So even their latest statement doesn't appease you. Can you state what would appease you and have you resub? As most have said here, "I am done with that Evil WOTC" If that is the case, then you are done and nothing you say has any more relevancy. You are done, you quit, and you are gone. So leave! If you aren't done, state what would keep you. What is it you really want other than to make yourself feel better that you got to vent and let others know how pissed you are. I can speak from experience on this. I did this very thing on Roll20. I spent 2 years being gaslighted by them over their Dynamic Lighting and then I shifted to FoundryVTT, yet I still trolled their forums constantly posting my negative feelings on the issue. I found that it didn't make a difference to Roll20 but I sure felt like crap alot of the time. So make yourself feel better and if you have truly cut the WOTC Cord, move on and never look back. I'm sure ORC and Paizo would love to have your money.
I...... was actually about to make a similar statement. Do I fully trust WotC? No, not really. But they are obviously aware that they dun goofed, so the situation isn't hopeless. It all comes down to whether the humans at WotC will be heard over the suits.
They did this before with the GSL and 4th Edition. It wasn't that long ago that a lot of publishers who actually worked *directly* with WotC/Hasbro were wringing their hands trying to figure out what to do next, as they'd been shut out completely and left to just...guess what was next.
The only thing Hasbro learned was how to say "we're sorry, it won't happen again" and then do it again, but even worse.
Lesson wasn't listened to, or learned, by the corporate folks.
That's a shame, because the folks working on this game made a really good one, with really great tools to support it, and worked hard to get fresh faces and perspectives involved, and embraced the community.
And then their clueless bosses came in and did something I am SURE they faced resistance to in many meetings from people closer to the community and the game. It's just really sad nobody seemed to listen.
So even their latest statement doesn't appease you. Can you state what would appease you and have you resub? As most have said here, "I am done with that Evil WOTC" If that is the case, then you are done and nothing you say has any more relevancy. You are done, you quit, and you are gone. So leave! If you aren't done, state what would keep you. What is it you really want other than to make yourself feel better that you got to vent and let others know how pissed you are. I can speak from experience on this. I did this very thing on Roll20. I spent 2 years being gaslighted by them over their Dynamic Lighting and then I shifted to FoundryVTT, yet I still trolled their forums constantly posting my negative feelings on the issue. I found that it didn't make a difference to Roll20 but I sure felt like crap alot of the time. So make yourself feel better and if you have truly cut the WOTC Cord, move on and never look back. I'm sure ORC and Paizo would love to have your money.
Why not both? I am going to make sure my voice is heard AND support Paizo/ORC. WotC deserves the backlash, they deserve the raging dumpster fire they started. Let them burn.
If this whole thing has left a bad taste in your mouth, and you don't want to support Wizards anymore, that's fine. That's totally understandable. It's how I feel, more or less.
Does that mean you need to stop playing D&D, or participating in D&D community spaces like this one? No, of course not. I assume it'll keep you from playing with the new stuff as it releases, so your experience of D&D will gradually drift further away from that of the current customers, but that doesn't bar you from having a place within the community, nor does it put your place at the bottom of some kind of hierarchy. This isn't just a spot for people who buy everything. You can play D&D with just the Basic Rules, and you can come here and talk about it, too. I myself plan to play 5e well after 6e drops.
But Yurei's right, there's really nothing to be gained from simply saying you hate what's happening... After a point. Where she's wrong is in saying we're past that point. The new OGL doesn't exist yet.
6e isn't coming for at least a year. We probably aren't seeing the final decision on the OGL until close to that. I don't think it's possible to stay furious for a whole year. Not about a hobby, anyway. So if you really care, if you want things to change, it might be time to figure out how to stay engaged and effective on that kind of time frame. I don't really have answers there. I've never been an activist. But I bet there are answers.
You can't just stop your boycott when you're given the tiniest scrap. That's not preserving the value of your voting dollar, it's actually the opposite. If you buy back in just because they said "sowwy :3", thinking that you have to be an ongoing customer in order to have the power to threaten to stop buying? That's exactly what they want, sister. They want to give as little ground as possible. Demand more.
As you say, the new version is a year away, BUT THE OGL IS NOT. They wanted it to be effective already. Unless they keep hearing vitriol that might chase even more money out the door, they will simply count on everyone forgetting. You're right, I might not stay so angry for a year. But I will make the decision to stay or leave well before that time. And right now, I am extremely angry about an abusive corporate approach to their customers and supporters. If they had released any kind of statement, I might feel differently, but they obviously can't decide that they've done anything wrong. So they need to keep hearing about it.
Hey, let's remember that I'm the ******* customer.
I mean, aside from the collapse of a decades in the making community, I personally have to make a decision here. As the customer. If that new OGL 2.0 walls in D&D publishing to just WoTC, then the community will not write material for 6e. This will be the death of 6e, to me. No matter how good it is.
So, as someone who has spent hundreds of dollars on DNDBeyond I need to know if I should cancel my subscription. Because 6e will be irrelevant to me.
And don't tell me 5e will still be around on DNDBeyond once 6e lands. Forget it. And yes I'm pissed off, because all those digital books and the sub I spent all that cash on will be pissed away.
If this whole thing has left a bad taste in your mouth, and you don't want to support Wizards anymore, that's fine. That's totally understandable. It's how I feel, more or less.
Does that mean you need to stop playing D&D, or participating in D&D community spaces like this one? No, of course not. I assume it'll keep you from playing with the new stuff as it releases, so your experience of D&D will gradually drift further away from that of the current customers, but that doesn't bar you from having a place within the community, nor does it put your place at the bottom of some kind of hierarchy. This isn't just a spot for people who buy everything. You can play D&D with just the Basic Rules, and you can come here and talk about it, too. I myself plan to play 5e well after 6e drops.
But Yurei's right, there's really nothing to be gained from simply saying you hate what's happening... After a point. Where she's wrong is in saying we're past that point. The new OGL doesn't exist yet.
6e isn't coming for at least a year. We probably aren't seeing the final decision on the OGL until close to that. I don't think it's possible to stay furious for a whole year. Not about a hobby, anyway. So if you really care, if you want things to change, it might be time to figure out how to stay engaged and effective on that kind of time frame. I don't really have answers there. I've never been an activist. But I bet there are answers.
You can't just stop your boycott when you're given the tiniest scrap. That's not preserving the value of your voting dollar, it's actually the opposite. If you buy back in just because they said "sowwy :3", thinking that you have to be an ongoing customer in order to have the power to threaten to stop buying? That's exactly what they want, sister. They want to give as little ground as possible. Demand more.
There’s a difference between maintaining a boycott and being vocal about it, versus spewing vitriol for the sheer sake of it. Now we’re at the stage in negotiations where it’s time to maintain our stance and see what their next offer is. At that time it may well be that we need to start spewing vitriol again, that’s certainly possible. Or, it may well be that it becomes time for people to return to the fold, we’ll see. But for now, I think it’s best if vitriol takes a backseat to stalwart stoicism.
You can't just stop your boycott when you're given the tiniest scrap. That's not preserving the value of your voting dollar, it's actually the opposite. If you buy back in just because they said "sowwy :3", thinking that you have to be an ongoing customer in order to have the power to threaten to stop buying? That's exactly what they want, sister. They want to give as little ground as possible. Demand more.
There’s a difference between maintaining a boycott and being vocal about it, versus spewing vitriol for the sheer sake of it.
Is there, though? That sounds a lot like civility politics to me. Like the backlash isn't acceptable unless it doesn't inconvenience anyone or annoy anyone. The real jerks are the ones complaining, kind of thing.
We're talking about people's jobs here. You understand that spewing vitriol *is* the nice option.
Now we’re at the stage in negotiations where it’s time to maintain our stance and see what their next offer is.
No we're not. They JUST delivered their offer this morning. We're at the stage where we either reject it or accept it. And if we shut up, we are accepting it. Look at the statement for yourself: it's not an offer. It's a statement. "Here's how it's going to be." They're not soliciting feedback, they're not taking votes. They don't need you to say yes.
So even their latest statement doesn't appease you. Can you state what would appease you and have you resub? As most have said here, "I am done with that Evil WOTC" If that is the case, then you are done and nothing you say has any more relevancy. You are done, you quit, and you are gone. So leave! If you aren't done, state what would keep you. What is it you really want other than to make yourself feel better that you got to vent and let others know how pissed you are. I can speak from experience on this. I did this very thing on Roll20. I spent 2 years being gaslighted by them over their Dynamic Lighting and then I shifted to FoundryVTT, yet I still trolled their forums constantly posting my negative feelings on the issue. I found that it didn't make a difference to Roll20 but I sure felt like crap alot of the time. So make yourself feel better and if you have truly cut the WOTC Cord, move on and never look back. I'm sure ORC and Paizo would love to have your money.
How about they stop threatening to try and obliterate the OGL, and the products and businesses it enables to exist?
I only care because they're an active threat to the industry and the hobby. Once they stop trying to insist they're trustworthy in the same statement they're trying to wriggle out of promises they made in 2000 and again in 2017, I'll stand down and stop caring again.
I dont care if they want to screw anyone making content for DnDone, but trying to go back on an agreement that was intended to not be changeable can't be let stand.
It's not impossible for WotC to turn things around and bring some people back, but the onus of that is on WotC, not us. They are the ones that burned the bridges with the community, so they have to be the ones to rebuild those bridges. Gaslighting us with corporate speak and outright lies is not the way to go about that.
Never forget that they need us a lot more than we need them. If WotC want people to forgive them, that sounds like a WotC problem to me.
Is there, though? That sounds a lot like civility politics to me. Like the backlash isn't acceptable unless it doesn't inconvenience anyone or annoy anyone. The real jerks are the ones complaining, kind of thing.
We're talking about people's jobs here. You understand that spewing vitriol *is* the nice option.
There's a difference between angry "I'm pissed off and I want this to change" invective and spiteful "All I care about is that you fail" invective. Virtually everything I've seen since the statement was released has been the latter sort.
The former invective is productive. It moves the case forward. It lets Wizards know that the speaker is still invested and can be salvaged if they about-face and stop being ****ups.
Nobody gives a shit about the latter invective. It's pointless noise that exists solely to spread sour moods and make the entire process more difficult.
Many people no longer wish for Wizards to correct this mistake. They'd rather watch the whole game burn up and die so they can dance on the ashes and crow about how they were too smart to be fooled by Wizards' lame dumb attempt to fix things. I don't give one soggy ferret fart about those people's wrong bad opinion - and yes, I will go right out and say that spiteful "All I want is for Wizards to fail" bullshit is a Wrong Bad Opinion. The game deserves better than to burn up and die out of misguided spite.
I'm pissed off. I want this situation to change. I want Wizards to stop trying to be our buddies with idiotic "we all win" crap and to get to work on printing a document that doesn' make everyone who looks at it cry. If they do that? I will be mollified. For all its warts I still like and am invested in this system and this service and I don't want to see them fail.
The people who do can pound sand. And I won't regret telling them to do exactly that.
Then leave. Take your leave, and enjoy your memories as much as you can. It doesn't stop the absolute insanity that's erupted in the last couple of hours from being incredibly counterproductive.
I paid for a year of DND Beyond and I plan to spend as much time as I would like to trashing WotC and everything they stand for until that subscription runs out in August unless they want to refund every cent I spent. And after the subscription runs out because I purchased digital products, I will come to these forums and trash them at every opportunity any time they make even a hint of a mistake unless they will delete my account and refund my purchases.
The only thing a bully understands is being stood up to. WotC tried to bully their entire customer base. Every criticism they get from here to eternity is now deserved.
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The age of OGL is over. The Time of the ORC has come!
The moment that WotC declares OGL 1.0a "de-authorized", "revoked" or any such nonsense is the moment I release as much content as possible under OGL 1.0a and say, "Sue me WotC". OGL1.0a cannot be revoked. If thousands of us do it, the countersuit will be a class action suit.
I’m saying to keep saying “no,” but not be nasty about it. Isn’t that reasonable?
Having no authority and also trying to police how people should respond is not really reasonable, no. Moderators do need to keep some semblance of decorum, but this thread and a ton of the responses here are the spitting image of an old man shouting at clouds.
Choir, I don't think you've seen some of the threads about the Open Game License; There are people who's usernames are "**** Wizards of the Coast" (with the part in asterics spelled out), there are people who are screaming about how Wizards' statement is nothing but a pile of lies and that anyone who doesn't think so is bad, and finally, there are people (or one person for that matter) who has taken the time to private message me over how I am an unbelievably terrible person for advising others not to panic just yet.
In other words, Sposta is right that there is a difference between hateful vitriol and reasonable protest. I never thought I'd say this, but Yurei is doing a wonderful job on articulating how etiquette (or a lack thereof) can make or break your case.
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Is there, though? That sounds a lot like civility politics to me. Like the backlash isn't acceptable unless it doesn't inconvenience anyone or annoy anyone. The real jerks are the ones complaining, kind of thing.
We're talking about people's jobs here. You understand that spewing vitriol *is* the nice option.
There's a difference between angry "I'm pissed off and I want this to change" invective and spiteful "All I care about is that you fail" invective. Virtually everything I've seen since the statement was released has been the latter sort.
The former invective is productive. It moves the case forward. It lets Wizards know that the speaker is still invested and can be salvaged if they about-face and stop being ****ups.
Nobody gives a shit about the latter invective. It's pointless noise that exists solely to spread sour moods and make the entire process more difficult.
Many people no longer wish for Wizards to correct this mistake. They'd rather watch the whole game burn up and die so they can dance on the ashes and crow about how they were too smart to be fooled by Wizards' lame dumb attempt to fix things. I don't give one soggy ferret fart about those people's wrong bad opinion - and yes, I will go right out and say that spiteful "All I want is for Wizards to fail" bullshit is a Wrong Bad Opinion. The game deserves better than to burn up and die out of misguided spite.
I'm pissed off. I want this situation to change. I want Wizards to stop trying to be our buddies with idiotic "we all win" crap and to get to work on printing a document that doesn' make everyone who looks at it cry. If they do that? I will be mollified. For all its warts I still like and am invested in this system and this service and I don't want to see them fail.
The people who do can pound sand. And I won't regret telling them to do exactly that.
Agree with this. I don't think anyone here wants D&D to fail, and if you truly like this game/community, the right thing to do is to 1) lay out the particular grievances that would actually keep you a paying, involved customer and 2) understand that WotC likely needs to update their OGL (which they never had to create in the first place, btw) moving forward to accomplish what they believe they need to protect/de-risk. The balance between 1) and 2) is the point of negotiation.
But if you've already written off D&D, or just want OGL 1.0a forever and nothing else - then that's not trying to meet WotC partway and they have zero reason to try to negotiate with you. You'd no longer be part of their target audience/customer (because you said so yourself) - they should just press forward with whatever OGL they want and call it a day then.
And before you go ahead and dm/quote me with negative remarks - I'm fully aware that the original OGL 1.1 language appears to have been WotC not meeting everyone partway at the start. But now it appears they are willing to do that. So yeah, I give them the benefit of the doubt (again, they never needed to do the OGL in the first place - many companies, including "white-knight" Paizo didn't until now, Warhammer doesn't, etc.), and WotC deserves more credit than people are giving. I'm not saying all the credit, or even most of the credit... but definitely more than "write them off and walk away and trust nothing".
And if you believe that, there's not really any point in continuing to ragepost, ne?
By all means, make the decision you want to make. Wait for Paizo to finish its deeply unfortunately named ORC. It'll be a few months before it does, and then several years before we see if it catches on or turns into an orphaned dud. In the interim, the rest of us will try and salvage the situation as best we can. Which includes holding Wizards to their word about not being evil on the next try and seeing if they got the message yet, and also includes not running around the forum simulposting in a dozen threads about LYING this and GASLIGHTING that and DONE FOREVER the other.
And if you believe that, there's not really any point in continuing to ragepost, ne?
By all means, make the decision you want to make. Wait for Paizo to finish its deeply unfortunately named ORC. It'll be a few months before it does, and then several years before we see if it catches on or turns into an orphaned dud. In the interim, the rest of us will try and salvage the situation as best we can. Which includes holding Wizards to their word about not being evil on the next try and seeing if they got the message yet, and also includes not running around the forum simulposting in a dozen threads about LYING this and GASLIGHTING that and DONE FOREVER the other.
You are hopeful which is admirable but also naive. These people truly do not care. Hasbro/WotC cannot be trusted, they have shown that multiple times now. If they want goodwill back, they must relinquish the OGL to another party who will make sure they cannot do this underhanded stuff again. Trying to "negotiate" with them is only going to end up with having your hand being bitten. You give them an inch, they will take a mile. I don't want to see DnD die but if THIS is it's true future, then it would be best to put it out of it's misery. Pathfinder and many other projects will rise up in it's death, hopefully in a better way.
And if you believe that, there's not really any point in continuing to ragepost, ne?
By all means, make the decision you want to make. Wait for Paizo to finish its deeply unfortunately named ORC. It'll be a few months before it does, and then several years before we see if it catches on or turns into an orphaned dud. In the interim, the rest of us will try and salvage the situation as best we can. Which includes holding Wizards to their word about not being evil on the next try and seeing if they got the message yet, and also includes not running around the forum simulposting in a dozen threads about LYING this and GASLIGHTING that and DONE FOREVER the other.
Yep, I'm past WotC/Hasborg. I went from Pathfinder 1E to D&D 5E and purchased what I need to start Pathfinder 2E today. They'll be able to strip OGL 1.0a from it as it obviously gave up the tired D&D tropes for their own creative output. And what is best of all, they put their products on a 25% off sale to help facilitate it.
They aren't waiting for WotC/Hasborg to give some halfway BS lies about what they are doing. Paizo have already stated unequivocally they are prepared to take it to court. So WotC/Hasborg has two choices. Either the OGL 1.0a stays as is, anything can be created under it up to their SRD 5..1 and any other product released under it, or they will see dozens of creator companies in a class action lawsuit that will likely also ask for a ruling on what parts of D&D are mechanics and thus cannot be copyrighted and what cannot.
This is a dangerous game for WotC/Hasborg to play. They could come out of it with nothing more than a few proper nouns and trademarks, and nothing else.
The age of OGL is over. The Time of the ORC has come!
The moment that WotC declares OGL 1.0a "de-authorized", "revoked" or any such nonsense is the moment I release as much content as possible under OGL 1.0a and say, "Sue me WotC". OGL1.0a cannot be revoked. If thousands of us do it, the countersuit will be a class action suit.
And if you believe that, there's not really any point in continuing to ragepost, ne?
By all means, make the decision you want to make. Wait for Paizo to finish its deeply unfortunately named ORC. It'll be a few months before it does, and then several years before we see if it catches on or turns into an orphaned dud. In the interim, the rest of us will try and salvage the situation as best we can. Which includes holding Wizards to their word about not being evil on the next try and seeing if they got the message yet, and also includes not running around the forum simulposting in a dozen threads about LYING this and GASLIGHTING that and DONE FOREVER the other.
You are hopeful which is admirable but also naive. These people truly do not care. Hasbro/WotC cannot be trusted, they have shown that multiple times now. If they want goodwill back, they must relinquish the OGL to another party who will make sure they cannot do this underhanded stuff again. Trying to "negotiate" with them is only going to end up with having your hand being bitten. You give them an inch, they will take a mile. I don't want to see DnD die but if THIS is it's true future, then it would be best to put it out of it's misery. Pathfinder and many other projects will rise up in it's death, hopefully in a better way.
I am not sure a post calling someone naïve has quite the same punch when the remainder of your post displays a fair bit of naïveté about how negotiating works, or the general fact that making unreasonable demands such as “surrender your intellectual property” are not conductive to a legitimate conversation.
A negotiation is a give and take, where positions are exchanged and a middle ground is reached. Wizards was already doing this process behind the scenes with the big players who had the most to gain or lose, and then a leak suddenly put some stage of those negotiations out in the open. That in turn caused users to respond - they voted with their wallets by cancelling subs and the other larger players cynically saw an opportunity to fundraise opened up more competition, which encouraged Wizards to make a far more generous position actively disavowing the elements of the draft folks were most concerned about.
So, we had a position from Wizards made known (we may never know if that was ever their actual position, or just something their lawyers, who Wizards tossed under the bus threw together). A counter position of “no, go back to the drawing board” was made; the ball is now in Wizards’ court.
At this stage, the important thing is seeing what the next step is, while also providing a carrot to Wizards - “do better and we’ll come back.” Anyone who says “screw Wizards, I’ll never come back” either explicitly or tacitly through the level of vitriol in their post is a non-entity, completely irrelevant to the negotiation process. You don’t negotiate to win over lose causes; you negotiate to win over folks you actually can win over.
Every successful negotiation works this way - it’s why competent unions, politicians, lawyers, businesses, etc. never fully burn a bridge. If there is no on ramp to return, that person is functionally dead to the other side of the bargaining table, and their opinion no longer matters.
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So even their latest statement doesn't appease you. Can you state what would appease you and have you resub? As most have said here, "I am done with that Evil WOTC" If that is the case, then you are done and nothing you say has any more relevancy. You are done, you quit, and you are gone. So leave! If you aren't done, state what would keep you. What is it you really want other than to make yourself feel better that you got to vent and let others know how pissed you are. I can speak from experience on this. I did this very thing on Roll20. I spent 2 years being gaslighted by them over their Dynamic Lighting and then I shifted to FoundryVTT, yet I still trolled their forums constantly posting my negative feelings on the issue. I found that it didn't make a difference to Roll20 but I sure felt like crap alot of the time. So make yourself feel better and if you have truly cut the WOTC Cord, move on and never look back. I'm sure ORC and Paizo would love to have your money.
They did this before with the GSL and 4th Edition. It wasn't that long ago that a lot of publishers who actually worked *directly* with WotC/Hasbro were wringing their hands trying to figure out what to do next, as they'd been shut out completely and left to just...guess what was next.
The only thing Hasbro learned was how to say "we're sorry, it won't happen again" and then do it again, but even worse.
Lesson wasn't listened to, or learned, by the corporate folks.
That's a shame, because the folks working on this game made a really good one, with really great tools to support it, and worked hard to get fresh faces and perspectives involved, and embraced the community.
And then their clueless bosses came in and did something I am SURE they faced resistance to in many meetings from people closer to the community and the game. It's just really sad nobody seemed to listen.
Why not both? I am going to make sure my voice is heard AND support Paizo/ORC. WotC deserves the backlash, they deserve the raging dumpster fire they started. Let them burn.
As you say, the new version is a year away, BUT THE OGL IS NOT. They wanted it to be effective already. Unless they keep hearing vitriol that might chase even more money out the door, they will simply count on everyone forgetting. You're right, I might not stay so angry for a year. But I will make the decision to stay or leave well before that time. And right now, I am extremely angry about an abusive corporate approach to their customers and supporters. If they had released any kind of statement, I might feel differently, but they obviously can't decide that they've done anything wrong. So they need to keep hearing about it.
Hey, let's remember that I'm the ******* customer.
I mean, aside from the collapse of a decades in the making community, I personally have to make a decision here. As the customer. If that new OGL 2.0 walls in D&D publishing to just WoTC, then the community will not write material for 6e. This will be the death of 6e, to me. No matter how good it is.
So, as someone who has spent hundreds of dollars on DNDBeyond I need to know if I should cancel my subscription. Because 6e will be irrelevant to me.
And don't tell me 5e will still be around on DNDBeyond once 6e lands. Forget it. And yes I'm pissed off, because all those digital books and the sub I spent all that cash on will be pissed away.
There’s a difference between maintaining a boycott and being vocal about it, versus spewing vitriol for the sheer sake of it. Now we’re at the stage in negotiations where it’s time to maintain our stance and see what their next offer is. At that time it may well be that we need to start spewing vitriol again, that’s certainly possible. Or, it may well be that it becomes time for people to return to the fold, we’ll see. But for now, I think it’s best if vitriol takes a backseat to stalwart stoicism.
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Is there, though? That sounds a lot like civility politics to me. Like the backlash isn't acceptable unless it doesn't inconvenience anyone or annoy anyone. The real jerks are the ones complaining, kind of thing.
We're talking about people's jobs here. You understand that spewing vitriol *is* the nice option.
No we're not. They JUST delivered their offer this morning. We're at the stage where we either reject it or accept it. And if we shut up, we are accepting it. Look at the statement for yourself: it's not an offer. It's a statement. "Here's how it's going to be." They're not soliciting feedback, they're not taking votes. They don't need you to say yes.
What they want is for you to stop saying no.
How about they stop threatening to try and obliterate the OGL, and the products and businesses it enables to exist?
I only care because they're an active threat to the industry and the hobby. Once they stop trying to insist they're trustworthy in the same statement they're trying to wriggle out of promises they made in 2000 and again in 2017, I'll stand down and stop caring again.
I dont care if they want to screw anyone making content for DnDone, but trying to go back on an agreement that was intended to not be changeable can't be let stand.
It's not impossible for WotC to turn things around and bring some people back, but the onus of that is on WotC, not us. They are the ones that burned the bridges with the community, so they have to be the ones to rebuild those bridges. Gaslighting us with corporate speak and outright lies is not the way to go about that.
Never forget that they need us a lot more than we need them. If WotC want people to forgive them, that sounds like a WotC problem to me.
I’m saying to keep saying “no,” but not be nasty about it. Isn’t that reasonable?
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There's a difference between angry "I'm pissed off and I want this to change" invective and spiteful "All I care about is that you fail" invective. Virtually everything I've seen since the statement was released has been the latter sort.
The former invective is productive. It moves the case forward. It lets Wizards know that the speaker is still invested and can be salvaged if they about-face and stop being ****ups.
Nobody gives a shit about the latter invective. It's pointless noise that exists solely to spread sour moods and make the entire process more difficult.
Many people no longer wish for Wizards to correct this mistake. They'd rather watch the whole game burn up and die so they can dance on the ashes and crow about how they were too smart to be fooled by Wizards' lame dumb attempt to fix things. I don't give one soggy ferret fart about those people's wrong bad opinion - and yes, I will go right out and say that spiteful "All I want is for Wizards to fail" bullshit is a Wrong Bad Opinion. The game deserves better than to burn up and die out of misguided spite.
I'm pissed off. I want this situation to change. I want Wizards to stop trying to be our buddies with idiotic "we all win" crap and to get to work on printing a document that doesn' make everyone who looks at it cry. If they do that? I will be mollified. For all its warts I still like and am invested in this system and this service and I don't want to see them fail.
The people who do can pound sand. And I won't regret telling them to do exactly that.
Please do not contact or message me.
I paid for a year of DND Beyond and I plan to spend as much time as I would like to trashing WotC and everything they stand for until that subscription runs out in August unless they want to refund every cent I spent. And after the subscription runs out because I purchased digital products, I will come to these forums and trash them at every opportunity any time they make even a hint of a mistake unless they will delete my account and refund my purchases.
The only thing a bully understands is being stood up to. WotC tried to bully their entire customer base. Every criticism they get from here to eternity is now deserved.
The age of OGL is over. The Time of the ORC has come!
The moment that WotC declares OGL 1.0a "de-authorized", "revoked" or any such nonsense is the moment I release as much content as possible under OGL 1.0a and say, "Sue me WotC". OGL1.0a cannot be revoked. If thousands of us do it, the countersuit will be a class action suit.
Having no authority and also trying to police how people should respond is not really reasonable, no. Moderators do need to keep some semblance of decorum, but this thread and a ton of the responses here are the spitting image of an old man shouting at clouds.
Choir, I don't think you've seen some of the threads about the Open Game License; There are people who's usernames are "**** Wizards of the Coast" (with the part in asterics spelled out), there are people who are screaming about how Wizards' statement is nothing but a pile of lies and that anyone who doesn't think so is bad, and finally, there are people (or one person for that matter) who has taken the time to private message me over how I am an unbelievably terrible person for advising others not to panic just yet.
In other words, Sposta is right that there is a difference between hateful vitriol and reasonable protest. I never thought I'd say this, but Yurei is doing a wonderful job on articulating how etiquette (or a lack thereof) can make or break your case.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
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HERE.Agree with this. I don't think anyone here wants D&D to fail, and if you truly like this game/community, the right thing to do is to 1) lay out the particular grievances that would actually keep you a paying, involved customer and 2) understand that WotC likely needs to update their OGL (which they never had to create in the first place, btw) moving forward to accomplish what they believe they need to protect/de-risk. The balance between 1) and 2) is the point of negotiation.
But if you've already written off D&D, or just want OGL 1.0a forever and nothing else - then that's not trying to meet WotC partway and they have zero reason to try to negotiate with you. You'd no longer be part of their target audience/customer (because you said so yourself) - they should just press forward with whatever OGL they want and call it a day then.
And before you go ahead and dm/quote me with negative remarks - I'm fully aware that the original OGL 1.1 language appears to have been WotC not meeting everyone partway at the start. But now it appears they are willing to do that. So yeah, I give them the benefit of the doubt (again, they never needed to do the OGL in the first place - many companies, including "white-knight" Paizo didn't until now, Warhammer doesn't, etc.), and WotC deserves more credit than people are giving. I'm not saying all the credit, or even most of the credit... but definitely more than "write them off and walk away and trust nothing".
The OGL doesn't change. Period. Nothing else is satisfactory.
And if you believe that, there's not really any point in continuing to ragepost, ne?
By all means, make the decision you want to make. Wait for Paizo to finish its deeply unfortunately named ORC. It'll be a few months before it does, and then several years before we see if it catches on or turns into an orphaned dud. In the interim, the rest of us will try and salvage the situation as best we can. Which includes holding Wizards to their word about not being evil on the next try and seeing if they got the message yet, and also includes not running around the forum simulposting in a dozen threads about LYING this and GASLIGHTING that and DONE FOREVER the other.
Please do not contact or message me.
You are hopeful which is admirable but also naive. These people truly do not care. Hasbro/WotC cannot be trusted, they have shown that multiple times now. If they want goodwill back, they must relinquish the OGL to another party who will make sure they cannot do this underhanded stuff again. Trying to "negotiate" with them is only going to end up with having your hand being bitten. You give them an inch, they will take a mile. I don't want to see DnD die but if THIS is it's true future, then it would be best to put it out of it's misery. Pathfinder and many other projects will rise up in it's death, hopefully in a better way.
Yep, I'm past WotC/Hasborg. I went from Pathfinder 1E to D&D 5E and purchased what I need to start Pathfinder 2E today. They'll be able to strip OGL 1.0a from it as it obviously gave up the tired D&D tropes for their own creative output. And what is best of all, they put their products on a 25% off sale to help facilitate it.
They aren't waiting for WotC/Hasborg to give some halfway BS lies about what they are doing. Paizo have already stated unequivocally they are prepared to take it to court. So WotC/Hasborg has two choices. Either the OGL 1.0a stays as is, anything can be created under it up to their SRD 5..1 and any other product released under it, or they will see dozens of creator companies in a class action lawsuit that will likely also ask for a ruling on what parts of D&D are mechanics and thus cannot be copyrighted and what cannot.
This is a dangerous game for WotC/Hasborg to play. They could come out of it with nothing more than a few proper nouns and trademarks, and nothing else.
The age of OGL is over. The Time of the ORC has come!
The moment that WotC declares OGL 1.0a "de-authorized", "revoked" or any such nonsense is the moment I release as much content as possible under OGL 1.0a and say, "Sue me WotC". OGL1.0a cannot be revoked. If thousands of us do it, the countersuit will be a class action suit.
I am not sure a post calling someone naïve has quite the same punch when the remainder of your post displays a fair bit of naïveté about how negotiating works, or the general fact that making unreasonable demands such as “surrender your intellectual property” are not conductive to a legitimate conversation.
A negotiation is a give and take, where positions are exchanged and a middle ground is reached. Wizards was already doing this process behind the scenes with the big players who had the most to gain or lose, and then a leak suddenly put some stage of those negotiations out in the open. That in turn caused users to respond - they voted with their wallets by cancelling subs and the other larger players
cynically saw an opportunity to fundraiseopened up more competition, which encouraged Wizards to make a far more generous position actively disavowing the elements of the draft folks were most concerned about.So, we had a position from Wizards made known (we may never know if that was ever their actual position, or just something their lawyers, who Wizards tossed under the bus threw together). A counter position of “no, go back to the drawing board” was made; the ball is now in Wizards’ court.
At this stage, the important thing is seeing what the next step is, while also providing a carrot to Wizards - “do better and we’ll come back.” Anyone who says “screw Wizards, I’ll never come back” either explicitly or tacitly through the level of vitriol in their post is a non-entity, completely irrelevant to the negotiation process. You don’t negotiate to win over lose causes; you negotiate to win over folks you actually can win over.
Every successful negotiation works this way - it’s why competent unions, politicians, lawyers, businesses, etc. never fully burn a bridge. If there is no on ramp to return, that person is functionally dead to the other side of the bargaining table, and their opinion no longer matters.