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.
I have every right to suggest to people that they be civil in this whole fiasco. That’s not “policing” anything, it’s just suggesting. And I never claimed to have any authority. I’m just trying to suggest to people that we keep the dumpster fire in the dumpster.
For clarity, I am not saying you are doing anything wrong. I am just saying you are not accomplishing anything. No one who is reading this is going to change what they are doing.
... There is zero equivalency between privately owned Paizo, run by people who are clearly members of the RPG community, and publicly Hasbro/WotC, run by executives at the whims of stockholders. ...
A word to the wise: privately held companies have shareholders, too. All companies have investors; privately held companies aren't traded on the public market, but they still have investors they have to please. Investors who invest in privately held companies aren't afforded the same protections as public companies, it's considered a "know what you're doing before you do it" venture, but private investors are still a very stark reality for anyone in business.
Paizo is looking out for Paizo, not for The Community. If they can score points with The Community while they look out for Paizo, that's a bonus. But I'll betcha the ORC treats Pathfinder 2e as its core system. And even if it's "system agnostic" - however that works - who do you think is in a position to quickly market products built under the ORC and try to bury its competitors? Hint: it's Paizo.
I'm not saying people shouldn't switch if they want to switch. I'm simply noting that everyone who's currently going apeshit over Wizards being an evil money-hungry corporation is conveniently forgetting that Paizo is also that thing. They just haven't misstepped yet. Hopefully they don't, but treating them like Shining Golden Gods is counterproductive to everything except Paizo's bottom line.
It seems this was the wrong week to come back to the forums (I was taking a break until WotC and a person I play with figured out their pre-order problem).
Tone can have a huge impact on how people take and react to your thoughts and ideas but at times being more vocal is beneficial then meekly stating your ideas and whys and where for's.
When I read the new OGL article on the home page today, I thought the beginning was ok but the ending was problematic in stating their thoughts and how others reacted to the first doc. To me (Note I have not seen any social media stuff or heard or read anything besides this thread and the statement today) it seems WotC is having trouble or at least trouble the last few months. If you have been around you should be able to point out the issues (please do not take this as a excuse to rehash them here and now) and for myself ask the question "What is going on?" I do understand that transitions can have issues and "things" do pop up for time to time but the frequency of issues and the issues themselves have me asking some very basic questions.
Yes as someone said above "peoples job, kind of questions." Now I am not inside WotC and am I sure there are things I and we the general public do not know about (I am trying to cut WotC some slack here) but there does come a time that people make drastic decisions, a time when people vent and a time to ask for change and a time to demand change.
So going back to basics, just reading the statement today the ending I found condescending and out of place, the fact that people were reacting to legal language is something I need to do some more looking into. And the number of issues lately across many fronts has me worried, concerned and at times shocked.
But that is just me right now reacting to having read the article a few moments ago and reading this thread only.
I do hope WotC does fix it and people keep their jobs. I have often said roleplaying is more like art and often people treat it like running a art supply store.
... There is zero equivalency between privately owned Paizo, run by people who are clearly members of the RPG community, and publicly Hasbro/WotC, run by executives at the whims of stockholders. ...
A word to the wise: privately held companies have shareholders, too. All companies have investors; privately held companies aren't traded on the public market, but they still have investors they have to please. Investors who invest in privately held companies aren't afforded the same protections as public companies, it's considered a "know what you're doing before you do it" venture, but private investors are still a very stark reality for anyone in business.
Paizo is looking out for Paizo, not for The Community. If they can score points with The Community while they look out for Paizo, that's a bonus. But I'll betcha the ORC treats Pathfinder 2e as its core system. And even if it's "system agnostic" - however that works - who do you think is in a position to quickly market products built under the ORC and try to bury its competitors? Hint: it's Paizo.
I'm not saying people shouldn't switch if they want to switch. I'm simply noting that everyone who's currently going apeshit over Wizards being an evil money-hungry corporation is conveniently forgetting that Paizo is also that thing. They just haven't misstepped yet. Hopefully they don't, but treating them like Shining Golden Gods is counterproductive to everything except Paizo's bottom line.
I'm going to judge them based on how they act, not based on some cynical nihilist 'all companies are equally bad' mentality. Companies are made up of, and run by, people. Not all people suck - I've met a few of them.
I'm going to judge them based on their actions - and until they do mistep (which they have) and then fail to follow that mistep in a reasonably appropriate manner (thus far, they've done a decent job) - they get the benefit of all of their past good actions.
And their past - and current - actions indicate there is no equivalence with WotC. They're worth trusting, especially when they're backing their words up with actions intended to demonstrate their good intentions.
Hey, Spamm. How ye been? This was indeed the wrong week to come back to the forums. I won't bore you with the details unless you want me to catch you up, but the Short Short version: Wizards was planning on introducing a new OGL 1.1 which was dramatically more punitive than the current one and not really 'open' at all. That version of the document was really, really bad, and would have completely destroyed the third-party ecosystem D&D is built on.It got leaked, people found out, and an Internet-wide shitstorm was raised. People canceled their DDB subs in droves after a second leak revealed that Wizards was looking at DDB subscription counts as their "Emergency" barometer. The ruckus was concerning enough that Wizards pulled back on their plans and promised to deliver a new OGL 2.0 that was less destructive, but they took over a week to do it and by then everybody had worked themselves into a frothing berserker frenzy. A few of us have been trying to stem the tsunami of Hatorade over today, but...well. You can see the front page. It ain't going so great.
Hopefully things work out in the end. Thanks for being calm about the whole thing. I appreciate it.
...a storm that might just have been egged on by the "D&D is too woke now" crowd, after they utterly failed in their attempts to damage WOTC for said wokeness
<adjusts tinfoil hat>
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Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I am going to jump in on the side of Paizo real quick.
1. The people who are in charge of Paizo now used to work at wizards when the original OGL was conceived.
This shows that the people there were dedicated to open gaming then and they are now.
Is this completely out of the good of their hearts? No. Their philosophy has already been stated, by them, that they believe that open gaming helps everyone. They believe by allowing third party developers to develop for their game that it helps grow their game and makes them more money, because it is good for the customer. They treat 3PP as supplements not competition. Which, as someone who is going to finish his business degree this year, I completely agree with that assessment.
This said that still means they are completely dedicated to open gaming and their current and past practices have shown this. They put OGL 1.0a at the beginning of their books so 3PP could use their content not so they could use Wizard's content, because they currently AREN'T using any of the Wizard's SRD.
In addition, all of their current core rule set and all non-adventure supplement rules are currently available completely for free online WITH Paizo's express permission. You dont need to spend a dime to read the Core rulebook, GMG or any of the bestiaries, the advance players guide, or any of the other supplements all of those rules are available for free on Archives of Nethys with Paizo's express permission.
As said, they have a current and past history of being completely for open gaming, and it is entirely because their philosophy that it ultimately builds their business more than it hurts it. And yes, they are currently reaping the rewards of that philosophy, because players and publishers value that philosophy.
Personally I would much rather support a company whose philosophy on third party developers is they are people who help them grow rather than one that sees third party content as a threat.
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.
The game won't ever, but the company might. Would that be so bad? I'm not sure.
Tell me: do you, as a Corporate Person, pick up this IP which is only available because its previous owner was eaten alive by 'fans' and has been irreversibly poisoned by the event?
These people aren't dealing on a scale you or I can really conceptualize properly. They bankrupt their companies all the time, as a matter of course. It's like... Having a diverse stock portfolio, or something. Playing a eurogame. It would get bought, I have zero doubt.
But even if it didn't. This was my real point. It's not a live service game, they can't shut down the official servers and delete your progress. Your character, your adventure, your world exists in your imagination and, if you're still using it, on paper. And you can make more without Wizards' help or permission. You don't need a supply of fresh content to keep playing, and even if you did, you can get it elsewhere. There's already too much D&D content available for anyone to play it all in their lifetime, and more gets produced every day, whether Wizards allows it or not, AND you have the tools to make it yourself. This has always been the case.
It's funny. I can project doom and gloom about the economy, the value of labor, and the rampant expansion of the owning class all day, but I really can't sustain any level of dread for the actual hobby itself. What are they gonna do, come and break my pencils?
A word to the wise on the OGL situation: if you have decided you will NEVER BUY FROM HASBROZARDS AGAIN and are busily whipping everyone you can into a zealous fervor of spite and fury seeking to do as much damage to Wizards as you can? You are not helping.
The community, together, put enough pressure on Wizards to get them to rethink their approach and pull back on some of their most egregious overreach. That is Good. We all did it, or at least we earned ground. The whole idea was to get Wizards to change their behavior or they'd lose their customers. Here's the rub - if you decide you're already a Lost Customer and absolutely nothing Wizards could ever do would woo you back, and you're just here to keep spewing invective aimed at everyone involved?
Wizards has absolutely no reason to listen to you or pay you any heed. You're already a write-off. There's no point in giving you the time of day. Your rabid snarling is not "pressure", it's just pointless noise. Everybody has a course of action they can take to apply pressure - cancel their subscription. Do that if you wish to do so, by all means. But keep in mind that if you want Wizards to reverse their course and change their actions, you have to be willing to entertain the possibility of continuing to do business with them should they do what you ask. This recent frothing riot over the Jan 13th Statement is beyond ridiculous. Yes, the statement is in Corpospeak. News flash: they're a corporation. They're gonna speak Corpospeak, Corpospeak exists for a reason. We all hate it, but we can't change it.
Be angry. Anger helps! You should be angry! Directed, focused anger won us some major concessions! But spite is worse than useless. Spite will do nothing but poison the entire process and make any further compromise or gaining of ground impossible. All you're doing when you ragepost endless spite in every thread in GD is making the forums a terrible place to be and hurting the community that's trying to band together and make changes happen.
Please. Calm down. Breathe. Have some water. And remember that if you continue to beat the dog over and over again after it's tried and tried to do what you want, eventually the dog will stop caring and bite you.
No. We don't have any reason to save a billion dollar corporation from itself. We all know what they think of us now. Them desperately clutching at the money they see slipping away doesn't change that. We can play D&D without WotC. We literally don't need them for anything.
We don't need thier license anymore either. There's already better options on the horizon.
A word to the wise on the OGL situation: if you have decided you will NEVER BUY FROM HASBROZARDS AGAIN and are busily whipping everyone you can into a zealous fervor of spite and fury seeking to do as much damage to Wizards as you can? You are not helping.
The community, together, put enough pressure on Wizards to get them to rethink their approach and pull back on some of their most egregious overreach. That is Good. We all did it, or at least we earned ground. The whole idea was to get Wizards to change their behavior or they'd lose their customers. Here's the rub - if you decide you're already a Lost Customer and absolutely nothing Wizards could ever do would woo you back, and you're just here to keep spewing invective aimed at everyone involved?
Wizards has absolutely no reason to listen to you or pay you any heed. You're already a write-off. There's no point in giving you the time of day. Your rabid snarling is not "pressure", it's just pointless noise. Everybody has a course of action they can take to apply pressure - cancel their subscription. Do that if you wish to do so, by all means. But keep in mind that if you want Wizards to reverse their course and change their actions, you have to be willing to entertain the possibility of continuing to do business with them should they do what you ask. This recent frothing riot over the Jan 13th Statement is beyond ridiculous. Yes, the statement is in Corpospeak. News flash: they're a corporation. They're gonna speak Corpospeak, Corpospeak exists for a reason. We all hate it, but we can't change it.
Be angry. Anger helps! You should be angry! Directed, focused anger won us some major concessions! But spite is worse than useless. Spite will do nothing but poison the entire process and make any further compromise or gaining of ground impossible. All you're doing when you ragepost endless spite in every thread in GD is making the forums a terrible place to be and hurting the community that's trying to band together and make changes happen.
Please. Calm down. Breathe. Have some water. And remember that if you continue to beat the dog over and over again after it's tried and tried to do what you want, eventually the dog will stop caring and bite you.
I mean the leakers have said that they are looking at dnd beyond subs as it's their only active gauge of the community. So idk what's wrong with trying to get as many people to just cancel their subscriptions as possible it's the only way to actually make them listen to us. Simply state the facts about what they're doing which is trying to squeeze more money out of this community while robbing us of a large part of it all that got a lot of us introduced to dnd in the first place. I mean there's no reason to not continue playing dnd with the hard copies we already have but not getting new ones is what's important here. So people please cancel your subscription atleast for now if WoTC actually makes good changes to the OGL then u can always get the sub back my group and I personally are already talking about switching games because once a greedy corprate entity always a greedy corporate entity but that's just us.
This recent frothing riot over the Jan 13th Statement is beyond ridiculous. Yes, the statement is in Corpospeak. News flash: they're a corporation. They're gonna speak Corpospeak, Corpospeak exists for a reason. We all hate it, but we can't change it.
Be angry. Anger helps! You should be angry! Directed, focused anger won us some major concessions! But spite is worse than useless. Spite will do nothing but poison the entire process and make any further compromise or gaining of ground impossible. All you're doing when you ragepost endless spite in every thread in GD is making the forums a terrible place to be and hurting the community that's trying to band together and make changes happen.
The thing is that it's not just "Corposoeak" it's lies, lies and more lies. I don't mind "corposoeak" but they're not using it to tell the truth. If you don't believe it was lies, I do encourage you to watch this breakdown of it: https://youtu.be/MeWaq6pQQW4
Denying righteous indignation and gaslighting the victims of evil corporations isn't an admonished, it's an admonition of sycophancy.
The thing is, there is a difference between "righteous indignation" and attacking users. Posters who disagree with you aren't you'r enemies, they are people too and they deserve to be treated as such. A lot of people seem to have not heard that message, and it is quite difficult and saddening when you are on the receiving end of a lot of the anger.
So yes, be upset. But be polite too, because that is one of the core virtues of humankind and it really hurts when I see some of the people doing some of the things I outlined earlier.
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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.
The game won't ever, but the company might. Would that be so bad? I'm not sure.
Tell me: do you, as a Corporate Person, pick up this IP which is only available because its previous owner was eaten alive by 'fans' and has been irreversibly poisoned by the event?
These people aren't dealing on a scale you or I can really conceptualize properly. They bankrupt their companies all the time, as a matter of course. It's like... Having a diverse stock portfolio, or something. Playing a eurogame. It would get bought, I have zero doubt.
But even if it didn't. This was my real point. It's not a live service game, they can't shut down the official servers and delete your progress. Your character, your adventure, your world exists in your imagination and, if you're still using it, on paper. And you can make more without Wizards' help or permission. You don't need a supply of fresh content to keep playing, and even if you did, you can get it elsewhere. There's already too much D&D content available for anyone to play it all in their lifetime, and more gets produced every day, whether Wizards allows it or not, AND you have the tools to make it yourself. This has always been the case.
It's funny. I can project doom and gloom about the economy, the value of labor, and the rampant expansion of the owning class all day, but I really can't sustain any level of dread for the actual hobby itself. What are they gonna do, come and break my pencils?
I really want One D&D to come out, I want more content that is properly balanced and that is fully within D&D lore. I want the new Planescape books, etc. None of that is possible without WotC. Now I don't think WotC will go under because of this outrage, the game is mostly casuals now, but that was not the point. The point is, they will simply not make any changes to 1.1/2.0 if the community just tells them to F off. So basically all this rage will have been for nothing, as it is unlikely WotC will go under so if you want to see the company burn, you probably won't even have the pleasure of that.
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DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
I really want One D&D to come out, I want more content that is properly balanced and that is fully within D&D lore. I want the new Planescape books, etc. None of that is possible without WotC. Now I don't think WotC will go under because of this outrage, the game is mostly casuals now, but that was not the point. The point is, they will simply not make any changes to 1.1/2.0 if the community just tells them to F off. So basically all this rage will have been for nothing, as it is unlikely WotC will go under so if you want to see the company burn, you probably won't even have the pleasure of that.
Why do you think they won't negotiate with anger, and relent on making any updates to the OGL?
They already responded to anger, and backed down from their earlier position - even if it was mostly show, and they have thus far not made the actually important concessions.
Staying angry will work, and can force them to relent - the idea that the community doesn't have that power is corporate propaganda.
They literally need their community more than the community needs them - their community can play with their existing books and tools, but they aren't actually making money without the communities consent.
Nobody is saying anger won't have an effect. But all the posts that say they won't come back no matter what WotC does, and there are a ton of those here and elsewhere, are actually having the OPPOSITE effect.
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DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
Hey, Spamm. How ye been? This was indeed the wrong week to come back to the forums. I won't bore you with the details unless you want me to catch you up, but the Short Short version: Wizards was planning on introducing a new OGL 1.1 which was dramatically more punitive than the current one and not really 'open' at all. That version of the document was really, really bad, and would have completely destroyed the third-party ecosystem D&D is built on.It got leaked, people found out, and an Internet-wide shitstorm was raised. People canceled their DDB subs in droves after a second leak revealed that Wizards was looking at DDB subscription counts as their "Emergency" barometer. The ruckus was concerning enough that Wizards pulled back on their plans and promised to deliver a new OGL 2.0 that was less destructive, but they took over a week to do it and by then everybody had worked themselves into a frothing berserker frenzy. A few of us have been trying to stem the tsunami of Hatorade over today, but...well. You can see the front page. It ain't going so great.
Hopefully things work out in the end. Thanks for being calm about the whole thing. I appreciate it.
Thank you for the update and explanation.
In general things take time so I would expect that if a company had planed for a course of action and then had to reevaluate that action it would take time to pivot to a new strategy. And I know customers often want it now no matter what the title wave of issues are that have occurred to prevent the transaction to begin with.
Based on my limited information I do think that the past interactions about the purchase of D&DB by WotC in the area of peoples home brew material was a strong predicter of how people would react to the D&D populaces reading of the OGL 1.0.
I do think people have a point as well as that some people just love to throw bombs and light things on fire as well and it can be difficult to pull valuable information from heated conversations.
Again I hope that WotC learns from this with out too much negative impact on any front, but only time and actions on the company part will tell.
Nobody is saying anger won't have an effect. But all the posts that say they won't come back no matter what WotC does, and there are a ton of those here and elsewhere, are actually having the OPPOSITE effect.
Actually, those posts serve a very important purpose - pressure.
The longer WotC goes without an actually good response, the more permanent damage becomes apparent to their brand.
Those posts are currently the minority. But the longer they wait - and this is what happened when they waited a week to back down even a little - the worse the permanent damage gets.
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As the man says, “I can certainly try.”
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A word to the wise: privately held companies have shareholders, too. All companies have investors; privately held companies aren't traded on the public market, but they still have investors they have to please. Investors who invest in privately held companies aren't afforded the same protections as public companies, it's considered a "know what you're doing before you do it" venture, but private investors are still a very stark reality for anyone in business.
Paizo is looking out for Paizo, not for The Community. If they can score points with The Community while they look out for Paizo, that's a bonus. But I'll betcha the ORC treats Pathfinder 2e as its core system. And even if it's "system agnostic" - however that works - who do you think is in a position to quickly market products built under the ORC and try to bury its competitors? Hint: it's Paizo.
I'm not saying people shouldn't switch if they want to switch. I'm simply noting that everyone who's currently going apeshit over Wizards being an evil money-hungry corporation is conveniently forgetting that Paizo is also that thing. They just haven't misstepped yet. Hopefully they don't, but treating them like Shining Golden Gods is counterproductive to everything except Paizo's bottom line.
Please do not contact or message me.
It seems this was the wrong week to come back to the forums (I was taking a break until WotC and a person I play with figured out their pre-order problem).
Tone can have a huge impact on how people take and react to your thoughts and ideas but at times being more vocal is beneficial then meekly stating your ideas and whys and where for's.
When I read the new OGL article on the home page today, I thought the beginning was ok but the ending was problematic in stating their thoughts and how others reacted to the first doc. To me (Note I have not seen any social media stuff or heard or read anything besides this thread and the statement today) it seems WotC is having trouble or at least trouble the last few months. If you have been around you should be able to point out the issues (please do not take this as a excuse to rehash them here and now) and for myself ask the question "What is going on?" I do understand that transitions can have issues and "things" do pop up for time to time but the frequency of issues and the issues themselves have me asking some very basic questions.
Yes as someone said above "peoples job, kind of questions." Now I am not inside WotC and am I sure there are things I and we the general public do not know about (I am trying to cut WotC some slack here) but there does come a time that people make drastic decisions, a time when people vent and a time to ask for change and a time to demand change.
So going back to basics, just reading the statement today the ending I found condescending and out of place, the fact that people were reacting to legal language is something I need to do some more looking into. And the number of issues lately across many fronts has me worried, concerned and at times shocked.
But that is just me right now reacting to having read the article a few moments ago and reading this thread only.
I do hope WotC does fix it and people keep their jobs. I have often said roleplaying is more like art and often people treat it like running a art supply store.
Good Luck to everyone
I'm going to judge them based on how they act, not based on some cynical nihilist 'all companies are equally bad' mentality. Companies are made up of, and run by, people. Not all people suck - I've met a few of them.
I'm going to judge them based on their actions - and until they do mistep (which they have) and then fail to follow that mistep in a reasonably appropriate manner (thus far, they've done a decent job) - they get the benefit of all of their past good actions.
And their past - and current - actions indicate there is no equivalence with WotC. They're worth trusting, especially when they're backing their words up with actions intended to demonstrate their good intentions.
This report from CNBC is interesting: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/13/hasbro-delays-new-dungeons-dragons-licensing-rules.html
Major outlets are catching wind of this, the community outcry has been heard.
The D&D game will never die, but Wotc's Digital roadmap has hit a traffic jam.
Hey, Spamm. How ye been? This was indeed the wrong week to come back to the forums. I won't bore you with the details unless you want me to catch you up, but the Short Short version: Wizards was planning on introducing a new OGL 1.1 which was dramatically more punitive than the current one and not really 'open' at all. That version of the document was really, really bad, and would have completely destroyed the third-party ecosystem D&D is built on. It got leaked, people found out, and an Internet-wide shitstorm was raised. People canceled their DDB subs in droves after a second leak revealed that Wizards was looking at DDB subscription counts as their "Emergency" barometer. The ruckus was concerning enough that Wizards pulled back on their plans and promised to deliver a new OGL 2.0 that was less destructive, but they took over a week to do it and by then everybody had worked themselves into a frothing berserker frenzy. A few of us have been trying to stem the tsunami of Hatorade over today, but...well. You can see the front page. It ain't going so great.
Hopefully things work out in the end. Thanks for being calm about the whole thing. I appreciate it.
Please do not contact or message me.
...a storm that might just have been egged on by the "D&D is too woke now" crowd, after they utterly failed in their attempts to damage WOTC for said wokeness
<adjusts tinfoil hat>
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Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I am going to jump in on the side of Paizo real quick.
1. The people who are in charge of Paizo now used to work at wizards when the original OGL was conceived.
This shows that the people there were dedicated to open gaming then and they are now.
Is this completely out of the good of their hearts? No. Their philosophy has already been stated, by them, that they believe that open gaming helps everyone. They believe by allowing third party developers to develop for their game that it helps grow their game and makes them more money, because it is good for the customer. They treat 3PP as supplements not competition. Which, as someone who is going to finish his business degree this year, I completely agree with that assessment.
This said that still means they are completely dedicated to open gaming and their current and past practices have shown this. They put OGL 1.0a at the beginning of their books so 3PP could use their content not so they could use Wizard's content, because they currently AREN'T using any of the Wizard's SRD.
In addition, all of their current core rule set and all non-adventure supplement rules are currently available completely for free online WITH Paizo's express permission. You dont need to spend a dime to read the Core rulebook, GMG or any of the bestiaries, the advance players guide, or any of the other supplements all of those rules are available for free on Archives of Nethys with Paizo's express permission.
As said, they have a current and past history of being completely for open gaming, and it is entirely because their philosophy that it ultimately builds their business more than it hurts it. And yes, they are currently reaping the rewards of that philosophy, because players and publishers value that philosophy.
Personally I would much rather support a company whose philosophy on third party developers is they are people who help them grow rather than one that sees third party content as a threat.
These people aren't dealing on a scale you or I can really conceptualize properly. They bankrupt their companies all the time, as a matter of course. It's like... Having a diverse stock portfolio, or something. Playing a eurogame. It would get bought, I have zero doubt.
But even if it didn't. This was my real point. It's not a live service game, they can't shut down the official servers and delete your progress. Your character, your adventure, your world exists in your imagination and, if you're still using it, on paper. And you can make more without Wizards' help or permission. You don't need a supply of fresh content to keep playing, and even if you did, you can get it elsewhere. There's already too much D&D content available for anyone to play it all in their lifetime, and more gets produced every day, whether Wizards allows it or not, AND you have the tools to make it yourself. This has always been the case.
It's funny. I can project doom and gloom about the economy, the value of labor, and the rampant expansion of the owning class all day, but I really can't sustain any level of dread for the actual hobby itself. What are they gonna do, come and break my pencils?
No. We don't have any reason to save a billion dollar corporation from itself. We all know what they think of us now. Them desperately clutching at the money they see slipping away doesn't change that. We can play D&D without WotC. We literally don't need them for anything.
We don't need thier license anymore either. There's already better options on the horizon.
I mean the leakers have said that they are looking at dnd beyond subs as it's their only active gauge of the community. So idk what's wrong with trying to get as many people to just cancel their subscriptions as possible it's the only way to actually make them listen to us. Simply state the facts about what they're doing which is trying to squeeze more money out of this community while robbing us of a large part of it all that got a lot of us introduced to dnd in the first place. I mean there's no reason to not continue playing dnd with the hard copies we already have but not getting new ones is what's important here. So people please cancel your subscription atleast for now if WoTC actually makes good changes to the OGL then u can always get the sub back my group and I personally are already talking about switching games because once a greedy corprate entity always a greedy corporate entity but that's just us.
The thing is that it's not just "Corposoeak" it's lies, lies and more lies. I don't mind "corposoeak" but they're not using it to tell the truth. If you don't believe it was lies, I do encourage you to watch this breakdown of it: https://youtu.be/MeWaq6pQQW4
Denying righteous indignation and gaslighting the victims of evil corporations isn't an admonished, it's an admonition of sycophancy.
We don't need to help, they did this to themselves, they can put 400% of the effort required to bridge the river of their fault.
The thing is, there is a difference between "righteous indignation" and attacking users. Posters who disagree with you aren't you'r enemies, they are people too and they deserve to be treated as such. A lot of people seem to have not heard that message, and it is quite difficult and saddening when you are on the receiving end of a lot of the anger.
So yes, be upset. But be polite too, because that is one of the core virtues of humankind and it really hurts when I see some of the people doing some of the things I outlined earlier.
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HERE.I really want One D&D to come out, I want more content that is properly balanced and that is fully within D&D lore. I want the new Planescape books, etc. None of that is possible without WotC. Now I don't think WotC will go under because of this outrage, the game is mostly casuals now, but that was not the point. The point is, they will simply not make any changes to 1.1/2.0 if the community just tells them to F off. So basically all this rage will have been for nothing, as it is unlikely WotC will go under so if you want to see the company burn, you probably won't even have the pleasure of that.
DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
Why do you think they won't negotiate with anger, and relent on making any updates to the OGL?
They already responded to anger, and backed down from their earlier position - even if it was mostly show, and they have thus far not made the actually important concessions.
Staying angry will work, and can force them to relent - the idea that the community doesn't have that power is corporate propaganda.
They literally need their community more than the community needs them - their community can play with their existing books and tools, but they aren't actually making money without the communities consent.
Nobody is saying anger won't have an effect. But all the posts that say they won't come back no matter what WotC does, and there are a ton of those here and elsewhere, are actually having the OPPOSITE effect.
DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
Thank you for the update and explanation.
In general things take time so I would expect that if a company had planed for a course of action and then had to reevaluate that action it would take time to pivot to a new strategy. And I know customers often want it now no matter what the title wave of issues are that have occurred to prevent the transaction to begin with.
Based on my limited information I do think that the past interactions about the purchase of D&DB by WotC in the area of peoples home brew material was a strong predicter of how people would react to the D&D populaces reading of the OGL 1.0.
I do think people have a point as well as that some people just love to throw bombs and light things on fire as well and it can be difficult to pull valuable information from heated conversations.
Again I hope that WotC learns from this with out too much negative impact on any front, but only time and actions on the company part will tell.
Actually, those posts serve a very important purpose - pressure.
The longer WotC goes without an actually good response, the more permanent damage becomes apparent to their brand.
Those posts are currently the minority. But the longer they wait - and this is what happened when they waited a week to back down even a little - the worse the permanent damage gets.