Quote from: Spinachcat on January 13, 2023, 02:43:04 AM
I've been a professional ghostwriter since before most of you were potty trained. Let's talk about the BUSINESS of writing.

Did not know you were a ghostwriter, cat. Cool.

While I detest the 1.1 license, this reads as fairly legit advice and criticism. It's true, most people who sign the new OGL will see no real harm from it and a boost to sales.

That doesn't make WOTC not a bunch of assholes for trying to de-authorize what came before. All they had to do was make signing the new OGL more attractive by making killer rules people would want to write for, access to DNDBeyond for your third party stuff if you signed it, and access to their new VTT if you signed it. IF that new VTT is the shit they claim it is, people would have wanted to write for 5.5e and signed the new OGL to do it. And they could have left the old OGL as it is for people not interested in writing for the new version of the game or having their stuff on DNDBeyond or the new VTT.

But de-authorizing 1.0a is not just unnecessary to achieving that goal, it's extremely harmful.

Quote from: Spinachcat on January 13, 2023, 02:43:04 AMDon't be afraid of this clause...because there's a 99.99% chance you're not that good of an author to be stolen from.

Thinking back to 2000, I think that's the exact same percentage chance the OGL would never change.

Quote from: Mistwell on January 13, 2023, 10:00:38 AMBut de-authorizing 1.0a is not just unnecessary to achieving that goal, it's extremely harmful.

I think it depends on how much clout the 3pp really have. This reminds me of how the Mongolians said stuff like "If your gods didn't want you to be punished, they wouldn't have made me".
5e has a much wider audience than before, but the truth is the wider the audience the dumber and more mindlessly consumerist they are. Could Blizzard have pulled off its 2019 shenanigans with the audience it had in 1999? I argue not.

'Can we just fuck all of you over, and will you all roll over and ask for seconds?' is basically the question WotC is asking. Currently there is blowback, but I don't have much faith in the willpower of modern day consumers. If the idiotic fans of 5e just ignore 3pp, then eventually all will be forced to fall under WoTC grip and then people will start making excuses for their actions like "Well, I gotta make somekind of living".

The 'cache' of writing something for D&D is pretty weak, especially these days. Back when D&D had little competition, when Dragon had a 98% rejection rate (according to Kim Mohan when he was EoC, because you sure as hell weren't getting a job writing an actual sourcebook), then it kinda meant something. But that's also because back then D&D *was* the definition of the hobby.

Today? By comparison, less so. Still significant of course. The OGL democratized game-design to the point where anyone willing to put some elbow-grease to their imagination can crank out a product, quality not withstanding. People that came in before 3e are the ones that fetishized the cache of doing "official" D&D products which the OGL capitalized on (which was a shrewd strategy).

But given the fact that D&D as both a brand and genre has been done to death, so much so "death" is debated as being removed from many tables... I still beat the drum of "why the love?" and why for WotC of all things? Look I get that people 1) like the system 2) like the genre - but historically we as D&D fans have ever completely agreed on the details of how these two things interact. Otherwise there wouldn't be a bazillion flavors of OSR, and third-party d20 products floating out there.

Unless you're racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars annually from your games, I'll say this (as someone that used to chase WotC Clout but was disabused of it and the system after getting their "Official D&D product" achievement - It's only worth it if you intend on *really* sacrificing to get experience. And even then you'll come out the other side asking yourself if it was *really* worth it. I'd contend that *today* you're better off saying fuck it - and making your own content, and *not* using the OGL at all (of course with Paizo announcing their new ORC License - this point may be moot).

But if you go that route, I'd seriously consider creating your own system and avoid the potential litigation altogether. Mainly because you need experience. If you want to do it full time, I *honestly* suggest going another route than D&D. There are ways to get that experience doing your own thing - or doing SWAG projects for Savage Worlds, or pitching ideas to your favorite Not-D&D company and avoid this fiasco entirely. Besides if WotC were the horse to bet your game-design futures on... why would you support them after this debacle?

The ORC License, I'm going to predict, assuming it's what they say it will be, is going to create a lot of opportunities for new game-startups, which might include you. No one is going to do it "exactly" the same (though I suspect d20-ish games will be well represented) but the options of it being setting neutral means that there will be no better time than in the history of our hobby for you to bring your imagination to life *your way*. So take advantage of it.

And fuck WotC. OneD&D is their locust-plague leaving our planet. Wave goodbye and good riddance. Now we have all this beautiful blank space to fill.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on January 13, 2023, 10:08:04 AM
I think it depends on how much clout the 3pp really have. This reminds me of how the Mongolians said stuff like "If your gods didn't want you to be punished, they wouldn't have made me".
5e has a much wider audience than before, but the truth is the wider the audience the dumber and more mindlessly consumerist they are. Could Blizzard have pulled off its 2019 shenanigans with the audience it had in 1999? I argue not.

I completely agree with this. But there is a breaking point even the cows can't abide by. Even now... Blizzard has lost a massive amount of it's peak playerbase due to hyperspecialization in a certain type of play. 5e is largely marketed like that - AP's and lame "pseudo-settings" where most 3rd party product does the real hard work. But the cows just run AP's and get their fix believing they're now just like the morons in Big Bang Theory... or whatever.

But there is a limit... we're gonna see if we've reached it.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on January 13, 2023, 10:08:04 AM'Can we just fuck all of you over, and will you all roll over and ask for seconds?' is basically the question WotC is asking. Currently there is blowback, but I don't have much faith in the willpower of modern day consumers. If the idiotic fans of 5e just ignore 3pp, then eventually all will be forced to fall under WoTC grip and then people will start making excuses for their actions like "Well, I gotta make somekind of living".

Yep. This is the real question. I would totally agree with you if not for one thing: OneD&D itself. It's going to drag a lot of people with it, for sure. But I'm contending that we're *both* right. In that D&D as a brand will not be doing the same thing as what most of us here *actually* do in our TTRPG's. They're going to be playing a different kind of game entirely.

People want to play TTRPG's in a traditional manner. I know very few GM's that actually want to do VTT's to the degree that WotC is proposing, because that's not really what TTRPG's are about - they're proposing a videogame with "DM assistance" (plus all that monetization)... which is really a clunky videogame. Meanwhile, for us, we're going to have the run of the place, with the responsibilities to curate the TTRPG experience based on our own products.

Quote from: tenbones on January 13, 2023, 10:32:55 AM

People want to play TTRPG's in a traditional manner. I know very few GM's that actually want to do VTT's to the degree that WotC is proposing, because that's not really what TTRPG's are about - they're proposing a videogame with "DM assistance" (plus all that monetization)... which is really a clunky videogame. Meanwhile, for us, we're going to have the run of the place, with the responsibilities to curate the TTRPG experience based on our own products.

That's always sorta been where I am. I don't "get" the VTT craze on a fundamental level.

I've played RPGs online for years. I remember playing Rifts in a chat room back around ~2000, I even played play-by-post Star Wars D6  before that on fricking Prodigy of all things.

I never needed the VTT crap. And trying to deal with that shit just takes up time and is frustrating and limiting.

But then again, I'm also not one of these GMs that invests in hundreds to thousands of dollars of elaborate 3D terrain for battle maps and has a stable of hundreds of painted miniatures. When I use them at all - and I don't, always - my battle map is one of those erasable vinyl grid maps that I sketch a scene on quick. My miniatures - for the most part - are glass craft stones in various colors for mooks and a few random things for more serious/unique encounters.

D&D is not my arts and crafts outlet, basically.

So maybe I'm the wrong market entirely, but I know more GMs like me than the alternative, by a long shot.

Quote from: tenbones on January 13, 2023, 10:32:55 AMI completely agree with this. But there is a breaking point even the cows can't abide by. Even now...

Agreed. In addition, WotC wishes it could monetize addiction as it can with Magic the Gathering. Magic DEMANDS you keep paying to keep playing. D&D doesn't. Because D&D, even at its worst design, and with the most focus on mindlessness, takes a bunch of effort. Even as just drama night with some dice for flavor, it still takes a large collaborative effort.

I don't see the very sort of weak-willed people WoTC wants to attract having said will to learn a new system and pay for basically the same experience. So I guess it depends if the main fanbase are shee or posers. If they are sheep, expect 10 more years of One D&D where all the other VTTs are shut down. If they are posers, the future is much more uncertain.

I suspect the VTT will be like a video game with a brain behind it instead of whatever options the coders could think of squeeze in. There is also the possibility of a stable of GMS s you could go online and play anytime in a one-shot or Western Marches type campaign. I think there is a lot of potential there. Unfortunately I'll never know as Wizards is dead to me after this.

This is what I said in other posts - a lot of D&D players don't consume mobile-games. OneD&D will be their first experience and it will capture a lot of them. But when I said that, I didn't see WotC pulling this OGL debacle out of their asses, which has put a lot of people off from the brand. How much? Probably not as many as I hope...

But that said, whatever it is they're doing, it's not going to be D&D as *we* know it. And that will also put people off. Hell, just changing editions often causes people to drop from a brand. D&D is certainly no stranger to that. But OneD&D is an entirely different beast. They claim it will be 5e compatible - but we know it won't. Even if it's just video-game version of 5e on a super-slick VTT, it will not be the same as what we enjoy as TTRPG's and all the corollary things we do with our TTRPG's. It will be highly curated, and manicured for consumption the way WotC wants it. Just like any mobile-game.

And these people running things at WotC don't really understand TTRPG's... but they do understand how to make mobile games, and frankly they don't care about TTRPG's - they see a bloc of brand loyalists they can implement their proven psychologically harpoon-driven mobile-games strategy into their collective melons and capture them. Sure a lot of people will fall out of the Brand... but they know There Be Whales in Them Herds!

To those of us that don't really *want* to engage in that kind of gaming - which already exists, mind you - we're going to be left to our own devices. That's a GOOD THING.

QuoteNot quite. The OGL 1.0a allows for distinction between Open Gaming Content, which is shareable and which anyone who builds a derivation of it must make shareable in turn, and Product Identity, which was not shared. WotC themselves reserved key creatures, as well as characters and settings, as Product Identity. The OGL 1.1 erases that distinction and gives WotC carte blanche.

This. It reduces our contribution to fan-based content without full protection and compensation. My work is my own and I don't work for free. Game mechanics and statistics are not copyrightable; only the product identity is and the 1.1 basically make me give up my rights of my own product identity.

I don't want to write for 5e and I have never written for 5e and have no plans to do so in the future. However, the products I have been writing for (Pathfinder, Mutants and Masterminds) have used the 1.0a license. I would not ever care about the OGL 1.1 except that the company is basically trying to void the 1.0a and force signing on the 1.1. That's the problem.

Fortunately, the development of the new ORC license will be the way to move forward.

Quote from: tenbones on January 13, 2023, 10:32:55 AM
I completely agree with this. But there is a breaking point even the cows can't abide by. Even now... Blizzard has lost a massive amount of it's peak playerbase due to hyperspecialization in a certain type of play. 5e is largely marketed like that - AP's and lame "pseudo-settings" where most 3rd party product does the real hard work. But the cows just run AP's and get their fix believing they're now just like the morons in Big Bang Theory... or whatever.

But there is a limit... we're gonna see if we've reached it.

Exactly.  We will also find out how well the parallel holds up, from MMO to WotC.  If I had to guess today, I'd say that a similar effect will happen, but we won't have any way to know it. 

I've played three MMOs where I really got into it, over a long period of time, and got a good sense of what the player base was generally like.  One was too early in the genre to develop a notable player culture, but the other two definitely had times where the devs pushed too far and drove off players with changes that affected the culture.  That's survivable if the changes attract new blood that enjoys them.  However, for those like me that left, it wasn't sudden.  Rather, over about a year or so, I played less and less, until finally I accepted that the game had changed to the point that it wasn't fun for me anymore.  A big part of that was who I could do pick up groups with.  When I started both games, you could meet random strangers online, organize a group, and usually have a good time.  Sometimes you even met people that became online friends that way.  In other words, there was a notable network effect in finding people to hang around with and do the game, which kept people coming back.  The changes to the game started gradually changing the network as the people dropped out and their replacements didn't fit that mold.

People have been playing D&D 5E and participating in their various online/organized activities despite all of the drama and woke nonsense.  When you give them a reason to consider if that's the best use of their time, some of them are going to realize that they don't really like the noise.  Every person you drive off like that magnifies the effect a little for the next person.  So I'm back to my guess that the real effect will be to drive out anyone that is primarily interested in table top roleplaying, but that the numbers will hold up on their end for years.

Quote from: Bruwulf on January 13, 2023, 10:43:12 AMSo maybe I'm the wrong market entirely, but I know more GMs like me than the alternative, by a long shot.

Im a big foundry fan. Since it has really good mod compatibility, I can get a lot of good automation going for free.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on January 13, 2023, 11:12:50 AM

Quote from: Bruwulf on January 13, 2023, 10:43:12 AMSo maybe I'm the wrong market entirely, but I know more GMs like me than the alternative, by a long shot.

Im a big foundry fan. Since it has really good mod compatibility, I can get a lot of good automation going for free.

I found VTTs like Foundry useful for things you'd want a battlemap for, but it took WAY more prep than for anything I've ever run at a table.

With a VTT, I can't just throw a map out on the table (I have a pile of nice maps of generic locations I can choose from... or I drop the vinyl mat and colored pens to rough it out in less than a minute), grab some monster minis (or dice... "monster 1-6" makes life easier for everyone), throw a bookmark in my monster book and record some hit point values and we're off to the races no matter how far my players go a field.

For VTTs I always had to treat it more like a railroad because if I haven't coded in all the monsters and picked the maps (and drawn in the walls/doors and added the light sources) ahead of time then everything slows to a crawl because it definitely takes longer to set up to the point my usual improv style of GMing feels like a poor for for a VTT (a theater-of-the-mind system on Discord with a dicebot works much better for my preferred style... I can always throw up a quick map or other piece of art for ambiance).

Quote from: hedgehobbit on January 13, 2023, 09:46:14 AM

Quote from: Spinachcat on January 13, 2023, 02:43:04 AM3) Pray to the gods that WotC steals your stuff!!!
The OGL clause where the Seattle Shiteaters own whatever you create sounds terrible, but it's actually no big deal in real life. Don't be afraid of this clause...because there's a 99.99% chance you're not that good of an author to be stolen from.

This is one complaint about the new OGL that I don't understand. If you release content under the current OGL 1.0a, then that content is Open Gaming Content which means that Wizards of the Coast and everyone else on Earth can copy your open content and sell it themselves. So the OGL 1.1 is only spelling out what is already true.

And I find it a big hypocritical to complain about WotC having a perpetual, royalty free right to copy your material without your permission while simultaneously arguing that you have a perpetual, royalty free right to copy D&D without WotC's permission.

Under OGL 1.0a you can release content as Open Content, and declare part of it Product Identity. OGL 1.0a does not allow anyone, not even Wizards of the Coast, to use what you declare as Product Identity.

In OGL 1.1, Open Content became Our Content and Product Identity became Your Content. And OGL 1.1 allows Wizards of the Coast to use Your Content without paying you, and also to cancel your license so you can no longer continue selling Your Content.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on January 13, 2023, 09:46:14 AM
This is one complaint about the new OGL that I don't understand. If you release content under the current OGL 1.0a, then that content is Open Gaming Content which means that Wizards of the Coast and everyone else on Earth can copy your open content and sell it themselves. So the OGL 1.1 is only spelling out what is already true.

And I find it a big hypocritical to complain about WotC having a perpetual, royalty free right to copy your material without your permission while simultaneously arguing that you have a perpetual, royalty free right to copy D&D without WotC's permission.

You are missing the part where if Wizards did that, their resulting work would have to open content as well. Which mean I and everybody else would get to copy and remix that content ourselves.