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

[Relic]

7 minutes ago, horangi said:

You'd think, considering the paucity of good official adventure modules, WotC would be embracing ways to bring in some of the more popular and creative 3rd party content into the 'official' fold.  I wove one of their supposedly 'best' modules into my otherwise home brewed campaign, having been too busy to develop my own content at the time, and it was pretty clear to the players since it was just so generic. Battle after battle of scrub mobs and little to no critical thinking or puzzle solving required.  It was nice to have some background for NPCs, but they tended be super tropes of Dwarfy MacDwarfison and Evil Badguyson.  It did end with a bit of levity when the ultimate battle ended on Turn 1 when the rogue's critical sneak attack nearly eviscerated Drizzt-do-Glasscannonmage to the point he surrendered immediately (per the module instructions), at which point the rogue just slit his throat and tossed him in a pit instead of letting him explain his dastardly plan.  The entire party then celebrated the end of that distraction in the campaign to go back to home brewed content (including me, the DM).

Yeah their modules ar emostly garbage. At best they are frameworks for a campaign, but they ALL require a ton of DM work to adapt. Which one did you run?

[Relic]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

They've never really overcome it though. Since the launch of 2E in 1989, it's been perfectly possible for 5+ people to enjoy a game of D&D with one copy of the Player's Handbook alone and almost nothing else, and of course that's been much more the case with the internet. And most games have only one core sourcebook, which makes it even easier to have everything you need in one massive rulebook and you never need to buy a supplement again.

"Must-have" supplements for D&D have been pretty rare through its history, with maybe only the 1E Unearthed Arcana and the 2E "Option" line of books (which allowed high-level play and a bunch of combat options which prefigured what was coming up in 3E) really counting.

The truth is you don't need ANYTHING to play D&D if you really wanted to. All the basic rules are available online, and you can launch your own campaign without every buying anything. Hell, all you need is a d20, and SOME of the rules. THe rules don't make the game. That's what makes TTRPGs and D&D so unique in the world of entertainment. You dont need ANYTHING to play a game. Come up with your own rules and throw some dice.

That being said, there is a LOT that can be done to potentially monetize the game without forcing people to spend 50 bucks for every book that comes out. WotC just lacks the imagination somewhere within its corporate structure to think of what those things might be. I'm certain that you, or I, can sit down and come up with a bunch of ideas that they haven't tried yet, and we'd probably hit with one or two of them. They are stuck in this mold of selling overpriced books, and changing the rules every 8 years to sell even MORE books. It's akin to DMOs (destination marketing organizations) trying to sell you a useless and antiquated map of Paris or whatever city you are visiting. 

Edited January 11 by Relic

[Relic]

dp

Edited January 11 by Relic

[horangi]

14 minutes ago, Relic said:

Yeah their modules ar emostly garbage. At best they are frameworks for a campaign, but they ALL require a ton of DM work to adapt. Which one did you run?

Lost Mines of Phandelver- as you said, it took nearly as much time to adapt as creating something myself in the end, which kinda defeats the purpose, and bores folks for good measure.

[Werthead]

The other thing is that you can also use stuff from many, many years ago. I still have all my 2E and 3E rulebooks, and I must admit, having only recently sat down to go through the 5E corebooks, I'm not sure I even want to use it, since it feels like 3E but with the skill system removed, combat made more complicated so miniatures (which are always optional, at best, in my campaigns) are mandatory, and some of 4E's iffier excesses retained. 3E has a shit-ton of problems (hence why I stopped using it in 2009 and was never even really minded to pick up Pathfinder) but I feel just using it would be easier than "unlearning" it in favour of 5E (or potentially taking a closer look at Pathfinder 2E, which seems to have a lot of fans). Or just give up and go back to playing Deadlands and the other RPGs I have been playing for the last decade.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Relic said:

The truth is you don't need ANYTHING to play D&D if you really wanted to. All the basic rules are available online, and you can launch your own campaign without every buying anything. Hell, all you need is a d20, and SOME of the rules. THe rules don't make the game. That's what makes TTRPGs and D&D so unique in the world of entertainment. You dont need ANYTHING to play a game. Come up with your own rules and throw some dice.

That being said, there is a LOT that can be done to potentially monetize the game without forcing people to spend 50 bucks for every book that comes out. WotC just lacks the imagination somewhere within its corporate structure to think of what those things might be. I'm certain that you, or I, can sit down and come up with a bunch of ideas that they haven't tried yet, and we'd probably hit with one or two of them. They are stuck in this mold of selling overpriced books, and changing the rules every 8 years to sell even MORE books. It's akin to DMOs (destination marketing organizations) trying to sell you a useless and antiquated map of Paris or whatever city you are visiting. 

DnD has been extremely well monetised, so there's really nothing potential about it. But most of the money is made in products that can't be made exclusive to any one company. Dice sets, dice towers, dice cases, dice mats, monster and character minis, notebooks, terrain pieces.

People are spending billions on TTRPG stuff in general, it's just that WOTC hasn't snagged much market share either because it produces less popular stuff, or it charges too much, or it simply isn't in the market.

[Kalnak the Magnificent]

Ars Technica did a very good writeup on what this means and what some of the community reactions were:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/01/rpg-fans-irate-as-dd-tries-to-shut-its-open-game-license/

Also, one of the more amusing things to me is that KOTOR uses the D20 system which basically means they're part of OGL...so good luck fighting Disney

[IlyaP]

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

A lot of people think that's bullshit, they just want their core rulebooks and a piece of A4 paper with their stats on and don't want to piss about with an app or online sub, although of course some people would use it.

This was how I felt when I tried it out. Having to switch from D&D mode to printer/IT mode, to make sure I'm printing at the right dimensions, not have any printing oddities, etc., and then having to make sure I'm using the best paper stock, ink, etc., or going to a local Officeworks to get stuff printed instead and paying the fees that come with color printing, like...no, just give me a nice manual with good binding, a legible font, good margin space, and for the love of the gods don't make it hardcover, as those weigh more, can't be folded the same way trade paperbacks can, and are often times prohibitively expensive. 

Or alternatively, give me a nice box with everything I need - as was practiced with the second edition, which has all the relevant manuals, sheets, maps, etc., in one nicely-designed and durable box. 

[The Anti-Targ]

2 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

Ars Technica did a very good writeup on what this means and what some of the community reactions were:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/01/rpg-fans-irate-as-dd-tries-to-shut-its-open-game-license/

Also, one of the more amusing things to me is that KOTOR uses the D20 system which basically means they're part of OGL...so good luck fighting Disney

The video @Werthead posted a few posts back discusses this with the dude that wrote OGL 1.0. He said that because a 3rd party published KOTOR under license from Lucas Arts (or whatever they were called) WOTC doesn't even have a theoretical option to try to snag any Star Wars IP for perpetual royalty-free use. It's really non-licensed original work of 3rd parties that WOTC wants to be able to steal and use. Whatever movie studio wants to use WOTC IP I'm sure will [from now on at least] be based on a separate licencing agreement independent of any version of OGL.

That video had an interesting discussion on the provenance of mindflayers, they concluded it was uncertain. But I would have thought a tentacle headed humanoid monster is surely derivative of Cthulu. So I would say good luck WOTC trying to claim mindflayers are an original concept.

[Gorn]

Honestly, using a d20 system in a non-D&D or -Pathfinder videogame is just lazy game design. With all that processing power, you instead choose to simulate rolling of a 20-sided die?

[Werthead]

15 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

Also, one of the more amusing things to me is that KOTOR uses the D20 system which basically means they're part of OGL...so good luck fighting Disney

As noted elsewhere, fully licensed d20 video games - KotOR 1 & 2, Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, Icewind Dale II, Temple of Elemental Evil etc - are not in the conversation as they were fully licensed from WotC on a standard arrangement. The OGL is not mentioned once in the small print of KotOR 1 & 2 anywhere. 

13 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

That video had an interesting discussion on the provenance of mindflayers, they concluded it was uncertain. But I would have thought a tentacle headed humanoid monster is surely derivative of Cthulu. So I would say good luck WOTC trying to claim mindflayers are an original concept.

I'd be interested to see what would happen if GRRM ever wrote another Thousand Worlds story with the githyanki and WotC tried to put in a copyright claim on the name, given that D&D stole the name (via Charles Stross!) from him without his permission.

11 hours ago, Gorn said:

Honestly, using a d20 system in a non-D&D or -Pathfinder videogame is just lazy game design. With all that processing power, you instead choose to simulate rolling of a 20-sided die?

The rules system even for a video game CRPG entails a nontrivial set of decisions, arguments, prototyping  and design, which can be time-consuming/expensive. Using a pre-existing rules system saves time and money, and is also a selling/marketing point for fans of those systems.

[Fez]

On 1/11/2023 at 3:12 AM, Ran said:

Though, reading further on RPG.net, what Hasbro has said when it talked about D&D being undermonetized... is that the players buy one or two books and then that's it, almost everything else is geared to DMs, so that basically 80% of the players have no incentives to keep buying D&D books besides the Player's Handbook and maybe the Dungeon Master's Guide. But this is a publishing issue, and they'd have to figure out how to retool publications to make them equally appealing to players as to DMs.

To me this feels like a solved problem, they just need to take a page from Games Workshop. E.g., regularly release supplemental rules that are written up in books filled with artwork and additional lore. Publish player versions of campaign books, which might have things like write-ups of basic background info that any in-world person might know, maps of public locations (like a street map of Waterdeep), and other non-spoiler content. Sell higher quality supplemental stuff, like metal dice. They could even try pushing minis more; which will never be fundamental to the game, like they are for Warhammer, but it seems like almost no one besides streamers actually use them right now.

Hasbro's problem, which others have pointed out, is that they don't want to put in any work. All the best content, even all the okay-to-decent content, is third-party; the official campaigns suck. And the best tools, like D&D Beyond, were made by outside developers and eventually bought by Hasbro. Roll20, which feels vital to playing online, is still independent.

[Werthead]

14 minutes ago, Fez said:

To me this feels like a solved problem, they just need to take a page from Games Workshop. E.g., regularly release supplemental rules that are written up in books filled with artwork and additional lore. Publish player versions of campaign books, which might have things like write-ups of basic background info that any in-world person might know, maps of public locations (like a street map of Waterdeep), and other non-spoiler content. Sell higher quality supplemental stuff, like metal dice. They could even try pushing minis more; which will never be fundamental to the game, like they are for Warhammer, but it seems like almost no one besides streamers actually use them right now.

Almost everyone I know who plays 5E uses minis. It's actually one of the things that puts me off the game.

[Fez]

4 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Almost everyone I know who plays 5E uses minis. It's actually one of the things that puts me off the game.

Maybe it's a UK vs US thing? I've never been in a game where there were actual, physical minis.

[Relic]

i havent had minis in 15 years. never use em anymore. Make all my maps on my desktop and use a virtual tabletop hooked up to a big screen even when playing in person. 

[Kalnak the Magnificent]

Minis in the US are a Big Deal - it definitely is not a UK-only thing. Especially with 3d printing to demand any minis that you want along with some of the terrain and other things. 

It's certainly not a requirement - and it ain't like WotC makes minis a big deal on their end - but it's a pretty big deal in the community. 

[Poobah]

Personally I've never played a game with minis (UK here). We do have some 2d tokens for grid combat for both players and enemies and several people I know have sprung for Heroforge (or other similar) minis of their characters but not really for use, just to have (they paid someone to have them nicely painted). One of the people I play with regularly is a big boardgamer and occasionally brings miniatures from other games he has for bosses and that's about it.

[Werthead]

Modiphius had joined the open licence new wave with their Worldbuilders 2d20 initiative.

People tend to dismiss Modiphius because they focus so much on licensed RPGs, but their 2d20 rules system is solid and they move a lot of product for the Conan, Dune and Star Trek RPG lines. They're also the ones who finally brought Fallout back to where it started (unofficially) with a solid tabletop game, and their production values for all their projects are excellent. They're also clever in picking up niche projects for a one-off book that would never exist elsewhere, like their recent Dishonored and Homeworld books.

Also, cheekily, the 2d20 moniker (which apparently WotC was previously unhappy about but unable to do anything about it) sounds a lot like the d20 logo and title for the original OGL line, which I'm certain Modiphius isn't too unhappy about.

I don't think it's quite as good a deal as OGL 1.0 was, though.

 

 

[IlyaP]

Well now! 

https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-ogl-announcement-wizards-of-the-coast-1849981365

Quote

Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast has apparently cancelled an announcement about its updated Open Gaming License for a second time this week. Inside sources at Wizards of the Coast tell io9 that the company is scrambling to formulate a response to backlash against the new OGL that has occurred over the past week, following io9's story about a leaked draft of the document.

 

[The Anti-Targ]

We've always used minis and terrain for our in-person combat, whether its DnD or Pathfinder. If I had the tech I'd probably use a virtual table top, but that's still using minis only virtually rather than physically.

Did Stranger Things popularise using minis? I guess Critical Role might also have increased use of minis in the newer generation of players.