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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   33587 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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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.

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.

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'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.

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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