Apple actually has always allowed other companies to create software and accessories for thier products.
The way it works for D&D is that anyone can use the OGL to create thier own content which then encourages more players to then purchase the PHB, DMG, MM and so forth. " A rising tide raises all boats" system.
It is ok to spend money on Beyond if it makes you and your friends happy.
As someone who was around in the scene before the OGL 1.0 was put in place and then witnessed the OGL Crisis, and have been semi familiar with the leadership off and on, my perspective is this. The new guy's credentials make me nervous, but I will give him a chance, the state of the OGL is pretty great now, but i have a lot of ill feelings about what it took to get there, and i have an ever growing animosity toward Hasbro, believer me i mean it when i say.
It is ok to spend money on Beyond if it makes you and your friends happy.
There is a lot of bad stuff happening in the world, so if this helps you deal with it, then go ahead. Yeah it sucks that you have to pay a sub, to use stuff you already paid for, that is the major weakness of Beyond. You also don't have to, since there are other sites like Roll20, That you can get access to the materials through as well, and Roll20 is a little more homebrew friendly. If you have the physical books, it will be time consuming, but you can type or transfer the text into Roll20 and make it work. (it is tetchy, but it works better than the homebrew stuff on beyond, and it comes free with the 2014 sheets, that can easily handle making 2024 characters with.)
talk to you players. If it is beyond or nothing, no shame in paying if you are happy, if they are willing to jump ship, experiment with other VTTs. Beyond isn't the only one.
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He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
Even if you have absolutely zero trust for "the new guy," guess what? D&D 5e's SRD is in Creative Commons now. You can play a theoretically infinite number of D&D campaigns and never have to send a dime to WotC - just stick with the SRD and third-party content and/or homebrew. When you're buying a new book from them, what you're paying for is convenience and at least a modicum of playtesting / familiarity.
Personally speaking, I don't trust any corporation because "trust" is ultimately irrelevant to our transactional relationship. Their job is to create content I'm willing to pay for, at a price I'm willing to pay. That's the extent of what I need or expect them to do. Ayoub's promises to investors on Wall Street might mean more stuff I get to enjoy in the future, but until that stuff exists, it barely matters to me.
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.
In fact, the ogl kind of went on hiatus for a few years during 4e. It had some other acronym and wasn’t nearly as good. And there wasn’t the robust 3rd party ecosystem we had in 3.x and have in 5. And 4e flopped (for a lot of reasons). But that seems to reinforce your point that having it works very well.
Yeah it sucks that you have to pay a sub, to use stuff you already paid for, that is the major weakness of Beyond.
You don’t have to pay a subscription to use your purchased books, only to share them.
ok, this may sound pedantic, but in the context of the guy DMing, being able to share them is using them. You want your players to have access to all the materials. sooo.... point stands.
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He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
Yeah it sucks that you have to pay a sub, to use stuff you already paid for, that is the major weakness of Beyond.
You don’t have to pay a subscription to use your purchased books, only to share them.
ok, this may sound pedantic, but in the context of the guy DMing, being able to share them is using them. You want your players to have access to all the materials. sooo.... point stands.
Except you're not being pedantic, you're being wrong. To be actually pedantic and not just incorrect, no one has to sub to use the stuff they own, but do they have to be part of a campaign where at least one person has subbed in order to share what they own. There is a non trivial difference there.
Yeah it sucks that you have to pay a sub, to use stuff you already paid for, that is the major weakness of Beyond.
You don’t have to pay a subscription to use your purchased books, only to share them.
ok, this may sound pedantic, but in the context of the guy DMing, being able to share them is using them. You want your players to have access to all the materials. sooo.... point stands.
Except you're not being pedantic, you're being wrong. To be actually pedantic and not just incorrect, no one has to sub to use the stuff they own, but do they have to be part of a campaign where at least one person has subbed in order to share what they own. There is a non trivial difference there.
Ok, fine i will rephrase. OP It sucks that someone has to pay money for you to use the things you already bought and paid for in the manner you wish to you to use them.
Still, if you can bring happiness to people in these dark times, you should not feel guilty about giving money to WoTC/Hasbro if you have to. As someone who hates the company now for the things they did, even i won't think ill of you if you do.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
Move forward or don't. I'm not aware of any "scandals" because I don't go looking for them. There seems to be an a priori assumption that there are issues that need solving.
I'll just say if you don't like the direction please find another game. The rest of us are aboard the train.
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 is the primary reason why D&D has grown over the last 25 years. Creators did not exist in any meaningful way before the OGL, because all products were either made in-house, or had to be licensed by TSR/WOTC. People like Critical Role (who are largely responsible for the poplularity boost) couldn't have created their various books about their settings.
Counter-example: C# is Open Source. Javascript is open source. Java has an OpenSource JDK.
Apple is a brand, not a platform. Swift, the programming language people use on iOS is Open Source, as is WebKit the content engine that most browsers run on, both owned by Apple.
Yeah it sucks that you have to pay a sub, to use stuff you already paid for, that is the major weakness of Beyond.
You don’t have to pay a subscription to use your purchased books, only to share them.
ok, this may sound pedantic, but in the context of the guy DMing, being able to share them is using them. You want your players to have access to all the materials. sooo.... point stands.
Except you're not being pedantic, you're being wrong. To be actually pedantic and not just incorrect, no one has to sub to use the stuff they own, but do they have to be part of a campaign where at least one person has subbed in order to share what they own. There is a non trivial difference there.
Ok, fine i will rephrase. OP It sucks that someone has to pay money for you to use the things you already bought and paid for in the manner you wish to you to use them.
Still, if you can bring happiness to people in these dark times, you should not feel guilty about giving money to WoTC/Hasbro if you have to. As someone who hates the company now for the things they did, even i won't think ill of you if you do.
You're perfectly able to hand over your physical copy to a friend. If you want an online, hosted, multi-user access product, that costs money because it costs money to host and maintain it.
The whole "I deserve free things that a business has to pay to provide me with" idea is how you become the product, not the customer.
Also, during the whole OGL brouhaha, people were crying that WotC was going to take all the money away from all the independent content creators. Except that they were only planning to take a small percentage of earnings above something like a quarter of a million dollars per year. So that would really only affect a handful of people in the entire world. And frankly, if you're making over a quarter mill per year playing D&D, then you've got absolutely nothing to complain about. Sorry. Just hand a few percent back to the people who made your amazing life possible and say "Thank you" in literally the most polite voice ever.
Yeah it sucks that you have to pay a sub, to use stuff you already paid for, that is the major weakness of Beyond.
You don’t have to pay a subscription to use your purchased books, only to share them.
ok, this may sound pedantic, but in the context of the guy DMing, being able to share them is using them. You want your players to have access to all the materials. sooo.... point stands.
Except you're not being pedantic, you're being wrong. To be actually pedantic and not just incorrect, no one has to sub to use the stuff they own, but do they have to be part of a campaign where at least one person has subbed in order to share what they own. There is a non trivial difference there.
Ok, fine i will rephrase. OP It sucks that someone has to pay money for you to use the things you already bought and paid for in the manner you wish to you to use them.
Still, if you can bring happiness to people in these dark times, you should not feel guilty about giving money to WoTC/Hasbro if you have to. As someone who hates the company now for the things they did, even i won't think ill of you if you do.
You're perfectly able to hand over your physical copy to a friend. If you want an online, hosted, multi-user access product, that costs money because it costs money to host and maintain it.
The whole "I deserve free things that a business has to pay to provide me with" idea is how you become the product, not the customer.
Are you missing the point that i am saying it is fine to spend money on Beyond even if there are aspects he doesn't like?
I feel like everyone is glossing over that so they can argue with me over minor details. I never once disputed the business aspect or the necessity of it to turn a profit. I just acknowledged it stung from a customer perspective.
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He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
Well, it's not really "minor details," because your starting position mischaracterized the relationship between content and subscription features. I think you'd have had less pushback if you had started by saying "I don't like having to subscribe to share content." That would have been more straightforward and more accurate than your initial claim.
I'm not unsympathetic to that position, by the way, but I would rather pay a predictable cost for premium features than have it be supported by some convoluted and intrusive system of advertising and selling customer data. Given the choice between cutting WotC a check once a year or having D&D Beyond splattered with full-page and pop-up ads and having to watch commercials before a link for a shared campaign loads, I'll take the subscription.
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Apple actually has always allowed other companies to create software and accessories for thier products.
The way it works for D&D is that anyone can use the OGL to create thier own content which then encourages more players to then purchase the PHB, DMG, MM and so forth. " A rising tide raises all boats" system.
It is ok to spend money on Beyond if it makes you and your friends happy.
As someone who was around in the scene before the OGL 1.0 was put in place and then witnessed the OGL Crisis, and have been semi familiar with the leadership off and on, my perspective is this.
The new guy's credentials make me nervous, but I will give him a chance, the state of the OGL is pretty great now, but i have a lot of ill feelings about what it took to get there, and i have an ever growing animosity toward Hasbro, believer me i mean it when i say.
It is ok to spend money on Beyond if it makes you and your friends happy.
There is a lot of bad stuff happening in the world, so if this helps you deal with it, then go ahead. Yeah it sucks that you have to pay a sub, to use stuff you already paid for, that is the major weakness of Beyond.
You also don't have to, since there are other sites like Roll20, That you can get access to the materials through as well, and Roll20 is a little more homebrew friendly. If you have the physical books, it will be time consuming, but you can type or transfer the text into Roll20 and make it work. (it is tetchy, but it works better than the homebrew stuff on beyond, and it comes free with the 2014 sheets, that can easily handle making 2024 characters with.)
talk to you players. If it is beyond or nothing, no shame in paying if you are happy, if they are willing to jump ship, experiment with other VTTs. Beyond isn't the only one.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
Even if you have absolutely zero trust for "the new guy," guess what? D&D 5e's SRD is in Creative Commons now. You can play a theoretically infinite number of D&D campaigns and never have to send a dime to WotC - just stick with the SRD and third-party content and/or homebrew. When you're buying a new book from them, what you're paying for is convenience and at least a modicum of playtesting / familiarity.
Personally speaking, I don't trust any corporation because "trust" is ultimately irrelevant to our transactional relationship. Their job is to create content I'm willing to pay for, at a price I'm willing to pay. That's the extent of what I need or expect them to do. Ayoub's promises to investors on Wall Street might mean more stuff I get to enjoy in the future, but until that stuff exists, it barely matters to me.
In fact, the ogl kind of went on hiatus for a few years during 4e. It had some other acronym and wasn’t nearly as good. And there wasn’t the robust 3rd party ecosystem we had in 3.x and have in 5. And 4e flopped (for a lot of reasons). But that seems to reinforce your point that having it works very well.
You don’t have to pay a subscription to use your purchased books, only to share them.
ok, this may sound pedantic, but in the context of the guy DMing, being able to share them is using them.
You want your players to have access to all the materials. sooo.... point stands.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
Except you're not being pedantic, you're being wrong. To be actually pedantic and not just incorrect, no one has to sub to use the stuff they own, but do they have to be part of a campaign where at least one person has subbed in order to share what they own. There is a non trivial difference there.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Ok, fine i will rephrase.
OP It sucks that someone has to pay money for you to use the things you already bought and paid for in the manner you wish to you to use them.
Still, if you can bring happiness to people in these dark times, you should not feel guilty about giving money to WoTC/Hasbro if you have to. As someone who hates the company now for the things they did, even i won't think ill of you if you do.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
Move forward or don't. I'm not aware of any "scandals" because I don't go looking for them. There seems to be an a priori assumption that there are issues that need solving.
I'll just say if you don't like the direction please find another game. The rest of us are aboard the train.
The OGL is the primary reason why D&D has grown over the last 25 years. Creators did not exist in any meaningful way before the OGL, because all products were either made in-house, or had to be licensed by TSR/WOTC. People like Critical Role (who are largely responsible for the poplularity boost) couldn't have created their various books about their settings.
Counter-example: C# is Open Source. Javascript is open source. Java has an OpenSource JDK.
Apple is a brand, not a platform. Swift, the programming language people use on iOS is Open Source, as is WebKit the content engine that most browsers run on, both owned by Apple.
You're perfectly able to hand over your physical copy to a friend. If you want an online, hosted, multi-user access product, that costs money because it costs money to host and maintain it.
The whole "I deserve free things that a business has to pay to provide me with" idea is how you become the product, not the customer.
Also, during the whole OGL brouhaha, people were crying that WotC was going to take all the money away from all the independent content creators. Except that they were only planning to take a small percentage of earnings above something like a quarter of a million dollars per year. So that would really only affect a handful of people in the entire world. And frankly, if you're making over a quarter mill per year playing D&D, then you've got absolutely nothing to complain about. Sorry. Just hand a few percent back to the people who made your amazing life possible and say "Thank you" in literally the most polite voice ever.
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.
Are you missing the point that i am saying it is fine to spend money on Beyond even if there are aspects he doesn't like?
I feel like everyone is glossing over that so they can argue with me over minor details. I never once disputed the business aspect or the necessity of it to turn a profit. I just acknowledged it stung from a customer perspective.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
Well, it's not really "minor details," because your starting position mischaracterized the relationship between content and subscription features. I think you'd have had less pushback if you had started by saying "I don't like having to subscribe to share content." That would have been more straightforward and more accurate than your initial claim.
I'm not unsympathetic to that position, by the way, but I would rather pay a predictable cost for premium features than have it be supported by some convoluted and intrusive system of advertising and selling customer data. Given the choice between cutting WotC a check once a year or having D&D Beyond splattered with full-page and pop-up ads and having to watch commercials before a link for a shared campaign loads, I'll take the subscription.