Steve

Apparently, once that info got out, so many people went to cancel their account, the web page crashed temporarily:
 

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.

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.

Beware the Dark Side!
 
Miffed leads to peeved, peeved leads to vexed, and vexed leads to suffering.
 
Or something like that.

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 thought this was interesting too.

https://mikeshea.net/thoughts_on_the_ogl_1_1.html

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.  

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. 
 

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.

I find this is a common trope in some movies "Be prepared to root for the bad guy!"  Yeah!  because everyone else is worse than he is.  Ocean's Eleven is a perfect example.  We like them, but forget they are all crooks and con artist and pick pockets and safe crackers.  The ONLY reason we root for them is that their target is SO unlikable.  The Sting is another excellent example!

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. 

The Meatgrinder was rechristened with a new name to honor the Princess of Drinax during the voyage to Hilfer, and the travel time allowed repairs and healing to occur.
 
The Imperium Treasure Ship had made a poor landing in the wastelands of Hilfer, and the remaining crew readied what defense they could while awaiting rescue, knowing it might take months to arrive, if ever.
 
@Durzan Malakim summarized the challenges facing the PCs pretty well. Here is some additional commentary.
 
The captain of the treasure ship is a martinet a bit reminiscent of the one from the movie Mr. Roberts, mixed with the British officer from Bridge on the River Kwai. He’s currently unconscious courtesy of his First Officer, Commander Mari Jagat, after I did my best to portray him as the insufferable prig he was.
 
She’s described in the module as the slightly Mary Sue-ish protagonist of a series of science fiction military action-adventure novels occurring parallel to the PCs activities, apparently an Honor Harrington homage. Further complicating things, she hero worships Brigadier Meson thanks to his “war hero” Positive Reputation but didn’t at first believe the “pirate captain” she was talking to was him even after he revealed his true identity, throwing quotes from his own biography in his face as to why her crew was not going to meekly surrender and letting the PCs know about the armed nuclear device.
 
Further complicating matters is the surviving Marine Commander Harc, who is paranoid that the ship was infiltrated by one or more Zhodani spies (apparently true from what the PCs later discovered) and refuses to accept the commands of any Navy officers, thinking they are all compromised puppets, and he’s not too sure about his fellow marines either. He and an unknown number of surviving marines are in full battledress and ready to fight pirates to the bitter end.
 
There is also a spy from the megacorp General Development Company (GeDeCo), running a scheme as well, but the PCs don’t know who it is. As one of the PCs also works for GeDeCo, he received some text messages from the spy on his personal comm device as a professional courtesy (and perhaps worried they would be killed if the PCs weren’t aware of their presence).

The Meatgrinder was rechristened with a new name to honor the Princess of Drinax during the voyage to Hilfer, and the travel time allowed repairs and healing to occur.
 
The Imperium Treasure Ship had made a poor landing in the wastelands of Hilfer, and the remaining crew readied what defense they could while awaiting rescue, knowing it might take months to arrive, if ever.
 
@Durzan Malakim summarized the challenges facing the PCs pretty well. Here is some additional commentary.
 
The captain of the treasure ship is a martinet a bit reminiscent of the one from the movie Mr. Roberts, mixed with the British officer from Bridge on the River Kwai. He’s currently unconscious courtesy of his First Officer, Commander Mari Jagat, after I did my best to portray him as the insufferable prig he was.
 
She’s described in the module as the slightly Mary Sue-ish protagonist of a series of science fiction military action-adventure novels occurring parallel to the PCs activities, apparently an Honor Harrington homage. Further complicating things, she hero worships Brigadier Meson thanks to his “war hero” Positive Reputation but didn’t at first believe the “pirate captain” she was talking to was him even after he revealed his true identity, throwing quotes from his own biography in his face as to why her crew was not going to meekly surrender and letting the PCs know about the armed nuclear device.
 
Further complicating matters is the surviving Marine Commander Harc, who is paranoid that the ship was infiltrated by one or more Zhodani spies (apparently true from what the PCs later discovered) and refuses to accept the commands of any Navy officers, thinking they are all compromised puppets, and he’s not too sure about his fellow marines either. He and an unknown number of surviving marines are in full battledress and ready to fight pirates to the bitter end.
 
There is also a spy from the megacorp General Development Company (GeDeCo), running a scheme as well, but the PCs don’t know who it is. As one of the PCs also works for GeDeCo, he received some text messages from the spy on his personal comm device as a professional courtesy (and perhaps worried they would be killed if the PCs weren’t aware of their presence).

The crew of the PC’s ship is remarkably diverse. At a rough count…
 
Seven male humans (two are PCs)
Three female humans (NPCs)
One male human with cybernetics (PC)
One male flesh-covered android (NPC)
One female flesh-covered android (NPC)
One uplifted gorilla (NPC)
One male Vargr (NPC)
One female Aslan (NPC)
Five robots of varying levels of sentience
 
They’ve now managed to conquer an all Aslan-crewed pirate ship with around ten female Aslan techs and a few surviving males.
 
Forging this motley band of pirates into a unified fighting force will take every ounce of Captain Nemos’ leadership ability and a considerable amount of luck.

Seen online

I was responsible for some PC dithering as we encountered obstacle after obstacle between us and a vault full of treasure.
Obstacle 1: Missile launchers shooting at our starship. We did manage to take out two missile launchers, but are there more? Obstacle 2: Imperial Navy and Marines guarding the vault. There are three factions aboard to contend with. Obstacle 3: A dead man's switch on a nuclear device that prevents us from just killing everyone from afar with starship weapons. Obstacle 4: Two groups of imperial marines in battle dress (basically Ironman armor). Obstacle 5: A Zhodoni psionic agent somewhere in mix scanning us from afar. Obstacle 6: My PC's psychological complication against killing Imperial military forces who he still has a sense of duty to. It's an interesting situation we find ourselves in.

Our first session of the year was mostly roleplaying as new NPCs were introduced to the players, including their first meeting with a psionic in the campaign, one of the Aslan females who came to negotiate their new role after the PCs victory. She is now acting as an advisor to the PCs.
 
The remaining male Aslans had their toughest fighter, the ace fighter pilot the PCs dealt with in the last session, nearly killed in a fistfight with PC Harrison, a boxer built a bit like Rocky Balboa in his abilities. Despite the Aslan having a four SPD and a higher DEX, Harrison blocked several blows and then unleashed an uppercut that struck his foe’s head, nearly killing the Aslan after hit location modifiers were figured in.
 
After a bit of travel time, they made it to Hilfer, where the next steps in the current adventure happened.
 
More to follow…

Another cool way to use emerging AI is to help with adventure plots.  You can use Chat-GPT to do this.  You need to create an account to use it.  For years I have been using Inspiration Pad Pro (free tool) to create adventure outlines like this.
 
Tigger: Apparition
Major Goal: Solve Mystery - Disappearance Of Person(s)
Obstacle to Goal: Race Against Antagonist(s)
Location: A church steeple rises above a swampy pool. The waters around the ruin are shallow, except in the graveyard, where open and empty graves create deep, submerged pits.
Location Feature: Chapel
Phenomena: Strange Weather
Villain Goal/Reason: Revenge
Artifact: Exotic Item
Theme: Power
Key NPC: Peasant   And then I took this and turned it into a statement like: Write an fantasy role playing game adventure where the adventure is triggered by an apparition.  The villain is after revenge and power.  A person has disappeared.  The location is a church and graveyard that is in a swampy pool.   "The Apparition of the Swamp Church"
 
You and your group of adventurers have been hired by the local lord to investigate a strange occurrence at the abandoned swamp church on the outskirts of town. It is said that an apparition has been appearing at the church, terrifying any who dare to enter its grounds.
 
As you approach the church, you notice that the surrounding graveyard is overgrown and the church itself is dilapidated, its walls and roof covered in vines. As you make your way through the swampy pool that surrounds the church, you hear the sound of chanting coming from inside.
 
Upon entering the church, you are confronted by the ghostly apparition of a monk, his body glowing with an otherworldly light. He tells you that he has been cursed to haunt the church for all eternity, unable to find peace until the person responsible for his death is brought to justice.
 
As you listen to the monk's story, you learn that he was a member of the church's clergy, and that he was killed by a vengeful member of the congregation who coveted the monk's position of power. This person, who has since disappeared, was willing to go to any lengths to achieve their goals, even murder.
 
As the monk's story comes to an end, he disappears, leaving you with the task of finding and bringing the killer to justice. You and your companions must search the swampy graveyard and surrounding area for any clues that might lead you to the culprit.
 
As you delve deeper into the mystery, you encounter strange and dangerous creatures, including undead skeletons and swamp beasts. You also discover that the killer is still in the area, using the abandoned church as a hideout.
In the end, you are able to track down the killer and confront them in a final showdown at the church. With the help of your companions and the ghostly monk, you are able to defeat the villain and bring them to justice, finally bringing peace to the haunted swamp church.
 
Which isn't too bad if you need a quick adventure for an upcoming game.  It took about 10 minutes to generate.

The first time I met Darren Watts, I was in the middle of a game at Gen Con. He gave me his DOJ business card and wanted to talk to me after. He respected my work on fanzines such as Haymaker, Rogues Gallery, and The Clobberin' Times. He and Steven S. Long later offered me a job writing and editing at Hero Games. The timing wasn't right for me, sadly, but I did get to manage/edit the in-house magazine Digital Hero for its full run. 
 
We always had a blast together, hanging out at the booth, running or playing games together, or otherwise just shooting the breeze. I usually acted as the GM Assistant in Darren's "Build & Brawl" Champions games, in which players started with a blank character sheet and dozens of books spread around the table, with Darren and I as rules experts to help players get going. I was surprised at how many first-timers we'd get, and they'd always come up with great ideas:
a first-time player made a superhero who would push her opponents into a different dimension with no way back the planet Earth, who apparently had a secret ID, and would occasionally fight other superbeings a brain in a jar who wore a domino mask to protect his secret identity as another brain in a different jar  
I helped run the special Champions 30th anniversary game along with Rod Currie, in which Foxbat had somehow changed the timeline and made himself an honest-to-gosh superhero, admired by millions (Foxbat and His Amazing Friends). Darren, Steven, and Jason Walters were the VIP players, along with several lucky other gamers, who went back in time to prevent him from kidnapping Steve Peterson, George MacDonald, Raymond Greer, and Bruce Harlick and forcing them to change his character origin in the original source material.
 
For the past three years, I've loved listening to his Explain This, Comics Guys podcast, where he'd take us all on a behind-the-scenes tour of the early days of the comic book industry. Every episode I'd learn a dozen things that I didn't know, despite being a lifelong nerd myself. 
 
Darren's passing will leave a hole in the industry and in my circle of friends. Darren was a hero.
 

OK, so I finally got bitten by the MidJourney bug because I had to set up a Discord account for something else.
 
After a little fiddling around, I made some images for a hypothetical noir planetary romance story I've had rattling around in the back of my brain:
 
Our hero:
 

 
a troubled war veteran, after catching a minor case of death from getting involved in the wrong situation with the best of intentions, awakens
 

 
in a ruined city in an alien desert, after dreaming of a woman who has haunted his nights ever since he woke up in that Army hospital tent, our titular Jade Eyed Princess:
 

 
He's astonished to find his old war wounds healed, but is soon set upon by a group of primitive hunters
 

 
who don't look quite human. These, he will later dub Big Heads. First, he must escape! Which he does. Fleeing into the desert, dawn breaks and he realizes he really isn't in Kansas (or the Bronx) anymore. The need for water sets in, so he tries to obtain some from a cactus-like plant
 

 
which lashes out at him with tentacle-like appendages, and nearly takes him down with a fast-acting poison. He manages to drag himself to a cave before the survivor of the Big Head hunting party shows back up with his clan. He awakens to find
 

 
an unusual, slightly grotesque, yet somehow adorable creature . . . chewing on his wounded leg! He's alarmed, and the creature jumps back and makes submissive gestures. He hears an amused laugh from the back of the cave, and turns to find
 

 
an ophidian woman with iridescent skin watching over him. She assures him the creature is only trying to clean the poison out of the wound, and in his fevered state, our Hero decides to just roll with it, because none of this is probably real anyway.
 
Some time later, the pair (trio!) are found by the Big Head search party and decide to deal with the situation head on. Which means a trial by combat. The festivities are interrupted before they begin by
 

 
a Royal Navy airship. The Big Heads have been in conflict with the Empire for some time. This is because the Empire controls the weather machines and has been withholding rain from the desert side for months, forestalling their brief annual rainy season, and the Big Heads have been raiding border settlements.
 
However, it turns out the airship is also looking for their Immortal Princess. Our Hero and Snake Lady (mostly Snake Lady) broker a tenuous truce and enlist the Big Heads to help with the search for the Princess. This, because the ship's commander discloses that the weather machines have been taken over by a rebel faction. All hope that the Princess can help sort this out.
 
Of course, there's that trial by combat to sort out first.
 
Our band finds the Princess. Hero, Snake Lady, and Head Big Head all fly off to
 

 
The mountain city capitol of the Empire, where Hero is fascinated by the Princess despite the warnings of Snake Lady. Political negotiations ensue. A small force lead by our Hero sets out to secure the weather machines.
 
That's all I have in pictures. Hero will find out some unpleasant truths when he meets older versions of himself in the form of both the Emperor and the rebel leader, and begins to once again question the reality of his situation . . . He's being made a plaything of by the Jade Eyed Princess.
 
Some writing software, like Scrivener, has a feature to save inspiration pics or reference pics for writers while they work on a story. I've always disregarded this habit, but I'm kind of warming up to it! MidJourney is pretty cool stuff.
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Scholomance (from passing mention in (Dracula )
 

I fed a MJ four image spread back into MJ and got this interesting result trying to turn the below into a black and white line art:
 

 
I didn't really think MJ would do a straight conversion, but the result was interesting.

Recently, we did the 40th anniversary episode for the campaign. More recently, the 100th episode for one of our newest supergroups. However, this past Saturday, we did the 600th episode for our earliest, and continually running, supergroup. It featured every hero of that group for the past 40 years, against Dr. Destroyer. Total supers, including cameos of which there were plenty, came out to 18 superheroes. Woo! It was a rousing success, complete with a 3 minute video I created (which came out to be the 250th video created for our Champions campaign), and an actual map of Paris the players used to save the city.