Wizards of the Coast Announces One D&D

[Khymeria]

Monte Cook being involved is a big deal. Makes sense for Roll20 to throw full support since there going to take a massive hit from the VTT part. 

[Hugh Neilson]

So,WOTC/Hasbro acts in its perceived economic best interests, and is considered a villainous robber baron.

 

Other businesses act in their own economic best interests, and they are considered the heroic rebellion.

 

How large, exactly, can a business get before it is expected to make its resources freely available to anyone else who wants to use them for their own profit?

 

 

[Khymeria]

@Hugh Neilson

I think many people are upset because the rules have been changed on what other people had believed, largely from the designers of the OGL that this wasn’t a possibility. WotC is free to act in their own interests, but they also get to deal with the public and more importantly fan perception of their actions. The leaked OGL was gross, then apology, then slightly less gross on the surface releases OGL draft. Morality clauses that exist outside the game and WotC is the sole discretionary to arbitrate, denial of class action or any group litigation, the ability to take your work and use it, profit, and if you can sue them, only in King County, Washington, there can be no injunction just monetary compensation is all gross. They are free to act how they want, that just get to deal with how those actions are perceived. I think more attention to other games is good for the industry as a whole and we will see where it all lands, but not since the Satanic Panic has gaming been this interesting for many. 

[Scott Ruggels]

3 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

So,WOTC/Hasbro acts in its perceived economic best interests, and is considered a villainous robber baron.

 

Other businesses act in their own economic best interests, and they are considered the heroic rebellion.

 

How large, exactly, can a business get before it is expected to make its resources freely available to anyone else who wants to use them for their own profit?

 

 

 

Large enough to effect the behavior of the community as perceived as negative. Then the community will tribalize and pick a direction.

[Grailknight]

2 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

So,WOTC/Hasbro acts in its perceived economic best interests, and is considered a villainous robber baron.

 

Other businesses act in their own economic best interests, and they are considered the heroic rebellion.

 

How large, exactly, can a business get before it is expected to make its resources freely available to anyone else who wants to use them for their own profit?

 

 

 

Also, you have to remember that WOTC/Hasbro is trying to revoke an established OGL that was originally written by people who were employed by WOTC at the time of its drafting.

 

And it's not as if they haven't benefitted from the current OGL. It's just that they see an income stream that is not as profitable as a typical corporate project and want to increase that profit without realizing that it is an atypical business model and customer base. Accountants can only give you purely financial advice, they needed marketing people in touch with the market and a legal team that wouldn't default to "steamroll the little guys if they won't cooperate" to have navigated these PR rapids.

[Hugh Neilson]

The original OGL was unprecedented. They opened the door wide for others to freely use their intellectual property, which a lot of businesses took advantage of.  The (legal) question of whether they can now close the door is very real.

 

There have been various games forced to end because their licensing ended.  Decipher's Star Wars CCG ended when their license was not renewed. In RPGs, TSR lost Marvel, West End Games lost Star Wars and Mayfair lost DC.  No shortage of other examples exist.  Dark Horse had Star Wars comics for some time.

 

The OGL is different in that it was unilateral, and expressed no time limits, although there was none for 4e and a new one for 5e.

 

It's interesting how we refrain from discussing Hero.  The current owners acquired the system from it creators, as did WOTC (and, by extension, Hasbro when it acquired WOTC). They have never offered an open gaming license for their mechanics.  Other than not having had an OGL in the past, how different is the Hero IP from the D&D IP?

 

Would 4e D&D have flourished had WOTC chosen to extend an OGL?  I think there were a lot of differences between 4e and 3e, not just the lack of an OGL.  5e returned to an OGL, but it also set mechanics much closer to 3e and prior editions than to 4e. Could it have succeeded with no OGL?  It would still have been competing with games based on 3e, and other systems, of course. But their 5e supplements would not have been competing with third party 5e supplements that WOTC derived no income from- having a bigger share of a smaller pie can be a superior result - I'd rather have 100% of $1 million than 20% of $3 million.

 

Yes, Hasbro/WOTC is trying to maximize the profitability of their business.  Do you think Paizo, Chaosium, Green Ronin or any other game company supporting a new OGL is NOT trying to maximize their own profitability? None of these businesses is acting out of altruism. Nor was WOTC when it released the first OGL!

[Duke Bushido]

You have excellent points, Hugh, and were I able to log in here on my compuet instead of my phone, I would love to discuss them, but I think the outarge here can be specifically pointed out; the rest is pile-on or tangentially related, but the crux of the outrage comes first from the attempt to backpeddle on a legal agreement.  Yes: no company has _any_ interest in _any_ human being, customer, contributor, or even employee-- beyond where the wallet they carry fits into their cost-versus-profit plans lie.   (One thing I would like to discuss- but won't, because the phone screen /touchpas interface is the absolute $I:1tt125t means of communication ever devised-- is just how many citizens of a capitalist society in my age group are just now figuring that out, and they are absolutely freaking out).

 

This is-not to younger folks who watched their parents work three jobs between them and celebrate victories like buying a car under ten years old or completing otherwise-unaffordable home repairs on their  own while they simultaneously watched their grandparents retire at 50 and travel the country in tri-colored busses with chandeliers in them after spendinf their lives twaching their kids to believe that it is almost their turn to be rich--

 

Those younger folks learned early on that the monied people are not to be trusted, while my the largest part of my generation is only on the edge of figuring out that they have been lied to so as to keep them complacent and spending, and that there is no path to great wealth that is all three of legal, ethical, and moral.  If you are very lucky, you can hit two, and once you have the money, you onky need to hit one to increase it.

 

Lots odbthe outrage comes from people who are seeing their first real-world example of real-world business practice.  Think of former presidenr Richard Nixon: he was _not_ the first high-level politician to do absolutely despicable things. He was, though the first _to get caught_, and,in a spectacular high-profile manner.

 

I believe that a lot of the outrage comes from people who just notice that wealth is made imorrally and unethically every day.  It hits harder when it comes from a company for whom you have committed the cardinal sin of believing that they give even a single squirrel turd about any human being anywhere when the other choice is making money.  We should all know that no company has ever been founded to form tight-knit commmunity bonds. All companies were formed,for the single purpose of making money, and any food or wondrous things that they develop on the way, such as tight-knit community bonds or a Twitter profile of spectacular comebacks and sarcastic patter are _incidental_, having grown from the desire to make money, and ultimately will disappear the moment it stops making them money.

 

 

There are people that are horridied that this might go in Wizard's favor.  This isnt an old antiquated contract: everyone incolved in the contract is still alive, and still mentally fit, and many have come forward to state that why is going on- the claims that are being made- are blatantly untrue, and what the original intent of the document were is counter to what is being attempted right now.  People are concerned that a court might read the language of the contract and state that what it says is something other than its verified intentions, and that scares them, too.  We live under contracts of one kind or other our entire lives, from wedding vows to bills of sale to business dealings of our own, and it is scary to the vast majority of us to think that it does not matter what sort of garauntees we believe we have for ourselves-- no mstter what personal investment we made or what protections we carvwd out for ourselves, a courtroom can simply declare "screw you; because of this particular word instead of that one, we have interpreted this to mean that must surrender twice as much as you promised, and are only entitled to one tenth of the agreed compensations.

 

And frankly, they shouldnt worry.  It should be taken as a dorefone conclusion that it _will_ go in Wizard's favor, simply because the entire process turns on money, and Wizards has more of it.  Remember that there are people who make their living by redifining intent based on nothing more than word selection, and doing so "legally."  These professional pendants are called lawyers, and if you have enough of them, working diligently enough, you can, owing the fact that almost every word in our language has more than one meaning, making it possible to prove that the sentence "I went fishing" means both "I spent time extracting fish from a body of water" to "I spent a considerable amount of time  questioning witnesses while takinf great care to include only results that supported my desired outcome" to "I was goofing off near a boat," and it is quite likely that with enough lawyers out there fishing, that in spite of the claims of those involved in the original contract a court will rule that it says something entirely different.

 

Why would lawyers do this?

 

Money.  Wizarda has lots of it.

 

Why would a judge allow this?

Money.  They need it for their own political campaigns to get relected (in states where they are elected), or for the campaigns of the politicians that install them.  Again: Wizards has lots of it.

 

So do not fear how this will come out; accept that it already has.  Still, the vast majority of us do not have money to buy the results we want, and the frustration has to go somewhere, and I expect that it is going into that road of outrage in the tiny, desperate hope that the noise will somehow make a difference, and with this they fight off the terror that it ultimately will do nothing.

 

Even the piles of lies and nonsense oouring out of Wizards right now isn't what many hope it will be.  It is a series of efforts (and they will continue) to create an illusion of concern to lull the complainers back to being consumers.  Notice that there were a few days of silence- an ignoring of the problem?  There were even momenrs if "so what?!" And really, why not?  They already know they will win; it is a matter how much money they are willing to spend to get the outcome they want.

 

I cant remeber the name of the 80's movie this is from, but a kid from a group of kids is grabbed by the wolfman, and one of his friends yells "kick him in the nards!"  The child does so, and is immediately dropped by a groaning wolfman, who then rolled around on the ground, cupping his groin, while the child wide-eyed marvels "wolfman's got _nards_!"

 

Notice how Wizards did very little damage control until so many people stopped spending money that Wizards got scared enough to go into major damage control?

 

Why the sudden change?  They got kicked in the nards.  As a guy who, when much younger, was very physical and athletic in pastimes,ranfing from ream sports to fighting the other drunks, I do not think it is possible for me to ever fully complete a list ofnthings that I would do to avoid being kicked in the nards.  Seriously; I cannot with one-hundred-percent certainty that "well, I would _never_ do _X_-!" If the oenalty for not doing it was getting kicked in the nards.  When tens of thousands of people are lined up for the world's most brutal game of hackey sack _ever_, I _know_ I cannot draw a line I wont cross.

 

If corporate personhood is real-  heck, even if it _isn't_, the one universal truth is that the dollar is the corporate scrotum, and they will do anything to stop being kicked in it.  Hence the damage control and the blatant lies, unceasing since the servers were crashed by thosands of people taking their turn at a (from the outside) very brutal kickball game.

(You didnt think any apology or claims of,accident were sincere, sis you?  You didn't fall back into thinking this company gave a single bloody booger about you, did you?  You do not matter, not to Wizards, not to Hasbro, not to- and this might hurt- not even to DOJ.  Neck, they wont even tell you who they are, because when something goes a way you don't like, they dont want to have to be bothered listening to you and your thoughts.  These are all companies, and were all formed for one purpose, and that purpose,is ont your nostalgia, your games, or your fun with friends.  They were founded for one purpose, and that is profit.  Your personal satisfaction is the monetized bait to start pumping oil from a known reservoir, period.   They are a company.  They want your scrotum dollars; they need them to keep going on and hopefully making more money.

 

Lots od people making rhe noise are making it for this reason.  For too many, it id the first time they have figured it out, and there is rage, disapointment, and possibly for some truly devoted fanboys, actual humiliation, and the realization that there is nothing that can be done to stop it (unless you commit to kicking those nards _forever_, in a unified front (which we already know wont happen: attention spans are too short, and there are too many who find believing the lies that a company cares about you to be gar more comforting than the truth, and they will have much lower forgiveness points, and eventually the majority of them,will again be happy customers-  not today; not tomorrow, but eventually,most will be back, and will even return to evangelizing the company all over again.)

 

Perhaps some,small portion od the uproar is disappointment in self on behalf of those who are disappointed in what they know of themselves, and are mad at Wizards for making them aware of it.

 

 

For me (if any poor sod has waded this far into the pool), it is the extortion.  I have spent many evenings here over the years of my membership claiming to and,retelling tales of how being an anti-bully got me into trouble throughout my life, so I dont feel obkiged to do that again.  But for me- and I would like to believe for many others, but my own life experience has demonstrated that- at least among my generation, that while being against bullying as a general rule is quite common, being an active anti-bully is nowhere near as common as my idealized version of society would have it to be. 

 

while I have no doubt that the lmoney and the lawyers that money can summon can (and will) make AP of this nice and legal (remember; when you already _have_ the money, you only have to check _one_,box, and for whatever reason, while money cannot make something ethical,or moral, it has almost _zero- trouble making things _legal_.  I suspect it is because lawyers are strongly motivated it, but never hwving been one, I cannot say.  I have seen that corporate lawyers don't seem horribly concerned about moral, and there is a rsther unique sense of what is ethical, but that is just observation; like many others, I shant live long enough to conduct meaningful research.)

 

Anyway, I cannot help but look at "surrender your legally-created smstuff any time we want it or we wont let you make more stuff we agreed to let you make" as extortion.  I am,certain that a lawyer can explain to me why it isn't, but it is still "give us your stuff or we will force unoleasqnt consequences onto you" _is_ extortion:  I cant see it as different from "give us your a jolly Ranchers or we will hit you in the face," which I am pretty sure _is_ extortion.  All Wizards is doing is working on spending the money to make this instance of it legal.

 

 

 

The short version:

 

A core audience of people whose greatest escapism pleasure is getting together with their friends and liberating the oppressed and toppling unjust tyrants and rescuing the townsfolk have just realized that that someone they loved is the bad guy.

 

It's going to be very ugly, and it saddens me that in the end, it is is going to spend it's way into perfect legality.

 

 

Remember kids:  business are not,and never will be your friends.  You exisit to satisfy human,needs and,desires; they exist because you hwve a dollar that they do not.  Anything that seems like goodwill or outreach or friendship from a business is absolutely,_never_ anything more an attempt,to get that dollar deom you.  This is how it has always been, and will always be.  No business does,anything that isn't one-hundred-percent about getting that dollar, no matter how long-rangedbor tangential it may seem.  I am saying this is a fact, period.  I am not saying it is evil; I am saying it is thenature of things.  Even Piazo (or however you spell,it) isnt offering the ORC lisence out of the goodness of their heart: people will blindly throw goodwill at them for it, and many new dollars will,come,from,that goodwill, swelling their corporate nards to unheard of proportions.

 

If we could as a planet of human beings, stop forgetring rhat every few minutes, life on earth could,be absolutely amazing.

 

 

[Grailknight]

Maximize your profit by making a better product, not by trying to implement a unilateral and questionably legal change to the rules.

 

 

[Hugh Neilson]

First off, while I accept that businesses exist to make money, I do not accept that they are made up of soulless corporate shills who care nothing for their customers or the quality of their products. There are ethical and unethical people in business, as there are throughout life.

 

If I accept that everyone in a corporation has no purpose other than to gouge the customers of that corporation, I must also accept that every person who accepts employment does so entirely for their own self-interest. No teacher cares one bit for a student, nor a nurse for a patient. And that their customers will make every possible effort to rip them off as well. Sadly, that is the Lawful Evil version of capitalism and, while it is all too common, I do not consider it to be universal.

 

To the WOTC issue, I am very curious what the actual legalities are.  Contracts at law, as I understand the law, require consideration by both sides. WOTC did not contract with anyone using the OGL.  Users provided no consideration.  They did, however, leverage WOTC’s IP, which WOTC had invited them to do.

 

As I saw the original OGL, WOTC wanted to see others take on the low ROI production of adventure modules which would support their game, and the higher ROI products (like splatbooks) that they would produce.  As I recall, a lot of early OGL products were adventures, and WOTC produced few outside Dungeon magazine.

 

With hindsight, the OGL stagnated gaming. How many innovative new games have been produced since its inception?  Have we seen interesting new game mechanics and task resolution systems, or have we simply seen “I’ll just use d20”?

 

What I have seen is people come to the Hero boards and ask where the free SRD is so they can play the game without paying one red cent to its developers. That is just as entitled and selfish as any unethical businessperson. Why would anyone develop new game systems and mechanics if that is the likely end result?

 

I don’t think WOTC went about this the right way. However, I also don’t think believing they have a right to generate income with the IP they created, building on the IP they paid for, is immoral or unethical.

 

In fact, much of the outrage seems directed at the suggestion that WOTC can just TAKE what I CREATED and use it to make money WITHOUT PAYING ME – how could anyone think that is right?  And the rest is that WOTC wants me to PAY for the use of what THEY CREATED – how could anyone think that is right?

[Khymeria]

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

I cant remeber the name of the 80's movie this is from, but a kid from a group of kids is grabbed by the wolfman, and one of his friends yells "kick him in the nards!"  The child does so, and is immediately dropped by a groaning wolfman, who then rolled around on the ground, cupping his groin, while the child wide-eyed marvels "wolfman's got _nards_!"

 

The movie is “Monster Squad” which also happens to be a sub-genre in my new book by Hero Games “Gaslight: Horror and Heroics in the Victorian Era.” Which was the third complete manuscript I sent to Hero Games without any contract in place, and not only did they credit me for my work, they paid me too. Funny little anecdote, WotC changed my credits on a project between printings without notice, permission, or compensation. So when we (not aimed at you) are throwing out any what about this company versus that company, I’ve actually played the adventure. 

 

Oh, wait you said about generational differences in expectations and gaps is so spot on! 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

@Duke Bushido, I believe the movie is called Monster Squad.

 

Professor Dungeon Master has an interesting take on the OGL mess. Hasboro is doing this so that the new OGL is a poison pill. Hasboro wants to be the sole creator of D&D and this maximize its ownership and money from it. 

[Duke Bushido]

2 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

@Duke Bushido, I believe the movie is called Monster Squad.

 

 

Thanks, N-B.

 

Niw I can try to google it up to share with the kids.

 

 

 

 

 

wasnt there a live-action teens vs monsters Saturday kids show in the 70s of the same,name?

 

possibly related?

 

[/OT]

 

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

Thanks to both of you; 

 

I just saw where K provided the title as well.

 

Which reminds me:  I understand the author of the best NPC book for Champions has completed a second one.  Is it still available in paper?

 

And I can't wait for a good horror  genre book!

 

 

[Scott Ruggels]

 

[Steve]

13 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

First off, while I accept that businesses exist to make money, I do not accept that they are made up of soulless corporate shills who care nothing for their customers or the quality of their products. There are ethical and unethical people in business, as there are throughout life.

 

 

 

If I accept that everyone in a corporation has no purpose other than to gouge the customers of that corporation, I must also accept that every person who accepts employment does so entirely for their own self-interest. No teacher cares one bit for a student, nor a nurse for a patient. And that their customers will make every possible effort to rip them off as well. Sadly, that is the Lawful Evil version of capitalism and, while it is all too common, I do not consider it to be universal.

 

 

 

To the WOTC issue, I am very curious what the actual legalities are.  Contracts at law, as I understand the law, require consideration by both sides. WOTC did not contract with anyone using the OGL.  Users provided no consideration.  They did, however, leverage WOTC’s IP, which WOTC had invited them to do.

 

 

 

As I saw the original OGL, WOTC wanted to see others take on the low ROI production of adventure modules which would support their game, and the higher ROI products (like splatbooks) that they would produce.  As I recall, a lot of early OGL products were adventures, and WOTC produced few outside Dungeon magazine.

 

 

 

With hindsight, the OGL stagnated gaming. How many innovative new games have been produced since its inception?  Have we seen interesting new game mechanics and task resolution systems, or have we simply seen “I’ll just use d20”?

 

 

 

What I have seen is people come to the Hero boards and ask where the free SRD is so they can play the game without paying one red cent to its developers. That is just as entitled and selfish as any unethical businessperson. Why would anyone develop new game systems and mechanics if that is the likely end result?

 

 

 

I don’t think WOTC went about this the right way. However, I also don’t think believing they have a right to generate income with the IP they created, building on the IP they paid for, is immoral or unethical.

 

 

 

In fact, much of the outrage seems directed at the suggestion that WOTC can just TAKE what I CREATED and use it to make money WITHOUT PAYING ME – how could anyone think that is right?  And the rest is that WOTC wants me to PAY for the use of what THEY CREATED – how could anyone think that is right?

 

The problems going on with WOTC right now are due to decisions made by their upper management, which _is_ a who’s who of soulless corporate shills hired from Microsoft and other such companies, where the bottom line and stock valuations are the be all and end all of their existence. One of them admitted she doesn’t even play D&D and seems to view it like a video game franchise. In contrast, the creative types working for the company were hired from third-party creators and are aghast at what is going on now, and they are the sources of leaks being revealed to the public.

 

One important thing to remember about the OGL is that it was a brilliant bit of viral marketing. You mentioned that the OGL stagnated gaming. This is true. Why come up with a new system when you could use d20 mechanics? So their share of the TTRPG industry went from around 50% in 2000 to around 85% today, and helped earn WOTC a BILLION DOLLARS in revenues per their public reports. They earned Hasbro MORE revenues and net earnings then their toy lines did.

 

The consideration WOTC earned from enacting the OGL was gaining them an army of third-party publishers and the legions of rabid fans of those companies acting as their advertisers and proselytizers for the d20 system and helping people play the game using those mechanics. These creators took a chance and invested their own money to publish their works, print and online, each of which contributed to ever growing numbers of D&D core books sold. Sales of the core books were driven through the roof by this. Rather than paying for the uncertainty of advertising, they instead gave third-party publishers some crumbs of the pie without spending a dime of their own money.

 

Now that its grown so large thanks to those independent efforts, they want the whole pie, and they have an army of lawyers ready to do their bidding in court to see that they get it.

 

Will they win? Maybe. But it seems like it will be a Pyrrhic victory that fractures the gaming community into a myriad of competing d20-like systems, and other mechanics selling what books they can in the margins.

 

The d20 OGL changed expectations of how a company publishing game mechanics can operate these past two decades. Those that don’t follow this model are in danger of being marginalized and left on the ash heap of gaming history. Gaming culture works on a principle of proselytizing by fans, and that is a big part of what enabled D&D to be where it is now, the most well-known TTRPG in the world.

 

I do what I can to support Hero, buying books and using the mechanics in the games I run, as I’m sure other fans of the system do, but it seems to be a losing battle in the face of what the d20 OGL culture has wrought.

[Cygnia]

 

[Hugh Neilson]

7 hours ago, Steve said:

The problems going on with WOTC right now are due to decisions made by their upper management, which _is_ a who’s who of soulless corporate shills hired from Microsoft and other such companies, where the bottom line and stock valuations are the be all and end all of their existence. One of them admitted she doesn’t even play D&D and seems to view it like a video game franchise. In contrast, the creative types working for the company were hired from third-party creators and are aghast at what is going on now, and they are the sources of leaks being revealed to the public.

 

So evil corporate shills daring to think their IP should generate a return, and noble, heroic workers who will nevertheless shield their identities so they can keep cashing paycheques from the Evil Overlords.  I'm not sold on the black & white heroes and villains painted in this story.

 

7 hours ago, Steve said:

One important thing to remember about the OGL is that it was a brilliant bit of viral marketing. You mentioned that the OGL stagnated gaming. This is true. Why come up with a new system when you could use d20 mechanics? So their share of the TTRPG industry went from around 50% in 2000 to around 85% today, and helped earn WOTC a BILLION DOLLARS in revenues per their public reports. They earned Hasbro MORE revenues and net earnings then their toy lines did.

 

The consideration WOTC earned from enacting the OGL was gaining them an army of third-party publishers and the legions of rabid fans of those companies acting as their advertisers and proselytizers for the d20 system and helping people play the game using those mechanics. These creators took a chance and invested their own money to publish their works, print and online, each of which contributed to ever growing numbers of D&D core books sold. Sales of the core books were driven through the roof by this. Rather than paying for the uncertainty of advertising, they instead gave third-party publishers some crumbs of the pie without spending a dime of their own money.

 

Let's recognize the OGL as self-interested marketing, and not consider it an altruistic gift to the gaming community. Companies getting behind a new OGL are promoting their own products, not heroically defending an ideal.

 

"Consideration" at law is something I give to you in return for something you give to me, under contractual agreements. I am not sold that there was "consideration" for the OGL in the legal sense.

 

7 hours ago, Steve said:

Now that its grown so large thanks to those independent efforts, they want the whole pie, and they have an army of lawyers ready to do their bidding in court to see that they get it.

 

Will they win? Maybe. But it seems like it will be a Pyrrhic victory that fractures the gaming community into a myriad of competing d20-like systems, and other mechanics selling what books they can in the margins.

 

"Is it legal" and "is it prudent" are entirely different things.  Starbucks carefully designed a corporate structure avoiding taxation in the UK. However, they made voluntary payments when their legal tax plan created a public relations disaster. Just how WOTC's withdrawal of the OGL, even if it goes entirely unchallenged, plays out remains to be seen.  Economists would typically consider a monopoly (e.g. d20) to be bad for the free market, and the restoration of competition an economic win.

 

7 hours ago, Steve said:

The d20 OGL changed expectations of how a company publishing game mechanics can operate these past two decades. Those that don’t follow this model are in danger of being marginalized and left on the ash heap of gaming history. Gaming culture works on a principle of proselytizing by fans, and that is a big part of what enabled D&D to be where it is now, the most well-known TTRPG in the world.

 

I do what I can to support Hero, buying books and using the mechanics in the games I run, as I’m sure other fans of the system do, but it seems to be a losing battle in the face of what the d20 OGL culture has wrought.

 

It was a definite game-changer.  It has created an expectation that some altruist will create the gaming mechanics and the core game, then make their IP free for all others to use. How many of those others would consider it appropriate for their work to also be open source by default, free for anyone else to copy?

[Duke Bushido]

On 1/21/2023 at 10:02 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

First off, while I accept that businesses exist to make money, I do not accept that they are made up of soulless corporate shills who care nothing for their customers or the quality of their products.

 

 

You do not have to accept it.  It isnt true.  It is also not what I said.  _'Companies are not people; stop attributing human qualities and building human relationships with them in your heads_" is a good summation of what I said in that regard.

 

We have all worked for companies at some,point or other.  We cant all be evil.  Not only is that mathematically problematic, it's exhausting.

 

Currently I work for two companies. One company has taken advantage of the inflation talk,that "prices are going up."  This is built on claims,that costs are going up and that wages are going up.

 

These clains are not exactly lies; they are, however, grotesque exaggerations.  At job 2, we have seen since the pandemic (with shortages and shipping issues and such)  an increase in costs _overall_ of about 6 percent.  The increase across product lines runs from -4 percent (yes; some,things went down) to +15 percent (lumber and steel products, which eventually settled at a level of +7 percent above what the were at the start of this, though in fairness, lumber is slowly creeping back up the last 3 weeks).

 

Our _retails_, however, have _all gone up, with the _smallest_ increase being. +28 percent, and the largest being +80 percent.  (When you shop for something, the smallest, least-expensive items are the money makers.  You even wonder why Home Depot carries 8 to 12 linear shelving feet of sponges?  Who needs that many choices?!  It is because they are typically makes at 400 percent margin, and some even more.  There are 99 cent sponges that cost less than one cent each.)

 

Now some "excess" margin is necessary in commodities: padding in a little extra lets you hold pricing from week to week when the market is volatile: you lose a little,but of money on one product line for two weeks but make excess (above ideal) for two oe three others, it balances out.

 

Job 2 is not the only company in this line of work.  With exceptions for,individual items,or product lines, most every company in this line of work sources material from the same manufacturers and pays within a few points of the same price, witch exception going to huge national box stores, who are buying freight cars as opposed to trucks.  They can expect to pay an,average of fifteen percent less per unit for everything they buy this way, and even less on certain product lines (remember that I have worked for both over the years).  This provides a _huge_ benefit to the large retailer: they have less invested, and therefore can make ideal margins and even more while selling at a lesser retail.

 

But they don't.

 

We survive at a smaller business by offering more efficient service, and at a lower price.   Every single day,  I get outraged by the idea that what we had priced at a 40 percent margin has gone up an additional 80 percent ("justified" by a six-percent cost increase) and shop around a bit to discover that the big "discount chains" are charging even more on the samenitem, for which they paid less, and feeding the public their own outrage at having to do this because of evil inflation.  You know: the thing they invented, causes, and profit heavily from.

 

Job 1:

 

Production has gone up 62 percent since we moved to new procedures, and in the last two years there has been only _one_ "run him to the ER and have him checked out" level accident (mostly because two years ago Headshot quit) and only two "take him to the clinic and have him pee in a cup" incidents (clean both times- a company record!)  Only two truck-involved accidents, both of which the driver was ruled to be not at-fault--

 

So the lowest level of additional expenses, and with the new manufacturing processes, the lowesr level of employees in over a decade, pumping out more finished material than ever.  We even asded seven new dealers the last two years, sriving sales into the stratosphere.

 

Upshot?  Record profits.  Absolute record profits.  Profit sharing was to be split amongst the lowest level of staffing in ten years.

 

It was the lowest PS distribution i have seen since I have been there.  Acorrding to a couple of the 20-plus year guys, it was the lowest they had ever seen as well.   Raises didnt happen this year (last year; they usually go into effect first paycheck in December) because 'there was no money this year."

 

Meanwhile, we find our that this because  the company bought an 800-plus acre hunting preserve and has begun construction on a fine mansion, which is odd, since on paper, it made no profits.  Given the chance to report their own profits, most companies make very, very little.  Some would call that unethical; others (like me) call it immoral. But it _is_ legal (sort of)

 

Despite contracts and agreements, companies do not care about _people_.  I did not say customers- well, I did, but not to exclusivity.  Companies are not people; they do not have human goals and human values, and they never will.  Companies are intangible entities with two purposes, one of which is the only thing they have in common with people:  survive.  The other is something that human beings cant actually do: profit.  People can make money: they sell chunks,od their lives in exchange for food and housing and transportation to and from the life/food exchange place, and a very small number of them can accumulate enough wealth to afford a hobby and a vacation every few years (note: that screwed up bit of social construction is a uniquely USA problem brought on by generarions of being taught that the life/food exchange place is more important than the life being exchanged; I totally understand why any outsiders would be reluctant to believe that this is a real problem in an industrialized nation).

 

As intangible creatures, companies cannot even be held accountable for their actions unless they deign to for reasons of their own, which aee _always_ tied to preventing the loss of proift and increasing the streams of profit.

 

So, to reiterate:  "evil" is not an appropriate word.  "Alien" is a better word, but most importantly:  they ee by their nature incapable of being your friends--

 

On some level, we al know that.  How many times have we heard the advice "never go to work with family; never go to work with friends!"?  We know instinctively that the nature of business is counter to human relations, yet somehow, when a particular company does a thing we like, a number of us will still attribute "good" to this company.  It doesnt work; they are alien.  Just like a shark splitting a surfer in half isnt "evil," a shark killing a baracuda that is streaking toward an unwary diver isnt "good," either.  It is a shark, and it is doing shark things for shark reasons, and if those shark reasons mean "you're next," then you're next, because you are not the shark, and therefore are measured only in what you can offer the shark, and whatever downside the shark perceives in taking it.  The only difference is the shark has no money, so he can't make shark things legal.  Fortunately, he isnt part of human culture, either, so we decide that "moral" and "ethical" are different for sharks, and it is all sad, but it is okay.

 

We expect moral and ethical to mean certain fundamental things to humans.  Notice your own refusal to believe that companies are staffed by evil people.  This makes perfect sense: they are _ethically_ and even _morally_ doing exactly what we expect of them: they are doing their individual jobs to the best of their ability, and with a mind always on the company's best interests.  The company, an intangible thing, can onky exist on the influx of money.  The company's single best interest is focusing on the only reason it exists in the first place: get the money.

 

Since we measure success (for some reason), the more money, the more success.  The company's best interest becomes "get _all_ the money."  Not-evil people ethically acring within the scope of their culture-sanctioned job, morally doing their best at their tasks.  There is nothing evil here.

 

The problem is when people started get confused: they see People inside the company  and expect the company to be people, too.  Tons is make this very mistake at the company where we are employed!  We assume for any of a variety if reasons that we have value to the company and that the company appreciates us for us.  Individuals within the company might actually hold such appreciation, but _the company_ does not.  As an example:

 

My brother J was a computer graphics and animator guy specializing in 3d modeling and animation way back when.  He was head-hunted constantly, and has worked on some high-profile stuff during his career.

 

Then he turned 40, and his workload just dropped.  Accirding to him, ir was like a switch had been thrown; there was no slow decline.  It went from "more rhan I could hope to finish without long nights and weekends ( he feels a moral obligation to meet his contractual agreement to meet the deadlines assigned to him by the company.  The company can _ethically_ abuse this by setting goals that he can only meet by working sixty or more hours in a week.  As he was salaried, the company is thus _legally_ able to essentially mandate what amounted to twenty or more hours a week of free labor had this been an hourly job.  Since it is salaried, this free labor is now legal and ethical, even though ir is only possible by abusing the morals of the employee.)

 

He turned 40, and the work all but stopped- he xomplained about beinf loaned out for things like painting out lines or finishing off models that were already inferior to what he had been doing routinely.

 

The head-hunting slowed down when he hit 35.  It also stopped when he hit 40.  By 41, he was jobless.  (He isnt any longer, but he no longer does what he loves for a living; the industry has decided he is too old, and it non-evil fired him for not having the training and tools they now required-,in spite of him being rhe guy training the newcommers on those tools).

 

None of it is evil.  It is the end result of being an alien creature with alien goals ans alien motivations.

 

When Home Depot fired me after breking my spine, my only two witnesses,were both transferred nd promoted, and the manager that created rhe situation was not censured, but given the transfer he has been begging for the six years I had known him.

 

It is not evil to retain trained employees.  Ir is not evil to provide large raises to employees.  It is not evil to prevent the loss of money via several surgeries to an employee you injures, but I cant make that call because I am not quite as objective on that front.  Given that the purpose id a company is the ingestion and _retention_ of dollars, it mighr even be ethically, heroic, savinf all thst money while the hourly employee loses everything paying for and ultimately defaulting into bankruptcy and spends the next few years learninf how to walk again; I dont know.  Like I said; I am not in a position to be terribly objective on that aspecr.  Certainly it was _legal_, and that is the only checkbox that companies are concerned about, because it is the only one that has the potential to cost them money.  Tjis is why they work so hard to make evertthing do legal, I'm even if ir doesn't start out that way.  This is why I am confident that all of the outcry qgainst wizarda is pointless; eventually, they will make this legal, making ethical or moral questions irrelevant, because those   only apply to _people_.

 

 

 

 

 

On 1/21/2023 at 10:02 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

 

There are ethical and unethical people in business, as there are throughout life.

 

No argunents there.  However, there aemee _three_ check boxes.  Ethical is following a law or a tradition.  Id that law is immoral, then erhical becomes immoral in regars to that law.  Fortunately, only people have to get along in society; companies cant be held accountable in any way that really mattters, and dorcinf change on them,by _any_ non-financial means is just not possible.  Besides, their goals and our goals are different.

 

We cant be friends, even if our goals _appear_ to be the same.  I once heard it said that the only way the company shares your interest or has any concern at all about you is if it is your company.  Then I think about Gygax and others like him who were remived from their own companies.  Sometimes there was foos reason (Gygad made terrible,business decisions overall, and was xostinf the company money.  He was kicking his own company in the corporate nards without meaning to.  Time to go, Gary.)

 

Again: companies do nit care abiut people, even when that person buikt the company.  Companies care about dollars; this is the onky reason companies exist: to expedite the getting of dollars.

 

 

On 1/21/2023 at 10:02 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

 

 

 

, I must also accept that every person who accepts employment does so entirely for their own self-interest.

 

I hate to be that particular Greek, but how long would you work your job for free?  Ten years?  Five?  A month?

 

I think I mentiones this before dor the humour of it, but some couple od years back,  the guy that owns Job 2 was xomplaining about nit being able to find help at the amount he was willing to pay.  "Nobody wants to work anymore...."

 

This has always been a trigger phrase for me, because it so clearly implies the idea of being entitled to the life hours and labors of another human being, and entirely on your terms.  I looked him dead jn the face (as much as possible; he is an unusually tall man: six-nine and in his eighties).  "Nobody _ever_ wanted to work, Mr. G; that is why you have to pay us."  I don't think I have ever seen him quite so angry, and I believe the onky reason I kept the job was because we were so short-staffed.

 

So yeah: whether it is personalnsatisfavtion, a xompetitive nature, or being able,to buy food, eveylryone st evevry job ever has been there for personal reasons.  I can't believe that every single person who has ever fired someone with a mortgage and a new baby has done it because he enjoyed it.  I have to believe he has done it because he couldn't afford to be next.  Fortunately, it is good for the company, and legal, so that makes it ethical, and he can use his own need of food to bakance any dark thoughts about his morality for doing this.

 

Look, you can throw the world Evil around all you want, but it wont discredit the argument.  It just weakens the word Evil.  The fact is that whike they can be abusive, draining, dangerous, toxic, stress-inducing, people-chewing, even deadly-- they are all able to justify what they do through legality, which means the people who do the finalndoing can justify their own actions through ethics, and,everybody wins except the humans bugged by the moral questions ofbwhatvthey are doing (I have been told that both lots of money and not-enough-money-so-you-fear-of-losing-the-ability-to-earn both make the mortality easier to wrestle with. "Render unto Woolworth that which is Woolworth's" and all that.

 

They arent evil.  They are intangible alien beings with goals separate from that of human society, making it impossible to truly have a human-like relationship with them.  We have know this for a long time, too:  "if the recruiter says wrle are like a big family," run.  Don't look back.  Flee from what will only be an abusive workplace filled with gaslighting."

 

 

 

 

 

On 1/21/2023 at 10:02 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

. Sadly, that is the Lawful Evil version of capitalism and, while it is all too common, I do not consider it to be universal.

 

Dude!  I live in the US!  It is the only version of capitalism I have ever seen!  We regulate _people_ here; Capitalism,and,funs to unchecked.

 

 

But jikes aside:

 

Last,time:

 

I am not saying evil.  I am saying alien.  Stop with the evil thing.

 

 

 

On 1/21/2023 at 10:02 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

.

With hindsight, the OGL stagnated gaming.

 

 

 

Here we agree.  You know how much I dislike D20,or the And "system."  A lot of really talented people put a lot of inspiring creativity into working up,entire new games, only to park them,on an unplayable mess of a system.  However, when this games collapsed or implode or the players got ready to move in, they were primed for playing End, or at keast some,other End-like game, keeoing them in that d20 orbit.

 

(I have just started reading T20.  No lifepath-- that thing most core to Traveller. ,instead there are like fifty career "classes."  Ugh.)

 

 

 

 

On 1/21/2023 at 10:02 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

 

What I have seen is people come to the Hero boards and ask where the free SRD is so they can play the game without paying one red cent to its developers. That is just as entitled and selfish as any unethical businessperson.

Also agreed.  Though that wierd xooyright loophole about mechanics versus flavor makes it a legitimate question.  I don't like it, personally, but it is legitimate.  Still, it doesnt mean that HERO- or anyone else- should have to provide one.  Buy the books and dig it out yourself.

 

 

 

On 1/21/2023 at 10:02 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

 

 

 

 

I don’t think WOTC went about this the right way. However, I also don’t think believing they have a right to generate income with the IP they created, building on the IP they paid for, is immoral or unethical.

 

 

 

In fact, much of the outrage seems directed at the suggestion that WOTC can just TAKE what I CREATED and use it to make money WITHOUT PAYING ME – how could anyone think that is right?  And the rest is that WOTC wants me to PAY for the use of what THEY CREATED – how could anyone think that is right?

 

Yeah-  look, I am,working on a flrickin _phone_ sxreen dor all this, and at rhis point-njust to get this far, I am seven hours,and two charing sessions in, so please: don"t be odfended if I am,done with the conversation, or the manual editing gets even worse,from here on in.

 

The crux of the outrage is best defined more simply:

 

I sell whittled art, and I also make and sell assorted,wood carving knives.  My knives are selling so-so, because there arent a lot of people who want to whittle.  If I can generate an,interest in the art, though, I might sell,more of both.

 

So I go down to the swap meet and I tell people that they can use the knives for free to whittle their own stuff.  I am hooing some od them,will like enough to buy knives, and I am hooing that the massive increase in whittled art might draw more attention to it- maybe get me a few more customers looking at and buying my wares.

 

Then it works!  People see this stuff _everywhere_, and they are buying whittled art from all over the place!  My own sales climbing higher and higher!  I am even selling more knives then I ever thought possible!  This is great!

 

Then it hits me that other people are selling their art, too.  Is that ancilary to my sales, or is it cutting into my sales?

 

Hmmm...  Best to just stop all that, and to make certain that I am the only source of whittled art.  I head down to the farmer's market or swap meet or wherever the hecknit was I passed out knives and say "okay, folks!  That sure was lots of fun!  I'm gonna need July knives back. ,you cant play with them anymore."  

 

Personally, I think this sucks, but I hsve no legal, ethicsl, or moral objection to it.  The owner of the knives hss called to have them back.  Many a backyaed baseball game has ended this very way.

 

Hey, uh-  I am going to take all your art, too.

 

That, I believe, is where most of the outcry is focused.  I said "here use rhis!  Make stuffs dor you!"

 

And then did, and niw I think I can just own it.

 

 

No matter how legalized rhe language, there is a serious moral issue here.  Then lets go with "if you liked makinf your art, and you want to mske more, then you have to make it for me."

 

That is being a crap person, right there,   But hey- it is more correct than taking what I made on the grounds of you saying I xould make stuff for me.

 

Toss in "and if you dont give me your stuff, I am,just going to take it, and never let you make,stuff again, and maybe find some ways to resell your sruff ad infinitum with no benefir to you, unless you agree to work,for me on my terms_

 

That's creeoinf into extortion.

 

I think it is those last two that are seeing the bulk of the complaints.

 

 

[Chris Goodwin]

4 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

On 1/21/2023 at 7:02 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

What I have seen is people come to the Hero boards and ask where the free SRD is so they can play the game without paying one red cent to its developers. That is just as entitled and selfish as any unethical businessperson.

Also agreed.  Though that wierd xooyright loophole about mechanics versus flavor makes it a legitimate question.  I don't like it, personally, but it is legitimate.  Still, it doesnt mean that HERO- or anyone else- should have to provide one.  Buy the books and dig it out yourself.

 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what state is Hero Games in right now?  

 

It's hard to argue that WotC did anything but benefit immensely from the OGL.  It did so in two eras: the D&D 3.0/3.5 era and the D&D 5e era.  In the D&D 4e era it tanked; in the D&D 4e era it had the onerous "Game System License" which, among other things, said that if you published anything under the GSL you could never, ever publish anything under the OGL.  

 

Look what happened to D&D 4e.  

 

Someone is inevitably going to say something about D&D 4e's rules.  I'm going to call that a red herring right now.  Every new edition of every game will have someone saying something about its rules.  People were saying how bad D&D 3's rules were when it first came out.  People were saying how bad D&D 5's rules were when it first came out.  (People were saying how bad Champions 4e's rules were when it came out!)  

4e died on the vine because it wasn't able to attract 3pp support, and WotC wouldn't or couldn't provide it with the level of support on its own that an entire ecosystem sprung up to provide for 3e.  Now WotC are repeating the mistake with D&D 6e.  Doing the same thing, expecting a different result?  

 

Anyone remember "T$R" and "They Sue Regularly"?  At least two companies went under directly as a result of TSR suing them over providing third party support for AD&D 1e.  I believe I've recently read that Game Designers Workshop went under not as a result of being sued, but as a result of the potential that they might be sued, over Gary Gygax's Dangerous Journeys game.  (When one is sued, and one has to provide discovery, one has to pay staff to go through one's documents...)  

 

I've seen -- not here, that I can recall, but definitely elsewhere -- the idea that "lol u can just re-rite theyre roolz in youre own wurdz lol" and -- really?  Has anyone ever tried that?  I have.  It sucks.  Never going to again, until the next time.  Yes, copyright law allows you to do that -- but it doesn't say that the litigious large corporation can't sue you anyway for doing it, or for any other reason they want, and bankrupt you anyway.  "They Sue Regularly", remember?  

The thing about the OGL (did I post this here?  I can't remember if I did, and I've been talking about this in more than one place...) is that it was a promise of a "safe harbor": that they wouldn't sue you over things they couldn't sue you over, in exchange for doing this, that, and the other thing.  Respecting rights to certain things, voluntarily choosing not to exercise rights that you might otherwise be permitted to...  That right there is, honestly, what built WotC into the billion dollar corporation it is now.  

 

Sure, corporations are not your friend.  They can pretend all they want, and it's not people's fault for believing them.  It's not people's fault for believing them.  

 

It's not people's fault for believing them.

People liked D&D, and a lot of people build up an identity around things they like.  There's nothing wrong with that; we all do it.  Our house is a Honda household; others are Toyota households, or Ford households, or Chevy households.  I'm a Champions and Hero player from 1985.  

 

Regardless of the motivations, WotC did something that really upset a lot of people.  They took away that safe harbor.  (Honestly, I'm kinda pissed over that, because I wrote some OGL stuff, and "published" it in forum posts here and there and occasionally on my Google drive.  Nothing to do with any WotC intellectual property directly, but I'm not sure of its status now.)

 

It might not actually be legal for them to have done so, in fact, but until and unless that's tested in court any given person's opinions on that depends on what lawyer they're listening to.  

 

Anyway, WotC will either succeed or fail, and the ORC license coalition will either succeed or fail, and the world will go on turning...

[Scott Ruggels]

I have to say, thst zI admire the novels Duke has been writing with his phone these past few day.  Breathtaking…

[Opal]

On 1/21/2023 at 6:16 PM, Grailknight said:

Maximize your profit by making a better product, not by trying to implement a unilateral and questionably legal change to the rules.

WotC tried that.  

It failed.

(OK, technically it simultaneously made a better product /and/ tried to kill the OGL)

[Grailknight]

20 minutes ago, Opal said:

WotC tried that.  

It failed.

(OK, technically it was a simultaneously launched better product /and/ tried to kill the GSL)

 

No. They launched a product that could not garner the same following and support of the previous product for various reasons. Money talks and it said 4th Edition wasn't good enough. 

[Chris Goodwin]

16 minutes ago, Grailknight said:

 

No. They launched a product that could not garner the same following and support of the previous product for various reasons. Money talks and it said 4th Edition wasn't good enough. 

 

It had next to zero third party support.  Why would anyone support it when doing so would cast doubt on the legal status of everything else they'd ever written?

[Grailknight]

1 minute ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

It had next to zero third party support.  Why would anyone support it when doing so would cast doubt on the legal status of everything else they'd ever written?

 

You should be asking that question of Opal, not me. The lack of third party buy-in was one of the various reasons that I didn't enumerate.

[Opal]

The hope was obviously that 3pps would sign onto the toxic GSL to grasp the coattails of the runaway success that 4e theoretically could have been had the success of D&D ever had anything to do with how good a TTRPG it was. 

 

"Make a better product" often fails - marketing and legal shenanigans are at least as successful. 

 

And luck. 5e's success was 100% accidental market timing.