"Obviously, the OGL fiasco has had some lasting effects ..."
March 19, 2025 8:05 PM Subscribe
Shannon Appelcline (Designers & Dragons, 3/10/2025), "Is the OGL Era Over?": "what are the continuing effects of the attack on the OGL, both on Wizards itself and on the rest of the industry?" "Dreams for Sale" has alternatives. More RPG news in review: Appelcline's "2024: The Year in Roleplaying"; Bloggies 2024 winners; Origins Award nominees; and today, nominees for the 2024 Indie Groundbreaker Awards. See also roundups of 2024 at "The Indie Game Reading Club," the "Indie RPG Newsletter," and the "Yes, Indie'd" podcast. Other recent RPG fun: Designing Dungeons Course. Either/Orc. Fifty Foot Gnome. Fight or Flight. Helvetia. Les Chroniques de Sainte Clervie. Planet of the Week. Squishy Space (by Mefi's Own Skerples). Utopia on the Tabletop. The World We Left Behind and its associated ballet! (review). Worldwizard (review).
In the wake of that fiasco, I compiled a list of free rpgs (a comment with a dead link is in The Pluto Gangsta's thread), but I present the current iteration of that list.
Some notes:
Of the lot, Worlds Without Number is probably the most d&d-like.
Eclipse Phase is particularly impressive in that unlike every other one, it includes literally every supplement they've made.
And if you're just casting about for something my recommendation goes to Lady Blackbird & things derived from it.
posted by juv3nal at 8:31 PM on March 19 [6 favorites]
Some notes:
Of the lot, Worlds Without Number is probably the most d&d-like.
Eclipse Phase is particularly impressive in that unlike every other one, it includes literally every supplement they've made.
And if you're just casting about for something my recommendation goes to Lady Blackbird & things derived from it.
posted by juv3nal at 8:31 PM on March 19 [6 favorites]
There are just so many awesome free and cheap indie RPG resources, and WotC/ Hasbro has acted so shittily that I I don't think I have any need to buy DnD stuff again, or get my kid into it at all. We'll be fine with homebrew and zines and all the cool stuff linked by juv3nal above, etc.
In the bigger picture, I'm not sure why anyone was all that surprised at immoral/unethical behavior surrounding OGL, because WotC got filthy rich by taking a solid game concept and infecting it at its core with a mechanic to extract cash from kids via induced gambling addiction.
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:48 PM on March 19 [7 favorites]
In the bigger picture, I'm not sure why anyone was all that surprised at immoral/unethical behavior surrounding OGL, because WotC got filthy rich by taking a solid game concept and infecting it at its core with a mechanic to extract cash from kids via induced gambling addiction.
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:48 PM on March 19 [7 favorites]
Polygon was so into the 2024 Player Handbook that I think they got wood.
But the consensus reaction from the podcasts I listen to amounts to a golf clap.
posted by Lemkin at 8:59 PM on March 19 [2 favorites]
But the consensus reaction from the podcasts I listen to amounts to a golf clap.
posted by Lemkin at 8:59 PM on March 19 [2 favorites]
As someone who fell back into the TTRPG/D&D world in 2023 after a 25 year hiatus (thanks Dimension 20 / Hank Green), I had missed the whole OGL fiasco the first time around. I have a lot of thoughts about it, but D&D has a name recognition that will keep it around for a while. It has become shorthand for TTRPGs in general.
I'm excited to try Daggerheart, Draw Steel, DC20, Cosmere, and Shadowdark, when I can get some folks who want to try a game in them. Right now my groups I play with are still happy exploring the D&D campaigns we have started, but will probably start doing one shots in the other spaces just to explore the properties. While I really love the indie / free TTRPG scene, I'm a sucker for big glossy books with lore and art to flip through.
A lot of the fallout of the 2024 game changes are the seemingly unplaytested last minuted differences showing how much the "must ship for arbitrary business target" goals have impacted some game mechanics (Daylight nerfing vampires, Conjure Minor Elementals scales by 2d8 a level seems like such a typo), and has demonstrated to a lot of people how WotC is not some ivory pillar of TTPRG game mechanic research. That has made these alternatives seem a lot more palatable. Combined with Hasbro* continually talking up using AI when the entire culture around TTRPGs has been about independent artist publishing, it just makes sense more and more people would rather put money into the hands of Matt Colville or the Critical Role folks, than Hasbro shareholders.
Draw Steel might have the best chance of overtaking D&D because so much of the emphasis appears to be on making it much easier to prep and run sessions for the GM. That is the single biggest bottleneck of expansion of a TTRPG platform and addressing that (without resorting to AI, which won't ever work anyway) can go a long way to driving expansion. Colville has already demonstrated you can just tack rules onto existing D&D games, since that was what he was doing before the OGL made him realize he should probably break fully from the Hasbro umbrella.
Daggerheart will probably have the most expansive lore of the up and coming commercial alternatives, but I can't tell if the mechanics are biased towards people wanting to re-enact an actual play at their home game, or if they are going to be easier to play and not just remind the GM that they aren't Matt Mercer every fifteen minutes. I'm curious if part of the delay of Critical Role confirming which game system campaign four will use is partially them waiting to see how the launch of Daggerheart goes before committing to another four years in it (as they've quietly sidelined Candela).
* I will say one positive thing to come out of Hasbro's ownership of D&D IP is the Potato Head Beholder which has already gotten folks over here thinking of a one shot in the grounds of Tayto Park
posted by mrzarquon at 2:03 AM on March 20 [5 favorites]
I'm excited to try Daggerheart, Draw Steel, DC20, Cosmere, and Shadowdark, when I can get some folks who want to try a game in them. Right now my groups I play with are still happy exploring the D&D campaigns we have started, but will probably start doing one shots in the other spaces just to explore the properties. While I really love the indie / free TTRPG scene, I'm a sucker for big glossy books with lore and art to flip through.
A lot of the fallout of the 2024 game changes are the seemingly unplaytested last minuted differences showing how much the "must ship for arbitrary business target" goals have impacted some game mechanics (Daylight nerfing vampires, Conjure Minor Elementals scales by 2d8 a level seems like such a typo), and has demonstrated to a lot of people how WotC is not some ivory pillar of TTPRG game mechanic research. That has made these alternatives seem a lot more palatable. Combined with Hasbro* continually talking up using AI when the entire culture around TTRPGs has been about independent artist publishing, it just makes sense more and more people would rather put money into the hands of Matt Colville or the Critical Role folks, than Hasbro shareholders.
Draw Steel might have the best chance of overtaking D&D because so much of the emphasis appears to be on making it much easier to prep and run sessions for the GM. That is the single biggest bottleneck of expansion of a TTRPG platform and addressing that (without resorting to AI, which won't ever work anyway) can go a long way to driving expansion. Colville has already demonstrated you can just tack rules onto existing D&D games, since that was what he was doing before the OGL made him realize he should probably break fully from the Hasbro umbrella.
Daggerheart will probably have the most expansive lore of the up and coming commercial alternatives, but I can't tell if the mechanics are biased towards people wanting to re-enact an actual play at their home game, or if they are going to be easier to play and not just remind the GM that they aren't Matt Mercer every fifteen minutes. I'm curious if part of the delay of Critical Role confirming which game system campaign four will use is partially them waiting to see how the launch of Daggerheart goes before committing to another four years in it (as they've quietly sidelined Candela).
* I will say one positive thing to come out of Hasbro's ownership of D&D IP is the Potato Head Beholder which has already gotten folks over here thinking of a one shot in the grounds of Tayto Park
posted by mrzarquon at 2:03 AM on March 20 [5 favorites]
So far this thread wins the "most acronyms per square meter" prize.
NGL, OGL left me SMH, thinking WTF.
Though I can see how an Open Government License for Rocket Propelled Grenades could lead to fiasco.
IYKYK
posted by chavenet at 2:31 AM on March 20 [13 favorites]
NGL, OGL left me SMH, thinking WTF.
Though I can see how an Open Government License for Rocket Propelled Grenades could lead to fiasco.
IYKYK
posted by chavenet at 2:31 AM on March 20 [13 favorites]
@chavenet I am not part of this world, so the lack of definition of OGL in the post or the first article was a bit of a barrier. After looking up what it means, I am still unclear on what the “open game license fiasco” was.
posted by Captaintripps at 4:29 AM on March 20 [7 favorites]
posted by Captaintripps at 4:29 AM on March 20 [7 favorites]
This previously will give a taste of the 2023 events, and there’s some history in the various links.
TL;DR? Wizards of the Coast, which owns D&D and is owned in turn by Hasbro, wants to hyper-monetize the product, ignoring the long history of people making up their own scenarios, campaigns, character classes, and rules. Fans get predictably annoyed, but a lot don’t seem to make the jump to just playing a different system.
I had a discussion recently with my brother. He and I both live Glorantha, a fantasy world that’s been supported by a range of rules over the years. I’d drifted away when they went back to RuneQuest, a system that is almost as old and overly-simulationist as D&D. It turns out he really likes dungeon crawls where “the dice tell the story,” and I want story-driven games with a lot of narrative freedom, so we may never meet on this topic. But Glorantha is still fun.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:00 AM on March 20 [2 favorites]
TL;DR? Wizards of the Coast, which owns D&D and is owned in turn by Hasbro, wants to hyper-monetize the product, ignoring the long history of people making up their own scenarios, campaigns, character classes, and rules. Fans get predictably annoyed, but a lot don’t seem to make the jump to just playing a different system.
I had a discussion recently with my brother. He and I both live Glorantha, a fantasy world that’s been supported by a range of rules over the years. I’d drifted away when they went back to RuneQuest, a system that is almost as old and overly-simulationist as D&D. It turns out he really likes dungeon crawls where “the dice tell the story,” and I want story-driven games with a lot of narrative freedom, so we may never meet on this topic. But Glorantha is still fun.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:00 AM on March 20 [2 favorites]
I am still unclear on what the “open game license fiasco” was.
This link from The Pluto Gangsta's post does a pretty good job summarising imo. Basically the OGL allows third parties to publish supplements, adventures what have you for d&d without wizards of the coast lawyers coming after them. The fiasco is that wotc decided to unilaterally change the terms of the license to be more restrictive, pissing everybody off (I believe they've since walked back the changes).
posted by juv3nal at 5:02 AM on March 20 [5 favorites]
This link from The Pluto Gangsta's post does a pretty good job summarising imo. Basically the OGL allows third parties to publish supplements, adventures what have you for d&d without wizards of the coast lawyers coming after them. The fiasco is that wotc decided to unilaterally change the terms of the license to be more restrictive, pissing everybody off (I believe they've since walked back the changes).
posted by juv3nal at 5:02 AM on March 20 [5 favorites]
I’ll note that Chaosium, which owns RuneQuest and controls Glorantha, has formalized fan publishing over the years, most recently through DrivetthuRPG and additions to the game world percolate into the “official” world quite often (generally with credit).
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:05 AM on March 20 [1 favorite]
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:05 AM on March 20 [1 favorite]
Regardless of them walking back the changes, it would do players (generally) some good to play some other systems and it's kind of a "they tried to pull this bullshit once, it's probably only a matter of time until they try something like it again" type of deal.
posted by juv3nal at 5:06 AM on March 20 [4 favorites]
posted by juv3nal at 5:06 AM on March 20 [4 favorites]
To clarify my comment, Wizards of the Coast started making a game called Magic the Gathering. It abstracted the idea of fantasy duels into decks of cards, and players enjoyed fighting each other with fireballs and summoned minions etc.
So far so good, but the main idea is that you never know what you buy. It's like baseball cards, and when you open a pack you might get something highly desirable, or nothing worth mentioning.
I literally knew underprivileged kids who would skip lunch to use that money to buy MtG packs, hoping for a big score. I guess it's not (yet) illegal to target kids with gambling mechanics, but it's certainly unethical and immoral in my book.
I'm a sucker for big glossy books with lore and art to flip through.
I think it's a mistake to think you can't get this on the Indie RPG scene! Ok some of it you may have to glossy print yourself if only color pdfs are available. As an example of some very pretty and captivating art in indie rpgs, check out Ultraviolet Grasslands, recently posted here.
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:35 AM on March 20 [3 favorites]
So far so good, but the main idea is that you never know what you buy. It's like baseball cards, and when you open a pack you might get something highly desirable, or nothing worth mentioning.
I literally knew underprivileged kids who would skip lunch to use that money to buy MtG packs, hoping for a big score. I guess it's not (yet) illegal to target kids with gambling mechanics, but it's certainly unethical and immoral in my book.
I'm a sucker for big glossy books with lore and art to flip through.
I think it's a mistake to think you can't get this on the Indie RPG scene! Ok some of it you may have to glossy print yourself if only color pdfs are available. As an example of some very pretty and captivating art in indie rpgs, check out Ultraviolet Grasslands, recently posted here.
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:35 AM on March 20 [3 favorites]
I'm another player who fell away around the time I hit 20 and came back when my kid learned the game 20 years later. There had been a lot of changes in the meanwhile. Yes, WotC (Wizards of the Coast, the company that sold MtG, Magic the Gathering, the breakout CCG, collectible card game) had bought TSR (Tactical Studies Rules, the company that originated D&D) and had pumped out a number of new editions to increase sales, transform the game, and make everyone who played buy many, many books. In the process they made two lasting fundamental changes to the IP (intellectual property): 1. they changed it from a game that was mainly about exploring dungeons, looting treasure, and surviving fights against scary monsters to a game that was mainly about building a superhero character to your exact specifications so that you could "win" by "breaking the game" at a certain level with combinations of powers that would just wreck any encounter the DM (dungeon master) could throw at you. As with MtG, the metagame became more important than the actual game, and the dungeoneering was only done to accumulate enough XP (experience points) to level up to acquire these preselected abilities (from an endless series of publications affectionately known as "splatbooks" which kept WotC in the green). 2. They published the rules under the OGL so that 3rd party publishers could create and sell content for the game, creating a thriving ecosystem to support brand-name D&D.
This was in the heyday of the Third Edition (3e) and its update (3.5e) but at a certain point there was more cruft than game, it became impossible to attract new players because everything was too complicated, there were so many gamebreaking combos that it wasn't fun anymore, and so many products to buy from so many companies that WotC and Hasbro (their corporate overlord) were no longer making enough money to suit them.
Since WoW (World of Warcraft, a popular MMORPG [massively multiplayer online role playing game]) was eating Hasbro's lunch, the designers at WotC built 4e to work like a pen-and-paper video game with all the math that such a thing sounds like it would involve. It tanked, and Paizo, one of the companies that had taken advantage of the OGL created Pathfinder, a game that was openly 3.5e D&D with the serial numbers filed off (enabled by the OGL) and players who were willing to still keep playing the mess that D&D had become over the years had a new home that rivaled what "official" D&D was doing.
So when WotC went back to the drawing board for 5e, they looked back to the pre-3e days for inspiration. They scaled back to just 12 classes (still way more than the core 4 I started with, plus elf, dwarf, and halfling in the race-as-class days). The element of building a superheroic character was still there, but with far fewer choices to make that were carefully balanced not to break the game. For a while it seemed like players were enjoying exploring dungeons again. Sales of WotC's epic high fantasy adventures (in hardcover, of course) sold well and happy 5e players were saving the world time after time.
But Hasbro wasn't satisfied. D&D was blowing up with actual play podcasts and cultural cachet. One book of new subclasses every year or two was not going to cut it. Only DMs needed to buy the adventure books, after all, and the players were where the cash was. So with the 50th Anniversary of the game coming up (and a sweet opportunity to force all these new players to re-buy all the hardcover rules in a new edition), Hasbro instructed the designers to speedrun breaking their own game, piling up over a hundred new poorly-balanced subclasses and almost as many "playable races" in addition to many, many new spells and magic items, refocusing on the meta (building your character, not playing the game) and preparing for a new edition to fix and "rebalance" all the shit they just broke.
But they weren't going to allow another Pathfinder situation to happen. Already the popularity of 5e had spawned Pathfinder 2e, which had brought a resurgence of people discovering alternatives to brand-name D&D. So in preparation for the new edition, Hasbro announced the end of publishing under the OGL, which they figured no one really cared about anymore. The 3rd-party splatbook factor had never been a huge thing in the 5e environment.
What DID happen was that it drew everyone's attention to the obvious cash grab and the fact that the designers at WotC had never been their friends, but had all along just been trying to milk them for all they were worth.
Personally, I had already become tired of the style of play of trying to optimize a character to compete with the other "builds" in the party and choose the optimal action to trigger each round from the menu of choices the game provided. This was not the playing-make-believe game I remembered from my youth. A friend introduced me to Shadowdark, a beautifully-designed game by Kelsey Dionne that won a ton of awards last year. It takes modern gaming mechanics and fuses them with an old-school playstyle. Characters are discovered, not built (and often die!), and are allowed to try whatever actions you can imagine rather than being mostly restricted to a list of specific things you're good at. The game is about exploring dungeons again. It's everything I ever wanted, and it's truly a treat to play and to run. It's so easy to get new players started, and because it shares the basic DNA of D&D and 5e mechanics, it's one of the easier games to convince 5e players to try.
If there's one flaw to Shadowdark, it's that you have to build your own world to go with it (not a flaw in my book, but fair), and Kelsey just successfully Kickstarted a new setting book to go with it (still open if you want to get in on it!). It's not something I need, but I'm going to get it just to give her money. Because the sad truth of RPGs is that if they are good, you only need to buy the rules and leave the rest to your imagination. That means it's hard to maintain a company selling product without becoming corrupt and evil. We've seen it happen over and over. There are so many great games out there, so many brilliant designers doing amazing work. And so few ways of making a living doing it. Once again, it always seems to come down to one thing: Capitalism sucks.
posted by rikschell at 5:48 AM on March 20 [18 favorites]
This was in the heyday of the Third Edition (3e) and its update (3.5e) but at a certain point there was more cruft than game, it became impossible to attract new players because everything was too complicated, there were so many gamebreaking combos that it wasn't fun anymore, and so many products to buy from so many companies that WotC and Hasbro (their corporate overlord) were no longer making enough money to suit them.
Since WoW (World of Warcraft, a popular MMORPG [massively multiplayer online role playing game]) was eating Hasbro's lunch, the designers at WotC built 4e to work like a pen-and-paper video game with all the math that such a thing sounds like it would involve. It tanked, and Paizo, one of the companies that had taken advantage of the OGL created Pathfinder, a game that was openly 3.5e D&D with the serial numbers filed off (enabled by the OGL) and players who were willing to still keep playing the mess that D&D had become over the years had a new home that rivaled what "official" D&D was doing.
So when WotC went back to the drawing board for 5e, they looked back to the pre-3e days for inspiration. They scaled back to just 12 classes (still way more than the core 4 I started with, plus elf, dwarf, and halfling in the race-as-class days). The element of building a superheroic character was still there, but with far fewer choices to make that were carefully balanced not to break the game. For a while it seemed like players were enjoying exploring dungeons again. Sales of WotC's epic high fantasy adventures (in hardcover, of course) sold well and happy 5e players were saving the world time after time.
But Hasbro wasn't satisfied. D&D was blowing up with actual play podcasts and cultural cachet. One book of new subclasses every year or two was not going to cut it. Only DMs needed to buy the adventure books, after all, and the players were where the cash was. So with the 50th Anniversary of the game coming up (and a sweet opportunity to force all these new players to re-buy all the hardcover rules in a new edition), Hasbro instructed the designers to speedrun breaking their own game, piling up over a hundred new poorly-balanced subclasses and almost as many "playable races" in addition to many, many new spells and magic items, refocusing on the meta (building your character, not playing the game) and preparing for a new edition to fix and "rebalance" all the shit they just broke.
But they weren't going to allow another Pathfinder situation to happen. Already the popularity of 5e had spawned Pathfinder 2e, which had brought a resurgence of people discovering alternatives to brand-name D&D. So in preparation for the new edition, Hasbro announced the end of publishing under the OGL, which they figured no one really cared about anymore. The 3rd-party splatbook factor had never been a huge thing in the 5e environment.
What DID happen was that it drew everyone's attention to the obvious cash grab and the fact that the designers at WotC had never been their friends, but had all along just been trying to milk them for all they were worth.
Personally, I had already become tired of the style of play of trying to optimize a character to compete with the other "builds" in the party and choose the optimal action to trigger each round from the menu of choices the game provided. This was not the playing-make-believe game I remembered from my youth. A friend introduced me to Shadowdark, a beautifully-designed game by Kelsey Dionne that won a ton of awards last year. It takes modern gaming mechanics and fuses them with an old-school playstyle. Characters are discovered, not built (and often die!), and are allowed to try whatever actions you can imagine rather than being mostly restricted to a list of specific things you're good at. The game is about exploring dungeons again. It's everything I ever wanted, and it's truly a treat to play and to run. It's so easy to get new players started, and because it shares the basic DNA of D&D and 5e mechanics, it's one of the easier games to convince 5e players to try.
If there's one flaw to Shadowdark, it's that you have to build your own world to go with it (not a flaw in my book, but fair), and Kelsey just successfully Kickstarted a new setting book to go with it (still open if you want to get in on it!). It's not something I need, but I'm going to get it just to give her money. Because the sad truth of RPGs is that if they are good, you only need to buy the rules and leave the rest to your imagination. That means it's hard to maintain a company selling product without becoming corrupt and evil. We've seen it happen over and over. There are so many great games out there, so many brilliant designers doing amazing work. And so few ways of making a living doing it. Once again, it always seems to come down to one thing: Capitalism sucks.
posted by rikschell at 5:48 AM on March 20 [18 favorites]
The fiasco is that wotc decided to unilaterally change the terms of the license to be more restrictive, pissing everybody off (I believe they've since walked back the changes).
On top of this, one version of the license tried to claim that WotC could take any material published under the OGL, and publish ot themselves, for profit, without crediting or paying the original authors. It did not go over well with a community of people with a long, long tradition of making up their own material. (Also known as "homebrew" for the uninitiated).
There was another piece in there where independent creators making over x dollars in profit on their OGL-material sales would have to pay WotC for it, where x was the amount of profit Critical Role was making. They basically personally targeted Matt Mercer for a shakedown.
posted by mrgoat at 5:48 AM on March 20 [8 favorites]
On top of this, one version of the license tried to claim that WotC could take any material published under the OGL, and publish ot themselves, for profit, without crediting or paying the original authors. It did not go over well with a community of people with a long, long tradition of making up their own material. (Also known as "homebrew" for the uninitiated).
There was another piece in there where independent creators making over x dollars in profit on their OGL-material sales would have to pay WotC for it, where x was the amount of profit Critical Role was making. They basically personally targeted Matt Mercer for a shakedown.
posted by mrgoat at 5:48 AM on March 20 [8 favorites]
And just this week Wizards of the Coast laid off 90% of the team developing "Sigil", their much-hyped, next-gen, 3-D virtual tabletop (VTT) system. Sigil was released in beta just a few weeks ago to middling-at-best reviews, and had a full launch more recently, to little fanfare. Sigil is probably dead-on-arrival, but there aren't many in the tabletop community mourning it. Over the past couple years, WotC and Hasbro have made clear their intention to monetize and micro-transact the D&D brand within an inch of its life (or beyond), but tabletop gamers aren't having it. Sigil would have been a cornerstone of that strategy, so if it is DOA then I don't know where WotC/Hasbro will turn next.
posted by The Nutmeg of Consolation at 5:58 AM on March 20 [10 favorites]
posted by The Nutmeg of Consolation at 5:58 AM on March 20 [10 favorites]
I'm just noting that I created my own gameworld in the D&D3 era, and when the first OGL issue happened, ripped out all of the references to any WotC things in fiction I was writing about my D&D characters, then turned it into my own book and world. I wonder how many other people did similar things, abandoning it for their creative pursuits.
posted by mephron at 6:19 AM on March 20 [4 favorites]
posted by mephron at 6:19 AM on March 20 [4 favorites]
WotC had never been their friends, but had all along just been trying to milk them for all they were worth
A podcast host recording during the thick of the controversy went considerably further. “They hate you,” he said repeatedly. “They don’t go to cons. They’re disgusted by you Midwestern neckbeards. All they want from you is to buy everything they publish and shut up.”
The whole affair was the consumer-goodwill equivalent of The Joker setting that huge pile of money on fire. And they just couldn’t help themselves. Once they decided D&D was an “under-monetized brand”, some heinous shit was only a matter of time.
The good news is that, to staunch the bleeding, they were forced to release all of 5e (the 2014 version) under a Creative Commons license that, at least in theory, puts it beyond the reach of Hasbro greedheads forever. Whether they’ll do the same for the 2024 changes now that all 3 core rule books have been published is unclear. But nothing about those seems to be setting the TTRPG world on fire anyway.
posted by Lemkin at 6:27 AM on March 20 [3 favorites]
A podcast host recording during the thick of the controversy went considerably further. “They hate you,” he said repeatedly. “They don’t go to cons. They’re disgusted by you Midwestern neckbeards. All they want from you is to buy everything they publish and shut up.”
The whole affair was the consumer-goodwill equivalent of The Joker setting that huge pile of money on fire. And they just couldn’t help themselves. Once they decided D&D was an “under-monetized brand”, some heinous shit was only a matter of time.
The good news is that, to staunch the bleeding, they were forced to release all of 5e (the 2014 version) under a Creative Commons license that, at least in theory, puts it beyond the reach of Hasbro greedheads forever. Whether they’ll do the same for the 2024 changes now that all 3 core rule books have been published is unclear. But nothing about those seems to be setting the TTRPG world on fire anyway.
posted by Lemkin at 6:27 AM on March 20 [3 favorites]
Fundamentally, WotC's problem is that ttrpgs have always been very hard to monetize. You really only need 1-3 books, and only one person at a table needs to buy them. On top of that, once one person makes the purchase, no one ever needs to pay again. It's not like your 3rd, second, first edition books stop working.
Which leads to: to make money, you need content. Good content, written by people who are good at producing content. Better enough at it that it's better content than people are coming up with on their own, compelling enough that people want to buy it.
Those people cost money. Most of the money going around in ttrpgs is in people who love the game enough to willingly shell out money to support the games they love, when they don't technically have to. WotC has always wanted to find a way to force the players to keep paying, to turn the game into a subscription. But ttrpgs just don't work that way.
Hence this post, and the myriad of wonderful, creative, amazing free or low cost rpgs out there.
posted by mrgoat at 6:39 AM on March 20 [15 favorites]
Which leads to: to make money, you need content. Good content, written by people who are good at producing content. Better enough at it that it's better content than people are coming up with on their own, compelling enough that people want to buy it.
Those people cost money. Most of the money going around in ttrpgs is in people who love the game enough to willingly shell out money to support the games they love, when they don't technically have to. WotC has always wanted to find a way to force the players to keep paying, to turn the game into a subscription. But ttrpgs just don't work that way.
Hence this post, and the myriad of wonderful, creative, amazing free or low cost rpgs out there.
posted by mrgoat at 6:39 AM on March 20 [15 favorites]
On top of that, once one person makes the purchase, no one ever needs to pay again.
Yup. My group still plays 1e AD&D. My players handbook still has the $18.95 price tag in it. 45 years of play, so money well invested.
posted by fimbulvetr at 6:50 AM on March 20 [13 favorites]
Yup. My group still plays 1e AD&D. My players handbook still has the $18.95 price tag in it. 45 years of play, so money well invested.
posted by fimbulvetr at 6:50 AM on March 20 [13 favorites]
See that? $18.95 for 45 years of play. TTRPGS may very well be the single best ROI for your entertainment dollar. That might even beat out public libraries for cost/enjoyment.
posted by mrgoat at 6:58 AM on March 20 [8 favorites]
posted by mrgoat at 6:58 AM on March 20 [8 favorites]
Yeah, and forgive my ignorance here because I'm merely TTRPG adjacent but I haven't played in like 40 years - what actual lock-in is there with modules? I mean ok if the setting is foreign to the game you probably couldn't make it work (although you could probably shove a high fantasy scenario into cyberpunk red, you probably couldn't do the reverse), but as long as it's broadly the same sort of setting, ech, tweak a little bit here and there and go?
Or are they much more self-contained, here's an assortment of PCs and here's the NPCs and you're just referring to the base game for everything other than the story?
posted by Kyol at 7:20 AM on March 20 [2 favorites]
Or are they much more self-contained, here's an assortment of PCs and here's the NPCs and you're just referring to the base game for everything other than the story?
posted by Kyol at 7:20 AM on March 20 [2 favorites]
I do think it's worth looking at newer games, especially if you are looking to play with a newer group of people. The games of the late 70s and early 80s are very imaginative but a nightmare from a design and organization perspective (not to mention implicit and often explicit gender and racial problems). It's never been easier to find people willing to try new games. I have way more people wanting to play than I can run for and it breaks my heart that I can't include everyone who would like to join.
posted by rikschell at 7:22 AM on March 20 [2 favorites]
posted by rikschell at 7:22 AM on March 20 [2 favorites]
what actual lock-in is there with modules?
There isn't, really. They're generally set in a specific fictional setting, and they come with a set of NPCs and a pre-written plot, but if you're willing to do the work you can often adapt them.
Where it stars to get complicated is when they make fundamental changes to the cannon of the setting, later modules set in the same universe may assume the plot lines of previous modules happened.
posted by mrgoat at 7:30 AM on March 20 [4 favorites]
There isn't, really. They're generally set in a specific fictional setting, and they come with a set of NPCs and a pre-written plot, but if you're willing to do the work you can often adapt them.
Where it stars to get complicated is when they make fundamental changes to the cannon of the setting, later modules set in the same universe may assume the plot lines of previous modules happened.
posted by mrgoat at 7:30 AM on March 20 [4 favorites]
Where it stars to get complicated is when they make fundamental changes to the cannon of the setting
And this is the crucial thing with any shared content world. “Monster of the week” stories can be fun. But if you want to tell a story where your adventurers make a difference, in some meaningful way that changes the world, then your world stops being the shared world.
Look at the profusion of world-changing endings there are in Baldur’s Gate 3. That’s the goal! At least for the player groups that want to change the world. But it’s pretty hard to write a sequel except by picking one ending and leaving all the others in the dust.
BG3 did a little bit of that to BG2 as well. They did Viconia dirty. I enjoyed talking her around to the Good side. Shar is a shitty gaslighting goddess that Vi was better off kicking to the curb. Seeing her crawl back made me a little salty. Still killed her anyway for the sweet XP and loot. It’s what the real Vi would have wanted.
posted by notoriety public at 7:51 AM on March 20 [7 favorites]
And this is the crucial thing with any shared content world. “Monster of the week” stories can be fun. But if you want to tell a story where your adventurers make a difference, in some meaningful way that changes the world, then your world stops being the shared world.
Look at the profusion of world-changing endings there are in Baldur’s Gate 3. That’s the goal! At least for the player groups that want to change the world. But it’s pretty hard to write a sequel except by picking one ending and leaving all the others in the dust.
BG3 did a little bit of that to BG2 as well. They did Viconia dirty. I enjoyed talking her around to the Good side. Shar is a shitty gaslighting goddess that Vi was better off kicking to the curb. Seeing her crawl back made me a little salty. Still killed her anyway for the sweet XP and loot. It’s what the real Vi would have wanted.
posted by notoriety public at 7:51 AM on March 20 [7 favorites]
I risk edition wars here, but 4e did not tank. This is a fairly good article about the finances; 5e has been more successful for sure, but 4e only failed if you're thinking in Hasbro terms. I.e., it didn't measure up to MtG.
posted by Bryant at 9:58 AM on March 20 [9 favorites]
posted by Bryant at 9:58 AM on March 20 [9 favorites]
It's not much of a sample size to draw on, but I wondered which of the indie games were recognized in multiple ways by these awards / round-ups. I hope I didn't miss any with two or more mentions:
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:25 AM on March 20 [5 favorites]
- Revolt!: Groundbreaker nominee for Game of the Year, Best Rules, and Best Art; mentioned by Indie Game Reading Club
- Last Train to Bremen: Groundbreaker nominee for Game of the Year, Most Innovative, and Best Rules
- His Majesty the Worm: Groundbreaker nominee for Game of the Year and Best Rules
- Triangle Agency: Groundbreaker nominee for Game of the Year and Best Design (layout, etc.); mentioned by Indie Game Reading Club; mentioned by Yes, Indie'd podcast
- Doomsong: Groundbreaker nominee for Game of the Year and Best Art
- Substratum Protocol: Groundbreaker nominee for Best Setting; mentioned by Indie Game Reading Club
- Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland: Groundbreaker nominee for Best Art; mentioned by Indie Game Reading Club
- Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast: Origins Award nominee for Best RPG Core game; Nebula Award nominee; mentioned by Indie RPG Newsletter
- Moria - Through the Doors of Durin: Origins Award nominee for Best RPG Supplement; mentioned by Indie Game Reading Club
- The Wildsea: Storm & Root: Origins Award nominee for Best RPG Supplement; mentioned by Indie Game Reading Clube; mixed review on the base game at Indie RPG Newsletter
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:25 AM on March 20 [5 favorites]
My gaming group started with Pathfinder 1e back in 2014 and has cycled through Cyberpunk, Starfinder, Monster of the Week, Dungeons and Dragons 5e, Call of Cthulhu, Blades in the Dark, and now back to Dungeons and Dragons 5e. We've typically played on Roll20, since we're distributed across the country.
I'm currently running an Eberron-based 5e adventure on Roll20 (based on Frontiers of Eberron), and having a blast.
When the OGL fiasco hit we were prepared to leave D&D forever. I absolutely refuse to support a company that treats its customers with the contempt that Wizards of the Coast has shown, and it's baffling to me that they haven't tried to fix their approach over the last few years.
posted by bshort at 10:30 AM on March 20 [2 favorites]
I'm currently running an Eberron-based 5e adventure on Roll20 (based on Frontiers of Eberron), and having a blast.
When the OGL fiasco hit we were prepared to leave D&D forever. I absolutely refuse to support a company that treats its customers with the contempt that Wizards of the Coast has shown, and it's baffling to me that they haven't tried to fix their approach over the last few years.
posted by bshort at 10:30 AM on March 20 [2 favorites]
I gather that Critical Role is planning on running their next main campaign using their homegrown system Daggerheart, which might have happened anyway but I am sure it was locked in by the attempted shakedown. So WOTC managed to drive off what had been the flagship live play for D&D, which had been responsible for a good bit of its recent renaissance.
posted by tavella at 10:39 AM on March 20 [5 favorites]
posted by tavella at 10:39 AM on March 20 [5 favorites]
Indeed, Critical Role is probably the biggest driver in recent interest in D&D. If WotC had been smart, they would have engaged in a partnership, sponsorship, and supported the show. Instead, all they did was try to sabotage CR and piggyback off them for money.
posted by mrgoat at 10:51 AM on March 20 [2 favorites]
posted by mrgoat at 10:51 AM on March 20 [2 favorites]
After looking up what it means, I am still unclear on what the “open game license fiasco” was.
Lots of information in the thread and takes on it, but just to add my 0.02 in Canadian currency:
The TTRPG community is stuffed to the brim with imaginative, creative people - most everyone I know in the hobby is always coming up with ideas, from world-building, new classes, new spells, rule tweaks, adjustments, and so forth. Every table I've been involved with is constantly evolving and changing the game to suit themselves. Best to think of D&D as a "game engine" from which multiple different games emerge, but have a core language & set of conventions.
Now, when I started playing in the late 70s/early 80s, that largely happened at each table, and the ability to share what people were doing was limited. What the OGL and the internet did was allow the creative types in the TTRPG world to take that game engine and share the things they were doing with it - the different applications, changes, interpretations, game worlds, mechanics, and on and on...and we could share those with each other, without being worried that Hasbro/WOTC would crack down on folks for sharing those things. Those really good at it got to make a small amount of money doing it; for most of us, it meant an ability to access lots of different ideas and share our own, and the hobby benefits from creative, engaged people doing this.
When Hasbro threatened to revoke the OGL, those creators who were making some money at their work were obviously upset and threatened, but what it meant for me was a return to the early days in the hobby - my tables could come up with our own tweaks and changes and ideas, but we wouldn't get the inspiration, influence, and joy of seeing what others were doing as well. Instead of an open ecosystem, we would return to closed ones. That, plus what was a giant betrayal of trust of the community, turned me & my group against D&D and into exploring a variety of other games, and Shadowdark seems to be becoming our home for now.
Basically, Hasbro/WOTC took a community full of people who were actively using their product to develop new ideas and keep things somewhat fresh and told them to fuck off, and even with them backtracking, the decisions being made overall make me think that D&D is heading into a period of decline and a return to relative obscurity. I hope it means good things for other systems; I worry that it means a decline for the hobby as a whole.
posted by nubs at 10:58 AM on March 20 [6 favorites]
Lots of information in the thread and takes on it, but just to add my 0.02 in Canadian currency:
The TTRPG community is stuffed to the brim with imaginative, creative people - most everyone I know in the hobby is always coming up with ideas, from world-building, new classes, new spells, rule tweaks, adjustments, and so forth. Every table I've been involved with is constantly evolving and changing the game to suit themselves. Best to think of D&D as a "game engine" from which multiple different games emerge, but have a core language & set of conventions.
Now, when I started playing in the late 70s/early 80s, that largely happened at each table, and the ability to share what people were doing was limited. What the OGL and the internet did was allow the creative types in the TTRPG world to take that game engine and share the things they were doing with it - the different applications, changes, interpretations, game worlds, mechanics, and on and on...and we could share those with each other, without being worried that Hasbro/WOTC would crack down on folks for sharing those things. Those really good at it got to make a small amount of money doing it; for most of us, it meant an ability to access lots of different ideas and share our own, and the hobby benefits from creative, engaged people doing this.
When Hasbro threatened to revoke the OGL, those creators who were making some money at their work were obviously upset and threatened, but what it meant for me was a return to the early days in the hobby - my tables could come up with our own tweaks and changes and ideas, but we wouldn't get the inspiration, influence, and joy of seeing what others were doing as well. Instead of an open ecosystem, we would return to closed ones. That, plus what was a giant betrayal of trust of the community, turned me & my group against D&D and into exploring a variety of other games, and Shadowdark seems to be becoming our home for now.
Basically, Hasbro/WOTC took a community full of people who were actively using their product to develop new ideas and keep things somewhat fresh and told them to fuck off, and even with them backtracking, the decisions being made overall make me think that D&D is heading into a period of decline and a return to relative obscurity. I hope it means good things for other systems; I worry that it means a decline for the hobby as a whole.
posted by nubs at 10:58 AM on March 20 [6 favorites]
I have to think that Critical Role was the central target, that some Hasbro/WOTC exec looked at their millions in revenue and said "why is that not all ours?" If you look at the patreons and so on, other big live play like Friends at the Table and NADDPOD are more "comfortable living for the cast" than CR's multimedia empire.
posted by tavella at 12:11 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]
posted by tavella at 12:11 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]
I want to push back against the idea that the WOTC devs aren't the gamers friends. The actual developers are fans and players who, I'm sure, want to produce good products. They are also hustling to make a living in a super precarious cottage industry and WOTC is one of the only big players. So I won't blame the developers, only the suits.
That said, while I was happy to see the pushback on the OGL fiasco, it didn't really impact me as I have never really played that much D&D. Even without going to funky indie games, I tend to run and play in stuff like:
1) Savage Worlds for fast, furious, and fun pulpy adventure (I'm currently running a Street Wolves campaign)
2) Call of Cthulhu for horror (I just finished running Masks of Nyarlathotep for my group)
3) Exalted or Runequest for fantasy
4) Pendragon for pretty amazing Arthurian dynastic adventures
5) The odd licensed game (I'm playing in a Star Trek Adventures game right now)
There is so much out there and I'm kind of glad when scandals like this shine some light on other games.
posted by Dalekdad at 12:32 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]
That said, while I was happy to see the pushback on the OGL fiasco, it didn't really impact me as I have never really played that much D&D. Even without going to funky indie games, I tend to run and play in stuff like:
1) Savage Worlds for fast, furious, and fun pulpy adventure (I'm currently running a Street Wolves campaign)
2) Call of Cthulhu for horror (I just finished running Masks of Nyarlathotep for my group)
3) Exalted or Runequest for fantasy
4) Pendragon for pretty amazing Arthurian dynastic adventures
5) The odd licensed game (I'm playing in a Star Trek Adventures game right now)
There is so much out there and I'm kind of glad when scandals like this shine some light on other games.
posted by Dalekdad at 12:32 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]
I saw Worldwizard listed at the end of this post - I purchased that recently! It sounded a lot like Dawn of Worlds, which I was a big fan of, and saw in the comments of the product that it was heavily inspired by it.
Boy, was it heavily inspired by Dawn of Worlds. It isn't exactly the same. Not exactly.
Dawn of Worlds can still be downloaded for free here.
posted by charred husk at 1:44 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]
Boy, was it heavily inspired by Dawn of Worlds. It isn't exactly the same. Not exactly.
Dawn of Worlds can still be downloaded for free here.
posted by charred husk at 1:44 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]
You can also pick up games for cheap in the odd bundle. I got 2 electronic copies of Thirsty Sword Lesbians along with over 100 games/suppliments/what have you from the bundles for Ukrane and Texas Trans Teens from a couple of years ago. There was also a recent itch.io bundle for California Wildlife Relief that included 100s of items. Many weren't complete games, but some were.
posted by Spike Glee at 1:50 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]
posted by Spike Glee at 1:50 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]
Stop making excuses to keep playing D&D and indirectly supporting the company and its brands. The current product isn't what you grew up with. There are dozens of better systems and companies to support now.
And if you are just nostalgic for old settings and stories, you can draw from them to run a game in any other system. You can literally just do whatever you want.
posted by seraphine at 2:07 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]
And if you are just nostalgic for old settings and stories, you can draw from them to run a game in any other system. You can literally just do whatever you want.
posted by seraphine at 2:07 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]
> Yeah, and forgive my ignorance here because I'm merely TTRPG adjacent but I haven't played in like 40 years - what actual lock-in is there with modules?
Modules are ready to play content packs. If you're a busy DM who doesn't do this for a full time job and want to throw together an adventure for your friends, it could be daunting. The modules offer a lot pre made stories, dungeons, and the like. This was where the TSR really started getting their revenue from - for every "I homebrew all my stuff and make up as we go" DM out there, there were 10 people buying every new module they can get their hands on to help flesh out the world.
I've been fascinated by the creation of Beadle and Grimm's, which is selling up market versions of various gaming modules / adventures as they are now called. Really nice high end set, with everything you need to run the campaign except for the players. Fancy battle maps, really well detailed dungeon keys, minis, etc. Yeah, the Curse of Strahd set is like $300+, but that's over a years worth of content based at the rate most D&D campaigns progress.
> I have to think that Critical Role was the central target
At one point the clause in the OGL being floated was you would owe Hasbro royalties if you made more than X million with it. Critical Role raised over $11 million in kickstarter funding to get their animated show made and I'm pretty sure that put the bee in the bonnets of a few suits at Hasbro who were upset they didn't get their cut.
Worlds Beyond Number broke Patreon with backers in their first hour it went live?
> The good news is that, to staunch the bleeding, they were forced to release all of 5e (the 2014 version) under a Creative Commons license that, at least in theory, puts it beyond the reach of Hasbro greedheads forever. Whether they’ll do the same for the 2024 changes now that all 3 core rule books have been published is unclear.
WOTC claims that they are releasing SRD (Systems Reference Document) 5.2 this (next month or two IIRC), also under Creative Commons. The downside of this, and what people really mean when they say "death of the OGL" is not just the scandal part, but the fact that the OGL allowed for people to build and sell a new gaming system without having to put the entire content in the public domain. The issue wasn't 100% with the OGL itself, but with Wizards trying to update the one that worked pretty well for folks who were independently publishing content, creating 5e based TTRPGs, etc. WotC might not have made the Creative Commons decision as hastily as people think, since the essentially killed any other open gaming license options out there that had the "yes you can copy the mechanics and rules, no you can't copy the text, lore, and world" that allowed for the whole world of 5e homebrew to show up. I don't know what the licensing situation will be for people wanted to make sellable content for Daggerheart, Draw Steel, etc. Like what happens with the first $500,000 kickstarter for a Daggerheart third party campaign book?
Stop making excuses to keep playing D&D and indirectly supporting the company and its brands.
Not everyone has the time or effort to evaluate every single hobby for arbitrary ethical purity, let people enjoy things they like. Buying the 2024 books or keeping a dndbeyond subscription is pretty low on the list of "problematic businesses to support" that I worry about in 2025, and 99% of my time, money, and effort around the hobby goes to independent publishers and creatives.
posted by mrzarquon at 2:30 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]
Modules are ready to play content packs. If you're a busy DM who doesn't do this for a full time job and want to throw together an adventure for your friends, it could be daunting. The modules offer a lot pre made stories, dungeons, and the like. This was where the TSR really started getting their revenue from - for every "I homebrew all my stuff and make up as we go" DM out there, there were 10 people buying every new module they can get their hands on to help flesh out the world.
I've been fascinated by the creation of Beadle and Grimm's, which is selling up market versions of various gaming modules / adventures as they are now called. Really nice high end set, with everything you need to run the campaign except for the players. Fancy battle maps, really well detailed dungeon keys, minis, etc. Yeah, the Curse of Strahd set is like $300+, but that's over a years worth of content based at the rate most D&D campaigns progress.
> I have to think that Critical Role was the central target
At one point the clause in the OGL being floated was you would owe Hasbro royalties if you made more than X million with it. Critical Role raised over $11 million in kickstarter funding to get their animated show made and I'm pretty sure that put the bee in the bonnets of a few suits at Hasbro who were upset they didn't get their cut.
Worlds Beyond Number broke Patreon with backers in their first hour it went live?
> The good news is that, to staunch the bleeding, they were forced to release all of 5e (the 2014 version) under a Creative Commons license that, at least in theory, puts it beyond the reach of Hasbro greedheads forever. Whether they’ll do the same for the 2024 changes now that all 3 core rule books have been published is unclear.
WOTC claims that they are releasing SRD (Systems Reference Document) 5.2 this (next month or two IIRC), also under Creative Commons. The downside of this, and what people really mean when they say "death of the OGL" is not just the scandal part, but the fact that the OGL allowed for people to build and sell a new gaming system without having to put the entire content in the public domain. The issue wasn't 100% with the OGL itself, but with Wizards trying to update the one that worked pretty well for folks who were independently publishing content, creating 5e based TTRPGs, etc. WotC might not have made the Creative Commons decision as hastily as people think, since the essentially killed any other open gaming license options out there that had the "yes you can copy the mechanics and rules, no you can't copy the text, lore, and world" that allowed for the whole world of 5e homebrew to show up. I don't know what the licensing situation will be for people wanted to make sellable content for Daggerheart, Draw Steel, etc. Like what happens with the first $500,000 kickstarter for a Daggerheart third party campaign book?
Stop making excuses to keep playing D&D and indirectly supporting the company and its brands.
Not everyone has the time or effort to evaluate every single hobby for arbitrary ethical purity, let people enjoy things they like. Buying the 2024 books or keeping a dndbeyond subscription is pretty low on the list of "problematic businesses to support" that I worry about in 2025, and 99% of my time, money, and effort around the hobby goes to independent publishers and creatives.
posted by mrzarquon at 2:30 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]
Another edition war bait taker, but I definitely don't think D&D 4e is fairly described as "all the math that would involve" when compared to D&D 3.0 and 3.5 and Pathfinder. Maybe that became more of a thing at higher level or later in 4e but I felt like I was doing a lot less math in 4e than in previous editions.
posted by Nec_variat_lux_fracta_colorem at 5:22 PM on March 20 [2 favorites]
posted by Nec_variat_lux_fracta_colorem at 5:22 PM on March 20 [2 favorites]
I've only gotten back into playing in the last year and a half, playing an online 2E campaign that, to be charitable, has devolved into a sort of series of lessons on how not to run a campaign, but sadly, has been the only game I've had access to. A friend in that game started his own, and I joined in, but he's absolutely married to using Foundry, which just seems to move very, very slowly, and feels more like watching someone else play a video game with lousy graphics than any kind of sitting around a table top experience that I'm playing the game for.
Even so, I'm grateful to both games for reigniting my interest in these games. I hadn't honestly played since high school, with maybe a session or two in college. In the past year, though, I've been following different game creators online, and really enjoyed just thinking about the stuff again. Meanwhile, I'm just sort of patiently waiting for His Majesty the Worm to have another printing, as it seems pretty amazing.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:31 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]
Even so, I'm grateful to both games for reigniting my interest in these games. I hadn't honestly played since high school, with maybe a session or two in college. In the past year, though, I've been following different game creators online, and really enjoyed just thinking about the stuff again. Meanwhile, I'm just sort of patiently waiting for His Majesty the Worm to have another printing, as it seems pretty amazing.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:31 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]
So many great comments already, so I'll spare the full personal perspective rehash from my forty five years of playing. A few highlights:
1. WotC may well have saved the ecology of local game stores when Magic the Gathering came out in 1993. They definitely saved D&D when they bought it from a failing TSR.
1a. TSR failed by doing a lot of the things Hasbro seems to be trying. In particular, chasing meteoric growth with the notion that it meant the game should break out into spaces such as shows, movies, etc. and taking their eye off the ball in terms of basic content and connection with their fans.
2. The original OGL saved D&D. At the time it came out the world of RPGs was awash with options, and the luster D&D was fading. Plus TSR had a history of going after copyright issues. The OGL turned that on its head and ushered in an "everything is a d20" game era.
2a. Sadly, I think it could be argued that the third edition of the game which received this initial distribution was the weakest of the versions. 3.5 cleaned some things up, but it was still a cumbersome system. (And now Pathfinder will forever be the better 'mathy' option).
3. WotC intended 4th edition to be playable both in person and online, and correctly recognized the popularity of MMOs in that evaluation. I think a lot of people misinterpreted the design choices too much through this lens however. It was a superior edition to 3.5 in many ways, but geek hobbyists as *very* resistant to change. (My Metafilter is still classic). And they never did deliver on the online space they promised. A mistake they seem to be repeating twenty years later.
4. The OGL controversy was mostly about a big corporation looking at a legal document that included the language "perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive [..] License to Use, the Open Game Content" and deciding that they could still revoke that license for any new content going forward. Ironically there was even a FAQ written in 2004 about the OGL that said essentially 'well yes, we could technically legally change this, but clearly the backlash would be so great that we never would'. Still, they decided to FA, so us fans made them FO.
5. I have had an active 5E campaign running since 2015. I immediately cancelled my DnD Beyond subscription and haven't bought a WotC/Hasbro D&D product since. I still use my previously purchased DnDBeyond materials for personal reference . Our campaigns run long, so we are still playing the one which was in progress when this happened to conclusion this spring.
But the big reason I wanted to post is I haven't seen anyone yet mention:
Dolmenwood !!!
I have been diving into the materials for this game/setting and I am absolutely floored by the creativity, consistent tone, beauty, and most of all practicality for running a campaign by a stretched thin DM (me) with a party of Fae and Chaos curious players. I backed the Kickstarter so I've had the PDF versions of the books to review for some time and I'm hooked and so excited to start our next multi-year campaign as my group begins to explore and change this magical land.
P.s. The Carverns of Thracia is still the best module of all time. I ran my most recent group through it (probably the sixth or seventh serious exploration into those depths by various parties in the 40ish years I've had that module) and it was as epic as ever. R.I.P. Jennell Jaquays, one of the earliest and most influential designers who lifted the D&D brand through her design from the outside.
posted by meinvt at 7:23 PM on March 20 [5 favorites]
1. WotC may well have saved the ecology of local game stores when Magic the Gathering came out in 1993. They definitely saved D&D when they bought it from a failing TSR.
1a. TSR failed by doing a lot of the things Hasbro seems to be trying. In particular, chasing meteoric growth with the notion that it meant the game should break out into spaces such as shows, movies, etc. and taking their eye off the ball in terms of basic content and connection with their fans.
2. The original OGL saved D&D. At the time it came out the world of RPGs was awash with options, and the luster D&D was fading. Plus TSR had a history of going after copyright issues. The OGL turned that on its head and ushered in an "everything is a d20" game era.
2a. Sadly, I think it could be argued that the third edition of the game which received this initial distribution was the weakest of the versions. 3.5 cleaned some things up, but it was still a cumbersome system. (And now Pathfinder will forever be the better 'mathy' option).
3. WotC intended 4th edition to be playable both in person and online, and correctly recognized the popularity of MMOs in that evaluation. I think a lot of people misinterpreted the design choices too much through this lens however. It was a superior edition to 3.5 in many ways, but geek hobbyists as *very* resistant to change. (My Metafilter is still classic). And they never did deliver on the online space they promised. A mistake they seem to be repeating twenty years later.
4. The OGL controversy was mostly about a big corporation looking at a legal document that included the language "perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive [..] License to Use, the Open Game Content" and deciding that they could still revoke that license for any new content going forward. Ironically there was even a FAQ written in 2004 about the OGL that said essentially 'well yes, we could technically legally change this, but clearly the backlash would be so great that we never would'. Still, they decided to FA, so us fans made them FO.
5. I have had an active 5E campaign running since 2015. I immediately cancelled my DnD Beyond subscription and haven't bought a WotC/Hasbro D&D product since. I still use my previously purchased DnDBeyond materials for personal reference . Our campaigns run long, so we are still playing the one which was in progress when this happened to conclusion this spring.
But the big reason I wanted to post is I haven't seen anyone yet mention:
Dolmenwood !!!
I have been diving into the materials for this game/setting and I am absolutely floored by the creativity, consistent tone, beauty, and most of all practicality for running a campaign by a stretched thin DM (me) with a party of Fae and Chaos curious players. I backed the Kickstarter so I've had the PDF versions of the books to review for some time and I'm hooked and so excited to start our next multi-year campaign as my group begins to explore and change this magical land.
P.s. The Carverns of Thracia is still the best module of all time. I ran my most recent group through it (probably the sixth or seventh serious exploration into those depths by various parties in the 40ish years I've had that module) and it was as epic as ever. R.I.P. Jennell Jaquays, one of the earliest and most influential designers who lifted the D&D brand through her design from the outside.
posted by meinvt at 7:23 PM on March 20 [5 favorites]
Stop making excuses to keep playing D&D and indirectly supporting the company and its brands.
Wow. How charmingly tumblresque of you. You don't actually get to decide what I like to play or think is "better". I enjoy my 5e game very much, it's lots of fun to play, same as I enjoy many other TTRPGs.
posted by tavella at 8:43 PM on March 20 [2 favorites]
Wow. How charmingly tumblresque of you. You don't actually get to decide what I like to play or think is "better". I enjoy my 5e game very much, it's lots of fun to play, same as I enjoy many other TTRPGs.
posted by tavella at 8:43 PM on March 20 [2 favorites]
I backed Dolmenwood! I'm still digesting the PDF, but am excited to run something when the books arrive.
I've also been fooling around with Index Card RPG. It's part of the OSR, another TLA, Old School Revival. Smaller, streamlined, made to be easier to set up and run.
Of course, I immediately started expanding the core ruleset to include Wild Magic. Occupational hazard.
posted by chromecow at 9:40 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]
I've also been fooling around with Index Card RPG. It's part of the OSR, another TLA, Old School Revival. Smaller, streamlined, made to be easier to set up and run.
Of course, I immediately started expanding the core ruleset to include Wild Magic. Occupational hazard.
posted by chromecow at 9:40 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]
Remember when WotC sent Pinkertons after a customer? They really should be a toxic brand at this point.
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 10:04 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 10:04 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]
Apologies if anyone's already mentioned this one, but Kobold Press recently released their own remake of D&D 5e called Tales of the Valiant, under their own OGL-like license.
Kobold Press are a big producer of 3rd-party D&D content so they, like many when WotC f**ked with the OGL, started writing their own D&D clone to protect themselves.
It's different enough to (hopefully) avoid legal issues but close enough that GMs and players could lift-and-shift their games over to it pretty easily.
posted by faceplantingcheetah at 11:41 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]
Kobold Press are a big producer of 3rd-party D&D content so they, like many when WotC f**ked with the OGL, started writing their own D&D clone to protect themselves.
It's different enough to (hopefully) avoid legal issues but close enough that GMs and players could lift-and-shift their games over to it pretty easily.
posted by faceplantingcheetah at 11:41 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]
what actual lock-in is there with modules?
Back in the day, because you were playing with (at minimum) just a couple of books and some dice, you could do any-damn-thing!
I played with a group in, oh, 1987 where the DM preferred Claw Law and Spell Law (full text available here!), so one day we just switched over some of the game mechanics from AD&D using the helpful notes on page 27.
My older brothers and their friends played AD&D and I don't recall ever seeing a store-bought module on the table.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:57 AM on March 21
Back in the day, because you were playing with (at minimum) just a couple of books and some dice, you could do any-damn-thing!
I played with a group in, oh, 1987 where the DM preferred Claw Law and Spell Law (full text available here!), so one day we just switched over some of the game mechanics from AD&D using the helpful notes on page 27.
My older brothers and their friends played AD&D and I don't recall ever seeing a store-bought module on the table.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:57 AM on March 21
(I haven't played D&D in 35+ years, but I have fond memories. Thanks for catching me up on what I missed: the comments upthread were very patient and informative!)
posted by wenestvedt at 7:02 AM on March 21
posted by wenestvedt at 7:02 AM on March 21
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