Wotc is being to quiet. Kobold press, paizo and others that have banded together to make an Open Rpg Creative license (ORC). Go ahead and speak or is the dragon afraid of so many heroes?
Best guess: they're hoping the trash fire burns itself out and they can just ride out the storm and go about what they had planned anyway. And hey: if they spin it right, they can make it a story of "them thar evil toxic gamer chuds! etc. etc." and get some free good press form the access media out of it.
Alternatively; the situation has escalated way beyond what blow-back they expected and now they're trying to figure out desperately how to salvage it without just caving entirely... because they're a corporation: and admitting you were in the wrong is impossible.
LOL... Fair enough. They won't get any more of my money, no matter the outcome now. WOTC showed their hand by their silence about the ogl. Even if they say, no, we are keeping the old ogl I will never trust them.
A new OGL is being worked on. Paizo, Kobold press, Chaosium, Green ronin and others have banded together to make it. I will roll under their banner now.
They’re just money managers playing their own game and looking to make a buck. They don’t care about appeasing the community in any way, only how to make money off of them. That is their only goal right now. In their position you wouldn’t immediately address anything, you’d wait until dust settled or attention has shifted and then you’d hire a professional relations team on how to save face in order to increase market share. What the suits don’t understand, and never will, is WHY D&D became so popular in the first place: word of mouth. They’re treating this like a product on a shelf with a reliable product sell rate without thinking about why it’s selling, it’s not because of their fancy schools or their holy salaries, it’s because it’s fun to play and when someone says they want to “play D&D” a few books are sold and people get a bug. Except in this case, when the entire TTRPG community decides that WotC and specifically Hasbro isn’t worth introducing new players to, there will be a generational paradigm shift away from specifically their product because of their actions. They are incapable of understanding anything here, and they will be incapable of providing a response to anyone’s reactions because it’s not in their playbook. They will wait, but they don’t understand the damage is already done. People will abandon this system for other ones. D&D books will no longer be sold, requested for gifts, subscribed to, miniatures sold.. we as a TTRPG community are seemingly deciding to move on, and they by their own profit driven means are and will be perpetually incapable of understanding. They won’t respond. Not yet.
There was another leak. I highly recommend looking it up.
BTW, if you are subbed to this site & reading this: unsub. Subscription numbers on this site are how they're tracking actual financial impact, so if you don't like what's happening, you need to vote with your dollar. There are plenty of other venues for the services provided, or your DND could take a break for a bit. Whatever the case, just felt like letting people know.
As bad and omnipresent as this looks to people dialed in to the community (count the number of non-OGL threads in the first three pages of GD. Betcha the number is not high), Wizards/Hasbro is counting on the fact that the average consumer knows nothing about the OGL, has never bought a third-party D&D book in their life, never looks up D&D on Reddit or these forums or YouTube or anything else, and just plays casual funtimes beer-and-pretzels games on the weekends whenever the mood hits. The silence is Wizards' attempt to ride out the storm and see if the bad reaction is mostly performative, i.e. a bunch of YouTube folks squawking without actually making any impact. The issue is, quite seriously, out of our hands - one influencer who convinces ten thousand people to go elsewhere, unsubscribe, or otherwise demonstrate anger is more effective than every single OGL post on this forum combined.
It's not a case of Money People not understanding the soul of D&D. It's a case of Money People figuring the one thousand silent casuals offsetting every one single angry Redditor or forumite or whatever are the real money and the angry forum troglodytes will come back eventually because they're financially and emotionally invested. And if they don't, the Money People legitimately do not care. They couldn't care less about Sam Exampleman's loud declaration of discontent and his highly inflammatory post about Unsubscribing Forever. They don't even know about it. It's completely irrelevant. Your money does not matter.
Your five hundred thousand friends? Their money matters.
This only gets better, gets an answer, if everybody gives up on D&D over it. And the odds of that are real damn low, because the Money People are right. The silent majority doesn't know or care about any of this, they just buy whatever Wizards puts in front of them and play it. Besides which, fact is that Paizo, Kobold Press, and all the rest have already abandoned the OGL and are not going to say "oh, no harm no foul, sure thing we'll be right back with ya" if Wizards pulls back on this issue. Wizards has already demonstrated that they cannot be trusted as business partners, or as stewards of open gaming. Given that, why should they pull back? They have the strongest tabletop brand by a country mile, D&D is a household name. The power of that "Household Name" status cannot be understated, and I guarantee you the Money People are counting on the power of that brand to pull them through this. The **** of it is that they're almost certainly right. This ORC of Paizo's has one mother****er of an uphill battle to catch even a tenth of the market share that D&D's got, and you can bet Hasbrozards will be sabotaging their efforts every step of the way.
They haven't decided who they are going to tar feather and fire as there scape goat because that's about the only option they have left at this point and even that won't repair half the damage they have done. They are to the point they will have to drop prices and make a true irrevocable ogl for dnd one with no stipulations and greed.
I don't know, Paizo is well known and Kobold press is one of the biggest 3rd party creators. I have 10 wotc books. I have 21 kobold press books. other 3rd party books 59. So I have bought 8 third party books to 1 wotc book. I am not counting the books on the way in kickstarter.
As bad and omnipresent as this looks to people dialed in to the community (count the number of non-OGL threads in the first three pages of GD. Betcha the number is not high), Wizards/Hasbro is counting on the fact that the average consumer knows nothing about the OGL, has never bought a third-party D&D book in their life, never looks up D&D on Reddit or these forums or YouTube or anything else, and just plays casual funtimes beer-and-pretzels games on the weekends whenever the mood hits. The silence is Wizards' attempt to ride out the storm and see if the bad reaction is mostly performative, i.e. a bunch of YouTube folks squawking without actually making any impact. The issue is, quite seriously, out of our hands - one influencer who convinces ten thousand people to go elsewhere, unsubscribe, or otherwise demonstrate anger is more effective than every single OGL post on this forum combined.
It's not a case of Money People not understanding the soul of D&D. It's a case of Money People figuring the one thousand silent casuals offsetting every one single angry Redditor or forumite or whatever are the real money and the angry forum troglodytes will come back eventually because they're financially and emotionally invested. And if they don't, the Money People legitimately do not care. They couldn't care less about Sam Exampleman's loud declaration of discontent and his highly inflammatory post about Unsubscribing Forever. They don't even know about it. It's completely irrelevant. Your money does not matter.
Your five hundred thousand friends? Their money matters.
This only gets better, gets an answer, if everybody gives up on D&D over it. And the odds of that are real damn low, because the Money People are right. The silent majority doesn't know or care about any of this, they just buy whatever Wizards puts in front of them and play it. Besides which, fact is that Paizo, Kobold Press, and all the rest have already abandoned the OGL and are not going to say "oh, no harm no foul, sure thing we'll be right back with ya" if Wizards pulls back on this issue. Wizards has already demonstrated that they cannot be trusted as business partners, or as stewards of open gaming. Given that, why should they pull back? They have the strongest tabletop brand by a country mile, D&D is a household name. The power of that "Household Name" status cannot be understated, and I guarantee you the Money People are counting on the power of that brand to pull them through this. The **** of it is that they're almost certainly right. This ORC of Paizo's has one mother****er of an uphill battle to catch even a tenth of the market share that D&D's got, and you can bet Hasbrozards will be sabotaging their efforts every step of the way.
Man. What a shit time to be a fan of the game.
I don't expect D&D to fail either, but it would be real nice if this ****storm causes them to publicly disavow the worst parts of 1.1. If they do nothing and move forward with the leaked version then I don't see any 3PP sticking by them at all.
But at this point, "disavowing the worst parts" isn't enough.
As Yurei points out, the catoblepas is out of the bag: Hasbro/WOTC have shown their true colors. We know what they're capable of, and we know how they view the fans and businesses that helped make 5E as huge as it is.
I also fear Yurei is correct in regards to the run-of-the-mill D&D group/player/DM. They'll either be unaware of this issue or won't care.
My biggest hope is that the gamechanger here vs 2008 is that HUGE amount of Millennials and Gen Zers who are players and are very connected online, thus increasing the chances of them finding out about the issue and siding with the gaming community.
The silence is because they suddenly developed enough self awareness to realize that whatever they were prepared to say was only going to make things worse, and they had no plan B.
Wotc is being to quiet. Kobold press, paizo and others that have banded together to make an Open Rpg Creative license (ORC). Go ahead and speak or is the dragon afraid of so many heroes?
I don't hear silence. I hear the sound of business executives crapping their pants.
Best guess: they're hoping the trash fire burns itself out and they can just ride out the storm and go about what they had planned anyway. And hey: if they spin it right, they can make it a story of "them thar evil toxic gamer chuds! etc. etc." and get some free good press form the access media out of it.
Alternatively; the situation has escalated way beyond what blow-back they expected and now they're trying to figure out desperately how to salvage it without just caving entirely... because they're a corporation: and admitting you were in the wrong is impossible.
LOL... Fair enough. They won't get any more of my money, no matter the outcome now. WOTC showed their hand by their silence about the ogl. Even if they say, no, we are keeping the old ogl I will never trust them.
A new OGL is being worked on. Paizo, Kobold press, Chaosium, Green ronin and others have banded together to make it. I will roll under their banner now.
They’re just money managers playing their own game and looking to make a buck. They don’t care about appeasing the community in any way, only how to make money off of them. That is their only goal right now. In their position you wouldn’t immediately address anything, you’d wait until dust settled or attention has shifted and then you’d hire a professional relations team on how to save face in order to increase market share. What the suits don’t understand, and never will, is WHY D&D became so popular in the first place: word of mouth. They’re treating this like a product on a shelf with a reliable product sell rate without thinking about why it’s selling, it’s not because of their fancy schools or their holy salaries, it’s because it’s fun to play and when someone says they want to “play D&D” a few books are sold and people get a bug. Except in this case, when the entire TTRPG community decides that WotC and specifically Hasbro isn’t worth introducing new players to, there will be a generational paradigm shift away from specifically their product because of their actions. They are incapable of understanding anything here, and they will be incapable of providing a response to anyone’s reactions because it’s not in their playbook. They will wait, but they don’t understand the damage is already done. People will abandon this system for other ones. D&D books will no longer be sold, requested for gifts, subscribed to, miniatures sold.. we as a TTRPG community are seemingly deciding to move on, and they by their own profit driven means are and will be perpetually incapable of understanding. They won’t respond. Not yet.
D&D is Now Trash
Goodbye
There was another leak. I highly recommend looking it up.
BTW, if you are subbed to this site & reading this: unsub. Subscription numbers on this site are how they're tracking actual financial impact, so if you don't like what's happening, you need to vote with your dollar. There are plenty of other venues for the services provided, or your DND could take a break for a bit. Whatever the case, just felt like letting people know.
Are you talking about the email from the person at WOTC? Or this is another OGL leak?
I have a free sub. I had been debating getting the legendary bundle as I am a dm. I will not be getting it, ever.
The absolute silence from wotc. they didn't say, no, no, this isn't what's going on.
Are you talking about the employee leaked letter?
As bad and omnipresent as this looks to people dialed in to the community (count the number of non-OGL threads in the first three pages of GD. Betcha the number is not high), Wizards/Hasbro is counting on the fact that the average consumer knows nothing about the OGL, has never bought a third-party D&D book in their life, never looks up D&D on Reddit or these forums or YouTube or anything else, and just plays casual funtimes beer-and-pretzels games on the weekends whenever the mood hits. The silence is Wizards' attempt to ride out the storm and see if the bad reaction is mostly performative, i.e. a bunch of YouTube folks squawking without actually making any impact. The issue is, quite seriously, out of our hands - one influencer who convinces ten thousand people to go elsewhere, unsubscribe, or otherwise demonstrate anger is more effective than every single OGL post on this forum combined.
It's not a case of Money People not understanding the soul of D&D. It's a case of Money People figuring the one thousand silent casuals offsetting every one single angry Redditor or forumite or whatever are the real money and the angry forum troglodytes will come back eventually because they're financially and emotionally invested. And if they don't, the Money People legitimately do not care. They couldn't care less about Sam Exampleman's loud declaration of discontent and his highly inflammatory post about Unsubscribing Forever. They don't even know about it. It's completely irrelevant. Your money does not matter.
Your five hundred thousand friends? Their money matters.
This only gets better, gets an answer, if everybody gives up on D&D over it. And the odds of that are real damn low, because the Money People are right. The silent majority doesn't know or care about any of this, they just buy whatever Wizards puts in front of them and play it. Besides which, fact is that Paizo, Kobold Press, and all the rest have already abandoned the OGL and are not going to say "oh, no harm no foul, sure thing we'll be right back with ya" if Wizards pulls back on this issue. Wizards has already demonstrated that they cannot be trusted as business partners, or as stewards of open gaming. Given that, why should they pull back? They have the strongest tabletop brand by a country mile, D&D is a household name. The power of that "Household Name" status cannot be understated, and I guarantee you the Money People are counting on the power of that brand to pull them through this. The **** of it is that they're almost certainly right. This ORC of Paizo's has one mother****er of an uphill battle to catch even a tenth of the market share that D&D's got, and you can bet Hasbrozards will be sabotaging their efforts every step of the way.
Man. What a shit time to be a fan of the game.
Please do not contact or message me.
They haven't decided who they are going to tar feather and fire as there scape goat because that's about the only option they have left at this point and even that won't repair half the damage they have done. They are to the point they will have to drop prices and make a true irrevocable ogl for dnd one with no stipulations and greed.
I don't know, Paizo is well known and Kobold press is one of the biggest 3rd party creators. I have 10 wotc books. I have 21 kobold press books. other 3rd party books 59. So I have bought 8 third party books to 1 wotc book. I am not counting the books on the way in kickstarter.
I see the president of wotc deciding to move to the video game arm of hasbro. she will be blamed
I don't expect D&D to fail either, but it would be real nice if this ****storm causes them to publicly disavow the worst parts of 1.1. If they do nothing and move forward with the leaked version then I don't see any 3PP sticking by them at all.
But at this point, "disavowing the worst parts" isn't enough.
As Yurei points out, the catoblepas is out of the bag: Hasbro/WOTC have shown their true colors. We know what they're capable of, and we know how they view the fans and businesses that helped make 5E as huge as it is.
I also fear Yurei is correct in regards to the run-of-the-mill D&D group/player/DM. They'll either be unaware of this issue or won't care.
My biggest hope is that the gamechanger here vs 2008 is that HUGE amount of Millennials and Gen Zers who are players and are very connected online, thus increasing the chances of them finding out about the issue and siding with the gaming community.
The silence is because they suddenly developed enough self awareness to realize that whatever they were prepared to say was only going to make things worse, and they had no plan B.
The silence exists, because publishing a press release on Friday at 4pm in hopes that the weekend news cycle buries it before Monday comes around.
Not many 3rd party people are going to throw in with wotc now. They have shown they are untrustworthy as a business partner.