The History of D&D Hasbro Refused to Learn From
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- Опубліковано 4 лип 2023
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"The History of D&D Hasbro Refused to Learn From" is a riveting exploration of the legal battles that have influenced the evolution of Dungeons & Dragons and the entire RPG industry. We will take you on a time-traveling journey through the origins of D&D, the rise of third-party publishers, the licensing agreements, and the subsequent lawsuits that changed the game's trajectory. Discover how legal disputes and fan discontent have shaped the game we know and love today, and get a glimpse into the future of this iconic tabletop RPG. Prepare for an epic dive into the decades-long drama of D&D's legal and fan challenges!
Sources and additional reading:
*Game Wizards, by Jon Peterson: a.co/d/i2cxXJ6
*Designers & Dragons, The 70s, by Shannon Appelcline: bit.ly/EvilhatDnD
*Slaying the Dragon, by Ben Riggs: a.co/d/4limcn9
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Bruh
You guys are incredible 🎉🎉🎉🎉❤❤❤❤❤
I am still mad with about the Orc Video.😠
Saludos desde cento america 😑
Already subscribed to Nebula but FYI please feel free to make longer videos like this. I'd love to see what you guys do with the extra time
13:52 I know what you did you put a futurama skit just because of there putting a new season out starting July 24 and also that was not expected for a dnd history lesson
You gotta understand: a company as big as hasbro sees community preception as a currency they can spend, not as a goal
Rather ironically, as a game mechanic
literally once you get to certain point higher ups dont count victories with money. they count points based on diversity and media attention.
Too true, and the corollary to that understanding is how each of us can have an impact, individually and collectively :- it’s all about ensuring they know they’ve devalued their currency too much.
Big lie. GamesWorkShop is and has been far more toxic than Hasbro. That company has a gag order on Pakistan and several other countries. That's just stupid.
@@TheHorzabora Hit them with debuffs that punish actions you don't want them to take, like free press, skeptical consumers and fair competition.
"If you want to control you enemy's behavior, create a situation he must respond to."
So, the lesson here is: do not let the suits run your game.
Why I agree, it more complex than that.
Or probably more specifically try to avoid hiring suits that don't understand the product or the market the product is made for.... Because there is a good chance that they will ruin your game without even realizing what went wrong....
and u never win by going woke
No, the lesson is don't trust the internet! Shiny zubat hadn't been released in 2016!
Heck, if memory serves, the first shiny (Magikarp during the Water Festival) only got released in Q1 2017
That is exactly why Gygax set up original TSR the way he did - he did not want non-gamers deciding the course of the game or the company
Unfortunately, Gygax ultimately did just as bad a job of running TSR as the suits did.
A reminder that D&D is not the only table top RPG out there. If you want fewer rules, or more rules, or less combat, or all da combat, or you want to play in space or be a demigod there is an RPG out there for you.
YES! There's so many RPG's out there to choose from now. With tons of amazing systems to try out. We always recommend looking around and playing what you love.
@@extracredits and considering this is the extra credits channel were game design is taught, one could also go and make their own TTRPG :D
am running one since about 15 years and oh boy did it change over the years xD
@@extracredits I'd actually love to see another video like this which compares D&D and Pathfinder through the ages, but through the lens of game design and how they've bounced off each other!
Little biased, but I think a massive takeaway is how the latter tends to do it well- poaching systems like inspiration and simplified maths- while the latter is actively failing. Best example for this is how in the OneD&D playtests, they've taken Pathfinder's magic Tradition system, but without the legwork to make it... work. They don't have a 'focus spell' equivalent, so very specialised spells like Paladin's smites were given to ALL Divine casters, and they cut out Occult spells... meaning originally Bards were said to be Arcane casters, except no, they can't use a whole half of the Arcane spell schools, except no, they're manually given healing spells... when they could've just been made 'Occult'. Now iirc they can pick from ANY Tradition, which is still a clumsy solution to a problem that was already solved in the game they took the idea from!
@@tnttiger3079 Pathfinder has just always been better from a world building perspective. Systems are built holistically and ideas shared between creators, unlike D&D where creators are actively punished for sharing among themselves, and are encouraged to work alone and release alone to get full credit and avoid rules and content getting sniped away from them. And since pathfinder uses more in house designers instead of contract designers, they just have that much more intimate an understanding of the world and lore in general.
Absolutely! With the lack of RPG community in my country and area about 10 years ago, I had to be the one who DM it while at the same time never actually play TTRPG. Thus, picking a very newbie friendly RPG rules was important at that point both for me and the players. Thankfully there are lots of RPG to choose.
Not holding my breath given Hasbro's *siccing the pinkertons* on an MTG fan.
Odd of the Pinkertons to attack a fan of a crazy lady from Georgia...oh, you mean the card game when you bring up MTG, I'm just think of the crazy bitch who thought the California wildfires were caused by Jewish Space Lasers
Those that fail there knowledge history check are doomed to repeat it
Literal Victorian robber baron tactics.
@@DD8842 *their, but yes.
Ha, ha. I never got into Magic. At first I thought you were talking about Marge Taylor Green but looked it up to see I was gratefully wrong.
I think that WotC repeatedly screwing their creators over is a symptom of perpetual growth. They want to grow infinitely, and will sacrifice everything to get there. Only thing that pulls them back is hurting the profits.
Yep. Capitalism requires that most enticing of fictions: perpetual growth. It's not possible. But you try telling that to a capitalist. Especially one who is legally obligated to do everything in their power to try to grow their business for the benefit of shareholders. (Because the US is a country fully given over to monied interests, who can lobby the creation of laws that MAKE people give them money).
Every time WotC is faced with the situation where growth slows down, they want and _need_ to find ways to squeeze blood from a stone. Despite that they're making loads of money, it's not ALL the money, and always more of it each fiscal quarter. So, repeatedly, they look at the smaller companies and creators making comparatively modest sums _alongside_ WotC - effectively their unofficial co-partners - and see only new sources of revenue that need to be "freed up".
Like cancerous cells seeing surrounding tissues as competition, despite the greater body being necessary to keep both itself and the cancer alive, WotC will attempt to cannibalize its own industry. All to make just a _bit_ more money.
Frankly it happens in many industries as the financial side of the business, clashes with & does not understand, the creative side of the business. As more money gets raked in, it's not uncommon for the financial side to pressure the creative side of the business into losing the company's best talent, as most business models treat human capital as entirely & easily replaceable. That thinking ends up in a company turning it's assets into competitors, although many have been trying to use "non competition" clauses to prevent this which can result in them being LESS attractive to the new talent they want to replace older employees who have left.
A lot of suits think that the line can go up forever, but it's gotta plateau at some point.
@@Hauntaku pretty much dead on. Line can't only go up but the absurdly wealthy refuse to believe that. Kinda like how they've forgotten physics works on everyone. A bit of a ... sub-par mentality... *badumtiss*
Right on ✊✊✊✊! Thank you.
TSR was also often called "They Sue Regularly" in the late '80s and '90s.
So Hasbro is keeping the legacy alive then =p
There is a table in a long forgotten release of "Murphy's Rules" by SJG, titled something like "Table Left Unnamed At The Insistence of Our Lawyers" in which "They Sue Regularly" is a result.
DIdnt know that, but 2nd ed was very cool!
Ça change, ça même chose
I remember that! It made me afraid to write novels which I then aspired to.
An interesting side note is that the reason D&D has editions at all was to avoid paying royalties. AD&D was made to cut out Dave Arneson as he only had royalties for D&D, AD&D 2e was made a separate edition so that Gygax wasn't due royalties.
amazing how "well" that worked out for him, eh?
@@setojurai never go public with your company, it turns it into cancer
Also not true. ADnD was in the works while Arneson was employed and he actually worked on the project. However, he was always behind and couldn't type worth a crap so Gygax always had to redo his work. When Dave got caught using the company car and relaxing at home, he was fired. Gygax successfully argued that because nothing he submitted made it to print, he gets no credit.
2e was mostly Gygax, though he wasn't part of the editing and actual writing. He was already working on 2e at the time he left the company. Gygax had been answering rules questions in the official magazine which was leading to a lot of errata and Gygax felt a 2e was needed, but at the time, he had stepped away from the writing room to focus on the media side of the house. TSR wanted to make a new edition that included these rules from the magazine and cleaned-up the bloat in the first edition and unearthed arcana. My copy of ADnD 2e credits Gary Gygax.
@@jaysw9585 None of that is true.
@@Welverin Some of it is at least. I cannot speak to the actual characterization of Gygax or Arneson but the 2E PHB & DMG both credit Gygax with the words: "This is a derivative work based on the original ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS *Players Handbook* and *Dungeon Masters Guide* by Gary Gygax and *Unearthed Arcana* and other materials by Gary Gygax and others." It is right there on the credits page.
Something that is going to be very interesting to see is how ORC turns out. For those not in the know, after the last OGL debacle, Paizo announced they were going to work with a number of smaller publishers to make their own version of the open games license which would allow them to publish a rule system without having to worry about when the next time Hasbro was feeling litigious. This is not something that has been released yet, but a directly competing open rules system that includes publisher protections against future legal action has the potential to cause some major disruption with D&D's current market if it lives up to the promises.
They actually have finished it in the last week or so
Yesssssss. Competition and being better is the only way these big wigs learn.
Considering Hasbro is STILL issuing C&D despite changing the licence says they will likely never stop trying to enforce their control completely, this is on top of them not removing the right to revoke or change the licence in future as well. ORC is very clear it is an infinite agreement.
AFAIK, the ORC has some issues regarding it's implications for small folk trying to make money on suplements, so it's not perfect either.
the ORC isnt just for one system, its more of a public domain for any rpg content anyone wants to publish under it.
Awesome episode.
To add to Lorraine Williams' mess-ups there was also her refusal to let workers playtest stuff and her habit of focusing on properties that her family owned (and therefore could personally make more money off) rather than what the players wanted.
What the... why would you _not_ want your people to playtest stuff? Don't most people hire people _specifically_ to do that?
@@generalcatkaa5864 because it was "playing games on company time"
@@generalcatkaa5864 She had no idea how games and game publishing actually worked. She was used to publishing novels and assumed games were the same and that employees playing games were employees not writing more content.
@@generalcatkaa5864 For the same reason you'd send your lawyers after your own fans: because you're more focused on money and control than in maintaining a consistent customer base.
CEOs and executives are not, as a rule, either informed or good at their jobs. As the Muskrat who just bought the bird app proved, you can own a business and have no idea how it works, nor what will keep people using it.
She was also a religious fundamentalist, which didn't help at all.
D&D was has been popular primarily due to name name recognition. The worst thing they can do is to give people a reason to try other systems.
Too late there, my group's already running Pathfinder. Blue Rose, and Mutants and Masterminds. They're talking about going back to D&D but only using books we already own for ethical reasons. Before now two of our members weren't even willing to do that.
@@amberkat8147 I went back to AD&D 1st edition instead, Drivethrough RPG sells really nice reprints. But we also plays Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green, Infinity's edge (a really cool indie game, cheap and highly recommended by me) and a bunch of other games.
Nothing wrong with D&D but there are a lot of really good RPGs out there. We used to play a lot of Pathfinder but it is a bit too item focused for my taste.
People forget the huge boost the system got for being in the somewhat successful movie E.T. Its been in th zeitgeist ever since.
@@elLooto I was a kid at the time and don't particularly remember that it boosted D&D but it is certainly possible.
Generally in the 80s it was either considered extremely nerdy or evil, at least until the late 80s when it started to get a better reputation (mostly because computer gaming and arcade games took over as the evil thing, and of course metal and rap).
D&D really became more common in the 90s, I remember people considering us weird in the mid 80s for playing.
Great job. I have a cousin who works for Paizo, and knowing his story emphasizes how important the development of the TTRPG community is for its long-term health and profitability. He started out writing his own short campaigns and getting them published in D&D magazines back in the 80s. That low bar to getting started is what helped him develop his writing skills over time. I'm betting there are a lot of stories in the industry of similar people who started out as kids just writing their own stuff and learning from the feedback.
I think most of Hasbro's community leaning reactions are directly due to the Pathfinder gaming licence, that offers infinite protections to creators and fans. Hasbro tried to sue them into not supporting the community, and when that was predictably thrown out, they were forced to once again embrace the community to regain market share... but they had no idea what they actually had and what was valuable from an IP perspective (Strahd) and what was "junk" items they could safely throw at the community without losing potential profits (Not actual profits, just the possibility that they MIGHT profit).
remember how these people said orcs are racist?
good times.
@@Saithene Paizo is trying to remove racist stereotyping from ancestries it seems... at least to some degree.
Orcs do have racist undertones in a lot of media, as "evil savage brute" stereotype is associated with how g3n0cidal colonialists saw native populations.
@@Saithene I remember how they applied nuance to a complex situation *some* people like to pretend is simple, and then simple people lost their minds and thought they were saying orcs are racist.
Is that what you're referring to?
The moment you start seeing your customers as criminals and licensees as liabilities, is the moment your customers look for your competitors, and your licensees will become the competitors they buy from. Thus goeth the Aesop.
Yeah, at best you loses a lot of talent that makes their own games instead.
Don't forget about the first legal dust up for TSR, when Gary Gygax created Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and refused to pay royalties to Dave Arneson, so Dave sued and won. Gary refused to compromise, and TSR created the Moldvey Box set to replace the Holmes Box set, thus needing to maintain material for Dungeons and Dragons as well as Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.
That wasn't even the first. They'd both been on the receiving end of their publishers refusing to pay royalties for their wargame rules. There's a lot of that crap in the publishing world. Hell, even Disney and his other animators were screwed out of their early cartoons, which led to the formation of the Disney Animation Studios in the first place.
@@watchm4ker (Laughs in streaming services removing their own content to avoid paying residuals to actors and crew)
@@TorIverWilhelmsen That's more multifaceted in how stupid that is, but yes. Hasn't stopped.
@@watchm4ker That is on top of using LOTR lore and being forced to change names and details to avoid copyright from Tolkien. Apparently both were really pissed they couldn't just use Tolkien's world and characters freely.
Although, the Moldvay box set was a gem in its own right. Arguably the best version of pre-3rd edition D&D
was waiting to see the Crit Role crew on the Extra Credits art style from the start of the video, and it absolutely paid off, they look adorable
It wouldn't be a DnD episode without them!
Now CR is selling its own RPG system, with blackjack and hookers
Spoilers, I haven't even got to that part yet, also which party are they cosplaying as, Vox Machina, Mighty Nein, or Bell's Hells?
I only wish that Sam was wearing the shirt with Matt's face on it lol
Where is this part?
Great deep dive into the glorious history. Having lived through a lot of this, and witnessing the successful OGL backlash firsthand, it was great to see this put together and given context. Good job! :)
Thank you!!! Eddy Webb did a great job on the details in this script! We got a huge passion for DnD over here and hope to do more with it.
I shall have to agree! I was the fodder of the OGL slapdash kerfuffle. I was a teen writing campaigns, in Australia, and low and behold a C&D letter arrived. Sucks that you can't get to America in less than 18 hours. For defending a product that made pocketbook money, plus air flight and accomodations.
@@Hattrick00 I am glad that the winds have turned again, and we are free once more to create campaigns and classes and spells and all the other fun content that drives the hobby forward.
Most of what is in the rulebooks today started out as player and DM created systems, and entered into the official rules through Dragon magazine and many other fan forums. Homebrew powers D&D, and should always be legal to create :)
@@Hrafnskald Most publishers I know are still preferring the new Pathfinder licence over the new D&D one simply because the D&D one has a clause in it still that they reserve the right to revoke at any time and sue for violations after the fact. They really haven't learned their lesson, and pathfinders is so clear in its language that it is infinite and unbreakable even by any potential future holders. Confidence is so much higher. And it doesn't help their legal team didn't get the updated memo and was still C&Ding small time publishers on print and plays AFTER the new OGL came out, not sure if these were just delayed lawsuits from the previous OGL or a mistake interpreting their new one, but it certainly shakes people who can't afford to go to court.
Honestly the first Dungeons and Dragons movie is worth it just for Jeremy Irons knowing EXACTLY what kind of a movie he was in, and clearly having a ball hamming it up.
[Makes agreeing Profion noises]
A role he took to pay to restore the castle he had just bought. That man lives large on and off screen.
I bought a copy of the first two, but forgot I had them. Found it in the public library, but the disc was in such bad shape, it was unwatchable. Just rediscovered my copy (still in shrink wrap) a few weeks ago. Once I get out of the hospital, that's one of the movies I plan to watch. Forgot Jeremy was in there.
The best DnD movie is Dragon Age Seeker of the dawn. Not DnD branded but still a great DnD movie. It is like Flirefly+Serenity is the bes Han Solo TV show.
I'll check it out. I really love stuff where one actor is acknowledging what film they're in. Alan Rickman in Robin Hood, Minnie Driver in Phantom of the Opera, Raul Julia in Street Fighter, etc.
Just like Games Workshop - There's a Product team that's invested in making something good that people want to play, and a Corporate team that's invested in using the product to make as much money as possible. Unfortunately, people only ever hear from Marketing and Legal - which are part of the Corporate side - and every time they make a decision without asking the Product team how it's likely to be received by players, it never ends well.
Supporting the community has always been more important to growing a game than Enforcing the Brand, but one of those looks like it would hoard more money on paper, so it's always where the revolving door of "innovative" marketeers and lawyers try to steer the company. The constant cycle of clamping down and opening up isn't good for anyone - it burns faiths, breeds resentment, and has the domino effect of killing off long running fan content - no I won't let TTS go! - which will get more people angry and lose them more interest and engagement.
This is why the ORC initiative is so nice, it not only gives confidence to the fans, but also limits the company and forces them to always keep the community in mind. Hopefully Paizo keeps the community and game focused culture alive for a long time and doesn't succumb to lawyers and accountants first, last, and only.
Nice one. I was in the thick of the late 1980's battles as a GM and writer for the RPGA. Shell shock was the best description for most convention players.
A note I think is skipped over is that D&D had a very organic, grass-roots origin. Important concepts like the Ranger class were initially designed by fans, and then made official. Much of the difference between AD&D and it's predecessors was homebrew and houserules from the fans that were then canonised into a finally 'complete' core game.
The product, therefore, that TSR fought 3pps over was by and large a product *of* those 3pps.
It'd be like if a video game, say Minecraft, released in Beta, looked at the most popular mods, and then included them in the base game without asking the mod authors... which is kinda fine, if they don't then go and ban those mod authors from releasing anything after that!`
makes sense. gary gygax was more on moorcock's side than on tolkien's. it was fans like arneson who put all those balrogs in blackmoor
You know what you're describing with Minecraft is exactly what happened with Minecraft, minus the banning mods part (though I suppose bedrock edition doesn't allow mods but hey there's still Java).
There's really no amount of learning from past mistakes that can make up for summoning the Pinkertons to traumatize a family over a two-week-early, accidental leak. Crossing that red line ended my relationship with Hasbro and WotC, full-stop.
Ditto!!!
Yup 😁
This is probably one of the most fun episodes I can recall. Great job!
Thank you!
@@extracredits Thank YOU! YOU did all the work! I just had the pleasure of enjoying it, easy peasy :D
(I realize this comment might not come across as friendly as I intend. No harm intended!)
Sending this to my dnd party. We're all still super salty about that whole mess at the beginning of the year but honestly because of that I got to play more ttrpgs than ever before. Shout-out to Wanderhome my one true love and therapist
Companies are used to being able to pull the wool over their consumers eyes, downgrade the product in the name of greater profit, and still have enough of a casual audience that the increased revenue will make up for the more "tuned in" fans that they lost. You see it all the time in other industries like video games and streaming platforms.
The problem for them is that in TTRPGs, the games tend to, more often than not, revolve around at least one "tuned in" person in every group to set the game up for the more casual fans. It's that person who buys the books, hosts the games, and acts as a gateway for other people to get into the hobby: it's the DM. If Hasbro turns off their DMs who then move onto different systems then guess what: They're likely to just take the whole group with them.
And that's exactly what happened with me.
Hasbro really is pushing for profits at consumer expense to an untenable level with both D&D and Magic.
If you were the there for the leaks, and their shareholder all-call, the numbers they are trying to attain are practically impossible.
I have this secret theory that Mark Rosewater has figured out how to clone himself, and slowly been replacing staff at WotC with more of himself ever since. So by now it's just Maro's wandering around, bumping into each other and laughing at their own jokes.
@@freelancerthe2561WotC is about 33% of profit for Hasbro.
@danielgehring7437 thanks, now I'm gonna be thinking about that worst case scenario for the rest of the day.
@@freelancerthe2561 Trouble is they see every publisher as being able to (Potentially) sell to 100% of the fan base immediately, and on top of that pull in an extra 10-20% more fans per publisher (Which gets to insane numbers very quickly). They see this as profits already realized and budget accordingly as per standard investor driven corporations do nowadays.
As someone who learned the game from the old box sets and kept playing, this was remarkably concise and informative... even clearing up a few things I didn't know about. Really amazing job... and I also learned I'm still a little salty about losing Dragon Magazine...
Before the big OGL debacle, I used to talk my friends' ears off about the history of the OGL for fun, none of us ever expecting that background to come in handy. But that's all right, by the time the OGL meltdown hit, we had all switched to PF2e anyways. Long live the ORC License!
Coincidentally, Pathfinder 2nd edition is looking pretty fire.
It's the best TTRPG system I've played. I can't imagine going back to D&D!
No one cares about Pathfinder after the OGL. Pathfinder is always a 2nd option in case DnD screws up.
@@jspsj0 I wouldn't say "noone cares" given Paizo experienced a product shortage, communities online experienced a surge of people for whom the osr debacle was the straw that broke the camel's back and so on.
@@jspsj0 I'd say its always consistently good but DnD claws back because of the brand name/marketing and the developers get their heads out of their asses... only to do it again the next edition.
DnD was always babies first RPG. You either grow out of it and find much better systems and communities or you sink with it. This is the time to learn how to swim.
Played 2e a few times and still prefer 1E since I don't wish to pay for a new edition and certain changes sucked.
I like fourth edition. I finished my first ever D&D campaign in fourth edition with a group of my close friends. Most everyone in that same group has since declared their love of other editions, but whenever I suggest that I move my current campaign to a new edition or system, I get a lot of hand wringing and trepidation. It just goes to show that the best edition of any version or offshoot of D&D is the one you can get your friends to play together.
You aren't wrong.
I'll happily play nearly any edition (though I'd pick Pathfinder over other 3.x stuff).
But running the game? The only one I'd actually run is 4e.
It's just so much simpler to handle the mechanics and generate fights that are tough without accidentally killing the entire party.
YMMV of course.
I always like to say D&D evolved until 5th: 2e fixed 1e; 3e fixed 2e, and 4e fixed 3e. And then WotC looked at the drama 4e stirred up, came to the wrong (IMO) conclusions, and made 5e a "greatest hits" edition rather than continuing the evolution. You can't argue with success, but 4e was the last edition I actually loved--5e is just what I play because everyone else does. :p
@@ematuskey 5E seems to be driving people towards Pathfinder ironically. They play 5E, love it, and want more of it, see everything is pay-walled so options are fairly limited without a lot of money. But they want more crunch, more content, more world, so they look for 3E DND, and find it is vanished from the world... but there is a 3.5, and everyone says it is more refined and the best version of the 3.0 system, and its all online, and it is massive, and it has a vocal community, and resources are everywhere and still supported and relatively cheap.
2E has only exacerbated this, especially with Hasbro basically admitting it is a superior simplified game system to the 5E system and trying (and failing) to steal from it, thus generating even more interest in it.
4e was a phenomenal 5 on 5 magical/fantasy back-alley knife fight simulator. It had massive issues in skill challenges where you rolled a dozen times for a binary result. 4e has great game design from the combat perspective. I'd go as far as to say clearly the best of all the editions. It just didn't have much in the way of support for exploration or social situations. You have con primary classes and only one con skill.
@@fugitiveunknown7806 back circa 2009 my HS D&D group attempted to play the starter 4th edition adventure. DM and us were using the same physical dice and the DM was rolling openly. He also forgot we apparently weren't supposed to get xp. IDK what happened to our luck but over 2 sessions are party got repeatedly TPK'd by the party only being able to roll "4" on any dice while the DM was maxing out his rolls. End of the second session party was 3rd level in a 1st level area and still getting TPK'd. And that's why I don't play 4e besides the fact it's basically an MMO in paper form with clearly solved builds due to lack of content.
In college, my friend group was too poor to buy any of the D&D books so we just bought a pack of dice and wrote the rules as we went along. It was slow going at times, but I highly recommend everyone (who's interested in TTRPGs) to do it once, since it really does change your perspective on how beholden you are to the creators of these pre-made systems.
I realize that there wasn't really time to go into what happened with Dave on the initial rights battle with Gygax, but if you want a microcosm that predicted this entire cycle, then that story's worth getting into. Also it reminds you to keep the shine off of Gygax's name, because dear lord, what a putz.
He was a great editor and creative director. But he should NEVER have been put in charge of a company.
Arneson had the great idea but couldn’t make publishable rules because he liked doing things ad hoc. Gary had the ability to codify the rules so took most of the credit.
its a bit weird cause i got the impression that they were gonna come back to the Dave thing later on and than they just didn't.
my biggest hope with the new OGL was the possibility of it pushing people to create an amazing open source TTRPG system. there were already some names in the industry talking about it.
There was already an amazing open source TTRPG. In fact there have been several over the years, such as Fudge, dating back to at least the era of D&D 2E. The problem has always been that because consumer markets follow a Zipf distribution, games that are unlike D&D in terms of mechanics and games that don't use trade dress of a known brand tend to go unnoticed or far less noticed than otherwise.
As a good case study the WEG D6 system was held up as a good simple cross-genre viable system while WEG still held the Star Wars RPG license. People used the system as a simple way to get all sorts of homebrew games and various implementations of franchises that didn't have any official TTRPG support to the table in the '90s and early '00s. Then they lost the Star Wars license to Hasbro during the height of the D20 boom, and the system hardly gets a mention let alone significant use since then.
@@chiblast100x never said they don't exist, the point is that with a lot of creators moving away from D&D because of the new OGL, we could see a community created system that is adopted by many different creators. with internet and streaming services this new system could have a lot more luck with being spread out than older systems in the 90's
@@danilooliveira6580 You see this with the ORC license which is, essentially, the new OGL for non D&D games, a lot of the 'heavy hitters' outside of D&D have signed up to it, Paizo pioneered the push for it but companies like Chaosium (Call of Cthulhu) also agreed to it. Thanks to the way WotC acted, the industry has decided that using the OGL is too much of a risk and created their own.
Random fun fact: Did you know that D&D does not carry the 'worlds greatest Roleplaying game' tagling in Japan, over there Sword World, a homegrown fantasy TTRPG outsells it by quite a wide margin. The biggest western TTRPG in Japan is in fact Call of Cthulhu. This is the case in Germany where, up until very recently, The Dark Eye (Das Schwarze Auge) outsold D&D and in Brazil Tormenta (another homegrown TTRPG) outperforms D&D due to the fact that WotC/Hasbro care very little for the South American market and take a metric age to translate stuff for release there, if they bother at all.
I find it unlikely that there will ever be large agreement on how that should look. Personally I think, you need three types of books: rule books, background books and adventure/campaign books. Ideally those should be interchangable but usually they are not.
@@kaltaron1284 an ideal open source system would be modular, basically just a barebones ruleset that allows you combine different rulesets and mechanics to it, as if adding different modules to tailor the playstyle and setting.
What, you're not gonna mention the wildly jarring inclusion of Buck Rogers RPG's Williams had TSR made? You know, the property she *personally* owned the rights to and charged an exorbitant amount of money to TSR to license?
That's a P. Diddy move right there.
I always wondered why they sent hard on Buck Rodgers of all things at the time.
15:10 The fact that game mechanics aren't under copyright is of critical importance here. The OGL was never legally necessary, it was a convenience for WotC and the third party publishers.
If that got challenged again in court, I wonder how it would play out. Before, the supreme court sided with a corporation against an independent game developer, making game mechanics non-copyrightable (Milton Bradley essentially copied the Landlord Game and created Monopoly). Now, the big corporation wants to control game mechanics and prevent other companies from using core mechanics that are common across TTRPGs. Seems like the side with the most money usually wins.
@@mborel Yeah, that's a good point. The courts are a machine that turns money into legal precedent, more than half the time. However, there is an inertia against overturning previous decisions, so it could really go either way now that the roles are reversed.
A long time ago I had my own version of Dungeons & Dragons which was fashion-related. I could easily bring it back with some adjustments and it'll obviously be dedicated to the public domain. It was all about creating and selling but also had social aspects. I'm sure you'd love it.
I'd love that. More fashion games, even table top. Yes please do.
Just use ORC and you will be golden!
@@littlekong7685 no don't, you don't need a license, Orc from what I hear is basically "no take backs" once you release something under it
You completely skipped over the printing issues that TSR had. Where they somehow destroyed the supply and demand of economics. They were paid based on PRINTED books not SOLD books. A lot more was involved with AD&D's sale and TSR and I recomend listening to the Plot Points podcast and Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons by Ben Riggs
Empire of Imigination also talk about that too
Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons by Ben Riggs is actually one of the recommended reading materials for this episode. You can check out a few more in the descrirption if you're interetsted! We absolutely tried to fit in as much content as possible.
Well it's not particularly relevant to the legal problems that the episode is analyzing. They also didn't cover the web development issues which pulled down 4th edition and caused its failure too. Because both topics are outside of scope and would take a lot of time to properly explain.
I don’t even play dnd or anything alike but this was informative and very entertaining to find out it’s history it’s interesting to see the development of such games even if it’s to just pass the time Thankyou for your hard work telling these stories in such an entertaining way that even non hardcore fans can enjoy I know it’s not easy to do so mad props
Thank you so much! This episode was a huge labor of love!
join 😀
I fucking love the energy of this video,
Turning what is essentially a video essay into a journey I can feel like I’m riding along with a is an incredibly entertaining way to tell a story.
TLDR loved it, more of this
Agreed!
In summary: "How many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man?!"
Every 15 years?
Being able to see how D&D’s legal and creator issues shaped TTRPGs as a whole was wonderful! As someone who consumes a lot of D&D-adjacent material but never actually plays it much, seeing so many tie-ins to other brands that I still recognize (WotC, Pathfinder) was also excellent to include in the episode so I was more invested.
Well done on this labor of love!
Oh, this is just skimming the surface. The story of TSR is the story of how badly you can run a company that's almost a license to print money. Conversely, WotC is a story of how taking the business side seriously from the start makes for a healthier company... Well, for a time, at least.
Oh dang, a Ryan Dancey cameo. Wasn't expecting to see him outside of Extra Politics!
This episode was GREAT! Really neat to see you be able to go into such detail and still make it really fun! Thanks, y'all!
Oh dear Cayden Cailean... I just applied to work at Wizards. Earlier today. Well, it's not like I expect to get a call back.
But if I, by some miracle, do; I need to remember what I learned here today and be the change I wish to see.
I love how your time travel method evolves over the course of the episode.
This was a fantastic episode! I’ve been looking forward to it since you mentioned it in the community post. Thank you EC!
The one think I hope that sticks is players being open to looking at games beside D&D. This is a huge industry with many great settings and rules sets.
The tendency towards Monopoly is not a thing that corporations are going to buck. They want to control all the money, not just make good money sustainably. But luckily, the RPG community is all about sparking creativity and a DIY mindset, so I think we will always have ways to fight back and if dnd makes it harder to play we can just play other games or make our own. Its a beautiful thing about TTRPGs
More like WOTC underestimated their playerbase's biggest strength..... rules lawyering. And unlike the video game communities, the TTRPG peeps are also stubborn, and capable of decisive action.
I hope the OneDnD experiment goes as badly as usual, so that we get more players and creators in the indie space again 😁
It's always a feel good moment to realize that we do not need hasbro, wotc, or any other big gaming company to thrive as a community. Paizo, Kobold Press, and many other indie makers understand this and that is why they've always stood with and as a part of TTRPG communities. We are a hobby that thrives off of our own creativeness and we don't /really/ need some rulebooks to have a good time. Yeah, they make it easier to go to different tables and help tell more consistent stories; but they are all of them optional.
Damn, a 25 minute video. Keep up the good work and thank you very much for whatever this content is. Not sure if it counts as an Extra Credits episode.
Fantastic work. Loved learning about the history and your animations were perfection. The time travel bits were hilarious!
Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for watching!
"Less than a cup of coffee _in any reasonable establishment"_
Ah, I see you casting Vicious Mockery at a certain green-logoed coffee empire...
Whattttt..... 😱 never... 😉
7:22
"Oubliettes and Ogres"
Friendship is magic.
What about the Pinkerton being enlisted to threaten a reviewer who was accidentally given magic the gathering cards early?
I want to add that the move to put 5e content into CC isn't a gesture of good faith, like many say it is.
That move was employed as a sleight of hand to do what WotC intended: kill the OGL.
Since 5e is in CC, using the OGL (the way Paizo did for 3.5) is not really viable, because in order to use an object in CC for content, you have to accept the terms of CC in your own content.
Which makes it a bit harder to monetize.
WotC did that to make people think they were acting in good faith, which worked, and to destroy the purpose and benefit of the OGL, which was their goal.
Using the CC is voluntary. WotC is not bound to use it for any edition going forward. And all evidence points to them gearing up to create a 4e esque GSL for 6e when it comes out.
So, don't hold your breath on WotC learning from history.
I love a good deep dive into the history of a thing we love! :-D I hope you get a chance to do more episodes like this.
"Rifts: Great world, terrible system" sums up my feelings exactly on it.
The issue I have with this is dropping the ball on names in the current history. Then current failure happened when Hasbro replaced the CEO and that person did not think it mattered if WotC had people that understood the industry or community. And you know you screwed up when hedge funds, call out your leadership choices.
So once again, the source of the problem was the "Biggering".
And that Biggering is trigering more Biggering!
Props to all who understood that reference
The gloss you add at 15:18 is a nice way of handling the contradiction at the center of all this. Nicely done!
I swear, the one good thing Lorraine Williams did during her tenure at TSR was the creation Spellhammer, and even then, that accomplishment is undermined by three points.
1: Spelljammer was created not because it sounded like a good idea, but because she thought she could capitalize on the Star Trek hype and manipulate Trekkies into buying poorly-written trash.
2: The only reason Spelljammer _wasn’t_ poorly-written trash was because her employees decided to put in the effort to make it fun, even though they all thought it was a terrible setting.
3: Because everything that made Spelljammer fun was added without Williams’ knowledge or consent, she refused to publish any more copies of the setting out of spite, and it wasn’t until TSR was bought out by WotC that it got a second run.
Combined with the decisions mentioned in this video and the fact that she thought gamers were such social inferiors that she held it as a point of pride that she never played D&D, it’s no wonder that Lorraine Williams went down in history as the most reviled name in TTRPG history.
Og spell jammer was pretty awesome, despite her best efforts. I really wish they had made more of an effort to keep that funky spirit in the "reboot".
I found an interesting parallel with another industry and the whole "Do great product - sell a lot - do greedy product - stop selling - damage control" cycle: the game console industry.
It happened to Nintendo: when the SNES was the king, they thought they didn't have to switch to CDs and stop making cartridge consoles because they were cocky and believed on the strength of their IPs over the third party developers, and they paid for it when they faced the PS1 and all of the third party exclusives that console got. Then it happened again going from the Wii to the Wii U, they thought the name of the Wii alone would carry the new console, but it turned out you need more than just a name.
It happened to Sony, when they were the kings with the PS2 they thought that the whole market was theirs, and got really arrogant with the release of the PS3, claiming that the next generation would only start when they said and offering an extremely overpriced console that also was a nightmare to develop for thinking that both consumers and developers were on the palm of their hand. Turns out, the consumers bought the cheaper console that released earlier with no visible technical drawbacks on its games due to a more developer friendly hardware, the Xbox 360.
But it also happened to Microsoft. The 360 was such a success that they thought they could tag on Kinect, make their new console always online and eliminate the possibility to resell or borrow games to increase their profit. And so, the Xbox One tanked, Sony openly mocked them and the whole brand had to be restructured to be more consumer friendly.
It seems that the lesson of focusing on making fun and engaging things first and thinking about profits later is true for videogames as well.
Imagine not agreeing with your dms ruling so much you wrote and got a offical ruling from the company lmao..
Tabletop Gamers take rules VERY seriously... 😅😅😅
Sometimes I think that it's a matter that some on the corporate side think 'THIS TIME will be DIFFERENT' when they stop up the dam thinking that they can ensure that only THEY will get the water, instead of seeing a rising tide lifting all boats.
The tabletop community must love D&D a lot. Each time the owners screw up, they are more than willing to come back once changes are made.
This animation is pretty high-quality
Thank you!
Every other edition underperforms?
So D&D goes by the Microsoft Windows tick-tock cycle?
Exactly. And the OGL changes backlash is remarkably like what the Windows community would do to Microsoft if it banned all non-Microsoft programs :)
D&D seems to be one of those things no matter how many times it begins to fail it will always make a comeback.
I would also add that recently there was more information shared on the Ken and Rob Talk About Stuff podcast regarding the 4E GSL, and that the original concept, led by the design team (!!) had been to deauthorize the OGL. This is fascinating because it means in both 4E and 5E you had design team members aware of the plans and even in the 4E case driving those plans. It isn't, historically, just corporate suits failing to grasp the game. It is senior designers as well. And, honestly, this matches problematic changes at any number of small to large RPG companies where, to make more $, they make truly terrible plans even though they should know better (see Paizo's MMO or the poor treatment of employees leading to a union, for example, or Cryptozoic recently failing to pay artists and ghosting them until a public outcry took place). The problem isn't suits or one company.
A lot of other early games grew in parallell to D&D without attaching themselves to its license and systems. BRP and Call of Cthuhu, Tunnels & Trolls, Hackmaster, Classic Traveller etc.
Hackmaster is a D&D based game that was released in 2001.
Technically it could be said it's one of the first of the OSR style games, @@Saru5000
This was an AMAZINGLY well produced video and incredibly informative. Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to dig into and spread this history and its impacts out to a wider audience.
Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for watching!
I LOVE these longer form videos! So excited at the prospect of more 😊
I love the longer format! I’m already subscribed to Nebula, but otherwise I would totally use your sign up link!
Thanks so much for the support!
I've already adopted Pathfinder 2E and have no intentions of looking back.
What an AMAZING episode!! I LOVE this long form dive!! So detailed and so entertaining!! Well done!! 👏🥳
Epic EC adventure.
As a D&D nerd I followed the drama with bated breath. So happy to see the community come together like this.
Rare are the instances where consumers can exert such power over companies that big.
Not one of the dragons or demons or warlocks in campaigns could ever compare to the evils of the DND corporate legal team
the dichotomy between demons and devils in the setting makes sense now, demons are the usual trope but lawful evil devils are based on their legal team
They keep forgetting that they publish supplemental material for the Core System that is The Human Imagination. The moment they start to think they own the means of production, they will put exploiting that power ahead of producing a quality product. Never let them forget.
And then WotC hired the Pinkertons to mug a content creator, and I decided that I would never spend money on them again.
Agreed, there are so many options. Personally I backed the latest KS from the Monster of the Week publisher to get the core game plus the new sourcebook. You can probably do low-fantasy in that, having a bunch of vikings go up against a giant troll for instance.
@@TorIverWilhelmsen I've actually switched to Pathfinder mostly. Both PF1e and PF2e are completely free on Archive of Nethys, so I save a bunch of money and have much more robust rule systems that reward my creativity. It's been great!
Gotta say, I LOVED the longer format video. It gives a lot more space for details
It's important to point out that the founders of Paizo didn't just find an exploit, they were involved in the creation of the OGL, and when WotC got draconian they left the company to found their own following the OGL they helped create.
"Rift: great world, terrible system" Thank you. Loved this ep. More of them would be great.
The Palladium system largely works - until you start introducing megadamage. Whether in Rifts or the Yucatan module for TMNT. That breaks the game.
IMO 4e didn't copy MMO's: it was more a case of parallel evolution, where MMOs and WotC both looked at the way people played their games, and came to similar conclusions about what the distinct roles were. So, I'm definitely in Eddy's camp here more than our narrator's. :D
Loved the whole video, but especially loved how each book cover is lovingly re-imagined in ExtraCredits-style
5:26 yes Inquisitor, this one right here.
This has been one of my favorite episodes in a while; you can really tell how much fun everyone was having. 🥰
My father went to school with Ed Greenwood who is the original author of the ever popular Forgotten Realms D&D campaign setting.
The timing on this is pretty good, I just finished watching the Record of Lodoss War OVA.
15:19 You cannot copyright game mechanics in America. But you can copyright IP, and you can copyright the text. I can stick an invisibility spell into my game but I have to explain how it works without sounding too similar to D&D. Even if WotC loses the court case those legal fees can destroy my company. This is why the OGL was so important - it was WotC's promise not to destroy 3rd party products (and coincidentally required you to buy D&D 3e books.) This is why the recent OGL debacle was so damaging - WotC was finally going to kill their golden goose. Let's see if the next edition starts with a dead goose and no OGL.
I'm really thankful for OGL 1.1!. I got started in Cyberpunk and World of Darkness. While 5e is a terrific system, no industry should be a complete monopoly. It's just not healthy for people to confuse a brand with an entire type of product. Diversity is good!
Good point. We couldn't live with out WoD!
I found myself surprisingly sad about Dave Arneson's contribution being "Hey, where's Dave?" after first edition.
Huge fan of this more in-depth, long-form content. Great work!
I always say that license killed 4e more than the inherent systemic problems that it have ( and could be fixed or made interesting with some fans and outside publisher could fix)
I think most people who play at clubs and convetions (not at home with a group of friends) noticed that history was going to repeat itself with the release of Xanathar's Guide to Everything.
Why that, specifically?
@@watchm4ker PS:
People who play at home can easily ignore those minor shifts, because they just ignore the new rules and keep playing as they always did.
Therefore they just realize what the publisher is doing when something more blatant comes.
But people who play at conventions and clubs always get hit harder with that stuff.
Thank you for this fantastic episode that succinctly (despite the super-sized runtime) describes the history of my favorite hobby. Very high quality episode!
Man, it was kind of unbelievable how many people "deleted" content on D&D Beyond when the leak happened. So many people wrote rants in those places because the website wouldn't allow them to delete the stuff outright, which just shoved this argument in the faces of anyone who uses homebrew on Beyond by not only removing that content but putting a rant in its place. I think that, more than anything else, menaced WotC into giving up. Their major new shiny toy which they just bought off Twitch got content bombed by angry users, ruining their chances of ever turning it into a VTT people would actively use. That's panic time.
What I find so unbelievable in all of this is that lawyers aren't stupid. At some point there has to have been at least one of the lawyers of Hasbro/WOTC to raise a finger and point out that whenever they started to crack down on the community they were hemmoraging money. How can they be so short sighted?
Well it doesn't help that the owners of DnD keep changing hands between each new edition.
@@pax6833 Hasbro's owned it since 2000. The problem is that in the past couple of years almost all of Hasbro''s board has changed, and they and the leadership of WotC is full of former Amazon and Microsoft suits who (to quote the leaked communiques) "see the players as nothing but an obstacle between them and their money". Combine that with Magic cracking the big 1 Billion mark recently and the board rep decided that she would find a way to increase D&D's revenue SEVENFOLD to get it to the Billion mark, since the new leadership of Hasbro has forgotten the lessons of the past and decided that having the internal units compete with each other for status somehow ISN'T a goddamn stupid idea.
@@EmperorPylades I'm not talking about the corporate entity I'm talking about the people in charge. Which change frequently.
Probably a combination of blinders/wishful thinking, groupthink, and being willing to fire anyone who doesn't get on board with the groupthink. Same thing as with that sub that imploded- everyone who insisted there were risks was fired to keep the blinders on. Also same reason as most major industrial accidents- no one could point out the flaws/the importance of safety spending, over-design, redundancy, backups, just plain having any kind of safety infrastructure, plan, and training, etc., to the decision-makers without getting silenced, so the foundations for disaster were laid with blithe serenity. Then there's the sadly common mistake of treating ammonium nitrate as a fertilizer that can explode and not an explosive that also just happens to be used as a fertilizer. Like seriously, how many buildings and boats have to explode before people stop taking it lightly? But whatever the exact problem was, you can bet that everyone in charge went "naw, we'll be fine, our safety program's good enough, our entire factory/warehouse/whatever hasn't blown up/burned down yet so we're good!" every time someone tried to ask about it. But when it's money you can't show a slideshow of craters and ruins to bring the point home. A picture of a shuttered storefront just won't have the same emotional impact, even though the financial disasters are every bit as real and inevitable as the physical ones.
Great dive into the history of D&D! Also, the era appropriate time travel methods was fun! lol
This is excellent and very helpful - thanks EC! Really enjoyed the long-form content.
Back when I was in high school and college, my parents were okay with me playing the D&D computer games, which was the only way I was exposed to D&D, as my friends weren't allowed to play due to the Satanic Panic. I got to play a huge variety of other games though - Earthdawn, Tales from the Floating Vagabond, Palladium (fantasy RIFTS), Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. I had the source books for 3.5, but I had source books for a lot of other games too. It wasn't until about 10-12 years ago that I started playing D&D (5e) regularly because that's all the majority of people around me wanted to play. Unfortunately, most folks I know still want to play only D&D even after the OGL debacle, but at least a couple of them are now open to the idea of trying something new.
As for me, thanks to a combination of the OGL AND the MtG Pinkertons messes, WotC is dead to me for the time being. It's an easy sacrifice to make, since none of the D&D campaigns I was in survived the pandemic.