#Open DnD

[leidensygdom]

(Check the link for the post itself! Here’s a screenshot of the same content available in the page, though)

Wizards of the Coast has finally made an official statement about the new OGL, and as expected, it’s an attempt to douse the fire with sweet corpo speak. So, here’s some key points about it, so we don’t forget what actually happened.

They repeated thorough the letter that this was to avoid bigoted content. About three times. Don’t let them lie to you: This was NEVER about preventing bigoted content. (In fact, please remember that WOTC released the hadozee on 2022, and has a lot of unresolved sexual harassment case allegations)

They also mentioned the NFT thing. Again: This is another buzzword, given how nowadays most people dislike NFTs openly. It was NEVER about preventing NFTs

Most importantly: They are blatantly lying about the leaked OGL being “up to revision” and them having planned “to accept community feedback”. The leaked OGL was sent as it is to implied third parties, alongside with contracts. THEY FULLY PLANNED TO HAVE PEOPLE SIGN IT AS IT WAS.

They have been saying they’ll backpedal on some of the choices. DO NOT BELIEVE THEM until we see an actual readable OGL of whatever changes they are promising. They are trying to, desperately, calm down the storm.

KEEP pushing, in fact. Keep unsuscribing from DnD Beyond. Do not buy their products, don’t watch the movie, etc. If this PR stunt makes people suddenly calm down, they’ll try to get away with the OGL as it is.

Also, here’s some segments I want to highlight, just to show how thoroughly filled with horseshit they are:

And third, we wanted to ensure that the OGL is for the content creator, the homebrewer, the aspiring designer, our players, and the community—not major corporations to use for their own commercial and promotional purpose.

This one is probably a jab at Paizo, but they certainly didn’t care about all the third parties affected by this. The “aspiring designer”, the “homebrewer”, the “content creator” are all people who probably have a foot in the industry and are working with smaller TTRPG companies, or third parties. Most third parties have a very limited number of employees (or quite literally consist of just one person), and hire freelancers as needed. These were quite literally the most hurt by this new OGL. Let’s not forget they were content trying to put an end to that.

It also will not include the license back provision that some people were afraid was a means for us to steal work. That thought never crossed our minds. Under any new OGL, you will own the content you create. We won’t. Any language we put down will be crystal clear and unequivocal on that point. The license back language was intended to protect us and our partners from creators who incorrectly allege that we steal their work simply because of coincidental similarities.

They made a section in the OGL that allowed them to steal content. Of course, they are claiming that is not true now, as it would give them a bad image. And yet, they have the nerve to claim they are just defending themselves when they release copied content.

Finally, we’d appreciate the chance to make this right. We love D&D’s devoted players and the creators who take them on so many incredible adventures. We won’t let you down.

This is obviously that sweet corpo speak that ties everything together. They never wanted to make this right: Again, the leaked full OGL was never a draft. They were ready to fuck the entire community over (and still are, most probably) over a greedy cash grab. Do noT forget, and do not relent now: The fight is not over.

We don’t need a “compromise” over the new OGL. I wouldn’t care if they applied this new OGL exclusively to OneDnD, but there is still a lot of people who have built a living operating under 5e’s OGL, and they should NOT be taking that from people. 

(As always, reblog for awareness!)

#onednd #dndbeyond #dnd #dungeons and dragons #ogl #open game license #wotc #wizards of the coast #opendnd #open dnd #ttrpg #5e #long post

[keplercryptids]

if you've never considered playing anything other than D&D 5e, now might be the time to start.

as you may have heard, Wizards of the Coast wrote up a new Open Game License that was leaked and it's really, really bad. (i linked to the article about it yesterday but here's a twitter thread of the author of that article summarizing it.)

i'll attempt my own breakdown of what this means here:

the new OGL revokes the previous OGL. this is bad for so many reasons, and will affect all kinds of TTRPGs like Pathfinder, and third-party publishers like Kobold's Press.

it also means that character sheets wouldn't be able to be used in unauthorized virtual table tops anymore, including Roll20, Foundry, etc.

the new OGL grants WotC a perpetual, irrevocable license to all third-party content produced and published under the old OGL, as well as future content. for example, if WotC hypothetically liked Dimension 20's Unsleeping City setting enough, it could sell products related to that setting, without needing D20's permission.

the new OGL can be updated, changed or revoked with only 30 days' notice. truly wild.

anybody who makes more than $750k revenue (not profit, but revenue) has to pay 20-25% over that amount in royalties to WotC. this will affect so many kickstarters raising funds for indie TTRPG systems that used to fall under the original OGL. $750k sounds like a lot but keep in mind publishing books is expensive.

this is really, really bad. WotC will probably go back on some of this based on public response, and a lawsuit may make them go back on even more. (some of what they're trying to do here is illegal? i think?) but they'll likely still push forward with some of it.

it seems WotC's goal is to 1) appease shareholders (which in late-stage capitalism means "exponential growth forever") and 2) create a closed ecosystem for d&d that's completely under WotC's financial control. think: D&D Beyond being the only place you can access any D&D content, character sheets, etc. and i mean, in general, they've shown a pattern of greed and weighing corporate interests more heavily than their customers or employees.

now would be a great time to move away from d&d if you've ever considered doing so, or to consider it if you haven't.

if you want something similar to d&d 5e mechanically but a bit crunchier, try pathfinder 2e. if you want narrative-focused storytelling games, try Powered by the Apocalypse or FATE systems. if you want a mechanics-forward episodic style of play, try Forged in the Dark systems. if you want a cross-genre game with freeform character creation, try Savage Worlds. and this is an extreme short list of the great TTRPGs out there! a lot of systems that, IMO, people would have more fun playing than d&d, just based on preferred style of play. try them out and please don't give WotC anymore money lol.

#dungeons and dragons #d&d 5e #wizards of the coast #should i have a wotc tag #ttrpg talk #open dnd #opendnd

[heroes-feasting]

haven’t seen this posted here yet

the ‘dragons’ part of dnd got me interested originally, but it was the fan creations like taz and critical role that really drew me in and kept me around

what a god awful decision

#i'm gonna keep posting hereos' feast stuff #because i'm having fun #but what a terrible thing to do #dnd #dungeons and dragons #dnd 5e #dnd5e #open dnd #ttrpg #wotc #wizards of the coast #homebrew #heroes' feast #heroes feast #not food #like at all #heroes feasting #taz #the adventure zone #critical role

[p1aguewitch]

Fearne 🥰🌿💚✨

#dnd #dnd one #dnd beyond #open dnd #critical role fanart #critical role art #critical role campaign 3 #critical role #cr fearne #fearne calloway #fearne my beloved #fearne fanart #dnd artist #dnd 5e art #critters #dnd character #dnd art

[hanathelorekeeper]

"Do not cite the OGL to us, Hasbro. We were there when it was written." - Paizo

Based on the post from here. Feel free to spread this meme across the internet. :)

#paizo #hasbro #the lion the witch and the wardrobe #meme #dnd memes #opendnd #open dnd #ogl 1.1 #htl og #hana the lorekeeper #My Works

[knightofburgers]

Nerds Will Defeat WotC

#wotc #ogl #dnd #d&d #wizards of the coast #hasbro #open gaming license #opendnd #open dnd #dungeons & dragons #dnd 6e #open d&d #fuck wotc

[snowthelostgirl]

So I’m as frustrated with the OGL situation as everyone else (I’m a 5e DM with a homebrew world and I use a variety of third party resources to keep my game fresh and aligned with my players’ preferences). I’m not about to say to stop fighting for dnd to stay the way it has been because I’m certainly not willing to give in that easily.

BUT.

Chaosium (makers of Call of Cthulhu, my other favorite TTRPG system) has made their Basic Roleplaying System (BRP) $0.99 on DrivethruRPG for the next couple of weeks. I’m not good at legalese so I don’t have any real comment on how similar they are, but Chaosium’s BRP is covered by a (seemingly reasonable?) OGL.

Now, are Chaosium throwing shade at WOTC with this well-timed sale? Absolutely. Is BRP the same as dnd? Absolutely not. But I think this is a great opportunity to pick up a nifty resource from a publisher that does seem to genuinely care about their community. At conventions, the folks at Chaosium are largely very helpful, open to constructive feedback (positive and negative), and passionate about their products. Maybe more importantly, they are not the mega-corporation that WotC is. Show them some love, and get a great resource at the same time.

#opendnd #open dnd #call of cthulhu #ttrpg #dnd #not linking because I know tumblr eats links #message me if you need help finding it

[melancholia-ennui]

So one thing that seems to get overlooked in a lot of the discussions around the current state state of D&D, the OGL changes, etc., is why it's D&D 5e that accrued such an mass following - not Pathfinder 2e, not previous versions of D&D, not any other OGL game.

Part of it is, of course, brand recognition. Part of it is "right place, right time" for the nostalgia cycle. But imo there's more to it than that.

At least to me, 5e seems to hit a surprisingly good sweet-spot between a bunch of conflicting trends in TTRPGs.

It's crunchy enough that you can optimise and build around cool combos and synergies if you want to, but also,

It's rules-light enough that it's very easy to pick up and learn for new players and GMs.

The balancing is robust enough that it mostly feels fair and yet flexible enough that it's easy to mod with homebrew content without breaking anything (as long as you understand the basics of bounded accuracy and action economy).

It's got enough of a default setting that you can just pick up and play without needing to build a whole world of your own, but also,

It's setting-agnostic and genre-agnostic enough that you can easily world build your own settings, as long as you're happy for it to be high magic and use the D&D-style magic system.

For all the "just try another system" posts I've seen - and for all the other RPGs I've played - I'm yet to find another system that works so damn well as both an entry point to the hobby and as a fairly robust "default", in the sense that while in many cases there will be some RPG that's better suited for a particular game, it's very rarely the case that there's any kind of game you simply cannot play in 5e without a little tinkering under the hood.

I adored playing Pathfinder 2e, but the simple truth is that I played in two campaigns for the better part of 2 years and I still don't feel like I have a strong grasp on all of the rules and tags and nuances of the system, and it's so thoroughly balanced that I never felt confident doing any homebrew for it because I was worried I would accidentally break something. (I also have more fundamental issues with the play feel of the game - I dislike action economies that punish movement, and I also dislike the way that a lot of the feats and magic items seem to amount to minor "number get bigger" rather than being able to do something new - but these are more personal judgment issues and there are also many points that I feel Pathfinder 2e gets more right than 5e, and you can actually see a lot of those in the bits that WotC is shamelessly stealing for OneD&D.) I would absolutely recommend PF2e to experienced players looking to try something different, but I would never put it in front of a new player who'd never touched TTRPGs before.

On the other end, there are plenty of systems that could work as good introductions to the hobby, even ones with a lot of brand recognition - your Call of Cthulhu, your Vampire: The Masquerade, etc. - but most of these are so thoroughly embedded in their setting and/or genre that they just do not have that capacity to work as a robust default, as a system you can pick up if you're not sure which system would be best for your game and you're feeling too lazy to check (or too broke to buy new books!). They're also fairly limited to being played by people who enjoy the particular genre they are designed for, and that can also just reduce their general mass appeal.

So it's not as simple as "try another game" - while it's very true that there are players and GMs who suffer unnecessarily trying to cram their game into D&D rules when another system would work better, and it's very true that you'll get more out of the hobby in the long run if your do diversify your systems, it's equally true that 5e serves a very particular niche which no other system has managed to satisfy to the same degree.

Which brings us back to the OGL

and one thing that I think a lot of people seem to be missing in the #OpenD&D campaign: any victory we get here is only a temporary concession.

Hasbro is a big international company deeply embedded in neoliberal capitalism. It wants da money. It's primary prerogative is constant growth - a constant increase in profit. D&D - TTRPGs generally - are not good profit making machines. It is entirely possible with D&D for one person to buy three books and then run weekly sessions with a group of six people for four years without ever giving another penny to Hasbro.

From a corporate perspective, this is a Bad Thing™. From a player perspective, it is a Good Thing™.

We already knew before the OGL 1.1 announcement and leak that Hasbro were worrying about D&D being "under-monetized". The move to make D&D more "monetized" would partially mean expanding into new media forms - more books, more toys, more TV shows and movies - but it also means finding more ways to wring money out of the player base.

Given the company's clear focus on D&D Beyond, it seems likely to me that the main direction for this will be a move towards increasing amounts of subscription-only content, which everyone who wants to use the content will need to individually pay for (as they also see DMs being the main people who pay for content as a "problem" to be "solved"), likely associated with attempts to suppress alternatives - e.g. one of the OneD&D announcements seems to be an attempt to push their own VTT, which in part explains why VTTs are specifically targetted in the proposed OGL 1.1.

All that said, it seems very likely that OneD&D is being set up to be much more player-hostile than 5e was.

Through this lens, it's pretty clear that part of the point of the OGL 1.1 changes is to try and force a captive audience. The one thing which would absolutely sink WotC/Hasbro's plans for an increasingly hostile but increasingly profitable D&D space would be someone doing a Pathfinder to 5e - that is, creating an alternative system that has all of the merits of 5e, potentially with a number of improvements, but is provided without the constant profiteering and hostile environment created by WotC/Hasbro's monetization policies. The changes to the OGL are an attempt to pre-emptively prevent any such alternative.

As such,

even if we get the OGL 1.1 decision reversed in the short term, we should expect WotC/Hasbro to try and pull the exact same BS down the line.

It could be months - a revised OGL 1.1 that claims it fixes the complaints people had but doesn't. It could be a year. It could be several years. But they will try and pull this again, for one very simple reason: the popular backlash to this decision may prove that people hate it, but it also proves that for a lot of people, they don't have anywhere else to go.

If people felt like there was a viable alternative to 5e, they would've just jumped ship on mass the moment the OGL 1.1 was leaked - and sure, a lot of people did that, but a lot more people didn't. So while the player base are showing an excellent display of solidarity in face of WotC/Hasbro, they're also half-acknowledging that they do have us just a little bit cornered. We're stuck in this room together.

So what can we do?

Well, signing the #OpenDND open letter and making a fuss about the OGL 1.1 changes is a good start.

However, even if we win the fight over the OGL 1.1, this is only a temporary victory - and we need to start looking to build a serious alternative structure to take power back from WotC/Hasbro.

The smallest way to do this is to avoid using the OGL if you can - get proper legal advice on this, but from what I can tell, a lot more of the 5e system would fall under noncopyrightable material than the OGL/SRD lets on. One lawyer even went as far as to say the original OGL actually gives up rights to material you could've potentially used. If you're making third party content and it only uses noncopyrightable material from 5e, simply release it without the OGL, and then WotC will be unable to pull the rug out from under you.

Of course, the ideal would be for someone to do a Pathfinder and release an alternative to 5e - something which is largely compatible with 5e and third party 5e materiesl, which captures the main merits of 5e (as outlined above), but which is released under a Creative Commons or similar open license, something which irrevocably guarantees the rights of third party content creators far more robustly than the OGL ever did.

This would require walking a fine line - Pathfinder, after all, is an OGL system, so if you were hoping to circumvent the OGL entirely you'd have to work a lot harder to make sure your system only overlapped with 5e/OneD&D in its noncopyrightable material. And that's in addition to the actual difficulty of, y'know, building an entire new TTRPG system from the ground up (or at least from a little above the ground).

But in the long run, creating a really open alternative to D&D - one which was a genuinely community collaborative effort, and which was guaranteed for third party creators under a robust and reliable license... well, it would be an absolute game-changer. (Especially if you could get the content creators and third party authors who've really driven the 5e boom on board, though that in itself is a whole other issue!)

I am aware that Kobold Press are already talking about creating a new system which they describe as "available, open, and subscription-free" (see here), and that could be one direction to keep an eye on in this regard. That said, while I will be keeping my fungal feelers pointed at that project, I would warn that any D&D alternative developed by a corporation and not released under a sufficiently robust open license could easily run into the exact same problems a decade down the line - or worse, be bought out by WotC/Hasbro and folded into the same hellscape that D&D is becoming.

All told, the response of the wider D&D and TTRPG community to these proposed OGL 1.1 changes has been very encouraging, but I feel like our sights are still too narrow - and if we want to avoid this becoming a perpetual war of attrition between WotC/Hasbro and the fans, we really need to be willing to think bigger, and consider more drastic measures to guarantee the future of our favourite game.

#opendnd #open dnd #onednd #one dnd #dnd #ttrpg #tabletop role-playing #ogl #ogl 1.1 #ogl 1.0a #.txt #thoughts and musings #wotc #wizards of the coast

[filipfatalattractionrblog]

Today

Paramount twitter account announced live action series based on Dungeons & Dragons... and got spammed with people making it very clear they’re gonna boycott it if Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro won’t ensure perservation of OGL 1.0a

Kobold Press, biggest publisher of 5e third-party content announced they’re fufilling their kickstarters and then will make their own game ruleset free of use and not attached to any OGL, basically recreating events that lead to birth of Pathfinder a.k.a. the very thing OGL 1.1 was supposed to prevent

Legal Eagle, lawyer youtuber with near 3 millions followers, respont to Matt Collville’s twitter thread about OGL clusterfuck with “Can we chat?”

 Paizo, publishers of Pathfinder, just announced Third Party Kon - a convention to celebrate and promote 3rd party Pathfinder publishers. I assume “Chad Kon” name was taken.

I really do not want to be in shoes of Hasbro and WotC executives right now

#dungeons & dragons #pathfinder #kobold press #one dnd #open dnd #Matt Collville #legal Eagle

[octoberspirit]

Hot damn.

#opendnd #open dnd #wotc #wizards of the coast #dnd #dnd beyond #dnd shorts #ogl #dungeons and dragons #Youtube

[betterlucky]

Forever ✊🥲

Increasingly Common W from Paizo

#open dnd #pathfinder #paizo publishing #wizards of the coast #fuck wotc #ogl 1.1 #in case you didn't know #Paizo is making its own OGL (called the ORC) #in collaboration with a bunch of other small publishing companies #and theyre putting it in a trust #so even if they get bought out the new open license is protected #dnd #dungeons and dragons

[leidensygdom]

CANCEL YOUR DND BEYOND SUBSCRIPTION AS A PROTEST TO THE OGL

This letter has been getting passed around on twitter, and confirmed as real by few reputable sources.

Tl;dr: WOTC's executives don't care about you or the community, only want your money, and are hoping people will forget about the OGL. They are using DnD Beyond as the metric of what is going on.

So, CANCEL YOUR DND BEYOND SUBSCRIPTION if you haven't yet, and tell them you did because of the OGL. Don't buy their new shinies until they backtrack and CANCEL the new OGL altogether.

They don't care about the community, so the only way to protest is to cut off where it actually hurts them.

#Ogl #Open game license #Opendnd #Open dnd #Wotc #Wizards of the coast #Dnd beyond #Dndbeyond #Ddb #Dnd 5e #Pathfinder #Ttrpg #Ttrpgs #Tabletop rpg

[keplercryptids]

insiders at WotC have shared that d&d beyond cancelations have affected them (source)

d&d beyond subscriptions are the most direct way for hasbro/WotC to get financial feedback from their cash cows oops i mean, customers lol.

the OGL 2.0 announcement was supposed to be today and seems to have been canceled, largely due to the backlash.

the page to cancel d&d beyond memberships isn't currently functioning, lmao. but once it's back up, please consider canceling your d&d beyond membership and cite "OGL 2.0" as the reason.

(more info about the OGL controversy here.)

#open dnd #wizards of the coast #d&d 5e #should i have a wotc tag #ttrpg talk #dungeons and dragons #opendnd

[grimgrump]

Wild how almost none of the big RPG names has said anything about the new OGL, uh?

Wizards is coming after their money and nobody is upset?

#critical role #dimention 20 #open dnd #ogl 1.1 #wotc #fuck wotc #matthew mercer #brennan lee mulligan

[bloodychocolateroses]

Wanna be part of a kinky dnd game? We need players!

(Cishet men dni)

If you want to bump swords and "bump" "swords" against all sorts of lewd and disgusting enemies, get in a battle of wits against the magical and perverse, or simply don't find erp challenging enough, consider signing up to join our campaign! We are looking for kinky players to join us in a fantasy based campaign full of horny monsters and perverse scenarios. Ever wanted to roleplay a huge campaign but can't do it in a chat room? Tried to seduce a dragon but your friends just looked at you funny? Consider signing up for dungeons and dildos today!

This is a serious post, dm me (@bloodychocolateroses) for more info or to apply, be prepared to discuss kinks, bisexuals encouraged lesbians considered, transphobes need not apply, lgbt+ friendly

#open dnd #d&d campaign #DnD #dnd nsft

[crippledgiraff]

Finished up this commission of this DnD Player Character and his lil' guy! (reupload because a sketch layer was still on)

#commission #commissions open #dnd #dungeons and dragons #open dnd #character art #player character #warforged #robot #artificer #cleric #jorasco #cannith #onatar #shield guardian #dragonshard