Quote from: S'mon on January 17, 2023, 10:40:42 AMDnD Shorts confirmed the leak, he has a record of having very reliable info

I don't trust any internet personalties on this sort of stuff just out of habit. Too many times they have reliable track records and then just start fibbing for clicks.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on January 17, 2023, 10:15:38 AM

Consider if the base subscription gives you access to a character builder that contains all the official classes, races, spells, equipment, etc. But if you want to add custom races or classes, you need to upgrade to gain access to the editor software. This is a perfectly reasonable pricing system yet it can also be declared as "NO HOMEBREW AT THE BASE LEVEL! OMG!"

For ~30 years individual fans have been writing character generators for games as fan projects. Maybe longer, I have no idea - they existed when I got in the hobby in the very early 90s. For free. It's not that difficult.

And generally speaking, subscription models for software are predatory bullshit to begin with. Hell, I happily forked over 29.99 or something like that for the AD&D rules CD that included a pretty darned good character generator...

In other words: It's a "perfectly reasonable pricing system" only in that it is technically legal. In no other way.

Worse? Only for WotC's paypigs, for the hobby in general this is a good thing, (IF TRUE) they are removing themselves from it! Now they'll be competing with MMORPGs like WoW and others, who charge fer lass than that AND have an established/fan/consumer/paypig base, I honestly don't see the commies (who don't buy the books anyway) becoming paypigs, and I suspect the vast majority of GMs will walk away (something they think too hence the AI-DM) but they fail to see that, if my GM were to drop out of Roll20, I would follow him, it's not the platform it's the people I play with.

So...One D&D or whatever it's called is basically just going to turn into an overpriced World of Warcraft? Nice.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on January 17, 2023, 10:15:38 AM
Consider if the base subscription gives you access to a character builder that contains all the official classes, races, spells, equipment, etc. But if you want to add custom races or classes, you need to upgrade to gain access to the editor software. This is a perfectly reasonable pricing system yet it can also be declared as "NO HOMEBREW AT THE BASE LEVEL! OMG!"

   I saw someone somewhere (it might have been TPB) opine that they had to lock out the homebrew section to avoid people just ripping all the for-pay content from elsewhere and sharing it with everyone at the homebrew level. If so, it does make a certain level of sense, and I'm not one inclined to defend WotC.

Quote from: Brad on January 17, 2023, 11:36:06 AM
So...One D&D or whatever it's called is basically just going to turn into an overpriced World of Warcraft? Nice.

WoW at least has an actual game engine and graphics and stuff. This sounds like it's basically going to be a slightly dolled up MUD.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on January 17, 2023, 11:40:23 AM

Quote from: hedgehobbit on January 17, 2023, 10:15:38 AM
Consider if the base subscription gives you access to a character builder that contains all the official classes, races, spells, equipment, etc. But if you want to add custom races or classes, you need to upgrade to gain access to the editor software. This is a perfectly reasonable pricing system yet it can also be declared as "NO HOMEBREW AT THE BASE LEVEL! OMG!"

   I saw someone somewhere (it might have been TPB) opine that they had to lock out the homebrew section to avoid people just ripping all the for-pay content from elsewhere and sharing it with everyone at the homebrew level. If so, it does make a certain level of sense, and I'm not one inclined to defend WotC.

Nothing is preventing people from buying actual books and pulling in the content into a VTT, a spreadsheet, whatever.

I've spent plenty of time taking the Forgotten Realms add-in for 3.x/PF1e in Herolab and adding in a bunch of stuff from the 3.x FR books that wasn't already included.

If you can type into Excel and can parse xml, you can generate data for input into pretty much any tool.

I'll be honest, I don't give a toss of shit how WotC wants to ruin the DnD brand. All I want to know is if the OGL 1.0(a) will remain intact so I can use the 5e SRD to release my Nazis From The Moon setting, where you play as the Nazis.

This is what Ive been saying - WotC is banking on the Mobile game psyop tactics to go after the Brand loyalists. It will succeed from a monetary standpoint. But it will not be D&D. And it will cleave off those that only want to play TTRPG's as we do. It will capture those that have never played Mobile games and predatory monetization *and* want to play some flavor of D&D... the former will overtake the latter. It will also pull in people already conditioned to engage in games like this.

Blizzards Diablo Immortal got unmitigated hate by the "gaming community"... it's already made more than 300-million dollars despite having non-stop hate poured on it by gaming channels. I literally know no one in my orbit that plays it. But the game is fantastically successful despite being one of the most predatory games out there. D&D is going this route.

The benefit we have in TTRPG's is that what they do has nothing to do with us, unless you *want* to play their game. So don't. And be free.

Quote from: Effete on January 17, 2023, 02:14:54 PM
I'll be honest, I don't give a toss of shit how WotC wants to ruin the DnD brand. All I want to know is if the OGL 1.0(a) will remain intact so I can use the 5e SRD to release my Nazis From The Moon setting, where you play as the Nazis.

Why do you need the OGL to do that? Nothing in the SRD is modern (e.g. no machine guns or tanks or rocket ships), so you'd have to do a lot of original content anyway. They can't restrict you from publishing if you use just the mechanics.

Could you, frex, rename attributes to be "safe?" Sure. D&D has Strength and Dexterity. Other games might refer to them the same way or could call them Muscles and Agility. Doesn't matter.  You can't protect the idea of physical attributes.  Just write your own descriptive text to avoid the expression of the idea. 

Or are you concerned that being allowed to play the bad guys would draw ire?  Newsflash - D&D can't claim the moral high road - they already published the Book of Vile Darkness that depicted a BBEG with child slaves in shackles attached to his carriage, if I recall

Quote from: 3catcircus on January 17, 2023, 02:39:31 PM

Quote from: Effete on January 17, 2023, 02:14:54 PM
I'll be honest, I don't give a toss of shit how WotC wants to ruin the DnD brand. All I want to know is if the OGL 1.0(a) will remain intact so I can use the 5e SRD to release my Nazis From The Moon setting, where you play as the Nazis.

Why do you need the OGL to do that? Nothing in the SRD is modern (e.g. no machine guns or tanks or rocket ships), so you'd have to do a lot of original content anyway. They can't restrict you from publishing if you use just the mechanics.

Could you, frex, rename attributes to be "safe?" Sure. D&D has Strength and Dexterity. Other games might refer to them the same way or could call them Muscles and Agility. Doesn't matter.  You can't protect the idea of physical attributes.  Just write your own descriptive text to avoid the expression of the idea. 

Or are you concerned that being allowed to play the bad guys would draw ire?  Newsflash - D&D can't claim the moral high road - they already published the Book of Vile Darkness that depicted a BBEG with child slaves in shackles attached to his carriage, if I recall

Uh...he's not really making a game where you can play as a Nazi

Rest of the points stand though. Kevin Crawford has already proved that you do not need an OGL.

Fantasy Candy Crush, the final evolution of Gary and Dave's historic innovation! 

So Hasbro is trying to ruthlessly nuke the entire TTRPG hobby and industry, so that our only option is to pay money to play some internet video game with an AI DM Chatbot?

That seems horribly depressing.

Quote from: Chainsaw on January 17, 2023, 04:15:49 PM
Fantasy Candy Crush, the final evolution of Gary and Dave's historic innovation! 

For a moment, I misread that as "Fatal Candy Crush", and almost had whiplash.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb on January 17, 2023, 05:06:35 PM
So Hasbro is trying to ruthlessly nuke the entire TTRPG hobby and industry, so that our only option is to pay money to play some internet video game with an AI DM Chatbot?

That seems horribly depressing.

Yeah but for only 99c you can buy a limited edition digital sparkly sword if you log on between 7-8pm, so you got that working for you.