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Wizards of the Coast, who own Dungeons and Dragons, have been in the news lately because their OGL 1.1 was leaked. The OGL was an open source-like license, originally from 2000, which allowed people to create D&D-related works and which was supposed to not be revocable, as confirmed by its drafters. WOTC is trying to revoke it by using a clause referring to "authorized" versions of the license and claiming to have de-authorized the earlier license. The new replacement license requires giving 25% of your revenue to WOTC, makes you send a copy of your content to WOTC which they can then publish for free, and they can revoke it at any time making all your products instantly unsalable.
After backlash from fans, WOTC officially released a 1.2 license instead, which has similar problems, but worded a bit more subtly.
The culture war element comes from this clause:
I hope the problems with this are obvious to everyone here. I absolutely don't want a world where people with the wrong political beliefs can be barred from producing game materials. But every objection I've seen to this clause by fans has been a twenty Stalins objection: WOTC has produced discriminatory material in the past and can't be trusted to do this properly. There have been calls to have WOTC outsource this to an independent tribunal. Just, take it out because even people with unpopular opinions should be able to put them in games? No, nobody believes that.
(Links are trivial to google, but it's hard to find a site that has everything correct all at the same time, and is up to date as well, and also engages in trustworthy journalism in general. This EFF post at least covers part of the initial controversy, though you'll have to follow links to see what's in the license.)
I used to be a big tabletop gamer, going to GenCon, writing games, etc. The wokeness factor has been so stupidly bad for so long I simply dropped out about a decade ago. None of this is surprising. Also, how the heck are you going to make a fantasy game set during savage medeival times without dark and challenging elements? So dumb. What I don't really understand is the wrath. Hasn't everyone who cares already bounced over to Pathfinder?
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This is far from the first thing that has had me despising WotC. A few years back they went after and probably ultimately killed Hex TCG which was a wonderful and ambitious online card game that I enjoyed while it was around. It seems to be their basic strategy to release games and the rent seek off of the products as much as humanly possible. If Board games as a wider industry operated the way wizards of the coast does we would not be living in the board game golden age like we are now and I hope they are punished for it.
What are some great current board games?
What kind of game are you interested in?
I'll plug Spirit Island as far and away the best board game I've played this decade. It's a complex cooperative game where you play as natural spirits of a lush island with the game automating a joint enemy, the Invaders who try to explore the island, build their towns and cities on it, and than ravage it for its natural resources, causing blight and slowly killing the island, the native people, and the spirits. Your goal as a team is to scare them away, or get rid of them, or just flat-out kill them as the case may be.
I will write a multi paragraph review of this game given the slightest provocation, so I will merely say that it is unique among cooperative games by scaling incredibly gracefully with player count (you can play this game solo and it is in fact consistently the #1 solo board game on BGG) and being near immune to quarterbacking (which constantly plagues games like Pandemic). The theme is incredible, the gameplay is incredible, the spirits are fun and evocative ... this game is an 11 / 10 for me. My brothers and I have played literally over a thousand games between the three of us.
Why do you say it’s immune to quarterbacking? I love the game, but I’ve only been able to consistently win by micromanaging each play, which gets tough with 3 or 4 players without riding herd to whole game.
Interesting; I'd be curious to hear more about what spirits you're playing as well as what difficulty you're playing at. My guess is either you are wildly more experienced than the rest of your group, or your entire group is inexperienced -- or you're just a lot smarter than I am!
My reason for saying Spirit Island is largely immune to quarterbacking is twofold. First, the Spirits play very, very differently. If you're playing Pandemic, everyone has the same basic actions available to them -- move, cure disease, discover a cure, etc. Each "role" really is tantamount to a very minor buff (usually to one action) and rules change. It is therefore fast and easy for someone with good game knowledge to scan the basic problem on the board and tell the next player the ideal solution.
But in Spirit Island, while the underlying mechanics are the same (everyone does Growth, gains Energy, and plays their cards), each Spirit has a very different play pattern and flow. You have to think about which growth option to take, which tracks to open up in which order, which cards to play in order to hit which innates ... in order to quarterback a new player piloting, say, Spread of Rampant Green, I'd have to have a very deep understanding of how to play the Spirit efficiently, such that I could play it with my eyes closed. I'd have to have all its starting cards plus their elements plus their tracks and growth options memorized or discernable at a glance, more or less, and that isn't even taking into account whatever powers they have drafted since the game started.
I'm not saying it's impossible to get to this point -- now that I've played hundreds and hundreds of games, some of the spirits with easy play patterns (River Surges in Sunlight, for example) I could probably quarterback if I wanted to, but if I'm playing with a new player it's actually both easier (for me) and more fun (for everyone) for me to grab one of their lands, drop a reminder token on it, and tell them "I'll handle this ravage for you, nbd". I could tell them "OK, this turn you need to pick your second growth option, both from cardplays, and, uh, what minor did you draft last turn again? Let me just see your hand real quick." Like I said, though, it's actually easier for me to just handle one of their lands and let them worry about the rest of it. I don't think quarterbacking is actually optimal even if you're trying to help out a less experienced player.
The other reason I'm skeptical that quarterbacking really works in practice is my own experience with two-handed play. I play a lot of solo games -- true solo, where I'm piloting one Spirit. I'm not exaggerating when I say I'm extremely good at Spirit Island. I can win against any Level 6 adversary with a near-100% win rate and when I'm interested in a challenge, I'm playing double adversaries around Difficulty 13-14. I have beaten 6/6 Adversaries before (albeit with very specific matchups). However, when I try to double-hand Spirits (even two Spirits I know well!), it is dramatically more difficult to actually play the game! It's really hard for me to keep track of everything that's going on if I'm playing two Spirits at once; I get confused about my game flow for each Spirit, make a lot more minor tactical mistakes, and the game gets bogged down as I try (and largely fail) to stay organized. It's difficult for me to imagine someone piloting a Spirit and then wanting to control the second one for a new player. I just haven't seen it happen. Maybe you're smart and fast enough that you can play your Spirit quickly and then jump over to another player and be able to tell them what to do, but if so you're a lot faster at board games than I am.
So to conclude a long-winded response, I think Spirit Island largely dodges the problem of quarterbacking because:
Each Spirit plays sufficiently differently that it's quite difficult to tell at a glance the correct set of moves for someone else.
Even if you are sufficiently experienced to do so, it's still easier and more fun for you to just handle a few more lands than literally try to play a second spirit.
The only place I've even been tempted to quarterback is when playing a Difficulty 0 game with new players and they're piloting an easy spirit that I know quite well -- but again, it's still both easier and more fun for me to help out with their lands and drop Gift cards on them every turn I can.
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Oh it's too broad of a question to answer easily but I'd love to answer in detail. There are all sorts of different types to explore depending on your tastes. The two broadest categorizations are the Euro game and the Ameritrash(this is a term of endearment) with euro games focusing more on tight puzzles to really crunch on with your brain while American style games still often have crunchy puzzles but with increased amount of random chance, direct player conflict and above all theme.
Past that classification there are all sorts of different experiences you can have but you may need to answer a couple questions for me to point you in the right direction, are you looking for games for a consistent group of players? There are 'legacy' type board games where each time you play them you modify the board with stickers and card packs in a campaign type experience. What is the age cohort you would like to play with? There are great modern games simple enough for kids. Would you like to cooperate with or fight against the other players? How about an asymmetric game where one player is against all the others? Cooperative experiences of board games have come a long way.
There's probably more factors as well if you have any particular goal.
Just so I actually answer you question if you're not that interested. Somewhat diverse set of games I'd recommend without hesitation:
Betrayal Legacy - Or the original 'Betrayal at house on the hill' if legacy doesn't appeal to you. Explore a randomly generated haunted house collecting boons and detriments until you trigger a haunting in which one or more players are suddenly trying to take down the rest of the group.
Treasure Island - One player is the pirate captain who picks a place on a map to bury treasure and is imprisoned by his crew as they search the island marking where they'd dug with dry erase markers and getting hints each round from the pirate captain.
Blood on the Clocktower - we actually have a motte discord group(albeit it's half rdramanaughts) where we play this one in a slightly modified format. It's an evolution on the classic werewolf where there is a demon and a number of other roles that need to each use their special abilities to find and execute them.
Gaia Project - This is a pretty classic euro style game. Over a few rounds each player uses their faction to try and colonize planets and rack up victory points.
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective - This one is like a classic choose your own adventure book with extra components meant to be played along or with others(definitely recommend with others)
Ticket to ride - You draft cards and try to complete railroad routes across the united states(or other locations with expansions). Deep enough for adults to enjoy together but really shines in being appropriate for all ages.
Betrayal at House on the Hill is the most ridiculously unbalanced game that I actually wholeheartedly recommend. IME the vast majority of monsters are ridiculously over or under powered, but IMO this actually kind of works for the game: either 4/5 players have fun taking down an axe murderer and some zombies (fun adventure!) or 4/5 players are running around desperately trying to survive one more turn against a vampire ("horror movie").
If you've not played the legacy variant yet I definitely recommend, and of course the balance isn't all that important. One of my favorite thing about asymmetric games that go a little theme heavy is that the balance isn't really all that important as long as it is not blatantly broken. A game with a terrible winrate for some role with a group that plays regularly just means the person who finally wins with it is a legend. Look at demons in Blood on the clocktower, they don't win all that often in games I've played but when they do or even just do really well they're praised for it.
Do you mean asymmetrical games?
Speaking of asymmetrical games and going on a slight tangent, it is funny how the Vagabond in Root is probably underestimated instinctively by new players (he's just one guy in a game where factions deploy dozens of units and buildings), yet is widely regarded as OP to the point of houserules for nerfing him, banning certain classes of Vagabond and/or having an agreement to take turns whacking him at all times.
Yes, edited
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How current are we talking? I would say we've been in a golden age of board games for the past 10-20 years, so there's a good wide range there.
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So why should anybody trust the new license? How can anyone have faith that the deal won't be altered again?
Mainly the word "irrevocable" instead of "perpetual."
No, seriously, that's the claimed original loophole.
Until the next lawyer would try to claim his yearly bonus by arguing that they are not "revoking" the license, they are "expiring" it, and since it doesn't say "perpetual" now, of course it's ok to expire it! And, also, nobody said the deal in "unalterable" - I am not revoking the deal, I am altering the deal!
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I've been arguing about with this a buddy of mine constantly.
Short version everyone complaining about this is getting what they deserve.
Long version is, all these WotC personality driven "content creators" have been rabble rousing for WotC to "do something" about people like me for years. And over time, WotC has fashioned a superweapon built out of services, contracts and copyright to effectively kick my kind out of the community. If we allow our believes to be known, we are banished from conventions, online services, even FLGS events.
Well, now that they've motivated WotC to put all this effort into privatizing the community so that they can kick witches like me out, WotC is looking at this fantastic weapon they've built, and are mugging the "content creators" who cheerleaded my banishment with it. I love it. At this point they deserve each other. I hope WotC takes 99% of their income.
I have my old AD&D 2e collection, hard copies of the Gold Box games, as well as the Infinity Engine games. I barely recognize nu-DND anyways, and barely wish to with woke blank slatism and alphabet people being the new core of the rules and community.
Are you talking about 5E content creators, or people using the OGL to create OSR games? Because while there is some woke virtue-signaling in the OSR community, like everywhere else, it's mostly a bastion of grognard greybeards who want nothing to do with that nonsense. GaryCon and CyclopsCon and NTRPGCon and a bunch of others I could name have stayed politically neutral and are quite welcoming of "people like you" (unless you're, like, dropping n-bombs at the table or going all murderhobo with a Lawful party).
Also, 1E > 2E.
2e had all the good settings though. I love Planescape and Dark Sun.
Mechanically, the core rules are practically identical though. You could have a party of 1e and 2e players in the same game and it would mostly go off without a hitch. The main difference is that 2e sanitized all the "evil" and "demonic" parts of 1e to make it more marketable to scared Christian house wives.
Yeah, I never understood the fuss about THAC0, but as an owner of the original Deities and Demigods (before they had to remove the Moorcock, Lovecraft, and Lieber pantheons because lol what's IP infringement? man, those were the days...) I resented the scrubbing of demons and devils to placate all the angry moms. I was precocious when it came to sensing culture war bullshit.
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I don't think this is a productive comment. While it's true that the influx of new players from actual play podcasts has resulted in tabletop gaming becoming a younger, queerer, and more progressive community than before (I have witnessed the transformation first-hand on Tumblr) I don't think the rest of us who haven't been calling for witch burning should have to suffer just to spite them.
This is because of WotC's greed, pure and simple. Hasbro isn't doing well, and the command has come down from on high to make D&D more profitable, and the people in charge made the calculated risk that shrinking their fanbase but increasing the amount of money they were getting from them would be a gamble worth taking. They want to become like Games Workshop - small number of actual players, but that small number is super dedicated, and is happy to fork over all their money no matter what shitty things you do.
I don't think anyone is fooled enough to believe this is WotC's real motivation. They don't care about progressive issues, or (their other scape goat) NFT's. They just included clauses that would limit two things lots of people hate in the hopes that they wouldn't overly scrutinize the new license.
I've been playing MTG for quite a while now and for years participated in their core subreddit. I wouldn't call this accurate:
From last year as they started purging card art:
The playerbase has asked for the company to take more control over its IP and purge witches. From the "thought leaders" the nerds unquestionably worship down to the Red Guards in reddit comment sections.
All that being said, I think the motivation for profit still wins as the majority influencer in these actions. Once again looking to MtG, the player base has shown that it's willing to accept any kind of abuse at any time. When, as a customer, your default position is face-down and ass-up your surprised indignation reads as idiocy.
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Why do we keep pretending that woke companies that walk like woke ducks, talk like woke ducks and purge wrongthink like woke ducks aren't actually woke ducks?
There is clearly a principal-agent problem at play here. Woke companies are woking it out even when it hurts their bottom line. If it doesn't sink the company or leads to massive lay-offs, why should the individual employee or executive care more about this than about their twitter clout? And even if it does, well.
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I don't believe this is actually true. Were 13 and 14 year olds really not playing D&D in the 80s and 90s? Is it really likely that young gay kids were too busy playing football to have any interest in TTRPGs? Or is this just that young people nowadays - particularly of the indoorsy and nerdy variety - are more likely to have strong progressive opinions and to be gay, trans, or otherwise GNC?
They cared enough to declare that Nielsen's art would never be reprinted.
I was. Not gay, also not a football player. The TTRPG scene in the 80s and 90s skewed liberal (it was an even nerdier space then than it is now) but "queer" was still a dirty word; gay kids didn't gravitate towards D&D, they gravitated towards theater or music.
Like @Iconochasm says, the rise of games like Vampire :The Masquerade (heavily influenced by Anne Rice's homoerotic Vampire Lestat series) and other games focused on drama over miniature skirmishes was responsible for bringing a lot of those kids into RPGing.
GURPS writer Willian Stoddard once described the core thesis of all the WhiteWolf games as something like "You are a unique locus of suffering and drama, and from this you derive powers and abilities that affirm your special nature." Those games introduced a whole genre of personalities to TTRPGs, coming from music and theatre, and the gay kids came with them. I remember so many huffing sighs at the guys who couldn't remember their attack rolls, but had very strong opinions about how their character should look.
Tbf, that era of games had a lot stronger opinions about how your character should look (or how local coinage should work, lol Exalted) than the mechanical ramifications of any of their attack rolls, too. But even the more mechanically 'robust' splats were very much, even if they were also very far from any of the modern-day story games.
And Changeling was pretty queer whether the authors intended it to be gay-queer.
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Some of them played. More were doing band, or theater, or hanging out in alternative subculture venues. D&D coded more STEMlord back then, and that faded slowly over decades as things like Vampire and LARP became popular.
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Idk. I nope'd out of WOTC products when they started stuffing homosexual characters into the Magic cards hand-over-fist in the Theros set ten years ago. Can't remember whether that was before or after they memory-holed cards like Crusade and Invoke Prejudice; it was certainly before they started firing their own artists for making anodyne pro-Trump statements on their own social media.
There's a pattern of behaviour. Maybe WOTC is un-woke itself but desperately seeking validation from its woke customers; or maybe it's putting on the political commissar jacket with full gusto. But I feel at this point it's a distinction without a difference as to how pleased I should be that the revolution is eating its own.
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Again as with Twitter, I think WOTC have the absolute right to decide who uses their IP via license and contract agreements, if they want to stop everyone left wing, right wing or whatever then that is up to them (and their bottom line). Note you can put whatever opinions you want in games or have them, you just can't do so with their license and IP and that should be their choice to control (or not).
I think that people with whatever opinions should be able to make games, but I also think WOTC has the right to decide who can do that for their licenses specifically.
And then people have an absolute right to not buy/use their products or go to a competitor if they don't like their stance.
But then I haven't liked a DnD product since 3.5 so it's no skin off my nose to avoid buying their stuff, as I haven't for years. Pathfinder 1E is a good substitute for 3.5 and Pathfinder 2E is excellent in my opinion and splits off further from DnD mechanics at least somewhat. Though not sure that helps you from a non-woke direction as I think Paizo are perceived as more woke than WOTC.
IP itself is a government creation. So the question is not "does WOTC have a right", the question is "are we happy with the government giving them this right". I'm not happy with it.
I suppose my question is why? Part of a companies brand and therefore value can be the moral values it upholds (or is seen to uphold at least). A trad right wing RPG company should be able to pick and choose who it licenses to and not license to communists or whatever. Thats a business decision. People who don't like it can suck it up and use it anyway. Or go elsewhere.
A company should be able to be openly political if it likes. If Elon owned Twitter wants to ban everyone to the left of Kevin Sorbo he should be allowed to. It's his platform now. We can then respond by not using it. It isn't necessary, it's not a requirement to live or take part in society. Even less so with WOTC.
I don't pick the companies I use due to their values but many people do and companies should be allowed to take advantage of those preferences if they like. If they think one of their license holders being outed as a rapist or a liberal or jaywalker is bad for PR then they should be allowed to write their license for the future to include severability. And then customers can either like that, not like it or not care and act accordingly. Forcing companies to be viewpoint neutral is a disservice to them and to the engine of capitalism. It's ok for them to be biased and have a political lean if they want. It's also ok for them not to be. More choice, more freedom, more dynamism.
Social media site for centrists only? Go for it. High heel shoes only for right wingers? Rock on. Rugby boots for anarcho-syndicalists? Kick away. You'll probably fail horribly but you should be allowed to try. If you want to try and spread your values and earn money that should be allowed. It gives people more opportunities for work where it is for something other than just a pay cheque, which is i think one of the most soul destroying things we do. Woke capitalism is the model of the future. Many people it turns out like to work for a company that (they believe) is also doing good.
Exceptions for utilities, phone, internet access and the like as they are requirements on the modern world. But it should be a light touch beyond that.
I'm not suggesting they be arrested for not wanting right-wingers to use D&D. I'm just pointing out that IP isn't naturally property; it's not a right which the government merely recognizes like the right to actual property or to your body. IP is a government-granted monopoly and the government shouldn't be granting monopolies that are against the interests of the populace in general.
They shouldn't be allowed to have a license for that at all. It's IP, it isn't something that they naturally own such that it can only be used by others if they license it out. It's not a car, or an apartment. It's a deal where we say "we pretend you own it and we'll shoot people who don't agree, as long as you use it for everyone's benefit".
I don't think the "use it for everyone's benefit" is part of the deal. It more like "so you can monetize it therefore incentivizing people to come up with new ideas in the future, which can also be monetized and thus taxed"
There is absolutely no requirement for everyone to benefit because that would mean giving your IP away. The restrictions specifically mean NOT everyone will benefit, thats the point. Only certain people will. I'm not benefitting from Brandon Sanderson owning his product, he is. Which makes sense as he spent time and effort making it up. I can enter into a transaction to enjoy his product by buying his books. But i would benefit more by getting them free. But he wouldn't.
There is a meta view that encouraging people to create by allowing them ownership so they can make money off it, then benefits society over all. But that doesn't mean every single person or group has to get that benefit for every single IP. Just that IP laws protect the trad right RPG maker as they do the communist left RPG maker. The key factor is that they then retain the right to decide what to do with their work. They can sell it on, destroy it, refuse to license it for any reason.
There are writers who refuse to license their works to be made into movies because they think the message will be destroyed or their vision perverted. But more people will benefit from their work when it is more widely spread so accepting your logic, they should not be able to refuse? Alan Moore must license his works so that more people can benefit? That would seem to be the end point of your argument.
If Alan Moore held 80% of the market, such that making a derivative of anyone else's work than Moore's was difficult merely because of the size of the market, it would be fair to not let him use copyright to keep people from making derivatives. Think of something like public accommodation laws, except that there's no issue of "the government telling me what to do with my property" because copyrights are not actually property.
I can't imagine how such a thing would even come up for Alan Moore. It would be impossible for one person to produce enough literature such that creating literature that didn't use it was orders of magnitude less practical than using it. Even Watchmen or Harry Potter aren't 80% of the literature market. D&D's position in the gaming market doesn't compare to anything else that's copyrighted except software, and I'd certainly object if Microsoft said "anyone can link to Windows libraries, except Trump supporters".
DnD makes up about 53% to 55% of the market as near as i can tell. So it isn't anywhere near a monoply though. And even if it were 80% there are plenty of alternatives, so it would quickly lose market share. As indeed seems to be happening right now.
There are feedback mechanisms to punish companies who overreach without government intervention. And if their consumer base like the overreach, then it was not overreach but a savvy business move.
I am more sympathetic to your Microsoft example. So its not that i think the base idea is without merit. Monopolies that lock people out of using most computers (vital for the modern world) seem something worth tackling.
But DnD is just a game. They don't have to be politically inclusive if they don't want to be. Even if Fox news had 80% share i still think they should be allowed to be as partisan as they want. After all that is part of how they would have got to 80% market share so hobbling their strategy doesn't seem warranted. Its ok for entertainment and "news" and so on to be partisan. People are partisan and in general companies should be able to appeal to that as much or as little as they want to.
And its not as though a conservative can't hold their nose and play DnD anyway. WOTC can't tell, the only thing they are targetting are people they license. Its more like Fox News saying they can fire a host who comes out as a communiat or gets into a scandal. Thats the default position I think.
Googling figures, if you add Pathfinder, Starfinder, and D&D 3.5 you get somewhat over 60%. Which is less than I expected, but big enough that keeping someone from using it is not like saying they can't use something by Alan Moore.
... if most of the market were occupied by Fox News and this automatically made you lose out on 60% of the jobs. And even that's a bad comparison because Fox News hiring someone means that Fox is spending money that they actually own, not things that we've created a fake ownership structure around.
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I have a problem with an open source style license ever being changed in a way that restricts use of material that had been open source. If you develop something newer and better that's fine, but you shouldn't be able to ever make an existing open source license more restrictive.
I agree with that. If they want to add a caveat or two going forward, i think that is their right (albeit probably stupid given the reaction.) But only for material licensed after that change.
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I am fundamentally against companies upholding moral values. I think it's a societal declaration of bankruptcy and corrosive to democracy, and I think it should be outlawed. I want my companies to be amoral profit-maximizers. This idea we have that we can tame companies when we already have a nice, central mechanism for arbitrating moral questions (elections, rule of law) just ends up recreating democracy but worse in every way: less equal, less regulated, less principled, less consistent, more corrupt, more vulnerable to extremism, and so on.
Companies are just people, and people have moral values. There's no getting around that point.
This is also why I don't take the defense that they're just pandering seriously. No, they are staffed by true believers, and those true believers have shifted the balance of power into their favor.
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There is no such thing as amoral profit maximizers involving people. Your idea means both Chik Fil A and the mom and pop restaurant who donate food to the needy are ruled out. You're ruling out Fox news, Red State, MSNBC, Twitter, any company that chooses to use American labor for patriotic reasons. Any company that donates to charity.
Choosing profit and nothing else is already a moral stance after all.
I'll take that trade. Companies should preferentially use American labor due to a law passed by Congress (or a state legislature or a local ordnance), if at all.
So when (which ever side is not yours) is in power and does the opposite of what you like, affecting every company in the nation, that is better than companies making their own choices and rising or falling based upon them?
When the neo-liberal wing is ascendant they force companies to out source, when the woke wing is ascendant they force companies to support Planned Parenthood or Trans rights? Evangelicals force companies to put up crosses? Once the government gets to decide what moral stances are acceotable for companies in general that can be used by every government.
I think it would likely be unconstitutional in any event but it seems like a very bad idea.
Companies are democratic in that they only survive if consumers use their products or services, we can easily choose not to, and if enough people agree either their stances change or they go out of business.
I believe in the ability of government to deadlock itself on contentious issues. That aside, this is how things used to work - labor regulation, health and safety, disabled access etc. That's the sort of world I want to go back to.
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The main issue is that WotC has almost certainly been piggybacking off the efforts of independent creators popularizing DnD and making it, lack of a better term, 'hip' and accessible for audiences who otherwise wouldn't consider tabletop role playing games at all. All this while there was minimal (to my knowledge) marketing by WotC itself.
Many of these creators probably wouldn't have bothered making DnD content if they had to agree to the 25% 'tax' up front (yes, it only kicks in after a certain amount of revenue, but you still have to do the accounting). They'd either have gone with a different game that didn't require that, or just not produced it at all.
I, personally, find it unreasonable to just unilaterally switch up the agreement, which was explicit in this case, on the people who have put in the actual effort to popularize your game, and who have accumulated a LOT more goodwill (whatever that's worth) than the company has.
It's not even clear what everyone is getting in exchange for paying this money forward. Will it be used to increase the quality of the product? Will they put some of that back into marketing? Or is it literally just establishing an additional revenue stream in the face of a tightening economy?
You sell people the books, they play the game with their friends, using their imagination to 'render' the world and characters, they add homebrew rules, they make up their stories using the basic materials you provided, they make content related to their game and publish it for other interested parties, and none of this really inflicts any additional costs on WotC.
This transaction really should not require WotC to do anything other than put out new materials semi-periodically.
Note I have no issues with WotC enforcing copyright on their books or characters, or restricting creators from using the brand name in their content, I'm just amazed at the lengths they're going to throw out the previous license in a clear money grab and burn through so much goodwill when there are ample competitors around who will gladly snatch their marketshare.
Absolutely, just because I think WOTC should be able to do x, doesn't mean I think they are right to do so. I don't think they should be able to retrospectively change contracts/licenses. That's a separate issue for which I will not defend them. My only point is that it isn't in and of itself bad for a company to be able to enforce standards on who gets to use or license their stuff, given it will have impacts on them. If a Trad Right Winger wants to create a game company and decide that they don't want to license it to someone who campaigns for abortion to be legal that should entirely be their decision.
Like I said I left WOTC behind a long time ago so I am not specifically defending them.
Right, not accusing you of taking their side. My point is mostly that they really shouldn't be able to accept all the lovely benefits that came with having an extremely open license, then turn around YEARS after implementing said license and try to impose heavy restrictions because they're suddenly worried about possible costs of said license might hit them as well, to the detriment of the very people who produced those benefits.
To me it strikes me less as them really needing to 'enforce standards' and more about them needing some excuse, any excuse to start charging money to those who have struck it rich off DnD content.
It might have been somewhat more acceptable if they had clearly articulated how this money was going to benefit the product or the players or anything. But that would mean they might be called on that later.
In short, they're seeking to heavily bind their creators hands even after those hands have made the product more popular, whilst leaving their own hands free to collect money, change the terms of the agreement further, change the product itself in the future, and, apparently, to tell creators to screw off if they cross some arbitrary lines.
It's asymetrical in the extreme.
You're right, but I have the suspicion that an abortion campaigner will self-select against buying from a Trad right-winger anyway so that's likely a moot point.
Oh yeah the standards change is just the side show. The important point from their point of view is the monetization change. I suspect the standards change is just so they can cut loose anyone they think is a PR problem once they have a financial link to them through the monetization program where they don't have the plausible deniability they had before.
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I agree with you in principle, but I think one of the issues here is that the FAQ for the original OGL website heavily implied, and several higher ups working for WotC at the time of its original release outright stated that the original OGL is an irrevocable license. Many of the companies that have relied on the OGL for 23 years (some of which consisting of employees who were working for WotC at the time), believe that WotC cannot legally revoke the OGL 1.0a, but few of them have the money to actually fight a protracted court battle and prove it.
The other issue is that many creators used the OGL as an open license, even when they were making their own material and just wanted it to be available for 3rd Party Publishers to use. Several games that have nothing to do with D&D will be affected by this, including the OpenD6 gaming line (descended from Star Wars D6 and Ghostbusters RPG), which unfortunately had its original creators go bankrupt, and which might not exist in a form where they could easily relicense their product to keep the OpenD6 community able to remix and share their creations as intended.
It also greatly complicates the position of OSR products, inspired by old school version of D&D. Granted, there are already a few OSR games that are compatible with old school D&D, and which are under Creative Commons licenses, like Knave, and Basic Fantasy Roleplaying has been frantically scrubbing all OGL material from their books, and will be re-releasing a 4th edition under a Creative Commons license, so while there will be a hiccup, it does seem like the OSR space will be able to weather this change. Still, it's a pain in the neck to have good portions of the D&D-based gaming space scrambling to change their products just to avoid a lawsuit.
US copyright law is clear that game mechanics can't be copyrighted, but the exact limits of where "game mechanics" end and "creative expression" begin has never been tested in the RPG space. The OGL was the magic feather that made large portions of the publishing space work, especially after how litigious TSR had been when it was the owner of D&D. In terms of the overall health for D&D-like fantasy role-playing, WotC may or may not be able to actually de-authorize the OGL 1.0a (time will tell), but if they are successful it will be a huge blow for the creativity within that publishing space, and a huge change in the status quo for major parts of the industry.
Unfortunately, Pathfinder 1e uses the OGL 1.0a, which is being de-authorized by WotC, and so its continued legality will be up in the air. WotC has claimed that they won't go after previously published products, but considering the whole current OGL controversy is them doing something they promised they wouldn't do 23 years ago, it's hard to see what's stopping them from sending cease and desist letters to every Pathfinder 1e SRD site, every OSR company that uses the OGL, etc., and blowing up a good portion of the RPG space if they want to.
Pathfinder 2e is supposedly safe, and will be re-licensed under the ORC license soon so that 3rd party publishers can publish adventures for it.
Oh sure, don't get me wrong I am not defending WOTC's overall actions. Especially that nonsense. Just defending the idea in general that a company should be entitled to decide who gets to use their IP and so on. I think they have had enough bad publicity that Pathfinder 1E is pretty safe.
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Yeah, I've been following this closely, and I've already scrubbed one of my products of all OGL content, and relicensed it under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license. I've been in talks with my current gaming group to just stick with the D&D books we already have, and boycott any future content from WotC or Hasbro, until they back down on unauthorizing the old OGL. It's not like it's much of a loss anyways - I was super disappointed with their recent Spelljammer release, and it really does seem like the books since Tasha's have seen a huge decline in quality.
I have no confidence in WotC's new feedback process for the OGL. They haven't budged on anything substantial yet, and I hope all third party publishers, at least, make WotC suffer over this, even if I have my doubts about how sustainable a boycott against WotC is in the long term.
But I'd rather tend to my own garden than worry about what the big boys are doing. I hope Paizo's new ORC license goes well, and sets us up for Pathfinder vs. 4e: Part Two, Electric Boogaloo, but even if it doesn't my group is going to be fine, and I'm going to change the way I deal with future material that I share online in the RPG space.
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I'm not clued in enough on TTRPGs to know, but was there ANYTHING that was either released or in the works that could have plausibly been covered by the "no hateful content or conduct"?
My impression is that they threw that in there as a boilerplate precaution but then when they got the vicious backlash about OGL they tried to use it as a figleaf defense in the form of "why's everyone mad? we just wanted to ban hateful conduct". That might be true, but I'm still intensely curious if there was any agitation over some RPG in the works with TERF goblins or something.
The son of the creator of D&D came out with a new TSR (the original creators) came out with a product recently that some people did say would fall afoul of the "no hateful content" policy. Conduct is a different story altogether, especially in a world where so many people view any sort of criticism as abuse. I actually think that's the bigger threat in terms of this policy.
You have to take into account, I think the larger story of what's going on. This is really targeting Virtual Tabletop providers (VTT) such as Fantasy Grounds and Roll20. That's who they really want to shut down. They're in the works making their own VTT program, and my guess is that the next version of D&D is going to be entirely based around it. To the point where I wouldn't be shocked if the next core rules simply don't include any dice formulas at all. You're expected to be logged in on your cell phone if you're playing at home, and push a button and the server will determine the outcome.
Where these things come together, I think, is to restrict the ability of these services to exist, under the guise of keeping out bad content and the bad people.
The whole point of this, is either some sort of subscription service or a Gatcha style game. The whole point is that basically WotC gotta turn D&D into a billion dollar brand and soon. That's the pressure. Which is something like a 500% increase. It's a sort of go big or go home thing. And I mean that. Apparently Hasbro is trimming the fat of their "underperforming" IPs, and this might be a gasp for that team to keep their jobs.
In fairness, the alleged leaks of Star Frontiers: New Genesis look like straight-up trolling. (Given the source, it's reasonable to be skeptical as to their authenticity, but so far as I know, no one at NuTSR has denied it.
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They've been "in the works" since 4E but there were apparently some personnel issues* during the development process and lack of user buy-in once a playable version was somewhat available.
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There are incidents around 5e that happened, like the Zak S playtesting kerfuffle. Long story short, Zak S is a male porn star, who runs a blog called Dnd With Porn Stars and has published a few products. He helped playtest 5e D&D, and was credited as one of many big name play testers. Then information about his abusive treatment of a romantic partner came out (along with sundry other shitty behavior), and he began to use dozens of sock puppet accounts to try and defend himself on Reddit and various RPG forums. In the end, he ended up removed from the 5e playtest credits, and several subreddits decided that any mention of Zak or his products was forbidden.
I think it's a shame nobody can talk about his products anymore on Reddit, because Zak was a genius in the OSR space, and Vornheim and A Red and Pleasant Land were without exaggeration, some of my favorite RPG products of all time. But I grudgingly understand why they did it - Zak is very thin-skinned, and anything that mentioned him in a less than positive light had a huge chance of breaking out into a flame war with a few Zak S sock puppets taking part.
I doubt this is the only thing that inspired WotC's new policy though. I think a few legacy RPG companies like Judges Guild and new TSR have ended up in the hands of purported racists, and there are always historical incidents like the third-party Book of Erotic Fantasy, which WotC prevented from being published with the d20 trademark after they realized the controversy it would probably glean.
Yeah, Zak S is a piece of work, though I dunno if anything he produced or was involved in would have triggered this directly. I guess banning from the field as a whole for unrelated unethical or unlawful behavior has been on the table for a while, now, though.
There have been more recent incidents than Book of Erotic Fantasy. Asian Spells Comp was probably more a failure of the marketing text than the actual focus (which from what I here was just normal supplement filler), but absolutely the sorta thing this would get used against. Even for mainstream bits, there's a few first-party works that have had big errata released to remove what's perceived as racially-insensitive metaphor
Cultural sensitivity towards mind flayers. I would have said you couldn't make this stuff up, but clearly somebody did.
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I read that clause way too fast and didn't realize this gives them a way to police offline conduct of OGL license holders. Obviously they can't go after everyone, so they probably added this "at our discretion" clause so they have a convenient out anytime a DnD person becomes too much of a PR problem for them.
This is I think the answer, especially as the new license means they have a financial tie to the license holder, which means they lost the plausible deniability from previous versions of not really being involved with each specific entity.
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How can someone 'own' Dnd?
Trademarks for the name, copyright for the unique artistic expression, and patents for any unique game mechanics.
That said, D&D has always been a "bad" intellectual property, because the "core" bits of it are things no one can own. There are thousands of systems that allow you to sit around a table, roll dice and play pretend your friends, and most of them are cheaper than D&D (some are even free!) D&D will always be the biggest or second biggest name in the RPG space, but whether you prefer narrative or heavy mechanics, massive rule tomes or printable minigames, it's safe to say no one will ever "own" the idea of tabletop RPGs on the whole, and all you need is a few like-minded friends to get out from under Hasbro and WotC's thumb if you want.
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Dungeons and Dragons is a specific intellectual property, consisting of a series of books with game rules, characters and sometimes species, and (kiiiinda?) setting. It's owned by The Wizards of the Coast in the same way that Parker Bros owns Monopoly, eg the specific approach and content produced by WotC (or by TSR then bought by WotC), rather than the generic idea of dungeon-delving and dragon-slaying wargames assisted by dice randomness.
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That's probably them covering their ass incase they try to monetize someone's kink campaign by accident while appeasing left culture warriors with the language. We know the suits behind this don't give half a shit about "inclusivity".
All in all, fuck Hasbro. Absolute shitters the lot of them. They infected GW with one of their double capitalists too; an exec that moved over was behind their latest anticonsumer/antifan behavior.
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This is exactly the kind of thing that happened with Codes of Conduct across the programming sphere. Demand a CoC, accuse the project owners of being incapable of properly policing it, point to a panel of hyper-progressives who you recommend to administer it instead, and use it to ban all dissent. Bonus points for making sure to put in that even the project owner is not immune from being removed under the CoC, thereby assuming total power.
Tons of well-meaning idiot programmers fell for it and a few were even ousted from their own projects. Let's see if an actual big company has the sanity antibodies to tell them no. If they don't, I won't feel sorry for them -- this is the audience they wanted, after all.
In this case it's clear it didn't start that way. WOTC created a new license and the objections to that license were genuinely because it was going to screw everyone over. Nobody demanded the hateful conduct clause before WOTC put it in.
But now that it's there, it's blood in the water regardless. So yeah, they might have just handed that crowd a gift apropos of nothing, but it sure sounds like they're leaping on it now it's there.
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