They lost me with the OGL debacle, and every misstep and debacle and scandal that came after, just cemented that. But there's a new guy running the show. Without turning this into a huge debate and nitpicking what you THINK I mean, what is the general belief that this new guy will not continue the trend set by his predecessors? I'm like Fox Mulder, I want to believe. Believe that I can feel good about spending money for DDB specifically, something I invested in heavily even before WotC bought it out. Sure, I can "use " the content, in limited ways as a non-paid account. But I'm a forever DM, and I have friends that want me to run games again online, since we are spread across the country., and the best way for me to do that, is to use the DDB assets I already paid for years ago.
This isn't about that. It's about moving forward under the new guy. If you want the history of all the scandals, debacles, and missteps, you can find that on any D&D tuber channel.
This isn't about that. It's about moving forward under the new guy. If you want the history of all the scandals, debacles, and missteps, you can find that on any D&D tuber channel.
I'm assuming you're referring to DNDshorts(Serial liar about RAW & RAI to encourage gaming the rules+Refused to verify his inside sources(Same as Linda Cociega in this regard) to the detriment of his bait+blindly believed GlassDoor(A site where literally ANYONE can schmittalk an employer w/no verification of truth) because it aligned with his pre-determinations), Indestructoboy(Lied about AI usage by using a tool that used AI+abandoning those he championed to make his own game), Dungeons & Discourse, Professor DM, Crispy's Tales & Tea, etc.(Clickbaiters who lie all the time about sales, Critical Role & anything & everything they come across)?
Or someone else?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
This isn't about that. It's about moving forward under the new guy. If you want the history of all the scandals, debacles, and missteps, you can find that on any D&D tuber channel.
Oh, I have an understanding about what happened, I was trying to see if our understandings matched. Since you won’t go, I will. The ogl was a whole lot of nothing. In short, a company said, we are going to do something. The customers said, we don’t want you to do that. The company (after what felt like way too long, but really wasn’t all that long) said ok, we won’t do that. In fact, we’ll go above and beyond everything our customers had even asked. That is the condensed version of what happened in the ogl.
Now, for reasons I don’t understand, people are still angry at that company for even considering it, rather than happy that the company listened to its customers.
My original question was to see your thoughts on the situation. Because if you were looking for clarity on what happened, I would try and have that discussion. But if you were one of the people still angry about a company that listened to its customers, I wasn’t planning to engage.
But here I am. So I will say that all the management folks around during the ogl have left, so there’s that. If you don’t trust WotC, that’s certainly your right. But I’m not sure what I or anyone else on the forums here could say to change your mind. So what is it you’re looking for?
This isn't about that. It's about moving forward under the new guy. If you want the history of all the scandals, debacles, and missteps, you can find that on any D&D tuber channel.
The reason the information is important is because it gives folks an idea of what the problems you perceived were, so they can respond about what has changed in a way tailored to you.
For the OGL matter, for example, there are lots of different understandings - a significant portion driven by individuals spreading misinformation or making a big issue over something that was truly, truly mundane. Some of these issues got resolved in a way that favored the players and third party creators - so if you are looking for a boon, the fact players won is a pretty big one. Other players unfortunately took issue with Wizards trying to protect the game from hate, which is a very different issue that would have a different type of response.
Letting folks know what your problems are, particularly when these issues were not monolithic, helps respondents provide more useful feedback.
And i wouldn't even say the WotC leadership was to blame for the OGL debacle. My read on the situation was that it was pressure from Hasboro execs who don't understand the product or the third-party market alienating the community to make a quick buck, while WotC had to take the blame and try to win back trust when it blew up in their face.
Was going to say something similar to the points raised by Xalthu and Caerwyn. The internet has sadly devolved into an ecosystem of largely misplaced anger, disinformation, and click/rage-baiting, and the D&D corner of the online TTRPG space is unfortunately not immune to that. When someone talks about a "debacle" or "scandal" around D&D it's genuinely difficult to be sure they're talking about an actual Bad Thing, a non-event that's been misrepresented or blown out of proportion, or something invented to drive views/clicks. Without volunteering information, I can't say what "trend" the OP is referring to that may or may not be continued, and if said "trend" is genuinely something problematic to begin with. As Caerwyn mentioned, a loud and cantankerous - but not actually large - portion of D&D players raised a stink about changes made to shed portrayals in the lore of certain species that mirrored real-world racism, as well as other efforts to keep hateful content out of 5E including third-party content. I certainly hope the OP isn't expecting to see that trend change, because it's been good for WotC, good for D&D, and good for welcoming players new and old to feel comfortable and included in the game.
Was going to say something similar to the points raised by Xalthu and Caerwyn. The internet has sadly devolved into an ecosystem of largely misplaced anger, disinformation, and click/rage-baiting, and the D&D corner of the online TTRPG space is unfortunately not immune to that. When someone talks about a "debacle" or "scandal" around D&D it's genuinely difficult to be sure they're talking about an actual Bad Thing, a non-event that's been misrepresented or blown out of proportion, or something invented to drive views/clicks. Without volunteering information, I can't say what "trend" the OP is referring to that may or may not be continued, and if said "trend" is genuinely something problematic to begin with. As Caerwyn mentioned, a loud and cantankerous - but not actually large - portion of D&D players raised a stink about changes made to shed portrayals in the lore of certain species that mirrored real-world racism, as well as other efforts to keep hateful content out of 5E including third-party content. I certainly hope the OP isn't expecting to see that trend change, because it's been good for WotC, good for D&D, and good for welcoming players new and old to feel comfortable and included in the game.
They're talking about how the current "guy" is allegedly a brand/IP killer by being hired at all, based on very selective places that this guy has worked at(Despite all the brands he didn't "kill"/were ruined anyway due to even higher management &/or shareholders' excessive greed). Some very angry & passionate fandoms have grudges easily exploited by Dungeons & Discourse, Professor DM & similar clickbait channels, with the residual fandom anger reignited & transposed doublefold onto WotC again with this one.
D&D is a game. I like playing D&D. And I have all the tools I need, both in paper and online, that I need to play that game. But if you're worried about spending money on a company that has done something nefarious, or even just merely distasteful, I've got bad news for you. They all have. From IBM to Apple, from Hugo Boss to Nike, from Dole to Nestle... compared to their crimes, the D&D OGL "debacle" is barely a kerfuffle.
D&D is a game. I like playing D&D. And I have all the tools I need, both in paper and online, that I need to play that game. But if you're worried about spending money on a company that has done something nefarious, or even just merely distasteful, I've got bad news for you. They all have. From IBM to Apple, from Hugo Boss to Nike, from Dole to Nestle... compared to their crimes, the D&D OGL "debacle" is barely a kerfuffle.
The current guy who's in charge of WotC on behalf of Hasbro.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
I have no idea who's in charge of WotC or Hasbro. None of the executives at either company are in my gaming group. You could make up a name and I'd believe you, and it wouldn't matter to me in the least, because my party will still be fighting an Arena full of evil snake cultists on Wednesday. I was playing D&D before the shenanigans, I played D&D during the shenanigans, and I'll be playing D&D long after the shenanigans have settled. Literally every single corporation in the history of the world has skeletons in its closet. If you want to avoid interacting with those skeletons, you should do what Dick Proenneke did back in 1968. And if that's a name you're not familiar with, go watch the documentary, "Alone in the Wilderness". It is truly breathtaking.
I have no idea who's in charge of WotC or Hasbro. None of the executives at either company are in my gaming group. You could make up a name and I'd believe you, and it wouldn't matter to me in the least, because my party will still be fighting an Arena full of evil snake cultists on Wednesday. I was playing D&D before the shenanigans, I played D&D during the shenanigans, and I'll be playing D&D long after the shenanigans have settled. Literally every single corporation in the history of the world has skeletons in its closet. If you want to avoid interacting with those skeletons, you should do what Dick Proenneke did back in 1968. And if that's a name you're not familiar with, go watch the documentary, "Alone in the Wilderness". It is truly breathtaking.
Around then they also changed their management model to bring the entire brand under one boss (Ayoub) where in the past, things like the ttrpg, movies, video games were all broken up under different leads. The only real impact to you and your group would be good management and the health of the brand in creating new products. If you’re like me, you’ve already got enough stuff to last a lifetime, so you don’t need new stuff. (Though if you’re like me you’re also always looking for and excited to get cool new stuff 😀)
Ignoring all the nitpicking, Dan Ayoub seems to be talking the talk, and his first step, making the VTT publicly accessible without subscription, is walking the walk.
But it's going to take a lot more before he has proven that he's getting things back on track. It'll also take a while before his decisions are those driving things forward, when it comes to real direction. He can make decisions, but production of a book etc takes months.
It is the “Open Game License” - a license that allows non-Wizards of the Coast entities to use certain aspects of D&D’s intellectual property to create third-party content. The original document used by 5e was extremely poorly written from a legal stance.
In late 2022, as Wizards was gearing up for the release of 5.24, and shortly after someone stole some of Wizards’ intellectual property to make an extremely racist and high profile product, a draft of a new OGL was leaked to the public. The draft - would have limited the license so you could not use Wizards’ products to create hate. It also would have given Wizards a cut of proceeds from any entity that made over a million dollars per year wirh Wizards’ intellectual property - which only applied to about ten entities.
Some threw a fit - largely driven by bad legal analysis, misinformation (including one of the largest D&D YouTubers being caught in multiple active lies that continued to circulate even after found out to be lies), and some questionable interpretations of the very simple word “draft”. It ultimately was a very loud fit - but not as loud as many of those yelling thought (only about 10,000 people responded to a poll Wizards did on the subject; compared to the 40-50,000 who participated in the 5.24 playtest polls).
Wizards dropped the financial component quickly, and actually produced a much better license for content creators, while still containing the “do not be a bigot with our property” riders. Given the timing - right after Ernie Gygax stole Wizards’ property to promote hate - and the fact the only thing they really fought for was anti-bigotry language, it seems the financial component was less important or likely a negotiating tool.
Despite giving creators new rights to use certain valuable trademarks in exchange for not being bigots, this proposed OGL document was still attacked. Wizards ultimately released the content under the Creative Commons - a very strong license that is much better than original.
Short form: Someone tried to make racist Wizards content, exposing a weakness Wizards had, Wizards created a draft document asking folks not to be racist, players rioted, Wizards gave players exactly what they wanted… some players are still upset.
Open Gaming License, basically the legal agreement that allows all those third party people on Kickstarter and Patreon to be writing adventures and subclasses etc and selling them. A couple of years back WotC tried to change it so they could claim a percentage of those sales on larger projects, everyone objected, and WotC reversed the decision and actually went a step further by putting it in Creative Commons so they could never change it
Thank you for letting me know that. Any company that grants open license is not a death penalty, but awfully close. Open license is great for the consumer, but bad for business. An example is the PC industry. Apple never gave/authorized any type of open licenses and therefore have survived over the decades.
Thank you for letting me know that. Any company that grants open license is not a death penalty, but awfully close. Open license is great for the consumer, but bad for business. An example is the PC industry. Apple never gave/authorized any type of open licenses and therefore have survived over the decades.
The OGL has existed since 2000 and is regarded as pretty good for everyone; Wizards of the Coast has done pretty well off of it in the last 25 years.
Thank you for letting me know that. Any company that grants open license is not a death penalty, but awfully close. Open license is great for the consumer, but bad for business. An example is the PC industry. Apple never gave/authorized any type of open licenses and therefore have survived over the decades.
D&D has had OGLs for the the majority of the editions WotC has published
Such licensing is a common practice in the industry and many systems launch with one. Often not launching with one is seen as a negative
The OGL is a big contributor towards D&Ds success as it's allowed a breadth of content to be made without WotC having to invest a penny
Your example is nonsensical because we also have Linux which is only 10 years younger than apple and still going strong (and also forms the backbone of a lot of spheres of professional and armature tech)
They lost me with the OGL debacle, and every misstep and debacle and scandal that came after, just cemented that. But there's a new guy running the show. Without turning this into a huge debate and nitpicking what you THINK I mean, what is the general belief that this new guy will not continue the trend set by his predecessors? I'm like Fox Mulder, I want to believe. Believe that I can feel good about spending money for DDB specifically, something I invested in heavily even before WotC bought it out. Sure, I can "use " the content, in limited ways as a non-paid account. But I'm a forever DM, and I have friends that want me to run games again online, since we are spread across the country., and the best way for me to do that, is to use the DDB assets I already paid for years ago.
Let me, instead of giving my recap, ask you. What did the ogl look like from your perspective?
And what is the scandal afterward you are referring to?
This isn't about that. It's about moving forward under the new guy. If you want the history of all the scandals, debacles, and missteps, you can find that on any D&D tuber channel.
I'm assuming you're referring to DNDshorts(Serial liar about RAW & RAI to encourage gaming the rules+Refused to verify his inside sources(Same as Linda Cociega in this regard) to the detriment of his bait+blindly believed GlassDoor(A site where literally ANYONE can schmittalk an employer w/no verification of truth) because it aligned with his pre-determinations), Indestructoboy(Lied about AI usage by using a tool that used AI+abandoning those he championed to make his own game), Dungeons & Discourse, Professor DM, Crispy's Tales & Tea, etc.(Clickbaiters who lie all the time about sales, Critical Role & anything & everything they come across)?
Or someone else?
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Oh, I have an understanding about what happened, I was trying to see if our understandings matched. Since you won’t go, I will.
The ogl was a whole lot of nothing. In short, a company said, we are going to do something. The customers said, we don’t want you to do that. The company (after what felt like way too long, but really wasn’t all that long) said ok, we won’t do that. In fact, we’ll go above and beyond everything our customers had even asked. That is the condensed version of what happened in the ogl.
Now, for reasons I don’t understand, people are still angry at that company for even considering it, rather than happy that the company listened to its customers.
My original question was to see your thoughts on the situation. Because if you were looking for clarity on what happened, I would try and have that discussion. But if you were one of the people still angry about a company that listened to its customers, I wasn’t planning to engage.
But here I am. So I will say that all the management folks around during the ogl have left, so there’s that. If you don’t trust WotC, that’s certainly your right. But I’m not sure what I or anyone else on the forums here could say to change your mind. So what is it you’re looking for?
The reason the information is important is because it gives folks an idea of what the problems you perceived were, so they can respond about what has changed in a way tailored to you.
For the OGL matter, for example, there are lots of different understandings - a significant portion driven by individuals spreading misinformation or making a big issue over something that was truly, truly mundane. Some of these issues got resolved in a way that favored the players and third party creators - so if you are looking for a boon, the fact players won is a pretty big one. Other players unfortunately took issue with Wizards trying to protect the game from hate, which is a very different issue that would have a different type of response.
Letting folks know what your problems are, particularly when these issues were not monolithic, helps respondents provide more useful feedback.
And i wouldn't even say the WotC leadership was to blame for the OGL debacle. My read on the situation was that it was pressure from Hasboro execs who don't understand the product or the third-party market alienating the community to make a quick buck, while WotC had to take the blame and try to win back trust when it blew up in their face.
Was going to say something similar to the points raised by Xalthu and Caerwyn. The internet has sadly devolved into an ecosystem of largely misplaced anger, disinformation, and click/rage-baiting, and the D&D corner of the online TTRPG space is unfortunately not immune to that. When someone talks about a "debacle" or "scandal" around D&D it's genuinely difficult to be sure they're talking about an actual Bad Thing, a non-event that's been misrepresented or blown out of proportion, or something invented to drive views/clicks. Without volunteering information, I can't say what "trend" the OP is referring to that may or may not be continued, and if said "trend" is genuinely something problematic to begin with. As Caerwyn mentioned, a loud and cantankerous - but not actually large - portion of D&D players raised a stink about changes made to shed portrayals in the lore of certain species that mirrored real-world racism, as well as other efforts to keep hateful content out of 5E including third-party content. I certainly hope the OP isn't expecting to see that trend change, because it's been good for WotC, good for D&D, and good for welcoming players new and old to feel comfortable and included in the game.
They're talking about how the current "guy" is allegedly a brand/IP killer by being hired at all, based on very selective places that this guy has worked at(Despite all the brands he didn't "kill"/were ruined anyway due to even higher management &/or shareholders' excessive greed). Some very angry & passionate fandoms have grudges easily exploited by Dungeons & Discourse, Professor DM & similar clickbait channels, with the residual fandom anger reignited & transposed doublefold onto WotC again with this one.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
New guy? What new guy?
D&D is a game. I like playing D&D. And I have all the tools I need, both in paper and online, that I need to play that game. But if you're worried about spending money on a company that has done something nefarious, or even just merely distasteful, I've got bad news for you. They all have. From IBM to Apple, from Hugo Boss to Nike, from Dole to Nestle... compared to their crimes, the D&D OGL "debacle" is barely a kerfuffle.
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.
The current guy who's in charge of WotC on behalf of Hasbro.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
I have no idea who's in charge of WotC or Hasbro. None of the executives at either company are in my gaming group. You could make up a name and I'd believe you, and it wouldn't matter to me in the least, because my party will still be fighting an Arena full of evil snake cultists on Wednesday. I was playing D&D before the shenanigans, I played D&D during the shenanigans, and I'll be playing D&D long after the shenanigans have settled. Literally every single corporation in the history of the world has skeletons in its closet. If you want to avoid interacting with those skeletons, you should do what Dick Proenneke did back in 1968. And if that's a name you're not familiar with, go watch the documentary, "Alone in the Wilderness". It is truly breathtaking.
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.
FWIW, Dan Ayoub took over as head of D&D a couple months back.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/2027-welcome-back-to-the-table-d-ds-new-direction
Around then they also changed their management model to bring the entire brand under one boss (Ayoub) where in the past, things like the ttrpg, movies, video games were all broken up under different leads.
The only real impact to you and your group would be good management and the health of the brand in creating new products. If you’re like me, you’ve already got enough stuff to last a lifetime, so you don’t need new stuff. (Though if you’re like me you’re also always looking for and excited to get cool new stuff 😀)
Ignoring all the nitpicking, Dan Ayoub seems to be talking the talk, and his first step, making the VTT publicly accessible without subscription, is walking the walk.
But it's going to take a lot more before he has proven that he's getting things back on track. It'll also take a while before his decisions are those driving things forward, when it comes to real direction. He can make decisions, but production of a book etc takes months.
What is OGL? Never heard of that acronym.
It is the “Open Game License” - a license that allows non-Wizards of the Coast entities to use certain aspects of D&D’s intellectual property to create third-party content. The original document used by 5e was extremely poorly written from a legal stance.
In late 2022, as Wizards was gearing up for the release of 5.24, and shortly after someone stole some of Wizards’ intellectual property to make an extremely racist and high profile product, a draft of a new OGL was leaked to the public. The draft - would have limited the license so you could not use Wizards’ products to create hate. It also would have given Wizards a cut of proceeds from any entity that made over a million dollars per year wirh Wizards’ intellectual property - which only applied to about ten entities.
Some threw a fit - largely driven by bad legal analysis, misinformation (including one of the largest D&D YouTubers being caught in multiple active lies that continued to circulate even after found out to be lies), and some questionable interpretations of the very simple word “draft”. It ultimately was a very loud fit - but not as loud as many of those yelling thought (only about 10,000 people responded to a poll Wizards did on the subject; compared to the 40-50,000 who participated in the 5.24 playtest polls).
Wizards dropped the financial component quickly, and actually produced a much better license for content creators, while still containing the “do not be a bigot with our property” riders. Given the timing - right after Ernie Gygax stole Wizards’ property to promote hate - and the fact the only thing they really fought for was anti-bigotry language, it seems the financial component was less important or likely a negotiating tool.
Despite giving creators new rights to use certain valuable trademarks in exchange for not being bigots, this proposed OGL document was still attacked. Wizards ultimately released the content under the Creative Commons - a very strong license that is much better than original.
Short form: Someone tried to make racist Wizards content, exposing a weakness Wizards had, Wizards created a draft document asking folks not to be racist, players rioted, Wizards gave players exactly what they wanted… some players are still upset.
Open Gaming License, basically the legal agreement that allows all those third party people on Kickstarter and Patreon to be writing adventures and subclasses etc and selling them. A couple of years back WotC tried to change it so they could claim a percentage of those sales on larger projects, everyone objected, and WotC reversed the decision and actually went a step further by putting it in Creative Commons so they could never change it
Thank you for letting me know that. Any company that grants open license is not a death penalty, but awfully close. Open license is great for the consumer, but bad for business. An example is the PC industry. Apple never gave/authorized any type of open licenses and therefore have survived over the decades.
The OGL has existed since 2000 and is regarded as pretty good for everyone; Wizards of the Coast has done pretty well off of it in the last 25 years.
pronouns: he/she/they
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