Ernest Gygax, the son of D&D co-founder Gary Gygax, started a company under the name TSR and began developing a version of Star Frontiers which is blatantly, wildly racist. Like, Ku Klux Klan-level racist. They even have a race in the proposed playtest document called Aryans, I believe. Wizards has been embroiled in a lawsuit with ol' Ernie G for years over the fact that Ernie G straight-up stole their IP (Wizards owns the rights to Star Frontiers) and is using it to peddle actively and deliberately hateful shit tro try and appeal to a certain breed of detestable jackwagon.
Given Wizards' recent attempts to correct historic oopsies in their brand and Ernie G's crusade to Make D&D Star Frontiers Racist Again, updates to the OGL saying "we reserve the right to distance ourselves from your product and deny you usage of our IP if you use this document to peddle hate" would have been perfectly reasonable, probably even laudable. As it stands right now, it's an open legal question as to whether Wizards would be able to stop it if somebody decided to use OGL 1.0 to print and sell The Bigot's Guide to Genocide: an Ethnic Cleansing Supplement for the World's Greatest Roleplaying Game. And that's ridiculous.
The constant use of this justification in the corporate communication is infuriating. It demonstrates that ideals like inclusion and non discrimination are more valuable as marketing buzzwords and PR armor than actual ideals.
Inclusion and non-discrimination in the corporate world only moves forward when it affects the bottom line.
To use it now, as a cheap deflection, is further insult to those fighting for inclusion, representation and respect.
This is an emotional canard; it's designed to make you stop thinking and go "Oh; WOTC are the good people! Anyone mad about this MUT be bad people! I don't want to be bad people pikachu!"
This has zero to do with "preventing hurtful content" and everything to do with WOTC asserting tighter control over "the brand" and the VTT space especially, since; that's what they see as the future of "recurrent user spending".
Oh; and the reason they lead with it i the new statement? Because it's an easy shield to hide behind. "I tap 3 white mana to cast shield of tolerance! All access media creatures must now defend us!"
...
That aside: I don't think a corporation that employs functional slave labour (Hasbro) is in any place to lecture me about ethics on anything. People SHOULD be allowed to make "Springtime for Hitler the RPG module" if they want... and anyone who thinks that's awful is free to not buy or play it. Using WOTC's registered trademarks is already illegal; that's what they're for.
The fact there was even a fuss over the Hadozee lore is.. quite silly.
Someone connects a dot to a real life event and apparently that makes the story unacceptable to exist, despite the lore in question vilifying the act. It was simply the idea of mentioning anything remotely close that apparently made it bad.
It's a game with lore about an, ultimately, cruel world where heroes have to constantly fight to stop the place from falling apart. Or at least it used to be before the book burning and lore scrubbing happened.
The reason they are doing this is simply to have more control over their product and what 3rd parties produce. Restrict third party from doing it, allow themselves to do so, profit for them, sucks for 3rd party.
There are going to be lots of people on this thread trying to make "free speech" arguments as a counter reason for why Wizards should not have this power. Here are the two facts: 1. Wizards of the Coast has a right to free speech. 2. When it comes to their own intellectual property and how their intellectual property is used, their free speech right should control. It is their right to say "hey, we are letting you use our intellectual property--but we are not going to let you do that if you are trying to use OUR creation for YOUR bigotry." That is something OGL 1.0 does not fully cover, and recent events show that, even if the OGL has not been used in that manner yet, there is cause to be concerned it could be.
And therein lies the hypocrisy of these "free speech" folks--they are actively advocating for suppression of Wizards' right to exercise their own speech with their own property. Whether they are engaging in that hypocrisy because they refuse to recognize that a creator has a more foundational right to speech than someone using another's creation; or because they never thought that maybe Wizards had free speech rights also; or because they are racists themselves and are sad that Wizards disapproves of their racism; or some other reason, I will not comment on, and I am sure there are as many reasons as there are people raising this (both legally and morally) hypocritical argument.
Has this been a problem from publishers? What products and what impact?
The only case I can recall of this happening was by WotC with the Hadozee in Spelljammer only four months ago.
Bit rich to claim to be the stewards of the game when the most high profile case of racist content is from the "stewards".
That is one of three reasons they give. It being the easiest to attack does not make the others go away.
And the others being: 2) "NFTS bad! Amiright?" - Nobody was making D&D NFTs... argualby; the closest people thinking about that are actually Hasbro who floated the idea of tieing NFTs to products like Action Figures in the not to distant past. 3) "We're doing this for you! The creators!" - No, no they clearly were not; OGL 1.1 was very clearly written FOR exactly one creator: WOTC themselves.
People printing NFTs to properties, IP, or other assets they have no legal claim to is something that happens all the time. Every creative industry is being hit with it. Many bands have had to sue people for creating NFTs to their songs without license or dispensation, and in a notable number of cases the band loses. I repeat: this happens all the time. And as Caerwyn said in another thread, judges generally don't understand NFTs in the slightest and often get things wrong when people try and take back their assets from NFT grifters who've made promises they have no legal basis to be making.
Semi-related side note: NFT grifters are scum-sucking cave slugs who're worse than Hasbrozards in every conceivable way and they can sod off forever.
Anyways. Curbing NFT's isn't nearly as much of a nothingburger as you think it is. As for the third point? That's the part Wizards backed off on. They're leaving OGL 1.0 content alone and no longer pushing royalties into the agreement, which means companies like Kobold Press, Green Ronin, Darrington Press, and all the rest will still be able to operate without issue and we'll still be able to get three million dollar Kickstarters for cool third-party books like Grim Hollow.
Until we see the new document, nobody can say if they backed off enough. But we also can't say if they didn't back off enough. Don't re-up your sub yet, but also stop acting like the company is the root of all evil when they're in the process of backstepping and taking their medicine.
All this crippling of lore, making all races a human with a different flavor by removing racial idenity, removing evil races, all of this just smokes and mirrors to make them look better while they hatch their nefarious plans... like the current ogl 1.1
People printing NFTs to properties, IP, or other assets they have no legal claim to is something that happens all the time. Every creative industry is being hit with it. Many bands have had to sue people for creating NFTs to their songs without license or dispensation, and in a notable number of cases the band loses. I repeat: this happens all the time. And as Caerwyn said in another thread, judges generally don't understand NFTs in the slightest and often get things wrong when people try and take back their assets from NFT grifters who've made promises they have no legal basis to be making.
Semi-related side note: NFT grifters are scum-sucking cave slugs who're worse than Hasbrozards in every conceivable way and they can sod off forever.
Anyways. Curbing NFT's isn't nearly as much of a nothingburger as you think it is. As for the third point? That's the part Wizards backed off on. They're leaving OGL 1.0 content alone and no longer pushing royalties into the agreement, which means companies like Kobold Press, Green Ronin, Darrington Press, and all the rest will still be able to operate without issue and we'll still be able to get three million dollar Kickstarters for cool third-party books like Grim Hollow.
Until we see the new document, nobody can say if they backed off enough. But we also can't say if they didn't back off enough. Don't re-up your sub yet, but also stop acting like the company is the root of all evil when they're in the process of backstepping and taking their medicine.
I support every effort at making ttrpg's (and society) more inclusive and tolerant.
But a company's expression of thier committment to such ideals is greatly undermined when it is turned into a PR talking point. A talking point used in an attempt to strongarm a community. A community that has consistently shown a equal or greater commitment to those same ideals.
People printing NFTs to properties, IP, or other assets they have no legal claim to is something that happens all the time. Every creative industry is being hit with it. Many bands have had to sue people for creating NFTs to their songs without license or dispensation, and in a notable number of cases the band loses. I repeat: this happens all the time. And as Caerwyn said in another thread, judges generally don't understand NFTs in the slightest and often get things wrong when people try and take back their assets from NFT grifters who've made promises they have no legal basis to be making.
Semi-related side note: NFT grifters are scum-sucking cave slugs who're worse than Hasbrozards in every conceivable way and they can sod off forever.
Anyways. Curbing NFT's isn't nearly as much of a nothingburger as you think it is. As for the third point? That's the part Wizards backed off on. They're leaving OGL 1.0 content alone and no longer pushing royalties into the agreement, which means companies like Kobold Press, Green Ronin, Darrington Press, and all the rest will still be able to operate without issue and we'll still be able to get three million dollar Kickstarters for cool third-party books like Grim Hollow.
Until we see the new document, nobody can say if they backed off enough. But we also can't say if they didn't back off enough. Don't re-up your sub yet, but also stop acting like the company is the root of all evil when they're in the process of backstepping and taking their medicine.
What was that about "NFT grifters are worse than Hasbro"? How about when they ARE Hasbro?
"Person using their own property to make an NFT" is dumb. "Person who uses someone else's property to make an NFT because not only are they engaged in the NFT nonsense, they are too lazy to even think up their own idea" is so obviously worse that I am surprised you managed to type this as if it were an intelligent argument on so many threads.
Which, to be clear, NFTs are dumb and an environmental catastrophe. But being dumb and contributing to an environmental catastrophe is still better than being dumb, contributing to an environmental catastrophe, AND trying to leech off someone else's intellectual property to do so.
Grifters as in stealing someone else's IP to make NFTs. Though we should always tell all NFTers to F right off, it is much worse when they don't even own the original content.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
People printing NFTs to properties, IP, or other assets they have no legal claim to is something that happens all the time. Every creative industry is being hit with it. Many bands have had to sue people for creating NFTs to their songs without license or dispensation, and in a notable number of cases the band loses. I repeat: this happens all the time. And as Caerwyn said in another thread, judges generally don't understand NFTs in the slightest and often get things wrong when people try and take back their assets from NFT grifters who've made promises they have no legal basis to be making.
Semi-related side note: NFT grifters are scum-sucking cave slugs who're worse than Hasbrozards in every conceivable way and they can sod off forever.
Anyways. Curbing NFT's isn't nearly as much of a nothingburger as you think it is. As for the third point? That's the part Wizards backed off on. They're leaving OGL 1.0 content alone and no longer pushing royalties into the agreement, which means companies like Kobold Press, Green Ronin, Darrington Press, and all the rest will still be able to operate without issue and we'll still be able to get three million dollar Kickstarters for cool third-party books like Grim Hollow.
Until we see the new document, nobody can say if they backed off enough. But we also can't say if they didn't back off enough. Don't re-up your sub yet, but also stop acting like the company is the root of all evil when they're in the process of backstepping and taking their medicine.
What was that about "NFT grifters are worse than Hasbro"? How about when they ARE Hasbro?
"Person using their own property to make an NFT" is dumb. "Person who uses someone else's property to make an NFT because not only are they engaged in the NFT nonsense, they are too lazy to even think up their own idea" is so obviously worse that I am surprised you managed to type this as if it were an intelligent argument on so many threads.
Which, to be clear, NFTs are dumb and an environmental catastrophe. But being dumb and contributing to an environmental catastrophe is still better than being dumb, contributing to an environmental catastrophe, AND trying to leech off someone else's intellectual property to do so.
WOTC, a division OF Hasbro, cannot, I repeat, CANNOT, pretend to be against NFTs, stolen or otherwise, on some sort of moral principal... while their parent corporation is minting them. Then again: blatant hypocrisy hasn't stopped them before, why should it now.
WOTC is taking NO stand here: this, like the "tolerance" point, is being used as an emotional lever. They are pushing your buttons to try to make you stop thinking critically about the rest of their statements.
Second of all, they're not trying to Make A Stand Against NFTs. They're trying to protect themselves from their shit being stolen by people whose entire business is stealing IP and selling it as NFTs. Hasbro minting NFTs of its property is fundamentally different than NFT grifters starting to sell pages out of the PHB as an NFT for fifty thousand dollars a pop - and yes, that is a very real thing that could happen. Similar things have happened before, and companies across most creative industries are scrambling to get in front of it.
Hasbro doing NFTs is just stupid. The sort of grifting Wizards is trying to get in front of is a legal quagmire nobody has figured out a reliable way to resolve yet.
Stop looking for reasons to call out hypocrisy that doesn't exist. There's other, better arguments to make, and potential hypocrisy that does exist to hammer on instead.
Does Hasbro have exclusive rights to determine what is considered hateful content here? I mean if another company starting making a lot of high quality, profitable material but it included orcs as being innately evil, could WoTC use that depiction of orcs as an excuse to drop the corporate hammer?
Who's financing Hasbro, and what atrocities do those entities financially promote across the world? WotC is nothing but virtue signaling for dollars. Typical corpo. Will change their logo in USA to make certain crowds happy, but won't do that in other countries.
Does Hasbro have exclusive rights to determine what is considered hateful content here? I mean if another company starting making a lot of high quality, profitable material but it included orcs as being innately evil, could WoTC use that depiction of orcs as an excuse to drop the corporate hammer?
You'll have to wait until we see the actual terms to know how this will function.
Does Hasbro have exclusive rights to determine what is considered hateful content here? I mean if another company starting making a lot of high quality, profitable material but it included orcs as being innately evil, could WoTC use that depiction of orcs as an excuse to drop the corporate hammer?
All forms of censorship are evil. Including the kind that happens on this forum.
Second of all, they're not trying to Make A Stand Against NFTs. They're trying to protect themselves from their shit being stolen by people whose entire business is stealing IP and selling it as NFTs. Hasbro minting NFTs of its property is fundamentally different than NFT grifters starting to sell pages out of the PHB as an NFT for fifty thousand dollars a pop - and yes, that is a very real thing that could happen. Similar things have happened before, and companies across most creative industries are scrambling to get in front of it.
Oh noes! The poor mega-conglomerates and their dedicated legal departments; hired to stop... trademark violations; a thing that's already illegal! What ever shall we do about the poor mega-conglomerates! WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE MEGA-CORPS!
Look at it this way:
Version 1: "We're WOTC and we're against NFTS because they're bad for the environment!" - Well that can't be the case; because Hasbro uses them themselves. They are NOT "against NFTs", and to pretend they are is a lie.
Version 2: "We're WOTC and we're against people making NFTs using our IP!" - Well... Trademark violation is already illegal. As is the breed of fraud most of those big NFT sales are conducted as. So alle diting the OGL would do is add "And also you violated our terms of service!" to their legal case.
There's no version that makes sense besides, Version 3: "We're WOTC; and we know this is ahot-button issue that has an easy side for us to take... we aren't against NTFs: we're against OTHER PEOPLE making NFTs... because that money should be ours."
Has this been a problem from publishers?
What products and what impact?
The only case I can recall of this happening was by WotC with the Hadozee in Spelljammer only four months ago.
Bit rich to claim to be the stewards of the game when the most high profile case of racist content is from the "stewards".
Yes it has, actually.
Ernest Gygax, the son of D&D co-founder Gary Gygax, started a company under the name TSR and began developing a version of Star Frontiers which is blatantly, wildly racist. Like, Ku Klux Klan-level racist. They even have a race in the proposed playtest document called Aryans, I believe. Wizards has been embroiled in a lawsuit with ol' Ernie G for years over the fact that Ernie G straight-up stole their IP (Wizards owns the rights to Star Frontiers) and is using it to peddle actively and deliberately hateful shit tro try and appeal to a certain breed of detestable jackwagon.
Given Wizards' recent attempts to correct historic oopsies in their brand and Ernie G's crusade to Make
D&DStar Frontiers Racist Again, updates to the OGL saying "we reserve the right to distance ourselves from your product and deny you usage of our IP if you use this document to peddle hate" would have been perfectly reasonable, probably even laudable. As it stands right now, it's an open legal question as to whether Wizards would be able to stop it if somebody decided to use OGL 1.0 to print and sell The Bigot's Guide to Genocide: an Ethnic Cleansing Supplement for the World's Greatest Roleplaying Game. And that's ridiculous.Please do not contact or message me.
The constant use of this justification in the corporate communication is infuriating. It demonstrates that ideals like inclusion and non discrimination are more valuable as marketing buzzwords and PR armor than actual ideals.
Inclusion and non-discrimination in the corporate world only moves forward when it affects the bottom line.
To use it now, as a cheap deflection, is further insult to those fighting for inclusion, representation and respect.
Shame.
This is an emotional canard; it's designed to make you stop thinking and go "Oh; WOTC are the good people! Anyone mad about this MUT be bad people! I don't want to be bad people pikachu!"
This has zero to do with "preventing hurtful content" and everything to do with WOTC asserting tighter control over "the brand" and the VTT space especially, since; that's what they see as the future of "recurrent user spending".
Oh; and the reason they lead with it i the new statement? Because it's an easy shield to hide behind. "I tap 3 white mana to cast shield of tolerance! All access media creatures must now defend us!"
...
That aside: I don't think a corporation that employs functional slave labour (Hasbro) is in any place to lecture me about ethics on anything. People SHOULD be allowed to make "Springtime for Hitler the RPG module" if they want... and anyone who thinks that's awful is free to not buy or play it. Using WOTC's registered trademarks is already illegal; that's what they're for.
The fact there was even a fuss over the Hadozee lore is.. quite silly.
Someone connects a dot to a real life event and apparently that makes the story unacceptable to exist, despite the lore in question vilifying the act. It was simply the idea of mentioning anything remotely close that apparently made it bad.
It's a game with lore about an, ultimately, cruel world where heroes have to constantly fight to stop the place from falling apart. Or at least it used to be before the book burning and lore scrubbing happened.
The reason they are doing this is simply to have more control over their product and what 3rd parties produce. Restrict third party from doing it, allow themselves to do so, profit for them, sucks for 3rd party.
There are going to be lots of people on this thread trying to make "free speech" arguments as a counter reason for why Wizards should not have this power. Here are the two facts: 1. Wizards of the Coast has a right to free speech. 2. When it comes to their own intellectual property and how their intellectual property is used, their free speech right should control. It is their right to say "hey, we are letting you use our intellectual property--but we are not going to let you do that if you are trying to use OUR creation for YOUR bigotry." That is something OGL 1.0 does not fully cover, and recent events show that, even if the OGL has not been used in that manner yet, there is cause to be concerned it could be.
And therein lies the hypocrisy of these "free speech" folks--they are actively advocating for suppression of Wizards' right to exercise their own speech with their own property. Whether they are engaging in that hypocrisy because they refuse to recognize that a creator has a more foundational right to speech than someone using another's creation; or because they never thought that maybe Wizards had free speech rights also; or because they are racists themselves and are sad that Wizards disapproves of their racism; or some other reason, I will not comment on, and I am sure there are as many reasons as there are people raising this (both legally and morally) hypocritical argument.
And the others being:
2) "NFTS bad! Amiright?" - Nobody was making D&D NFTs... argualby; the closest people thinking about that are actually Hasbro who floated the idea of tieing NFTs to products like Action Figures in the not to distant past.
3) "We're doing this for you! The creators!" - No, no they clearly were not; OGL 1.1 was very clearly written FOR exactly one creator: WOTC themselves.
People printing NFTs to properties, IP, or other assets they have no legal claim to is something that happens all the time. Every creative industry is being hit with it. Many bands have had to sue people for creating NFTs to their songs without license or dispensation, and in a notable number of cases the band loses. I repeat: this happens all the time. And as Caerwyn said in another thread, judges generally don't understand NFTs in the slightest and often get things wrong when people try and take back their assets from NFT grifters who've made promises they have no legal basis to be making.
Semi-related side note: NFT grifters are scum-sucking cave slugs who're worse than Hasbrozards in every conceivable way and they can sod off forever.
Anyways. Curbing NFT's isn't nearly as much of a nothingburger as you think it is. As for the third point? That's the part Wizards backed off on. They're leaving OGL 1.0 content alone and no longer pushing royalties into the agreement, which means companies like Kobold Press, Green Ronin, Darrington Press, and all the rest will still be able to operate without issue and we'll still be able to get three million dollar Kickstarters for cool third-party books like Grim Hollow.
Until we see the new document, nobody can say if they backed off enough. But we also can't say if they didn't back off enough. Don't re-up your sub yet, but also stop acting like the company is the root of all evil when they're in the process of backstepping and taking their medicine.
Please do not contact or message me.
All this crippling of lore, making all races a human with a different flavor by removing racial idenity, removing evil races, all of this just smokes and mirrors to make them look better while they hatch their nefarious plans... like the current ogl 1.1
Well.... oh my... isn't this... slightly... inconvenient...
https://corporate.hasbro.com/en-us/articles/hasbro_makes_nft_debut_with_power_rangers_collection_on_wax
What was that about "NFT grifters are worse than Hasbro"? How about when they ARE Hasbro?
I support every effort at making ttrpg's (and society) more inclusive and tolerant.
But a company's expression of thier committment to such ideals is greatly undermined when it is turned into a PR talking point. A talking point used in an attempt to strongarm a community. A community that has consistently shown a equal or greater commitment to those same ideals.
Its freaking corporate gaslighting.
"Person using their own property to make an NFT" is dumb. "Person who uses someone else's property to make an NFT because not only are they engaged in the NFT nonsense, they are too lazy to even think up their own idea" is so obviously worse that I am surprised you managed to type this as if it were an intelligent argument on so many threads.
Which, to be clear, NFTs are dumb and an environmental catastrophe. But being dumb and contributing to an environmental catastrophe is still better than being dumb, contributing to an environmental catastrophe, AND trying to leech off someone else's intellectual property to do so.
Grifters as in stealing someone else's IP to make NFTs. Though we should always tell all NFTers to F right off, it is much worse when they don't even own the original content.
DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
WOTC, a division OF Hasbro, cannot, I repeat, CANNOT, pretend to be against NFTs, stolen or otherwise, on some sort of moral principal... while their parent corporation is minting them. Then again: blatant hypocrisy hasn't stopped them before, why should it now.
WOTC is taking NO stand here: this, like the "tolerance" point, is being used as an emotional lever. They are pushing your buttons to try to make you stop thinking critically about the rest of their statements.
Corvid. Buddy.
First of all, this isn't the NFT thread.
Second of all, they're not trying to Make A Stand Against NFTs. They're trying to protect themselves from their shit being stolen by people whose entire business is stealing IP and selling it as NFTs. Hasbro minting NFTs of its property is fundamentally different than NFT grifters starting to sell pages out of the PHB as an NFT for fifty thousand dollars a pop - and yes, that is a very real thing that could happen. Similar things have happened before, and companies across most creative industries are scrambling to get in front of it.
Hasbro doing NFTs is just stupid. The sort of grifting Wizards is trying to get in front of is a legal quagmire nobody has figured out a reliable way to resolve yet.
Stop looking for reasons to call out hypocrisy that doesn't exist. There's other, better arguments to make, and potential hypocrisy that does exist to hammer on instead.
Please do not contact or message me.
Does Hasbro have exclusive rights to determine what is considered hateful content here? I mean if another company starting making a lot of high quality, profitable material but it included orcs as being innately evil, could WoTC use that depiction of orcs as an excuse to drop the corporate hammer?
Who's financing Hasbro, and what atrocities do those entities financially promote across the world? WotC is nothing but virtue signaling for dollars. Typical corpo. Will change their logo in USA to make certain crowds happy, but won't do that in other countries.
You'll have to wait until we see the actual terms to know how this will function.
All forms of censorship are evil. Including the kind that happens on this forum.
Oh noes! The poor mega-conglomerates and their dedicated legal departments; hired to stop... trademark violations; a thing that's already illegal! What ever shall we do about the poor mega-conglomerates! WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE MEGA-CORPS!
Look at it this way:
Version 1: "We're WOTC and we're against NFTS because they're bad for the environment!" - Well that can't be the case; because Hasbro uses them themselves. They are NOT "against NFTs", and to pretend they are is a lie.
Version 2: "We're WOTC and we're against people making NFTs using our IP!" - Well... Trademark violation is already illegal. As is the breed of fraud most of those big NFT sales are conducted as. So alle diting the OGL would do is add "And also you violated our terms of service!" to their legal case.
There's no version that makes sense besides, Version 3: "We're WOTC; and we know this is ahot-button issue that has an easy side for us to take... we aren't against NTFs: we're against OTHER PEOPLE making NFTs... because that money should be ours."