So I posted about the D&D
OGL situation last Thursday. On Friday, WOTC completely capitulated.
They stated that they will make no changes to the OGL and to show their good
faith, they rereleased the 5.1 SRD
as a Creative Commons document. That act put much of the 5e rules set,
spells, and monsters into perpetual and irrevocable free and open usage for the
D&D community.
You’re welcome.
Actually, I’m embarrassed by my post. It was badly written, poorly thought out, and
unnecessary given all the other much-more educated commentary. I still basically stand behind what I said, just
not how I pushed it out. Let me offer an
excuse: I was sick when I wrote it. I
was stuck at home waiting to recover and wrote my last two posts.
(I felt like a dummy when I realized that there was a 5.1 SRD. I didn’t know. I was still using the 3.5 SRD when I wrote up my Robomeck
game. If I’d known, I might have done
things differently. Then I felt even
dumber when I found out I’d actually downloaded that SRD years ago and
remembered looking it over! I can’t
blame the flu on that oversight.)
Really, it was a confluence of events that forced WOTC’s
hand. The fans were in an uproar. Every D&D player and DM with a Youtube
channel and a Twitter account was howling.
There were no exceptions in the outrage.
There were a rumored 40,000 people cancelling their D&D Beyond subscriptions, even with the website crashing and
then hiding the “cancelation” button. WOTC
finally ran a fan poll about their new OGL that was cut off early after
overwhelmingly critical results.
Nearly all of D&D’s competitors had banded
together. Paizo had rallied other companies around a new OGL, called ORC.
WOTC’s biggest RPG competitor also announced that they’d sold out of all
eight months’ worth of their Core Rulebook backstock in two weeks. Kobold
Press, 5e’s premier third party
publisher, has announced Black Flag,
a new open RPG. (Whoa! Sudden flashback of 4e/Pathfinder, dude!) Critical Role, D&D’s biggest
promoter, issued a cryptic statement, owing to their contractual obligations to
WOTC, reminding everyone that they own their RPG publishing company.
Hasbro,
WOTC’s owner, has a big budget D&D movie coming in a couple of months that
was being prematurely boycotted. (Hey,
now I can go see the movie.) Hasbro’s stock
had plunged based on holiday sales and were getting ready for a 15% staff layoff. Their biggest shareholder, an investment
group, openly chastised the company for kneecapping their most profitable property. Finally, with the leak of their draft of the
updated OGL, interested lawyers were seriously questioning if WOTC had a leg to
stand on in revoking the “perpetual” license.
Little wonder WOTC decided to not only back off, but give
in. There may be more concessions to
come even. It really all was just a
greedy corporate screw up. There wasn’t
a master plan. I’m kind of shocked.
What does all this mean?
We’ll find out when WOTC releases One
D&D. It looks like with this
move that they are abandoning physical tabletop gaming. They’re going to focus on the online version
of the game and cultivate a new audience.
If Paizo and other companies take over the physical space, WOTC doesn’t
care. In all honesty, the tabletop
market is small and perhaps tapped out compared to the nearly unlimited
potential of a really good online RPG experience. There are features and possibilities in convenience
of play that will make the tabletop look Stone Age by comparison. (Think of waiting by a land line telephone
for a call versus having a cell phone.)
Will it still be the same D&D as our ancestors have
played? (Oh, wait. That’s me!)
That’s a good question. Does the
hobby still have a bunch of “social” problems?
Oh yeah. (Hopefully, the Woke all
go play online and cancel each other.) In
the meantime, thank you, Ryan Dancey,
for creating the OGL and foreseeing this day when Dungeons & Dragons had to be kept safe from its owners and
retained for the players. Forever.
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