Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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agreed!
It's so much worse than that. They can take something you created, publish it as their own and then shut you down for using "their" content. Your only recourse at that point is to sue them and hope you can prove in a court of law that they stole from you and even if you win, the only thing you can get is a cash settlement, they still own your content and can still shut you down.
Now I will admit this is quite an alarmist position to take, I don't actually believe they would do something like that, but with this OGL, they certainly could.
And the next person you walk past on the street certainly could decide to start beating on you, but the vast majority of the population carries on with life regardless. Brandishing these hypotheticals is not a great argument, particularly given that we’ve already demonstrated to WotC that the end state of such actions is the majority of playerbase abandoning D&D. I’m not under any illusions that the company is a benevolent entity with only the best of intentions in mind, but I also don’t buy into the illusion that they’re so Stupid Evil they’ll burn their own house down attempting to make a quick buck.
I don't disagree, I don't think their goal is to steal from the 3rd party creators, I think their goal is to ensure the contract is such a raw deal that their won't be anyone creating any 3rd party content to begin with.
The objective here is to shut down the 3rd party market and create a lifestyle environment and it's a pretty brilliant move. With less content available for D&D, if you want to buy D&D content you'll be doing it through them for all your content. Sure the community will shrink, but if 100 people spend 50 bucks each on your books and 50 bucks on 3rd party books, you will make less money than if 70 people spend 100 bucks each on your product. Even if the community shrinks by 30-40% they will make way more money if the 3rd party market is dead.
Wizards of the Coast is evil but not stupid.
The OGL 1.0a only needs one change.
If WotC was afraid of 3rd party content and thought it was eating into their own profit they would just buy it up like any other company.
There are thousands of 3rd party publishers creating 10's of thousands of books, people buy this content sporadically. No single publisher is making all the money, but all combined they are making a fair share and they sell books at considerably discounted prices compared to what Wizards of the Coast could get for it.
Buying them out is not profitable, eliminating them is.
They only need to to buy out the ones that become a financial threat. Not all of them. There are very few that are putting a noticeable dent into their bottom line.
An excerpt from my survey:
I have DM'd my group for 25 years. I bought every 3rd Edition book. I've bought every 5th Edition book to date. In between, however, I bought every Pathfinder book because 4th edition declined to keep the promise of the OGL. I won't buy any more books or tools or anything from this company again, and will move my group elsewhere. I spend hundreds of dollars a year on books from this company, and I won't pay another dime. The OGL represented a promise to not follow TSR's ways. I can't trust OGL 1.2 as the promises of the past have been thrown away.
I can't trust any component of the new OGL because of this one act. It is the move of a company that refused to learn the lessons of the past, who discards the good will of a community of creators. Everything else, from the Morality clause that will be used to harm creators that WotC deems competition, to attack VTTs that show WotC has no faith in their future product. It shows that WotC has no faith in 6th edition as a whole. These are small though, compared to trying to revoke a promise that for decades has made this property a money printing machine.
Simply put, Do not attempt to revoke the OGL 1.0a. WotC's own FAQ said so:
"Can’t Wizards of the Coast change the License in a way that I wouldn’t like?
Yes, it could. However, the License already defines what will happen to content that has been previously distributed using an earlier version, in Section 9. As a result, even if Wizards made a change you disagreed with, you could continue to use an earlier, acceptable version at your option. In other words, there’s no reason for Wizards to ever make a change that the community of people using the Open Gaming License would object to, because the community would just ignore the change anyway."
They're not eliminating anyone. If they wanted to do that, there'd be no OGL at all, they'd simply deauthorize 1.0a and demand everyone come to them for a custom license they way TSR did.
Or if we're listing things they aren't able to do, why not just materialize bricks of gold out of solid air?
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Naw, they can't deauthorize. Just as much as they can't materialize gold from thin air.
They could lie and say they can do either. Some people will even believe them.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Fascinating that you think a company is an entity capable of holding a belief.
Looks like some folk are exhibiting some personification tendencies here. Your best pal WotC needs to get defended huh? Those internet meanies keep picking on your poor defenseless friend just for believing he can revoke his gaming license.
...
No man. WotC doesn't hold a belief. People hold beliefs, and you can rest assured they hold an array of them. Some grounded in reality and some... not. You got polling data for the beliefs of everyone all 1000+ employees? No? Okay, stop acting like you know what WotC believes or doesn't believe. Or even phrasing it like that sentence is coherent.
If WotC was making perfectly reasonable and coherent choices based entirely on good information.... they wouldn't currently find themselves embroiled in a massive PR disaster over this issue. Clearly mistakes are being made within their walls. We should be questioning the choices they're making. We should be questioning the statements they're making.
Trust, built on decades of good faith, is gone. An attempt was made, by people within WotC, to pull some shady shit. Can WotC redeem themselves? That's a personal choice. Your answer and mine clearly differ on what they need to do to redeem themself. Will the right people who are calling the shots course correct? Time will tell. It ain't looking favorable though. Not if they keep trying to revoke a legally perpetual and irrevocable (imo*) promise made to the community.
*which is correct.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.