Wizards of the Coast Announces One D&D

[Old Man]

5 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Right but regarding Hero specifically we’re back to the fact that in Hero you still need to build a game to play the game. I see a major draw of OSR is simplicity to pick up and play. Hero needs a basic sample game that can be picked up and play.

 

Exactly this.  Hero's fatal flaw has always been the perceived learning curve.  The difficulty is that if you put out something with preconstructed characters and powers to lower the barrier to entry, you're also hiding the flexibility that is Hero's killer app.  Which is probably why we've never really seen a truly pick-up-and-play Hero game, just settings and the occasional rules revision.  Fantasy Hero hasn't had a definitive mechanic for healing in thirty years FFS.

 

 

3 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

Now, imagine if (say) 10% of indie game designers were to license the Hero Games core mechanics (say, at a much more modest 5% of sales over $750k royalty) and market their game as Powered by the Hero System instead of A d20 OGL product.

 

I'm really curious how Mutants and Masterminds will react - their mechanics are kinda sorta d20, but have a lot of unique aspects that aren't common to d20 products.

 

OGL 1.1 (and the overall WotC attitude) are so horrific that I would expect future game designers to avoid anything even remotely resembling d20.  Maybe relatively large orgs like Paizo will try to walk that tightrope but what'll mostly happen is people will start looking for less threatening game systems to build on, preferably ones that don't use d20 terminology, d20 mechanics, or even d20s.

[Scott Ruggels]

Welp, they are heading for the life boats. This just dropped.  
 

https://koboldpress.com/raising-our-flag/

 

As we look ahead, it becomes even more important for our actions to represent our values. While we wait to see what the future holds, we are moving forward with clear-eyed work on a new Core Fantasy tabletop ruleset: available, open, and subscription-free for those who love it—Code Name: Project Black Flag. 

[Old Man]

Honestly I’m kind of excited. Aside from new players possibly finding Hero, this will inspire all kinds of new systems with new and interesting mechanics. I just feel bad for people who made their living under the OGL and are now looking at having their work straight up stolen by WotC. 

[BarretWallace]

I thought this was kinda funny too:

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/NonOGLFantasy

[Ninja-Bear]

@Old Man, ideally I think it might be doable to have a free scenario that is build using FHC. And I mean a stripped down only human and using roughly competent normals and out of the book magic. Something that if a prospective player bought, they could run in a night to get the feel for Hero system.

[Chris Goodwin]

8 hours ago, Old Man said:

Honestly I’m kind of excited. Aside from new players possibly finding Hero, this will inspire all kinds of new systems with new and interesting mechanics. I just feel bad for people who made their living under the OGL and are now looking at having their work straight up stolen by WotC. 

 

Worse, there's no way now WotC can say "Oops, we messed up, here, have the OGL 1.0a back!"  Their name is mud, and their reputation is 💩.  There's no way anyone would believe them.  

[CrosshairCollie]

I've been more or less evangelizing Hero System over on Reddit since The Obnoxious Gouging License 1.1 came down..  Admittedly, I've no doubt most 5e refugees will flee to Pathfinder 2e, but I like to think I'm doing my part.  I'm specifically drawing attention to things HERO does well that D&D does poorly, especially the 'have you ever had a character concept you can't make work in D&D?  You can do it in HERO' concept.

[Old Man]

5 minutes ago, CrosshairCollie said:

I've been more or less evangelizing Hero System over on Reddit since The Obnoxious Gouging License 1.1 came down..  Admittedly, I've no doubt most 5e refugees will flee to Pathfinder 2e, but I like to think I'm doing my part.  I'm specifically drawing attention to things HERO does well that D&D does poorly, especially the 'have you ever had a character concept you can't make work in D&D?  You can do it in HERO' concept.

 

And if they complain about complexity, mention that any math is confined to character creation and that it's still not as complex as multisubclassing while hunting for feats to fit the concept you want.

[CrosshairCollie]

2 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

And if they complain about complexity, mention that any math is confined to character creation and that it's still not as complex as multisubclassing while hunting for feats to fit the concept you want.

Already on my standard spiel.  I also mention how HERO works for any genre, as I've seen a number of 'I want to use 5e to play this extremely not 5e game' posts like Sci-Fi or Low/Gritty Fantasy.  Hmm.  Thinking about it a little, I'd say that the rules for HERO enable both players and GMs, where the D&D rules seem more to restrict them.  DnD says you can't do X (say, cast Fireball) until you're 5th level, and know how to cast a bunch of other spells.  Hero? "I know one spell, Fireball."  DnD: "My character can't get superhuman strength without several levels and/or a magic item." Hero: "My demigod started with a 40 Strength.  I can juggle cows." Expensive if you're using NCM, but possible.

[Opal]

On 12/8/2022 at 5:20 PM, Scott Ruggels said:

Absolutely.  D&D is what it is, and will never be balanced

 

No one else has mentioned it, so:

 

D&D was reasonably balanced for about 2 years, between the release of 4e in 2008 and the release of Essentials in 2010.  Even then, it didn't return to the profound, perennial imbalance you alude to until the official release of 5e in 2014.

[mallet]

Best numbers I could find is that 12-16 million people play D&D regularly. Wizards of the Coast apparently made something like $400million profit last year, but easily 75% of that was from Magic: The Gathering. So D&D maybe accounted for less then $100 Million. 

D&D suffers from the same issue all other RPG's suffer from. Once a group buys the original books, they don't need to spend any more money. Adventures, new sourcebooks, more classes or whatever, are nice, but not necessary. As HERO System fans we are more then aware of this. If you have the 2 main rule books for 6th ed, you never needed to buy another Hero System book again if you didn't want to (and were willing to do all the building yourself). 

 

I know a few D&D groups where only the DM had all 3 core books, and the players only had the Player's guide (and not even all of them had it). If we average each core book at $50, and a table of 5 players and 1 DM, that means WotC made about $350.00 from that group. And maybe nothing more, even years after that group started playing the game. That is a business model that only survives if you keep constantly drawing in new players, and even then every few years you need a "new edition" to get the older player to re-buy the core books. 

 

I am 100% certain the the WotC game plan is to change that business model. They want to go all digital, all subscription based. Charge DM's $10/month for a subscription and players $5/month. Now that group of 6 people I mentioned earlier are going to be spending $35/month to play D&D. So in 10 months they will have paid what the originally spent on the books, and everything after that is more profit for WotC. 

 

Under this model, even if they lost 50% of their player base, so from 14 Million down to 7 million. They would still be making about $40million a month in subscription fees. In 3 months they would be making more then what D&D is currently making in a year. That works out to about $480 million a year. That would more then double WotC's profits in less then a year. And that is even after losing 50% of their players. 

 

And you know what, it would still be an amazing deal for people who played D&D. Subscription would give you access to every book, including all new books that would come out. All setting, all adventures, all monsters, all magic items, everything. The online character builder would allow players to build everything they want that was rule legal. Their VTT would be fantastic for at home and online play. You know they would have the budget to do that. And with all that extra money they could triple their output of new books and material, again all for "free" to subscribers. And they could connect players looking for games from around the world. You could play it on your PC, laptop, ipad/tablet or smartphone. And if you stopped playing D&D for a bit to try another system, you just stop paying for a few months, then re-subscribe when you want to play again. 

 

They would also sell this as being environmentally friendly. No physical books, means no cutting down tress for paper. No international shipping and delivery using gas and oil, no printing with harmful chemicals and glues and dyes. Plus it would save them tons of cash. No need for all those printing and international shipping expenses, especially in these days of supply chain disruption. No need for a whole department in the company that deals with publishing, printing, shipping, storage and delivery. All that money saved on wages. 

 

I'm sure something like this has been the dream of every game company in existence, but only recently has the technology reached the point where it is doable, and only D&D has reached the size and popularity where they could actually make it happen.  

 

The OLG 1.1 license is just the first step on the path to this. All this "noise" of people complaining online about it is, honestly, almost nothing to the size of D&D. I know it sucks for the people making a living off of D&D and OLG, but that is a really small % of people who play D&D. Looking at twitter at the height of #openD&D trending they was 20k tweets. You know a lot of those are the same people tweeting 2 or more times. so lets say 15k individuals. That is less then 0.001% of the people who play D&D regularly. Even if it was 1-2% that is still nothing. It is just all blown way out of size by the echo chamber that is social media. People on social media like to believe they speak for everyone, but they in fact speak for almost no one but themselves. Millions of D&D players around the world could careless about the OLG. They stick to playing their one game, refuse to play any other system, and are happy to do that. It is those people WotC is counting on. When they go all digital subscription base system, also long as they can keep around 50% of those players, then they will still be making more money then they ever dreamed of. 

 

[Chris Goodwin]

51 minutes ago, mallet said:

All this "noise" of people complaining online about it is, honestly, almost nothing to the size of D&D. I know it sucks for the people making a living off of D&D and OLG, but that is a really small % of people who play D&D.

 

Really?  Your hot take on this is that it sucks to be someone who makes a living off of this stuff but can't any longer, because... it's such a small percentage?

 

The OGL ecosystem made D&D 5e as popular as it was.  D&D 4e died because it didn't have that.  WotC hasnt created very much material in house for 5e.  How is OneD&D or D&D 6e or whatever they end up calling it going to go anywhere without people willing to create material for it?  

 

And it's not just D&D third party publishers who will suffer.  Lots of games not based on WotC material at all have released their stuff under OGL 1.0a.  People are making a living off of those, too.   Those people have been given a week to adapt or die, and adapting means accepting untenable terms.  

I'm certainly not going to recommend D&D, any edition, to anyone I know; in fact I'm going to recommend against it.  I'm not going to look in on Reddit and answer people's questions.  

 

This story has made it onto MSN and Forbes.  Twitch streamers and YouTube creators have already heard about it, and are hedging their options.  

[Ninja-Bear]

@mallet, I think your post is pretty close to what Hasboro want to achieve. I don’t think that they thought through though how many people who buy D&D stuff also buy other people’s stuff. That is where this license mess will shoot them in the foot. O understand that they can loose X amount and still make a profit but can they keep even X amount? At least in the short term I see this as a boon to OGL games as people probably want to snatch up stuff before its “banned”.  And I do hear problems people have with VTT some its not a guarantee that it will work as promised.  

[Chris Goodwin]

Additionally, while Wizards are currently saying that OneD&D will be backward compatible, their word is worthless.  Assume that everything will be changed just enough to require everyone to purchase all new materials be annoying, and that everyone who wants to GM a game using their fancy online tools will have to provide their own materials.  Which thanks to the OGL 1.1, are given to Wizards free of charge, so that they can turn around and sell them to everyone, and the creator gets zero.  How long will that last before GMs say no?

[Ragitsu]

5 hours ago, Opal said:

 

No one else has mentioned it, so:

 

D&D was reasonably balanced for about 2 years, between the release of 4e in 2008 and the release of Essentials in 2010.  Even then, it didn't return to the profound, perennial imbalance you alude to until the official release of 5e in 2014.

 

Balance is overrated and not always desirable.

[BarretWallace]

I thought this was interesting too.

https://mikeshea.net/thoughts_on_the_ogl_1_1.html

[BarretWallace]

And, another interesting one!  Sorry folks, I normally ignore this kind of thing, but TheyWhoShallNotBeNamed is leaving me rather miffed.  If they're not careful, I might upgrade to peeved.

 

https://www.inverse.com/gaming/dnd-dungeons-dragons-ogl-11-homebrew-changes-opendnd?fbclid=IwAR3rCI-zgIsp036YLxHDM3ITjKgk2CP-XFcw6NpT5tNfGDrbS61O5C9hrNU

[Old Man]

6 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

Additionally, while Wizards are currently saying that OneD&D will be backward compatible, their word is worthless.  Assume that everything will be changed just enough to require everyone to purchase all new materials be annoying, and that everyone who wants to GM a game using their fancy online tools will have to provide their own materials.  Which thanks to the OGL 1.1, are given to Wizards free of charge, so that they can turn around and sell them to everyone, and the creator gets zero.  How long will that last before GMs say no?

 

Honestly?  A lot of GMs will never say no.  For many, TTRPG means WotC D&D, full stop.  For others, TTRPG means d20, and they're terrified of learning any other systems, so they'll follow along.  If I had to guess I'd say that a majority of d20 players fall into one of these categories.

 

For thirty years I've watched these guys bitch and moan about d20 rules, only for them to turn around and viciously mock me when I helpfully suggest that other RPG systems exist.  The lock-in is real, and while I feel awful for the people whose livelihoods are at stake here, I have no love for the d20 ecosystem.

 

However evil the OGL 1.1 may be, it is not clear to me at all that it is the wrong decision for WotC legally or financially, at least in the short term.  In the long term, they are basing their future monopoly on online TTRPG on their specific ruleset, which may or may not work out for them. 

[Steve]

2 hours ago, BarretWallace said:

If they're not careful, I might upgrade to peeved.

Beware the Dark Side!
 

Miffed leads to peeved, peeved leads to vexed, and vexed leads to suffering.

 

Or something like that.

[Steve]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

 

Honestly?  A lot of GMs will never say no.  For many, TTRPG means WotC D&D, full stop.  For others, TTRPG means d20, and they're terrified of learning any other systems, so they'll follow along.  If I had to guess I'd say that a majority of d20 players fall into one of these categories.

 

For thirty years I've watched these guys bitch and moan about d20 rules, only for them to turn around and viciously mock me when I helpfully suggest that other RPG systems exist.  The lock-in is real, and while I feel awful for the people whose livelihoods are at stake here, I have no love for the d20 ecosystem.

 

However evil the OGL 1.1 may be, it is not clear to me at all that it is the wrong decision for WotC legally or financially, at least in the short term.  In the long term, they are basing their future monopoly on online TTRPG on their specific ruleset, which may or may not work out for them. 

I’m not very sure it will work out, and just talk of things changing so radically seems to be blowing up in their faces. I haven’t seen anyone saying this is a great idea. Not one.

 

Adding a subscription model and micropayments to monetize people is one of many things enraging the fan base, not to mention likely destroying popular smaller publishers adding to the hate. As things stand, you buy a rule book and some dice as a player, a few more books as a DM and go from there, maybe not buying anything more for years unless you are a DM. 5th Edition is already experiencing a shortage of DMs willing to adjudicate the rules. Their market seems to already be imploding.

 

I suspect DrivethruRPG is going to melt down this week as word continues to spread and people download their entire libraries to make sure they have the latest PDFs in case they can’t after the next few days.

[Shoug]

On 12/8/2022 at 3:16 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

The biggest flaws in any game come from trying to "balance" things.  Just no.  Get them reasonably close, and then let the GM balance things with the encounters, adventures and scenarios they create.  So the warriors are more powerful than the mages?  Run games that allow the strengths of the mages to shine.  Let everyone have their big moment and struggles.

This is not a MMOG where you have to worry about PVP and one class having it too easy while another struggles facing the same pre-programmed series of encounters and locations.  There's an actual human in charge who can adapt the game to what is in it.

This isn't only the job of the GM. Fate Core said it best, "Both players and gamemasters have a secondary job: Make everyone around you look awesome!" It's everybody's responsibility to be looking out for ways to make every player at the table feel like their character has a place in the story.

[IndianaJoe3]

14 hours ago, mallet said:

I am 100% certain the the WotC game plan is to change that business model. They want to go all digital, all subscription based. Charge DM's $10/month for a subscription and players $5/month. Now that group of 6 people I mentioned earlier are going to be spending $35/month to play D&D. So in 10 months they will have paid what the originally spent on the books, and everything after that is more profit for WotC. 

 

Typical (modern) corporate behavior. Instead of selling a product, they sell access to a product. They want to sell the same product to the same users (not customers!) every month. If they don't want to pay? Too bad, everything they had goes away. It's disgusting.

[Duke Bushido]

That guy again....

 

 

Subscription model?

 

 

Print screen.

Print screen.

Print screen.

Print screen.

 

 

Many years ago, I _bought_ a pdf of a repair manual for an old Royal Enfield; I had a buddy that owned one and was absolutely terrified of bending his own wrenches, so....

 

 

He'd need something done to the bike (because it was a Royal Enfield), and he'd swing by.  I'd pull up the site, the PDF, search a bit, and take notes (torque specs and the like), shut it a down and get to work.

About four years later, they adopted a subscription model, and suddenly I couldnt access the book I had _paid_ forty-eight buck for!

 

The message said that my subscription had run out, but for only eight bucks a month (yeah; do the math), I could access an entire library of repair manuals.

 

So I chipped in eight bucks for a "thirty-day trial," and spent the next Saturday night hitting "print to PDF" repeatedly,

 

 

Just sayin.

 

Now you know I actively work against piracy.  I had _bought and paid for_ that book.  That Extra eight bucks to access a book I paid for in full was, from where I sit, simple robbery.

 

 

 

[Shoug]

11 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Subscription model?

 

 

Print screen.

Print screen.

Print screen.

Print screen.

The biggest advantage of the subscription model is convenience and comprehensivity. Nobody who values those things (read: the people who are going to be subscribing to these services) is going to copy out materials. These are literally the opposite types of players. It's probably a super great deal for nerds patient enough to hand copy their own materials.

 

On 1/10/2023 at 11:19 AM, Old Man said:

Exactly this.  Hero's fatal flaw has always been the perceived learning curve.  The difficulty is that if you put out something with preconstructed characters and powers to lower the barrier to entry, you're also hiding the flexibility that is Hero's killer app.  Which is probably why we've never really seen a truly pick-up-and-play Hero game, just settings and the occasional rules revision.  Fantasy Hero hasn't had a definitive mechanic for healing in thirty years FFS.

 Hero's fatal flaw isn't the perceived learning curve, it's the frontloading of all of the creative work on top of the learning curve. It's not even really a game, it's a game system. A system that lets you (read: requires that you) define all the basic assumptions and parameters of your game before you can even start character creation. You've got to learn the game so you can make the game so you can finally play the game.

[Old Man]

An opinion from the EFF (who know a thing or two about open source licenses) interprets the OGL 1.0 as less of a license than a mutually agreed-upon contract.  That would make it irrevocable, at least unilaterally.