I'm not going to watch WotC Kirkland Brand Mathias Mapphews and his Hysterical Role campaign
Hey now, Kirkland brand is actually pretty good sometimes!
Seriously though this made me laugh way more than it should, 10/10 joke. You're absolutely right too, I'm not going to expect a lot of content creators that people actually enjoy watching be like 'Hmm, should I stick around and keep playing D&D, and sign over 25% of my money -and- my rights -and- know that WotC could change the deal at any moment due to a passing wind?' like... Even the dumbest of the dumb aren't that dumb.
******* ridiculous. Homebrew BANNED for non-subscribers?? I have the books, I don't need your content paid for again to fill out my online charcter sheet. Up yours D&D and Hasbro execs.
If they don't make books anymore for 6e, and they lock the game behind a subscription pay wall ...
Also, it's not locking out homebrew for non-subscribers, it's locking out homebrew at lower subscription tiers. At least that is the report.
Yeah, and they and their shills will hide behind the "Well you got all the official content, there's nothing saying that they HAVE to let you put in homebrew," to excuse away the fact that the ability is locked behind higher pay walls.
I genuinely feel bad for younger generations who have been so heavily conditioned to accept tiers of service for different price points. It's such a dystopian thing to do when you really look at it sometimes, like - I have this feature in my car that's supposed to be an SOS feature right? Well, it only works if you pay a subscription fee for it.
There's literally a button in my car that I can push to get help if I get into an accident, but it only operates if I pay them money every month forever for it to work. How ****ed up is that? Like, there's nothing stopping them from just making that a feature of cars, that all cars have a help button in case of emergency, but nope they gotta monetize it, and it's normalized! Normalized to the point that I'm sure a few people will read this and think 'well of COURSE they charge you for it!' like that's just... reasonable, and not horrifically immoral and ethically wrong on every level. It's one thing to offer premium services that are upgrades, like going to a fancy club and paying extra to sit in the best seat in the house; it's another to be like, well, sorry you didn't give me enough money, go die over there in that ditch I don't give a crap.
WotC thinking that they can squeeze monthly money out of us just to access a website that, frankly, should be a free service that they are offering in order to incentivize and draw players in to their game and keep an audience is... laughable. Pathetic. Sad. I dunno, take your pick of bad words.
Despite the ogl fiasco, I stayed cuz I relied a lot on Dnd beyond for organization, but if I'm going to be charged more than I've been charged to play MMORPGs, I will simply buy more notebooks for DM notes and unsubscribe. Happily
I genuinely feel bad for younger generations who have been so heavily conditioned to accept tiers of service for different price points. It's such a dystopian thing to do when you really look at it sometimes, like - I have this feature in my car that's supposed to be an SOS feature right? Well, it only works if you pay a subscription fee for it.
There's literally a button in my car that I can push to get help if I get into an accident, but it only operates if I pay them money every month forever for it to work. How ****ed up is that? Like, there's nothing stopping them from just making that a feature of cars, that all cars have a help button in case of emergency, but nope they gotta monetize it, and it's normalized! Normalized to the point that I'm sure a few people will read this and think 'well of COURSE they charge you for it!' like that's just... reasonable, and not horrifically immoral and ethically wrong on every level. It's one thing to offer premium services that are upgrades, like going to a fancy club and paying extra to sit in the best seat in the house; it's another to be like, well, sorry you didn't give me enough money, go die over there in that ditch I don't give a crap.
So the people monitoring that button's receiver in case you push it should just... sit there for free then?
Not all recurrent spending is unreasonable. If they offer me a service worth paying more for, then I'll pay for it, it's that simple. And if the base functionality (driving the car) doesn't require it, then the folks who don't want it don't have to pay. That is eminently fair.
One thing I will mention. This new bit from D&D Shorts mentions "Tiers". It could be - and this is an increasingly faint hope - that DDB is not necessarily planning on taking away from existing users but instead on adding new tiers above/between Hero and Master to give people more options. Mostly because at this point with the community already feeling as burned and ruffled as it is, taking away people's subscriptions and asking them to pay drastically more for the same content is...not a winning play. Not when half the damn board is already dropping their sub over the OGL thing. Making subscribing more painful and making not being subscribed more punitive is gonna result in a fresh hemmorhage of people, especially for a feature as fundamentally pointless as "A.I. DMs"
For 6 bucks we get everything we need. I can run all of my campaigns at the 3 dollar level now. What could they possibly offer that would be worth an extra 24 bucks a month?? There's literally nothing that would add that much value.
The only way this makes sense is if the lowest tiers are significantly more expensive than they are now. Wait for it...
* Canceling your D&D Beyond sub and giving other games your business
* Canceling your D&D sub with intent to renew IF WotC stops this money-grubbing and puts irrevocable legal protection on open licenses by either leaving OGL 1.0 standing in perpetuity or cosigning ORC or whatever ethical equivalent there is.
* Still playing and enjoying D&D 1-5e openly at your lesiure with whatever materials you already own and/or get for free.
* Thanking the devs and workers who risked their jobs to bring us this information.
* Never forgetting this or letting them think we will/have.
* Standing on a boat with an eyepatch going "yarr harr harr"
Morally Bad and/or Unreasonable things:
* Harassing the devs/workers (who are on our side)
* Harassing people who still like and want to play actual D&D brand D&D
* Thinking this will blow over if we keep quiet and do nothing.
* Being against the stated goals of diversity/inclusivity and anti-NFT.
* Believing WotC execs brought up diversity/inclusivity and anti-NFT as anything other than a smokescreen to draw attention from everything else they were doing.
* Giving 6e any attention or money while this is going on.
* Pretty much every single thing WotC execs have done throughout this whole process, from even having the gall to think this stuff up in the first place through their passive-agressive gaslighty "apology"
That just about sums it up. I like D&D, I especially love 5e because I feel it combines the strengths of 3.5 and 4. I tried a few other systems, including Pathfinder, and they never really grabbed me the way D&D does. I will keep playing D&D as long as I can. But they also will never get another cent of my extremely limited funds until such time as they both stop trying to landlord us as well as make sure nobody else can ever try this crap again. And this specific leak, if it's true? It's totally the wrong direction.
That said, trying to find the balance of staying civil without kowtowing to ineffective civility politics is extremely difficult, but it's in our best interest to try as long as we remain active no matter what.
The WotC hierarchy have shown themselves to be duplicitous liars. Many former fans, who have invested themselves substantially in the game, have a right to, typically respectfully, have our say. Your toxic spins and slurs have no place in a forum of reasoning people.
There's a difference between not trusting WotC (fully justified) and believing every random rumor.
$30/month for existing master tier would just cause people to cancel their subscriptions, and Wizards is unlikely to be unaware of that. There's really three options:
WotC has gone collectively insane.
The proposed $30/mo is a new product proposal.
The rumors don't relate to reality at all.
I can fully imagine someone having a pie in the sky idea about AI DMs as a new service, but I can't imagine them thinking the existing service is worth $30/mo.
Thanks but that's a list of "Best Sellers in Puzzle & Game Reference" with a whole load of references to games like chess.
It's still weighed toward D&D in Best Sellers in Role-Playing & War Games but at least here, with some other fillers, the Pathfinder RPG: Advanced Player’s Guide (P2) comes in eighth.
Excuse you. Not everyone is required to throw away their account, swear off playing D&D ever again, and immediately start attacking anyone still playing/making content for 5e out of misguided fervor to "PROTECT THE OGL" by actively sabotaging the very people the OGL was allowing to create. That's not "fence riding", that's hoping the issue actually ends up solved and I can continue to enjoy the third-party ecosystem we all went to war to protect in the first place.
A- you don't get to passively attack everyone you disagree with and then cry about those same people responding in kind. You call people rabid hyenas and then get upset because you're accused of sitting on the fence??? Seriously???
B- every major third party has moved on. Why do you constantly give WotC the benefit of the doubt while completely ignoring what the 3PP are saying?? One D&D will be unsupported by any major 3PP. The third party ecosystem that you pretend to care about is going to be just fine without WotC. In fact, it's painfully obvious that it'll be better off in the long run. You can't work with a company that hates the fact that you exist. Obviously...
One thing I will mention. This new bit from D&D Shorts mentions "Tiers". It could be - and this is an increasingly faint hope - that DDB is not necessarily planning on taking away from existing users but instead on adding new tiers above/between Hero and Master to give people more options. Mostly because at this point with the community already feeling as burned and ruffled as it is, taking away people's subscriptions and asking them to pay drastically more for the same content is...not a winning play. Not when half the damn board is already dropping their sub over the OGL thing. Making subscribing more painful and making not being subscribed more punitive is gonna result in a fresh hemmorhage of people, especially for a feature as fundamentally pointless as "A.I. DMs"
I think you are correct, and D&D Beyond will be adding a fourth tier that gives access to the VTT and AI scripted content for $30.
I’m also on the record with Hasbro doubling the price for all of the existing tiers and with removing shared content access from free subscriptions (after some introductory period). Under normal circumstances, the community wouldn’t be happy with these two changes, but I think most would accept a $12 DM tier and a $6 player tier. I think that this is appropriately priced for what the customer is getting BTW. We might grumble about $6 a month to use shared D&D Beyond content, but how many would cancel just for this reason?
Unfortunately for Hasbro, these aren’t normal circumstances with the way they handled OGL 2.0 and the extremely angry community backlash Hasbro created. Now, I see very few accepting this type of price increase.
All Hasbro had to do was keep supporting OGL1.0a, increase the sub prices, license 3PP for use within D&D Beyond, and then start printing money.
It won't fly not even under the bestest of times. DM's are the ones who love the game and buy the materials. Players are free riders but spend time playing the game investing their time so the DM's have fun. When the DM's don't have fun, they don't buy new content and WotC goes broke broke (poor them). By upping the price on players and requiring them to pay to play it will reduce the pool of players and cut down the availability of games. It will also make it harder for players to migrate to DM's when they want to run their own campaigns due to the lack of players.
In the past, we had Adventurer's League fully advertised and ready to go by WotC that kept the game going well with new members. Well D&D has made it extremely difficult to find Adventurers league links now on their site. In the Midwest, I saw about 4 games going, one of which is because I had to show my hobby shop owner how to do it again. Getting a table going in real life is slow compared to 2019 which filled up quickly. With D&D doing everything they can to push the game to pay to play online, well good luck idiots, they are cutting down on the future funnel of players. If you get someone playing at 14 when they don't have money to buy, when they get older there is an excellent chance they'll convert into paying customers.
I see nothing but hard fail for D&D on their future business plan. They will do well for the first few quarters, I'll give them that, but mid to long term, they are done and will get the boot.
It's still weighed toward D&D in Best Sellers in Role-Playing & War Games but at least here, with some other fillers, the Pathfinder RPG: Advanced Player’s Guide (P2) comes in eighth.
There's frequently pretty rapid dropoff on a list like that. There's probably a factor of 2-4 drop just between #1 (PHB) and #2 (DMG).
B- every major third party has moved on. Why do you constantly give WotC the benefit of the doubt while completely ignoring what the 3PP are saying?? One D&D will be unsupported by any major 3PP.
Even if this were true (we have only statements of intent for this, and even then only for some 3PP, however prominent they might be), the reality is that D&D is still the most played TTRPG and therefore the most lucrative to make content for due to its installed base. If WotC is successful at toning down the OGL 2.0 provisions, they'll be back, if they even truly left in the first place.
It's still weighed toward D&D in Best Sellers in Role-Playing & War Games but at least here, with some other fillers, the Pathfinder RPG: Advanced Player’s Guide (P2) comes in eighth.
There's frequently pretty rapid dropoff on a list like that. There's probably a factor of 2-4 drop just between #1 (PHB) and #2 (DMG).
The WotC hierarchy have shown themselves to be duplicitous liars. Many former fans, who have invested themselves substantially in the game, have a right to, typically respectfully, have our say. Your toxic spins and slurs have no place in a forum of reasoning people.
There's a difference between not trusting WotC (fully justified) and believing every random rumor.
$30/month for existing master tier would just cause people to cancel their subscriptions, and Wizards is unlikely to be unaware of that. There's really three options:
WotC has gone collectively insane.
The proposed $30/mo is a new product proposal.
The rumors don't relate to reality at all.
I can fully imagine someone having a pie in the sky idea about AI DMs as a new service, but I can't imagine them thinking the existing service is worth $30/mo.
The $30/mo tier offers additional content, their goal is to migrate players to it, which is bloody insane. Players paid $9/mo for a MMORPG that gave unlimited entertainment, offering them AI DM's to run through the modules which they do once and done, isn't going to work, not anywhere near workable.
I wish D&D Execs the best of luck, they'll get their year on their contracts and if there are no golden hand cuffs they'll be Ole Yeller'd shortly there after. If it costs to much, they'll be sidelined and a new person will come in as they have a window seat.
They have little to no Social Media skills and their knowledge of the community is atrocious. Rather than doing incremental changes to test the water, they did the worst thing a boss can do is change everything in the first few weeks of being on the job without understanding what it will do. Its a sign that D&D hired Execs did not take the time to learn the product and the consumer. To me, its a sign of incompetence and reason for termination, I know if I behaved the way they did towards my customer, I'd be fired with reason.
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Hey now, Kirkland brand is actually pretty good sometimes!
Seriously though this made me laugh way more than it should, 10/10 joke. You're absolutely right too, I'm not going to expect a lot of content creators that people actually enjoy watching be like 'Hmm, should I stick around and keep playing D&D, and sign over 25% of my money -and- my rights -and- know that WotC could change the deal at any moment due to a passing wind?' like... Even the dumbest of the dumb aren't that dumb.
If they don't make books anymore for 6e, and they lock the game behind a subscription pay wall ...
Also, it's not locking out homebrew for non-subscribers, it's locking out homebrew at lower subscription tiers. At least that is the report.
Yeah, and they and their shills will hide behind the "Well you got all the official content, there's nothing saying that they HAVE to let you put in homebrew," to excuse away the fact that the ability is locked behind higher pay walls.
I genuinely feel bad for younger generations who have been so heavily conditioned to accept tiers of service for different price points. It's such a dystopian thing to do when you really look at it sometimes, like - I have this feature in my car that's supposed to be an SOS feature right? Well, it only works if you pay a subscription fee for it.
There's literally a button in my car that I can push to get help if I get into an accident, but it only operates if I pay them money every month forever for it to work. How ****ed up is that? Like, there's nothing stopping them from just making that a feature of cars, that all cars have a help button in case of emergency, but nope they gotta monetize it, and it's normalized! Normalized to the point that I'm sure a few people will read this and think 'well of COURSE they charge you for it!' like that's just... reasonable, and not horrifically immoral and ethically wrong on every level. It's one thing to offer premium services that are upgrades, like going to a fancy club and paying extra to sit in the best seat in the house; it's another to be like, well, sorry you didn't give me enough money, go die over there in that ditch I don't give a crap.
WotC thinking that they can squeeze monthly money out of us just to access a website that, frankly, should be a free service that they are offering in order to incentivize and draw players in to their game and keep an audience is... laughable. Pathetic. Sad. I dunno, take your pick of bad words.
Despite the ogl fiasco, I stayed cuz I relied a lot on Dnd beyond for organization, but if I'm going to be charged more than I've been charged to play MMORPGs, I will simply buy more notebooks for DM notes and unsubscribe. Happily
Nah, I'm good.
So the people monitoring that button's receiver in case you push it should just... sit there for free then?
Not all recurrent spending is unreasonable. If they offer me a service worth paying more for, then I'll pay for it, it's that simple. And if the base functionality (driving the car) doesn't require it, then the folks who don't want it don't have to pay. That is eminently fair.
For 6 bucks we get everything we need. I can run all of my campaigns at the 3 dollar level now. What could they possibly offer that would be worth an extra 24 bucks a month?? There's literally nothing that would add that much value.
The only way this makes sense is if the lowest tiers are significantly more expensive than they are now. Wait for it...
deleted
So this is pretty much where I stand:
Morally Good and/or Reasonable Things:
* Not trusting WotC execs
* Being angry at this whole mess
* Canceling your D&D Beyond sub and giving other games your business
* Canceling your D&D sub with intent to renew IF WotC stops this money-grubbing and puts irrevocable legal protection on open licenses by either leaving OGL 1.0 standing in perpetuity or cosigning ORC or whatever ethical equivalent there is.
* Still playing and enjoying D&D 1-5e openly at your lesiure with whatever materials you already own and/or get for free.
* Thanking the devs and workers who risked their jobs to bring us this information.
* Never forgetting this or letting them think we will/have.
* Standing on a boat with an eyepatch going "yarr harr harr"
Morally Bad and/or Unreasonable things:
* Harassing the devs/workers (who are on our side)
* Harassing people who still like and want to play actual D&D brand D&D
* Thinking this will blow over if we keep quiet and do nothing.
* Being against the stated goals of diversity/inclusivity and anti-NFT.
* Believing WotC execs brought up diversity/inclusivity and anti-NFT as anything other than a smokescreen to draw attention from everything else they were doing.
* Giving 6e any attention or money while this is going on.
* Pretty much every single thing WotC execs have done throughout this whole process, from even having the gall to think this stuff up in the first place through their passive-agressive gaslighty "apology"
That just about sums it up. I like D&D, I especially love 5e because I feel it combines the strengths of 3.5 and 4. I tried a few other systems, including Pathfinder, and they never really grabbed me the way D&D does. I will keep playing D&D as long as I can. But they also will never get another cent of my extremely limited funds until such time as they both stop trying to landlord us as well as make sure nobody else can ever try this crap again. And this specific leak, if it's true? It's totally the wrong direction.
That said, trying to find the balance of staying civil without kowtowing to ineffective civility politics is extremely difficult, but it's in our best interest to try as long as we remain active no matter what.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/4441/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_books
It says Internet culture is addicted to perpetual outrage.
There's a difference between not trusting WotC (fully justified) and believing every random rumor.
$30/month for existing master tier would just cause people to cancel their subscriptions, and Wizards is unlikely to be unaware of that. There's really three options:
I can fully imagine someone having a pie in the sky idea about AI DMs as a new service, but I can't imagine them thinking the existing service is worth $30/mo.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/4441/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_books
Call me skeptical but I don't believe this.
Thanks but that's a list of "Best Sellers in Puzzle & Game Reference" with a whole load of references to games like chess.
It's still weighed toward D&D in Best Sellers in Role-Playing & War Games but at least here, with some other fillers, the Pathfinder RPG: Advanced Player’s Guide (P2) comes in eighth.
A- you don't get to passively attack everyone you disagree with and then cry about those same people responding in kind. You call people rabid hyenas and then get upset because you're accused of sitting on the fence??? Seriously???
B- every major third party has moved on. Why do you constantly give WotC the benefit of the doubt while completely ignoring what the 3PP are saying?? One D&D will be unsupported by any major 3PP. The third party ecosystem that you pretend to care about is going to be just fine without WotC. In fact, it's painfully obvious that it'll be better off in the long run. You can't work with a company that hates the fact that you exist. Obviously...
It won't fly not even under the bestest of times. DM's are the ones who love the game and buy the materials. Players are free riders but spend time playing the game investing their time so the DM's have fun. When the DM's don't have fun, they don't buy new content and WotC goes broke broke (poor them). By upping the price on players and requiring them to pay to play it will reduce the pool of players and cut down the availability of games. It will also make it harder for players to migrate to DM's when they want to run their own campaigns due to the lack of players.
In the past, we had Adventurer's League fully advertised and ready to go by WotC that kept the game going well with new members. Well D&D has made it extremely difficult to find Adventurers league links now on their site. In the Midwest, I saw about 4 games going, one of which is because I had to show my hobby shop owner how to do it again. Getting a table going in real life is slow compared to 2019 which filled up quickly. With D&D doing everything they can to push the game to pay to play online, well good luck idiots, they are cutting down on the future funnel of players. If you get someone playing at 14 when they don't have money to buy, when they get older there is an excellent chance they'll convert into paying customers.
I see nothing but hard fail for D&D on their future business plan. They will do well for the first few quarters, I'll give them that, but mid to long term, they are done and will get the boot.
There's frequently pretty rapid dropoff on a list like that. There's probably a factor of 2-4 drop just between #1 (PHB) and #2 (DMG).
Even if this were true (we have only statements of intent for this, and even then only for some 3PP, however prominent they might be), the reality is that D&D is still the most played TTRPG and therefore the most lucrative to make content for due to its installed base. If WotC is successful at toning down the OGL 2.0 provisions, they'll be back, if they even truly left in the first place.
#2 is the Dungeon Master's Screen.
If this was pure fraud why wouldn't HotC respond to it rapidly, especially since it is right here on the own platform, like they did back in August?
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/d-d-beyond-feedback/30499-request-and-vote-for-new-features-for-ddb?page=119#c2468
Gideon Hawke
Just a Valor Bard trying to find his way through D&D after a 20+ year "break". Enjoying being back and sharing with my RL family.
The $30/mo tier offers additional content, their goal is to migrate players to it, which is bloody insane. Players paid $9/mo for a MMORPG that gave unlimited entertainment, offering them AI DM's to run through the modules which they do once and done, isn't going to work, not anywhere near workable.
I wish D&D Execs the best of luck, they'll get their year on their contracts and if there are no golden hand cuffs they'll be Ole Yeller'd shortly there after. If it costs to much, they'll be sidelined and a new person will come in as they have a window seat.
They have little to no Social Media skills and their knowledge of the community is atrocious. Rather than doing incremental changes to test the water, they did the worst thing a boss can do is change everything in the first few weeks of being on the job without understanding what it will do. Its a sign that D&D hired Execs did not take the time to learn the product and the consumer. To me, its a sign of incompetence and reason for termination, I know if I behaved the way they did towards my customer, I'd be fired with reason.