Help support TMP


"WotC/Hasbro caves! Abandons all plans to alter OGL." Topic


6 Posts

All members in good standing are free to post here. Opinions expressed here are solely those of the posters, and have not been cleared with nor are they endorsed by The Miniatures Page.

Remember that you can Stifle members so that you don't have to read their posts.

For more information, see the TMP FAQ.


Back to the Fantasy RPG Message Board


Areas of Interest

Fantasy

Featured Hobby News Article


Featured Recent Link


Top-Rated Ruleset

Dragon Rampant


Rating: gold star gold star gold star gold star gold star gold star gold star gold star gold star 


Featured Showcase Article

Return of the Glittery Skulls

Putting some spare Halloween styrofoam glitter skulls to use.


Featured Workbench Article

It Started With Grandfather...

The Editor was browsing on eBay one day...


Featured Profile Article

Gen Con So Cal 2006 Report

Wyatt the Odd Fezian reports from the final California Gen Con...


Featured Book Review


1,103 hits since 27 Jan 2023
©1994-2024 Bill Armintrout
Comments or corrections?

The Membership System will be closing for maintenance in 1 minutes. Please finish anything that will involve the membership system, including membership changes or posting of messages.

Personal logo Parzival Supporting Member of TMP27 Jan 2023 6:41 p.m. PST

link

So all the fuss of the last month over D&D is done. The OGL 1.0a which many third party creators and publishers like Paizo and Kobold Press relied on for producing products remains intact and unchanged. WotC is backing off their attempt to prohibit third party development of Virtual TableTop products. And they have officially placed their SRD generic rules text under the Creative Commons license— an apparently irreversible move.

The fans and third party creators are sticking their heads out and saying, "Wait— did we just win?"

I'm not quite ready to say the dragon has been slain, but…maybe?

79thPA Supporting Member of TMP27 Jan 2023 7:07 p.m. PST

15,000 survey responses is pretty incredible.

Bunkermeister Supporting Member of TMP27 Jan 2023 10:19 p.m. PST

That's good news. Who will they fire over this debacle?

Or will they wait six months and do it again?

Mike Bunkermeister Creek

Mr Elmo28 Jan 2023 4:46 a.m. PST

Who will they fire over this debacle?

Hasbro just laid off 1000 employees.

And yes, they will lie low and be back.

Personal logo Parzival Supporting Member of TMP28 Jan 2023 6:06 a.m. PST

From what I've read, legally the release of the SRD— a document which contains the rules in plain language, including charts, monster stats, magic spells, etc.— under the Creative Commons license is irrevocable. (Of course, under actual copyright law this is like announcing that public domain game mechanics and processes do not belong you, but that may not really be relevant at this point.) So, according to law, they won't be able to stop that.

Also, there was already considerable commentary among intellectual property attorneys that the original OGL could not be terminated or altered by WotC anyway— that it was a contract which could not be changed, revoked or broken by WotC, no matter what they had just tried to say.

Plus, there was growing buzz about letting the whole thing go to court, where the precedents do not actually favor WotC's position at all.

And they were already out millions of dollars in just one month from the loss of D&D Beyond subscriptions.

Finally, the stock just dropped significantly on rumors of a bad quarterly report.

I don't think they're gonna "lie low and be back."

I expect that at least one executive's head is gonna roll. (There are already rumors that the current guy in charge of all this is greatly disliked by employees and has a lot of negative baggage, making it possible he could be dismissed for "other" reasons as a fall guy to appease customers, employees and angry shareholders… but that's rumor, so I'm not naming him, and execs tend to protect their own…)

Moonbeast28 Jan 2023 7:01 a.m. PST

The problem is this: The damage has already been done. As someone on another forum said: "Nobody in their right mind will trust WOTC again and sign a licensing agreement."

They could come up with another licensing agreement for D&D Next or whatever the NEW D&D is going to be called. Paizo and Kobold Press have their own projects in the works, spurred on by the WOTC debacle. It's going to cost them market share, even more then it already has. Rumor has it that Paizo has already sold 8 months worth of Pathfinder 2E books in a week or so, people are jumping ship and I suspect will continue to do so. Me, I'll continue playing D&D until my group finds something that suits their needs better, I have more material then I can run in two lifetimes as it is. :)

Sorry - only verified members can post on the forums.