D&D Campaign 2: D&D Harder

[Sly Boots]

The talented Raid/Opus has kindly shared his finished Corvus design:



Think it looks awesome, be sure to send him your character details!

[Raid]

Oh everyone else has sent their replies. Now that I've finished with Corvus I may be sending some short follow-up questions to the others.

[Sly Boots]

Oh everyone else has sent their replies. Now that I've finished with Corvus I may be sending some short follow-up questions to the others.

Cool, looking forward to seeing Farley's performance costume

[Sly Boots]

And also! We need to come up with a party name before the next session. Pretty sure WB gave us a prompt to do so in the first one, but I was fresh out of inspiration at the time

I've been trying to come up with something that alludes to our mostly beastfolk composition, but the best I can do is the Wild Things (or a fantasy style mispelling of Wyld Things).

Any better ideas?!

[Raid]

I was thinking that a group name might be better thought up after we've actually spent some time together. At the moment we're probably best known as "The Accused".

I do quite like Wild Things though. Not sure about Wyld, given that's the spelling used in Wyld Stallyns which is what it largely brings to mind.

[Sly Boots]

I may have watched Bill & Ted recently with the kids

[Raid]

Hah. Great minds and so on.

[Mantis]

I was also minded to not suggest anything as a group name yet seeing as how early days it is and we've just been thrown together more by happenstance than actively choosing to adventure together currently.

I don't recall how long it took until 'The Unmentionables' formed officially, it may have been as long as until we reached Neverwinter for the first time.

[Bird]

And also! We need to come up with a party name before the next session. Pretty sure WB gave us a prompt to do so in the first one, but I was fresh out of inspiration at the time

I've been trying to come up with something that alludes to our mostly beastfolk composition, but the best I can do is the Wild Things (or a fantasy style mispelling of Wyld Things).

Any better ideas?!

I like the Wyld Things. Or, what about the Wyld Theatre Company. Or Wyld Detective Agency. Depending on the situation.

I'm having fun writing up the first session, the murder investigation especially unfolded so well.

[Raid]

I'm still reeling from the fact that a corpse passed a wisdom save.

I do quite like the idea of using Wyld as a prefix for whatever we need at the time.

[Sly Boots]

Yeah, me too!

We can maybe be the Wyld Ones and then modify it to fit different situations.

[Wrathbone]

My other group have just had the 14th game of the new campaign and it was only last game that they semi-settled on the party name of the Arse Bandits, due to a most unfortunate autopsy incident. Last night they decided to veer towards the Chaos Bandits instead, due to the mess they leave in their wake.

[Wrathbone]

Everyone good for tomorrow night at 8pm (could do earlier instead)?

Not sure if anyone else has been following this mess around the leaked change to the Open Gaming Licence (OGL) which has the tabletop community up in arms. I spent some time last night going over it and it looks like Hasbro / WotC have decided to become robber barons.

[Raid]

Yup, all good here.

I've seen some of the comments around this license thing and I'm not sure what to think of it. Obviously it's not going down well, how often are changes that force people to pay money for something they weren't paying for before ever popular? But while the comments tend to focus on how much free advertising they get from places like Critical Role, I have to wonder how much income the average player actually creates for them. I first became interested in the game when the Outside XBox team started playing it, and it brings that team some amount of income through YouTube advertising... but WotC themselves have never made a penny from me. I don't actually own anything official because I've always used a free account on D&D Beyond to actually play. Perhaps a better way of generating new income would be a small subscription fee on that given that they bought the website a year or two back.

[Wrathbone]

I don't think the biggest problems are even with the grabs on income, although it's still bad (I'll come back to that). The worst thing is that under OGL 1.1 (and this was validated by a lawyer stream where he went through the doc line by line), WotC will be able to claim any content created under the licence as their own. Not just that - they could revoke the licence from a third-party creator and then do whatever they want with that content. So if an OGL business creates some new monsters that prove really popular, WotC could say "we think this is racist, we're revoking you're licence", even if it's nothing of the sort (the wording of the OGL is such that they wouldn't need to justify their stance), and then sell those monsters in their own products.

They could also revoke the rights of platforms such as Roll20 to support D&D games or OGL-based games, so that everyone has to use the new virtual tabletop coming to dndbeyond. It's insidious.

But yeah, the income thing. Note that they want 25% of any revenue over $750k. Not profit, revenue. If an OGL publisher like Kobold Press produces that level of revenue (which they probably do), most of the profits will go back into production. The developers who made Solasta use the OGL, so any future DLC or sequel they have in the works is going to be under serious threat, because as good as the game is, I don't expect it made huge profits. This is an industry with small profit margins, which means an attack on revenue will make a substantial number of businesses no longer viable. It'll kill them stone dead unless they're able to rapidly adapt and move away from the OGL, but even then, all their existing products will still be subject to the OGL.

There is an open letter which you can sign (I have) to let Hasbro and WotC know that this isn't acceptable:

https://www.opendnd.games/#open-letter

EDIT

I have to wonder how much income the average player actually creates for them.

I was thinking about this last night. In our group, for example, I think Dave has bought some books (not sure if Alan has), but in my other group none of the players have ever given a penny to WotC as far as I know. I tend to buy most of the books for my own personal interest, which I suspect is the case for a lot of DMs because it makes sense that someone who enjoys reading RPG material would naturally end up wanting to run a game. In other words, I would say that in most groups - especially those which started since 5E was released - the DMs are the point of income for WotC, and I think that's something WotC / Hasbro have failed to appreciate.

I think that most groups are invested in playing some form of RPG, not necessarily D&D, and it's often the case that the group will simply play what the DM is happy to run. What this means in terms of monetising D&D is that subscriptions aren't necessarily the solution, because if the DM is pissed off with the situation (I certainly am) then they may end up just moving to another game, and then the players won't be paying any sub to WotC. Just to be clear, I'm not saying I want to move away from D&D. But I do think this will backfire in ways they haven't considered if it goes ahead as the leaked doc currently stands.