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senrath posted:Personally my problem is entirely that they slapped the warning on literally every old product instead of putting an actually meaningful warning on only the ones that needed it. I agree. Even if we say that they shouldn't just erase from history every book that was problematic, it was also exceedingly lazy for them to not even go through the trouble sussing out which individual books those were. It's like if you simply blanket assumed that every episode of the Joe Rogan podcast had him saying the n-word.
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Jan 15, 2023 06:22
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Arivia posted:If they attached a good report from a cultural consultant, maybe. There’s a problem with free products as a subset of a larger paid line: regardless of what they are, more people will gravitate towards them because they are free. So if you don’t foreground a report or something you’ll see a lot of people grab those products and use them regardless of how bad they are, simply because it’s a free entry point. (You see this plenty with free starter sets, adventures, and SRDs.) And then you end up with a bunch of people running Kung Fu D&D adventures and make the problem even worse. I distinctly remember the warning label coming after. And I mean, I'm sorry, loving Oriental Adventures for AD&D 1E is not going to be anyone's entry point to anything.
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Jan 15, 2023 06:24
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I distinctly remember the warning label coming after. Tons of people ask in threads here and on discords I’m in about free or cheap ways to start playing old-school D&D. Even if it’s gawky and stupid, legally free 1e OA would definitely get added to recommendations next to Basic Fantasy RPG, Swords & Wizardry, and the like. Not because it’s good but hey, more classes, monsters, spells and martial arts.
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Jan 15, 2023 06:29
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Arivia posted:Tons of people ask in threads here and on discords I’m in about free or cheap ways to start playing old-school D&D. Even if it’s gawky and stupid, legally free 1e OA would definitely get added to recommendations next to Basic Fantasy RPG, Swords & Wizardry, and the like. Not because it’s good but hey, more classes, monsters, spells and martial arts. Yes, by all means let's worry about the mass of people chomping at the bit to play AD&D 1E directly from the old TSR books when there are better free alternatives around, including better formulations of the same exact rules.
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Jan 15, 2023 06:33
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Capfalcon posted:Last I looked, Hasbro makes more from Jenga than D&D. You know, the wooden block tower game. Meanwhile, MTG made almost half a billion in *profit.* I imagine that has changed. WotC made more than the rest of Hasbro combined not long ago, and D&D has been promoted as a big reason for that. No it does not make as much as Magic, but it does have the advantage over magic of being more well known in the public consciousness. Who knows how the Movie, TV show and Video Games might change that as well.
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Jan 15, 2023 06:44
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Gynovore posted:
Wizards of the Coast hasn't been translating or publishing the Pokemon Trading Card game for 20 years, FYI.
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Jan 15, 2023 06:55
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MonsterEnvy posted:I imagine that has changed. WotC made more than the rest of Hasbro combined not long ago, and D&D has been promoted as a big reason for that. No it does not make as much as Magic, but it does have the advantage over magic of being more well known in the public consciousness.
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Jan 15, 2023 08:42
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Funny thing is given the inherently social status of the hobby- it's a lot harder to just passively consume D&D and tune out the community, even if you're listening to podcasts and poo poo- is part of why this has become such a PR nightmare for WotC, gossip spreads like wildfire in the age of social media.Farg posted:i think this is smart. the thing to consider and keep in mind that THE thing that matters, with regards to the vast majority of people entering the hobby with its recent surge, is that a ton of them got in via actual plays. your critical roles, your d20's, your naddpods, etc. the people who got into the hobby and are big fans of those shows would not stop listening if they pivoted to different systems, they'd be introduced to new systems and might leave behind d&d. Yep. Hell, a friend of mine did an about face on 4e after buying into the initial 'WoW on paper' line after watching Let's Play D&D from this very dead gay forum and realising that it's an actual playable game, the idea that non-D&D systems are too hard and too different dies pretty quickly when seeing people actually play them and have fun.
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Jan 15, 2023 08:46
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Terrible Opinions posted:Maybe I'm reading their earning reports wrong, but it looks like the Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming segment is only about 1/5 of the overall revenue in 2022. Any specific source on the more money than everything else combined bit? I' was most profitable part of Hasbro. They (Hasbro) also said magic is their first billion-dollar brand. Hasbro as a whole has had significant drops in earning/profits, while WotC was making increases over the last two years. Bank of America last November did a deep dive where they claimed that WotC/Hasbro was damaging magic's brand because of too many releases, saturation etc. So no, they're not making more money overall, but they are a sizeable chunk of the company that is making higher profits. https://sea.ign.com/magic-the-gathering-1/191579/news/magic-the-gathering-is-now-a-billion-dollar-brand
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Jan 15, 2023 09:18
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Yeah highest single brand sounds plenty right, just the claim of more than everything else combined that seems completely implausible.
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Jan 15, 2023 09:36
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Blockhouse posted:I have to imagine that balance of power changed when D&D 5e blew up in a way D&D hasn't seen since the 80's. The stuff about A&B making GBS threads on C is much, much easier if A can basically say to corporate "out of the two of us, who made you the most money this year?" Reminds me of the bullshit you see as normal now with AAA gaming, how people raged when it started and it still all crept in with this crushing inevitability, and now you have 12 year olds using 'default' as an insult in Fortnite if you don't have a paid skin. Capitalism fucks everything, and the worst of it is, it will win eventually. Even if they've backed down now, they'll try again. Or it'll be death by a thousand cuts. Or it'll try to burn the hobby down out of spite.
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Jan 15, 2023 09:53
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The sales numbers in the 80s pale in comparison to 5e anyway. Each new edition has outsold the last, yes even red box in the Toys R Us were nothing compared to the 4e box set they sold on Amazon for a hundred bucks.
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Jan 15, 2023 10:08
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Oriental Adventures seems less relevant to WotC's "commitment to inclusiveness" than this recent Hardozee  In fairness, they were eventually removed and apologized for. But the apology says less about the company culture than the initial mistake; How many WotC desks did "race of enslaved monkey people" frictionlessly glide across?
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Jan 15, 2023 11:15
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A CCG of a certain level of popularity is always going to be more profitable than a TTRPG of a similar level of popularity simply because with the CCG there's so much more poo poo To Buy. The amount of money going to WotC from a group of six people running, say, Curse Of Strahd for five months, is going to be substantially lower than the amount of money going to them from those same six people playing Magic against each other, because part of the game with Magic is deckbuilding, and deckbuilding requires Buying poo poo. To add to that, the upper bounds of what you can purchase are much lower. Let's say you were a truly TRULY obsessed D&D player. You can buy every single currently in print 5e book for less than a thousand dollars. And that's all they'll get out of you for their books until they release new ones. Sure, they'll also try and sell you minis and dice and poo poo, but other places sell minis and dice. The reason they are watching the Beyond sub rate so hard is that it's their only repeat income. In a sane world, this would be fine. Some hobbies cost more than others. Unfortunately capitalism being what it is every market has to be capitalised until it either becomes a money hose or dies on the vine.
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Jan 15, 2023 11:38
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Lamuella posted:A CCG of a certain level of popularity is always going to be more profitable than a TTRPG of a similar level of popularity simply because with the CCG there's so much more poo poo To Buy. Another factor, though I'm not at all sure how much of the pie it adds up to, is Magic is translated into like eight languages (down from ten), while the last time I checked WotC was being extremely stingy about international licensing of D&D for international markets, to the point markets that used to exist such as in Japan have dried up and been overtaken by other games like Call of Cthulhu.
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Jan 15, 2023 11:52
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A friend made a pretty decent and simple argument- with its market domination and lucky popularity boosts, D&D had pretty much hit the point of maximum saturation- of diminishing returns. There's just only so many people they can have buying their poo poo. There is, as a certain author wrote, a tendency for the rate of profit to fall compared to the rate at which it has been rising at this point. Thing is, capitalism literally cannot handle this, it's anathema, completely unacceptable, a crack addict going cold turkey, and with similar responses.
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Jan 15, 2023 11:54
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Comstar posted:I should have expected the company that made GI Joe would be run by Cobra Commander. Comics Cobra genuinely seems like a very nice place to work. Don't insult Cobra Commander by comparing him to WoTC.   
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Jan 15, 2023 11:56
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Ghost Leviathan posted:A friend made a pretty decent and simple argument- with its market domination and lucky popularity boosts, D&D had pretty much hit the point of maximum saturation- of diminishing returns. There's just only so many people they can have buying their poo poo. There is, as a certain author wrote, a tendency for the rate of profit to fall compared to the rate at which it has been rising at this point. my friends (crying): you can't keep saying every problem is caused by capitalism me: *points at Wizards Of The Coast* capitalism
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Jan 15, 2023 11:59
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They've really been dropping the ball on computer adaptations of 5e as well. It's the still-in-production BG3 and a whole bunch of mobile shovelware. They should have just adopted Games Workshop's policy of "if your game doesn't look literally the worst, you can have a license, sure." There's been a boom of okay-to-actually-great Warhammer games thanks to it.
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Jan 15, 2023 12:28
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Ghost Leviathan posted:A friend made a pretty decent and simple argument- with its market domination and lucky popularity boosts, D&D had pretty much hit the point of maximum saturation- of diminishing returns. There's just only so many people they can have buying their poo poo. There is, as a certain author wrote, a tendency for the rate of profit to fall compared to the rate at which it has been rising at this point. The thing is, they had a working plan to keep getting more money from the brand - turning it into a lifestyle brand instead of just a roleplaying game. They were selling t-shirts and funko pops and all that poo poo and the movie, if successful, would have put them further up there. They got greedy and shot the core brand to pieces before their new goose was cooked. Absolutely hosed.
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Jan 15, 2023 12:33
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SimonChris posted:Comics Cobra genuinely seems like a very nice place to work. Don't insult Cobra Commander by comparing him to WoTC. Well he WILL kick a dog or two sometimes.
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Jan 15, 2023 12:36
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Arivia posted:Tons of people ask in threads here and on discords I’m in about free or cheap ways to start playing old-school D&D. Even if it’s gawky and stupid, legally free 1e OA would definitely get added to recommendations next to Basic Fantasy RPG, Swords & Wizardry, and the like. Not because it’s good but hey, more classes, monsters, spells and martial arts. The most important consumers are people that have never played a TTRPG but want to start, but only with the racist supplements for first edition
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Jan 15, 2023 14:45
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Zurai posted:LegalEagle is on the case The Opening Arguments podcast did an episode on this fiasco recently as well. Their tldr is that the author of that Gizmodo article specifically set out to do a hatchet job and frame things a certain way, that the updated 1.1 license was just updated language for the most part meant to clarify things like “we don’t want nazis using our material” which I can’t see how is a bad thing. Also, that the pathfinder people are a multimillion dollar company who are abusing the 1.0 license to make and sell a competing product. To be honest I’m more inclined to believe 2 lawyers (legal eagle and the opening args guy) over a video game journalist for gizmodo and a bunch of rabid redditors.
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Jan 15, 2023 17:26
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As a Opening Arguments podcast patreon supporter, Andrew is correct on some parts of the article, but completely misses what the "static pdfs or physical copies only" change means because he isn't really familiar with the TG community or that this is coming just ahead of WotC coming out with their own VTT. Also it absolutely is not primarily intended for "we don’t want nazis using our material” purposes, it's 95% them trying to take a bunch of money and trying to destroy other VTTs
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Jan 15, 2023 17:37
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Boris Galerkin posted:The Opening Arguments podcast did an episode on this fiasco recently as well. Their tldr is that the author of that Gizmodo article specifically set out to do a hatchet job and frame things a certain way, that the updated 1.1 license was just updated language for the most part meant to clarify things like “we don’t want nazis using our material” which I can’t see how is a bad thing. Also, that the pathfinder people are a multimillion dollar company who are abusing the 1.0 license to make and sell a competing product. good job having as ignorant a take as that podcast episode
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Jan 15, 2023 17:40
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Boris Galerkin posted:the updated 1.1 license was just updated language for the most part meant to clarify things like “we don’t want nazis using our material” which I can’t see how is a bad thing Okay but this is objectively not true.
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Jan 15, 2023 17:49
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Boris Galerkin posted:the updated 1.1 license was just updated language for the most part meant to clarify things like “we don’t want nazis using our material” which I can’t see how is a bad thing. Also they want to skim profits off of every single work that uses their license and makes money, unrestricted and unlimited free access to all IPs made using that license, the ability to change the license further at will, and the complete destruction of D&D on every other Virtual Tabletop but their own. I can see how those are bad things.
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Jan 15, 2023 17:55
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I *think* he's saying that all of that stuff are things the Gizmodo article is claiming. sincequote:Their tldr is that the author of that Gizmodo article specifically set out to do a hatchet job and frame things a certain way, that the updated 1.1 license was just updated language for the most part meant to clarify things like “we don’t want nazis using our material” which I can’t see how is a bad thing. Also, that the pathfinder people are a multimillion dollar company who are abusing the 1.0 license to make and sell a competing product. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Jan 15, 2023 |
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Jan 15, 2023 18:01
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Improbable Lobster posted:The most important consumers are people that have never played a TTRPG but want to start, but only with the racist supplements for first edition This is D&D, isn't it?
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Jan 15, 2023 18:15
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Serf posted:Their podcast where they played 4E was what got me to buy the books back in the day. It sounded like fun, and it turned out that impression was right. I still remember when they did the live game of 5E and the guy running it couldn't explain why squares had been replaced by feet, and Scott Kurtz visibly lost interest 15 minutes in and was just doodling his character because all his cool powers were gone. Even before the Zak stuff that turned me off to the new edition entirely. As I recall their 4e podcast also started with a lot of doodling before they got into the swing of things.
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Jan 15, 2023 18:28
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PerniciousKnid posted:As I recall their 4e podcast also started with a lot of doodling before they got into the swing of things. The difference is that the doodling happened before the game mechanics were introduced, after which Scott became more engaged with the game. In their 5E game, he lost interest after the game mechanics were introduced.
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Jan 15, 2023 18:32
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The biggest tragedy of the Mearls introducing 5e to Penny-Arcade is that the Invincible "That's the neat thing. You don't!" meme didn't exist already. Great encapsulation of the whole "My favorite thing about playing Clerics is that they don't just heal! They attack and heal, attack just to attack, heal with a benefit, all kinds of stuff. Can't wait to see how that design is taken forward!" "Oh, it just isn't! The end! No moral."
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Jan 15, 2023 18:35
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Quite a few of the fans of the podcast are roasting Andrew for his bad take and he seems to be doubling down calling it all nerd rage. I don’t really care either way because I agree he isn’t completely wrong and brings up some good points but I do think it’s kinda funny he framed the original article as a hatchet job but then did the same thing to the article with out a hint of self awareness.
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Jan 15, 2023 18:54
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I think the OA episode focused a little too much on Wizards' legal rights and on the specific wording of the Gizmodo episode, and not enough on the reasons why a lot of people are actually upset. This is probably because of unfamiliarity with the TTRPG space.Boris Galerkin posted:Also, that the pathfinder people are a multimillion dollar company who are abusing the 1.0 license to make and sell a competing product. This is flat-out false, though. Paizo was doing exactly what the original OGL was intended to allow them to do, as stated by the actual people who wrote it. Mostly it seems like people are:
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Jan 15, 2023 19:01
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I don't think VTTs can legally be affected?
YggdrasilTM fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jan 15, 2023 |
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Jan 15, 2023 19:12
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YggdrasilTM posted:I don't think VTTS can legally be affected? Relevant OGL 1.1 text quote:B. Works Covered Under 1.1 you can't sell anything but static files. That means no stuff like encounter/character builders, but also you can't do stuff like adventures that automatically set up everything for stuff like Foundry or Fantasy Grounds Piell fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Jan 15, 2023 |
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Jan 15, 2023 19:17
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Piell posted:Relevant OGL 1.1 text You can't just NOT using the OGL, though.
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Jan 15, 2023 19:19
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YggdrasilTM posted:You can't just NOT using the OGL, though. Not sure I understand what you're saying here, but under the 1.0a OGL you absolutely could do this 1.0a OGL FAQ quote:Q: I want to distribute computer software using the OGL. Is that possible?
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Jan 15, 2023 19:21
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I mean, you could just not use the OGL for your VTT
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Jan 15, 2023 19:24
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YggdrasilTM posted:I mean, you could just not use the OGL for your VTT Yes, but you can't do so if you want to do 3.X or 5E stuff. The point of this change is WotC wants to make other VTTs much more difficult to use for 5E/OneD&D in order to drive people to use their upcoming VTT
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Jan 15, 2023 19:31
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