RPG Opinion: Let It Burn

 

I’m not going to bother going over the particulars of D&D’s OGL debacle.  I’ve watched plenty of videos about this, which you can hardly avoid if you’re an RPG fan.  (This one by the RPG Pundit is one of the best I’ve seen.)  Essentially, WOTC, who owns D&D, is revoking the Open Game License, which allows other creators to use D&D rules and IP royalty-free.  People are mad about this because the language of the OGL states it is “perpetual.”  Paizo started their very successful business off of it.  Other companies use it, along with a legion of small individual creators.  I used it and I wasn’t even selling anything.   

 

I don’t think WOTC really realized the depth of anger they were provoking.  It was instant and unanimous.  This has united factions of the hobby that hate each other.  However, WOTC has gotten what they wanted.  They wanted everyone to stop using the OGL.  Paizo has already capitalized on this and started their own version of the OGL (ORC) and have gotten a bunch of signers on it. 

 

WOTC must have underestimated how many people would care about this.  They’ve acquired a bunch of new players over the last five years, who only create characters for their games.  If 95% of D&D’s fanbase are players who don’t care about the OGL, the other 5% are the DM’s who make up all of the adventures and settings and do care.  And they all seem to have their own Youtube channels, where they’re screaming about this.  

 

Critical Role, who is responsible for much of D&D’s current popularity, seems to be one of the entities specifically targeted by the new OGL’s royalty scheme.  Given that CR is about to release Season 2 of their Vox Machina animated series, I’m sure Matt Mercer appreciates this great publicity.  CR started off using Paizo’s Pathfinder and they currently use a modified version of 5e.  Mercer is fully capable of making his own RPG to play on show and has been weeding out D&D’s IP from his game.  Mercer hasn’t really said anything and can’t, but as soon as his arrangement with 5e ends, I suspect he’ll have something to say.  Boy, does WOTC know how to make enemies.

 

The purpose of this self-immolating behavior seems two-fold (to me).  They’re setting up One D&D, the upcoming next version of D&D, to be an online game, where they will fully monetize every transaction.  If you can’t find a DM, a common problem today, no problem, WOTC will provide AI DM’s.  If you can’t find a group, you can play pick up with a group of random players worldwide.  There’s clauses in their new OGL that will ensure no competition in the digital realm.  (Why not just play Dark and Darker?)    

 

The other reason is that WOTC wants to like Games Workshop, who produce Warhammer 40k.  GW has a very successful business selling rules, little models, novels, and all sorts of other merchandise to an obsessed fanbase.  They are the only providers.  Likewise, WOTC no longer wants third party providers for D&D.  They make no money directly off those products and don’t have control over them.  Since this new version is supposed to be backward compatible with the current 5e, they can’t have “knock-off” real world versions of their online game floating around.    

 

After my own anger subsided a bit, I became more amused by the situation.  WOTC is totally compromised with wokeness.  They had groomed and served their large new liberal audience and they just calculatedly stabbed them all in the back.  I was listening to an incredibly informative commentary about the OGL, which was stopped cold by the guest correcting the host about somebody’s gender pronouns (and then apologizing himself for using the wrong pronouns). 

 

Somebody posted that the new morality clause in the updated OGL might eliminate gays from any aspect of the game.  I can assure you, there’s no chance WOTC will do that, not when they take orders from Woke Twitter.  It’s more likely it’ll go the other way with minimum diversity quotas.       

 

However this goes, the hobby is likely ruined.  It’s certainly united against WOTC, but hopelessly fractured regardless and filled with people who fundamentally hate each other because the hobby became political.  Worse, the people they’re bowing to are people who are going to eventually cancel one another.  Nobody left will want to play with each other.  Thank goodness for the AI DM’s.     

 

Don’t look for much help elsewhere.  Paizo eliminated the term “race” from the game before WOTC did.  (“Race” in D&D means stuff like elves, dwarves, and humans and such.  Nothing to do with skin color.)  And the company was always woke.  I know, because I was on their message boards when they started.  I hand Troll Lord Games (makers of Castles & Crusades) credit here.  When one of their writers made a political comment, management immediately disavowed it and basically said, “We sell to everybody.” 

 

Like comic books and fantasy, sci-fi, and superhero TV and movies, tabletop RPG’s were just another front in a culture war.  D&D was just something else to be infiltrated and ruined for everyone eventually.  The new players of the game were looking forward to excluding everyone who didn’t agree with them on all issues.  Now they’re locking arms with the Old School players against the company who just betrayed them all. 

 

Players are canceling their D&D Beyond subscriptions in enough numbers to make WOTC put out another OGL draft with slightly better terms.  Most of D&D’s competitors are joining forces on some level.  During the 4e era of D&D, Pathfinder did become the number one RPG, which prompted the creation of 5e.  WOTC may be happy to cede the physical tabletop market, as long as they own all of the online one.  This will definitively bifurcate the hobby between online players and tabletop players.  Or should I say, between knockoff WoW addicts and some grognards, whom mainstream journalists have already deemed to be r@cist$ because they’re not playing the official, current version of the game.  

 

None of this is settled, but none of it matters to me if the hobby doesn’t return to just playing the game and not pushing Agenda messages.  It will collapse and shrink just like comic books and so on.  As much as people worry about WOTC crushing all resistance eventually, that won’t be what crushes the hobby.  Thankfully, we have the books, especially all those produced under the OGL, to fall back on.