D&D Campaign 2: D&D Harder

[Raid]

Dungeon Dudes, the D&D channel I've spent a lot of time watching in the last few months actually published a video on these changes just a few hours ago, which I've watched since posting that initial comment and along with your info I think I better understand the issue now. Yeah, that's not going to work for WotC, is it. Perhaps small creators will stick around (although I suspect the legal requirement of revenue reporting will mean they won't), but the companies that base their business model around the OGL surely won't. The moment there's a legal manner in which an entire company's revenue can be snatched away from them, that company becomes un-investible.

I like D&D, but I'm not dead set on playing it at the expense of all other TTRPGs. If you decided that you didn't want to run your next campaign on a different system, I'd happily come along for the ride. But there's a definite draw to a setting and system where there are so many contributors and so much history. It's pretty easy, as an example, for me to find a ton of reference images when I'm learning how to draw a dragonborn or tiefling for example.

I'm always dubious when things like this are leaked. It always feels like an entity putting out feelers for how communities will react so that they can then say "oh that's not what we're doing at all." Then they bring out something more palatable, allowing them to impose anti-consumer practices with less of a backlash. If this is what WotC actually go ahead with though, it'll be a good day for a lot of other TTRPG producers.

----

On an entirely different note, I'm back to watching Critical Role's first campaign as something to have on while I draw. I finally hit the last episode with Orion Acaba in it, and you weren't kidding about it being awkward. It almost felt like Acaba was goading Willingham, perhaps after something had been said in private (Tiberius asks Grog more than once if he wants to punch him, and it's not really obvious whether it's Grog or Travis refusing).

[Wrathbone]

Dungeon Dudes, the D&D channel I've spent a lot of time watching in the last few months actually published a video on these changes just a few hours ago

Yeah, I've just watched it. It's the first time I've seen them look rattled, which is understandable given that they've put loads of work into projects they're intending to publish under the OGL.

My gut feeling is that Hasbro never anticipated this level of backlash and will backpedal. Part of me suspects that it was intentionally leaked by someone at WotC because they understood what the response would be better than the new execs at Hasbro, who came from Microsoft 365 and ostensibly were appalled to find that third-party businesses are making money from the OGL and that WotC aren't getting a slice. I mean, from that simplistic perspective I get it, and it's not unreasonable for the execs to ask why they're not getting money for it. The answer has a few layers, such as the fact that game rules were deemed non-copyrightable in a legal case in the 1950s around Monopoly, and that the open nature of the OGL has resulted in the industry flourishing and ultimately bringing new people to D&D through third-party material such as Critical Role. It's good for everyone, but Hasbro apparently put their greed goggles on and ignored all of that.

WotC aren't innocent in this, though. One of the most interesting figures around all this is Adam Bradford, who was the lead developer / designer of D&D Beyond from the start, and he quit along with two other key staff members when WotC bought it. Recently he's talked about the reasons why he left, which were due to WotC's arrogant attitude to D&D Beyond, as they believed that the platform's success was solely down to the D&D name rather than the vast amount of work and effort that went into making it what it is today. The joke's on WotC, though, because Bradford joined a company called Demiplane which is working on a similar character creator that supports systems like Pathfinder 2e. I'll be watching that very carefully, as I imagine many other people are now.

[Mantis]

I've bought quite a few of the rule, DM and monster books; in some cases I picked up digital and hard copy versions. I won't be supporting anything they release again if they follow through on these changes though. I'm fundamentally against the changes leaked with this new policy document, it's nothing more than the parasitic theft of the imaginative efforts of the entire community that has built up over what is essentially a relatively basic ruleset.

It's extra ridiculous because so much of the content in the 5e adventure books is so lazy, sometimes quite a hefty amount of pages are allocated to the book telling the reader to basically make things up for themselves, or the modules are just poorly formatted and the books make little sense. They've released a fair few poor quality titles of their own material and now want to cash in on others creative efforts.

If the new policy goes live in this format it'll be interesting to see how Critical Role deals with it given how huge they've become. I wouldn't be surprised if WotC offered them a lucrative deal to reduce the royalties hugely and protect the original CR content from being stolen by WotC to try and get CR to shill the new policy. Hopefully they'd be against that though and work towards breaking away to start their own TTRPG ruleset with all the original content Matt Mercer has created.

I've no issues moving to a new system. TTRPGs for me are all about the story telling and the social aspect, you can't monopolise that; and that element works with literally any rules you want. As a DM there are so many times where you completely bend the rules for the sake of giving everyone a good experience or just make things up entirely as you go along, the game systems can be completely superfluous to that.

[Wrathbone]

If the new policy goes live in this format it'll be interesting to see how Critical Role deals with it given how huge they've become. I wouldn't be surprised if WotC offered them a lucrative deal to reduce the royalties hugely and protect the original CR content from being stolen by WotC to try and get CR to shill the new policy. Hopefully they'd be against that though and work towards breaking away to start their own TTRPG ruleset with all the original content Matt Mercer has created.

I remember when Sam Riegel ran his infamous Wendy’s RPG one-shot and the CR fandom went bananas because apparently Wendy’s are into some unethical practices. They immediately pulled the episode, apologised and went into damage control for a little while. Given how egregious the proposed OGL 1.1 changes are, I can’t imagine any of the CR team are in favour of it or believe that they’ll retain most of their audience by going along with it. For me the only question is what they would do to separate themselves from WotC in the short to medium term, because their businesses are no doubt legally intertwined to some extent, and I expect that’s why they’ve been silent on the matter so far. Simply put, though, Mercer has always been vocal and supportive to third-party OGL creators, and CR wouldn’t exist without the OGL 1.0, so I can’t fathom him being tolerant of the changes.

EDIT - I've just thought of another case where there's some hefty legal meat to be chomped on: the original D&D live show, Acquisitions Incorporated. It started as a collaboration between WotC and Penny Arcade, with D&D lead story designer Chris Perkins as DM, but it came under legal scrutiny a few years ago when webcomic artist Scott Kurtz left the game over a dispute regarding the rights to his character, Binwin. Basically he wanted to create Binwin merch and PA said nope, it's all ours, so he left and took Binwin with him. Since then, as I understand it, the shows have been entirely a PA affair with Chris Perkins and later D&D lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford moonlighting as DM in an unofficial, non-WotC capacity. The shows do loosely revolve around whatever the current D&D published adventure is, though, so it's mutually beneficial.

If the OGL 1.1 is unleashed, though, all that goes up in the air. WotC will be able to do whatever they want with the Acq Inc characters, Binwin included, even if PA and Kurtz don't agree. Even Wil Wheaton could get dragged into this, as he once played with them and is no stranger to heated legal disputes. I have no idea how any side of this is going to react, but good grief is there ever going to be some legal spaghetti thrown at the wall.

[Mantis]

As the Dungeon Dudes video alludes to, it was the unwanted changes made during 4th Edition DnD with the introduction of a revised document that led to the creation of Pathfinder as an alternative. I'd be very interested in seeing a gaming system created entirely by Mercer even if I had no intention of running games in Exandria because I prefer homebrew settings.

What a hilarious self-own it would be by Hasbro/WotC if they introduced this change and it predominantly led to the creation of a rival which would be a genuine threat to their market share. The fans will go with Critical Role because of the stories, characters and people involved in that project, it's crazy how much of a love-in their community is; I can't see many of them giving a toss about DnD or WotC if CR broke away to make something new.

All good for 7pm or 8pm tomorrow incidentally.

[Bird]

I'm good for tomorrow as well, really looking forward to it.

I don't think I would say "I won't continue playing without OGL" but I think "I won't continue playing unless there's a virtual platform as good as Roll20 or better available at reasonable pricing" is fair to say. For me having a bit of a visual aid makes the game so much better, playing virtually makes it run so much more smoothly as well.

It must come down to them wanting to replace Roll20 and monetize it more, so why aren't they just making them a fair offer to buy them out? Surely this is going to hurt them more in the long run?

I also wouldn't mind venturing into different systems. One campaign I've always wanted to run is All Flesh Must Be Eaten after I found it in a charity shop. There's a modern conversion available to make the dice rolls more like DnD, and I wanted to strip out all the fantasy and do a raw zombie survival RPG.

[Raid]

I don't think I would say "I won't continue playing without OGL" but I think "I won't continue playing unless there's a virtual platform as good as Roll20 or better available at reasonable pricing" is fair to say. For me having a bit of a visual aid makes the game so much better, playing virtually makes it run so much more smoothly as well.

It must come down to them wanting to replace Roll20 and monetize it more, so why aren't they just making them a fair offer to buy them out? Surely this is going to hurt them more in the long run?

I think the virtual table-top makes the game, frankly. Combat is very different without it, as there's so little thought given to positioning. It seems daft having spells that hit everything in a line or cone when you can't see where your character is in relation to your opponents. I know the DM can make this stuff up on the fly, but surely it's vastly easier when everyone can just see it in front of them. Oxventure do pure theatre of the mind stuff, and I think it's one of the reasons they get away with just ignoring rules when they feel like it (although the other reason is if you've ever listened to Johnny Chiodini talk about D&D on their personal channel, they're fairly clear that they don't actually like it as a system). Corazon hiding after every single attack doesn't really make sense unless there's something for him to hide behind.

Wizards of the Coast know this, and that's why they've already announced their own VTT that'll use Unreal-engine, coming with the next edition. At the time I thought it was going to open up an entirely new marketplace for game creators to make assets for it, but with this new announcement I can't see that happening either. I doubt the new rules as leaked would allow asset creators to actually own their own work. They're not going to do a deal with Roll20 when they've already announced their own replacement for it.

[Wrathbone]

Totally agree on the importance of a VTT. I tried running my first games as theatre of the mind and it was more confusing and less fun for everyone. I think to make it work you have to have a DM who is great at detailed but concise environment description, which I’m not.

I also think dndbeyond has transformed the game for players and DMs alike, to the extent that I don’t think my other group would go back to pen and paper as they don’t really have a working knowledge of how the stats work or progress with levels and it used to involve me just telling them what to roll. I’m hopeful that this new Demiplane platform which will support Pathfinder 2E is just as good, because a real alternative is what would lure me away from dndbeyond more than anything else.

[Mantis]

These changes wouldn't necessarily be the end of Roll20 hopefully. Yes they generate revenue selling WotC material on their site in a format that is compatible with their system, but the core game system with the lobby pages and tokens etc. are all largely independent. You're in no way limited to playing DnD on their site at all. You could quite easily add maps, items, tokens and music for a totally different ruleset on there and you'd have just as good a time. I'm sure they get a decent chunk of their revenue from the subscription service which gives DMs access to extra mechanics like the advanced lighting and such. I think they'd still retain a decent user base if they marketed themselves as a general purpose VTT.

DnDBeyond definitely makes life a lot easier though. Once you've gone to the efforts to create custom monsters it is so much easier to run encounters using the battle manager and triggering all the dice rolls by just clicking the relevant section of the stat blocks. It'd be a nightmare going back to DMing without that. As a player I think I'd probably survive without the rolling and interactive character sheet though.

[Raid]

In the in-person game that started with another group (it lasted a month, then Covid hit and we never went back to it after), I was bringing my Surface Pro with me so I could have my character sheet on dndbeyond, because I literally didn't know how half of the stuff worked. I've since learned most of it, but it's *so* much easier to understand for newcomers. I reckon that's the reason Wizards bought the platform last year (for $141million no less).

The trouble is that I think it largely replaces the player's handbook. If you've got access to a web connection to use DnDBeyond, you've got access to all of the wikis and other fan databases to look things up, and it largely replaces the character creation stuff too. It's much easier to know what you need to choose as options when you've got a dropdown box telling you to pick something from a list. The page would be superior to pencil and paper for the tooltips that give you immediate access to spell descriptions alone.

...but it's barely monetised. They've effectively replaced what had to have been a steady income stream (players handbooks) with a much easier to use alternative and then not made the most of it (from a business standpoint anyway).

[Wrathbone]

...but it's barely monetised. They've effectively replaced what had to have been a steady income stream (players handbooks) with a much easier to use alternative and then not made the most of it (from a business standpoint anyway).

The PHB was certainly bought by most (or all) players in previous editions, but traditionally the main source of direct income for WotC and TSR has been sourcebooks and adventure modules aimed at DMs. The PHB is a one-time purchase, whereas sourcebooks and modules have always had regular releases. There used to be more optional player supplements that could be purchased, but overall I would say income from players has always been dwarfed by income from DMs, for reasons I mentioned in an earlier post.

What has changed in 5E compared to previous editions is the sheer amount of official D&D published books. There used to be masses of books and modules to buy, whereas in 5E they moved to a model of 2 to 4 book releases a year. They're bigger books that come at a higher price, effectively putting a lot of eggs in each basket. I've barely bought any of the official books in the last year because they didn't interest me, whereas if they'd released double the books at half the size/price, I might have had a punt on a few of them.

[Bird]

I'm not gonna lie, I would pay for an official VTT made in a decent game engine if it turns out to be good. But then we're talking about an actual video game, it would suck a bit of the imagination out if you had animated tokens etc - DMing could basically become the dungeon editor from Solasta.

[Raid]

Are we going for 7 or 8 tonight? I'm good for either, but figure 7's probably better in case we overrun.

[Sly Boots]

I wasn't in London today so more than happy for a 7pm session!

[Wrathbone]

7 sounds good to me.