Quote from: Bruwulf on January 14, 2023, 11:59:09 AM

Quote from: Mistwell on January 14, 2023, 11:45:11 AM

But all the fiddly stuff is just taken care of for you. All that stuff that seems minor but can take hours to do right. And your time can be devoted to just playing.

... Why am I, the GM, there, then? If everything is done for me, what is my role?

I mean, it's all the important aspects of being a GM are still for the GM to do. Running the adventure, running NPCs and monsters and challenges, making all the judgement calls.

QuoteOn a very, deeply fundamental level, what you are describing is not the roleplaying hobby I am a part of. It feels like you're explaining to me why TV dinners will help me cook dinner every night.

You felt drawing the terrain yourself and placing the stuff was the important part of being a GM? I don't. Roleplaying it all, making the judgements, describing the situation, reacting to what the PCs do, all of that is the job of the GM for me. Dealing with the fiddling bits of terrain and whether or not a PC does or does not have exact line of sight to something and figuring out exactly how far a light source casts light and whether or not a barrier gets in the way, it's nice to have a machine just do that fiddly stuff so I can focus on the human challenges of running an adventure.

Quote from: Mistwell on January 14, 2023, 12:06:39 PM

I mean, it's all the important aspects of being a GM are still for the GM to do. Running the adventure, running NPCs and monsters and challenges, making all the judgement calls.

"Running the adventure, running NPCs and monsters and challenges"... So long as they are exactly the NPCs, monsters, and challenges that were pre-packaged for me. What happens if my puppets cut their strings? Suddenly I don't have all those nicely prepared maps, gorgeously illustrated NPC portraits, etc. Or, rather, I have them and they're worthless.

Quote
You felt drawing the terrain yourself and placing the stuff was the important part of being a GM? I don't.

Neither do I. I feel they are at best completely unrelated to the role of a GM, and personally find them orthogonal to the role.

QuoteDealing with the fiddling bits of terrain and whether or not a PC does or does not have exact line of sight to something and figuring out exactly how far a light source casts light and whether or not a barrier gets in the way, it's nice to have a machine just do that fiddly stuff so I can focus on the human challenges of running an adventure.

I don't want that stuff, period. I don't want to play with people who are going to try to fight over exactly the precise angle of their view through a window to know if the light from the torch quite illuminates something, I don't want or need to have to worry about a machine telling me if a player can or can't walk through a fucking wall or something, I don't want to play a game where those are things that have to occupy my or my player's concerns. It's stupid-bad-wrongfun to me, and not the hobby I've been enjoying for 30 years.

Quote from: Bruwulf on January 14, 2023, 12:19:21 PM

Quote from: Mistwell on January 14, 2023, 12:06:39 PM

I mean, it's all the important aspects of being a GM are still for the GM to do. Running the adventure, running NPCs and monsters and challenges, making all the judgement calls.

"Running the adventure, running NPCs and monsters and challenges"... So long as they are exactly the NPCs, monsters, and challenges that were pre-packaged for me.

What? NO! Not at all. All the stuff is prepped so you can make those changes extremely easily. Our current adventures probably look nothing like what the writers planned for them. Our GM took what was there and modded it to fit his preferences and then as we PCs did stuff he adapted it to that But it was made super-easy for him to do because the setting and features and bones of basic stuff are all there already.

QuoteWhat happens if my puppets cut their strings? Suddenly I don't have all those nicely prepared maps, gorgeously illustrated NPC portraits, etc. Or, rather, I have them and they're worthless

Dude, we cut the strings from day one. He has enough material to immediately adapt to pretty much anything we throw at him. Right now we're travelling between two different adventure path materials because of that very thing.

QuoteI don't want that stuff, period. I don't want to play with people who are going to try to fight over exactly the precise angle of their view through a window to know if the light from the torch quite illuminates something, I don't want or need to have to worry about a machine telling me if a player can or can't walk through a fucking wall or something, I don't want to play a game where those are things that have to occupy my or my player's concerns. It's stupid-bad-wrongfun to me, and not the hobby I've been enjoying for 30 years.

I've been enjoying it since 1979. I love in-person games too. But most of our players from younger days moved to other states and this is the only way for us to play together still. And I was very skeptical but it's turned out to be a blast now for years.

Quote from: Bruwulf on January 14, 2023, 11:59:09 AM
... Why am I, the GM, there, then? If everything is done for me, what is my role?

On a very, deeply fundamental level, what you are describing is not the roleplaying hobby I am a part of. It feels like you're explaining to me why TV dinners will help me cook dinner every night.

Agreed, in that scenario anyone can be a GM (which might be the point) but the duties will be unfulfilling. So likely they'll have rent-a-GM options for a small fee.

Gang, I don't think you get what Spinachcat is saying here.

If you see the WotC OGL as a vehicle for writing for money or to hone your skills, it does make some sense. You just can't let yourself become attached to what you write for them.

As Harlan Ellison once said about writing for the pulps, "It is honest whoredom".

Quote from: MeganovaStella on January 13, 2023, 07:45:03 AM

WOTC EMPLOYEE POSTS WORST BAIT EVER, ASKED TO LEAVE

Spinachcat has more posts here than you by far, young'un.

Quote from: Mistwell on January 14, 2023, 12:42:18 PM
What? NO! Not at all. All the stuff is prepped so you can make those changes extremely easily. Our current adventures probably look nothing like what the writers planned for them. Our GM took what was there and modded it to fit his preferences and then as we PCs did stuff he adapted it to that But it was made super-easy for him to do because the setting and features and bones of basic stuff are all there already.

QuoteWhat happens if my puppets cut their strings? Suddenly I don't have all those nicely prepared maps, gorgeously illustrated NPC portraits, etc. Or, rather, I have them and they're worthless

Dude, we cut the strings from day one. He has enough material to immediately adapt to pretty much anything we throw at him. Right now we're travelling between two different adventure path materials because of that very thing.

So if my players go off the rails, I better hope I've bought other modules for them to hop onto the rails of, basically? I'm "good" as long as I've bought enough sets of rails?

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I've been enjoying it since 1979. I love in-person games too. But most of our players from younger days moved to other states and this is the only way for us to play together still. And I was very skeptical but it's turned out to be a blast now for years.

My primary gaming group lives in three states spread over half the country. We play on Discord with a shared whiteboard for quickly doodling maps and moving tokens around when we need to. That's it. We don't need, want, or have any use for what a fancy VTT offers us. It would just complicate things and not improve our game.

Quote from: Spinachcat on January 13, 2023, 02:43:04 AM
...
Very few authors in the history of D&D have ever created iconic settings, adventures, monsters or classes. Ask yourself, since WotC took over D&D, what not-WotC 3PP author has created something for D&D that has become really popular inside the D&D community? Try to name an iconic adventure created by any 3PP that you've seen run repeatedly at tables or even talked about often online? ...

Considering that even Eberron was done by an industry insider, one could make the claim that both TSR and WotC have never allowed something to become popular "inside the D&D community" without their official chop.

Their control over their own ecosystem has always been fairly tight.

Official D&D has always been a walled garden.

With DnDone/OneVTT - WotC is just shutting that gates and throwing away the key.

Quote from: tenbones on January 13, 2023, 10:24:41 AM
...
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.
...

Because for a great many more groups than we realize; D&D is literally all that they play.

If they are not playing D&D they will not play RPG's at all. 

For a lot of people, official D&D is the hobby; Period.

I've seen this on other forums where GM's lament that when they suggest trying out other games the majority of their players just walk.

The D&D or bust effect is real.

Now I have a real hard time wrapping my head around why anyone would look at the RPG hobby that way.

But I must acknowledge that it is real, and far more pervasive of an attitude that we would think at first.

I get that. I know all of that. But that's why it's on us as GM's to win them over.

I like everyone else used to be down with nothing but D&D. If I could convert, anyone can. But its not going to happen by itself. And everyone if fooling themselves if they thing there is going to be another D&D Umbrella to get under. OneD&D will *not* be D&D as we currently know it. The integration with VTT pulls it out of the arena of TTRPG's into its own thing.

YES I emphatically believe a lot of "D&D" Players will blindly follow it. However I believe the TTRPG hobby itself will be largely intact because the people that play non-D&D specific TTRPG's will continue to do so. So its incumbent on us to bring in those that want the TTRPG experience, and not the corporatized manicured hybrid videogame experience of OneD&D.

It's on US. And it's about to turn back into The Jungle again - where every company is going to have their own House System, and some might be d20-ish but they won't be the same. And that's GOOD. You get to eat what you kill, and the consumers will decide who lives and dies. D&D is, and always will be their own thing going forward.

In fact, at this point - they have nothing to do with us, unless you happen to want to play D&D as WotC defines it.

According to Gizmodo (who's been dead on so far with this) DDB cancellations between the OGL1.1 leak and the Friday announcement were in the "five digit range" and were the main reason Hasbro is balking. From what I've seen on their forums, no one's changed their minds and the WotC shills are getting more and more shrill.

Even it it's just the bare minimum to qualify as "five digits", that's 10k people putting their foot down. To me that is encouraging news... that's a lot of NotSheep who will be looking for new systems in the broader RPG market.

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 14, 2023, 04:51:14 PM
According to Gizmodo (who's been dead on so far with this) DDB cancellations between the OGL1.1 leak and the Friday announcement were in the "five digit range" and were the main reason Hasbro is balking. From what I've seen on their forums, no one's changed their minds and the WotC shills are getting more and more shrill.

Even it it's just the bare minimum to qualify as "five digits", that's 10k people putting their foot down. To me that is encouraging news... that's a lot of NotSheep who will be looking for new systems in the broader RPG market.

What's also worth keeping in mind is all the people who never had DDB subscriptions to cancel, who may still be D&D 5e players (or DMs), but will likely move over to another system. You can also bet that people who cancelled their DDB subscription will be telling their friends they play D&D with about it, and trying to convince them to do so as well. A lot of people are still not happy with the way WotC has walked back, so those cancellations will probably continue.

Quote from: Spinachcat on January 13, 2023, 11:04:07 PM
The successs of OneD&D's digital walled garden plan depends on data we don't have. Perhaps WotC does have the data. They are clearly not interested in older fans nor traditional gamers, and perhaps that is because they are stupid and just chasing the dream of digital dollars OR it's because they have the data about GenZ gaming preferences.

Unless we can somehow access the data on the digital player base (especially their spending behaviors), we won't know why Woketards are betting so heavily on VTT D&D.

Here's the catch to this. We'll never know what the numbers are. But we do know what Walled Garden One D&D *is*. It's not a traditional TTRPG. It's a hybrid of what "we" do and this "VTT" emulation of D&D.

The reality is these things *already* exist. The experience that OneD&D is going to give will be less than what already occurs in that space. The proof is in the fact that D&D5e has already, in the height of its glory, been sitting alongside these games that are made by dedicated videogame studios, and there is no way that OneD&D is going to compete with them. There is a massive assumption that WotC can even produce such a system with that level of skill - they're *not* known for making videogames.

They *not* competition for Non-D&D players because anything outside of D&D is done largely by intent. They're banking mostly on the brand. Before the OGL debacle I was very sure that OneD&D would capture people that never experienced a well designed Mobile app that might get its meathooks in some players. Now? I'm not certain.

But literally nothing changes for non-D&D players, but what does change for those that *want* to get some writing experience, is that the TTRPG world is about to have the 800lbs gorilla lifted off their backs. D&D is GOING AWAY. The Walled Garden works both ways. They are walled off from us. And what theyr'e doing is not what we're doing. That vaccum *will* be filled - by what? No one knows. We're back to the Jungle. But now *everyone* is a lot more savvy about the rules of the Jungle. And it's going to be great.

Red in tooth and claw, and may the best games win. Who gives a fuck, now, about having D&D writing cred, when they will exist in their little psy-op monkey-pen squeezing the money out of their drones. Out here in the wild, we, me, you, everyone, can write for ourselves, others, the new companies that are leaving the D&D fold. There are opportunities galore in the next couple of years.

*and I say this literally after just getting a writing offer in the wake of this*. Anecdotal... sure. But it's directly due to this very phenomenon we're talking about. I honestly do not care what D&D does as a brand. If people want to go play their games - have fun. Fuck them. The rest of the TTRPG space now has to fend for itself. And that's a good thing. All the D&D dickriding days are *OVER*.

If you want to write and design - get to typing, because its not been this good since the drop of the first OGL. And you don't need D&D to do it, now more than ever. The money will be the same: the market will decide. I'm not saying it didn't mean anything to have D&D credentials. I'm saying it means a hell of a lot less.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on January 14, 2023, 11:36:19 AM

Quote from: hedgehobbit on January 14, 2023, 10:38:06 AMI'm still bragging that Hero Games used an idea of mine for Champions 2. And that was 40 years ago!

Exactly. Getting fan content into a main release is generally pleasant. Primarily when you're actually credited.

   Tends to lose some of its luster when you're cut from the paperback, though.

Quote from: tenbones on January 14, 2023, 05:27:12 PMIf you want to write and design - get to typing, because its not been this good since the drop of the first OGL. And you don't need D&D to do it, now more than ever. The money will be the same: the market will decide. I'm not saying it didn't mean anything to have D&D credentials. I'm saying it means a hell of a lot less.

The only thing that impacts me directly is that I use Foundry & Forge for my VTT experience, and if WOTC pulls 5e from them, then that may impact servers.

Quote from: tenbones on January 14, 2023, 05:27:12 PM
That vaccum *will* be filled - by what? No one knows. We're back to the Jungle.

It would be amazing if an OSR game filled the vacuum instead of Pathfinder.