I am aware that for many this is very unlikely. But let's hear suggestions anyway ok ?
Here's MY suggestions:
First thing would be to replace the current CEO of Wizard of the Coast. It's clear to many of us that Mrs Williams's vision is and always will be incompatible with what D&D stands for and no amount of backpedaling will repair the damage she and other greedy higher ups have recently done to the brand. Trust has been broken and even a new CEO will have to demonstrate a huge amount of good faith to start rebuilding that trust.
Obviously not having a terrible new OGL for starters. But I mean once this is done and done properly. (If that ever happens of course).
A good way to show that good faith would be to allow third party content to be sold and used directly in D&D Beyond.
Also canceling this silly idea of turning D&D Beyond into a more videogame like VTT that is clearly made to monetize the brand via a plethora of microtransactions. It's perfectly fine to sell adventures and rulebooks and charge for annual subscription tiers but the direction the greedy higher ups are obviously steering toward is unacceptable.
As long as Hasbro is calling the shots it really does not matter who is in what position below the Hasbro board of directors.
I see no good endings in this as long as Hasbro is in charge so I hope WOTC is split off from Hasbro if another shareholder takeover is attempted like what happened the last time.
I like the analogy the Dungeon Dudes just used. Its like WotC stepped into one of those tiled trap rooms where all the tiles are trapped except one particular path and if they want to find their way back into the trust of the community they have to step on all the right tiles.
Stop lying about the intent of the OGL, its history, and its original intended limits and application. Its easily verified that de-authorization is not something that Hasbro/Wizards themselves thought was an option until late 2021, and also easily verified that the original version happily allowed for electronic products and video games. Them claiming otherwise is a bizarre slap in the face of people capable of basic fact checking.
Then, presumably, they need to honor their past agreements and promises. They can't be trusted while they're trying to de-authorize 1.0a - for better or worse, thats the deal they made and while they can regret it they can't just ignore it.
THEN, they need to pursue their goals - opposing hateful, racist, etc. content - through other means not coupled to advancing their new VTT product. I recommend looking into bringing something like the old D20 badge back, to identify content that meets their standards beyond just what is allowed by the OGL. Create a premium class of DnD content, that is easily identified and available on things like DnD Beyond. This is important if they want us to believe they actually care about these Social Justice goals, as opposed to just using them as a cover.
While I agree with you sentiment, none of that is within the realm of actionable, except for maybe the purchase third party stuff.
The CEO is doing her job. She doesn’t work for us, she works for the shareholders. Her job is to make money. She is trying to do that. The problem isn’t their mindset, it is they lifted the thin veil between corporation and customer. We live in a mostly capitalist world. What Wizards is doing is exactly what they are supposed to. They just aren’t supposed to show us. They are supposed to appear as a friend. These moves reminded us they are a giant corporation with only one thing on their mind. Also, they employ amazing people who are dedicated to making the best product they can. When it was the design people out front, our relationship was great. The last few months though, the executive team has been out front. Their plan appears to transition back through the executive producer. He will be around for awhile. Then the designers will be back out front.
The VTT thing is not going to change. You keep using the word greedy, but that just isn’t right. What they are doing is a feature of capitalism, not a bug. Wizards is not in the business of doing anything but making more money. That is all.
Again though, the designers and other teams are in the business of making the product. As soon as it is safe to do so, they will hide the executives again, and get back to just being about the game. Until this thing is settled though, it is all business.
Her job was to not lose tens of thousands of subscriptions in a matter of weeks.
She is failing at her job. If they don't have someone who understands at least the basic organization of the game and how it works, and understands how to the community responds to things, that person will continue to drive the game into the ground.
No customers means no money. Too many companies keep forgetting that fact as soon as they're mega successful. While they need us, we who have been playing for decades, don't need them. I have all the books I need. I could stop supporting and my game group would still have decades more fun. No to mention if I get bored, I can always switch back to Star Wars, World of Darkness, Shadowrun, Palladium Rifts (mostly have Robotech lol) and many other systems. They are not the definitive TTRPG and never have been. What I would miss from the OGL is stuff like animal adventures, Wizard of Oz, D&Destiny as well as the many kickstarted nuanced content that wizards would of never thought would be a good idea.
The Graphite Dragon said "The CEO is doing her job. She doesn’t work for us, she works for the shareholders. "
In most companies I would agree with that but not with Hasbro. She is working for the board of directors and I am not at all sure they are looking out for the welfare of the stockholders over their keeping their seats on the board.
We will see over the next month or so since I suspect another takeover attempt will be made to separate WOTC from Hasbro.
Everything else you said I agree with which what makes this such a sad story. No happy endings are going to occur here.
I honestly dont think there is any way they will now ever truly regain the trust of the community. A lot of the escapades they have done to get to here just arent things you can just forget about. The reply from Kyle is a start but its not an end and from here on in , the community are watching whats happening like a hawk, nothing janky is going to get passed us. They have a mountain to climb ,, with a 200lb back pack full of eggs which need to get to the top without a single one cracking. I just dont know if its even possible ,, this is the kind of thing people will remember for decades ,, not a few weeks or months.
On the one hand, once some things are broken they cannot be fixed, or at least, not fixed to a point where they are identical to what they were before they were broken. I think we're very much in that boat right now, because WotC has already shown us several times that they are interested in finding ways of taking things away from us, the community, in order to make more money. And that just doesn't sit right with many people, rightfully so.
On the other hand, D&D is a huge part of many lives and it exists well outside of what WotC 'owns' as far as I'm concerned, too. But that doesn't necessarily mean that there won't be damage done to D&D if the parent company is working hard to drive away the player base with unfair rules and requirements that previously were not expected in the TTRPG space, and are unecessary and harmful to the community - which is exactly what WotC is doing right now.
A lot of whether or not they CAN build back trust is currently hinging on... how WotC wraps this all up.
Are they going to insist that they should revoke the original OGL, despite their attempts at doing so being such a telling fiasco of their greed and hubris?
Are they going to insist that they need to do it, despite having no evidence that it actually needs to be done?
Are they going to change course at any point in time and learn from these mistakes?
I think if they try and change the OGL to any other version it's going to be fishy at best, and establish a precidence that puts the third party creators on shaky ground - even if it's a 'better' OGL (not even sure it could be at this point) it still sets a beat in time where, they changed it. It's a thing that they do. Which means that they will use it as a reference point in the future to say why they should change it again, perhaps to less favorable conditions then.
Like basically even if they walk EVERYTHING back, and say '"We're going to give you this new, -actually- better OGL, please switch to it while we deauthorize the old OGL which we never really said we had the right to do but just trust us okay we can totally do that. You shouldn't even be upset, the new OGL is actually better, for reals this time!"
Even if that ^ happens, why would I go along with it when the current OGL seems to have been working for 2 decades just fine, and is actually fair, tried and true in court etc. - just knowing in the back of my brain that at any point in the future Wizards could do ALL OF THIS all over again and try and get 25% of my profits? Why would I willingly be chill with that?
The only way they fix this is not doing it at all, basically, and I really don't see them doing that. They're going to insist that they 'have to' in order to protect everyone from the big bad NFT's and hateful content that literally doesn't exist, and shoehorn this whole thing in because... They want money. And they don't care how much they hurt the community to get it. =/ So like... yeah they could fix it. By just not doing anything. But they won't.
Her job was to not lose tens of thousands of subscriptions in a matter of weeks.
She is failing at her job. If they don't have someone who understands at least the basic organization of the game and how it works, and understands how to the community responds to things, that person will continue to drive the game into the ground.
Actually, no.
Her job has nothing to do with subscriptions, or even the number of customers. It has to do with the amount of revenue brought in.
A new OGL was a necessity in order to take control of the VTT and digital market. They were about 10 days away from making it a quiet reality. Then a leak happened. Likely, few executives and shareholders care one bit if 100 people pay 1 dollar for DandD as opposed to 1 person paying 100 dollars. The revenue is the same.
Imagine the4 value of getting rid of the squeekiest of wheels now, over corporate behaviour that the business world finds normal, rather than having them pan the actual product on release. Get rid of the ones who will rebel laterand just keep around the whales and the content to play along ones.remember the numbers. 50 people will pay 2 dollars and be happy. Revenue neutral. But, what if 40 people will pay 3 dollars and be happy? Now you are making 20 more bucks and 60 complainers and problems have left.
It is easier to keep 40 people happy than 100.
I am not saying this went how they wanted or planned, merely that it is not over for her yet, and the company will bounce back.
This is gonna be a stupid question but..how are they undermonetizing us? Did these people forget that, for all the notariety that D&D has, this is still a niche ******* hobby? Just cause Vin Diesel likes D&D doesn't mean all the motor jocks will be.
Stop trying to make ALL the money, just make the money and be glad the books are in the black, you want us to use your VTT? Incentivize us, show us why you think yours is better, don't just go kicking the crap out of your competition with big sticks and make yourselves the only game in town. I'm perfectly happy to do this shit with webcams and trusting my players rolling their dice, Wizards.
....Right, where was...Oh. Back off the controlling VTTs. You don't get to run in years after the fact of someone else doing this and say no one gets to do it anymore. Be competitive. You people make alot of ******* money, right? Put it where you should: investing in your own resources! Christ...
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"I don't give a rat's f***ing ass how big it is, it can still bleed and I'm not dealing with this s*** a minute longer!!!" -Brass Khorne, Dragonborn Rogue/Fighter Battlemaster.
"Welcome to the Weeping Willow! Ale, rooms, or both?...Yes, dogs are fine, why does everyone ask that?" -Lucky Shot, Tabaxi Eldritch Knight and Innkeeper
"Greetings, I'm Sir Dexter of House Barkton. What do I do? I'm a Good Boy." -Dexter, Awakened Dog Rogue and knight of the realm.
I am aware that for many this is very unlikely. But let's hear suggestions anyway ok ?
Here's MY suggestions:
First thing would be to replace the current CEO of Wizard of the Coast. It's clear to many of us that Mrs Williams's vision is and always will be incompatible with what D&D stands for and no amount of backpedaling will repair the damage she and other greedy higher ups have recently done to the brand. Trust has been broken and even a new CEO will have to demonstrate a huge amount of good faith to start rebuilding that trust.
Obviously not having a terrible new OGL for starters. But I mean once this is done and done properly. (If that ever happens of course).
A good way to show that good faith would be to allow third party content to be sold and used directly in D&D Beyond.
Also canceling this silly idea of turning D&D Beyond into a more videogame like VTT that is clearly made to monetize the brand via a plethora of microtransactions. It's perfectly fine to sell adventures and rulebooks and charge for annual subscription tiers but the direction the greedy higher ups are obviously steering toward is unacceptable.
What are YOUR suggestions ?
Honestly? Ditch the idea of a VTT policy, and offer an open license for other VTT providers to be able to offer OneDnD on their platforms, including an API where people could use content they've purchased on DnDBeyond on other platforms without having to repurchase it. Offer all of the Older Editions of D&D, from the white box up through 5e under a perpetual, irrevocable royalty free license. Maybe the ORC License when it comes out, or a Creative Commons license for the entire SRD document. Offer expanded SRD's that included all of the races, classes, subclasses and spells, and any monsters that aren't covered under trade dress like the Beholder and Mind Flayers. And Offer OneDnD under a fair and open license that is not a poison pill preventing you from using older licenses.
In short, give the older versions of DnD that they don't want to play with anymore to the community in a way that can NEVER be taken back, knock off the anti-competative BS, and offer us a good, and irrevocable license for OneDnD, with the promise that it will be rolled into the "Old Versions" license when it's replaced in 10 years or so.
Trust won't be earned by one action. Trust is earned over years. They NEED to make binding things they can't back out of so that trust is not needed right now to give them time to earn trust back.
They need to acknowledge that they messed up bad enough that they do not get the benefit of the doubt with this new OGL. We are not going to trust them to not abuse power so it needs to be explicit what they can and can't do. No vague get out of jail free cards.
They need to stop lying. Stop calling it a draft. Stop using deceptive words in posts. Do not say this licence will be irrevocable in a blog post, and then in the licence literally redefine the word.
Openness, honesty, and no back handed sneaky ways out. Give us a document that literally does what we need it to do and make it irrevocable in the literal sense. Make it a document that benefits us in the same way 1.0a does. Don't attack VTTs.
And be very pro consumer for the foreseeable. You have lost the right to push the envelope even in a reasonable way right now.
Stop thinking like a corporation and start thinking as if you were a member of the community.
Look, it's super simple, the only problem we have is that we (the community) want to have a community-driven game. It's really all there is to it. Paizo, Troll Lord Games, Goodman games.. and countless others all understand that they are members of a gaming community first and a business second and it's why they don't have the problems Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro is constantly having with its community. You can't use deception, trickery, lies and marketing BS and expect anything from your community but outrage. It works in the short term sometimes when the game is really good and people are willing to overlook some stuff, but a constant and endless barrage of bullshit just doesn't fly long term.
Really Wizards of the Coast has been lucky because this community has been so in love with their 5e D&D that they haven't looked up in quite a while, but really this crap has been going on pretty much since 5e launched. The only thing that has changed is people are simply wising up. What they are doing right now.. they have been doing all the time, this isn't some great revelation or misstep, this is business as usual for Wizards of the Coast.
If they want to make amends at this stage however, it's going to have to be a pretty major overhaul of the entire way the company operates. I would say five things need to happen.
1. A complete halt to any attempts to change the OGL, they need to accept that D&D is an open-source product that belongs to the community and embrace this concept whole heartedly and stop trying to impede 3rd party creativity and expansion of the game.
2. They need to embrace all of the communities of D&D, not just the modern community even if its not profitable. D&D is a lot of different things to a lot of different people, identify them all and cater to them. On some you will make money, on others you will lose money, but uniting this community under one flag without exception comes with long-term benefits.
3. Stop hiring people based on their gender, race or self-proclaimed identities and start hiring based on talent and experience. All their effort for diversity has resulted in some of the shitiest content I have seen come out of Wizards of the Coast in 3 decades and its because they stop looking at qualifications and are just trying to prove how diverse they are.
4. Stop turning the management of the company over to people that don't know anything about RPG's and the Table Top Community. If you haven't been in the hobby for 20 years you have no business running an RPG publishing company.
5. Stop listening to the vocal minority. Yes, we get it, you want to be inclusive of everyone, but the everyone's you are targeting make up less than .01% of the community. You can be inclusive of minority groups without excluding the majority groups.
Honestly, as long as Hasbro owns them, I will have trouble taking ANYTHING at face value after the s%^tshow this has been. Getting them to say anything even remotely honest, much less acceptable, has been too great a onus for them. I am moving away to other more crunchy systems for a while. I will reconsider after 18 months and see how WotC is doing as a steward of our system.
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I am aware that for many this is very unlikely. But let's hear suggestions anyway ok ?
Here's MY suggestions:
First thing would be to replace the current CEO of Wizard of the Coast. It's clear to many of us that Mrs Williams's vision is and always will be incompatible with what D&D stands for and no amount of backpedaling will repair the damage she and other greedy higher ups have recently done to the brand. Trust has been broken and even a new CEO will have to demonstrate a huge amount of good faith to start rebuilding that trust.
Obviously not having a terrible new OGL for starters. But I mean once this is done and done properly. (If that ever happens of course).
A good way to show that good faith would be to allow third party content to be sold and used directly in D&D Beyond.
Also canceling this silly idea of turning D&D Beyond into a more videogame like VTT that is clearly made to monetize the brand via a plethora of microtransactions. It's perfectly fine to sell adventures and rulebooks and charge for annual subscription tiers but the direction the greedy higher ups are obviously steering toward is unacceptable.
What are YOUR suggestions ?
As long as Hasbro is calling the shots it really does not matter who is in what position below the Hasbro board of directors.
I see no good endings in this as long as Hasbro is in charge so I hope WOTC is split off from Hasbro if another shareholder takeover is attempted like what happened the last time.
I like the analogy the Dungeon Dudes just used. Its like WotC stepped into one of those tiled trap rooms where all the tiles are trapped except one particular path and if they want to find their way back into the trust of the community they have to step on all the right tiles.
They need to stop lying, first off.
Stop lying about the intent of the OGL, its history, and its original intended limits and application. Its easily verified that de-authorization is not something that Hasbro/Wizards themselves thought was an option until late 2021, and also easily verified that the original version happily allowed for electronic products and video games. Them claiming otherwise is a bizarre slap in the face of people capable of basic fact checking.
Then, presumably, they need to honor their past agreements and promises. They can't be trusted while they're trying to de-authorize 1.0a - for better or worse, thats the deal they made and while they can regret it they can't just ignore it.
THEN, they need to pursue their goals - opposing hateful, racist, etc. content - through other means not coupled to advancing their new VTT product. I recommend looking into bringing something like the old D20 badge back, to identify content that meets their standards beyond just what is allowed by the OGL. Create a premium class of DnD content, that is easily identified and available on things like DnD Beyond. This is important if they want us to believe they actually care about these Social Justice goals, as opposed to just using them as a cover.
While I agree with you sentiment, none of that is within the realm of actionable, except for maybe the purchase third party stuff.
The CEO is doing her job. She doesn’t work for us, she works for the shareholders. Her job is to make money. She is trying to do that. The problem isn’t their mindset, it is they lifted the thin veil between corporation and customer. We live in a mostly capitalist world. What Wizards is doing is exactly what they are supposed to. They just aren’t supposed to show us. They are supposed to appear as a friend. These moves reminded us they are a giant corporation with only one thing on their mind.
Also, they employ amazing people who are dedicated to making the best product they can. When it was the design people out front, our relationship was great. The last few months though, the executive team has been out front.
Their plan appears to transition back through the executive producer. He will be around for awhile. Then the designers will be back out front.
The VTT thing is not going to change. You keep using the word greedy, but that just isn’t right. What they are doing is a feature of capitalism, not a bug. Wizards is not in the business of doing anything but making more money. That is all.
Again though, the designers and other teams are in the business of making the product. As soon as it is safe to do so, they will hide the executives again, and get back to just being about the game. Until this thing is settled though, it is all business.
Her job was to not lose tens of thousands of subscriptions in a matter of weeks.
She is failing at her job. If they don't have someone who understands at least the basic organization of the game and how it works, and understands how to the community responds to things, that person will continue to drive the game into the ground.
No customers means no money. Too many companies keep forgetting that fact as soon as they're mega successful. While they need us, we who have been playing for decades, don't need them. I have all the books I need. I could stop supporting and my game group would still have decades more fun.
No to mention if I get bored, I can always switch back to Star Wars, World of Darkness, Shadowrun, Palladium Rifts (mostly have Robotech lol) and many other systems. They are not the definitive TTRPG and never have been.
What I would miss from the OGL is stuff like animal adventures, Wizard of Oz, D&Destiny as well as the many kickstarted nuanced content that wizards would of never thought would be a good idea.
The Graphite Dragon said "The CEO is doing her job. She doesn’t work for us, she works for the shareholders. "
In most companies I would agree with that but not with Hasbro. She is working for the board of directors and I am not at all sure they are looking out for the welfare of the stockholders over their keeping their seats on the board.
We will see over the next month or so since I suspect another takeover attempt will be made to separate WOTC from Hasbro.
Everything else you said I agree with which what makes this such a sad story. No happy endings are going to occur here.
I honestly dont think there is any way they will now ever truly regain the trust of the community.
A lot of the escapades they have done to get to here just arent things you can just forget about.
The reply from Kyle is a start but its not an end and from here on in , the community are watching whats happening like a hawk, nothing janky is going to get passed us.
They have a mountain to climb ,, with a 200lb back pack full of eggs which need to get to the top without a single one cracking.
I just dont know if its even possible ,, this is the kind of thing people will remember for decades ,, not a few weeks or months.
There is nothing they can do now.... they made too many mistakes in a very short time.
On the one hand, once some things are broken they cannot be fixed, or at least, not fixed to a point where they are identical to what they were before they were broken. I think we're very much in that boat right now, because WotC has already shown us several times that they are interested in finding ways of taking things away from us, the community, in order to make more money. And that just doesn't sit right with many people, rightfully so.
On the other hand, D&D is a huge part of many lives and it exists well outside of what WotC 'owns' as far as I'm concerned, too. But that doesn't necessarily mean that there won't be damage done to D&D if the parent company is working hard to drive away the player base with unfair rules and requirements that previously were not expected in the TTRPG space, and are unecessary and harmful to the community - which is exactly what WotC is doing right now.
A lot of whether or not they CAN build back trust is currently hinging on... how WotC wraps this all up.
Are they going to insist that they should revoke the original OGL, despite their attempts at doing so being such a telling fiasco of their greed and hubris?
Are they going to insist that they need to do it, despite having no evidence that it actually needs to be done?
Are they going to change course at any point in time and learn from these mistakes?
I think if they try and change the OGL to any other version it's going to be fishy at best, and establish a precidence that puts the third party creators on shaky ground - even if it's a 'better' OGL (not even sure it could be at this point) it still sets a beat in time where, they changed it. It's a thing that they do. Which means that they will use it as a reference point in the future to say why they should change it again, perhaps to less favorable conditions then.
Like basically even if they walk EVERYTHING back, and say '"We're going to give you this new, -actually- better OGL, please switch to it while we deauthorize the old OGL which we never really said we had the right to do but just trust us okay we can totally do that. You shouldn't even be upset, the new OGL is actually better, for reals this time!"
Even if that ^ happens, why would I go along with it when the current OGL seems to have been working for 2 decades just fine, and is actually fair, tried and true in court etc. - just knowing in the back of my brain that at any point in the future Wizards could do ALL OF THIS all over again and try and get 25% of my profits? Why would I willingly be chill with that?
The only way they fix this is not doing it at all, basically, and I really don't see them doing that. They're going to insist that they 'have to' in order to protect everyone from the big bad NFT's and hateful content that literally doesn't exist, and shoehorn this whole thing in because... They want money. And they don't care how much they hurt the community to get it. =/ So like... yeah they could fix it. By just not doing anything. But they won't.
Actually, no.
Her job has nothing to do with subscriptions, or even the number of customers. It has to do with the amount of revenue brought in.
A new OGL was a necessity in order to take control of the VTT and digital market. They were about 10 days away from making it a quiet reality. Then a leak happened. Likely, few executives and shareholders care one bit if 100 people pay 1 dollar for DandD as opposed to 1 person paying 100 dollars. The revenue is the same.
Imagine the4 value of getting rid of the squeekiest of wheels now, over corporate behaviour that the business world finds normal, rather than having them pan the actual product on release. Get rid of the ones who will rebel laterand just keep around the whales and the content to play along ones.remember the numbers. 50 people will pay 2 dollars and be happy. Revenue neutral. But, what if 40 people will pay 3 dollars and be happy? Now you are making 20 more bucks and 60 complainers and problems have left.
It is easier to keep 40 people happy than 100.
I am not saying this went how they wanted or planned, merely that it is not over for her yet, and the company will bounce back.
A new Board of Directors...
Stop attacking VTT competitors and focus building their best VTT.
This is gonna be a stupid question but..how are they undermonetizing us? Did these people forget that, for all the notariety that D&D has, this is still a niche ******* hobby? Just cause Vin Diesel likes D&D doesn't mean all the motor jocks will be.
Stop trying to make ALL the money, just make the money and be glad the books are in the black, you want us to use your VTT? Incentivize us, show us why you think yours is better, don't just go kicking the crap out of your competition with big sticks and make yourselves the only game in town. I'm perfectly happy to do this shit with webcams and trusting my players rolling their dice, Wizards.
....Right, where was...Oh. Back off the controlling VTTs. You don't get to run in years after the fact of someone else doing this and say no one gets to do it anymore. Be competitive. You people make alot of ******* money, right? Put it where you should: investing in your own resources! Christ...
"I don't give a rat's f***ing ass how big it is, it can still bleed and I'm not dealing with this s*** a minute longer!!!" -Brass Khorne, Dragonborn Rogue/Fighter Battlemaster.
"Welcome to the Weeping Willow! Ale, rooms, or both?...Yes, dogs are fine, why does everyone ask that?" -Lucky Shot, Tabaxi Eldritch Knight and Innkeeper
"Greetings, I'm Sir Dexter of House Barkton. What do I do? I'm a Good Boy." -Dexter, Awakened Dog Rogue and knight of the realm.
Honestly? Ditch the idea of a VTT policy, and offer an open license for other VTT providers to be able to offer OneDnD on their platforms, including an API where people could use content they've purchased on DnDBeyond on other platforms without having to repurchase it. Offer all of the Older Editions of D&D, from the white box up through 5e under a perpetual, irrevocable royalty free license. Maybe the ORC License when it comes out, or a Creative Commons license for the entire SRD document. Offer expanded SRD's that included all of the races, classes, subclasses and spells, and any monsters that aren't covered under trade dress like the Beholder and Mind Flayers. And Offer OneDnD under a fair and open license that is not a poison pill preventing you from using older licenses.
In short, give the older versions of DnD that they don't want to play with anymore to the community in a way that can NEVER be taken back, knock off the anti-competative BS, and offer us a good, and irrevocable license for OneDnD, with the promise that it will be rolled into the "Old Versions" license when it's replaced in 10 years or so.
The current executive was chosen by the Board of Directors of Hasbro Inc to lead Wizards of the Coast.
Replacement at the executive level is not going to happen any time soon no matter how many times her detractors plan ways to sabotage her.
However, management at the staff level over at Wizards of the Coast may need a closer examination on how business is conducted.
Trust won't be earned by one action. Trust is earned over years. They NEED to make binding things they can't back out of so that trust is not needed right now to give them time to earn trust back.
They need to acknowledge that they messed up bad enough that they do not get the benefit of the doubt with this new OGL. We are not going to trust them to not abuse power so it needs to be explicit what they can and can't do. No vague get out of jail free cards.
They need to stop lying. Stop calling it a draft. Stop using deceptive words in posts. Do not say this licence will be irrevocable in a blog post, and then in the licence literally redefine the word.
Openness, honesty, and no back handed sneaky ways out. Give us a document that literally does what we need it to do and make it irrevocable in the literal sense. Make it a document that benefits us in the same way 1.0a does. Don't attack VTTs.
And be very pro consumer for the foreseeable. You have lost the right to push the envelope even in a reasonable way right now.
I actually think it would be very easy.
Stop thinking like a corporation and start thinking as if you were a member of the community.
Look, it's super simple, the only problem we have is that we (the community) want to have a community-driven game. It's really all there is to it. Paizo, Troll Lord Games, Goodman games.. and countless others all understand that they are members of a gaming community first and a business second and it's why they don't have the problems Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro is constantly having with its community. You can't use deception, trickery, lies and marketing BS and expect anything from your community but outrage. It works in the short term sometimes when the game is really good and people are willing to overlook some stuff, but a constant and endless barrage of bullshit just doesn't fly long term.
Really Wizards of the Coast has been lucky because this community has been so in love with their 5e D&D that they haven't looked up in quite a while, but really this crap has been going on pretty much since 5e launched. The only thing that has changed is people are simply wising up. What they are doing right now.. they have been doing all the time, this isn't some great revelation or misstep, this is business as usual for Wizards of the Coast.
If they want to make amends at this stage however, it's going to have to be a pretty major overhaul of the entire way the company operates. I would say five things need to happen.
1. A complete halt to any attempts to change the OGL, they need to accept that D&D is an open-source product that belongs to the community and embrace this concept whole heartedly and stop trying to impede 3rd party creativity and expansion of the game.
2. They need to embrace all of the communities of D&D, not just the modern community even if its not profitable. D&D is a lot of different things to a lot of different people, identify them all and cater to them. On some you will make money, on others you will lose money, but uniting this community under one flag without exception comes with long-term benefits.
3. Stop hiring people based on their gender, race or self-proclaimed identities and start hiring based on talent and experience. All their effort for diversity has resulted in some of the shitiest content I have seen come out of Wizards of the Coast in 3 decades and its because they stop looking at qualifications and are just trying to prove how diverse they are.
4. Stop turning the management of the company over to people that don't know anything about RPG's and the Table Top Community. If you haven't been in the hobby for 20 years you have no business running an RPG publishing company.
5. Stop listening to the vocal minority. Yes, we get it, you want to be inclusive of everyone, but the everyone's you are targeting make up less than .01% of the community. You can be inclusive of minority groups without excluding the majority groups.
Honestly, as long as Hasbro owns them, I will have trouble taking ANYTHING at face value after the s%^tshow this has been. Getting them to say anything even remotely honest, much less acceptable, has been too great a onus for them. I am moving away to other more crunchy systems for a while. I will reconsider after 18 months and see how WotC is doing as a steward of our system.