product that can't be used in D&D Beyond carries the possibility of switching to another form of play (analog, other electronic products, etc) that wouldn't require a D&D Beyond subscription.

I think they're willing to suffer the pain of a negative backlash in 2023 to clear the decks and hope that people are more interested in the new shiny coming in 2024. Maybe not, I'm sure we'll find out. But seeing analog 3pp Kickstarters and such as possible stumbling blocks to greater D&D Beyond adoption sure seems logical to me.
If this is the case, each person who cancels their DDB sub over this is going to hit them where it hurts.
 



Umbran

Mod Squad
Staff member
what I was trying to say is that they are investing a very large amount, and when companies invest a large amount, they often increasingly seek to control the environment around that investment, even when it doesn't really make complete sense.

Yeah, we don't fundamentally disagree, then.

There have been a lot of PR backfires through corporate history where attempts at increasing control that made sense politically inside the company - we have heard that apparently a lot of people at WotC are quite bitter about the OGL, despite the tiny amounts of money involved with 3PPs - but that didn't make actual financial sense when the reputational damage involved was assessed.

Yep. People in corporate leadership have egos that can be bruised. Go figure :)
 

Umbran

Mod Squad
Staff member
At least with 3E and 4E there was some exciting stuff, whether you hated it or loved it. 1D&D a lot of it looks like change for the sake of change, combined with some minor improvements and minor questionable choices.

Well, that sounds like they are actually aiming at the stated design goal of backwards compatibility - if you want that, there's only so much you can change.
 


payn

Legend
Backwards compatibility is a PR goal. Changing it enough to force you into the walled garden is a monetization goal.

Guess we'll see which one wins out.
JovialSneakyCrossbill-max-1mb.gif
 


Umbran

Mod Squad
Staff member
Backwards compatibility is a PR goal. Changing it enough to force you into the walled garden is a monetization goal.

Guess we'll see which one wins out.

Backwards compatibility is at least as much a User Experience and Marketing goal as it is PR.

Marketing is not PR, by the way. Marketing is telling you reasons why you should buy the new product. PR is managing your image after a debacle over your planned license terms.
 

DMZ2112

Chaotic Looseleaf
I think one thing the 3D VTT will cause is a bit of a "system shock" for a lot of WotC purist groups. Because a lot of people are running rules in slightly "alternative" ways, that they're often very sure is the "right" way, and the 3D VTT is going to show them what WotC thinks is the "right" way, and I'll be interested to see how many people go "Oh, haha, we were doing it wrong!" (even when they weren't) and how many go "Goddamnit, this is not okay!".
I gave you a like, but couldn't not QFT as well. If Wizards was smart, they'd leave the rules out of it and just focus on making the VTT as pretty and accessible as possible. A VTT with beautiful 3D graphics that truly reduced prep time would be a godsend for everyone. Let people use it for whatever they want to use it for; it's all money in the bank. As soon as you start hard-coding rules into it you are taking a pickaxe to the dam.
Also unlike 3E and 4E, 5E was built on an absolute morass of optional rules, "The DM may...", and generally DM-resolved situations which is part of why 5E was a success (in allowing people to do what they thought was right, not what some rulebook demanded), and I'm uncertain how well a more regimented 3D VTT designed for accessibility is going to cope with that. I'll also be interested to see if 1D&D changes from 5E DM-side and makes some stuff more prescriptive and less "may".
You're my new goddamn hero.

Been saying this ever since Jeremy Crawford took over. Dude does not appear to have a handle on the vision of D&D5. Deeply concerned that we're looking at the second coming of D&D3.5.
 

Haplo781

Legend
Worth noting that modern consoles are increasingly looking at ways to get mods on to them, and I know at least a few games have them. Also PC gaming's success relative to console game has increased vastly over the last decade. In 2013 you could be forgiven for thinking PC gaming was probably on the way out. Not so by 2018, let alone now. Ironically PCs have also got better at making games just be "download and play" though.

I think one thing the 3D VTT will cause is a bit of a "system shock" for a lot of WotC purist groups. Because a lot of people are running rules in slightly "alternative" ways, that they're often very sure is the "right" way, and the 3D VTT is going to show them what WotC thinks is the "right" way, and I'll be interested to see how many people go "Oh, haha, we were doing it wrong!" (even when they weren't) and how many go "Goddamnit, this is not okay!". Also unlike 3E and 4E, 5E was built on an absolute morass of optional rules, "The DM may...", and generally DM-resolved situations which is part of why 5E was a success (in allowing people to do what they thought was right, not what some rulebook demanded), and I'm uncertain how well a more regimented 3D VTT designed for accessibility is going to cope with that. I'll also be interested to see if 1D&D changes from 5E DM-side and makes some stuff more prescriptive and less "may".
Protip: natural language and optional rules don't play nice with VTTs
 

Been saying this ever since Jeremy Crawford took over. Dude does not appear to have a handle on the vision of D&D5. Deeply concerned that we're looking at the second coming of D&D3.5.
Yeah that's an interesting point.

One of the major reasons we stopped playing 3.XE was that the game tried to define every possible situation, and ended up with a "rule for everything", something PF1 doubled down on (looking at you stairs handedness penalties). But doing this didn't make the game better - not even as a "simulation". It just made us need to look things up way more and roll more dice (usually with tons of penalties).

4E backed off from this a bit, weirdly enough, with Page 42, Skill Challenges and so on. And where it did go detailed rules, it was to a specific end - a tactical combat game. Not everyone loves that but there was some actual cost-benefit.

With 5E, one of the nice things is it's a bit more relaxed and DM-guided and open-minded. Jeremy Crawford often comes out with his understandings of the rules, and the collective D&D community often laughs him off the stage (you should hear how the 5E reddit talks about his SA lol!). I don't think he minds, and sometimes he even acknowledges that his take might be a bit weird (albeit other times he's mystified when basically no-one agrees with him). His Sage Advice is just as terrible as Sage Advice in 2E, but even easier to ignore, because we're not teenagers now lol.

But goddamn, if that was translated to a VTT? I mean I don't think he'll personally come and enforce his vision - though I suspect any fraught rules implementations might go to him - instead we'll have dozens of unnamed Jeremy Crawfords making their own choices about how certain rules work, and I'm sure Crawford and Perkins will see some of that, but no way all of it, and even if they did, Crawford's takes are often wack. It'll be the closest to the "Rules Police" we're likely to ever see.

Now it is possible they'll go for something much looser, but that's antithetical to accessibility and mass-market appeal I'd suggest. Most people using this will want it to "just work", esp. they'll be paying a subscription. They don't want to fiddle around the way you need to in Roll 20 or whatever. It's also likely they'll have an override so the DM can create arbitrary checks, apply arbitrary damage/healing/movement and so on, but are they going to do that every time an ability you understand one way and Crawford understands another way goes off? What of house rules? I'll be impressed if they can make anything sane out of that.
 





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