I’m a 30+ year D&D Veteran. I have issues with your statement, and I am not convinced, nor will I come back to WotC for any future purchases. I am also convincing others online to not purchase Hasbro products and games, and I am convincing people to avoid the movie. Every Fan of the hobby that was upset over Hasbro/WotC and the “OGL 1.1” and your follow up actions have become hostile to the corporate structure of Hasbro.
Thank you for the apology, but you still missed the point.
Wizards of the Coast is not the Stewards of Dungeons and Dragons, you are the Copyright holders, you own all the settings, characters, and lore surrounding games created by or owned by TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) when Wizards of the Coast Purchased them at the end of the 1990s. You also own game settings created in house by WotC/Hasbro, and a few purchased over the years.
You do not however thanks to Copyright Law own the Game Systems, or Gameplay, or Mechanics of Tabletop Gaming. The OGL was not a gift from WotC to the Community, it was a way for WotC to maintain control over a community while giving free access to rules which you did not actually have legal grounds to control. The OGL 1.0(a) was a mutual agreement, that allowed for D&D the brand to continue being published.
What we want as a community, is for heads to roll, specifically the people on top who “See customers as an obstacle to profits.” If Hasbro inc publicly fires the CEO, and other corporate managers, if Hasbro acknowledges that they do not own or control Table Top gaming. If Hasbro Inc gives an actual humble apology with out “we control this” attitude. Maybe we will listen to what you want to do going forward. But as it sits from the Letter you have issued. From your past responses. From the Egregious rumors from inside WotC. And from the actions of WotC towards other properties like Magic the gathering. We started this week done with “D&D” and after this letter, we are still done with D&D, with added Next Sunday will be Pathfinder 2e going forward.
This time next year I expect Paizo will have 90% of the market share that D&D had. And that is 100% Hasbro/Wizards of the Coasts fault.
I hate to say this, and I know you are mad, but your letter is not going to convince Hasbro/WOTC of anything other than you are a lost cause. It is absolutely reasonable to be upset, but as of yet no actual harm has been done to anyone other than WOTC's reputation. Believe it or not, neither you, any other community member here, nor any 3rd party developer have been harmed by anything that has occurred to date. If you want actual change, you will need to put forth reasonable expectations, and be prepared to deescalate your own rhetoric and actions in response. You don't seem willing to do that, honestly even if every one of your (fairly unlikely) demands are met, I don't expect you to be satisfied.
I personally don't even care if they stay as long as they sign the ORC or revise OGL 1.0 to be irrevocable, perpetual and unchanging agreement. Personally I don't care much about their supposed plans for $30/month sub tiers. I will just move to a better service. But if D&D goes through with OGL 2.0 we will lose all the 3PP that made it amazing and to be frank, WotC own material has been worse than trash lately.
This is Hasbro we're talking about. One of the largest toy and game manufacturers in history. A 100 year old globally-recognized brand worth billions. The inventors of Mr Potato Head, and G.I. Joe, and My Little Pony. The owners of Monopoly, the Transformers, the Power Rangers, and Pokemon. The largest licensed distributor of toys for this other little startup you might have heard of . . . Disney! They own Tonka, they own Playskool, and they own Dungeons & Dragons.
But I'm sure your Open Letter will be the magic bullet that cuts through all the noise and all the flack of the last few months, right? I'm sure Chris Cocks is cleaning our his desk right now, and penning his heartfelt apologies to you and to everyone.
Or... rather than demanding a pound of flesh, rather than demanding that "heads roll", maybe it would be more productive if everyone could just discuss and debate the issue on reasonable terms.
It will take quite a bit for me to trust WOTC, and I'm not sure they are up to the task of building that trust.
I had some gripes about 5e but tried it out, bought about $500 worth of 5e Books and have a 5e Campaign running. I don't like what I see about One D&D at all and I already had one foot out the door.
Yesterday I spend $200 on Pathfinder books and my next Campaign I DM will be Pathfinder. In the words of business, if WOTC wants me to purchase One D&D, I will have to be a "win back" - a customer who has left, but is possible to convince to return.
Here are my reasons. I understand that my way to play is not the only way, and as such I am willing to compromise on some things. However - these are my gripes: First, regarding 5e: - Many necessary rules are needlessly spaced out across 40 books, or just are not even in any book. I want a compendium of monsters (or even 3 to 5 compendiums) - but I don't want to go searching through 20 different adventure modules to find a Sea Elf stats, for example. Or I don't want to buy Saltmarsh to get rules for sea Combat. So in summary - I want all the rules in one place or in somewhere close to 5 or so books. Other later additions should all be options, not core races or rules. - Lots of monsters were nerfed to be basically useless. Harpies, Sirens, Medusas, Basilisks. I understand people will disagree with this, but I really see many creatures as pointless. 1st round 4 out of six of the party makes their save then 2nd round the other two make their save - and the encounter is over because those monsters don't really have any other weapon.
What I saw coming out in Q4 2022 led me to believe that these trends would just get worse with One D&D. Again, for some people might see this as "better", but to me I saw the actual game play as getting further from what I and my table enjoy.
Then there was talk that I was under monetized. I and many others have been to this rodeo before with MMO after MMO. For many of us, it is why we went back to tabletop and are not playing MMO's. If we wanted to be monetized through microtransactions and loot chests - we would be playing far more creative IP's.
Here I will just point out the elephant in the room - WOTC hasn't done much with the IP. Most the IP are the same as in 1e or 2e. I fought Strahd in 1e in Ravenloft. Ok, it got a refersher in 2e but after that it's just the same adventure. Baldurs Gate - already been done so many times. Undermountain - same. Tales of the Yawning Portal - same adventures I played 30 years ago. Forgotten Realms is stale, but WOTC just doubled down on that and focused on only one section of it in 5e - the Sword Coast.
So all of this is even before the OGL thing.
As a player and DM - I actually don't like DnD Beyond. I like to home brew things and don't want to pay extra to modify my own game.
What kind of VTT will you develop? Do you even have a VTT Dev team and working Beta? What will it offer to us above what is offered by R20, Foundry, or FG?
The conclusion I came to was that WOTC would foist onto me an inferior VTT and make me pay more for it, as well as make me and also my players pay more for customizing our game. Remember from above I have serious problems with some of the monsters in 5e - and to change them (which you will charge me more for)
WOTC has done nothing really to show me that my conclusions are not correct. Please realize that a large portion of your customer base are not teenagers - we work in corporations, run businesses, work in PR departments, etc etc. Sure, some small portion of the customer base are easily hoodwinked by a doublespeak press release - but many of us just roll our eyes and spend our money elsewhere. I, like many of my peers who started this hobby in the 80's are professional empty nesters with a disposable income - but we aren't stupid. Maybe we are waiting for the Elder Scrolls 6 to come out and in 2024 we will choose between spending hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours on that or One DnD - or Pathfinder.
Don't think for a minute that I'm going to spend hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours on an entertainment product when the company blatantly makes the game worse and wants to charge a higher price for a lesser product decade after decade.
Wizards of the Coast is not the Stewards of Dungeons and Dragons, you are the Copyright holders
Uhh, that literally makes them the stewards of D&D
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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)
Ultimately, our money is in our pocket and we have lots of entertainment choices to spend that money on. I'm not going to spend money on a product for the reason "they haven't harmed me". Not being physically harmed isn't a reason to make a purchase, lol.
Sorry, but you have it backwards - customers do not owe Hasboro / WOTC anything. We don't need to "put forth reasonable expectations", lol.
If a company wants me to purchase their product it's their responsibility to sell a product that enough people feel is worth it.
You have it completely backwards if you think that customers are somehow responsible for convincing a company to release a decent product and not exploit it's customer base, lol.
I appreciate the emotion on display with your post, because it shows you care.
Sharing a little bit of my own situation.... I started playing online through R20 about 6 years ago with long-lost D&D friends from high school. Ended up spending about $1,000 on content between hard copy books for myself and friends, D&DBeyond content (that can travel in tablet form) and finally again on R20. Yes, I bought everything thrice - pretty much exactly how WotC would have wanted me to.... just so I could have the experience I wanted anywhere I went.
I'm not a fan of OneD&D, nor are members of my campaign. Honestly, it's a disappointment to traditional TTRPG enthusiasts that run in the same circles that I do. Before any of this OGL stuff started, we were already discussing staying on the 5e platform in perpetuity (not moving to OneD&D), or checking out Pathfinder 2.0. I gotta say... after how WotC has managed the OGL conversation, and the lack of awareness and humility on display, it's only pushed me and my clan closer to Pathfinder.
If there is even a hint that I'd have to switch VTT platforms and buy new/old content all over again, but only through D&D Beyond, I'll be gone - and so will the 10 other companions I game with. We've spent a ton of money on this hobby already - much more than any video games. And to chase content that is less than the quality expected, it just doesn't make sense. As one poster pointed out above, we're all adults well into our 40's-50's... we're professional and have a variety of backgrounds. We have a lot of other choices.
Will it move the needle for WotC? Probably not. But I felt like I had to make my opinion known in a public forum that's associated with WotC.
This is Hasbro we're talking about. One of the largest toy and game manufacturers in history. A 100 year old globally-recognized brand worth billions. The inventors of Mr Potato Head, and G.I. Joe, and My Little Pony. The owners of Monopoly, the Transformers, the Power Rangers, and Pokemon. The largest licensed distributor of toys for this other little startup you might have heard of . . . Disney! They own Tonka, they own Playskool, and they own Dungeons & Dragons.
But I'm sure your Open Letter will be the magic bullet that cuts through all the noise and all the flack of the last few months, right? I'm sure Chris Cocks is cleaning our his desk right now, and penning his heartfelt apologies to you and to everyone.
Or... rather than demanding a pound of flesh, rather than demanding that "heads roll", maybe it would be more productive if everyone could just discuss and debate the issue on reasonable terms.
Have you seen the financials for Hasbro? Do you know what percentage of profits D&D makes? If anything they should have been addressing all the other IPs that aren't carrying their weight and look at what D&D is doing right. When you tank the brand that is responsible for the lion's share of profit for your mega corporation, yes heads should roll. That is a justified pound of flesh and very appropriate. However, I still believe that the people who brought the new leadership on board did so for a reason which coincides with the new direction they intended to go. Those people need to go too.
Wizards of the Coast is not the Stewards of Dungeons and Dragons, you are the Copyright holders
Uhh, that literally makes them the stewards of D&D
Actually no. A Steward is a guardian of property and a protector of large groups of people. You could argue that their legal team are stewards of the Copyrighted material, but the game itself is not something that can be copyrighted, and they are not the protectors of what you are doing on the table top. If anything with Paizo standing up with other publishers to make the ORC they are the actual Stewards of D&D, as they are stepping up to protect the community that plays D&D. Remember, it's not just the Copyrighted material, but also the narrative style of table top gamming that is called D&D. Just like the PC is what we call all home computers not Just the IBM PC.
Wizards of the Coast is not the Stewards of Dungeons and Dragons, you are the Copyright holders
Uhh, that literally makes them the stewards of D&D
Actually no. A Steward is a guardian of property and a protector of large groups of people.
That's an odd definition to use for a product and a set of ideas
Try this one
Stewardship: the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care
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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)
This is Hasbro we're talking about. One of the largest toy and game manufacturers in history. A 100 year old globally-recognized brand worth billions. The inventors of Mr Potato Head, and G.I. Joe, and My Little Pony. The owners of Monopoly, the Transformers, the Power Rangers, and Pokemon. The largest licensed distributor of toys for this other little startup you might have heard of . . . Disney! They own Tonka, they own Playskool, and they own Dungeons & Dragons.
But I'm sure your Open Letter will be the magic bullet that cuts through all the noise and all the flack of the last few months, right? I'm sure Chris Cocks is cleaning our his desk right now, and penning his heartfelt apologies to you and to everyone.
Or... rather than demanding a pound of flesh, rather than demanding that "heads roll", maybe it would be more productive if everyone could just discuss and debate the issue on reasonable terms.
Have you seen the financials for Hasbro? Do you know what percentage of profits D&D makes? If anything they should have been addressing all the other IPs that aren't carrying their weight and look at what D&D is doing right. When you tank the brand that is responsible for the lion's share of profit for your mega corporation, yes heads should roll. That is a justified pound of flesh and very appropriate. However, I still believe that the people who brought the new leadership on board did so for a reason which coincides with the new direction they intended to go. Those people need to go too.
It goes deeper.
20%+ of Hasbro Earnings are from WotC, and 70% of the profits come from WotC. This came out ... almost 2 years ago when some Investor reporting source investigated Hasbro Stocks as the last few years has seen a marked growth in profits. The result was, WotC was responsible for the growth. And besides acknowledging they own WotC, they never talked to investors about WotC once in over 20 years.
The Investors most of last year were calling for WotC and Hasbro to Split. For investors they saw this as a win/win two good stocks for the price of one. Hasbro instead replaced the CEO with the former CEO of WotC and moved forward with a plan to prove they could make more money by keeping the two entities as one. If this disaster continues, and if Wallstreet becomes aware of it, and if the bottom line is actually effected. Hasbro stocks will be hurt, and investors will want the pound of flesh. My hope is they act fast, give the community the pound of flesh, turn us from hostile customers to appeased customers before Wallstreet decides that Hasbro is a bad investment.
Also Hasbro makes 6 billion a year in Earnings and just under 2 billion in profits. As far as companies on the stock market, they are small fry.
Just for some clarification, because I think some people might be missing some of the points involved, WotC staff claiming any form of stewardship of the TTRPG community is nothing but PR speak to try to convince whoever is left here to listen to them an a more positive light. Their copyrights are only meaningful for their IP but it has no baring on our own tables games, virtual or otherwise, we're the player we decide what we play. It is simply hubris to try to claim that just because you own the D&D brand that you have any say in what or how we get to enjoy the games we play.
This distinction is important because previously where the community was willing to listen to WotC for how to enhance their own games, now that trust and partnership has been broken. If they want to get that back, if they want to have the same position at our tables that they once enjoyed, they will need to take more drastic measures to win us back.
At a bare minimum this includes flat out stating, in writing, as part of the next and all future licenses, that previous versions of the OGL remain irrevocable for perpetuity. Not that they have the right to revoke it in the first place, they can certainly try and many people with their own army of lawyers are eager to let them do it so they can challenge that in court where the odds are drastically against WotC. That's why this is the bare minimum, because it only requires for them to do nothing.
But that won't bring people back, because of the trust they broke with their fans and community, which is a lot harder to repair then with any single updated license. This is why it's valid to set the terms so high, to call for their pound of flesh, it would take that much to convince people that it's worth risking their trust once more.
Sure it's unlikely, but all that means is that you're not going to get those die hard customers back. And this is a big problem for WotC which their executives really don't understand the scale of yet, I'd wager. As we speak D&D sales are dropping off a cliff across stores all over the world. Both in store and online. This is not hyperbole, this is actually happening right now to anyone looking at sales. The D&D movie coming out was marketed to those very same fans who now have no reason to see it on opening weekend. Rather then becoming the next big IP movie franchise the way Transformers was, it will become just another D&D movie flop, only this time it will be entirely due to Hasbro and WotC incompetence rather then the movie itself being bad.
While this is going on, Paizo is seeing a huge boost in sales of their own products, which is dwarfing anything D&D related, just about everyone I know is jumping ship to the competition. In addition Kobold Press JUST announced their plans for their Black Flag project, which will be developed under the new Open RPG Creative License (ORC) that's also coming out soon. Both of these companies will have things to show by *next month* already. Black Flag is even set to start public playtesting by this year's GenCon. Suffice to say WotC doesn't have the standing to push their agenda anymore.
In the end the very people these executives actually answer to, the Hasbro stockholders, have much more to lose from keeping these executives around then they do from firing them.
To speak their greedy corporate language, if I was a Hasbro stockholder, I would be insisting they spin off WotC to a separate entity and replace all of the leadership with new people that they can trust to lead the brand effectively and not squander the literal hundreds of millions of dollars they've spent between the movie and the other online/VTT development they've done.
Wizards of the Coast is not the Stewards of Dungeons and Dragons, you are the Copyright holders
Uhh, that literally makes them the stewards of D&D
While they do have quite a lot of copyrighted material, more importantly they own Trademarks, which does more or less make them the stewards. They may not be the voice or heart, or whatever, but they are the stewards, even if many people feel they aren't doing a good job of it.
Ultimately, our money is in our pocket and we have lots of entertainment choices to spend that money on. I'm not going to spend money on a product for the reason "they haven't harmed me". Not being physically harmed isn't a reason to make a purchase, lol.
Did I say that? You are absolutely free to speak with your money, and many have. What I was saying is that hyperbolic language does not make the object of your anger more likely to make amends, and the response in the OP was absolutely hyperbolic given that no actual harm (physical, mental, financial) has occurred yet
Sorry, but you have it backwards - customers do not owe Hasboro / WOTC anything. We don't need to "put forth reasonable expectations", lol.
You do need to if you want a response that is positive. Otherwise you, your words, and your actions are just written off.
If a company wants me to purchase their product it's their responsibility to sell a product that enough people feel is worth it.
You have it completely backwards if you think that customers are somehow responsible for convincing a company to release a decent product and not exploit it's customer base, lol.
They absolutely are though. if consumers don't buy one product because of x, that is pressure to sell a better product or act differently. And I encourage anyone who wants to vote with their money and unsubscribe from the service, cancel accounts, whatever, to do so if they feel strongly that way. But. what the OP wrote was not a demand that the company sell a better product and not exploit a customer base, they wanted "heads to roll" people to be fired, etc. That does not in any way accomplish the two things you have said, it only fulfills your lust for vengeance. The next CEO/executive team is most likely governed by the same goals of increasing profit and getting ahead of competition, so if you think that change will ultimately benefit the game, you are most likely wrong.
Unfortunately it's important for these people to continue reminding the staff of what they've lost or they will easily convince themselves they're not as bad as they are.
They claim to want feedback, but if the only feedback they get is from people who stick around then they won't get accurate feedback. This will be massively skewed via survivorship bias, where only the people who stayed behind, those who don't understand or care about the true state of the community, and are happy to just agree with whatever WotC gives them. I'm sure WotC themselves wants to have this skewed feedback so they can claim that D&D players never really cared about the OGL and it was all just overblown, completely ignoring the huge number of D&D players who left.
I don't know how many analysts actually follow the community at a granular-enough level to have an opinion on the OGL and what it means to potential investors - in fact, if anything they would probably applaud it - thinking it's the easy way to monetize the IP.
More likely that they've seen a dramatic reduction in subscribers to D&DBeyond, which absolutely will impact the forecasts that they just signed up for as part of their annual financial plan (assuming their year-end is 12/31). That's my guess as to why Kyle is posting now and seeming contrite.
The analysts will care if "reported earnings" show a decline... but again, only after being reported.
Analysts and investors generally don't know as much about the industry when compared to business leaders and customers. Not always the case - but I'm guessing that's the case with Hasbro.
An open letter to Kyle Brink,
I’m a 30+ year D&D Veteran. I have issues with your statement, and I am not convinced, nor will I come back to WotC for any future purchases. I am also convincing others online to not purchase Hasbro products and games, and I am convincing people to avoid the movie. Every Fan of the hobby that was upset over Hasbro/WotC and the “OGL 1.1” and your follow up actions have become hostile to the corporate structure of Hasbro.
Thank you for the apology, but you still missed the point.
Wizards of the Coast is not the Stewards of Dungeons and Dragons, you are the Copyright holders, you own all the settings, characters, and lore surrounding games created by or owned by TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) when Wizards of the Coast Purchased them at the end of the 1990s. You also own game settings created in house by WotC/Hasbro, and a few purchased over the years.
You do not however thanks to Copyright Law own the Game Systems, or Gameplay, or Mechanics of Tabletop Gaming. The OGL was not a gift from WotC to the Community, it was a way for WotC to maintain control over a community while giving free access to rules which you did not actually have legal grounds to control. The OGL 1.0(a) was a mutual agreement, that allowed for D&D the brand to continue being published.
What we want as a community, is for heads to roll, specifically the people on top who “See customers as an obstacle to profits.” If Hasbro inc publicly fires the CEO, and other corporate managers, if Hasbro acknowledges that they do not own or control Table Top gaming. If Hasbro Inc gives an actual humble apology with out “we control this” attitude. Maybe we will listen to what you want to do going forward. But as it sits from the Letter you have issued. From your past responses. From the Egregious rumors from inside WotC. And from the actions of WotC towards other properties like Magic the gathering. We started this week done with “D&D” and after this letter, we are still done with D&D, with added Next Sunday will be Pathfinder 2e going forward.
This time next year I expect Paizo will have 90% of the market share that D&D had. And that is 100% Hasbro/Wizards of the Coasts fault.
Yours
Rachel Winter (Aka the Gothic Shark)
I hate to say this, and I know you are mad, but your letter is not going to convince Hasbro/WOTC of anything other than you are a lost cause. It is absolutely reasonable to be upset, but as of yet no actual harm has been done to anyone other than WOTC's reputation. Believe it or not, neither you, any other community member here, nor any 3rd party developer have been harmed by anything that has occurred to date. If you want actual change, you will need to put forth reasonable expectations, and be prepared to deescalate your own rhetoric and actions in response. You don't seem willing to do that, honestly even if every one of your (fairly unlikely) demands are met, I don't expect you to be satisfied.
I personally don't even care if they stay as long as they sign the ORC or revise OGL 1.0 to be irrevocable, perpetual and unchanging agreement. Personally I don't care much about their supposed plans for $30/month sub tiers. I will just move to a better service. But if D&D goes through with OGL 2.0 we will lose all the 3PP that made it amazing and to be frank, WotC own material has been worse than trash lately.
You want Hasbro to fire the entire C-Suite?
That's the pound of flesh you demand? Really?
This is Hasbro we're talking about. One of the largest toy and game manufacturers in history. A 100 year old globally-recognized brand worth billions. The inventors of Mr Potato Head, and G.I. Joe, and My Little Pony. The owners of Monopoly, the Transformers, the Power Rangers, and Pokemon. The largest licensed distributor of toys for this other little startup you might have heard of . . . Disney! They own Tonka, they own Playskool, and they own Dungeons & Dragons.
But I'm sure your Open Letter will be the magic bullet that cuts through all the noise and all the flack of the last few months, right? I'm sure Chris Cocks is cleaning our his desk right now, and penning his heartfelt apologies to you and to everyone.
Or... rather than demanding a pound of flesh, rather than demanding that "heads roll", maybe it would be more productive if everyone could just discuss and debate the issue on reasonable terms.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
I will word my view differently:
It will take quite a bit for me to trust WOTC, and I'm not sure they are up to the task of building that trust.
I had some gripes about 5e but tried it out, bought about $500 worth of 5e Books and have a 5e Campaign running. I don't like what I see about One D&D at all and I already had one foot out the door.
Yesterday I spend $200 on Pathfinder books and my next Campaign I DM will be Pathfinder. In the words of business, if WOTC wants me to purchase One D&D, I will have to be a "win back" - a customer who has left, but is possible to convince to return.
Here are my reasons. I understand that my way to play is not the only way, and as such I am willing to compromise on some things. However - these are my gripes:
First, regarding 5e:
- Many necessary rules are needlessly spaced out across 40 books, or just are not even in any book. I want a compendium of monsters (or even 3 to 5 compendiums) - but I don't want to go searching through 20 different adventure modules to find a Sea Elf stats, for example. Or I don't want to buy Saltmarsh to get rules for sea Combat. So in summary - I want all the rules in one place or in somewhere close to 5 or so books. Other later additions should all be options, not core races or rules.
- Lots of monsters were nerfed to be basically useless. Harpies, Sirens, Medusas, Basilisks. I understand people will disagree with this, but I really see many creatures as pointless. 1st round 4 out of six of the party makes their save then 2nd round the other two make their save - and the encounter is over because those monsters don't really have any other weapon.
What I saw coming out in Q4 2022 led me to believe that these trends would just get worse with One D&D. Again, for some people might see this as "better", but to me I saw the actual game play as getting further from what I and my table enjoy.
Then there was talk that I was under monetized. I and many others have been to this rodeo before with MMO after MMO. For many of us, it is why we went back to tabletop and are not playing MMO's. If we wanted to be monetized through microtransactions and loot chests - we would be playing far more creative IP's.
Here I will just point out the elephant in the room - WOTC hasn't done much with the IP. Most the IP are the same as in 1e or 2e. I fought Strahd in 1e in Ravenloft. Ok, it got a refersher in 2e but after that it's just the same adventure. Baldurs Gate - already been done so many times. Undermountain - same. Tales of the Yawning Portal - same adventures I played 30 years ago. Forgotten Realms is stale, but WOTC just doubled down on that and focused on only one section of it in 5e - the Sword Coast.
So all of this is even before the OGL thing.
As a player and DM - I actually don't like DnD Beyond. I like to home brew things and don't want to pay extra to modify my own game.
What kind of VTT will you develop? Do you even have a VTT Dev team and working Beta? What will it offer to us above what is offered by R20, Foundry, or FG?
The conclusion I came to was that WOTC would foist onto me an inferior VTT and make me pay more for it, as well as make me and also my players pay more for customizing our game. Remember from above I have serious problems with some of the monsters in 5e - and to change them (which you will charge me more for)
WOTC has done nothing really to show me that my conclusions are not correct. Please realize that a large portion of your customer base are not teenagers - we work in corporations, run businesses, work in PR departments, etc etc. Sure, some small portion of the customer base are easily hoodwinked by a doublespeak press release - but many of us just roll our eyes and spend our money elsewhere. I, like many of my peers who started this hobby in the 80's are professional empty nesters with a disposable income - but we aren't stupid. Maybe we are waiting for the Elder Scrolls 6 to come out and in 2024 we will choose between spending hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours on that or One DnD - or Pathfinder.
Don't think for a minute that I'm going to spend hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours on an entertainment product when the company blatantly makes the game worse and wants to charge a higher price for a lesser product decade after decade.
Uhh, that literally makes them the stewards of D&D
Active characters:
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)
Ultimately, our money is in our pocket and we have lots of entertainment choices to spend that money on. I'm not going to spend money on a product for the reason "they haven't harmed me". Not being physically harmed isn't a reason to make a purchase, lol.
Sorry, but you have it backwards - customers do not owe Hasboro / WOTC anything. We don't need to "put forth reasonable expectations", lol.
If a company wants me to purchase their product it's their responsibility to sell a product that enough people feel is worth it.
You have it completely backwards if you think that customers are somehow responsible for convincing a company to release a decent product and not exploit it's customer base, lol.
I appreciate the emotion on display with your post, because it shows you care.
Sharing a little bit of my own situation.... I started playing online through R20 about 6 years ago with long-lost D&D friends from high school. Ended up spending about $1,000 on content between hard copy books for myself and friends, D&DBeyond content (that can travel in tablet form) and finally again on R20. Yes, I bought everything thrice - pretty much exactly how WotC would have wanted me to.... just so I could have the experience I wanted anywhere I went.
I'm not a fan of OneD&D, nor are members of my campaign. Honestly, it's a disappointment to traditional TTRPG enthusiasts that run in the same circles that I do. Before any of this OGL stuff started, we were already discussing staying on the 5e platform in perpetuity (not moving to OneD&D), or checking out Pathfinder 2.0. I gotta say... after how WotC has managed the OGL conversation, and the lack of awareness and humility on display, it's only pushed me and my clan closer to Pathfinder.
If there is even a hint that I'd have to switch VTT platforms and buy new/old content all over again, but only through D&D Beyond, I'll be gone - and so will the 10 other companions I game with. We've spent a ton of money on this hobby already - much more than any video games. And to chase content that is less than the quality expected, it just doesn't make sense. As one poster pointed out above, we're all adults well into our 40's-50's... we're professional and have a variety of backgrounds. We have a lot of other choices.
Will it move the needle for WotC? Probably not. But I felt like I had to make my opinion known in a public forum that's associated with WotC.
Have you seen the financials for Hasbro? Do you know what percentage of profits D&D makes? If anything they should have been addressing all the other IPs that aren't carrying their weight and look at what D&D is doing right. When you tank the brand that is responsible for the lion's share of profit for your mega corporation, yes heads should roll. That is a justified pound of flesh and very appropriate. However, I still believe that the people who brought the new leadership on board did so for a reason which coincides with the new direction they intended to go. Those people need to go too.
Actually no. A Steward is a guardian of property and a protector of large groups of people. You could argue that their legal team are stewards of the Copyrighted material, but the game itself is not something that can be copyrighted, and they are not the protectors of what you are doing on the table top. If anything with Paizo standing up with other publishers to make the ORC they are the actual Stewards of D&D, as they are stepping up to protect the community that plays D&D. Remember, it's not just the Copyrighted material, but also the narrative style of table top gamming that is called D&D. Just like the PC is what we call all home computers not Just the IBM PC.
That's an odd definition to use for a product and a set of ideas
Try this one
Stewardship: the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care
Active characters:
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)
It goes deeper.
20%+ of Hasbro Earnings are from WotC, and 70% of the profits come from WotC. This came out ... almost 2 years ago when some Investor reporting source investigated Hasbro Stocks as the last few years has seen a marked growth in profits. The result was, WotC was responsible for the growth. And besides acknowledging they own WotC, they never talked to investors about WotC once in over 20 years.
The Investors most of last year were calling for WotC and Hasbro to Split. For investors they saw this as a win/win two good stocks for the price of one. Hasbro instead replaced the CEO with the former CEO of WotC and moved forward with a plan to prove they could make more money by keeping the two entities as one. If this disaster continues, and if Wallstreet becomes aware of it, and if the bottom line is actually effected. Hasbro stocks will be hurt, and investors will want the pound of flesh. My hope is they act fast, give the community the pound of flesh, turn us from hostile customers to appeased customers before Wallstreet decides that Hasbro is a bad investment.
Also Hasbro makes 6 billion a year in Earnings and just under 2 billion in profits. As far as companies on the stock market, they are small fry.
Dictionary wording, still means the same thing. They are owners of a license not the stewards of gameplay.
Just for some clarification, because I think some people might be missing some of the points involved, WotC staff claiming any form of stewardship of the TTRPG community is nothing but PR speak to try to convince whoever is left here to listen to them an a more positive light. Their copyrights are only meaningful for their IP but it has no baring on our own tables games, virtual or otherwise, we're the player we decide what we play. It is simply hubris to try to claim that just because you own the D&D brand that you have any say in what or how we get to enjoy the games we play.
This distinction is important because previously where the community was willing to listen to WotC for how to enhance their own games, now that trust and partnership has been broken. If they want to get that back, if they want to have the same position at our tables that they once enjoyed, they will need to take more drastic measures to win us back.
At a bare minimum this includes flat out stating, in writing, as part of the next and all future licenses, that previous versions of the OGL remain irrevocable for perpetuity. Not that they have the right to revoke it in the first place, they can certainly try and many people with their own army of lawyers are eager to let them do it so they can challenge that in court where the odds are drastically against WotC. That's why this is the bare minimum, because it only requires for them to do nothing.
But that won't bring people back, because of the trust they broke with their fans and community, which is a lot harder to repair then with any single updated license. This is why it's valid to set the terms so high, to call for their pound of flesh, it would take that much to convince people that it's worth risking their trust once more.
Sure it's unlikely, but all that means is that you're not going to get those die hard customers back. And this is a big problem for WotC which their executives really don't understand the scale of yet, I'd wager. As we speak D&D sales are dropping off a cliff across stores all over the world. Both in store and online. This is not hyperbole, this is actually happening right now to anyone looking at sales. The D&D movie coming out was marketed to those very same fans who now have no reason to see it on opening weekend. Rather then becoming the next big IP movie franchise the way Transformers was, it will become just another D&D movie flop, only this time it will be entirely due to Hasbro and WotC incompetence rather then the movie itself being bad.
While this is going on, Paizo is seeing a huge boost in sales of their own products, which is dwarfing anything D&D related, just about everyone I know is jumping ship to the competition. In addition Kobold Press JUST announced their plans for their Black Flag project, which will be developed under the new Open RPG Creative License (ORC) that's also coming out soon. Both of these companies will have things to show by *next month* already. Black Flag is even set to start public playtesting by this year's GenCon. Suffice to say WotC doesn't have the standing to push their agenda anymore.
In the end the very people these executives actually answer to, the Hasbro stockholders, have much more to lose from keeping these executives around then they do from firing them.
To speak their greedy corporate language, if I was a Hasbro stockholder, I would be insisting they spin off WotC to a separate entity and replace all of the leadership with new people that they can trust to lead the brand effectively and not squander the literal hundreds of millions of dollars they've spent between the movie and the other online/VTT development they've done.
Sylnache Ashrain - 7th Sojourn
The OGL Story was in Motley Fool Today - so it's on the radar of Financial Analysts.
That's probably why we see a 180 today with discussion and input suddenly being encouraged.
The corporate headsman's axe is already being sharpened and they sent out Kyle Brink to talk the mob down a bit and get subscriptions flowing again.
The whole funny thing about Kyle Brink in my opinion is he didn't have a DnDBeyond account 5 hours ago, lol.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/01/17/big-change-coming-for-hasbro-should-investor-worry/
While they do have quite a lot of copyrighted material, more importantly they own Trademarks, which does more or less make them the stewards. They may not be the voice or heart, or whatever, but they are the stewards, even if many people feel they aren't doing a good job of it.
Did I say that? You are absolutely free to speak with your money, and many have. What I was saying is that hyperbolic language does not make the object of your anger more likely to make amends, and the response in the OP was absolutely hyperbolic given that no actual harm (physical, mental, financial) has occurred yet
You do need to if you want a response that is positive. Otherwise you, your words, and your actions are just written off.
They absolutely are though. if consumers don't buy one product because of x, that is pressure to sell a better product or act differently. And I encourage anyone who wants to vote with their money and unsubscribe from the service, cancel accounts, whatever, to do so if they feel strongly that way. But. what the OP wrote was not a demand that the company sell a better product and not exploit a customer base, they wanted "heads to roll" people to be fired, etc. That does not in any way accomplish the two things you have said, it only fulfills your lust for vengeance. The next CEO/executive team is most likely governed by the same goals of increasing profit and getting ahead of competition, so if you think that change will ultimately benefit the game, you are most likely wrong.
Unfortunately it's important for these people to continue reminding the staff of what they've lost or they will easily convince themselves they're not as bad as they are.
They claim to want feedback, but if the only feedback they get is from people who stick around then they won't get accurate feedback. This will be massively skewed via survivorship bias, where only the people who stayed behind, those who don't understand or care about the true state of the community, and are happy to just agree with whatever WotC gives them. I'm sure WotC themselves wants to have this skewed feedback so they can claim that D&D players never really cared about the OGL and it was all just overblown, completely ignoring the huge number of D&D players who left.
Sylnache Ashrain - 7th Sojourn
I don't know how many analysts actually follow the community at a granular-enough level to have an opinion on the OGL and what it means to potential investors - in fact, if anything they would probably applaud it - thinking it's the easy way to monetize the IP.
More likely that they've seen a dramatic reduction in subscribers to D&DBeyond, which absolutely will impact the forecasts that they just signed up for as part of their annual financial plan (assuming their year-end is 12/31). That's my guess as to why Kyle is posting now and seeming contrite.
The analysts will care if "reported earnings" show a decline... but again, only after being reported.
Analysts and investors generally don't know as much about the industry when compared to business leaders and customers. Not always the case - but I'm guessing that's the case with Hasbro.
You are right. We demanda OGL1a perpetualy