Wizards of the Coast Have REALLY Messed Up
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- Опубліковано 8 січ 2023
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This is the opportunity for literally every other TTRPG to step in and say, "WHY HELLO THERE!"
Do they allow people to use their branding?
@@davidmorgan6896 I know that City of mist does
definitely an opportunity!!
Chaosium seems to do so with RuneQuest and Call of Cthulhu.
Time for me to start telling people about Savage Worlds again :)
Wotc 2022: "alrighty let’s f%$k the mtg community!"
Mtg community: 100% pushback.
Wotc 2022: "huh, customers are so price sensitive all of a sudden."
Wotc 2023: "well that didn’t work with mtg, let’s try dnd!"
MTG community: "Counterspell."
@@somecallmetimelderberries432 naw it was more of a mana drain
They’re really just screwing their golden geese.
It doesn't matter if you love D&D or hate it, push back against this. This screws over everything from Pathfinder to OSRIC.
Which are just D&D.
The question is ... And i'm asking this as a relativly new guy to the hobbie ... How do we push back ?
@@vivamexico254 don’t buy dnd products, you can still play the game of course, but just don’t pay for it
Agreed
@@Sleeper_6875 that i can do !
Who knew the old pearl clutchers didn't need the whole "Satanic Panic" to kill D&D. They just needed corporate slime to mutilate it beyond recognition.
Funny how greed like this gets ignored with corporations but anything that looks not so good is immediately pen1
D&D will outlive Hasbro.
This reminds me of Gary Gygax
How to destroy dnd:
❌️Step one: satanic panic.
✅️Step two: capitalism
@@saltypork101 agree. There will always be value in the brand and IP, no matter how badly Hasbro manages it.
The way I see the situation, WotC tried to do a sneak attack and failed.
They tried to surprise the biggest third-parties into accepting the agreement, by giving it at a very short notice, without enough time to read through it, when half of the staff will be on holidays. And, apparently, this didn't work.
I think they're Assassin Path Rogue and were hoping for Surprise, giving them an automatic Critical on a hit.
If they thought anyone would trust NotC (let alone AssBro), they miscalculated pretty badly.
Nah Blizzard did something similar fans kicked off then they started to cover it and that publicity made their game open to the very people they wanted the mobile generation where Monetization and micro transactions are normal and part of games and the fans intensified their loud attacks against blizzard - boycotts were issued, Blizzard turned their backs on the fans as the money came rolling in from the people they were aiming at. So they then dropped the trailer for Diablo 4 and these very channels who were screaming boycott boycott suddenly started to beat off and flap the cash at Blizzard. So I got a feeling the same will happen.... Time will tell lol.
@@Mark-nh2hs This isn't like Blizzard, this whole situation has massive impacts across the TTRPG scene.. Pathfinder is an OGL product based on 3.5 D&D, now a standalone game. This would be like Blizzard being able to take out every indie studio that ever made a Diablo clone. There is so many D&D ambassadors who make OGL content, and these the same people like Crit Role who made 5th edition popular and profitable like never before. I've played D&D since I was 10, 30 years ago.. all of this is unlike anything we've seen before. This beats the TSR scandals, we never thought it could get worse than that.
They rolled a 1
Third Party Creator "We had a deal!"
Hasbro "I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further."
And Paizo comes in with: "Do not cite the OGL to me, Wizard. I was there when it was written."
@@colinsmith1495 what is that reference?
@@MajorBrowne It’s from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. The actual quote was “Do not cite the deep magic to me, Witch. I was there when it was written.”
@@benjaminirving2593 thanks.
The fact that Hasbro has just stayed silent on this as more steam builds up just reinforces the fact they are strictly looking at this from a bottom line vs customer wishes. (At least from this clown's perspective)
Their silence seems to imply they are not going to budge from this under ANY circumstances. If anything I expect them to go full metal Vader and make the terms of the OGL even worse because of the backlash.
@@graugger5918 I can 100% see that and am already prepping for the salted earth timeline.
@@graugger5918 I actually think it means WotC is in uttered chaos with a lot of infighting so they've gone radio silent until it's settled. Also take into account the 1.1 OGL was supposed to be released back on January 4th, before the leak occurred, and it was supposed to have folks signed by January 14th at the latest. They are running out of time. I full expect this too end with powerful folks like Cynthia Williams and D&D Vice President and maybe even CEO of Hasbro Chris Cox fired.
@@graugger5918 I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they did go full scorched earth policy at this stage...
Of course they are. D&D made the grave mistake of becoming profitable. Welcome to our cyberpunk present where greedy corpos work to wring every last cent out of anything they can get their hands on, even if that means destroying the thing in the process.
Imagine if General Mills said, "If you use our flour to bake a cake we get a piece of that cake. If you bake bread with our flour we get a chunk of that bread. If you make a pie using our flour in the crust, we are entitled to a slice of that pie. And if you make oatmeal raisin cookies with our flour, you better not put cranberries in them or you will never be able to use our flour again. Oh and if any of your bread, cake, pies and cookies are better than what we make, you have to give us the recipes and stop baking." This is exactly what the leaked OGL is trying to do.
Granted the above example is simplistic, but then again I'm not a corporate lawyer trying to bury my ill intents in a 9000+ word document.
It's even worse. It would be like General Mills saying, "If you use our flour to bake a cake we get a piece of that cake, and if we give you 30 days notice we can take every cake you've ever baked with our flour as our own property."
that's extremely inaccurate. General mills makes a product that you are intending to buy, use, and enjoy, and be done. WotC makes a product that you are intending to buy, interact with, change how you see fit, enjoy, change a little more, bring some friends over and maybe see what they can do, and then wayyy down the line finally be done.
This is more like a restaurant giving you your food and then holding the rights to kick you out if they don't like how you're behaving, add random ingredients to your sandwhich you were about to enjoy, or if your table has more than 16 people, they can tax you extra. It's annoying, but that's the extent of it.
@@dexterity494 "This is more like a restaurant giving you your food and then holding the rights to kick you out if they don't like how you're behaving"
If you claim the above as "extremely inaccurate" an analogy, yours is no better. By this analogy, WotC's demand to the licensing rights to your IP is completely ignored.
The biggest error in the OP's analogy is that it implies General Mills can force you to give them the recipes _if they are better,_ while in fact you must give them regardless. And _then_ General Mills may or may not decide if you are allowed to keep baking with their product. For any reason they want (and a 30-day window to "fix" the recipe to avoid that).
bad example. it is more like, imagine a bakery used the General Mill's flour recipe and created thheir own 3rd party flour, but adding a few things in the mix that would make it more appealing (and cheaper) than the General Mill's original official folour.. General Mills would suddenly start losing consumers that were buying their flour and are now buying the 3rd party flour, which is based on their recipe... Fake examples does not engage in constructive criticism....
@@dexterity494 You missed the part where the Restaurant has given itself the right to take your business at will
It's killing me that we live in a society where a contract lawyer realized her life was vastly improved by switching careers to putting on whiteface clown makup and talking about toy soldiers in her moms spare room
society sold me a lie
I thought she said it was her living room.
People quitting law in pursue of a better and more meaningful life is quite common, actually. I don't know about UA-cam, but it sounds better than going back to Grad School as I did lol
@@charlesentrekin140 It's always the parents' basement, it's nerd law
@@dungeonsanddiscourse I dropped out of the regular work force a few years ago. I think we were sold the same type lie.
I realize people see this as a personal affront but they're just exercising corporate greed. I compare this to the skateboard craze of the 80s when companies started pandering to everyone and selling all sorts of inferior product to put everyone and their grandma on a board and in skate wear. Then boom. Collapse and devastation for the industry and the sport. WoTC wants to turn D&D into a lifestyle brand...they don't care about the real gamers as long as the masses buy their products. They've learned how easily people share their content via internet over the last several years so they want to stop that.
Liked your cosplay of WotC executives.
i expect to need the outfit a lot more
Here's the thing, it wasn't even good faith and Idealism that created the OGL 1.0. Dancey was *very* clever in that he realised that putting out sourcebooks and the like was quite costly and that WotC made most of their money selling the core books, so with the OGL they could simply have 3rd party publishers do it, not only that by making the OGL specifically *for* D&D it meant there was an incentive for 3PPs to publish under it whilst also acting like free advertising for D&D, effectively drowning out other systems because the majority would be focused on D&D.
And he was right, during both 3.0/3.5 and 5th edition D&D did nothing but massively grow and drowned out other smaller systems. It was malicious yes but it was very clever. A lot smarter than the current heads at WotC who only saw competitors taking scraps from their table and said "I want those scraps too, those are MINE, I didn't want them but you can't have any either!" and trying to burn the hobby to the ground...just like they did with the GSL under 4e and just like they're trying to do it now.
if you call scraps Billions of dollars in revenue each year that all the 3rd party combine are making..... Pathfinder only makes close to 10M$ every year... I think it would only be faire that they give back to WotC a million or two as WotC are the reason pathfinder company exist...they would have never existed as if would not be for the right to create a d20 knockoff close to what D&D is.
@@sylvaina.1211 billions really? OK so including pathfinder AND kickstarters do you know how much that entire 3rd party publishers made, hell the entire fucking TTRPG industry, not including WotC, made last year? 60 million.
Lets compare that to the 6.42b that Hasbro made last year or if you want to go just by WotC which is 1 billion dollars. The 3rd party publishers made 6% of what WotC ALONE made.
60 million vs 1 billion...yeah fuck off mate, you're either a troll or a god damn corporate shill account.
@@luketfer WoTC makes more money with their trading cards than D&D... D&D is worth maybe a 500 M$ business to WotC, yes it is 10 times more than the 3rd party. Gee it is THEIR invention ! They invented even the dice themselves ! before DnD the only dice you could see on earth was a 6 sided die.
@@sylvaina.1211 Yes but the act of 'rolling a dice' cannot be copyright or trademarked, that's enshrined in US AND EU law. So yeah, jog on mate, it was nice bait whilst it lasted but I ain't gonna bother from here on in.
I really wouldn't call it malicious.
Self-serving yes, but hardly malicious.
Love it. I'm also a contract attorney and an IP lawyer. I've even worked on open source software licensing.
Your analysis is excellent. It's also important to note that international agreements (which I've also negotiated and drafted) create additional complications. I'm licensed in the US, but our legal system-while similar to England-is different. And even in the UK, the English and Scottish courts are not completely identical. Then there is the continental legal systems over in Europe proper.
Still, one thing to bear in mind is this-at least in the US, you cannot copyright or otherwise protect with IP a specific gaming "system."
So, the whole D20 system behind D&D? Not protectable. What is protectable is the way in which WotC EXPRESSES the D20 system. Their unique expression of the system is protectable, but the actual mechanics are not.
This includes, for example, some of the D&D-specific terminology behind different features of the system. For example, D&D-specific elements and classes, spells, etc. However, more generic spells, terms, classes, features, etc, are not protectable. D&D cannot stop others from having Paladins in their games, for example, or a Fireball spell where a spellcaster summons and throws a fireball.
What's truly monumentally stupid is that, ultimately, there is nothing stopping a company like Paizo from simply dropping any reference to the OGL and D&D compatibility from their games. My understanding is that, to an extent, Pathfinder 2E already does this, although it references the OGL and incorporates it.
Why? Because this is a bar against WotC simply up and suing them-WotC's OGL basically is, in part, a covenant not to sue.
Even so, simply because WotC is effectively saying "all bets are off; we might sue you now" doesn't guarantee they will win, or their claims are valid. All it means is that they may be stupid enough to try and make money from suing folks. (Which I can tell you, as a lawyer who litigates over contracts and does commercial litigation, is a foolish idea. The only folks winning in those scenarios are the parties' respective lawyers.)
This mistake smacks of upper-level HASBRO management dictating on high, and bringing in corporate lawyers (and probably outside BigLaw law firms). It is a property-maximalist view of the world, and only folks disconnected from the tabletop gaming experience and world would think that this makes sense.
It's a damn shame. WotC did this once before with 4E and, well, it didn't go well.
In the end it would be nice to see a true open-source gaming system based on D20 that various players rallied around. The open source software community provides examples of how this kind of collaborative project might be maintained and managed. Open source software licenses vary, and many allow dual-licensing solutions wherein a core system of combat, player development, movement, and tracking could remain open but allow different game developers to expand using proprietary additions. Or it could be a link-back requirement a la the GPL 3.
The sheer idiocy of WotC-or, really, HASBRO-here is that they, by default, had done this effectively with the OGL. So, what do you do if you want to play in, say, a non-fantasy realm based on a third-party creators stories and backgrounds, or even bolt on your own (such as a Star Wars-based setting), but run it using D&D 5E rules everyone is familiar with?
Well, you, and likely your players, are going to be buying WotC's core books-DM book, Player's Book, etc.
Now? WotC won't have that. All because folks at HASBRO didn't understand it. (And, btw, I count the head folks at WotC as "HASBRO" folks, because they, as far as I understand it, didn't come up through WotC to their roles but were appointed from outside WotC by the folks at HASBRO, effectively.)
As someone who's been around table-top gaming and RPGs for a while, albeit in adjacent space (pour one out for FASA and my old BattleTech/MechWarrior systems!), as well as the open-source software community, it's fascinating seeing these two worlds of interest collide. In the end, though, it's the players who suffer, especially those truly special ones dedicated enough to create third-party content.
Sucks to see them lose out.
I suspect that when this all washes out, that there will be the equivalent of an "open source" set of core d20 or d20 adjacent rules that folks can use as a central touchstone for cross compatibility. As well as a proliferation of systems.
@@dahobdahob This would be one of the best outcomes. I remember that WoTC pushed the idea of "d20 Systems" back in 3e to enable D&D-esque roleplay in different time periods. I actually owned "D20 Modern" back in the day. A little lackluster, but the concept was already there. I say just make d20 systems open-sourced. Ally the open-source system with Paizo (because they're not completely corrupted by corporate greed) and weaponize the open-source system to cut into WotC's profits.
Totally agree. Hasbro’s failure here is in thinking they have such command of the market that they can force users to accept their new terms.
I teach IP law in England. We don't have as well developed jurisprudence on the (lack of) copyright in game rules as the US does, but the principles are the same & US cases would be persuasive I think. Suing for non-literal copyright infringement is always tough; lawyers would far rather be suing over a nice simple TM infringement I think. If anything copyright is narrower here due to the 'closed list' system for what works are protectable (literary dramatic musical etc) so our Act the CDPA 1988 does not have the kind of excluded content list the US Code or TRIPS does.
@@simontmn lawyers would be less interested in sueing for infringement over something that has already been deemed uncopyrightable. DaVinci v. Zika was about two identical games with different themes and artworks and it was sentenced there was no copyright infringement because you can't copyright the concept of hidden roles, what these roles are and do, action cards and health points. Given that Pathfinder 1e is out of print and PF 2e is different enough from any DnD edition that you can't take one's rules and apply it to the other, it could be an even cleaner sentence.
If WotC tries to argue that Pathfinder has broken actual copyright because of the licence, they will find the hard way the licence always covered the game mechanics under OSR and never the fluff and lore, the actual copyrightable stuff, under IP.
Hasbro/WOtC were the real D&D villains all along
Vecna over there just going "damn, guys! Way to just one up me!"
Just like doppelgangers.
And D&D was just the friends we made along the way.
Even if Wizards walks this back, I will not purchase any official D&D merch until the current execs are removed from the company, Wizards puts out an official apology, and then they'd STILL have to do more to show good faith to their customers.
Oh, and I'll boycott any and every Hasbro product.
Hear, hear! I've been in contact with several gaming groups in my town over this, most of whom have more disposable income than do I. The response was unanimous and unambiguous; *NO* WOtC/Hasbro products for the foreseeable future. Kids toys to books to board games to CCGs. We're all done with all of them. We're trying to get an ear from our local game stores, as well. No telling how that'll go.
@@madlordhubris624 Hell yeah. I talked with my play group and they've also agreed not to purchase anything from WotC in the future until/unless they reject this and say their Mea Culpas. This has to be a community movement. Seems like Wizards wish to kill their golden goose, so no more golden eggs for them.
I'm not buying anything from Wotc in my opnoin they became worse than GW and my views of GW are already very low
I have been buying official D&D product for the last 40 years, even before any 3rd party existed. I could not care less if they all disappear and its only D&D back again. loved the game then, love the game now, me and my group of 23 D&D lovers will continue buying WotC official books every month (hell I even own about 20,000$ worth of Magic the Gathering cards both when WotC was just a start up) I like WotC where they came from, loved them when they bailed TSR from bankruptcy and saved D&D for all the world , They totally deserve our loyalty
This will single handedly sink the new DND movie. I was curious to see it before, but now have zero interest in seeing it.
This may be the best way I've ever seen to discuss legal issues with exactly zero chance of ever being credibly accused of offering legitimate legal advice.
"But your honour, clearly I am dressed as a clown"
"Perpetual" is like a spell with a duration of "Permanent" - It doesn't end on its own, but if you hit it with Dispel Magic, there's a check to see which wins.
Yes - 'Perpetual' in an open licence like the OGL is a level 9 spell, but in another contract like the one in BMS v AB Agri (2010) it's only level 2. The DC depends on the rest of the contract.
that is exacly like filmora scandal not so long ago
Thank you so much for distinguishing the "perpetual is a legal term and has legal ramifications as used in OGL 1.0." I'm getting so tired of people who have no knowledge of contract law and no legal knowledge at all acting as if they've cracked a code that a team of contract lawyers paid by Hasbro somehow just entirely missed and acting as if this is no big deal because of it.
I've seen lawyers point out that this contract was made before the ruling that expected "irrevocable" to be added if intended, but I don't know enough about it myself to confidently place that on the table as an option.
@@megasuperiordude that seems like a very shaky defense. Courts care a lot about precedent and the fact that the precedent has been set that perpetual doesn't mean irrevocable, I can't really see a judge overturning that just because it may not be grandfathered in.
Donning-kreuger in effect
And yet, actual IP lawyers have pretty overwhelming said that courts would likely find it to be irrevocable due to a number of factors.
@@bobbyellis5006 In this case, precedent actual sits with the side of it being irrevocable. The precedent being that it becomes irrevocable de facto if they have let it go for this long knowing full well the ramifications and never made any attempts to rectify the situation. Also, the precedent that a perpetual license can only be revoked if the license only benefits one side (said simply but there's a lot more legalese involved. This is a unique case where the gaming license actually benefits the licensor equally, if not more than the licensee. It would be hard for hasbro to argue that they don't benefit from the OGL 1.0a.
I was thinking, “Wait-is she really a contract lawyer?” but then the clown outfit made it so obvious.
I was already stepping away from D&D before this OGL debacle. I still loved D&D, it got me and many others into TTRPGS. But, rather the new OGL goes into effect as they intend it to or not, its just "Attempted Murder" vs "Actual Murder" and that enough to turn my opinion. I am finishing my Curse of Strahd game, after that I'll likely not return to D&D or any WotC product.
I recommend Old School Essentials and the Dolmonwood setting.
That or The Fantasy Trip by Steve Jackson Games.
Or Pathfinder 2nd Edition if you want a game that gives GMs great support. Apologies if you already have other systems in mind.
@@malkyn9998 This whole situation impacts Pathfinder 2.0 and Starfinder.. they are both 3.5 OGL products. This effects their ability to make new content going forward, and may force them to rebuild Pathfinder from the ground up and release a 3rd edition with a whole new system.
@@azarinevil
It might. I was recommending it as a good system either way.
@@malkyn9998 I don't disagree, it's one my fav systems.. but until we find out which way Paizo is going in terms of the OGL, not the best investment. Might be better to wait for 3.0 to come out, rather than start a dead version that's not going to get more content updates and will be drastically different from the newest edition.
This could affect more than D&D. If this bullshit gets a pass, it could damage other open source agreements, of any kind.
But keep in mind that the OGL is about using the same mechanics as D&D... which is actually public domain and at this point can only be public domain and cannot be patented. DaVinci v. Zika pronounced that you cannot claim a copyright on game mechanics even kn their entirety, only on the artistry to express these rules, the wording that has to be creative enough, same way you cannot copyright a recipe but only the artistry in which you show it, the video shots and the photographs detailing the steps, but not the steps themselves. The OGL as well excluded the PI or basically the IP, it is not about using what copyrighted material D&D and WotC owns, which IRONICALLY is what a licence should be for.
A judge can very easily claim thay OGL 1.0a is null and void not because OGL 1.1 exists, but because it never had legal ground to begin with, you can't licence something that is public domain by law, and oh with 1.1 Hasbro risks being sued by the EUROPEAN UNION for violating THEIR copyright laws and guidelines, so if Hasbro wants to actually go through this they might have to pull out the European market or face a massive class action, and both could be costly. As if the risk of getting Disney, Amazon and the Tolkien Estate involved wasn't enough.
"Perpetual" is like "immortal" for elves. You're immortal but you can be killed.
Do Elves need to change their socks?
@@fredrik241 Excluding House Elves, when have you seen an elf with socks?
@@TheRawrnstuff
In truth, I have never paid close attention to Elves' ankle regions before.
But this shall be my New Years resolution for 2023!
(I'll have to crack open that LOTR remastered box again)
In the grim dark there is only war....
This really opens the door to Paizo to come in again and steal D&D's spot at the top. Clean up their books, release Pathfinder 2.5 and offer an OGL to all the publishers pushed out by D&D.
From one of the comments I saw on another video today, it sounds like Paizo's looking at doing just that with their new ORC
@@wolf1066 And with the aim being to make it of a nature that goes for non-profit, and not even being in the hands of Paizo... it says a lot.
Piazo actually cleaned up 2.0 they just put the ogl in there so people could use parts of their material in Piazo letter they said that newer books printed will not have the license in them until the ORK license is finished
I wish they'd come out with an alternate version that was more stripped-down and quick to play like 5E is, though. Using advantage/disadvantage instead of a bunch of sometimes-stacking modifiers makes things quick and easy in combat. And not assembling your character from huge lists of feats makes character creation a lot easier too.
They don't need a new edition, p2 is still quite new and is intentionally legally unrelated to DND enough to not be under OGL.
Perpetual is a legal word with a legal meaning. But it was written when that meaning was different and GNU V2 had a lawsuit over that very issue which supported that perpetual in this context DOES mean irrevocable. Either way, that's not even important here because they can't use a different contract's terms to change an existing one unless you agree to it anyway. And WOTC clearly KNOWS this because they want people to *actively sign up* to their new contract with the poison pill, instead of actually declaring it unilaterally.
I own a Thing. That which I say about the Thing is true until some other competent authority tells me different. Translation: WOTC's interpretation is good until someone challenges them in court _and_ gets a favorable verdict. Even then, the slap down is only in the jurisdiction of that court. Maybe we'll get lucky and quickly get a summary judgment in a very large market like the U.S. Yes, this is another vast oversimplification. I just don't want people to think it is an easy peasy process as you are implying.
Also, if they sign then there is no issue--doesn't hurt to try from WOTC's perspective.
I wonder if this is being done in an attempt to kill Pathfinder, and everything else is collateral
Probably pathfinder plus several other main options. OSR is another. Kickstarters, patreon creators. It's the equivalent of a mob shakedown on any mid or high tier creator. "Nice back catalog ya got there. Shame of something happened to it."
@NoDan's Land This is 100% how I think of it as well.
@@nodansland303 possibly, but Paizo can scrub the mention of the OGL from their Pathfinder 2e books though.
@@zenvariety9383 They have to do so quickly in order to get that ready for when OGL 1.1 comes into affect. They also cannot sell anything OGL 1.1 related which will be all the other Pathfinder editions and related content. That's efectively several months of downtime where they have nothing to sell.
No need to wonder Paizo was specifically called out in their blog as the type of competitor ogl enabled. Pf1e and sf are screwed but pf2e is feasibly an expensive errata still cheaper than legal fight or paying royalty. Their card game is already nonogl so they know what to rename
I kind of wonder if the fact that WotC made a different license for 4E will come up as evidence that they didn’t think the OGL1.0 was revocable.
could be relevant!!
Or their public statements, made in articles written by their employees and published on their website, from the days of 3.5e, archived via the Wayback Machine, wherein they very blatantly talk about the ogl as though it was intended to be irrevocable.
Love the clown costume
I'm also dreading round two of this. I expect a lot of Hasboro lawyer money going after competing products when their official Virtual Tabletop goes live.
A great additional thought on all of this; Roll20 and other's will be overwhelmed, because WOTC will come after them for using their source material and shut them down.
Plot twist: The lawyers convinced the execs to do this because they knew it would go to court and they could be paid even more. (Though they're probably on retainer, so I'm kinda disproving myself here).
Virtual Tabletop products that will be Gamesystem agnostic will have no problem at all. example, the newly created VTT Menyr platform will be badass and totally safe.
@@sylvaina.1211 lawsuits don't have to be valid to destroy a company.
@@sylvaina.1211You can take D&D 5e mechanics and put them in your game since they are not under copyright, that's why Tabletop Sim exists
So while the current wording of the new OGL is a fairly blatant cash grab, especially with the "we get to use your content however we want for forever", I want to point out that you seem to have misread the part about the royalties.
It is not "If you make $749,999.99 you pay nothing, but if you make $750,000 you owe $62,500" (25% of total revenue), you only pay the 25% on everything Over the $750,000. So if you make $750,001 you only owe WotC/Hasbro $0.25
The current wording is essentially a Graduated Tax system.
For now. Remember they can change the deal unilaterally at any time how ever much they want...
I think that makes it a flat tax system with a very high poverty "no tax" line.
Except in the released OGL 1.1, they state they can change any part of it for any reason, and only have to give 30 days notice(which they will probably do similar to how Arthur dent, going into the basement, locked behind a door, and the cabinet was wedged) and can revoke the license for any reason whatsoever.
So sure the 1.1 says that only 25% of the total revenue now. in 3 months they can change it to 50% of total revenue on all sales starting at 1$
Furthermore with them trying to claim all content made using the OGL 1.1 as theirs. it means they do not need to pay you even if they take the stuff
@@MyAramil Yes, they can mess with 3rd party creaters in many many ways.
But according to what has been written so far karadinx is right: it's 25% on everything above $750,000.
That's an important detail, considering further changes in the greed-direction to the OGL will create further shitstorms (WotC may or may not care).
As it stand WotC is "just" really greedy, but they can in fact get even greedier.
I suppose you're right about not having to pay royalty for the first 750,000$ (like everyone else I haven't read the actual terms). However this is no consolation if the profit of the sales over said 750,000 is less than 25%. Imagine the following scenario: you make an adventure which proves to be a bestseller. You want to print another printing of the adventure. However printing costs (etc.) will actually be 80% of what you sell it for. If you on top of that must pay WoTC 25% your costs will rise to 105% effectively meaning every copy sold will lose you money.
If the royalty would be 25% of the net revenue (as I believe graduated tax works) it would be gross but not unbearable, but rumour has it is 25% of gross revenue, and that, I dare say, is a show stopper.
My heart will always belong to Earthdawn (Living Room games, now sadly defunct). My campaign lasted a decade. DnD 5e is okay, and I host and play it every Sunday afternoon, but I hope some new life springs forth from the compost WoTC is spreading around. I've been hurting to explore a truly new game system.
I know. It's like the whole world is bemoaning a change to Miller Lite or Carling while all the beer fans are wondering why they don't try something better.
There's tons of systems available to play out there! Numerous options you can try out. Sine Nomine's books are all excellent, and for a slightly more old school with D20 era quality of life improvements includes Castle & Crusades. Lots and lots of options.
It's ironic that people are bemoaning the end of OGL 1.0. All it ever was was a tool for WotC to lure creators to jump on the D&D bandwagon instead of creating competition in the ttrpg marketplace. All throughout the OGL, WotC's competitors have faded and fallen to the wayside while they've gained more and more market share. It's seriously going to be sad if the creators under OGL 1.0 lawyer up for the right to stay cucks to WotC instead of trying to produce some truly original games.
Savage Worlds is an interesting one to check out. Different than a typical D20 system, but fairly simple to learn, and it's theme agnostic. Specifically built around making your own themes, world settings and custom content, while also making NPC/ enemy creation easy and quick for the GM. Tons of official and third party books for any setting you could think of, as well as conversions for other rulesets and tons of free content. Recently started running a campaign, myself, and really enjoying it.
Clown Discourse always makes my day better, even when giving me horrible news. >_>
glad you like it :D
Point is no more WOTC, not a single product. Also should start a petition that all community RPG games(like CR) stop using 5E immediately and stand with their audience and community that they represent. If they still represent US or are they corporate greed now.
They don't care if you quit buying products. Just like Nintendo doesn't care how many decades you've bought their products...they care who is going to buy right this minute. I'm buying everything I want from every publisher right away because this shits gonna get bad and once you own the hard copy they can't take it from you or stop your personal use. This is all about them getting royalties off all the UA-camrs, Twitch, etc that are making money showcasing their products. That's what they want a piece of. They want a piece of Vox Machina and all Mercer's and his crew's big fat wallets.
hahahah hahahaha .. sure.. Good luck with that
Corporate greed is representative of US. The United States.
As someone who has gotten threatened by Hasbros lawyers from a WOTC admin for compiling all the adventurers league rules because of how dispersed they were a few years ago, this doesn't surprise me at all.
They pulled my submission down from DMS guild and when I asked what the deal was it was due to concerns over their IP dilution.
The irony was it was effectively doing their job for them making the game more useable. And that's when I went down the rabbit hole of realizing you can't copyright rule sets and they were just trying to keep someone that wasn't them publishing their ruleset in a more streamlined and readable format.
I can't recall the last time a clown held my attention for over 5 mins let alone 15+. Thanks for your informative and insightful view. New Sub.
Glad you enjoyed it!!
From ONE D&D to NOT ONE PENNY FROM ME.
*Pathfinder is not going to die.*
Paizo has announced a new open-source license, and it was written by Mr. Brian Lewis, the original author of the WotC OGL 1.0a. It also includes language indicating irrevocability, per Paizo's press release less than 90 minutes ago.
NOTE: This is not misinformation, this is published information from Paizo itself.
Dressing as a clown was not in vain. Just saying.
was it fun and engaging?
@@dungeonsanddiscourse it was fun and engaging
I like how you dressed up as a WOTC exec for this video
My concern is this is being done to drive all the dissenting voices OUT of official DnD. The ones who would push back against a digital walled garden approach where they charge out the arse for every single thing. Once we are all gone the sheep will spend spend spend.
not just those that would push back against the over monetization, but those who push back over the "social" changes as well.
There's been a lot of push back against the whole caving in to "DnD is racist/Orcs are racist/Drow are racist/etc" thing that has swept over WOTC's writing and publishing staff. Some of the latest leaks I've heard from 1DnD range from "races are now species" (which honestly sounds more racist to me, funnily enough), to "clerics no long have to believe in their god" (which destroys the entire idea of the cleric class).
Under the OGL, 3rd party publishers could literally undo every "social" change that WOTCs is putting into their game and restore it to the original way of doing things...which would render WOTC's work useless. For example, I could make a 3rd party source book about the Drow and restore them to being the gloriously evil little shits they are, because I love the Drow. Someone could do the same for Orcs, because they loved them for everything that makes them wrong or "problematic" to WOTC. With OGL1.1, WOTC could literally shut down such a product and because they hold "perpetual rights to said material" it would possibly even mean i could then be prevented from taking my source book and transferring it to a different gaming system just to spite me.
Their goal is to turn D&D into a live service game.
@@luciussvartwulf6630 Yeah just having the language In there to cancel projects they seem to have "bigoted" content is troubling. What if I have slavers in my game. OBVIOUSLY they are there for the PC's to deal with in a deadly way, and it's in no way condoning slavery in real life, they can completely shut it down.
This is pretty draconian. It has personally effected a project I'm working on. Im now forced to scrap 5e mechanics and build my own up from scratch.
Or maybe I'll learn the Cypher system. Either way it's time and effort I was not planning on.
However I'm torn here. I don't think completely divorcing ourselves from DnD is a good idea. Won't be anybody left to keep the gates...
@@PolyhedralParadice You might be right that there won't be anyone left, but sometimes the only thing to do is walk away and let the rabble burn it to the ground. D&D can't be killed. Hasbro can try to turn it into whatever they want, but we all have imaginations and access to 5 editions that can keep us engaged and having fun for lifetimes to come. Let Hasbro devalue D&D and drive it back out of the cultural lens. Once they've killed their golden goose, someone else will be able to buy D&D and run it in a meaningful way. That's probably the best course of action from here, honestly. Time to go torrent all the old 3e books and have tons of fun. For most of the players out there now, 3e would be a whole new edition anyway - just pretend it's the 6e and let Hasbro destroy the game for the next 10 years. It won't be the first time they've done this BS (4e, I'm looking at you).
@@PolyhedralParadice if you're looking for a good system to switch over to, there's always OpenD6, which is free, has an OGL, and the parent company is gone, so there's no one to change their OGL or come after you as far as I know, but you might want to research a little before you publish. I can attest it is a very fun system to play though.
Another good option might be to contact Runehammer here on youtube, since he created the ICRPG. It's super easy to convert DnD stuff to it, though I don't know if he has an OGL or what his rules would be for making 3rd party materials.
I think Savage Worlds also might have an OGL, but I'm not sure about that.
I have been working on a major homebrew project for my playgroup and I was thinking about releasing it online (probably Redit). If Wizards are trying to pull this then I'm straight up not gonna bother. I don't want my hard work to have the threat of being straight up plagiarised because Hasbro got greedy. Similar things are happening in Magic: The Gathering where there is a complete lack of good will between players and Wizards due to similar levels of boneheaded stupidity from WOTC
Hear me out. Check out other systems (like savage worlds, modiphus's 2d20, whitewolf system) tweak what needs to be tweaked and rework what framework needs to be worked. then release it for that system
Feel you there.. I have an almost 30 year old campaign world that I was working on turning into a sourcebook set. Now it's not even worth it, all I needed to do was source some artworks and figure out my layout.. but like hell I am giving Wizards three decades of my hard work, bad enough they get as much of my cash as they do.
If you genericize all the actually copyrightable material, mainly monsters... they can't do a damn thing.
How about offering it for free with donations ? If you do not Sell the product you wont need to pay anything and will not be bothered by their lawyers
@@sylvaina.1211 That doesn’t solve the problem caused by WOTC being able to steal it.
The ongoing negative press is going to hurt Hasbro/Wotc shares so hopefully whoever thought this was a good idea will loose their job. (unless this was a plan within higher ups to damage the company and then dismantle it and sell off it's IP)
Disaster capitalism in the toys and games market?
Actually didn't expect that one.
@@SymbioteMullet stuff happens under communism. Greed exists in any system. At least with this, we can just not buy the product while under communism the government props them up.
They recently hired a new CEO who's a former Microsoft employee, and a new VP whose former job was managing mobile gaming and optimizing microtransaction revenue.
This is definitely a plan within higher ups, but they're expecting it to optimize profits from D&D.
I think it will spell the end of D&D instead, and the end of WotC within a few years, as they try to apply the same tactics to MtG.
Honestly, think about that for a moment. I think the best thing that could happen to D&D is that it is sold to anyone who isn't Hasbro. They literally destroy everything that they touch. I consider this one of the better possible outcomes honestly. Far worse would be Hasbro retaining its grip for years to come as it slowly strangles D&D and destroys the cultural movement that has built up around it.
@@silvergreylion . . . . Did you not see mtg 30th? They royally pissed off the entire mtg community with mtg 30th to the extent that they sold roughly 10% of the product they made for it. Check out alpha investments for more in-depth knowledge about it but Wotc has been slowly murdering mtg for the last few years with card quality, overprinting and mass release of new content. They’ve upped the release of new sets by roughly 100-150%, plus the crazy power creep of new cards. They are financially destroying competitive standard players who now need to completely rebuild a new deck every few months, spending hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. I’m not sure on the exact rulings as I only play commander, but I think standard can only use the last 2(?) sets which used to be 6-8 months to the 2-3 months it is now. We get spoilers for new sets before the current set is even out.
Time to jump the ship chaps - we'll make our own OGL with Blackjack and H...
Hot wings?
That's what you were gonna say right?
Honking noses
This whole thing has me accelerating the development of our own ttrpg game and mechanics.
As someone who works with several talented freelance artists I can tell you that several of those artists are already losing work as creators (companies large and small) are suspending and/or cancelling projects until this shakes out. It's hurting a lot of people, many of whom were already financially vulnerable.
My concern though is that the market is going to be absolutely flooded with hundreds of independent systems, and while many I'm sure are amazing, there will be too many for consumers to pick from.
@@JasonHauser125 i think you're right in that there will be many new games and mechanics to choose from. It definitely won't be easy on consumers or creators
Man, being a lawyer sounds so dull and lifeless when you have a ton of paperwork you do and stare at for hours on end.
Rip clown nose. It will be missed. It just completes the look so much.
You know what they're gonna do.. They're gonna come out and say "We listened to you and instead of the 1.1 as it was leaeked it'll be ever so slightly better than that!" and everyone will applaude them for thier listeing to the people! when in actuality if this is'nt what they were doing n the first place they'd have already at the very least made a statement. This is an ancoring ploy in al its glory.
Well no, because we already know that the leaked version has been signed by some people and contracts were sent out with it - so there's an easy way to prove their claims false.
Also it wouldn't fix the issue of canceling the old OGL or making future changes to the new one. No matter how good the terms are, if they are able to alter them at any moment - it's enough for most creators to fight or more likely flight.
Yep, Influencers need to be preparing the community for this.
I've been thinking of expanding my channel to include the lore of lesser-known RPG's for awhile now. Might be time to expand I think if only make more people aware there are other RPGs with unique mechanics and lore.
I was prepping to launch a channel covering lesser known and older D&D products like the Forgotten Realms supplements from 2e and modules like Day of Al' Ak-Bar. Three vids in the hold. Now, I don't want to even say the word D&D out loud. Individual GURPS products are desperate for attention so I may go there.
+
My understanding is that the OGL was a way to quell lawsuits from other companies over game mechanics, since their ownership of game mechanics is on amazingly shakey legal grounds. It smells like they have decided this is a good time to hit the courts with their incredibly poor ip arguments.
The only thing you missed is the WoTC FAQ: it's not just the creator who said it was designed not to be revokes, their official FAQ said it too.
Personally, I think WOTC will have a tough time in court given that industry leaders helped them develop it and they've profitted considerably from it in terms of popularity and market share.
I own way more content than I could go through in a lifetime and I love making worlds for my players using the books I have. Looks like Papa Hasbro just saved me a lot of money and I'll just use what I have. Thanks Papa.
Maybe it's the lack of sleep today, but - despite knowing it was coming - I still laughed for 30 seconds straight after it cut to the clown costume.
I do believe this is the first time I've ever seen a lawyer in a clown suit. I become more of a loyal viewer with every video. 😁
I completely disagree with your assessment that most small 3rd party publishers will be intimidated by Wizards!! There is no way in hell anyone with 3+ of INT would sign such a license.... I predict the fall of D&D/Wizards if they release this license as is!!
I think every lawyer should have to wear a clown costume when doing lawyer stuff.
agreed
I always get my Legal advice by a Clown, so it must be accurate and real... 🤔🤔
where else could you get it?
@@dungeonsanddiscourse Love ❤❤
I'm starting to suspect that capitalism might actually be bad
Corporatism*
This is the America we vote for every 2 and 4 years: neither "D" nor "R" give a shit about anyone making less than a million dollars a year (and probably not even that little!). All private fortunes represent a public threat.
Behind every great fortune their lies a great crime -(can't remember author)
It needs an overhaul. This would be worse under Communism. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
@@RoboVenturer "NoT rEaL cApItAlIsm!"
As Ian Runkle (Roll of Law / Runkle of the Bailey) mentioned (and pardon my paraphrasing), this is not an accident. WotC knows full well that agreeing to this puts the life of your product and in many cases your company in their hands. With how thin profit margins are for 3rd party D&D content (with almost certainty less than 20%), EVEN IF everything is followed as amicably and in as much good faith as possible under the OGL, you will start to lose money if you make over 750k in revenue - with every unit sold after crossing that threshold. EVEN IF you go and want to negotiate a deal, which this doc explicitly pushes you towards - because, again, the product won't survive under the OGL - WotC holds ALL the power. And, considering you gave them IRS audit level access to your financials with the tier below (50k-750k in gross revenue), they know exactly how tight they have to put the screws on to make sure you as a potential competitor will wither and die on the vine.
I am 53. I started playing Basic D&D (pale blue book) when I was but a lad. Since then I have ran and/or played AD&D, Battletech, Travellers, GURPS, Champions (HERO), Toon, Runequest, Space Opera, Universe, Star Trek (FASA), Top Secret, Palladium, Boot Hill, World of Darkness, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Vampire: The Masquerade, Car Wars (and GURPS Car Wars), Danger International (HERO), DC Heroes, The Doctor Who Role-playing Game (FASA), Fantasy Heroes (HERO), FUDGE, Judge Dread: The Role-Playing Game (GW), Justice Inc (HERO), Marvel Super Heroes (TSR), Middle-earth Role Playing (MERP), RuneQuest, Space 1889, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness.
I am not particularly worried.
Why is the forest fire getting worse... Why is it Pandemonium now. I just want to collect dice and grid maps T^T
You can, we just gonna play Pathfinder now under the ORC lissence.
Gary Gygax would never have done this to us.
*** New Quest Available ***
An evil organization of Wizards have set up a stronghold on the Coast and have created a weapon that will force us to give up control of our lands. We need a brave group of heros to venture forth to stop them.
Every time she says “creators” I hear “critters.” I love the diversity of the English language.
Same here.
Was talking about this yesterday with some friends and an interesting aspect came up. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was created using the OGL using 3rd edition mechanics as well as some TTRPG supplements also. I wonder if Disney will feel affected by this and get involved in any way.
Here is hoping. I hate Disney but it would be funny to see them slap the shit out of Hasbro
@@braedenmclean5304 "Let them fight."
Likely they would reach a small settlement or agreement. Probably even make a deal on allowing Disney special access for movies or cartoon series. WotC isn’t going to go to war with Disney just due to the team of lawyers representing there. WotC will focus on smaller fish.
@@wreckedgamerqq5001 "WotC is now proud to announce the Disney&D license for D&D merch!
It was not. Would be funny if it were, but it simply wasn't.
It uses the Star Wars d20 RPG (IIRC specifically a slightly modified version of the second of three editions) created by WotC themselves. It has absolutely nothing to do with the OGL. The old contracts obviously still apply for sales of the old games. And AFAIK the remake is to use action combat, which probably has nothing to do with WotC, and if it does, they'll have their own contract, not OGL.
I don't think I want to live in a world where I can't play as a hotdog
Wizards is reading their own exploding runes, but apparently they think if they do it in a room full of competition it's okay.
This is a massive opportunity. It's clear that WotC is determined to kill DnD. This should show other TTRPG companies that if they want legacy, then to use an OGL like the 1.0. Honestly you don't have to use DnD to have a D20 system in TTRPG. While I don't know the specifics, a new or existing company could just break off and pick up where DnD dropped their ball. Then it can just be business as usual for the community and WotC and Hasbro are just left high and dry.
Well, it's the biggest moment in tabletop RPGs since 1997 when original D&D owner TSR went bankrupt. But, yeah, this is pretty big.
But in the Q&A WotC have since struck from the website the creator of the OGL says that we may change the OGL in the future but you can still use an older version of the license. Intent as non revocable. It was intended as a game version of an open source license. It was literally based on the GPL.
I wonder if Hasbro/Wotc will just use the arguement "we need this level of control as this is meant for children and a lack of control is allowing people to create pornographic content using our kids toy. This hurts the brand, ect ect"
Oh, like the Book fo Erotic Fantasy, which was forced to not apply OGL or d20... and still went on with it and was published with just the serial numbers scrapped away? And is still remembered and referenced?
@@KyrieFortune something like that could be argued.
For the record, I don't AGREE with them on doing this stuff. I'm just saying it's possible they would try that, and courts being courts and the public being the public ..it could be an argument that lets them steal a win.
I don't have to support the play to see it coming, is all
It's unfortunate that WOTC has chosen to operate this way. But it feels more like parent company Hasbro may have more to do with this. As WOTC has a higher profit margin than Hasbro its parent company does. It seems that if there's money on that table, either via the online market DLC option DnDbeyond seems to be taking, penny pinching 3rd party developers or by licensing fees. It's more like a move to make stock holders happy, then the community that they are producing these products for.
It’s a total cash grab and that’s all it is, I’d say your right about improving their stock except for the fact that it’s been dropping like a rock, at least it was last I looked a few weeks ago, because of what Wotc is doing with mtg. Major financial institutions have come out and said they’re over printing mtg products and destroying their brand, the players have been saying it for years, and Wotc is like "naw, everything’s great, we plan on increasing our output of mtg products, our customers are just price sensitive that’s all."
This is my opinion. I would rather people focus on Hasbro than WoTC but that may just be nostalgia on my part. I think the old WoTC may be history at this point but maybe one of the last holdouts is the one that leaked the new OGL.
I understand that it would be cost prohibitive for each 3rd party creator to create their own RPG system, but what would prevent a union of third party creators from creating a universal RPG ruleset framework that could be utilized by anyone through a new OGL that could be made irrevocable?
Time and resources.
@@cmmosher8035 I don't think it would take much of either. All you need is a few nerds and a couple of IP lawyers for long enough to reverse engineer the SRD under a new license. I suggest calling it the Really Open Fucking License (ROFL) 1.0. Since the mechanics can't be copyrighted all you have to do is change the wording enough to pass a court challenge. Figure $20-40k and that makes it an easy bar if third party creators fund it collectively. Hell, just ask Matt Mercer to check his couch and he could probably come up with that much. Do it right, and third party folks can republish their existing material under the new license and leave Hasbro to eat a shit sandwich. The part of this 1.1 deal that pisses me off the most is the "you grant WotC an irrevocable, international, sublicensable, royalty free license to everything you have ever created or create in the future" bit. 'm not even a third party creator and I want to burn Hasbro HQ to the ground over that part. Jesus.
@@chrisdegraaff1418 it depends on how big they want to go, obviously the more complex the bigger the commitment.
This is why companies are always depicted as evil in movies. Because they are.
The contract doesnt say its non revokable, but their own faq said its non revokable, and that same faq also says if they make one the community doesnt like, it can always go back to an older liscense, also also the creator of the OGL said it was intended to be non revokable, its going to be very very hard to show that to a court and not come off as a bad actor, which tends to tick off judges.
Wayback machine, making discovery easier for everyone since... I dont know 2000 ish?
Thank you Saul goodmen
It is just after noon where I live, and I have just returned from my friendly local gaming store. I spoke to the owner about this betrayal by Wizards of the Coast. While role-playing has never been a huge part of his business. He was outraged enough that he contacted his distributor and asked for a list of currently available role playing games that are not either Wizards or on the ogl.
The clown costume is perfect for anything to do with the legal system.
About the "perpetual". Someone is going to need a good lawyer and lots of money, but the intention at the time was to make it a permanent irrevocable license. The original writer of license has said this. And this was before the legal system settled on the magic word being "irrevocable" as being the required magic word. So the original intent was to make it irrevocable and they did state it as clearly as they could. But a lawyer fight is needed.
It even states it's intended to be irrivokable in the FAQ's of 1.0a
honestly WoTC probably don't have a leg to stand on but who's going to throw money at lawyers to fight them?
So... I am a business person (MBA, working banking, yadda yadda...)... I am not not a lawyer but I will approach this from both my deep understanding of business and my somewhat informed knowledge of business law. First, FROM A BUSINESS STANDPOINT, OGL 1.0 was a nightmare. The fact that you had so many other companies making money from a product you own and you saw NOTHING of that... was a horrible business decision. The context of course being that if an OGL in some form was not created when it was... DnD would have gone the way of the dodo. They created the OGL to drum up fans and interest in the product... they succeeded.
There was no attempt to eliminate the OGL when 4th edition released. Wizards had lost the rights to much of the content and hence created a new setting. The original OGL was still present and hence Paizo was born. What happened with 4th edition (and why it is the red headed step child of DnD) is that there was no SRD (System Reference Document) and therefore little in the way of 3rd party content could be made for it... because of this... it went and died in a fire because it was not really well managed to begin with but that is whole other story.
Fast forward to... I want to say eight months ago? Probably longer because concepts like One DnD do not appear that quickly... anywho. The ENTIRE concept behind One DnD is that DnD can make more money than it is... (a lot people state that Hasbro is doing this because they claim DnD does not make enough money... that is a fallacy and in being so leads to a massive misunderstanding of this entire thing...). Hasbro (again... let us call out who we need to call out here... Wizards are the subsidiary... they exist SOLELY because people would not buy DnD or any other such products from Hasbro directly. They do not exist as a separate entity... they answer to the leaders of Hasbro... and that is where all of this is coming from...) looked at all of these third party content and supplement creators and rightly so (FROM A BUSINESS STANDPOINT) went... wait a second... why aren't we the one's profiting from this?
So they began to create One DnD with a three pronged goal. One, increase the capacity to monetize the systems and tools needed to utilize the product. Two, adjust the product in and of itself to not just allow for but to require this monetization strategy, three... and most impactful to this entire thing, remove the capacity of third parties to gain monetization from the product. I want to point out that I am using the word 'product' very specifically here in so much the fact that that is all DnD is to Hasbro. It is an item to gain profit. Like most companies, Hasbro does not care about the end user of the product, the only concern is how to make that end user provide more profit from the product.
So... what does this long winded diatribe that probably no one will read actually mean to the contents of the OGL 1.1. Well I am glad you asked that no one at all. OGL 1.1 is exactly (FROM A BUSINESS STANDPOINT) what Hasbro needs to accomplish all three of the goals it has with One DnD. By severely curtailing the capacity of third party designers and creators to make content, they gain near total control over the platform and thus exponentially expand their capacity to monetize while pulling in the monetization capacity of the third parties. Further, by curtailing or eliminating third party content, they remove competition (this... is a big thing which we will talk about in a moment) from being able to gain monetization and on the off chance someone does, it becomes the sole property of Hasbro and nothing can be done it about.
Now... here is where the fun begins and why corporations suck so much. The high and mighty at Hasbro feel that what this (if... this was actually the plan to start with... which... I have my doubts on... more on that in a moment...) will cause is the third parties to go... whelp... I guess my best chances are to find freelance work with Wizards so that I can get at least something from what I am doing. In corporate theory... which is an amusing kind of sophistry all on its own... this basically means that not only do they get control over the money but also the PEOPLE. Which at the end of the day is the goal of any company.
Where this starts to fall down in the business sense of it all (and something I hope that the legal side people recognize as well...) is that you are removing competition. In business... competition sucks BUT is necessary for survival. See... there is this tiny little thing call a monopoly that is REALLY bad for business because it starts having people look at you who you really don't want looking at you. The OGL 1.0 was GOOD for business because it allowed pseudo-competition to be created. Pseudo-competition is a really good thing because it means you are in control of those who should be your opponents. The problem with the OGL 1.0 was that it was written with no controls put into it because frankly the product was dying and anything short of what it was would have failed.
The problem is now Hasbro is coming back and saying... okay... now let us write a document that makes us the controller. Which... this time... from any standpoint not just business from business especially is the same as going we screwed up time to fix it. Had Hasbro slowly over the years tightened the control... MAYBE they could have reached the point they are trying to reach without backlash (it is basically what telecom and airlines have done...). The issue (FROM A BUSINESS STANDPOINT) is not in what they are doing... heck, what they are doing is exactly what a business should do... it in how they are doing it. You cannot just go from open do whatever you want to now being completely under control. What's worse is that they are trying to just shove this in place with little time to react... they are using scar tactics which are HORRIBLE for consumers.
Now... all of this being said... Hasbro does not strike me as the kind of company to do this. Do not get me wrong, they want all the money they can get and they do not care about the end user but... they know the value of publicity and public relations. If precisely what is happening happens and all of your end users throw a fit and refuse pay you... whelp... sucks to be you. What I actually think is happening (and a few other people have pointed it out as well) is a bit of corporate trickery. This 'leak' is... curious. How it happened, who it happened to, when it happened... all of it raises a few flags to me. I do not think the plan was to launch this at all.
I think the plan with this 'leak' was to see how the world would react to the wishlist Hasbro had. Like asking for the moon knowing you will not get it... it allows you to then come back and say 'okay fine... but how about this?" It is why we have gotten precisely nothing from Hasbro themselves. They want to take stock of the damage and figure out the best way of getting SOME of the things they want. I could see them scaling this way back and keeping the reporting of all items, the royalties on money (though, I could see them changing this to Net Profits at a lower threshold) as well as of course, the deauthorization of OGL 1.0. I think the 'we can take your stuff and you can't do squat about it' would fail miserably in any court and they had to know that. The reporting of items however will allow them to create their own things that supercede what that person or entity is creating and simply make their work obsolete which would give them more control over third parties.
The problem is though is that this has become so wide spread now they may be forced to double down on it... which would not be a good result for anyone... even Hasbro themselves. I am hoping someone in Hasbro's power structure has anticipated all of this and will not go that direction...
Yes. This.
Thanks, interesting perspective on the leak being deliberate.
I think, though, that it will be widely seen as an accidental leak, and that the majority with that view will distance themselves from D&D and WotC/Hasbro, as they can now only trust them to be greedy.
Only a Ba in commerce here but it seems to me that Hasbro /WotC really misjudged how much of 5th Eds goodwill came from the creative community and their consumers and this may cause them to take some licks.
That being said, I keep seeing how WotC has become GW but GW seems to have survived.
Hasbro and these other corps need to realise in the real world players are not just assets to squeeze money out of and this continual and increasingly scaled bleeding of cash from them, while clamping down on IP isn't a winning solution. There are so many options out there now I can only see this as a massive loss for Hasboro - people are going to flee far away from this and play other games or use old DnD editions. Or even better make their own games!
Let them burn I say. The real passion and talent for roleplay games always gets sucked out of the sphere when they become too Corp and commercialised. I hate it because I love roleplay games and the boot of commercialism is going to stamp down on it.
You being an actual lawyer and now being an ‚advocat‘ for us gamers is lit
You already had that clown costume handy didn't you?
doesn't everybody?
Obviously, you gotta have a Hasbro executive costume ready for such things.
I guess its open season to see what TTRPG will replace D&D, because there is no such thing as something "too big to fail".
The problem with that logic is that there has been a plethora of systems available for ages. Yet, when D&D falters as a brand you rarely see the rise of a new or existing system into the main stream. Instead you see committed hobby gamers sticking to the editions they're set in or, occasionally, adopting a new system while casual gamers that tie the hobby into the mainstream just walk away entirely balking that it was "just nerd shit anyway". The biggest exception to this was probably the WoD games just before D&D3.0 hit. And a lot of that WoD success had more to do with the notoriety of the associated LARPs than D&Ds place (or lack thereof) in the market at the time.
The fact is, when D&D drunkenly stumbles while doing something stupid, it knocks the whole hobby off balance.
I really love your coverage videos, thank you!
The future will be fun! Many players and creators weren’t around when TSR tightly held the licenses- Hasbro has the Disney lawyers on speed dial- these sharks 🦈 are complete leeches- like the saying goes “there will be blood”
Regardless of what actually gets published... im contemplating just walking away from WOTC products - MTG and DnD for good, for even thinking this was acceptable. I have SRD based content, and spend hundreds every year on MTG. Eff WOTC and Hasbro.
See I get wotc asking for royalties but all the other stuff that has been added is honestly not fair
My doctor said that lump is just my head and I shouldn't worry.
But I want a second opinion because occasionally it talks to me telepathically and it freaks me the f out.
Thank you, Discourse, for your videos. Your in-depth research is appreciated, and so is your utter lack of BS. You've covered all aspects of all of this hoohaw and and you don't sugarcoat. This is dirty. WotC has come into a perfect storm of D&D love and money with Critical Role and Stranger Things and Ginny Di, and all the others who've contributed to the game's massive increase in popularity of late. And now they think they have an MCU.... Not content to just rake in the bucks from happy customers, they gotta pull this shite and not just have their dirty hands in all the pies, but control the recipes and eat them all too, and to hell with their customers... BAH! And so many are just fine to say, well then play something else... or worse, this is just protecting their IP and they're fine to want to make money, and people using their IP SHOULD pay for the privilege.... Me, I LIKE D&D TYVM. Have for MANY years. Lots of good friends and good memories made around a number of D&D tables. Why should I give that up? How do I give WotC a big fat flippin' of the bird, but still play the game I love? It's not about the soulless owner of the brand - but this kind if SHITE needs to be stopped... At the end of the day, WotC "owns" the game, but without US, the GAMERS, what do they have?
I feel as if this was purposely leaked in order to stir people up. Even on their own discord the admins are stating that this could be real or false. No certain answers i feel like they will make a slightly less restrictive ogl and then act as if they were the heroes who saved dnd
At this point I wouldn't put it past WOTC to have leaked a fake to turn around and be like "The real document is nowhere near as bad as that" and it would still completely rip off third parties, just slightly less so everybody accepted it because it isn't as bad as everyone thought.
according to roll for combat (one of the first ones to receive the leak) this was sent out with contracts to creators as a final product so there is a good chance that this was a genuine leak.
Judging by how they handled mtg 30th I highly doubt this was fake . . .
I had to watch the video again because I spent the first watch through trying to figure out what your accent was. (but seriously, thank you for making this)
Remember how well this type of thing worked out for Blizzard with Warcraft 3 Reforged?
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Do you look as someone I'd trust giving legal advice? Yeah, pretty much, why not?
Something they don't understand is that in terms of 3rd party creators using DnD it's that most people spending money on that stuff aren't necessarily fans of dungeons but rather those creators. I watch critical role and Dimension 20 because I'm a fan of the people and the interactions, not always the game itself. This is going to drive DnD and casual fans away
Also, the people most likely to buy stuff are also the people most likely to turn their backs on WotC: the Dungeon Masters. A player will even only need a Player's Handbook, but the DM needs that, the DM guide, the Monster Manual, whatever campaign book they might be running, possibly Tasha (especially with making up new races), Xanathar or Volo... and they can decide to just stop playing or switch to another game or system. And once you get into DMing you WILL start exploring different mechanics and systems, it is a natural development
... and D&D is currently suffering from a chronic lack of DMs. Players actually cannot start a game, which means they will likely not play, thus not access to D&D Beyond, and will even more likely to migrate or stop buying merch.
There apparently used to be an FAQ about the OGL on WotC's website. It said specifically that if WotC were to change the license in a way you didn't agree with you would be able to keep using the old license no matter what. It could be argued that many people who used the OGL used it under that advice.
At this point, they could do a whole ass 180 and it wouldn’t matter. Everyone knows they wanted to take it all. The big ones I can guarantee are already working on new entirely D&D free systems
Rekieta Law
Roll For Law
@@luciussvartwulf6630 I mean Nick and Ian are friends so why not both.
D&D doesn't have a product without the 3rd party creatives. Good luck and bon voyage.
WotC is potentially setting themselves up for a nasty lawsuit as a lot of these companies would have the ability to claim material damage from a one sided agreement change, especially if they lose in court. It would be pretty lovely to see Hasbro take one up the ass for trying to go full blown monopoly.
Ayo, you definitely read my comments, 100%, and guess what, Open Genius License, keep killing it, woman!
I do!! :D
@@dungeonsanddiscourse You wanna try something crazy? Grab a bottle of Laphroaig, and then reframe the OGL as a perverse incentive to mitigate competition through the _appearance_ of ease and safety, and the _implication_ of danger. Then, think about how little of a game you can actually copyright in North America or Europe. Remember how _easy_ it was for TSR to create halflings from Hobbits after being sued by the Tolkien estate, and how little a difference actually makes to your mind.
Cask strength.
I love the content your putting out on this topic but I would also love to see LegalEagle do an episode on OGL 1.1. I'm curious as his look on it as less of a gaming channel and more of a legal analyses channel.
I would trust Legal Eagles analysis of a bowl of soup much less law, better go and watch someone who knows what they are talking about.
Ian Runkle or Nick Rikeita are both gamers and UA-cam lawyers, Ian already did a breakdown on Roll for law.
The other day you said your costumes weren't very good. I think your JOKER cosplay is fantastic. Keep up the good work.
everything burns!
I was expecting you to end with "Wait until they get a look at me!"
I think the specification that users can choose which license to use is the biggest element. Wizards may attempt to wiggle around the word "authorized" and whether they can de-authorize a license, but the existence of that clause indicated clearly that the original intent was to allow old versions to continue to be used. If they *intended* to just de-authorize older versions when making a new version with more favorable terms, they would simply have left that bit out entirely. The only argument they could make for intending to de-authorize would be to admit that they had included the clause to deceive the other party, and as far as I have heard, judges *really* do not like it when you include deceptive clauses in a contract, as it immediately shows bad faith.
Call of Discourse: Modern Lawfare.
D&D isn't a very good rpg. A great opportunity for people to try something else.
That's not wrong but it is a little short sighted
True to a degree, but D&D IS the definition of a role playing games to most of the public. Good luck finding Zweihänder at your friendly chain bookstore. Even Pathfinder might fall to the new OGL (IANAL).
I switched to OSE and The Fantasy Trip. Been having a really good time!
I even got into the free war gaming game "Grimdark future" by One Page Rules
Our tables for OSE at our LGS are PACKED. 6 players per table. Sometimes more.
@@PatGilliland this is when the old guard step up and say "excuse me, but have you heard of World of Darkness, RIFTS, Besm, Kobolds Ate My Babies, Hackmaster, Runequest, Risus, Exalted, Nobilis, Car Wars, FATAL, SLA Industries, and any other combination or random letters and words that happens to actually be an RPG.
@@testtest648 I don't know Fantasy Trip but OSE is an OGL game