"Dungeons & Dragons: ‘People are leaving the game’" Topic

…But as Gizmodo first reported, a leaked new agreement drafted by Wizards of the Coast (WoTC), the Hasbro subsidiary that owns D&D, threatens to "tighten" the OGL that has been in place since the early 2000s. It would grant WoTC the ability to "make money off of these products without paying the person who made it" and companies that make over $750,000 USD will have to start paying Hasbro a 25% cut of their earnings…

The Guardian: link

Update: WotC has reversed its position.

No, they haven't reversed it.

They've tried to say "That was a rough draft that had stuff we really didn't mean to have in it. We just put it out there to get people's thoughts so we could improve it." But they don't actually say they're changing a word.

You know, I'm white-box D&D. I've been involved since the '70's, and I have to admit, maybe this is a good thing. What I mean is, when D&D first came out, it was a set of rules and DM's had to create their own worlds. Over the decades, however, D&D came to have a group of worlds (Ravenloft, for example), that were created for DMs. OK, that was cool, but I think it also made DMs lazy--all they had to do was run a campaign from a book. Well, maybe, it's time we as DMs took the core 5e rules and started creating our own worlds and our own adventures. OK, I'll step off my soapbox now….

Just an observation that it's extremely difficult to have this sort of fight in historical miniatures gaming.

When gaming meets franchise, it's seldom good news for gaming.

True for historical, but spot on for sci-fi properties like 40K. That game has spawned a number of companies making "grim dark" miniatures which GW has been struggling against. What makes this different is that the OGL was made specifically to encourage other folks to make their own supplements for D&D, 3.0 that is, so they could grow the game. I guess they're done "growing" and want control. These other companies have been putting out products for 20 years now, and many of them are pretty impressive. We've seen Star Gate, modern based rpgs, horror, and even King Arthur themed games using the D&D engine. The Old School Renaissance (OSR) movement has been all about using the OGL to access BECMI and AD&D to get those older systems out in a more refined form and to even build new modules and supplements for them. This new OGL would/could easily crush this movement. WOTC has shown on many occasions that it dislikes the OSR and it's so called "anti-hate" and royalties would crush that movement. I'm glad the fan outrage was enough to make them reconsider what they are doing.

But yeah, in many ways this is pretty unique to the TTRPG industry.

Fan outrage doesn't equal money loss, lots of online shriekers but until the subscriptions drop Wotc won't care. From what I've heard the 750k threshold is "more like a suggestion" and it can go as low as wotc wants. Things like Critical Role have probably already cut deals most likely. Kickstarters will be hit hard from what I saw considering Wotc would take a big chunk of any KS profits, leaving the KS owner to fulfill the KS but not getting much more. All this assumes the worst that wotc could do, and that depends on how bad you think they'll act. Watching some of the videos on this it doesn't look like the OGL change will kill any other games off, just make it less easy to get your non-wotc goods to the gamers that are all in on wotc=d&d, some are already moving to really open source style. Wotc is all in on monetizing everything they can so it'll change the nature of their version of dnd and make it 2 flavors: already now called "folk" rpg's and wotc version which I think is going to look more like a more rpg version of WoW. Lots of tech to buy to personalize your "dnd experience" and more gloss than substance.

Historical minis don't have anything really to copyright. Can't say WW2 is someone's IP.

I seem to recall a few years back some car companies asserting that their car designs were IP and anybody making a model of them owed royalties… and some tried to extend it to military vehicles.

As far as I know, that idea got dropped almost as quickly as it appeared.

In any case, the proper question is "What IP"? As far as the base rules go, there is no IP. A handful of unique and original monsters and some character names used in the spell text, maybe (I'm not even sure these are protected). Everything else is based on history, myths, and folklore, none of which can be protected.

The unique, original game settings and the trademarked names, yes. But it's not hard to avoid any of that. The rest is largely generic fantasy, as un-IPable as you can get.

They have a brand and the specific artistic expression used in the things they publish— but they don't really have anything else.

Except low-integrity lawyers. They have lots of those.

I share Thatblodgettkid's heritage and viewpoint. I don't really understand this new squabble about ownership and royalties and whatever -- haven't kept up with the ins and outs of D&D over the last few decades -- but I have often wondered about why so many players and DMs are content to just be passive receptors of OTHER people's ideas and "worlds" rather than enjoy the experience of creating their own -- as was originally more or less the intent of D&D's designers. Modules and pre-generated "worlds" have shoved aside so much of what was once considered he purview of the DM. Gamers just got lazy, or unimaginative?

I think it's just that we got more gamers, and the modules and published campaign settings made that possible.

As some teens observed to me, being a DM "requires a very special skill set."

And it does. You have to be imaginative, creative, detailed, logical, impartial, honest AND deceptive in the same moment, and more.

And then there's the prep time. You dream up the setting, the adventure, the NPCs who populate both, the plot, the skeletal story, the clues, the alternative clues in case the first clues get missed, and so on. You have to make the maps, create any handouts or visuals, pick the monsters, record their stats, plan the traps and tricks, and consider the nature of the characters who will be confronting these obstacles. And, of course, you want these obstacles to be challenging, with a possibility of failure, but also a possibility of success.
You have to review the player's characters, approve their backgrounds (or modify them), confirm what equipment is available for purchase and what is not— and maybe even roleplay a haggling session for the same.

And THEN, when play starts, you are essentially tasked with herding a bunch of cats, known as "the players," and keep them interested, engaged and entertained for several hours.

All of that together is a lot of work— days, weeks or even months of it, if all totaled up.

For some people, that's too much. Reading the rules and being fair, they can do. All the rest— well, maybe they lack the skills (writing, drawing) or simply lack the time. And for those, pre-done adventures and campaign settings are ideal.

But there's always been an assumed setting for D&D. Vaguely expressed, but still also locked in place— the encounter charts, spells, magic items, even some of the monsters all assume certain thematic aspects are in place.

For a publisher, of course, making that setting more detailed offers opportunity to expand sales, and build with future sales of related setting products— which is better than a one-time sale of the rules.

And that's basically how and why we got to where we are today— the game that started as generic became more and more specific— and that was more useful to "casual" DMs (not meant as disparagement, merely meant as an assessment of the time they had available for the game). More products, more sales; more sales, more gamers; more gamers, more demand. And so on.

I think the backlash comes down to Hasbro/WOTC putting these gems out there:

1. Anything you make under OGL 1.1 is ours, period.
2. We don't owe you anything for taking your content and making it ours, ever.
3. If you're making good money off your OGL-covered content, say, over $750 USDK, we get a quarter of it.
4. By creating content under the OGL, you agree to waive any right to sue us, and must instead submit to binding arbitration adjudicated by an arbitrator who we will select and pay.

You forgot the very first clause:

If we decide that what you have done is offensive— and we are the sole arbiters of what that might entail— then we can cancel you and erase your creation from existence.

+1 Parzival

What Hasbro/ WoTC has done is actually a quite serious thing, and not just for DnD. they are trying break a contract with the community, which if they get there way, will have far reaching impact on more then just gaming. Everyone including non gamers needs to be worried about this one.