Woot! +2! Or, as the kids are calling it these days, “advantage.”
Tucker did.
I haven’t been paying attention to what WotC does directly from their site but watch other sites (enworld.org) to know. I’m really curious what this does to their plans. Are they going to try and put out a new OGL just for OneD&D, which they can do, and try and keep that? I mean, it’s 4E all over again if they do but they can. Are they still going forward with their own VTT for OneD&D to try and get everyone on that? To make it a great experience such that it’s the only way to play it?
I do see that the ones that said they are doing a new OGL are still doing that. It will be interesting to see how many 3PP move over to those. Or how many 3PP make their own system or OGL.
Interesting times! Thanks for the discussion!
I think that applied to tow things- Movie tie in merchandise, and a possible pay to play online d&D game. In those cases, “monetizing” is not an issue.
Here is a well done, pretty unbiased article about this, from NPR (who I generally trust)
One thing I’ll mention: What they put under CC licensing was just the Source Rules Document, which is a very small subset of what the OGL covered. Further, the SRD is also a lot smaller than what most people think the SRD is: If you Google up the SRD, you’re likely to find third-party sites with much more than the actual SRD. Which leaves open the possibility that someone uses what they thought was CC-licensed, but wasn’t actually, and then gets sued by Hasbro.
Interesting insight from inside the process.
TL;DR: WotC leadership was largely kept out of the process and didn’t pay enough attention to the Hasbro-driven monetization drive and let Hasbro’s lawyers and accountants come up with the shameless money grab that was the revised OGL.
It was, indeed, Hasbro vs. the community.
New Wizards of the Coast fuckery:
Stranger
Care to summarize?
A guy who makes Magic: The Gathering videos for YouTube bought some boxes of the new expansion from a legitimate retailer. The retailer fucked up, and gave him the wrong box - the box he got was for a set that wasn’t supposed to have been released yet. He does an unboxing video, still not realizing that this was an unreleased set, and Wizards of the Coast finds out about it. They hire the literal Pinkerton Detective Agency to find out how the cards got in this guys hands. The Pinkertons go to the guys house and threaten him and his wife with exorbitant fines, ridiculous legal penalties, and possibly a drawn fire arm (reports are unclear on this last point), if he doesn’t hand the cards over.
Now Wizards is taking heat for sending armed thugs to intimidate a guy who does free advertising for them, over a mistake that was in no way his fault. The fact that it’s the Pinkertons, who have a long history of stuff like strike-breaking and murdering ethnic minorities, plays heavily into the criticism.
So, with Critical Role releasing their own TTRPG system, does this mean more or less the end for DnD?
WOTC will probably keep on, as their money has always come from CCGs, and their acquisition of TSR never seemed to be a big money maker for them.
But, with them alienating most of their fanbase, and most of their fanbase having gotten into RPG’s from Critical Role in the first place (even if indirectly), it seems as though it’s not all that likely, IMO, that they make it to a 6th edition.
I think that this very likely overstates the importance of Critical Role to their player base as a whole. The show undoubtedly has attracted a lot of new players to D&D, but there are likely millions of D&D players who either (a) predate Critical Role, or (b) came into the game recently, through other sources.
Even for D&D players who weren’t directly brought into the game by Critical Role, but who are fans of the show, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will follow the show into a new, non-D&D game system.
I also think that, for a lot of D&D players, the short-term anger, from back in January, may have faded when WotC backed off on the proposed OGL changes.
Critical Role was a major influencer in the resurgence of WotC ’DnD’, and there is actually little that prevents gamers from switching to the multitude of other DnD-like systems other than inertia, which mostly depends on the quality of supplements available which is questionable since the “D&D Beyond” platform is already being scaled back. The TTRPG space is already kind of restricted, and card games being the real bread and butter for WotC, it is reasonable to expect significant migration to the unimaginatively named “Daggerheart” and other fantasy TTRPGs.
Stranger
Well, the guy knew the cards were not to be released, but he makes $$ off his Youtube channel so he made a YouTube about them anyway.
Pinkertons are now just another PI agency. Yeah, like 100 years ago they- and others- were hired to bust Unions, heads etc. 100 years ago the Democrats were the party of Racism and lynching. The guy who made the Youtube is making a big deal about THE PINKERTONS!!!". Maybe that meant something decades ago, but it doesn’t any longer, uless you watch westerns and such.
The only story about those threats were from the guy who make the YouTube. He has reasons to lie. Nor is there any indications they were armed, PI’s usually are not.
So, not “armed thugs”- 
just some PIs. Just like they ones every company in America hires for similar issues.
It wont make a dent.
No one I know got into RPGs from CR.
Right.
Nope, 5th ed was. Or as I call it “D&D lite”. Easier, more newbie friendly game.
I think the vast majority of D&D players don’t really care about things like the OGL fiasco, that WotC hired the Pinkertons (one of their security guys used to work for Pinkerton), or whatever the current fan outrage is. I doubt it’s going to drive anyone away. D&D is currently enjoying a level of popularity it’s never had before which is great. But I think it’s going to come to an end eventually and the player base will shrink.
But they were the bad guys in Red Dead Redemption 2!
No, almost certainly not. Even if Hasbro kills the product line, which is very unlikely, D&D will still exist in gaming spaces. The brand has a ton of institutional inertia. There’s still people running 1st ed. Ad&D campaigns, and they stopped supporting that version last century.
CR was a huge influence in the D&D resurgence, but saying that “most” people came to the game thanks to them is a wild overstatement. And releasing their own game system doesn’t automatically mean they’re dropping 5th Ed. in the show.
I’m among the skeptical that Daggerheart will pose any threat to D&D’s dominance.
Inertia was mentioned above and is a big deal. People own books (or digital access to DDBeyond, etc), are in running campaigns, etc. Either a new system is just D&D with the serial numbers filed off – in which case, no real reason to change – or is significantly different and is a big pain in the ass to change, learn a new system, buy new materials, etc. Any GM who has wanted to diversify can probably tell stories of reluctant players who just want to play familiar and comfortable D&D instead. And groups willing to try a new system every week are probably already not playing D&D.
While Critical Role may be very popular, I don’t think that CR as a campaign is particularly influential within the 5e space. As in, I never really see Explorer’s Guide to Wildemont mentioned in D&D spaces or people asking how to optimize their Dunamancy wizard. Soft things like “I like how he DMs” or “I like this character concept” sure but those apply to any D&D-esque game. From a mechanical and lore perspective, D&D remains mainly rooted in the Forgotten Realms and I’ve seen much more interest in the Dragonlance or Planescape settings than Critical Role source material. So any idea that “This is THE way to play in the CR world” doesn’t seem like it’ll be a huge draw. There’s a lot of people who watch Critical Role, I don’t know how many are committed to playing Critical Role.
For the record, I’m not in any D&D games at present. Involved in a Pathfinder 1e Kingmaker campaign and in a Mutants & Masterminds 3e game. I’m not in love with a lot of newer 5e material and direction so it’s unlikely I’ll buy any more D&D material in the foreseeable future. I don’t have any real stake in the continued success of D&D but I don’t see it ending any time soon.
I don’t think some people fully appreciate how thorough D&D’s dominance really is. For good or bad, D&D is synonomous with role playing games. If I tell someone I’m playing Call of Cthulhu, Pathfinder, or GURPS they’re probably not going to know what those are and I will have to tell them it’s like Dungeons & Dragons. The only reason the whole OGL debacle was taken so seriously is because the relationship between many game companies and WotC most closely resembles the relationship between pilot fish and a shark.
Sure, and those who predate CR already have bought most of what they are going to ever buy from WOTC.
And many of those other sources are influenced by Critical Role. If you are a popular RPG streamer, you are likely following in the footsteps of the most successful RPG stream. Many of them directly collaborate with CR as well, I’d expect Dimension 20 to adopt Matt’s system, as well as many others.
CR fans gave $12 million in a kickstarter to back a cartoon. You don’t think that they are going to buy RPG materials? Even if they don’t use them to play, they will want them just for the lore, and to follow along with the new system when they start using it in their stream.
Your average player, probably. They may not have even heard of it. Content creators and DMs on the other hand, they probably followed it more closely, and continue to have concerns about the direction that WOTC is taking their product.
Especially streamers. Anyone making a living off of playing RPG’s isn’t going to forget it very soon.
That’s an interesting cite. I mean, sure, most of the people I play with have been playing longer than much of the CR cast has been alive.
But, do you know anyone under 30? Other than the kids of a couple old school gamers, I don’t know anyone (that plays TTRPG’s) under 30 that is more than 2 degrees of separation from CR.
You may not know any, but there are millions of them. And that’s the coveted demographic. Not us old geezers that still have copies of AD&D.
The vast majority of D&D players aren’t the market that WOTC needs to cater to. They maybe have bought a PHB, but most likely borrow someone else’s when they need it.
Sure, and how much is Hasbro making off of that?
Most of the new players have, either directly or indirectly.
It’d be a little weird if they didn’t. They have the perfect advertising platform for it. The current plotline is all about the whole world undergoing massive changes, the pantheon realigning, spells acting weird or not working at all. I’d be very surprised if that’s not all a setup for changing the system.
And inertia will probably keep people playing 5e. People still play 3(.5) and Advanced (no one plays 4th). I know a group that still goes old school with Basic.
But that’s not new sales.
WOTC is wanting players to change, they want to come out with a new edition for people to buy. They’d be fighting against exactly the same inertia.
There is certainly a lot more material for Forgotten Realms than there is for Wildmount, I agree. And all that material is going to need to be repurchased when WOTC rolls out their new edition.
When people are making a choice, are they going to stick with WOTC?
Depends on how good the system is. If it sucks, then people won’t buy it. If it’s good, then it has the best advertising platform imaginable.
WOTC has been trying to monetize D&D the way that CCG games are since they bought TSR. If you are playing a game of M:TG, you’ve probably spent way too much money on your deck, and you will probably continue to spend money on your deck. If you are playing a TTRPG, you’ve maybe bought a PHB. The only one that has any significant investment is the DM. WOTC really wants everyone at the table to give them money, but they don’t seem to understand that, even if the same people play them, they think of CCGs and TTRPGs completely differently.
Among who? Among people who have heard of TTRPGs and maybe played a session or two? Or among people who actually spend money on it?
Personally, I see CR coming out with their stuff, doing pretty well, and WOTC coming out with their new edition, and it flops. Maybe at that point WOTC gives up on the TTRPG market as a wasted 30 year investment.
I don’t think one follows the other. The cartoon goes back to the “soft” aspect – seeing the roleplaying story in action. Also, they paid to see a cartoon they didn’t already have. They already own RPG materials to play a game at their table. A better example would be how popular the Wildemont source book is and, casually, it doesn’t seem to be very popular. I’m sure it made money and wasn’t a huge failure but it didn’t make any sort of splash either.
WOTC has intentionally held back from calling this a 6e (or even 5.5e) for that very reason. They say that all the current 5e materials will be compatible with the revised ruleset.
For what it’s worth (not much), I spent a couple years running Adventurer’s League open games and played with a lot of new and young players. Rarely, if ever, heard Critical Role mentioned. Obviously I don’t know if they arrived because of CR or a friend of a friend, etc but it didn’t seem to be their motivating factor for being there. Or rather, maybe CR made them think D&D might be neat but they didn’t show up devoted to the idea of ‘playing’ Critical Role. Of course, I’ve also ready various internet laments from DMs who say new players showed up and then bitched that the game wasn’t CR-quality so who knows. CR can have those players anyway 