Considering that there is by an order of magnitude more third party stuff for 5e than there was for 3e I’d say that whatever problem you think is being caused by the SRD is a you problem rather than one being experienced by everyone.
Also unless I’m mistaken d20srd wasn’t official so the only reason it exists and a 5e equivalent doesn’t exist is because someone hasn’t made it. It’s not a problem you can level at WotC considering they weren’t involved in the old site
I may not be communicating properly what I'm trying to say, as it seems we're talking past each other... I'll take the blame for that, and try to explain more clearly.
As I tried to say, I see two reasons why the SRD can be beneficial for the D&D ecosystem and community, and those are to foster: 3rd party content, and 3rd party tools.
The conversation so far has focused a lot on 3rd party content, which is great and I'm glad that this benefit is there.
I am trying to bring attention to the other aspect however: the 3rd party tools. For some weird reason, my desire to look for better tools has been construed as looking for a way to steal intellectual property, which is not at all where I'm coming from.
The 3.5e d20srd site is (AFAIK) 3rd party / community provided, and there are 5e equivalent sites, including at d20srd itself. From my assessment, it is incorrect to say that "the only reason it exists and a 5e equivalent doesn’t exist is because someone hasn’t made it". The sites are there, and the clear (to me at least) difference in the usefulness of these 5e sites compared to the 3.5e sites is directly related to the content, which is based on the SRD. The point I'm trying to make is that the 5e SRD content has significant enough chunks of it missing as to make it hard for the community to build useful 3rd party tools around it, and that was not true in 3.5, since the 3.5 SRD was sufficiently complete.
Again, this has nothing to do with 3rd party content. It is orthogonal. I'll take your word for it that there is an order of magnitude more 3rd party content for 5e than for 3.5e. I am not familiar enough to tell. Assuming it is true, then it could be for a variety of reasons. MAYBE it is somehow because the 5e SRD has holes in its content and that somehow has helped prop up the 3PP ecosystem. Or maybe it's because DM's Guild exists / has existed for longer by now. Or maybe it's because the 5e SRD has been published under the CC license which is considered by many to be quite a bit better for 3PP than the OGL. Or perhaps because WotC is releasing fewer books of their own and thus leaving a vacuum for 3PP to step into. Maybe it's a mix of all these reasons. I don't know.
But two things can be true at the same time: the 5e third party content ecosystem might be better while the 5e third party tools might be worse. There is no inherent contradiction between these two aspects. I think they need to be disentangled in order for the discussion to progress. Otherwise we're having two separate parallel conversations...
Ok, so you are saying that " Information in the SRD is sparse enough to hamper the creation of 3rd party tools."
Which tools are you thinking about specifically? because there has been lots of " X tool is actually piracy" sentiment. (I remember when people said that about D&DBeyond before it was Acquired by WoTC.)
What specific tool do you want to see developed?
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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
Considering that there is by an order of magnitude more third party stuff for 5e than there was for 3e I’d say that whatever problem you think is being caused by the SRD is a you problem rather than one being experienced by everyone.
Also unless I’m mistaken d20srd wasn’t official so the only reason it exists and a 5e equivalent doesn’t exist is because someone hasn’t made it. It’s not a problem you can level at WotC considering they weren’t involved in the old site
I may not be communicating properly what I'm trying to say, as it seems we're talking past each other... I'll take the blame for that, and try to explain more clearly.
As I tried to say, I see two reasons why the SRD can be beneficial for the D&D ecosystem and community, and those are to foster: 3rd party content, and 3rd party tools.
The conversation so far has focused a lot on 3rd party content, which is great and I'm glad that this benefit is there.
I am trying to bring attention to the other aspect however: the 3rd party tools. For some weird reason, my desire to look for better tools has been construed as looking for a way to steal intellectual property, which is not at all where I'm coming from.
The 3.5e d20srd site is (AFAIK) 3rd party / community provided, and there are 5e equivalent sites, including at d20srd itself. From my assessment, it is incorrect to say that "the only reason it exists and a 5e equivalent doesn’t exist is because someone hasn’t made it". The sites are there, and the clear (to me at least) difference in the usefulness of these 5e sites compared to the 3.5e sites is directly related to the content, which is based on the SRD. The point I'm trying to make is that the 5e SRD content has significant enough chunks of it missing as to make it hard for the community to build useful 3rd party tools around it, and that was not true in 3.5, since the 3.5 SRD was sufficiently complete.
Again, this has nothing to do with 3rd party content. It is orthogonal. I'll take your word for it that there is an order of magnitude more 3rd party content for 5e than for 3.5e. I am not familiar enough to tell. Assuming it is true, then it could be for a variety of reasons. MAYBE it is somehow because the 5e SRD has holes in its content and that somehow has helped prop up the 3PP ecosystem. Or maybe it's because DM's Guild exists / has existed for longer by now. Or maybe it's because the 5e SRD has been published under the CC license which is considered by many to be quite a bit better for 3PP than the OGL. Or perhaps because WotC is releasing fewer books of their own and thus leaving a vacuum for 3PP to step into. Maybe it's a mix of all these reasons. I don't know.
But two things can be true at the same time: the 5e third party content ecosystem might be better while the 5e third party tools might be worse. There is no inherent contradiction between these two aspects. I think they need to be disentangled in order for the discussion to progress. Otherwise we're having two separate parallel conversations...
Unless you're recorded laughing like the Joker & flipping off the camera while using sites that host tools that violate copyright, malice doesn't enter into it.
3rd-party tools are not Partnered, so they are violations of the EULA you technically signed by buying anything with the Dungeons & Dragons sticker on it, even Partnered/3rd-party content.
As for the original question....the logic is "We need to hold onto SOME things, copyright-wise, so some wiseguy doesn't try to challenge our control of our IPs in court by, for example, holding a ton of (nowadays AI-generated) NSFW material, or other forms of copyright/trademark/patent trolling that work in various legal systems worldwide."
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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.
3rd-party tools are not Partnered, so they are violations of the EULA you technically signed by buying anything with the Dungeons & Dragons sticker on it, even Partnered/3rd-party content.
Hmm… sorry, I don’t understand this.
If you look at the 5e version of d20srd, it seems to adhere strictly to the SRD content. For examples, spells are missing Blade Ward, and Mordenkainen’s Sword is renamed Arcane Sword: https://5e.d20srd.org/indexes/spells.htm
I have not checked every single spell so I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that they built this off of the SRD and respected it strictly. It is a third party tool, albeit entirely legal and not in violation of anything. There is no EULA that comes into play, unless I’m missing something?
And to answer @GnollitAll78450’s question, this is also an example of what I’ve been trying to point out: the 5e version of d20srd is much less useful as a tool to help play 5e than the 3.5e version of d20srd was in helping to play 3.5e.
Ok, so you are saying that " Information in the SRD is sparse enough to hamper the creation of 3rd party tools."
Which tools are you thinking about specifically? because there has been lots of " X tool is actually piracy" sentiment. (I remember when people said that about D&DBeyond before it was Acquired by WoTC.)
What specific tool do you want to see developed?
There are a bunch of tools I would like. Filtering tools, character sheet builders, spellbook builders [redacted] , build analyzers, and other ideas.
I wish some of these tools were open source also, so that the community could come together and contribute. Legally, of course.
There are a bunch of tools I would like. Filtering tools, character sheet builders, spellbook builders (there is a fantastic one I found the other day, which even includes the ability to print cards as a PDF, but unfortunately contains some illegal content, which makes me iffy about using it, even though I already own all of the content across both physical and digital… I won’t post it here, but IYKYK), build analyzers, and other ideas.
I wish some of these tools were open source also, so that the community could come together and contribute. Legally, of course.
Question. Is the issue the tool or the customization?
A big part of the reason I don't really find much use for DnD beyond is that, generally speaking, I find that 3rd-party and even amateur content for D&D is far superior to official D&D products. Wether its adventures or supplements, official D&D books are trash by comparison to the stuff coming out on DM Guild, RPG Drive Thru, and 3rd-party kick-starters. Its so far beyond anything Wizards of the Coast can create. And since very little of that content ever finds its way into DND Beyond, trying to use DnD Beyond by manually keying that stuff in is insanity, so it kind of excludes D&D Beyond as a digital tool.
I mean at this stage I find the 5e rule set to be simple enough and the 2024 book as a reference well organized enough that, I don't think a digital version of the rules is particularly helpful anymore. Its slower than using the material offline, even in an online session.
Even just the character sheets in DnD Beyond because of all of the 3rd party material we use, its just too much of a headache to try to get all of the material online for it to be useful enough to be worth the time.
I don't know how many people find value in trying to customize and sort of coral DnD Beyond into submission to get there campaigns online but I find its just not worth the effort. Its just easier to use something like Owl Rodeo or some other basic VTT, keep everything offline. All I need is a map and token utility and some online dice that everyone can see.. and everything else can be offline line. Its faster, easier..
Like I don't know, I don't think the problem is DnD Beyond, I think the complexity of trying to run a campaign online and get all your stuff into digital versions is too much work. It might be ok if I was only using official 5e material but other then the core books none of it has any value to me at all and even the core books like the monster manual I don't use. Im usually either using custom monsters, or some cool shit I found on RPG drive thru born out of the awesome imagination of the community. Most characters in my campaign are running classes and sub-classes not in the official books, I never run official adventures, I rarely use magic items or even spells out of the core books.
Im not sure what use DnD Beyond is at this point in terms of running a 5e campaign and Im not sure what they could do to change that?
They would need to find a way to get stuff from DM Guild and RPG Drive Thru, like the PDF's into the DnD Beyond with a few clicks and I don't think that is mechanically possible and frankly, Im just not willing to do any work for it. Like.. Im not sure DnD Beyond can "fix" the problem.
Then there is the other problem which is that "official" D&D is not the only D&D we play. Like We play Shadowdark for example, which is a 5e game, just a stripped-down version, but there is no option on D&D Beyond for it and frankly, if my group "switches games", we don't want to swap out all of our tools. We want the same echo system for all of our games so that we don't have to learn new tools all the time, and we are not going to let the tool decide which game we are going to play because that's insane.
We need a tool that works for all our games. Which again, I don't think is a problem DnD Beyond can solve.
I think the big mistake DnD Beyond made was letting Wizards of the Coast buy them. I think had they remained on their own, they might of been able to adapt to the changes happening in the RPG community and come up with solutions to some of these issues.
As it stands the only thing you can do with DnD Beyond is play 5e using mostly official material and/or spend ungodly amounts of hours manually adding and adapting 3rd party material ... and thats it. That is a pretty limited.. even if the tool was free it would not be worth it just for that. The fact that the digital books for 5e cost almost as much as printed copies, is not helping their case either.. I mean.. if Im going to buy a digital version of a book it will be a PDF, not a "unlock" for a specific utility like DnD Beyond, because then its not usable outside of the tool.
I just don't think DnD Beyond is flexible enough to handle the future of the hobby that is coming and they really can't adapt to it. It will over time become less and less useful for more and more people.
And to answer @GnollitAll78450’s question, this is also an example of what I’ve been trying to point out: the 5e version of d20srd is much less useful as a tool to help play 5e than the 3.5e version of d20srd was in helping to play 3.5e.
I think this is where you’re going wrong and fundamentally misunderstanding the whole purpose of the SRD. It’s not and has never been intended to make it easier to play the game, its sole purpose is to allow third party publishing. Complaining it isn’t very good at something it’s not trying to be is like complaining a China tea pot isn’t a very good hammer
Im not sure what use DnD Beyond is at this point in terms of running a 5e campaign and Im not sure what they could do to change that?
They would need to find a way to get stuff from DM Guild and RPG Drive Thru, like the PDF's into the DnD Beyond with a few clicks and I don't think that is mechanically possible and frankly, Im just not willing to do any work for it. Like.. Im not sure DnD Beyond can "fix" the problem.
Then there is the other problem which is that "official" D&D is not the only D&D we play. Like We play Shadowdark for example, which is a 5e game, just a stripped-down version, but there is no option on D&D Beyond for it and frankly, if my group "switches games", we don't want to swap out all of our tools. We want the same echo system for all of our games so that we don't have to learn new tools all the time, and we are not going to let the tool decide which game we are going to play because that's insane.
We need a tool that works for all our games. Which again, I don't think is a problem DnD Beyond can solve.
Your use case is significantly atypical, however. Most people aren't doing anything like your level of customization and third-party use, much less playing other games. DDB is fine for them.
If you wanted online tooling, you'd want Roll20 or the like. (I guess. I've never really looked into online tooling for non-5e games.)
I think the big mistake DnD Beyond made was letting Wizards of the Coast buy them. I think had they remained on their own, they might of been able to adapt to the changes happening in the RPG community and come up with solutions to some of these issues.
DDB was designed as a specialized site for playing D&D 5. To go generic would have required them tossing out everything and starting over from scratch.
(Also, there really aren't any significant "changes happening in the RPG community". D&D is still the vastly dominant game, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The business model of "just support D&D" is entirely viable.)
(Also, there really aren't any significant "changes happening in the RPG community". D&D is still the vastly dominant game, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The business model of "just support D&D" is entirely viable.)
I think that is a very delayed assessment based on a world that existed a few years ago, a sort of response that used to be true that feels like it might maybe still be true. Wizards of the Coast is itself responsible for the rapidly growing and expanding RPG expansion. Not even talking about other games, which are gobbling up market share at a shocking rate, but just the sheer volume of material published on DM Guild and RPG Drive Thru for 5e specifically is insane, and the quality is blowing anything WotC has done in the last 3-4 years out of the water. Do you really believe that 5e players after over 10+ years of 5e are still neatly filing in line playing "official" content exclusively?
(Also, there really aren't any significant "changes happening in the RPG community". D&D is still the vastly dominant game, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The business model of "just support D&D" is entirely viable.)
I think that is a very delayed assessment based on a world that existed a few years ago, a sort of response that used to be true that feels like it might maybe still be true. Wizards of the Coast is itself responsible for the rapidly growing and expanding RPG expansion. Not even talking about other games, which are gobbling up market share at a shocking rate, but just the sheer volume of material published on DM Guild and RPG Drive Thru for 5e specifically is insane, and the quality is blowing anything WotC has done in the last 3-4 years out of the water. Do you really believe that 5e players after over 10+ years of 5e are still neatly filing in line playing "official" content exclusively?
No. They're mostly playing some mix of official stuff and homebrew. Same as it ever was.
Most people never buy anything beyond the core books. Many of those who do will buy some of the official books, and never anything third-party.
Book purchases look like a power law distribution. (I have no evidence of that beyond the fact that everything is a power law distribution.) You and I are way far out along the tail. (Not that I buy third-party stuff for 5e, or even much of the official WotC stuff. I can make my own things up. Much of my spending goes on other games entirely.) The entire third-party ecosystem exists by that long tail, which they can do because the audience is so large. (Also, a huge percentage of that stuff on DM's Guild and Drive Thru doesn't sell basically any copies.)
(Also, those 5e players over 10+ years are not the same people. There's continuous turnover. We are, again, way out on the far end of the tail.)
Sorry i haven't been posting. Cunning smile kinda nailed it on the head there. The SRD is not originally intended to be the source of 3rd party tools. It was always intended to be for the creation of 3rd Party content. OGL1.0 was made to protect people who were publishing adventures or experimental classes and stuff in Zines, or Forums. That first license the OGL1.0 was made when online D&D was still mostly secret Play by Post, and online tools were never considered because they weren't the predominant method of play. Pen and Paper was.
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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
And to answer @GnollitAll78450’s question, this is also an example of what I’ve been trying to point out: the 5e version of d20srd is much less useful as a tool to help play 5e than the 3.5e version of d20srd was in helping to play 3.5e.
I think this is where you’re going wrong and fundamentally misunderstanding the whole purpose of the SRD. It’s not and has never been intended to make it easier to play the game, its sole purpose is to allow third party publishing. Complaining it isn’t very good at something it’s not trying to be is like complaining a China tea pot isn’t a very good hammer
I think you’re right that the SRD was intended to foster 3rd party content and that 3rd party tools were probably an unintended side effect.
Just like electricity might have been originally a niche technology for the sake of the telegraph but ended up powering countless other applications since then. (Not a perfect analogy by any means, but I think you probably get the gist of it…).
I totally get your point though: we should not whine about something not being good at what it wasn’t meant to do.
I would argue, however, that now that we do have these other applications, it is worth considering how to make them as great as possible.
D&D is, for better and for worse, no longer just a pen & paper game. Hasbro said as much in their latest earnings call. They are going to be digital first. And it shouldn’t suprise anyone, as there is already a sliver of WotC content which is digital only (not to mention all of the 3PP stuff which is heavily digital too).
In the context we’re heading towards, quality of tooling will matter increasingly more, regardless of what the intent of the OGL 1.0 was. That is water under the bridge. Useful historical context, but not destiny-defining as far as what’s next is concerned.
My belief is that tooling would be better if there were first-class / legal provisions for letting data (both official and 3PP in origin) flow freely across tools in a lock-in-free fashion, such that tools can compete with each other and the cost and friction of switching tools is as low as possible. But that’s just me.
And to answer @GnollitAll78450’s question, this is also an example of what I’ve been trying to point out: the 5e version of d20srd is much less useful as a tool to help play 5e than the 3.5e version of d20srd was in helping to play 3.5e.
I think this is where you’re going wrong and fundamentally misunderstanding the whole purpose of the SRD. It’s not and has never been intended to make it easier to play the game, its sole purpose is to allow third party publishing. Complaining it isn’t very good at something it’s not trying to be is like complaining a China tea pot isn’t a very good hammer
I think you’re right that the SRD was intended to foster 3rd party content and that 3rd party tools were probably an unintended side effect.
Just like electricity might have been originally a niche technology for the sake of the telegraph but ended up powering countless other applications since then. (Not a perfect analogy by any means, but I think you probably get the gist of it…).
I totally get your point though: we should not whine about something not being good at what it wasn’t meant to do.
I would argue, however, that now that we do have these other applications, it is worth considering how to make them as great as possible.
D&D is, for better and for worse, no longer just a pen & paper game. Hasbro said as much in their latest earnings call. They are going to be digital first. And it shouldn’t suprise anyone, as there is already a sliver of WotC content which is digital only (not to mention all of the 3PP stuff which is heavily digital too).
In the context we’re heading towards, quality of tooling will matter increasingly more, regardless of what the intent of the OGL 1.0 was. That is water under the bridge. Useful historical context, but not destiny-defining as far as what’s next is concerned.
My belief is that tooling would be better if there were first-class / legal provisions for letting data (both official and 3PP in origin) flow freely across tools in a lock-in-free fashion, such that tools can compete with each other and the cost and friction of switching tools is as low as possible. But that’s just me.
And that scenario will never happen because the dark overlords at Hasbro are running an old toy company like a Big Tech firm.
They'll enforce copyright when pinch comes to shove.
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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 am just going to say, look up the licenses, grab the SRDs, and discuss this topic somewhere safer and friendlier than here. This isn't me telling you to scram, this is me telling you this place can be very hostile to the endeavor you are asking about even if done legally.
Go forth and build the tool following the law as best as you can, just don't let them know about it in this dark place.
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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
I am just going to say, look up the licenses, grab the SRDs, and discuss this topic somewhere safer and friendlier than here. This isn't me telling you to scram, this is me telling you this place can be very hostile to the endeavor you are asking about even if done legally.
Go forth and build the tool following the law as best as you can, just don't let them know about it in this dark place.
Thanks for the advice 😅🥲 …
I do think there are ways to build the vision I’m painting legally. It would be easier and more powerful with support from WotC, but it is nonetheless possible, even if less easy and less powerful, to build flexible tools that respect copyright laws.
But enough said… words are cheap. Maybe code will prove the point eventually. I haven’t decided yet.
And to answer @GnollitAll78450’s question, this is also an example of what I’ve been trying to point out: the 5e version of d20srd is much less useful as a tool to help play 5e than the 3.5e version of d20srd was in helping to play 3.5e.
I think this is where you’re going wrong and fundamentally misunderstanding the whole purpose of the SRD. It’s not and has never been intended to make it easier to play the game, its sole purpose is to allow third party publishing. Complaining it isn’t very good at something it’s not trying to be is like complaining a China tea pot isn’t a very good hammer
I think you’re right that the SRD was intended to foster 3rd party content and that 3rd party tools were probably an unintended side effect.
Just like electricity might have been originally a niche technology for the sake of the telegraph but ended up powering countless other applications since then. (Not a perfect analogy by any means, but I think you probably get the gist of it…).
I totally get your point though: we should not whine about something not being good at what it wasn’t meant to do.
I would argue, however, that now that we do have these other applications, it is worth considering how to make them as great as possible.
D&D is, for better and for worse, no longer just a pen & paper game. Hasbro said as much in their latest earnings call. They are going to be digital first. And it shouldn’t suprise anyone, as there is already a sliver of WotC content which is digital only (not to mention all of the 3PP stuff which is heavily digital too).
In the context we’re heading towards, quality of tooling will matter increasingly more, regardless of what the intent of the OGL 1.0 was. That is water under the bridge. Useful historical context, but not destiny-defining as far as what’s next is concerned.
My belief is that tooling would be better if there were first-class / legal provisions for letting data (both official and 3PP in origin) flow freely across tools in a lock-in-free fashion, such that tools can compete with each other and the cost and friction of switching tools is as low as possible. But that’s just me.
And that scenario will never happen because the dark overlords at Hasbro are running an old toy company like a Big Tech firm.
They'll enforce copyright when pinch comes to shove.
There is the little detail where failing to enforce copyright can wipe a multi-million dollar asset off their company's books, but sure let's go with they're doing it because they're reactionary evil overlords. Sounds pithier.
There is the little detail where failing to enforce copyright can wipe a multi-million dollar asset off their company's books, but sure let's go with they're doing it because they're reactionary evil overlords. Sounds pithier.
I think you may be confusing Trademark and Copyright. Trademark requires you to defend your trademark; copyright does not. The issue relevant to this thread is copyright - Wizards explicitly takes steps to ensure their Trademarks are not in the SRD. (Amusingly, the OGL 2.0 proposal would have given content creators the right to use a WotC Trademark in exchange for an agreement to not use WotC IP for bigotry - a powerful boon that the community rejected.)
The reason for this - Trademark has its origins in protecting customers, so governments since Ancient Rome have required holders of trademarks to defend the mark and thus put the financial burden of protecting both their brand and the customer on the holder of the mark. Copyright is only about protecting a creator’s rights - and thus creators have wide freedom in how they are allowed to use their own rights.
Now, diluting the value of a copyrighted work by allowing copycat can devalue it - and I do not think it is wrong for Hasbro to defend their rights when it needs to. After all, like any content creator, they created the content and should be rewarded with rights for their efforts. It just is not quite a case where “failure to enforce” will “wipe” the asset from the books.
And to answer @GnollitAll78450’s question, this is also an example of what I’ve been trying to point out: the 5e version of d20srd is much less useful as a tool to help play 5e than the 3.5e version of d20srd was in helping to play 3.5e.
I think this is where you’re going wrong and fundamentally misunderstanding the whole purpose of the SRD. It’s not and has never been intended to make it easier to play the game, its sole purpose is to allow third party publishing. Complaining it isn’t very good at something it’s not trying to be is like complaining a China tea pot isn’t a very good hammer
I think you’re right that the SRD was intended to foster 3rd party content and that 3rd party tools were probably an unintended side effect.
Just like electricity might have been originally a niche technology for the sake of the telegraph but ended up powering countless other applications since then. (Not a perfect analogy by any means, but I think you probably get the gist of it…).
I totally get your point though: we should not whine about something not being good at what it wasn’t meant to do.
I would argue, however, that now that we do have these other applications, it is worth considering how to make them as great as possible.
D&D is, for better and for worse, no longer just a pen & paper game. Hasbro said as much in their latest earnings call. They are going to be digital first. And it shouldn’t suprise anyone, as there is already a sliver of WotC content which is digital only (not to mention all of the 3PP stuff which is heavily digital too).
In the context we’re heading towards, quality of tooling will matter increasingly more, regardless of what the intent of the OGL 1.0 was. That is water under the bridge. Useful historical context, but not destiny-defining as far as what’s next is concerned.
My belief is that tooling would be better if there were first-class / legal provisions for letting data (both official and 3PP in origin) flow freely across tools in a lock-in-free fashion, such that tools can compete with each other and the cost and friction of switching tools is as low as possible. But that’s just me.
And that scenario will never happen because the dark overlords at Hasbro are running an old toy company like a Big Tech firm.
They'll enforce copyright when pinch comes to shove.
There is the little detail where failing to enforce copyright can wipe a multi-million dollar asset off their company's books, but sure let's go with they're doing it because they're reactionary evil overlords. Sounds pithier.
I was implying that they'll focus on enforcing IP dipshittery that only corps care about.
That has nothing to do with reactionary natures.
& this isn't just the US market they feel compelled to hog IP in. A lot of others have much harder to maintain IP control in if someone were to challenge such.
Yes, I am an intellectual property abolitionist.
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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 just the US market they feel compelled to hog IP in. A lot of others have much harder to maintain IP control in if someone were to challenge such.
Yes, I am an intellectual property abolitionist.
While I agree that the century plus of copyright protection the US has as a result of Disney political lobbying is far too much if you abolish it all together there’d be no incentive for anyone, from huge corporations to instagram cartoonists, to create new IP if they couldn’t profit from it. So yes, you’re advocating for the abolition of intellectual property as you said and not intellectual property law which is what I think you probably meant
I was implying that they'll focus on enforcing IP dipshittery that only corps care about.
That has nothing to do with reactionary natures.
& this isn't just the US market they feel compelled to hog IP in. A lot of others have much harder to maintain IP control in if someone were to challenge such.
Yes, I am an intellectual property abolitionist.
So, creators should just give their work away? Or if I write a popular book, a film company should be able to make the movie version of it without paying me anything? And Justice Armin and the rest shouldn’t get paid for making D&D? Because that is where this leads very quickly.
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I may not be communicating properly what I'm trying to say, as it seems we're talking past each other... I'll take the blame for that, and try to explain more clearly.
As I tried to say, I see two reasons why the SRD can be beneficial for the D&D ecosystem and community, and those are to foster: 3rd party content, and 3rd party tools.
The conversation so far has focused a lot on 3rd party content, which is great and I'm glad that this benefit is there.
I am trying to bring attention to the other aspect however: the 3rd party tools. For some weird reason, my desire to look for better tools has been construed as looking for a way to steal intellectual property, which is not at all where I'm coming from.
The 3.5e d20srd site is (AFAIK) 3rd party / community provided, and there are 5e equivalent sites, including at d20srd itself. From my assessment, it is incorrect to say that "the only reason it exists and a 5e equivalent doesn’t exist is because someone hasn’t made it". The sites are there, and the clear (to me at least) difference in the usefulness of these 5e sites compared to the 3.5e sites is directly related to the content, which is based on the SRD. The point I'm trying to make is that the 5e SRD content has significant enough chunks of it missing as to make it hard for the community to build useful 3rd party tools around it, and that was not true in 3.5, since the 3.5 SRD was sufficiently complete.
Again, this has nothing to do with 3rd party content. It is orthogonal. I'll take your word for it that there is an order of magnitude more 3rd party content for 5e than for 3.5e. I am not familiar enough to tell. Assuming it is true, then it could be for a variety of reasons. MAYBE it is somehow because the 5e SRD has holes in its content and that somehow has helped prop up the 3PP ecosystem. Or maybe it's because DM's Guild exists / has existed for longer by now. Or maybe it's because the 5e SRD has been published under the CC license which is considered by many to be quite a bit better for 3PP than the OGL. Or perhaps because WotC is releasing fewer books of their own and thus leaving a vacuum for 3PP to step into. Maybe it's a mix of all these reasons. I don't know.
But two things can be true at the same time: the 5e third party content ecosystem might be better while the 5e third party tools might be worse. There is no inherent contradiction between these two aspects. I think they need to be disentangled in order for the discussion to progress. Otherwise we're having two separate parallel conversations...
Ok, so you are saying that " Information in the SRD is sparse enough to hamper the creation of 3rd party tools."
Which tools are you thinking about specifically? because there has been lots of " X tool is actually piracy" sentiment.
(I remember when people said that about D&DBeyond before it was Acquired by WoTC.)
What specific tool do you want to see developed?
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
Unless you're recorded laughing like the Joker & flipping off the camera while using sites that host tools that violate copyright, malice doesn't enter into it.
3rd-party tools are not Partnered, so they are violations of the EULA you technically signed by buying anything with the Dungeons & Dragons sticker on it, even Partnered/3rd-party content.
As for the original question....the logic is "We need to hold onto SOME things, copyright-wise, so some wiseguy doesn't try to challenge our control of our IPs in court by, for example, holding a ton of (nowadays AI-generated) NSFW material, or other forms of copyright/trademark/patent trolling that work in various legal systems worldwide."
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.
Hmm… sorry, I don’t understand this.
If you look at the 5e version of d20srd, it seems to adhere strictly to the SRD content. For examples, spells are missing Blade Ward, and Mordenkainen’s Sword is renamed Arcane Sword: https://5e.d20srd.org/indexes/spells.htm
I have not checked every single spell so I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that they built this off of the SRD and respected it strictly. It is a third party tool, albeit entirely legal and not in violation of anything. There is no EULA that comes into play, unless I’m missing something?
And to answer @GnollitAll78450’s question, this is also an example of what I’ve been trying to point out: the 5e version of d20srd is much less useful as a tool to help play 5e than the 3.5e version of d20srd was in helping to play 3.5e.
There are a bunch of tools I would like. Filtering tools, character sheet builders, spellbook builders [redacted] , build analyzers, and other ideas.
I wish some of these tools were open source also, so that the community could come together and contribute. Legally, of course.
Question. Is the issue the tool or the customization?
A big part of the reason I don't really find much use for DnD beyond is that, generally speaking, I find that 3rd-party and even amateur content for D&D is far superior to official D&D products. Wether its adventures or supplements, official D&D books are trash by comparison to the stuff coming out on DM Guild, RPG Drive Thru, and 3rd-party kick-starters. Its so far beyond anything Wizards of the Coast can create. And since very little of that content ever finds its way into DND Beyond, trying to use DnD Beyond by manually keying that stuff in is insanity, so it kind of excludes D&D Beyond as a digital tool.
I mean at this stage I find the 5e rule set to be simple enough and the 2024 book as a reference well organized enough that, I don't think a digital version of the rules is particularly helpful anymore. Its slower than using the material offline, even in an online session.
Even just the character sheets in DnD Beyond because of all of the 3rd party material we use, its just too much of a headache to try to get all of the material online for it to be useful enough to be worth the time.
I don't know how many people find value in trying to customize and sort of coral DnD Beyond into submission to get there campaigns online but I find its just not worth the effort. Its just easier to use something like Owl Rodeo or some other basic VTT, keep everything offline. All I need is a map and token utility and some online dice that everyone can see.. and everything else can be offline line. Its faster, easier..
Like I don't know, I don't think the problem is DnD Beyond, I think the complexity of trying to run a campaign online and get all your stuff into digital versions is too much work. It might be ok if I was only using official 5e material but other then the core books none of it has any value to me at all and even the core books like the monster manual I don't use. Im usually either using custom monsters, or some cool shit I found on RPG drive thru born out of the awesome imagination of the community. Most characters in my campaign are running classes and sub-classes not in the official books, I never run official adventures, I rarely use magic items or even spells out of the core books.
Im not sure what use DnD Beyond is at this point in terms of running a 5e campaign and Im not sure what they could do to change that?
They would need to find a way to get stuff from DM Guild and RPG Drive Thru, like the PDF's into the DnD Beyond with a few clicks and I don't think that is mechanically possible and frankly, Im just not willing to do any work for it. Like.. Im not sure DnD Beyond can "fix" the problem.
Then there is the other problem which is that "official" D&D is not the only D&D we play. Like We play Shadowdark for example, which is a 5e game, just a stripped-down version, but there is no option on D&D Beyond for it and frankly, if my group "switches games", we don't want to swap out all of our tools. We want the same echo system for all of our games so that we don't have to learn new tools all the time, and we are not going to let the tool decide which game we are going to play because that's insane.
We need a tool that works for all our games. Which again, I don't think is a problem DnD Beyond can solve.
I think the big mistake DnD Beyond made was letting Wizards of the Coast buy them. I think had they remained on their own, they might of been able to adapt to the changes happening in the RPG community and come up with solutions to some of these issues.
As it stands the only thing you can do with DnD Beyond is play 5e using mostly official material and/or spend ungodly amounts of hours manually adding and adapting 3rd party material ... and thats it. That is a pretty limited.. even if the tool was free it would not be worth it just for that. The fact that the digital books for 5e cost almost as much as printed copies, is not helping their case either.. I mean.. if Im going to buy a digital version of a book it will be a PDF, not a "unlock" for a specific utility like DnD Beyond, because then its not usable outside of the tool.
I just don't think DnD Beyond is flexible enough to handle the future of the hobby that is coming and they really can't adapt to it. It will over time become less and less useful for more and more people.
I think this is where you’re going wrong and fundamentally misunderstanding the whole purpose of the SRD. It’s not and has never been intended to make it easier to play the game, its sole purpose is to allow third party publishing. Complaining it isn’t very good at something it’s not trying to be is like complaining a China tea pot isn’t a very good hammer
Your use case is significantly atypical, however. Most people aren't doing anything like your level of customization and third-party use, much less playing other games. DDB is fine for them.
If you wanted online tooling, you'd want Roll20 or the like. (I guess. I've never really looked into online tooling for non-5e games.)
DDB was designed as a specialized site for playing D&D 5. To go generic would have required them tossing out everything and starting over from scratch.
(Also, there really aren't any significant "changes happening in the RPG community". D&D is still the vastly dominant game, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The business model of "just support D&D" is entirely viable.)
I think that is a very delayed assessment based on a world that existed a few years ago, a sort of response that used to be true that feels like it might maybe still be true. Wizards of the Coast is itself responsible for the rapidly growing and expanding RPG expansion. Not even talking about other games, which are gobbling up market share at a shocking rate, but just the sheer volume of material published on DM Guild and RPG Drive Thru for 5e specifically is insane, and the quality is blowing anything WotC has done in the last 3-4 years out of the water. Do you really believe that 5e players after over 10+ years of 5e are still neatly filing in line playing "official" content exclusively?
No. They're mostly playing some mix of official stuff and homebrew. Same as it ever was.
Most people never buy anything beyond the core books. Many of those who do will buy some of the official books, and never anything third-party.
Book purchases look like a power law distribution. (I have no evidence of that beyond the fact that everything is a power law distribution.) You and I are way far out along the tail. (Not that I buy third-party stuff for 5e, or even much of the official WotC stuff. I can make my own things up. Much of my spending goes on other games entirely.) The entire third-party ecosystem exists by that long tail, which they can do because the audience is so large. (Also, a huge percentage of that stuff on DM's Guild and Drive Thru doesn't sell basically any copies.)
(Also, those 5e players over 10+ years are not the same people. There's continuous turnover. We are, again, way out on the far end of the tail.)
Sorry i haven't been posting.
Cunning smile kinda nailed it on the head there.
The SRD is not originally intended to be the source of 3rd party tools. It was always intended to be for the creation of 3rd Party content. OGL1.0 was made to protect people who were publishing adventures or experimental classes and stuff in Zines, or Forums. That first license the OGL1.0 was made when online D&D was still mostly secret Play by Post, and online tools were never considered because they weren't the predominant method of play.
Pen and Paper was.
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
I think you’re right that the SRD was intended to foster 3rd party content and that 3rd party tools were probably an unintended side effect.
Just like electricity might have been originally a niche technology for the sake of the telegraph but ended up powering countless other applications since then. (Not a perfect analogy by any means, but I think you probably get the gist of it…).
I totally get your point though: we should not whine about something not being good at what it wasn’t meant to do.
I would argue, however, that now that we do have these other applications, it is worth considering how to make them as great as possible.
D&D is, for better and for worse, no longer just a pen & paper game. Hasbro said as much in their latest earnings call. They are going to be digital first. And it shouldn’t suprise anyone, as there is already a sliver of WotC content which is digital only (not to mention all of the 3PP stuff which is heavily digital too).
In the context we’re heading towards, quality of tooling will matter increasingly more, regardless of what the intent of the OGL 1.0 was. That is water under the bridge. Useful historical context, but not destiny-defining as far as what’s next is concerned.
My belief is that tooling would be better if there were first-class / legal provisions for letting data (both official and 3PP in origin) flow freely across tools in a lock-in-free fashion, such that tools can compete with each other and the cost and friction of switching tools is as low as possible. But that’s just me.
And that scenario will never happen because the dark overlords at Hasbro are running an old toy company like a Big Tech firm.
They'll enforce copyright when pinch comes to shove.
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 am just going to say, look up the licenses, grab the SRDs, and discuss this topic somewhere safer and friendlier than here.
This isn't me telling you to scram, this is me telling you this place can be very hostile to the endeavor you are asking about even if done legally.
Go forth and build the tool following the law as best as you can, just don't let them know about it in this dark place.
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
Thanks for the advice 😅🥲 …
I do think there are ways to build the vision I’m painting legally. It would be easier and more powerful with support from WotC, but it is nonetheless possible, even if less easy and less powerful, to build flexible tools that respect copyright laws.
But enough said… words are cheap. Maybe code will prove the point eventually. I haven’t decided yet.
There is the little detail where failing to enforce copyright can wipe a multi-million dollar asset off their company's books, but sure let's go with they're doing it because they're reactionary evil overlords. Sounds pithier.
I think you may be confusing Trademark and Copyright. Trademark requires you to defend your trademark; copyright does not. The issue relevant to this thread is copyright - Wizards explicitly takes steps to ensure their Trademarks are not in the SRD. (Amusingly, the OGL 2.0 proposal would have given content creators the right to use a WotC Trademark in exchange for an agreement to not use WotC IP for bigotry - a powerful boon that the community rejected.)
The reason for this - Trademark has its origins in protecting customers, so governments since Ancient Rome have required holders of trademarks to defend the mark and thus put the financial burden of protecting both their brand and the customer on the holder of the mark. Copyright is only about protecting a creator’s rights - and thus creators have wide freedom in how they are allowed to use their own rights.
Now, diluting the value of a copyrighted work by allowing copycat can devalue it - and I do not think it is wrong for Hasbro to defend their rights when it needs to. After all, like any content creator, they created the content and should be rewarded with rights for their efforts. It just is not quite a case where “failure to enforce” will “wipe” the asset from the books.
I was implying that they'll focus on enforcing IP dipshittery that only corps care about.
That has nothing to do with reactionary natures.
& this isn't just the US market they feel compelled to hog IP in. A lot of others have much harder to maintain IP control in if someone were to challenge such.
Yes, I am an intellectual property abolitionist.
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.
While I agree that the century plus of copyright protection the US has as a result of Disney political lobbying is far too much if you abolish it all together there’d be no incentive for anyone, from huge corporations to instagram cartoonists, to create new IP if they couldn’t profit from it. So yes, you’re advocating for the abolition of intellectual property as you said and not intellectual property law which is what I think you probably meant
So, creators should just give their work away? Or if I write a popular book, a film company should be able to make the movie version of it without paying me anything? And Justice Armin and the rest shouldn’t get paid for making D&D? Because that is where this leads very quickly.