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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So your striking evidence of wide scale incompetence is… them getting a few terms wrong?
It establishes a pattern of them not particularly caring about or understanding their products, what they are, and who buys them.
Them being the people in charge, making strategic decisions, and sailing straight into a metaphorical hurricane.
It’s a bit of a leap to go from misspeaking to the kind of abject poor decision making being purported here
It's not impossible, but I'd consider it low probability.
I fully believe that AI game masters (in a broad sense) will come, but they'll come from a video game company, not Hasbro, and they're not super close.
I mean, if you don't want to take Krispy's word for it, you can always look at what WotC want to do with the OGL for proof of their abject poor decision making. Krispy isn't pulling this out of their ass. It's not just one bad thing. It's a pattern of behavior that is clearly demonstrated in their words and actions, as has been the case since at least the time Hasbro purchased thr company, and in all honesty since before then as well.
It's not a leap in logic at all. It's common sense. It's correctly identifying that a major corporation is out for itself and its investors, and is willing to screw over its customers in the process; a corporation of the kind WotC claimed to not be working in the interests of in their response, for that matter.
This is part and parcel of living in a capitalist society, and it's certainly not limited to just WotC. When a corporation tells you it has its customers' best interests as its main priority, that corporation is lying to you, no exceptions.
And Krispy clearly is not more concerned with the CEO misspeaking than they are about WotC's poor business practices. They pointed out - correctly - that this is an indication that Hasbro's CEO has not made any attempt at understanding the product and service she's now advising business practices for.
Hasbro,
You just can't get it right. You can't listen or understand the community can you? You've dug in and won't back down, I'm done. TSR was able to do what they did for so long because we didn't have a choice, there wasn't the electronic tech that we have now. But, the world changes and moves forward. You want to control the VTT environment? Make the best VTT with the best features and easiest use to interface. But, preventing the animations because it becomes a video game? Yeah, no. First off, you didn't come up with the idea of animations for VTTs. You didn't come up with animations for video games. Secondly, even if you do manage to win this, I will simply animate spell effects using lasers, explosions, clouds, etc. Things that are either uncopyrightable or things to emulate the animations of the spells (but not an animation FOR spells). Oh, I can't do that because it's not representative of what I could do at a table? Want to bet? Magic Missile, analog animation would simply be a string of LED lights laid down between miniatures and activated when someone casts magic missile. Hell, all I need is a little bit of electrical know how (which, btw, I have) and ingenuity. Simply lay down a grid of lights and use a simple series of switches to turn on the lights in order to emulate the path of a magic missile. Lighting effects, easy peasy, lamps and shades on lamps, candles and crepe paper and wire. Stinking cloud animation? Simple, clear plexiglass bowl/box, some dry ice and an LED. Or hell, how about some cotton with food coloring?
You don't realize the lengths we used to go to back in the day. Line of sight? A simple piece of string. Animating magic missile with no electronics? Sure, how about an extended tape measure with a drop of white out? Yeah, I absolutely can and have emulated spell effects and animations on my at home table top game.
Lastly, this clause opens you up to other lawsuits that you haven't foreseen. First you're attempting to describe the difference of a VTT and a video game by use of animation. By that definition, any animated film is, by default, a video game. Second, you fail to account for text based video games, and third, that's not the legal definition of a video game. By your definition, and I strongly encourage computer animators to do this, animators could copywrite the context of their animations and demand that you pay them if anything looks remotely similar to what they have already done.
Next, all your language about reserving the right to change various articles in your 1.2 eitgher has to go outright, or detail specifically what you can and can't change in those articles. I thought you had said something about using "crystal clear language," but maybe I'm misremembering it.
Next, REMOVE the anti-class action lawsuit clause outright. That marks as if you're INTENDING to do something that could trigger that. If that's not your intent, then you don't need it. If that is your intent, then by all means leave it in.
And finally, REMOVE the requirement of waving our rights. Specifically the right to trial by jury. TO ALL, NEVER SIGN YOUR RIGHTS AWAY! Any company that requires this, is not a company worth doing business with.
But, Hasbeen, er, Hasbro, thank you so much for all of this. I mean this without any sarcasm or snark. By what you have done with 1.1 and now 1.2, you are educating the community the importance of reading terms and conditions. This misstep of yours may have finally convince people to truly read the terms and conditions that they need to agree to prior to clicking OK. So, well played, very well played. You continue to outplay yourself.
As I've said previously, you keep challenging a community that is used to bending rules legally. To min max things in our favor. The more caveats you add to your agreement, the more loopholes we will find and exploit. The biggest mistake here is trying to say we couldn't animate things like Magic Missile at our home table top game. Not only did I demonstrate that we could, but we have.
So, in conclusion. Instead of trying to find some legalese to tip the tables to make your VTT and screw over those that came before you. Make the BEST DAMN VTT available. Make us WANT to use it, not forced to use it. As a long time DM (close to a forever DM), I'll tell you one thing that the community that has included does when they're forced into something, they refuse. And the more you try to railroad into it, the more likely you are to find that you don't have anyone to play with.
They did not know their biggest money maker for the last 6 years was not a video game.
The President did not know the name of the 2nd biggest source of their income.
They lost 1/3 to half of the company stock value in one day because they failed to understand basic economics.
They lost the trademark to their biggest board game because they got caught playing fast and loose with ethics and the law in Europe. A trademark they have had for decades.
I could go on but its way past obvious that there is something going on with the HASBRO board.
Then there are the events of the last two weeks and today. Losing over 40 thousand subs in one day and hiding how to unsubscribe for the rest of that day and not thinking someone would notice?
I am not a friend of HASBRO even though I welcomed their taking over at first. I made a mistake there.
I have tried to point out there can be actions without deliberate malice by them because they are not gamers, just practitioners of capitalism who never take the long game choice.
On the other hand, I could not fail to notice some accounts in these forums that seem odd in their postings.
I am not talking about posts defending WOTC or Hasbro but the way it is occurring and some of the reasoning.
I have noticed posts disappearing but never any supporting WOTC or Hasbro and now have to wonder if that is the only thing occurring here in the forums.
For the record I have no plans to disappear from the forums so if I do not reply to anything it's not me just lurking but something else.
There is a review of the "Draft 1.2 OGL and TTR Policy" that was blogged by an IP lawyer who is invested in this industry. It's worth a read as it provides good insight to the "draft" shenanigans Hasbro is still trying to pull from a legal perspective.
https://medium.com/@MyLawyerFriend/lets-take-a-minute-to-talk-about-d-d-s-updated-open-game-license-ogl-1-2-5b95fe8889b2
He also did a live review with Nerd Immersion on youtube expanding further on his blog post.
Keep the pressure on Hasbro, this is not a step forward but more of a side step trying to distract us.
VTT policy is garbage. Basically kills Foundry VTT.
WOTC should also not be able to be the one that decides what's "harmful." Because to them any competition could be considered "harmful." And given their recent actions I don't trust them to actually use that policy right.
It would entirely be based on what and how much was borrowed from WotC material.
And that is a case for the courts. IF WotC does not take them to court then even they do not think they could win.
Because they promised that license was for life. That it was perpetual.
Changing a perpetual agreement is highly unethical. And possibly it is illegal.
Isn't that a bit hyperbolic? The example seems a bit over the top. Are you implying that WotC is now a slave to 20 year old agreement IT made with the community?
Are we talking about an indentured servitude contract?
I thought we were talking about a license agreement, which is to publish products covered by it.
And that license was perpetual and WoTC wants to revoke it.
All that indentured servitude nonsense is straw men.
Uh no. OGL 1.0a does not allow you to use any WoTC IP. It doesn't let you use anything they create. Not even everything related to D&D. That is just false.
It is the second fallacy that I read to you in this debate. Please, let's try to debate seriously.
Examples are helpful.
Consider Flee Mortals by MCDM. They are creating a unique monster manual with all new monsters and monster variants. They are doing all the work, art, writing, design, publishing etc.. Its for 5th edition D&D. Why should Wizards of the Coast get any money from that at all? They have done absolutely nothing to contribute to that work, hell they didn't even create D&D, Gygax at TSR did that, all they did was buy the franchise and stake their claim.
To me, 3rd party publishing has absolutely nothing to do with Wizards of the Coast, so I see no reason why they should earn anything or have any rights to that work. These are community members creating content for the community. If that monster manual is better than the official WotC one, tough cookies, do better next time.
What an insane take
Yes the nature of the agreement does matter
No the nature of the agreement is not akin to forms of literal slavery
Hasbro created 1.0a to indirectly generate profit during 3e/3.5e, and it worked amazingly. It worked a second time over a decade later when they repeated the experiment with fifth edition.
Now, somehow, the new generation at leadership at Hasbro/WotC regrets their decision (which was made to make money, and did so) and wants to go back on their word and people are holding them to their word and... you're painting Hasbro/WotC as the victim? Of their own, profitable decisions?
There's no world in which your metaphor works.
You are misunderstanding the core principle behind community-driven content.
3e and 5e were popular BECAUSE of the OGL and 3rd party content. It is what facilitated its popularity and its growth.
Its not like Wizards of the Coast created 5e and it was so good that 50 million people started playing it. A small number of people started playing, those people started creating content under the OGL, which brought in more players, who then also created content, which brought in more players.. so on and so forth.
Community growth is very powerful, Wizards of the Coast's D&D is as popular as it is because a vast community adopted it. They make tons of money from 3rd party content because this content grows its player base, market share. This creates opportunities for them to sell things of their own creation.
So no they earn nothing on 3rd party products, but yes, they make crazy amounts of money because of the growth of the community which has grown as a result of the OGL and the massive expansion of the game beyond what Wizards of the Coast publishes.
Its the same with video games. Half-Life became one of the most popular PC games in the history of gaming, not because Half-Life was such a good game, but because they opened the game to modders who created so much content for the game including entire sub-games like Counter-Strike. Valve made tons of money on the game, but ZERO money on the modder's work, but in the end it was the growth of the community that made them filthy rich.
Wizards of the Coasts wants the growth and the royalties but as soon as you ask for royalties, that 3rd party community disappears.. more specifically they will go somewhere else and before you know it, it will be Paizo's Pathfinder that gets all the 3rd party content and insane growth.
It's coming.. you'll see. If Wizards of the Coast releases this OGL they are shooting themselves in the foot. What do you think will happen to D&D's popularity when Critical Role decides to move their game to PF2.... MCDM decides to create a monster book for PF2 instead of D&D, when people start streaming PF2 tutorials instead of D&D tutorials.
Create an OGL that blocks motivation for people to create content for your game and those people will move elsewhere to do the same thing. Content creators will always find a way to make their stuff, passionate communities function like that and if they can't do it under D&D without getting hosed... Well... they will just find somewhere else to do it.
Stuff to be wary of from OGL 1.2 Draft:
5. YOU CONTROL YOUR CONTENT: "You can make your Content available under any terms you choose but you
may not change the terms under which we make Our Licensed Content available."
(a) "You must clearly indicate that your Licensed Work contains Our Licensed Content under this license either by including the full text of this license in your Licensed Work or by applying the Creator Products badge in compliance with the then-current style guidelines."
(b) "You may permit the use of your Content on any terms you want. However, if any license you offer to your Licensed Work is different from the terms of this license, you must include in the Licensed Work the attribution for Our Licensed Content found in the preamble to the applicable SRD, and make clear that Our Licensed Content included in your Licensed Work is made available on the terms of this license."
9. MISCELLANEOUS:
(a) Notices. "We may notify you by any email or physical address we can locate for you. Only if we cannot locate your email or physical address after a reasonable search, notice via a public channel is sufficient. You may provide notice to us of your email or physical address, or any other notice, by emailing oglnotices@wizards.com."
breach within 30 days of notice to you of the breach."
I will simply add this.
A few years ago, there was a controversy and Orcs were considered to be a racist experience and a proxy to diminish people of colour.
WOTC can deauthorize a full RPG using the new ogl for putting orcs as monsters. Without justification, without resort of any kind.