Quote from: Ruprecht on January 14, 2023, 08:14:43 PM

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.

No. The OSR is out. (even though a few more people will take a look).

It will be between PF2 and the 5e clone that becomes ascendant.

I believe that if the 5e clone is halfway savvy they will beat out PF2 as well over time.

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.

In my experience with a "smart VTT" this takes hours and hours and hours, more than doubling my preparation time for games. And that's with somebody else handling server maintenance, and somebody else doing bespoke maps for me - setting up visibility & lighting, finding the right monster stats, coming up with replacement monsters, custom treasure, finding better art than what WotC provided, pre-planning maps for the random encounters or side treks I'm building & iterating on them with my mapmaker - all that eats time and is stuff I don't have to do with pen & paper. Using a dumb VTT (Owlbear Rodeo 1) takes about half as much work; it's a little slower for me during play but a lot more pleasant for the players.

My family owns around a quarter of the official 5e WotC adventures, and they range from "outright bad" to "mediocre, need a lot of work to be worth playing"; if you're finding good things there, we're remarkably bad at choosing hardbacks.

Quote from: Naburimannu on January 15, 2023, 06:46:19 AM

In my experience with a "smart VTT" this takes hours and hours and hours, more than doubling my preparation time for games. And that's with somebody else handling server maintenance, and somebody else doing bespoke maps for me - setting up visibility & lighting, finding the right monster stats, coming up with replacement monsters, custom treasure, finding better art than what WotC provided, pre-planning maps for the random encounters or side treks I'm building & iterating on them with my mapmaker - all that eats time and is stuff I don't have to do with pen & paper. Using a dumb VTT (Owlbear Rodeo 1) takes about half as much work; it's a little slower for me during play but a lot more pleasant for the players.

My family owns around a quarter of the official 5e WotC adventures, and they range from "outright bad" to "mediocre, need a lot of work to be worth playing"; if you're finding good things there, we're remarkably bad at choosing hardbacks.

That more or less matches my experience with both VTTs and WotC's products as of late. Mistwell's description of the experience sounds like it's really only for (a) whales and (b) groups that are very... I'm trying to be polite here... "conventional" as WotC understands it. Or else, as you describe the process, people who are basically willing to mate GMing not just a hobby they spend time on, but practically their job.

No thank you to all of that.

On the other hand, I checked out Owlbear Rodeo - thank you! I think that might work better than the generic shared whiteboard we were using, while being really no more complicated or slow.

Quote from: Jaeger on January 14, 2023, 09:33:27 PM

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 14, 2023, 08:14:43 PM

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.

No. The OSR is out. (even though a few more people will take a look).

It will be between PF2 and the 5e clone that becomes ascendant.

I believe that if the 5e clone is halfway savvy they will beat out PF2 as well over time.

I agree, if it happens at all (big question), then that is the way it will happen.  It's possible that during the immediate aftermath, there will be several competing option, all grabbing sub 5% of the eyeballs.  However, the network effect (however small in this case) will eventually kick in, and someone will win out.  We'll end up with an 80 pound gorilla in the much smaller market of people who do enjoy tabletop roleplaying (instead of talking about it or being trained monkeys). 

Whatever wins is not going to appeal to most of the people in this forum, because it's going to be rather bland and centered on the abandoned market, OR it's going to have flavor in spades that grabs attention but isn't everyone's cup of tea--just enough of a chunk to get the network going.  That's always the problem--need enough generic to appeal to wide audience and enough details and flavor to feel like a game instead of a toolkit.  Despite their waffling, Kobold Press could pull it off.  They do get gaming, and they've got a decent mix of generic/flavor, where at least some of the flavor will catch on.  Plus, it doesn't hurt that they were putting out better quality with 5E than WotC was.

The reasons that people hang on so long are many.  I think the thing that people miss is that even when you take out all the sturm and drang, sloppy rules, edition churn, etc.--there are still people, like me, that really enjoy hit points, AC, zero to hero, fantasy genre, etc.  It takes a lot to drive me away from D&D, because D&D produced by someone halfway competent and interested is a game that I can easily wrestle into doing what I want.  I've done it with every major version of the rules, and some spin offs.  Plus, up to a point, it's just easier to play with someone else's rules and tweak than it is to write your own.

Well, WotC did what seemed impossible a decade ago.  They've made me write my own game, which has all the things about D&D that I like, and none of the things that I dislike.  Call it a hearbreaker, call it what you will, it's giving me games I'm enjoying running, and the players in my groups are having a blast.  If it never spreads past that, at least I met the primary goal.  Whatever wins, I might take for an occasional spin as a change of pace.

Quote from: Naburimannu on January 15, 2023, 06:46:19 AM
In my experience with a "smart VTT" this takes hours and hours and hours, more than doubling my preparation time for games. And that's with somebody else handling server maintenance, and somebody else doing bespoke maps for me - setting up visibility & lighting, finding the right monster stats, coming up with replacement monsters, custom treasure, finding better art than what WotC provided, pre-planning maps for the random encounters or side treks I'm building & iterating on them with my mapmaker - all that eats time and is stuff I don't have to do with pen & paper. Using a dumb VTT (Owlbear Rodeo 1) takes about half as much work; it's a little slower for me during play but a lot more pleasant for the players.

In my view, all GM prep comes into two categories:  Play and Work.  Naturally, some things have some of each.  It's the total amount of play and work that I'm checking.

Play Prep:  Creating new concepts for creatures, spells etc.  Stringing them together into locations, NPCs, factions, goals.  Using the tools to make something.  Occasionally, combining the tools to make better tools, and/or tweaking the system to hum even better (when the rule worked fine before, but you are adjusting it to the campaign).

Work Prep:  Accounting (e.g. your creature formula is 5% idea and 95% calculating derived values and recording them), copying stat blocks, dealing with broken rules, working around design flaws so embedded into the system that they can't be fixed, etc.

For the kind of person who enjoys crafting, putting together static environments, and so on, then I suspect using the various VTT tools also comes under the heading of "play".  The same way some people spend as much time with video game mods and editors as they do playing it, I get that it is its own kind of reward.  For me, that stuff is all work.  Boring, tedious work that I only do to get to the play as soon as possible.  If my game prep becomes too much work, the outcome is burnout, and then no game for anyone.

Quote from: migo on January 14, 2023, 04:59:29 PMWhat'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.

RPGers are notoriously picky about what games they play. I can't see a huge number of people playing a game they don't like just because the game they do like isn't meeting some nebulous, undefined standard of openness.


Watching video games has shown a pattern. Gamers will scream, bitch, and complain ...

and then preorder the next game as soon as it's announced.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on January 15, 2023, 10:28:30 AM

Quote from: migo on January 14, 2023, 04:59:29 PMWhat'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.

RPGers are notoriously picky about what games they play. I can't see a huge number of people playing a game they don't like just because the game they do like isn't meeting some nebulous, undefined standard of openness.


Watching video games has shown a pattern. Gamers will scream, bitch, and complain ...

and then preorder the next game as soon as it's announced.

Sure, if it's more of the same that they like.

There's a strong indication WotC is trying to make the OneD&D experience very different from what we're all used to, to the extent that it isn't really D&D anymore. And if it goes the way it looks, they'll be competing with a bunch of established micro-transaction based MMORPGs.

That is of course a separate issue to the OGL, but if they're already sour about the OGL and on top of that D&D isn't D&D anymore, that's more reason for them to switch systems.

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.

And this is how false rumors spread. From Gizmodo, "five digits worth of complaining tickets in the system". Which is something you cannot do if you canceled your account.

I made a complaining ticket too. I didn't cancel my account.

You can make a free DNDBeyond account and I strongly suspect the overwhelming majority of account cancelations were of free accounts. The paid account, which had actual digital books bought and only accessible if you have that paid account, likely are in wait and see mode. Why give away your books before you see if your game will continue or not, or if WOTC will back down or not? Like me, they issued complaints using the help tickets.

Quote from: Mistwell on January 15, 2023, 12:27:19 PM

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.

And this is how false rumors spread. From Gizmodo, "five digits worth of complaining tickets in the system". Which is something you cannot do if you canceled your account.

I made a complaining ticket too. I didn't cancel my account.

You can make a free DNDBeyond account and I strongly suspect the overwhelming majority of account cancelations were of free accounts. The paid account, which had actual digital books bought and only accessible if you have that paid account, likely are in wait and see mode. Why give away your books before you see if your game will continue or not, or if WOTC will back down or not? Like me, they issued complaints using the help tickets.

Ahhh, Mistwell,  never change your wishful shilling ways.  My entire group of 5e players, most of whom have hundreds of dollars in purchased material on DnDBeyond, all canceled our monthly subscriptions.  WotC can't deny us access to the material we bought (and we can still see all of it), but not a single one of us is still paying anything to them.  So we're actually a net drain, as they are hosting for us for free.  But keep on shilling...