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Apparently DDB's servers are down at the moment, either as a deliberate attempt to stop people from unsubbing or just from getting pounded by people who are trying.
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Jan 12, 2023 21:34
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Hunter Noventa posted:That's probably true. Its still not a great look. None of this has been for WotC. Nothing short of a public cancellation and apology will be, tbh. And even that may well be too little, too late.
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Jan 12, 2023 21:34
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The Bee posted:Nothing short of a public cancellation and apology will be, tbh. And even that may well be too little, too late. If they roll back and roll out a new version that only adds "irrevocable" and other safeguards the community wants, and smooch rear end, things might calm down I think.
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Jan 12, 2023 21:37
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Well the big thing I feel like D&D survives on is the same WoW survived on: Inertia. They’ve always been fairly hostile to the player base but because it was already where everyone was, and just general cultural knowledge, it’s where folks go if they wanna sit down and roll dice with friends. Now they’ve turned a corner where we could see competitors enter into play and center around something else as all the third party content and inertia starts forming around someone else.
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Jan 12, 2023 21:38
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Hunter Noventa posted:That's probably true. Its still not a great look. None of this has been for WotC. tbf if I'm the boss of the socials and public facing people at D&D beyond I would cancel that stream too. The people doing that stream and probably no one anywhere near the people on that stream have power to actually do or say anything. And it's just going to be opening them up to just absurd amounts of abuse and online posters with a complete lack of Chill. While they can do nothing but try and moderate a tidal wave or try and ignore it.
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Jan 12, 2023 21:40
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Yeah. Unless they had an executive who was senior enough to actually be able to say things on that stream, it would have been a disaster.
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Jan 12, 2023 21:42
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Saxophone posted:Well the big thing I feel like D&D survives on is the same WoW survived on: Inertia. I'm not big on 5E at all, and market dominance and name value undoubtedly play roles. But I don't think its entirely inertia. Recent media interest (Stranger Things and Critical Role) and an overall middle of the road design that's simple Enough to get into but crunchy Enough to wrestle with also played big roles. However, I do think 5E's role as a good intro and baseline is colored by how commonly 5E is used as an intro baseline. If it wasn't the standard for those before, its kind of morphed into one by now.
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Jan 12, 2023 21:47
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Saxophone posted:Well the big thing I feel like D&D survives on is the same WoW survived on: Inertia. Very much so. You also touched on it, but WoW also had the benefit of being a paid "subscription" to your friend group. You weren't paying a monthly sub to raid; you were paying a monthly sub to access a group activity. The perception that D&D is your group's default and only choice is absolutely not where it was last week. Hell, it's possible that won't even be the medium that people use to connect with parasocial "friend" groups once the streamers back out. A month ago, that would have been unthinkable. They've managed to squander, in a week, complete and unshakable market dominance. Even if they manage to pull out of this nosedive, that will have been a remarkable feat of incompetence. And there's no way they can just apologize or pay off everybody with $30 in D&D store currency. This is worse than TSR could have handled it.
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Jan 12, 2023 21:52
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Siivola posted:I'm sorry, who? Alteltsis
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Jan 12, 2023 21:54
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Saxophone posted:Well the big thing I feel like D&D survives on is the same WoW survived on: Inertia. WoW generally survived off of not having multiple bad expansions back to back. They finally did that, along with Covid torching their development pipeline, dovetailing with ABK's abhorrent treatment of employees and sexpest poo poo. All hitting at the same time. Though Dragonflight is literally the best expansion they've released probably ever? at least at launch. They have it in them, just have to execute on the expansion like they did in MoP and they can rebuild. And it's starting from a far more solid foundation than MoP.
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Jan 12, 2023 21:55
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Saxophone posted:Corporate Assholes almost never make good decisions. Just ones they think might be short term profitable. They also, by everything we’ve seen, fundamentally do not understand the TTRPG ecosystem. They want quick money and they literally do not care or even know about all the poo poo they’ll burn down to get it. They just think that all these mooches are making money off of us and we’re not getting any! If the audience doesn't fit the financial model that allows for optimal growth, use marketing to pivot to a new audience, and gently caress the current audience for not fitting the financial model. The idea of fitting the financial model to the audience doesn't make sense because you're in it for financial growth, not audience.
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Jan 12, 2023 21:59
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Megazver posted:If they roll back and roll out a new version that only adds "irrevocable" and other safeguards the community wants, and smooch rear end, things might calm down I think. At this point, it should be clear that WotC will never make OGL 1.0a or 1.1 irrevocable. And imho, 1.1 needs more than safeguards. It's pretty heinous in terms of who owns your work as a licensee, having to open your financials up to WotC auditors, etc. The whole thing is a farce that isn't remotely Open.
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Jan 12, 2023 22:00
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Yeah the leaked draft 1.1 has explanatory language (which is weird) saying their "intent" is that since people might publish something similar to what they were already going to publish, they need to have it in the license that they can always publish anything that is a copy of what you published. There's a germ there. When you send a script to a hollywood studio they don't open or read it, because they want to be 100% certain they can prove that their movie that comes out next year isn't ripping off some rando's script. They'd get sued constantly otherwise. Wizards' lawyers or someone experienced in this realm has a similar concern. It's bogus because, has this not happened for the last 20 years? Then why would it suddenly start happening now? And it's implemented in a stupid way, like, giving yourself forever-permission to copy anything someone else does doesn't go away just because you say in your contract "oh but we won't, this is just if it's an accident or whatever". This is transparently obvious to everyone. I think trying to de-authorize 1.0a is a big deal but this irrevocable taking of all your poo poo is the bigger deal. It's also the point I think is more likely to maybe get adjusted in a revised 1.1.
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Jan 12, 2023 22:10
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Finster Dexter posted:At this point, it should be clear that WotC will never make OGL 1.0a or 1.1 irrevocable. And imho, 1.1 needs more than safeguards. It's pretty heinous in terms of who owns your work as a licensee, having to open your financials up to WotC auditors, etc. The whole thing is a farce that isn't remotely Open. Yeah, there now is p much no reason for anyone to do any OGL stuff unless they are specifically making content for UnoD&D/5e. Anyone making stuff on the OGL that's not meant to be directly used with WotC's system should just rip the bandaid and comb through and hire lawyers to figure out what you need to remove and change to no longer be reliant on the license. I'm sure Paizo and others are doing this as we speak lol.
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Jan 12, 2023 22:12
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Leperflesh posted:
No they don't. Most screenplays get rejected for being bad and for having nobody but the author attached to them and the vast majority of seething idiots who file "you stole my idea!" suits lose because you cant copywrite ideas, only the expression of said idea.
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Jan 12, 2023 22:39
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Goodman posted an official statement. It was "eh. Whatever."
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Jan 12, 2023 22:48
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:No they don't. Most screenplays get rejected for being bad and for having nobody but the author attached to them and the vast majority of seething idiots who file "you stole my idea!" suits lose because you cant copywrite ideas, only the expression of said idea. Yes, they do. For example: https://www.sonypictures.com/corp/help.html quote:Can I submit my movie/ TV show idea or script? https://www.pixar.com/careers-at-pixar quote:Can I submit a creative story and/or script idea? https://investors.lionsgate.com/investor-resources/contact-us quote:HOW CAN I SUBMIT MOVIE/TECHNOLOGY IDEAS? Unsolicited scripts are not accepted by the majority of studios. You are also correct that 99% of accepted scripts are never made into movies, but that's a factor of there being tens of thousands of scripts optioned, solicited, etc. by the collective studios, on top of tons of them being crap. There are a few studios that will accept unsolicited scripts: https://freshmenscreenplay.com/accepting-unsolicited-scripts/ As british companies, Century and the BBC is operating under a completely different legal system. The rest are obviously small potatoes houses.
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Jan 12, 2023 22:51
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MockingQuantum posted:Wow yeah that's an extremely incisive way of putting it and he definitely knew exactly what they were doing, it's funny to read that in context of the other Dancey quotes I've seen thrown around in the last few days that paint the picture (probably more through omission of info like this than being intentionally misleading) that Dancey's motivations were purely about creating an environment that fostered contributions from what was a growing community of creators. That's not to say it couldn't be or wasn't motivated by that in addition to being a very intentional marketing move, but the article you linked definitely confirms it was a marketing move first and foremost. And that yeah, undercutting that move by putting out a more restrictive OGL is basically only really cutting your own throat (though as others have said, D&D's inertia probably minimizes those losses). The thing is, this isn't really undercutting the old OGL. This is the culmination of the path the old OGL laid out. First, Wizards releases the OGL, and 3PP start hopping on, because it's a quick way to make money with a captive audience. This work lets D&D stretch and expand, gobbling up more market share and pushing other RPGs out of the spotlight. The 3PP folks don't care what's happening to the other games, because they're in with the game that's making more and more money. But they don't own the game that's making more money, and it's not their name in lights, it's D&D. Now we're at a point where D&D has expanded to take up just about every inch of market share it can get while other RPG companies still exist, so WotC turns their eye to the 3PP making money off of their game and says 'you want to keep playing in our sandbox, pay the gently caress up.' Now suddenly people are screaming about the leopard eating their faces, but the truth is this leopard has been feasting for decades, and they've been helping it grow fat.
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Jan 12, 2023 23:06
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Dexo posted:I don't think it's particularly malicious(unless you think a company that wants to be the leader in an industry is inherently malicious, which tbf there are definitely some arguments for). It's just someone recognizing that a rising tide lifts all boats, and hey, this will allow us to lift all boats, and also keep all those boats and boat passengers in our little enclosed ocean where we are the big boat that people will eventually want to hang out on. Oh definitely re: maliciousness, I didn't read it that way and didn't mean to imply it came off as malicious. It definitely reads like he thought it was a good move for everyone involved, but that WotC was positioned to benefit the most from it regardless of how well it was adopted. And he was probably more correct than he could have predicted! Tsilkani posted:The thing is, this isn't really undercutting the old OGL. This is the culmination of the path the old OGL laid out. I don't really disagree with what you're saying here, but I do think there's at least some nuance that explains why so much of the backlash is so extreme, and why I have some sympathy for the faces being eaten by leopards. That Dancey interview from earlier does sort of display that OGL 1.0 was intended to both make WotC money and expand the hobby, since at the time they were effectively the same goal... so yeah 1.1 just expands the goal of making more money, but at the ostensible expense of the hobby, in a way that actively and intentionally punishes or completely neuters 3PP, which for all it's faults 1.0 didn't really do. Like yeah, there are lessons to be learned here for 3PP, and they're lessons that probably could have been predicted since 5E really took off and pulled in a bunch of new fleshy money generators and suddenly had execs that realized they could make big-deal money off of the hobby. It's a change that was probably pretty predictable, but I could see how if you have been operating under 1.0, you could be fooled into thinking there was some vested interest in not cutting small 3PP companies out of the equation entirely. I do think it's a pretty short-sighted culmination of that path, for reasons others have articulated better than I can--it feels like a blatant attempt to monopolize the VTT and D&D-as-a-service model, and trap their core users in a curated ecosystem where they get the biggest cut... but I would think for that to work, it would rely on a fairly robust stream of 3PP modules and supplements to keep people active and paying money for the foreseeable future, since WotC's current leadership doesn't seem particularly interested in investing in top talent to make that stuff in house (though honestly I haven't paid much attention to what they've put out lately besides Spelljammer, so maybe that's changed). That's what I mean by "undercutting," not so much that them neutering the OGL is somehow a betrayal of some closely held ideal, more that the older OGL model seems like it's more beneficial to them long-term than the path they seem to be hell-bent on taking, though they're so installed in most player's minds as the only option I'm probably wrong there. MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Jan 12, 2023 |
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Jan 12, 2023 23:24
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MockingQuantum posted:Oh definitely re: maliciousness, I didn't read it that way and didn't mean to imply it came off as malicious. It definitely reads like he thought it was a good move for everyone involved, but that WotC was positioned to benefit the most from it regardless of how well it was adopted. And he was probably more correct than he could have predicted! They will probably come up with some kind of toolkit that allows you to create your own adventure from preset templates. Sold separately of course.
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Jan 12, 2023 23:37
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Leperflesh posted:Yes, they do. None of that proves that this practice is to avoid lawsuits, though. Again, Pixar and Dreamworks both made Ant movies and no lawsuits got flung. Why?
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Jan 12, 2023 23:39
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Malek Deneith posted:Their entire drive is "D&D is undermonetized, in part because only DMs buy most of the product". Cutting out physical books and moving to all-digital/all-VTT walled garden would allow them to monetize everyone, and in ways they can't with books and imagination. It's a plan that makes a lot of sense... if you're coming from video games sector and have no idea how people actually play RPGs, which the current head honcho's apparently are. Granted it's all speculation, but "the whole plan is to go all digital" is an explanation that fits with what we know of 1.1 to a scary degree. They are explicitly not cutting physical books. Also the primary thing was that the Brand was under monetized which I agree with largely.
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Jan 12, 2023 23:45
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I'm told that when JK Rowling was doing book tours back in the day before the Harry Potter series was finished she had at least one person with her at all times at these events whose sole job was to intercept anything a fan tried to hand to her. These would 99% be fan letters, small gifts etc. These would later all be dumped untouched so that no one could later claim they'd given her something with an idea or suggestion which would later appear in a (at that point) yet to be published novel that they could then try and sue over.
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Jan 12, 2023 23:46
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:None of that proves that this practice is to avoid lawsuits, though. Again, Pixar and Dreamworks both made Ant movies and no lawsuits got flung. Why? Presumably because no actual text was found to have been conveyed from one production to the other? Exactly what these policies are meant to avoid with respect to unsolicited scripts?
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Jan 12, 2023 23:48
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:None of that proves that this practice is to avoid lawsuits, though. Again, Pixar and Dreamworks both made Ant movies and no lawsuits got flung. Why? This might not be the best example because it was the center of a huge public slapfight between the companies and Antz was probably developed to be just over the line as a legally distinct but public and unsubtle gently caress-you from Katzenberg to Lasseter. JerikTelorian fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Jan 12, 2023 |
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Jan 12, 2023 23:48
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Deptfordx posted:I'm told that when JK Rowling was doing book tours back in the day before the Harry Potter series was finished she had at least one person with her at all times at these events whose sole job was to intercept anything a fan tried to hand to her. These would 99% be fan letters, small gifts etc. These would later all be dumped untouched so that no one could later claim they'd given her something with an idea or suggestion which would later appear in a (at that point) yet to be published novel that they could then try and sue over. But you can file evidence-free suits regardless. Stephen King was sued by four different people because he """stole""" the idea of The Stand from them and all of them were thrown out. The "cant accept an unsolicited anything from anyone ever because lawsuits" is the "We have to pour bleach on unsold food or else a homeless person might eat it, get sick and sue us" of the entertainment industry.
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Jan 12, 2023 23:53
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:But you can file evidence-free suits regardless. Stephen King was sued by four different people because he """stole""" the idea of The Stand from them and all of them were thrown out. The "cant accept an unsolicited anything from anyone ever because lawsuits" is the "We have to pour bleach on unsold food or else a homeless person might eat it, get sick and sue us" of the entertainment industry. Right, but evidence-free suits are relatively easy to deal with, a big company shouldn't be worried about those. The problems are the ones where someone can say, "I gave creator x my idea on date y and he came out with something similar on date z," and now if the two properties are even superficially similar you have to worry that the judge will just decide "yep that's close enough," because US judges are often hilariously under qualified.
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Jan 13, 2023 00:01
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:None of that proves that this practice is to avoid lawsuits, though. Again, Pixar and Dreamworks both made Ant movies and no lawsuits got flung. Why? The quote from Pixar specifically cites their legal department, and the one from Lionsgate indicates it's company policy. I can find more statements that specifically cite lawyers if you insist. But first, maybe you can explain: why do you think the lawyers working for major studios advise them to return unsolicited scripts unopened? All of them? here's a useful commentary, including specific examples. Importantly, it's not necessary for these suits to prevail a lot, or even ever, for a legal team to advise the studio to take clear documented measures to avoid them, because merely being the subject of a suit is both expensive and reputation-damaging. In Jordan-Benel v. Universal City Studios, Inc. Jordan-Benel did not prevail. But the suit alleges that UTA and David Monico ripped off the script he sent to UTA, which they passed on, and that allegation is not disputed. His suit instead failed only on the basis that he couldn't prove he was asking to be paid for his work, and therefore, defendants were free to steal from him. As an aside, this is an example of how the law often fails at the most basic poo poo. The article concludes: quote:However, there are a few specific points we can take away from the facts and procedural history of these respective cases. Firstly, Jordan-Bernal illustrates the importance of the circumstances surrounding the submission of an idea. In order to prevail under Desny, a plaintiff must show that an idea was submitted in consideration of payment for use of such idea. Accordingly, any production company, studio, agency, YouTube multi-channel network, web content provider or other entity that accepts third party submissions must be very careful to manage the dialogue and circumstances relating to such submissions. This can be achieved through using a robust submissions process that makes clear, among other things, that there is no promise or expectation of payment, that the receiving company does not regard third party ideas or submissions as unique or valuable, and that the receiving company is independently developing its own ideas (which may be similar or identical to submitted ideas). On the other side of the deal, the Jordan-Bernal case demonstrates to writers, producers and other creatives the importance of submitting ideas and materials through appropriate channels, in the correct way (usually through an agent or other business representative). My comparison to the current situation with Wizards is in the legal framework for copyright violations that, despite heavily favoring the big powerful corporation, nevertheless could lead to costly suits whenever any significant similarity between Wizards' own publications, and publications under the OGL, leads an author to believe they may have been stolen from. By asserting a right to effectively total, irrevocable ownership of the copyrighted elements of all work under OGL 1.1, Wizards would never face such suits, or at least could have them quickly dismissed. Similarly, by refusing to accept unsolicited scripts under any terms, Hollywood studios can be certain that the only scripts that circulate within their bounds have been brought in under clearly stated contractual terms that establish who will own what and owe what to whom.
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Jan 13, 2023 00:08
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Paizo just announced their plans: they are releasing a new license, the Open RPG Creative License ("ORC"), under which they will publish future work. They are working with other TTRPG makers to make this license, including Kobold Press, Chaosium, Legendary Games, Rogue Genius, and Green Ronin. This license will be owned by an organization which has a history of managing open licenses, and they floated the Linux foundation as a possibility. Announcement here. VikingofRock fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Jan 13, 2023 |
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Jan 13, 2023 00:09
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VikingofRock posted:Paizo just announced their plans: they are releasing a new license, the Open RPG Creative License ("ORC"), under which they will publish future work. They are working with other TTRPG makers to make this license, including Kobold Press, Chaosium, Legendary Games, Rogue Genius, and Green Ronin. This license will be owned by an organization which has a history of managing open licenses, and they floated the Linux foundation as a possibility. Pretty cool and probably worst case scenario for WotC to have these folks all teaming up under a new license together.
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Jan 13, 2023 00:11
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VikingofRock posted:Paizo just announced their plans: they are releasing a new license, the Open RPG Creative License ("ORC"), under which they will publish future work. They are working with other TTRPG makers to make this license, including Kobold Press, Chaosium, Legendary Games, Rogue Genius, and Green Ronin. This license will be owned by an organization which has a history of managing open licenses, and they floated the Linux foundation as a possibility. Oh this is cool
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Jan 13, 2023 00:13
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VikingofRock posted:Paizo just announced their plans: they are releasing a new license, the Open RPG Creative License ("ORC"), under which they will publish future work. They are working with other TTRPG makers to make this license, including Kobold Press, Chaosium, Legendary Games, Rogue Genius, and Green Ronin. This license will be owned by an organization which has a history of managing open licenses, and they floated the Linux foundation as a possibility. Yeah, honestly going to be really funny when it works out and none of the Hasbro executives can quite understand what happened
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Jan 13, 2023 00:22
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Dexo posted:Oh this is cool Yeah that's a slick move. I can't help but think paizo have been working on how to handle the OGL going away for a number of years, it's a wildly obvious corporate risk having your IP subject to the whim of your main competitor.
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Jan 13, 2023 00:25
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I did not expect this to end in the Alliance to End Hulkamania forming, but god am I here for it.
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Jan 13, 2023 00:26
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That is some serious good PR for Paizo right now.The Bee posted:I did not expect this to end in the Alliance to End Hulkamania forming, but god am I here for it. lmao, this is excellent.
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Jan 13, 2023 00:27
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quote:taking advantage of discount code OpenGaming during checkout for 25% off your purchase of the Core Rulebook, Core Rulebook Pocket Edition, or Pathfinder Beginner Box. 
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Jan 13, 2023 00:32
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The Bee posted:I did not expect this to end in the Alliance to End Hulkamania forming, but god am I here for it. It's really quite something
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Jan 13, 2023 00:43
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That is genuinally hilarious. This is almost Elon Musk levels of self-owning on Hasbro's part.
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Jan 13, 2023 00:47
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I mean, it basically guarantees that Wizards will sue them at some point, so good luck to them, but they’ll need it.
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Jan 13, 2023 00:48
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hyphz posted:I mean, it basically guarantees that Wizards will sue them at some point, so good luck to them, but they’ll need it. They literally said they don't believe that the original OGL can be revoked and are prepared to go to court over it.
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Jan 13, 2023 00:50
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