DnD OGL 1.1 Creator Crisis - an Ultimately Good Thing or a Bad Thing for TTRPGs?

[Arakasi]

I doubt Paizo is working on another edition. They already wrote PF2 to be disconnected from the OGL anyway. Anyway while i agree with your points I think PF2 has already solved most of the issues. To me PF2 takes a bit from PF1, 4e and 5e and has parts of all in it. (For good or bad)

 

The only negative thing I can really say with 2 is that everyone does tend to be good at anything they invest in as just a single point gives full level scaling to skills. So I’ve found people might not be excited that them being an expert at something means they’re only 2-6 points higher in a roll than a person who put a single point in it. Now mathematically that difference can be significant but to players when they’re rolling it doesn’t seem like a lot. Also plus to level means all numbers at high level are super high.

[Durckad]

1 minute ago, Arakasi said:

I doubt Paizo is working on another edition. They already wrote PF2 to be disconnected from the OGL anyway. Anyway while i agree with your points I think PF2 has already solved most of the issues. To me PF2 takes a bit from PF1, 4e and 5e and has parts of all in it. (For good or bad)

Ah, okay. I saw some vague comments about "PF3" and wasn't sure if something had been hinted at or announced or if it was just baseless rumors. I haven't really been following Paizo much since my Pathfinder 1 game ended back in 2012, I think, so my knowledge of their current going ons is rather limited at the moment.

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The only negative thing I can really say with 2 is that everyone does tend to be good at anything they invest in as just a single point gives full level scaling to skills. So I’ve found people might not be excited that them being an expert at something means they’re only 2-6 points higher in a roll than a person who put a single point in it. Now mathematically that difference can be significant but to players when they’re rolling it doesn’t seem like a lot. Also plus to level means all numbers at high level are super high.

That doesn't bother me all that much, although the super high numbers is certainly not something I miss from 3E/PF1. I do much prefer the less steep curve of 5E over the sometimes absurd number inflation of the other two.

[Arakasi]

43 minutes ago, Durckad said:

Ah, okay. I saw some vague comments about "PF3" and wasn't sure if something had been hinted at or announced or if it was just baseless rumors. I haven't really been following Paizo much since my Pathfinder 1 game ended back in 2012, I think, so my knowledge of their current going ons is rather limited at the moment.

That doesn't bother me all that much, although the super high numbers is certainly not something I miss from 3E/PF1. I do much prefer the less steep curve of 5E over the sometimes absurd number inflation of the other two.

It’s a fairly easy house rule to halve the level bonuses (like 4e) or remove them entirely (like 5e) if that is the game you want. The main thing with PF2 rolls is everything f is on the same scale. There are things like combat maneuvers where things like acrobatics are rolled against AC. Also fairly common to have attacks rolled directly against saves. 

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Durckad said:

This is simply not true in any conceivable fashion of reality, though I guess it may vary depending upon the ability to remember various, minor bonuses and modifiers and do quick math on anything and everything. But 5E being more tactical than 3E is just flat out not true.

The 5E streams I've seen and the 5E campaigns going on at the local board game/RP cafe all had fairly simple fights taking place over multiples of the same time period that a comparable fight I'd have had completed and done away with in 3E.

Although I did play - 90% of the time DMing - 3E for nine years, so by the end of that time period I could run a 3E fight in my sleep (and I kept every single NPC, homebrewed monster etc I ever created, so had a significant home-generated library of stock stuff I could pull out rather than having to create an NPC from scratch; I've still got all that stuff now, in fact), so granted after a similar amount of time DMing 5E maybe those fights would be significantly shorter still.

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Again, this not true. In fact this is also a complaint that AD&D players had about 3E/PF "back in the day" in that having a skill called "Diplomacy" or "Search" (with explicitly spelled out rules governing both of their uses) significantly deemphasized role-play and puzzle solving in favor of rolling a die. Which is... not true for those editions either.

I remember that complaint and it was fairly baffling at the time. My experience playing in and running 2E campaigns for six years before 3E came out (most of that time as a player) was that the absence of diplomacy, search and pretty much skills full stop (nonweapon proficiencies were not a substitute skill system in any way) made roleplaying and puzzle-solving harder. One of the rotating DMs always tried to put in puzzles but had to houserule a whole ton of stuff to determine how it worked (he also houseruled an ad hoc 2E sci-fi system on the spot for energy weapons because on a whim he teleported us to a technologically advanced planet and hadn't quite thought it through) because otherwise it became a rules-lawyered nightmare.

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Right now there's not much interest in moving on to a different system amongst my players and I'm honestly not very keen on going back to running a more rules heavy system like PF1 (I would happily play such a game, but fuck DMing that again) unless it's a very, very limited campaign (ie 1-6 or 1-10 at most). I might spend some time checking out PF2, but that has been out for a couple of years now and if Paizo is working on another edition, I might just wait and see.

Yeah, PF3 is not happening for a long time. 

In fact, there seems to be some unofficial idea that the "rule" for D&D should be at least 10 years between editions. We went 11 years from 1E (1978) to 2E (1989) to 3E (2000). 3E made a huge mistake in making 3.5E (2003) such a big deal that they treated it almost as a brand-new edition rather than an errata (complete with brand-new PHB/DMG/MM editions) and then tried to move to 4E (2008) only five years later, and eight years after 3E had come out in the first place. The relatively short time before shifting to 5E (2014) was deemed acceptable because 4E was perceived as shitting the bed so badly that emergency action was required.

PF1 came out in 2009 and PF2 in 2019, and I see zero chance of PF3 happening really for the rest of this decade, at least. In fact, Paizo was quite voluble on there never being a PF2 for many years, and I think abruptly changed their minds only because of the fear of Hasbro pulling some shit that would make their game non-viable overnight, so developed PF2 to stand alone and free from D&D influence as much as possible.

[Durckad]

22 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The 5E streams I've seen and the 5E campaigns going on at the local board game/RP cafe all had fairly simple fights taking place over multiples of the same time period that a comparable fight I'd have had completed and done away with in 3E.

Although I did play - 90% of the time DMing - 3E for nine years, so by the end of that time period I could run a 3E fight in my sleep (and I kept every single NPC, homebrewed monster etc I ever created, so had a significant home-generated library of stock stuff I could pull out rather than having to create an NPC from scratch; I've still got all that stuff now, in fact), so granted after a similar amount of time DMing 5E maybe those fights would be significantly shorter still.

Yeah, it honestly really, really depends.

There are two main differences that can lead to this sort of scenario: hit point inflation in 5e and modifier inflation in 3E/PF. Generally monsters in 5E have much higher hit points than their counterparts in 3E/PF, so the typical orc might survive 2-3 good hits before going down, whereas one in 3E/PF will go down probably after only 1. 

The other difference is that the modifiers to everything increase way quicker in 3E/PF than in 5E. Attack modifiers, Armor Class, save DC's, skill check modifiers, and skill check DC's will rather quickly eclipse their 5E counterparts... after the first 3 or so levels. So that encounter with the orc in 3E/PF is generally going to involve a lot more missing attack rolls, which will draw out the combat whereas 5E will have far more frequent successful hits, with the hit point totals drawing out the combat.

The big difference between the two is that the typical orc will very quickly stop being a threat to higher level adventurers, even in massed numbers. 20 orcs vs a 12th level fighter with a 34 AC, 3 attacks at +20/+14/+8 is generally not going to be really challenged by those orcs (barring some usage of creative tactics) whereas the same character in 5E might be a bit more challenged simply due to the fact that AC and attack bonuses don't scale as much.

Same if you use a wizard instead, the 3E wizard will have more, higher level spell slots that auto scale with higher DC's (that the orcs will likely not even be able to save against), whereas the 5E version has fewer slots, especially of higher level spells, and may be able to wipe them all out with a single lucky spell, but may not, as the DC is going to be lower and the hp of the orcs higher. And the 5E wizard has to deal with concentration so has significantly less ability to crowd control and buff, even at higher levels.

TLDR, but the math is ultimately different and not completely 100% comparable as they're aiming for different things.

I'll be honest, I prefer the 5E approach as lower CR enemies can remain a challenge for far longer and don't become little more than minor speed bumps. Many of the encounters I run in 5e are against larger groups of lower level foes, which tend to run much longer, whereas the encounters against single "boss" monsters are over much quicker. 

So what is, on paper, a "simple fight" in 3E is less simple in 5E and it really depends upon what the DM is aiming for. Me? I like a long combat. I don't really "do" random encounters often, I prefer curated encounters that are more meaningful, and they tend to run longer than the average. But I also did the same when I ran 3E/PF and it mostly worked there as well. Some were really short (anticlimactically usually) and others were long, drawn out slugfests. I once ran an encounter in PF that lasted for almost 2 full 5-6 hour sessions, but it was the players versus multiple mid to high level spellcasters with buffs and summons up. It was a great encounter but probably too much, honestly.

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I remember that complaint and it was fairly baffling at the time. My experience playing in and running 2E campaigns for six years before 3E came out (most of that time as a player) was that the absence of diplomacy, search and pretty much skills full stop (nonweapon proficiencies were not a substitute skill system in any way) made roleplaying and puzzle-solving harder. One of the rotating DMs always tried to put in puzzles but had to houserule a whole ton of stuff to determine how it worked (he also houseruled an ad hoc 2E sci-fi system on the spot for energy weapons because on a whim he teleported us to a technologically advanced planet and hadn't quite thought it through) because otherwise it became a rules-lawyered nightmare.

Yeah, I never did and still don't agree with that complaint. That said, I do not remember my brief time with 2E all that well, either as a player or DM, so I have no idea how we adjudicated those sorts of things back then.

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Yeah, PF3 is not happening for a long time. 

In fact, there seems to be some unofficial idea that the "rule" for D&D should be at least 10 years between editions. We went 11 years from 1E (1978) to 2E (1989) to 3E (2000). 3E made a huge mistake in making 3.5E (2003) such a big deal that they treated it almost as a brand-new edition rather than an errata (complete with brand-new PHB/DMG/MM editions) and then tried to move to 4E (2008) only five years later, and eight years after 3E had come out in the first place. The relatively short time before shifting to 5E (2014) was deemed acceptable because 4E was perceived as shitting the bed so badly that emergency action was required.

PF1 came out in 2009 and PF2 in 2019, and I see zero chance of PF3 happening really for the rest of this decade, at least. In fact, Paizo was quite voluble on there never being a PF2 for many years, and I think abruptly changed their minds only because of the fear of Hasbro pulling some shit that would make their game non-viable overnight, so developed PF2 to stand alone and free from D&D influence as much as possible.

Yeah, I've been out of the loop on PF and Paizo for years so I have really no idea what they've been up to since the early 2010's at least.

[IlyaP]

So there are now two different pieces of reporting happening around OGL and...it hurts my brain. (Clearly, I am not meant to ever work in law. Please don't trust me with contracts or terms and conditions wording.)

1. As reported by PC Gamer: https://www.pcgamer.com/the-dungeons-and-dragons-community-imploded-over-a-leaked-draft-of-a-license-change/

2. As reported by io9: https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-wizards-hasbro-ogl-open-game-license-1849981136

 

[Poobah]

 

[The Anti-Targ]

I don't really care too much what WOTC wants to do with DnD Beyond since you can play the game perfectly well without using it at all. But I guess with their further push for monetisation of it, that should just mean generic alternatives will come along.

[Durckad]

Assuming that is true, $30 per month is an insane amount of money. I assume it's for some platinum+ tier where Jeremy Crawford literally helps you run your games with rules checks, but still that's more than half of what I spend on my total streaming services. There's no way any of my players would sign up for that.

Everything else requires a bit more info before passing judgment, though my knee jerk reaction is, um, "negative." Like explaining what exactly "base tier" means. Same with AI DMing and "stripped down gameplay." Like that could go either way, honestly. Want a quick TTRPG fix but have no one to play with? Well Skynet here will gladly run you through an AI approximation of the Tomb of Horrors! It really couldn't be anymore baffling and nonsensical than the real thing.

But yeah this all just plays into my fears when they unveiled their plans for their VTT earlier in 2022, just pointless, greedy monetization. I eagerly await their rendition of loot boxes.

[Werthead]

Wizards announce the OGL 1.2.

This will be a Creative Commons licence which applies solely to physical and virtual tabletop. It will not require royalty statements or reporting and will not apply to streams or video games.

However, it will still deauthorise the OGL 1.0, will require people signing up to waive any legal right to sue WotC or Hasbro, and it allows WotC and Hasbro alone to define what is and what is not "hate speech."

[Ran]

By the sounds of it, they'll get away with deauthorizing 1.0a... because people will just switch to ORC and ignore them going forward. They've really shot themselves in the foot.

What they should have done is just leave 1.0a for 5e content, letting people continue to do that for however long they wanted, and 1.2 is for One D&D and whatever follows. Yes, maybe people would decide to stick to 5e, but if they are so sure that scandals over hateful content would sully that, well, it's only a matter of time before people moved to the much "safer" 1.2, right? 

It's transparently cynical.

 

[HokieStone]

This is where I out myself as an old man yelling at clouds.  I haven't played D&D in a long time...but when I did, it was all pencil, paper, dice and books.  I have no idea why I would spend 30 cents, much less $30 a month on anything "online" for D&D.

[Relic]

9 hours ago, HokieStone said:

This is where I out myself as an old man yelling at clouds.  I haven't played D&D in a long time...but when I did, it was all pencil, paper, dice and books.  I have no idea why I would spend 30 cents, much less $30 a month on anything "online" for D&D.

Because these days you dont have to be in the same room as your buddies are to play D&D. My group and I pay for an annual Roll20 membership and we are discussing buying some of the core rule books on that platform as well, for convenience sake. 

[baxus]

Yeah, Roll20 was a lifesaver in early Covid days. I don't think I've ever played that much D&D in my life. Still, it could never reproduce the real feel of meeting in person for sessions. It's a useful tool but I don't think I could play D&D that way only.

[Ran]

Yeah, as I understand it the mooted $30 would typically be a thing that a group pays for together, too, so they can get access for their play sessions to whatever is being offered. It's not something each individual player needs to do.

 

[HokieStone]

6 hours ago, Relic said:

Because these days you dont have to be in the same room as your buddies are to play D&D. My group and I pay for an annual Roll20 membership and we are discussing buying some of the core rule books on that platform as well, for convenience sake. 

What does Roll20 provide you?  A virtual map for the DM to move around virtual miniatures?  Like I said...I'm old.  The way we played when I was in high school, we could play over zoom today with no need for an extra app.  When I got to college, my group there used map boards and miniatures...and that of course is not so easily done over zoom.  But, we all had copies of the Players Handbook and DM Guide, and most everyone had the Monster Manual, and other various books.

So...I guess I just don't know what something like Roll20 provides.

[Werthead]

 

[Maithanet]

It is interesting reading this thread, as I am not a D&D guy (played a brief campaign in college 20 years ago is all).  But I do play a lot of Magic: The Gathering, which is also owned and produced by WOTC and Hasbro.  And many of the same complaints about WOTC are coming up for Magic as well, just with different flavors. 

Just a bit of background, COVID was VERY good for Magic sales.  It's kind of counterintuitive, because people couldn't get together and play, but during 2020 apparently a lot of people dusted off their cards and started building decks (which is obviously something you do alone).  Prices for older (and many of the newer) Magic cards basically doubled between June 2020 and March 2021.  This rise in price obviously helped boost interest in Magic and helped WOTC make money easily.  You can jack up the prices of packs way more easily if cards in those packs are likely to be worth $30-100 dollars on the secondary market.  WOTC had the goal of doubling magic sales from 2019 levels by 2024.  They hit that goal in 2021.  

But capitalism and greed are undefeated, and WOTC let that success go to their head.  They printed more sets than ever before in 2020, and more still in 2021, and still more in 2022. They introduced Secret Lairs, which are not sold in stores, but straight on the WOTC website, so they cut out the middleman (card/comic stores) to keep all that money themselves.  They made deals with Amazon to have periodic sales of MTG boxes at super low prices (like 25% off what everyone else is charging), which destroys sales at stores because people know to just wait until an Amazon sale.  Most of all, there was growing discontent about the sheer quantity of Magic cards being sold, with new sets basically every month, such that many sets came and were forgotten the space of weeks. 

Then came Magic 30th Anniversary Edition.  MTG was first introduced in 1992, so they wanted to make a big deal of the 30th anniversary.  They were going to reprint the Beta set (basically the first complete set of magic).  For the first time since the early 90s, players could open packs hope to get vintage, infamous cards like Black Lotus, or Mox Jet (Mint, Beta versions of these cards sell for 10s or even hundreds of thousands of dollars).  Obviously these reprints would be nowhere near as valuable, and the cards are not legal in any Magic tournaments, but it would be fun and nostalgic, right?  What could go wrong?  Then WOTC announced the price.  $1,000 for four packs (60 total cards).  Who has a thousand dollars to drop on Magic cards?  Basically nobody.  The reaction was quite comparable to the recent reaction to the D&D changes.  Everyone, even big time magic collectors, insisted that they would never buy these cards.  The set went on sale on the WOTC website and was pulled within a day.  They did not sell out, they just stopped selling them.  Now those few who do have 30th anniversary cards cannot easily sell them because the set is so hated.  On Facebook groups dedicated to selling Magic cards, you will get dozens of negative comments if you even try and sell them.

And what did WOTC do afterwards?  Carried on like nothing happened.  They have more sets planned in 2023 than in 2022, and their ownership has scoffed at the idea that they need a course correction.  Unlike D&D, Magic makes WOTC and Hasbro a TON of money (it is their biggest product).  But they seem determined to kill the golden goose. 

[baxus]

On 1/20/2023 at 7:14 PM, HokieStone said:

What does Roll20 provide you?  A virtual map for the DM to move around virtual miniatures?  Like I said...I'm old.  The way we played when I was in high school, we could play over zoom today with no need for an extra app.  When I got to college, my group there used map boards and miniatures...and that of course is not so easily done over zoom.

I'm with you on preferring map boards and miniatures (my group would use dice), but if you're going to play via Zoom, then play via Roll20 and have virtual miniatures and buttons for weapon rolls and all that stuff to make it easier.

On 1/20/2023 at 7:14 PM, HokieStone said:

But, we all had copies of the Players Handbook and DM Guide, and most everyone had the Monster Manual, and other various books.

Yeah, my group all had PHB, we usually had one Monster Manual and DM's Guide among us but we had as many other books we could get our hands on (Forgotten Realms settings book, books on prestige classes etc.).

My shelf with D&D books contains around 10 books (3E and 5E, combined), and most of my friends I played with have as many or more. And we're from Serbia, so I'm not really buying the whole "WotC don't get enough money by selling books" narrative they are trying to push.

[HokieStone]

Eh...looks like some handy stuff, sure, but I suppose I'm nostalgic for the old days.  The one thing that I suppose would be really nice is the ability for the DM to pass info to only certain players, and they can decide to share it or not.