Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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I posted about that earlier.
It's apparently contained to the Magic:The Gathering:Arena management, but still, cut off the infected managers if you want to survive the bad PR, Chris, geez...
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.
Good.
Must have missed it in the thread. I only found out about it today.
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 panicked when I made the thread, but the concern was genuine.
Boycotting Magic:The Gathering:Arena is easy enough.
Not spending on DND until the management of the area where the union is forming is fired, & the union is recognized respected, heeded, & obeyed, as well as compensating trans & enby union members for emotional damages, is a harder sell.
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.
As this whole conversation started in part in response to the new Drops content, I thought people should see the update about them posted yesterday.
Short version: they are not committing to any sharing changes, but do realize they made mistakes in the way they chose to release the stuff and are looking at it. And they plan to make an annual package of what they release available for non subscribers for purchase.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/2187-d-d-beyond-drops-update-on-the-program
Nice, the company responding and listening, not hollowly either, they are working on making things the way the community wants!
So much for "Evil Corporate Overlords" - Why was that non a monster in the Acquisition Inc book! New idea for 5.5e
Nah, you see, it isn't "sub-only DND" now, it's "Live service DND"
Goalposts moved successfully! /s
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.
They literally said they were going to make them purchasable at intervals. It's just a perk for subscribing to draw a few more players.
When it comes to D&D they've made a few mistakes and scored a few own goals in the last decade, but it never surprises me that the explanations are more rooted in thoughtlessness than mustache-twirling villainy. Hanlon's Razor holds true. And the pattern has ever been that when the folks at WotC suffer a pratfall they explain their mistake, listen to the community, and make adjustments. Not always in that order. But what also keeps happening is that their efforts to engage the community in good faith get ignored or portrayed as cover for some sinister conspiracy to destroy D&D or whatever.
Did you not notice the /s? It's a tonal indicator for sarcasm.
I was mocking how the goalposts of complainers have been moved so quickly from "WotC is doing sub-only DND" to "WotC is doing live service DND", you'd think it was planned or something.
I think the compromise could be better, but I'm certainly not mad at WotC for listening(If anything, I'm still mad at the transphobia in the M:TG:A department that still hasn't been quashed).
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.
And here I thought we had put the pin back in this grenade....
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
Regarding the current controversy a few things worth noting.
I think it is worth noting that Wizards has a long history of standing up for its LGBT+ community. From large financial donations to things like the Trevor Project, to installing rules in MTG tournaments to protect trans players, to telling the Russian government to kick rocks and that they would not censor their products years before it became easy to do that, Wizards has been at the forefront of promoting LGBT+ equality and representation.
I cannot speak for the team who handles MTG Arena, but Wizards, as a whole, has consistently proven, time and time again, that they stand up for the LGBT+ community. They have earned more than a little credit on this front.
If you look at more posts on the topic, it is very, very clear what happened - Powell specifically said, in fact. Wizards leadership used their legal name database for some correspondence. For such databases, Wizards is required to use the legal name of individuals - not the name they are choosing to go by. That is required by the law, since the database is used for tax and other official purposes. These lists also tend to be the most complete and up-to-date, since they are updated anytime employment status changes.
It is not really hard to see how this happened - Wizards was doing a mass employee action, used the best database for such mass action… and the database they used has a significant flaw due to reasons outside of Wizards’ control.
Does it look bad? Sure. Is it disappointing to staff? Absolutely. Is it deadnaming? Almost certainly not - deadnaming is, by definition, an intentional act. This very much looks like a common HR mistake when doing things at scale. Frankly, folks who are trying to spin this into something more than it is need to get their Hanlon’s razors sharpened - this is textbook “never ascribe to malice that which can be blamed on simple incompetence.”
Edit: To be very clear, I do think Wizards should apologize privately to workers - this was, after all, a mistake. But Wizards has consistently been a strong ally to the LGBT+ community… maybe we should not be getting out our pitchforks over something that, almost certainly, was just a dumb, but understandably mundane, mistake.
I think it's up to trans & non-binary staff involved in unionization efforts what constitutes deadnaming(& the semi-public doxxing of such) in this regard.
Certainly not the cisgender people of a forum.
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.
Apologies, didn't read the tone correctly. My bad.
Regarding the question in the title, I don't think there ever was a point in recent years that WotC wasn't making money from D&D. The problem is that we live in a world where nothing is enough and you always need more. WotC understands that the potential growth from releasing books alone is rather limited, and so have been trying to increase their profit in other ways.
Spotify and Netflix were mentioned earlier in this thread, but a much more relevant comparison is Sony in the world of video games. WotC wants to not just make the game, but to also be the one selling it and also act as the platform where people play it. Basically cut out the middle men and grab a bigger share of the money to themselves. They have tried to funnel players into dndbeyond by offering things that others cannot: exclusive early access to new books, exclusive official release (Astarion's Book of Hungers), and bundling together physical and electronic copies.
Is this a bad development for players? Not necessarily, but I am concerned. A lack of competition usually leads to stagnation. Luckily, it doesn't seem like WotC/dndbeyond are going to get into a dominant position anytime soon. The Maps VTT is inferior to things like Roll20 and Foundry, which limits the appeal of the platform as a one stop service for playing the game (as opposed to just being the go to place for electronic character sheets). And D&D players tend to make their opinions heard in general, so if WotC decides to more aggressively force players to dndbeyond, there will likely be significant backlash.
You forgot to mention that at the same time as trying to funnel people into DDB with things like early access they've also been giving FLGS early access and exclusive variant covers. Seems an odd tactic if they're aiming to cut out the middle man. I'm not saying that they're not hoping for more people to buy the digital products straight from them but between the stores and only recently renewing contracts with Roll20 and Foundry they're going about it in a very strange way if they're aiming for a PlayStation like monopoly
Not to mention they just shut down their international online store in favour of recommending people to buy books from their FLGS.
As a Member of the LGBTQ community, I can say that WoTC has been rather friendly towards us, but stuff like this happens enough that I know there are some people in the management circles who would happily put a knife in my spine for an advantage.
My Trans siblings have been wronged, and I must stand for them as they have for me.
That is why i am just going to say, aim your ire at the management responsible, not the creatives and staff that had nothing to do with it, this isn't their faux-pas, but I in no way think the Deadnaming is accidental. We can lay that blame at a specific name, and think we should do so.
Leave the innocent alone. The filth are trying to hide behind them.
Let your rage be a scalpel not a hammer.
Nutshelling it: Be mad at the right person, not everyone else. The whole Corp didn't do this, but the one who did should pay. Focus, don't lash out.
As to how it relates to this thread, being able to buy the drops outright has me pretty happy though, so I count that as a win.
I don't like spending when I see perpetrators of this kinda of thing get off scot-free so I might wait for a bit.
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
People spent years begging them for digital + physical bundles. For a long time, they’d been hesitant to implement them in no small part because the are a book maker, not a retail and fulfillment company. Starting that product was a response to players and giving people what they had been asking for.
And I’m not sure if I agree about the competition analogy. Seems to me the competitor is paizo and the other game companies. They’re not really competing with Roll20; WotC still gets a cut when someone buys a book there.
Deadnaming is denotes calling someone a birthname they no longer use. Intention isnt part of the definiton.
However the term "misnaming" also denotes the same thing.
The connotations of deadnaming and misnaming are pretty different though, as deadnaming usually shows up in the news about some self titled bigot using someones birthname to deny them rights.
So in the case of an ally making what appears to be a computer/clerical/legal error, and trying to fix or address it, i will probably refer to it as misnaming.
They're competing with roll20 more than they're competing with game stores. They want D&D players to use the DDB ecosystem.
In the larger RPG market, they really don't compete with anybody. Nobody else is anywhere close to their level.