So... was Dancey also a proto-SJW?

Did he see that coming because he was right in the middle of that culture and propose the OGL to save D&D from Wizards of the Coast, rather than from Hasbro? Or is that just a beneficial side effect?

Quote from: migo on March 19, 2023, 06:23:51 PM
So... was Dancey also a proto-SJW?

Did he see that coming because he was right in the middle of that culture and propose the OGL to save D&D from Wizards of the Coast, rather than from Hasbro? Or is that just a beneficial side effect?

Ryan Dancey absolutely was a proto-SJW.  His current twitter feed is testament to that fact.

And the OGL was never about "saving D&D". That is pure PR propaganda.

Dancey understood the value of D&D's network effect within the hobby, and how to leverage it.

Dancy has said in interviews that "Different gaming systems divide gaming groups." - The intention of the OGL was always to bring settings, and alternate genres under the D&D/d20 umbrella; keeping gamers within the WotC/D&D sphere of influence.

As we have seen; When WotC even half gets it right, the OGL serves to drive the RPG industry to supporting D&D in some fashion. Just look at the number of games/settings that have gotten the "5e Treatment" in recent years.

The OGL is what has allowed WotC to finally leverage D&D's market leader position to have the D&D/d20 system as the preeminent RPG, sucking all the air out of the room for everyone else.

Ryan Dancey's OGL was a brilliant move.

Quote from: Jaeger on March 19, 2023, 05:58:15 PM

Quote from: oggsmash on March 19, 2023, 07:36:06 AM
I think you may have it backwards with WOTC infecting hadbro.   Hadbro is likely owned in a sizeable amount by Blackrock and has to push the DEI bullshit and shit rolls down hill.  I think WOTC is likely just suffering the same issues all corporations being dictated DEI and similar policies by fink and his ilk who own shares of their stock that allow enough leverage to issue some demands.

Wotzi's SJW infection was already a done deal even before the Hasbro buyout...

Quote from: Chris24601 on March 19, 2023, 11:26:52 AM
...
Also don't forget the shares held by Vanguard (11%; another ESG/DEI pusher), State Street Corporation (4%; has announced position of voting against any board members who refuse to embrace their ESG targets) and a host of other big ESG/DEI pushing firms (Morgan Stanley 3%, Janus and Charles Schwab at just over 2% each, etc.).
...

I'd say Hasbro is well past "infected" and well into "metastasized rot."

The ESG/DEI people in Hasbro are just cementing what was already in place...

The rot was firmly in WotC from day one:
https://www.salon.com/2001/03/23/wizards/
https://www.salon.com/2001/03/26/wizards_part2/


In 20/20 hindsight it is obvious that D&D was going down this road the moment it was bought out by WotC, given Tweet's writings on the development of 3e that he has done. Adkison, Tweet and Co. were all proto-wokesters.

IMHO the hobby's professional convergence got underway good and proper when D&D - the market leader - moved from middle America to the left coast. Because leftists with control only hire like minded people. Not that the lake Geneva WI crew were anything resembling a right wing coalition... But the culture at Adkison's WOTC was a different animal entirely! And D&D exerts a huge influence over the RPG hobby as a whole.


I think a lot of what I wrote here a year ago still very much applies:

Quote
https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/no-the-ttrpg-hobby-is-not-your-family/msg1206676/#msg1206676

The things we are seeing now are very much a result of a subset of longtime Fandom within the hobby that have managed to place themselves in positions of power and influence.

IMHO, a lot of what the RPG hobby is going through is eerily echoed with what happened to the pulps pre WW2:

"All of this started because of a small cadre of antisocial geeks with no higher purpose in their lives."
https://wastelandandsky.blogspot.com/
https://wastelandandsky.blogspot.com/p/science-fiction-illustra.html

"Fandom changed mainstream perception by bullying and forcing themselves inside the system and lying continuously. It goes without saying that everything they pushed, every term they invented, everything they said, and everything they supported, must be looked at with the highest level of suspicion. They were never your friend."

I've been reading this blog the past week - and although really long winded, the parallels are strong.


I'm going to  express myself very imperfectly here, as most of my thoughts are half formed...

A lot of the problems with the RPG hobby, and specifically current D&D, is due to the subset of Fandom that do not identify with normal people, and have gotten some control over the hobby.

For all his failure as a businessman, Gygax was a normal family man, and insurance salesman with a common wargaming hobby before he went and did D&D.

Most of the early TSR employee's were the same. Just normal guys who moved into this new thing that they thought was really cool.

Even Lorraine Williams, with all her greed, was just a career woman bouncing around between middle manager gigs that saw an opportunity to make some real money when she was invited into TSR.

They were mostly all relatively normal people that viewed RPG's as a recreational activity and fun hobby. Even Williams with her distain of D&D fans, didn't have any interest in changing the game. It was a money making vehicle to her...

But that Changed when TSR was bought out by WoTC - which was wholly driven by Peter Adkison.

Adkison was a lifelong gaming nerd computer geek working for Boeing that got rich when Magic hit. When he got the chance to buy D&D he did, because he wanted it bad. By his own admission; literally a gaming geeks dream.

This is where at least somewhat normal people being in charge of D&D ended. Peter "open marriage" Adkison slept with employee's while Ceo of WotC. He was very much a product of lefty seattle culture and he brought in like minded fellow travelers to run D&D with him. Like Johnathan "My plan was to demonstrate hell to be absurd" Tweet, and other proto-sjw's like Monte Cook. I have posted how they intentionally started to change elements of the game for left-wing sociopolitical reasons in the past.

The People in charge of D&D no longer identified with the normal people that largely saw RPG's as a recreational hobby.

And even though Adkison got handed his walking papers in early 2001; the deed was done. Fanatics were now in charge of D&D. D&D was not just a hobby to these guys, it was an intrinsic part of their lifestyle and personal identity. One in which they feel an overwhelming need to self-insert their own personal sociopolitical beliefs into so that they could feel more comfortable within it. No one would be hired to work on D&D from that point on that did not agree with their internal political beliefs.

Even now that WotC is essentially in the hands of IP Money Merchants - everyone directly in charge of D&D falls into the Fanatic mold that does not identify themselves in any way with at least half of their customer base. (If not secretly despising it). And as long as WotC/Hasbro is otherwise making money off of the IP - the Fanatics will be left in charge of D&D.

Greetings!

Oh yeah. I remember reading some article about The Minotaur Head or something. Anyways, the article--written by a game designer and employee of WOTC--talked about the decadent orgies, the mountain group retreats that Adkinson would take the whole departments of WORC on, all the wife-swapping sex, the "spin the bottle" games going on, it was absolutely a hedonistic playground for everyone, regardless of position or rank. This, combined with a desire to hire huge numbers of other Geeks--social misfits, Gothy, freak vampire girls, and all kinds of socially retarded weirdos was a huge thing, and a desired process to "Change corporate culture".

Normal people were run out of the company a long time ago.

The results have been a cascade of Woke degeneracy and incompetence. Not very surprising, really. These socially-retarded misfits pride themselves on frying their mind with drugs, pursuing every kind of debased sexual lifestyle, and bathing in any kind of intellectual and pseudo-spiritual garbage, whether it is Marxism, or Spirit Crystals. These people's personal lives are typically absolute train-wrecks. Shit flows downstream, so it also isn't surprising that whatever professional talents they may have possessed, also gradually degrade and get squandered a well.

Now, WOTC is entirely filled with Woke, SJW morons.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I don't see the culture of companies based out the the pacific NW changing, unless the culture of the entire pacific NW changes. And when I watch news interviews of people complaining about having tents in their backyards and having to step over needles to take out the trash, their complaint isn't that the tents and needles are the problem, just that it's in their yard/neighborhood. So yeah, things won't be changing at WoTC any time soon.

But it also won't mean that WoTC dies off as the market leader. Just being able to maintain "mediocre" in the writing is more than enough to stay the market leader so long as you have good marketing. And while the OGL fiasco was a mess, the pivot back from that was very smart PR. They're even now flying "influencers" out for DnD summits, all expenses paid. As long as they can put out okay movies, tv shows, keep critical role on DnD, and shovel gifts/praise onto the reviews/influencers, they'll do just fine no matter how bad the actual core product is.

Quote from: Dracones on March 21, 2023, 09:52:09 AM
...

But it also won't mean that WoTC dies off as the market leader. Just being able to maintain "mediocre" in the writing is more than enough to stay the market leader so long as you have good marketing. And while the OGL fiasco was a mess, the pivot back from that was very smart PR. They're even now flying "influencers" out for DnD summits, all expenses paid. As long as they can put out okay movies, tv shows, keep critical role on DnD, and shovel gifts/praise onto the reviews/influencers, they'll do just fine no matter how bad the actual core product is.

^This guy gets it^

IP brand loyalty in RPG land is ridiculous. Combined with D&D's large network effect, all Wotzi has to do is give the majority of their players a reason to stay with them, and generally speaking, they will.

These two factors will keep Wotzi D&D floating along as the #1 RPG for far longer than it should under a converged corporation.

It's network effect, and the reluctance of players to leave it for an alternative, will act as a buffer slowing a collapse.

Unless it changes hands, Wotzi D&D will end the same way as DC/MARVEL comics, and Dr. WHO. But its fall will be longer, and more drawn out.

Quote from: Jaeger on March 21, 2023, 01:41:51 PM

IP brand loyalty in RPG land is ridiculous. Combined with D&D's large network effect, all Wotzi has to do is give the majority of their players a reason to stay with them, and generally speaking, they will.

I agree, as someone who grew up with other games I find it's bizarre. I know of a couple of places in LA where they used to sell and play all sorts of games, but then it soon boiled down to just D&D, Pathfinder, and some miniature games. And today I noticed that Pathfinder had disappeared too.

Quote from: Trond on March 21, 2023, 06:42:39 PM

Quote from: Jaeger on March 21, 2023, 01:41:51 PM

IP brand loyalty in RPG land is ridiculous. Combined with D&D's large network effect, all Wotzi has to do is give the majority of their players a reason to stay with them, and generally speaking, they will.

I agree, as someone who grew up with other games I find it's bizarre. I know of a couple of places in LA where they used to sell and play all sorts of games, but then it soon boiled down to just D&D, Pathfinder, and some miniature games. And today I noticed that Pathfinder had disappeared too.

You can thank the OGL for that, it gave WotC a level of brand recognition no one will be able to achieve or surpass. Why else do you think they placed (what little meat there is) the 5.1 SRD under CC By? Stops the bleed and allows them to retain the free publicity, now even more since you can put on your game 5e compatible while still using (the meager stuff in) the SRD you couldn't legally use without a license.

The elephant in the room is that a large percentage of games are basically just somebody's house-ruled variation of some edition of D&D. I don't have a clue what the exact number is, but I'm betting it's more than half.

I'll grant you that D&D (any iteration, take your pick) is not the best game ever made, let alone the best game that could possibly be made. How much better is your game that you want to propose instead? Therein lies the rub. No other game is better by a large enough margin to compete. It isn't good enough to be a little bit better than D&D, the game has to justify groups doing a lot of work. Either they have to convert their current material over, or they have to start a new game. Groups aren't going to do that just because this other game has a slightly more realistic way to handle climbing walls.

No matter what kind of woke nonsense they inject, players still have access to content from early print runs of the Player's Handbook. That can't sustain WotC forever, but it will keep them going for a long time. Third party content easily keeps the D&D brand strong. All WotC has to do is pull their heads out of their asses for a year or two and release a decent new set of rules and they can reset the clock like they did with 5E.

Quote from: Corolinth on March 23, 2023, 03:53:47 PM
The elephant in the room is that a large percentage of games are basically just somebody's house-ruled variation of some edition of D&D. I don't have a clue what the exact number is, but I'm betting it's more than half.

I'll grant you that D&D (any iteration, take your pick) is not the best game ever made, let alone the best game that could possibly be made. How much better is your game that you want to propose instead? Therein lies the rub. No other game is better by a large enough margin to compete. It isn't good enough to be a little bit better than D&D, the game has to justify groups doing a lot of work. Either they have to convert their current material over, or they have to start a new game. Groups aren't going to do that just because this other game has a slightly more realistic way to handle climbing walls.

The OSR solves this by the fact that OSR products are compatible with each other. There's lots of OSR games that do a specific genre or concept much better than the baseline D&D rules do (for example, Lion & Dragon with medieval authenticity). But beyond that, there's the fact that the OSR line AS A WHOLE provides a bunch of products that are easily combined with each other that are almost all much better designed than current year D&D.

Quote from: Trond on March 21, 2023, 06:42:39 PM

I agree, as someone who grew up with other games I find it's bizarre. I know of a couple of places in LA where they used to sell and play all sorts of games, but then it soon boiled down to just D&D, Pathfinder, and some miniature games. And today I noticed that Pathfinder had disappeared too.

Yep when I was first starting in gaming I could get people to try a lot of different types of games (Heroes, Cyberpunk, etc) and now everyone acts like D&D is the only game in the hobby.  It's annoying. 

I know the OGL has a lot to do with this, with people shoving settings into D20 (which sometimes worked, many times it didnt) but it kind of sucks.  It was part of the reason I took two years off from the hobby.

I am starting to find people who will try other things which is nice and online VTT helps run/play other settings but I prefer in person gaming.