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Comrade Koba posted:everyone is now legally required to refer to their game as an “arr-pegg”. actually it's pronounced "arr-jeff" E: terrible snipe, have a meme: https://twitter.com/Rulelord2E/status/1613694395668389888
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Jan 13, 2023 06:56
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sebmojo posted:https://arkenforge.com/what-does-ogl-v1-1-mean-for-vtts/ Don’t sleep on this link, thread. This is why Paizo will spend what it takes to fight if and when the new OGL goes up: it is an existential threat to both their web store and their ability to have their products involved in any VTT. This isn’t just going to establish D&D Beyond as an enclosed space with exclusive access to One content and adventures, it allows WotC to send takedown notices to other VTTs which have any OGL content, unless they have a separate agreement. And for the ones that do, I sure hope they are perpetual and irrevocable, or expect WotC to cancel them at the first opportunity once their own VTT is up. The hilarious thing to me is that there’s no system yet to build a VTT for and WotC has a miserable record with this sort of thing, both with the 3E “character builder” software packaged with the PHB, and the 4E debacles. They may have planned such an early OGL update so the lawsuits would be resolved before their VTT goes live.
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Jan 13, 2023 06:56
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Dexo posted:Look up GNU and have your mind blown. Yes, thank you for reminding me of another abomination that should be put to the sword.
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Jan 13, 2023 06:58
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gradenko_2000 posted:I think the thread has only tangentially touched on this, but was there a change in leadership at WOTC and/or Hasbro that would have precipitated this? Per the thread on RPGnet it does seem to be the case that WotC's current D&D leadership are all people who lack any institutional knowledge of what happened the last time they tried to mess with the OGL, and who also have a lot of tech/video game industry background rather than TRPG industry. The current guy in charge of D&D who replaced Ray Winninger has only been working at WotC for two years, for example.
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Jan 13, 2023 07:11
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Whatever happened to Mike Mearls
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Jan 13, 2023 07:17
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Bottom Liner posted:I think a lot of this is fallout from this restructuring along with the WotC branch being so lucrative in it's profit margins and the natural drive to push that harder. The fact that their division is now "Wizards and Digital" tells you everything you need to know here. It's all about making that sweet microtransaction money.
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Jan 13, 2023 07:19
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Narsham posted:The hilarious thing to me is that there’s no system yet to build a VTT for and WotC has a miserable record with this sort of thing, both with the 3E “character builder” software packaged with the PHB, and the 4E debacles. They may have planned such an early OGL update so the lawsuits would be resolved before their VTT goes live. The really funny outcome might be if after all this going all-in on it, WotC gets beaten to the market by another VTT from one of the former third party partners they burned. Especially likely given I absolutely bet they've cheaped out on the actual software again.
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Jan 13, 2023 07:19
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Whatever happened to Mike Mearls Shunted over to a do nothing position on Magic last I heard.
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Jan 13, 2023 07:22
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I'm surprised Chaosium got on board with ORC. As far as I know they weren't OGL contributors and they already have an license for third party BRP games.
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Jan 13, 2023 07:33
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Kwyndig posted:Shunted over to a do nothing position on Magic last I heard. He was also involved in some sort of capacity with Baldur's Gate 3 I believe, though I don't know what the extent was.
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Jan 13, 2023 07:35
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Siivola posted:I'm surprised Chaosium got on board with ORC. As far as I know they weren't OGL contributors and they already have an license for third party BRP games. CoC is like the second or third most-played game on Roll20. They have a vested interest in VTT survival.
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Jan 13, 2023 07:38
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:CoC is like the second or third most-played game on Roll20. They have a vested interest in VTT survival.
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Jan 13, 2023 07:39
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Kai Tave posted:He was also involved in some sort of capacity with Baldur's Gate 3 I believe, though I don't know what the extent was. He was the liaison between Larian and Wizards
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Jan 13, 2023 07:41
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Whatever happened to Mike Mearls He’s not been part of the D&D team proper since 2019 if I recall correctly.
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Jan 13, 2023 07:42
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gradenko_2000 posted:I think the thread has only tangentially touched on this, but was there a change in leadership at WOTC and/or Hasbro that would have precipitated this? So specifically what seems to have happened is that, back in October of 2021, Brian Goldner died. He was CEO of Hasbro Inc. for a decade and a half - crucially, he was the CEO for the disaster that was 4th edition and is the one who learned that specific lesson. He's also responsible for Hasbro diversifying out into media so much, including the recent D&D thrusts. When Goldner cacked it, Chris Cocks became overall CEO of Hasbro. He'd come on previously in 2016 or so, coming over from a fairly long stint at Microsoft. Cocks is the one who led the "huge revenue surge" of Wizards in the past half-decade - so you can likely thank him for Secret Lairs, among other things. Having been chief executive of what's become Hasbro's earning-est division, the Investors were confident Cocks could do Great Things™ for Hasbro overall. To fill the leadership tree with him promoted, Cocks appears to have brought in old friends from his Microsoft days, Cynthia Williams and Tim Fields. These were mostly video game people - they'd all had major positions in the XBox division together, seemingly. Williams has Microsoft and Amazon experience, Fields has been doing executive poo poo in videogames since I was in middle school. Quite notably, Williams and Fields have no leadership experience with the tabletop market. At all. Zero. Nol. It's unclear how much TT experience they have, period. So all this was completed by February 25th, 2022. The core decision-making for Wizards has been the Cocks-Williams-Fields connection since that time. Knowing that their main experience is with things like XBox and mobile gaming (Fields went from Microsoft to a stint at Kabam) should make all these recent moves over the past year toward a dominant, microtransaction-based VTT, the heavy videogame investment, and the incredible antipathy for anything like competition appear in a rather different light, I'd think. SpaceDrake fucked around with this message at 08:55 on Jan 13, 2023 |
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Jan 13, 2023 08:21
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SpaceDrake posted:So all this was completed by February 25th, 2022. The core decision-making for Wizards has been the Cocks-Williams-Fields connection since that time. this is great work, thank you
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Jan 13, 2023 09:02
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Thanlis posted:I'm reasonably pleased by this announcement but let's be clear: Paizo is paying for and making their own version of an OGL, and a bunch of other companies have signed on to using it (probably tentatively). Paizo will be taking feedback, which is very cool. "Paizo will pay for this legal work" means that Paizo gets the final say. This is OK, the alternatives are somewhat complex, but that announcement is also marketing and PR and Paizo is not immune from being a corporation. if Paizo makes it self-serving and not actually an irrevocable open license then they won't be able to meet that goal of getting it managed by a significant open-source legal non-profit (they're mentioning the Linux foundation but I'd guess this is far more likely to end up closer to creative commons governance). The statement of "we're putting this into actual open-source license community governance" means that it's going to get a lot of eyes from actual lawyers and actual people with tons of expertise who are very, very experienced in making sure these licenses stand up legally in court (because they have, for amounts that make anything wotc OR hasbro can threaten look like peanuts). Putting the rigor to make the ORC not something Paizo can use to gently caress with others is extremely easy next to making sure a license can't be hosed with by Microsoft or Oracle. e: to put it another way, Paizo is saying "oh, you want to say we can't play softball any more? okay we'll take the team to the MLB and play by their rules instead, and we've got the money to do it." Of course, it could potentially be a sham or go all wrong but according to their deeds and actions about the OGL and the ORC throughout the company's existence so far, we have no reason to think otherwise. The kinds of organizations Paizo is reaching out to about the ORC are the ones that people were already hoping were big fish that could tell WotC to gently caress off about the OGL 1.0 being deauthorized (for example, the EFF.) Arivia fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Jan 13, 2023 |
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Jan 13, 2023 09:22
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gradenko_2000 posted:oh my god Holy poo poo, totally missed that. loving awesome.
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Jan 13, 2023 09:35
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SpaceDrake posted:crucially, he was the CEO for the disaster that was 4th edition 4E outsold 3.5 and was commercially successful in its own right. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that it was a disaster from. SpaceDrake posted:and the incredible antipathy for anything like competition By Dancey's own admission the entire point of the OGL was to "drive support for all other game systems to the lowest level possible in the market" and "create customer resistance to the introduction of new systems" so they're in good company! Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 09:48 on Jan 13, 2023 |
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Jan 13, 2023 09:42
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Lemon-Lime posted:4E outsold 3.5 and was commercially successful in its own right. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that it was a disaster for anyone. I'm not sure that 4E outselling 3.5 is a great metric though, since 3.5 and 3.0 were pretty much fully compatible.
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Jan 13, 2023 09:48
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I'm not going to argue that 4e was not-successful, but I am going to say that how WOTC moved from 4e to 5e suggests that they either didn't perceive it to be, or that they willing to throw out the design of 4e regardless of its success; for whatever reason, and in light of Mearls already trying to pump the brakes on 4e since taking over with Essentials
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Jan 13, 2023 09:53
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4e did well, but not as well as they hoped, combined with a pretty vocal audience against it. But It was for sure not a disaster.
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Jan 13, 2023 09:53
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If 4e can be seen as a "disaster", it's not so much about 4e itself so much as how it all led to the existence of Pathfinder. The combo of giving Paizo a reason to make their own game, having a more restrictive license which let the third parties make a buzz about moving away from D&D, and the game being different in a meaningful sense, it added up to a crack in D&D's brand hegemony because there was another company with high production values making all this stuff that satisfied the D&D tummyfeels, and then Wizards are going to look over from their huge pile of money and ask "why are those people giving Paizo money for something similar instead of buying our product?" Never mind that there were people who bought both, D&D isn't about the idea of there being a "both". At least, that's how I see it, but I'm no expert on anything at all. 1st Stage Midboss fucked around with this message at 10:04 on Jan 13, 2023 |
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Jan 13, 2023 10:00
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MonsterEnvy posted:4e did well, but not as well as they hoped, combined with a pretty vocal audience against it. I haven't played tablestop RPGs in a very long time (over a decade, I think) but DND 4E was sufficiently bad / frustrating that my old group and I mutually agreed we preferred the 3.0 / 3.5 style and dumped it for Pathfinder. Wrote the whole thing off as a bad investment. I mostly DM'd and I remember 4E being the most inflexible pile of bullshit. Very good for running a tabletop skirmish wargame with cookie cutter builds. Terrible for anything else. A big step back in the hobby. It was essentially a toned down 3.X PHB with a ton of stuff stripped out mixed with the 3.X tabletop wargame supplement, the name of which I forget now. The book with all the mini battle rules. Reading about this current OGL situation I wanted to get a copy of the current Pathfinder just to relive and remember old times but wouldn't you know it, Paizo's website is still overloaded.
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Jan 13, 2023 10:05
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'm not going to argue that 4e was not-successful, but I am going to say that how WOTC moved from 4e to 5e suggests that they either didn't perceive it to be, or that they willing to throw out the design of 4e regardless of its success; for whatever reason, and in light of Mearls already trying to pump the brakes on 4e since taking over with Essentials
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Jan 13, 2023 10:11
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All that said, DancingShade posted:I haven't played tablestop RPGs in a very long time (over a decade, I think) but DND 4E was sufficiently bad / frustrating that my old group and I mutually agreed we preferred the 3.0 / 3.5 style and dumped it for Pathfinder. Wrote the whole thing off as a bad investment. I mostly DM'd and I remember 4E being the most inflexible pile of bullshit. Very good for running a tabletop skirmish wargame with cookie cutter builds. Terrible for anything else. A big step back in the hobby. It was essentially a toned down 3.X PHB with a ton of stuff stripped out mixed with the 3.X tabletop wargame supplement, the name of which I forget now. The book with all the mini battle rules.
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Jan 13, 2023 10:12
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Siivola posted:All that said, Found it online, thanks google. The "Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures Handbook". I've still got all my old 3.X stuff in a storage box somewhere, I think. Well unless it's all been eaten by mold now. It's not been cracked open in a long time.
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Jan 13, 2023 10:16
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Siivola posted:Essentials isn't a deliberate sabotage Siivola posted:but a backdoor through which PF and OSR gamers can get enticed to buy a D&D product 
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Jan 13, 2023 10:32
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What I mean is, Essentials wasn't a "poison pill", it could have just as well been a "4E for babies" line that ran alongside the advanced game. The poison pill was Ryan Dancey in 2004 recognizing that Wizards are not in the business of making good games.
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Jan 13, 2023 10:56
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one of the ironies of this sequence of events is that WOTC already did have a working monetization model during the 4e era in the form of the character builder: we know for a fact that 4e was making more money for WOTC than Pathfinder was for Paizo, because the sheer number of people paying their 15 bucks a month in subscription fees would just about outweigh anything that Pathfinder could have ever done in book sales at the time, and Pathfinder's content treadmill actually requires that they churn out content constantly, as opposed to people continuing to stay subbed just to retain access rights to the app that said, I come at this in ignorance of existing VTTs - for all I know D&DBeyond might already be doing something similar
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Jan 13, 2023 11:18
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Beyond is basically the same thing as the 4e online tools except you don't get free issues of Dungeon and Dragon with it. It has no VTT (yet)
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Jan 13, 2023 11:32
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Don't you also need to buy the "beyond" version of whatever splat/source book to use it in your characters or am I misremembering?
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Jan 13, 2023 11:42
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ConanThe3rd posted:Don't you also need to buy the "beyond" version of whatever splat/source book to use it in your characters or am I misremembering? From what I understand yes, the app is loaded with transactions.
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Jan 13, 2023 12:00
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The Critical Role Reddit sub (358k readers) has buckled under pressure and has opened a megathread for the discussion of OGL drama. https://www.reddit.com/r/criticalrole/comments/104cxtp/no_spoilers_critical_role_and_the_open_gaming/ Also, I don't know if CR did the D&D Beyond promo on the last night's episode (it was pre-recorded anyway), but they actually didn't mention it as a sponsor on their Twitter feed, like they did for the previous two episodes I checked. Megazver fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Jan 13, 2023 |
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Jan 13, 2023 12:23
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It's going to be very interesting to see how some of the bigger channels (CR, Dimension20) deal with this. Obviously nobody's expecting Matt mercer to start his next session by saying they're a bunch of nerdy rear end voice actors who sit around and play 13th Age, but if they're actively sponsored by D&D at a point where a lot of their user base are feeling alienated by Wizards, that's going to cause tension.
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Jan 13, 2023 12:38
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Someone from Dimension 20 has commented earlier this week that WOTC did not approach them about the new OGL and they don't really have any special relationship with them.
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Jan 13, 2023 12:42
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Lamuella posted:It's going to be very interesting to see how some of the bigger channels (CR, Dimension20) deal with this. Obviously nobody's expecting Matt mercer to start his next session by saying they're a bunch of nerdy rear end voice actors who sit around and play 13th Age, but if they're actively sponsored by D&D at a point where a lot of their user base are feeling alienated by Wizards, that's going to cause tension. Might just be a case of them needing to run out the clock (or have it pushed off a cliff by a good lawyer) on their sponsorships before doing whatever they're going to do.
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Jan 13, 2023 13:02
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Speaking of running out the clock, D&D are postponing scheduled announcements about the OGL. https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-ogl-announcement-wizards-of-the-coast-1849981365
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Jan 13, 2023 13:10
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hyphz posted:
If Paizo has a lawyer on staff, the initial motions and responses are a lot of work, but one unhappy person can do them, and the expenses are just filing fees. Separate lawsuits are not an automatic "I win" button for the wealthy; as a broad rule, when you sue somebody, you get one bite at the cookie for a given set of facts, and have to raise any and all claims that you have against them (on those facts!) in a single suit or lose your right to raise them later. Separate lawsuits for every perceived infringement in Pathfinder is a good way to make an entire courthouse and all the judges there extremely angry with you.
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Jan 13, 2023 13:24
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Also Paizo is not a publicly traded company, they can only be bought if the CEO decides to sell.
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Jan 13, 2023 13:35
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