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Apparently the page for cancelling subscriptions went down from sheer traffic. You love to see it.
Checking Ginny Di’s Twitter linked from Linda Codega’s article linked above shows a lot of people have their hearts in the right place. Cancellation after cancellation, many of them truly wrenched by giving up a tool they use regularly and love. If you know anyone who uses DnDB, let them know cancelling is giving Wizard$ and Ha$nobros a major headache.
A PR nightmare. Really interesting to see this happen in 2023 - it is true that bosses and shareholders will literally shoot themselves in the foot to try to make maw cashola, don’t understand people and care not a jot for anything except that cashola stuff.
The Critical Role fandom used to call it the Critter Hug of death.
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Apparently the page for cancelling subscriptions went down from sheer traffic. You love to see it.Checking Ginny Di’s Twitter linked from Linda Codega’s article linked above shows a lot of people have their hearts in the right place. Cancellation after cancellation, many of them truly wrenched by giving up a tool they use regularly and love. If you know anyone who uses DnDB, let them know cancelling is giving Wizard$ and Ha$nobros a major headache.
A PR nightmare. Really interesting to see this happen in 2023 - it is true that bosses and shareholders will literally shoot themselves in the foot to try to make maw cashola, don’t understand people and care not a jot for anything except that cashola stuff.
They see so many other companies getting away with it, whether it's games forever in early access, kickstarters that take over a decade to make anything, or really bad battlepass monetisation. So many companies are able to find whales that will prop up their bad behaviour
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Hasbro/WOTC does not own the OGL it is a contract. They cannot revoke 1.0 or 1.0a. Or it is very very unlikely. Ryan Dancy the original co-contributor along with the Lawyer Bryan Lewis have indicated that it was meant to be a continues license that was not revokable and cannot be deauthorized. The authorization clause was put in for the drafts going around at the time of the original OGL. So you had to use an authorized version not a draft. They Hasbro/WOTC also had an FAQ indicating this and people could use previous version of OGL if they did not like the new one.
So business were built on the OGL 1.0 and 1.0a contract. It was based on the contract not be revokable and continues. A new version of the OGL can be sone, but anew version of he OGL could be done, however, if you did not like it you could publish under an previous authorized OGL such as 1.0 and 1.0a. If this was not the case no one would have sated a business are done OLG. This is what the original architect had indicted Ryan Dancy.
So you have the co authors of the OGL saying what the contract intent was. In essence what you are saying is valid contracts do not have any value and cannot be up held or enforced. That would be a chilling president to set don't you think. Not sure a Judge would want to attach their name to it.
I would encourage you to check out Roll for Combat that has allot of outstanding guest that talk about this. to include Ryan Dancy
Stephen Glicker/Mark Seifter are saying something else might be happening in 45 minutes.
Matt Colville's also going live in 15 on Twitch. WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN?!
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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
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WHOOP! THERE IT IS!!!
https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6si7v
That's it, in the coming weeks I will be purchasing EVERYTHING Pathfinder 2E I can lay my hands on!!!!!
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Apparently Paizo just launched a 25% off sale lmaooooo gosh bless
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On a new srd/OGL Can we call it:
Open Roleplaying Community System!
Oooh, I was close. ORC/ORCS, same thing really!!!!
Oooh, I was close. ORC/ORCS, same thing really!!!!On a new srd/OGL Can we call it:
Open Roleplaying Community System!
Yep, was thinking of your post when I saw the news…
Such good, good news.
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A while back, I showed my girlfriend Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and she made the joke that "Spike" is actually short for "Spikel". It became an inexplicable running gag in the household, with different words and names getting substituted in (Neil DeGrasse Tykel comes to mind). Anyways, ORC being short for ORCL has her absolutely tickled pink.
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Mission Accomplished.
At the very least this will give companies like Paizo more time to plan a transition off of 1.0a, as it is clear WOTC is ready at any moment to revoke free use of that license.
Obviously, Paizo was already planning for this move. WotC wanted to prevent the development of another Paizo -- apparently the existing one was enough here.
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wotc sowing: its good to be the king
wotc reaping: ah man heck me dude
Yup!
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What will the effect be on publishers and fans who create PF1E compatible products? What about Pathfinder Infinite?
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The ORCs are a coming! And this time in a good way!
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That's naive.When I look at the big picture I think: How can Hasbro even win this fight? How can you handle millions of angry highly educated people who can sink dozens of hours a month in their hobby?
The TTRPG market won't even blink. Even if a bunch of publishers go bankrupt, they'll be quickly replaced by others and in a decade from now the TTRPG market will be back on tracks. Our market is fueled by passion, not money.
On top of it, they hit their clients as much as their competitors. How many of us have backed up Kickstarter campaigns, participated in a way or another to an RPG project, wiki, platform, website or whatever? There's not a strong distinction between clients and professionals in the TTRPG market. Hasbro will experience a level of anger that is unheard of. And the hits will come from everywhere.
And the TTRPG community is very reactive because if a single person around a table is vocal against Hasbro, they can easily turn an entire table away from D&D. So the disease can spread extremely quickly.
On top of it, we are used to be attacked. Remember all the "RPGs are satanic" vibe? That was not that far away (I'm not that old). We were not loved, we grew strong from it.And most importantly: How can the company owning D&D show to everyone that they have an evil alignment and expect to live with it? Some of us are already killing giant rats in their basement. It'll take us a couple of months to raise a proper level 20 party to take the case.
I'm not worried. Hasbro should be.
Naive?
Me: "Hasbro will experience a level of anger that is unheard of. And the hits will come from everywhere."Real life: So many hits that their website crashed.
Me: "And the TTRPG community is very reactive"
Real life: We organized ourselves in the span of a couple of weeks, I'm not sure there are many worldwide communities with such a low reaction time.
Me: "I'm not worried. Hasbro should be."
Real life: Hasbro postponed the release of the OGL, I'm still not worried.
I'm not naive, I'm a prophet. There's no way a small company like Hasbro can mess up with us. We are an extremely strong community.
Bravo Paizo. I have just bought 2e pocket edition via Amazon and reactivated my AP subscription.
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The age of OGL is over. The time of the ORC has come!
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All hail Paizo, the ORC is all powerful, Paizo the holy divinity of gaming! So happy! Does it show?
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What will the effect be on publishers and fans who create PF1E compatible products? What about Pathfinder Infinite?
indeed, this is my concern.
Latest rumor/leak says they're putting a six month grace period in. Not sure how that's going to help anyone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjbBuZafv4c
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I got the sense Paizo was going to release their own OGL for Pathfinder and Starfinder based on some vague-tweets I saw from Paizo staff a few days ago. I did not expect them to bring everyone else in on it too! The contrast between WotC failing to meet rock bottom expectations and Paizo blowing all expectations out of the water is glorious.
It's ORCing time!
and now RollforCombat's got the FAQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTXkxy2KjXU
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Latest rumor/leak says they're putting a six month grace period in. Not sure how that's going to help anyone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjbBuZafv4c
To get the gracious grace period granted by WotC, you have to agree to OGL 2.0.
IT'S A TRAP!
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Sounds like WotC is trying to walk things back now. It doesn't matter. We now know that they believe they can do this, legally.
Notably, they have specified that already published properties should be unaffected, so PF1 should be fine for now.
EDIT: Darn my slow texting!
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WOTC have published an announcement on D&D beyond. Full of PR lies but it seems like they're substantially backing off. Maybe.
Need to see the actual new "OGL" of course but it is possibly a good step
"A couple of last thoughts. First, we won’t be able to release the new OGL today, because we need to make sure we get it right, but it is coming. Second, you’re going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They won—and so did we."
The pure distilled COPE is thick as steel, hoooo-lyyy!
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WOTC have published an announcement on D&D beyond. Full of PR lies but it seems like they're substantially backing off. Maybe.
Need to see the actual new "OGL" of course but it is possibly a good step
"A couple of last thoughts. First, we won’t be able to release the new OGL today, because we need to make sure we get it right, but it is coming. Second, you’re going to hear people say that they won, and we lost because making your voices heard forced us to change our plans. Those people will only be half right. They won—and so did we."
The pure distilled COPE is thick as steel, hoooo-lyyy!
The FAQ are not legally binding. There is little difference when you really read the FAQ. 1.0a is still being deauthorized for anything new. To get the 6 month grace period on 1.0a, you have to agree to 2.0.
Did these guys forget their audience is a bunch of people who regularly spend several hours BSing with each other, and they expect us to buy their BS?????
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WOTC have published an announcement on D&D beyond. Full of PR lies but it seems like they're substantially backing off. Maybe.
Need to see the actual new "OGL" of course but it is possibly a good step
Barely a half step back in practice I think
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Working off my experience with other big TTRPG scandal controversies, I'm not looking forward to the point where people start saying, "See? I told you there'd be nothing to worry about," as if this change in policy isn't very obviously directly sprouted from the massive and well-organized fandom backlash.
WotC is flinching because a ton of people got mad and launched a very effective boycot of DDB. That's very clear here.
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I'm not at all sure, but I think the D&D beyond post comes AFTER the leaked FAQ. So it may now be the most up to date (albeit very vague) indication of where we are.
I think WOTC blinked and is now frantically trying to do damage control. Or, of course, just trying to delay things in the hope the problem goes away
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Did these guys forget their audience is a bunch of people who regularly spend several hours BSing with each other, and they expect us to buy their BS?????
Worse. They forgot we are a bunch of people who regularly have to defend our games against Munchkins - rules lawyers who try to twist and torture the rules to gain advantage over the other players at the table.
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They forgot this hobby is entirely dependent on its community, and in particular its prominent community figures who can help organize things. It's a board game, not a video game--it's all about word of mouth. I honestly think the moment minicelebs like Ginny Di started speaking out was the moment WotC became completely screwed.
They also seriously messed up in taking their employees for granted. That leak telling everybody that boycotting D&D Beyond would work was a gamechanger. If they'd understood this fandom at all, they'd have understood why the employees wouldn't be on board with trying to destroy it.
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Well, sure, I don't think anyone thinks that D&D as a brand is dead. Hasbro's a big company. They'll be fine. So what, though? 5e coming out was a big boon for third party creators and for the hobby as a whole, so why should we complain if it turns out 7e is likewise a step away from predatory practices and a great leap for the industry? No complaints here.
If anything, I think that's why we're celebrating, right? We're glad that the community is still united enough on certain issues to punish bad corporate behavior.
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Well, sure, I don't think anyone thinks that D&D as a brand is dead. Hasbro's a big company. They'll be fine. So what, though? 5e coming out was a big boon for third party creators and for the hobby as a whole, so why should we complain if it turns out 7e is likewise a step away from predatory practices and a great leap for the industry? No complaints here.
If anything, I think that's why we're celebrating, right? We're glad that the community is still united enough on certain issues to punish bad corporate behavior.
I think 6E will crash hard given this BS. Maybe by the time they do 7E they'll decide to use the only real Open Roleplaying Game Creative License still operating (ORC). <eg>
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The basic issue from the Hasbro execs is that they understand that D&D is very popular, and it's a prestige brand, but it also doesn't make an especially large amount of money. So they assume there's money here, they just need to figure out how to get it, but when you treat your customers as obstacles between a company and the contents of a customer's wallet then people tend to resent that.
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As a sidenote, I do cautiously hope that the ORC adopts language similar to the new OGL's about prohibiting blatantly abusive content. We don't need "Myfarog, ORC edition".
At the same time, I (perhaps vainly) hope the ORC avoids being overly restrictive around "messy" content, like BoEF-style Mature Audiences Only publications, publications that explore potentially traumatic subjects, and content that digs into "problematic" tropes to try to unpack their deeper meaning. I think a lot about how marginalized writers like Isabel Fall have been treated when trying to write about some edgy topics, and it's left me sort of more on the side of taking a light touch to this sort of thing. There's a difference between tackling a messy subject in good faith and writing actual Nazi propaganda, and I hope we can tell the difference.
As one example, I'm working on an ancestry right now that is closely linked to severe trauma as a key motif of its, well, existence. It's not the sort of thing everyone would be comfortable with, and parts of it might not be super kid-friendly, but that doesn't mean it doesn't deserve to exist provided it's correctly labeled.
I may be paranoid, but I guess I worry about new licenses ultimately emphasizing a squeaky-clean Disneyfied feel for new releases--less out of social conservativism so much as simple play-it-safe corporate caution. I've seen that trend in other industries, and I'm not a huge fan.
Oops, my sidenote went longer than my actual note.
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when you treat your customers as obstacles between a company and the contents of a customer's wallet then people tend to resent that.
Especially when said customers are doing the majority of the work.
It is not necessarily intuitive that the bulk of the work of creating and playing a particular campaign is done by the players directly instead of by the rule books.
Very different from a video game or even a card game.
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As a sidenote, I do cautiously hope that the ORC adopts language similar to the new OGL's about prohibiting blatantly abusive content. We don't need "Myfarog, ORC edition".
That is tricky. Because you can't have it both ways.
Basically you can't release your rules under an open license and restrict how other people use your content.
Again, using the Open Source GPL because it is what I am familiar with.
If I create a graphics and rendering library and release it open source under GPL, then someone else can take my library and create an open source video game about things that I personally don't like. But there is nothing I can do about forbidding them from creating and releasing their video game.