Game Makers Stage Mass Exodus From Dungeons & Dragons' 'Open' License (arstechnica.com) 181
Following controversial changes to Dungeons & Dragons' decades-old Open Gaming License (OGL), "many prominent third-party RPG publishers now say they're abandoning the OGL, regardless of what changes [publisher Wizards of the Coast (WotC)] officially releases in a coming new version," reports Ars Technica. "What's more, many in the community have now lost faith in WotC's stewardship of the licensed rules system that has underpinned so much of the industry's last two decades." From the report: Pathfinder publisher Paizo Inc. is behind perhaps the biggest effort to move the industry away from WotC's OGL. The company announced last Thursday that it is creating a new Open RPG Creative License (ORC) designed to be "open, perpetual, and irrevocable." [...] Regardless of the legal fate of the OGL, Paizo says it wants to "irrevocably and unquestionably keep alive the spirit of the Open Game License" with its new ORC. The system-agnostic license, designed with the help of IP law firm Azora Law, will eventually be controlled and protected by a nonprofit akin to the Linux Foundation, the company says. Until that new license is ready, upcoming Paizo products will be printed without any explicit license, the company says.
Paizo's ORC effort has already drawn some significant support from the community. Call of Cthulhu and Runequest publisher Chaosium, which never used the WotC OGL for its products in the first place, nonetheless writes that it's "very happy to be working with the rest of the industry to come up with a system-wide OGL that anyone can use." Popular D&D module publisher Kobold Press has also lent its support to Paizo's ORC product but stopped just short of committing to use it for its just-announced Core Fantasy ruleset, codenamed Project Black Flag. Instead, Kobold says it is "wait[ing] to see exactly what shape the Open Gaming License might take in this new era" and "will review the terms and consider whether they fit the needs of our audience and our business goals" when the updated OGL is eventually released. Mutants & Masterminds publisher Green Ronin is also on board with the ORC, with founder and President Chris Pramas publicly comparing the current OGL fiasco to WotC's disastrous attempt to push a new Game System License for the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons back in 2008.
Apart from the companies backing Paizo's ORC -- including Legendary Games and Rogue Genius -- some tabletop publishers are creating their own licenses or finding other ways to extricate themselves from the WotC OGL. Blade Runner RPG and Mutant: Year Zero publisher Free League, for instance, says it's overhauling its unique Year Zero Engine to remove any WotC OGL content. At the same time, it's creating a new "irrevocable, worldwide, and royalty-free" license for anyone who wants to use that engine in their own games. [...] Old-School Essentials publisher Necrotic Gnome has similarly announced that it's "moving away from the OGL" for its future products. The company is leaving a bit of wiggle room, saying it will be "keeping an eye on developments" and that its next move "will depend on how the OGL topic develops over the coming months." But Necrotic Gnome adds that "the direction is clear," and that direction is toward "an alternative open license," which could end up being Paizo's ORC. Arcadia publisher MCDM and publisher Basic Fantasy also have plans to abandon the D&D 5th edition ruleset. "Troll Lord Games, meanwhile, publicly abandoned the OGL weeks ago and liquidated its existing stock of 5th-edition D&D products, 'never to be revisited again, in any edition,'" adds Ars.
Paizo's ORC effort has already drawn some significant support from the community. Call of Cthulhu and Runequest publisher Chaosium, which never used the WotC OGL for its products in the first place, nonetheless writes that it's "very happy to be working with the rest of the industry to come up with a system-wide OGL that anyone can use." Popular D&D module publisher Kobold Press has also lent its support to Paizo's ORC product but stopped just short of committing to use it for its just-announced Core Fantasy ruleset, codenamed Project Black Flag. Instead, Kobold says it is "wait[ing] to see exactly what shape the Open Gaming License might take in this new era" and "will review the terms and consider whether they fit the needs of our audience and our business goals" when the updated OGL is eventually released. Mutants & Masterminds publisher Green Ronin is also on board with the ORC, with founder and President Chris Pramas publicly comparing the current OGL fiasco to WotC's disastrous attempt to push a new Game System License for the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons back in 2008.
Apart from the companies backing Paizo's ORC -- including Legendary Games and Rogue Genius -- some tabletop publishers are creating their own licenses or finding other ways to extricate themselves from the WotC OGL. Blade Runner RPG and Mutant: Year Zero publisher Free League, for instance, says it's overhauling its unique Year Zero Engine to remove any WotC OGL content. At the same time, it's creating a new "irrevocable, worldwide, and royalty-free" license for anyone who wants to use that engine in their own games. [...] Old-School Essentials publisher Necrotic Gnome has similarly announced that it's "moving away from the OGL" for its future products. The company is leaving a bit of wiggle room, saying it will be "keeping an eye on developments" and that its next move "will depend on how the OGL topic develops over the coming months." But Necrotic Gnome adds that "the direction is clear," and that direction is toward "an alternative open license," which could end up being Paizo's ORC. Arcadia publisher MCDM and publisher Basic Fantasy also have plans to abandon the D&D 5th edition ruleset. "Troll Lord Games, meanwhile, publicly abandoned the OGL weeks ago and liquidated its existing stock of 5th-edition D&D products, 'never to be revisited again, in any edition,'" adds Ars.
WotC Merger News (Score:5, Funny)
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When lawyers & accountants design your strateg (Score:3)
For sometime the official content put out by WotC has been far inferior to stuff put out by smaller independant groups.
WotC could have worked hard at making better content or recruiting these 3rd parties into the fold (though that would only be a small bump in revenue).
WotC could have effectively made an "App Store" with good integration for this kind of content and taken a cut there.
WotC could have waited until their virtual table top was ready and monetised lots of little assets there.
Heck, I'm not even saying all of the above would be received favourably, but they wouldn't have resulted in mass exodus.
But the market demands increase profit year after year - so they beheaded the golden goose. Things are stacked up against them:
D&D is very dependant on 3rd party content creators - who are going to be the first to walk away from this.
The D&D community probably has a higher percentage of people who know about the politics behind the products than most other markets - every game requires about 4 people minimum, 1 person in every group is going to know and communicate about this.
Just about everybody is fed up and is at some kind of breaking point these days, consumers are always punched down on, everything has a battlepass, everything is spying on us, frauds who wear suits only go to jail if they steal from the rich - when you present a bunch of angry nerds with the option of toppling a greedy corporation through the means of... not buying stuff - god damn it we're going to take it.
There's no Diablo Immortal whales that can keep this going, there's no FIFA addicts - the movie and Baulder's Gate 3 might give them a temporary bump. There's been so many previous movements with consumers holding pitchforks that have failed - I really hope this will be different.
Re:When lawyers & accountants design your stra (Score:5, Insightful)
The four people minimum is really at the heart of this.
At my table, three of us buy rulebooks and two of us access online rules with laptops. If those two can can't play anymore, the rest of us will stop playing, and buying the books too.
I'm sure there is someone at Hasbro who thinks these changes mean they can monetize the other two players, but the truth is they would just lose three customers instead. I hope this backlash has helped them figure that out.
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Well, seeing on how anytime you move on to the next edition, yes, you basically are starting from scratch. Gotta buy new rulebooks. See what all is different and new. It is not like editions are cross-compatible. So, yeah. It's quite simple. You stop buying anything new from WotC for 5th edition. You finish up your current campaigns, stories, etc. for a while. D&D 6th edition (or whatever they ultimately call it) will come out. You can either:
A) keep going with what you already have - WotC makes no addi
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You say that, but undeniably, behind DnD's recent surge in popularity over the past few years, it is considered "cool", and that is a double edged sword.
My young niece, who has never shown any interest in dragons or elves or dwarves, wants me to by the DnD Starter or Essential set so I can DM some games with her and her friends. This is because DnD is now cool. That's because of multiple things: Stranger Things, 80's nostalgia, Live plays of games, celebrities getting involved... all of those things bump th
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I don't pick my games based on publisher licensing agreements.
Well, yes you do. Or at least, people do. Not because they care for the agreements but because they care for the effect these agreements have.
One of the key effects of the OGL was that there was a flood of authors creating content for D&D. D&D is everywhere. There is the insane amount of content created by many different studios and independent creators. There is people talking about it. You have dedicated Twitch channels of people streaming nothing but playing it. For a lot of people, at least peop
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No, they also didn't sit down saying "Let's play some TTRPG" in the first place. They said "Let's play some D&D" because that's what they saw in Twitch. Outside of a few tabletop nerds, nobody gives a fuck about systems, period. People simply don't know about any other systems because D&D is the only one they got into contact with.
And that's to no small due to the amount of material available.
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Whether that changes or not will depend on the Twitch-streamers. Yes, I do believe that they have a very big impact on how most people playing D&D play and perceive it. You might have heard about the Mercer effect, and it's called after the guy for a pretty simple reason: He's pretty much the gold standard for most people playing.
Now, I don't know if Mercer is on the payroll of Hasbro, but he's not the only one playing. And these people will very likely know about the OGL and the fallout around it, and
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Have you ever played another ttrpg that wasn't D&D?
Your post reads to me like a lot of hand waving and excuse making to defend Wotc's actions which are wildly unpopular with much of it's fan base. I'm thinking perhaps D&D is all you know and you're upset that people might not play it anymore. Otherwise I'm not sure how anyone arrives at corporate abuse of small business partners isn't something to be bothered about.
"Sure, make content for our games and you can make money"" "Psych! Now everything you
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I've owned and played dozens of games going all the way back to yellow book basic d&d.
D&D wasn't even the first ttrpg I played back then.
Fair enough, my mistake.
Licenses are bullshit. Most people have no fucking clue what the rules are much less the licensing terms.
How do you explain the mass outrage over this then? Slashdot isnt the only spot on the internet where people are bothered by this by a long shot.
As a publisher the terms are super important. As a gamer, no one needs to give a fuck. I'm not a publisher nor are 99.999% of the millions of players.
Turns out an awful lot of people enjoyed the community of contributors that 5e licensing brought. It's fine you didn't but don't pretend that just because you think something isnt important it isnt to everyone else. Wotc wouldnt be back peddling so hard if 99.999% of its user base didnt care https://www.gamesradar.com/dan... [gamesradar.com] .
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Because in today's world, companies are super sensitive to the tiniest bit of internet noise.
There are how many millions of d&d players? Let's say 5 to pick an arbitrary reasonable number (no one can know for sure).
Out of 5m players how many individual game player / non-publishers have posted anything negative about it?
A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand?
And with a hand wave you've created a fictional world that supports your opinions. In the real world most companies dont give a shit unless they think it's going to effect their bottom line. Companies get complaints all the time that you never hear about because not enough people care. The ones you hear about on the other hand are the ones that have enough people involved that the companies have to care if they care about their bottom line.
I also think you're failing to appreciate how much of 5e's massive s
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Oh sorry, I'll address that part right here:
Nice Strawman!
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I've been looking at finding another system, because the 5e system has some serious shortcomings in the endgame. It's great if you never plan to go past 13th or 14th level, but the rest of the levels up to 20 are next to impossible to prepare for as a DM. There are high power monsters, but not enough to put together a string of interesting adventures the way there is earlier, and the variance becomes really swingy again (lots of save or suck), like it was at the really low levels. It doesn't look like 6e wa
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3.5e was great! D20 in general was a huge step forward, and 3.5e was the most-refined product WotC released based on the original d20.
You just needed a competent DM to get ahead of the lame munchkin builds. There were plenty of ways to do it.
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4e did indeed try to give everyone some new styles, spells and a lot to do with a wide array of tactical options to use at each level, but I guess the community saw it as an attempt to "WoWify" D&D to lure in the MMORPG crowd and it was generally shunned for that reason.
I think 4e tried to solve a problem most hardcore fans didn't exactly perceive as one. While combat is a fairly important part of the game, I think that most people didn't really care about things like "balance" or "tactical styles". Yes
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The 2 will find that there is a cheap source for books online (whether legal or some equivalent of the Buccaneer Bay is not even important here) and the other 3 will go "hey, I didn't know that is possible".
Why do you think things would be different in D&D than they were in any other content related hobby?
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I guess we'll have to wait and see how it develops.
My prediction would be that the RPG world become a bit more fractured again. Which isn't the worst thing that could happen to be honest, D&D's market share really got a bit intimidating already.
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D&D has one unparalleled advantage: It's easy to pick up. Moreover, it's easy to pick up for the GM. You don't need to learn and heed a lot of rules to play. The statistics of the game also lend themselves for easy "power level" matchmaking and even an inexperienced GM will not put a too strong or too weak challenge to his party. There is also no way to "gimp" your character by spending points "wrong".
That's very appealing to a lot of players.
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Buying four non-WOTC book sets is likely less expensive than a single player buying a regular set of WOTC books. Have you looked at what these cost lately? $30 for the player guide and some blank character sheets is pretty high. A "regular" player is going to have about 5 books at that price, and there are 50+ books total to play with all the
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Something very similar occurred at my table last night. There is a 3rd party world we are planning on playing in as soon as it releases. It sounds like they are planning on sticking with the 5E ruleset, but if they decided to even make it Pathfinder 2E compatible we will move to that.
It's true that a good majority of players don't care too terribly much about the license directly, but a lot of them do use a _whole lot_ of 3rd party content. The rules (what WOTC makes) enable the story, but the 3rd parties a
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No, that's not going to happen. But I could easily see "well, we've finished that module. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing any good modules to move forward with at this level, and if we start again with low levels in D&D I'm not seeing a lot of modules in general we haven't done. Wanna give Pathfinder a try?"
This is actually even nastier than that (Score:2)
Several people have pointed out that the fees they're demanding are too high for any of these companies they're going after the stay in business.
Logically it means they want those companies to go out of business. That one in turn leave a gap and wizards of the Coast could pocket that money for themselves.
The Incredibly stupid thing is that none of these companies are big enough to really make it worth the trouble of running out of business s
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It's not "the market". It's Hasbro.
Hasbro's numbers are really bad. The stock is tanking horribly. Band of America did a rare double-downgrade of Hasbro to "Underperform". And Hasbro's CEO has reportedly said "Consumers are too price sensitive" after raising prices and seeing sales tank.
Hasbro has been putting incredible pressure on their one golden goose - WotC - the past 5 years to produce more and more. To feed the "Money machine goes whirrr...." and produce the profits.
WotC reportedly makes 35% of the r
Re:When lawyers & accountants design your stra (Score:4, Interesting)
Aaaand....that's what Hasbro hopes you will think.
The problem is that DnD is popular now not *just* because it is fun... but because it is cool. But when a bunch of nerds gang up en masse to force changes and provide bad publicity that make news (I would not be surprised if this becomes a NY Times story) then DnD is in real danger of becoming rapidly *uncool*.
And if you ignore that uncoolness as a billion-dollar corporation, *especially one that primarily markets things to kids*, then you do so at your own peril.
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D&D will remain cool as long as the cool nerds (i.e. Mercer et al) keep Twitch-streaming it. It may seem strange to the old school nerds that are essentially the hipsters of RPGing because they did it before it was cool, but yes, these celebrity-players are to no small amount what constitutes the mass appeal of the game.
Before that, D&D was, like pretty much every other RPG, some pastime for nerds that can't get a date on a Saturday evening. It got cool because people who look like they could get da
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I run two tables as well as AL and play in another. Maybe we just run in different circles (my tables+AL are all fully remote), but it seems like _everyone_ is talking about this and worried about the future viability of the game. Everyone is concerned that we can't continue to do what we do now into the future. Actual-play groups, r/dndhorrorstories reader channels, the communities around VTTs like Fantasy Grounds, the people who take your commissions for character references and token art. It has lite
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And in my 2 D&D groups people who I never knew cared about such things are wanting to change games. Anecdotes are fun!
Wotc wouldnt be back peddling so hard on this if this wasnt something a lot of people cared about.
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You literally point out one of the very good reasons why Wotc is taking this so seriously. Shutting down the influencers that made 5e massively more successful than any other edition is going to understandably upset fans.
Your strawman of " "those guys are bad people who want to ban us from playing d&d! If they get away with this we won't be allowed to play anymore!"" did make me laugh though.
Your players want to change games, why? They think it will impact wotc bottom line? Will wotc even know you changed games? Did they FedEx a letter to the wotc ceo saying they are changing games and why?
Wotc have demonstrated with their actions that they are worried about player exodus. They're realizing that they
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Wotc is not worried that people will leave d&d because they understand the issues and care about the license.
Of course that's not true at all because as I showed you before they are back pedaling as fast as they can on all this nonsense.
Wotc is worried that people will leave d&d because they will believe Paizo stirring shit up over licensing and making people believe this will somehow impact them as players in a real way. Which it won't. It's just Paizo noise.
The game's new found popularity is built on people like this Paizo you're obsessed with. Wotc doesnt want to go back to the paltry sums D&D was earning prior to social media popularizing it and as I've already shown you they are back pedaling as fast as they can to appease these people.
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Your players want to change games, why?
My players and I just want to be be able to play D&D the way we always have. This involves lots of third-party tools, content and FOSS that can't continue to be useful under OGL1.1. Wizards explicitly wants to kill those things off and make 6e/OneDND a thing that can only be played on their future inhouse VTT, so its kind of forcing us to switch regardless of our opinions on the corporation itself.
Its not about "hurting" WoTC somehow, that's a weird outlook. We just want to play RPGs. More like we'r
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They can change the license for future content. They can not rug pull for content and tools already released until the current license.
Ideally, no, they shouldn't be able to retroactively kill your 3/3.5/4/5e tooling just by releasing a new license that kills the old one. Unfortunately, they seem to think they can and that's exactly the problem we're all pissed about -- this is the crux of the "perpetual" vs. "nonrevocable" debate, and why its original authors like Brian Lewis and Ryan Dancey are getting interviewed about how it being deauthorizable was not the original intent.
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The OGL and d20 were a huge deal back when they came out. Anyone who has been into tabletop roleplaying since at least the late 90s knows a little about both.
Looks at headline (Score:2)
"News for Nerds"... yup, definitely fits the bill.
Ran a campaign 40 years ago. (Score:2)
For Heavens Almighty, ditch D&D already. (Score:2)
It's mediocre at best.
The inane non-sense that Hasbro has been planning with D&D in recent weeks is hopefully enough to push this outdated mess of an RPG franchise over the edge and into obscurity, where it belongs.
A World of alternatives way better than D&D, in every aspect!
There is really no lack of excellent RPG systems to go around and even reprints, remasters and refinements (not that they would need to much of that) of old systems are popping up on crowdfunding left, right and center. I just g
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100%. I've been RPGing for about as long as you and I've always thought D&D was one of the worst rule sets of any era regardless of edition. I still enjoy playing it mind you, I would just enjoy playing literally any other rule set I've ever played more.
Loved that you gave a shout out to GURPS by the way. Such a great system that is as complex or non complex as you want it and doesnt hem you in with class and level restrictions or one of my least favorite RPG mechanics ever, spell slots! It being such a
mis reported (Score:2)
The companies aren't abandoning ogl; to be clear, wotc is introducing a revision of ogl which basically breaks it and these companies (many of which only exist because of permissions introduced by ogl in the first place) aren't going along with it.
To wit:
Ogl was developed by wotc in 2000 to encourage the wide adoption of the d&d mechanics as the default rules people would use, by letting other developers use the mechanisms and own what they made. In essence it was a (brilliant) long play move fostering
Is there any reason for the ORC? (Score:2)
I haven't looked at it in detail, or really at all, but I wonder: Is there anything the ORC does that isn't already available under a CC license?
Re:And all it took... (Score:5, Insightful)
WoTC released an open license. This is the entire point of an open license. It allows you to build on something freely (as in beer).
Now, they are not only going to release DnD 6th edition under a new license, but have decided to retroactively change all existing licenses. In other words, they are altering the deal, so pray they do not alter it further.
You're wrong. This is corporate greed at its worst. They are altering the terms of the deal they agreed to, after they agreed to it.
As an aside, they tried releasing 4e under a license similar to what they are considering now. It failed, hard.
Also what's not forget why the open license exists (Score:5, Interesting)
The ogl wasn't just there to protect people who make D&D modules and content it was there to protect TSR or rather wizards of the Coast at that point from themselves.
It was specifically created to prevent wizards of the Coast from doing the bone-headed stupid dipshit stuff they're doing right now.
The theory is the corporate executives think they can chase everyone out of the D&D ecosphere and take all the money for themselves with just the threat and no actual lawsuits.
That's not going to work of course. One of the things that really pisses me off is the way we think that just because somebody's running a company that makes a lot of money they're somehow intelligent. Despite how much nepotism we know there is out there we still want to believe that anyone in that high of a leadership position must have some sort of merit...
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Maybe they felt it was "open" because you were allowed to read it?
Anyway, I felt that D&D is long in the tooth anyway. It was outdated by the 80s. Point based systems feel much better to me and have more flexibility. The main thing D&D offers is an outlet for the rules lawyers (no fudging allowed) and a LOT of source material (though like comic books, be prepared for regular reboots and inconsistencies. You can do D&D in a point based system if you want, but you can't do a point based system
Re:And all it took... (Score:5, Insightful)
The new license (before the outrage) was going to require you to not only give them a portion of your profits, but ALSO allow WotC to just straight up take any, and all, of your own work (art, writing, etc) and resuse/sell it themselves without giving anything back to you, or even acknowledging where it came from. That's the problem. It meant anything you created is theirs. Period. It meant you had no legal right to your own work. Which meant if creators went with it, eventually the only ones that would be making any money at all would be WotC while doing zero of the work. And since WotC has shown that it's willing to retroactively change license terms, even if they walk back now, why would you trust them into the future? The 5th edition system isn't even that good to begin with. The only thing good about it is that OGL existed the way it did. That's it. The system itself is terrible, because the main architects of it have borderline comatose levels of brain activity.
Re:And all it took... (Score:4, Insightful)
The new license (before the outrage) was going to require you to not only give them a portion of your profits,
Actually, it requires you to give then a portion of your revenue, i.e., your gross, not net.
Re:And all it took... (Score:4, Interesting)
You didn't need a license in the first place! You can't copyright the rules of a game.
There is nothing stopping anyone from writing their own compatible rule book and giving it away for free.
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You didn't need a license in the first place! You can't copyright the rules of a game.
There is nothing stopping anyone from writing their own compatible rule book and giving it away for free.
I believe you meant to say "you can't patent the rules to a game.
You can in fact copyright your written description of the rules of a game, but anyone can write their own description of the same game, just using different words or illustrations.
For example, there are many different ways to describe how to play chess, or monopoly, or risk. Or how to play any video game, for that matter. So as long as you don't copy someone else's descriptive text, you can write your own version of the rule book.
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You didn't need a license in the first place! You can't copyright the rules of a game.
There is nothing stopping anyone from writing their own compatible rule book and giving it away for free.
I believe you meant to say "you can't patent the rules to a game.
In fact, you can. WotC patented certain game mechanics for Magic: the Gathering years ago. The Library of Congress has made it very clear you cannot copyright the mechanics of a game, only the specific expression of them.
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You didn't need a license in the first place! You can't copyright the rules of a game.
There is nothing stopping anyone from writing their own compatible rule book and giving it away for free.
I believe you meant to say "you can't patent the rules to a game.
In fact, you can. WotC patented certain game mechanics for Magic: the Gathering years ago. The Library of Congress has made it very clear you cannot copyright the mechanics of a game, only the specific expression of them.
Only the USPTO can actually issue a patent, and methods of playing games are not patentable. How to play a game is an abstract idea, and not subject to patent. [nutter.com]
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I believe you meant to say "you can't patent the rules to a game.
No, I didn't. Do you even know what the license in question was about? Here's a hint: it had nothing to do with patents.
Copyright only applies to a particular expression, not the rules themselves. If I have a book that explains my rules, the book is subject to copyright, but the rules themselves are not. You could take my rules and make your own book.
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You are lying. I never claimed that you can copyright the rules of a game. I very explicitly say that you can not copyright the rules of a game.
In case you're incapable of scrolling up:
You can't copyright the rules of a game.
Maybe you just have trouble reading? I explained that to you again in my next post. Do I need to quote that for you as well?
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And thus things like Pathfinder exist, which has basically forked D&D under a new name. Pathfinder used OGL more as an asscovering thing but I guess they'll run some plagiarism tools over their rules, bestiary
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Many RPGs you could buy (Score:5, Informative)
There is nothing stopping anyone from writing their own compatible rule book and giving it away for free.
Heck, someone could write their own D&D-style game and sell it. No need to give it away.
Even back when I was a teen there were alternatives to D&D. Runequest was well-regarded, and GURPS was a pretty big deal when it came out. They're mostly forgotten now but I remember Tunnels & Trolls and The Arduin Grimoire (which started out as expansions for D&D but evolved into its own boxed set game).
But you can definitely find modern rules sets that describe a game very similar to old-fashioned D&D. I was at a games store and I found a book called something like "Old-School RPG" (I can't remember exactly) that described a game very like first-edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. And actually they had at least two different games like that, from different companies. (Maybe I saw this one [necroticgnome.com] but I'm not sure.)
I did a Google search to try to find the exact title. While looking I found Dungeon Crawl Classics, which I don't think I saw at the store.
https://goodman-games.com/dungeon-crawl-classics-rpg/ [goodman-games.com]
And while looking I found that there are apparently enough of these that Wikipedia has a special page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_retro-clones [wikipedia.org]
P.S. The most recent RPG I have actually played is Numenara by Monte Cook Games. Monte Cook wrote a really cool module for AD&D and I'm willing to send money to his games company.
https://www.montecookgames.com/store/product/numenera-starter-set/ [montecookgames.com]
P.P.S. If I were starting a new RPG group I think rather than any of the above I might try the Savage Worlds rules. These are all about fast and furious play rather than rules lawyering.
https://peginc.com/savage-settings/savage-worlds/ [peginc.com]
You can see how the Savage Worlds rules work by reading the webcomic Up to Four Players [uptofourplayers.com] which shows a small group playing a campaign in the Crystal Heart setting using those rules. The writer for that webcomic is the person who wrote the Savage Worlds rules.
I like "bennies", I like "the wild die", I like dice "exploding", I like drawing cards for initiative... and I wish I could be a player in any RPG with that author as the GM.
Here's a 2-page mini comic that broadly outlines how Savage Worlds plays.
https://www.uptofourplayers.com/ready-to-roll/savage-worlds-rules/ [uptofourplayers.com]
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Heck, someone could write their own D&D-style game and sell it. No need to give it away.
Yes, that's true. The 'giving it away' part is not a requirement. That was my proposed solution to the problem as there are no licensing issues if there is a public domain rule book to quote or whatever.
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one of the best things about MERP/Rolemaster were critical hits as well as fumbles
I like how Savage Worlds handles this. If you roll (on a d6 or d4, remember) the max number, you roll again; you keep rolling as long as you keep getting the max; and your number is the sum of these rolls.
So your lowly hobbit shoots an arrow at an Uruk Hai. He or she rolls a d4 (and a d6 "wild die"). The GM said that the shot is at -5 for difficulty. Hobbit rolls 6 on the d6, so rolls it again; gets 6 again, rolls again; a
Re:And all it took... (Score:4, Interesting)
So this is actually a real problem that hasn't been litigated in quite this way, and if WOTC goes to court and sues Paizo for the ORC because it incorporates rules from DnD, they might have a leg up.
That is because WOTC also owns Magic: The Gathering, which is *heavily* rules based. And other companies like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh stay clear of the rules of MTG, even if they express them slightly differently, because of threats of lawsuits from WOTC. WOTC sued in 2014 over something like this, where another game copied the rules and parts of the game, but altered them to be different enough to (unsuccessfully) avid a lawsuit.
https://forums.escapistmagazin... [escapistmagazine.com]
It may very well be the case that Paizo can get away with creating to ORC, but if WOTC sues them a lot of grey areas in law will end up eventuall at the Supreme Court, and that won't end well for anyone.
What *will* happen, I can guarantee, if that if DWOTC is stupid enough to sue Paizo for creating the ORC and trying to create an open license for rulesets that WOTC claims they own, there will be a boycott the likes of which we have not seen in years, and DnD will die pretty quickly. Game stores will stop selling DnD books, and those that don't will face boycotts from people because they don't stop selling DnD books. It's that serious.
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You mean like like all those dumbass nerds who watch the NFL get up in arms and threaten to boycott teams over changing names from the Redskins to the Commanders? Like that?
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Nope. Original OGL was stated as being irrevocable.
No, it didn't. It said perpetual. According to the lawyers who have looked at it, those are very different things, and perpetual can, in fact, be revoked - sometimes.
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And according to the lawyers who actually wrote it, who are now working at Paizo, it was understood by all parties that "perpetual" meant and *means* irrevocable. There's statements to that effect from everyone involved at the time the license was created.
Re:And all it took... (Score:4, Informative)
They are party to the license, because they wrote it.
From Paizo:
"We believe that any interpretation that the OGL 1.0 or 1.0(a) were intended to be revocable or able to be deauthorized is incorrect, and with good reason.
We were there.
Paizo owner Lisa Stevens and Paizo president Jim Butler were leaders on the Dungeons & Dragons team at Wizards at the time. Brian Lewis, co-founder of Azora Law, the intellectual property law firm that Paizo uses, was the attorney at Wizards who came up with the legal framework for the OGL itself. Paizo has also worked very closely on OGL-related issues with Ryan Dancey, the visionary who conceived the OGL in the first place."
https://paizo.com/community/bl... [paizo.com]
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This license was issued 20 years ago. It may be the case that "nonrevocable" is a term used *now* in licenses, but it may have not meant that 20 years ago. I dunno. I suspect that if/when this goes to court, the court would ask each party what was *intended* by using the term perpetual. Was nonrevocable a commonly used term for licenses like these in 2002? If so, why didn't WOTC use them?
I know who the courts should ask... the LAWYERS WHO FUCKING WROTE IT and the PARTIES WHO AGREED TO IT. I paste again
Re:And all it took... (Score:5, Interesting)
But it's a BONEHEAD move, that in the end only serves to hurt everyone, but most especially WotC. Everything was running smoothly since 5ed, and making money for everyone involved, so that's why they all went along with it, and the OGL license seemed fine. No one expected WotC to be idiots like this, they are shooting themselves in the foot with a bazooka by doing this.
The reason they put stuff under the OGL in the first place is because it was a brilliant marketing mavuever: they encourage 3rd parties to make content by allowing them to piggyback off the DnD franchise and make a decent profit (no cut to WotC). The reason it's so brilliant is that the increase in potential customers for WotC products is fantastic for them: they made a lot of money selling Player's Handbooks and Monster Manuals and figures and so on. It was such a success for them that they teach it in MBA courses as a case study.
Sure, they are within their rights to be fucking morons that try and kill off the whole ecosystem that feeds their company, but it doesn't change the fact that this is a completely boneheaded move that hurts the entire DnD ecosystem.
They tried this same shit with 4ed, and it didn't work then. How stupid do they have to be to try it again?
Oh well, no one will use their licenses NOW.
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It is extremely rare I think for corporations to issue perpetual licenses that all parties involved at the time of its creation believe are irrevocable.
It's licensing 101 to *not* issue such a license. They did it to save DnD, and they did, but they are in fact not within their rights to do it, and Paizo would have an excellent case if they went to court. More importantly, they don't *need* to abide by the license, as Paizo's rulesets are significantly different from DnDs.
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a perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, fully paid-up, sublicensable, transferrable, assignable license
This is, in fact, exactly the kind of thing you'd have signed if you wanted to make it clear that they licensee could do whatever they wanted for as long as they wan
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But nobody actually used the d&d "mark" except for people writing supplements for the main game, a practice that was widely-abandoned after the transition to 4e. The OGL pertains more to the SRD, or Source Reference Document which is the basis for every d20 OGL product made. Like Pathfinder 1e. Despite the fact that Pathfinder 1e now has its own SRD, it's still based on the 3.5e SRD.
Perhaps there are still some publishers using the d&d name on their product for OGL games a based on 5e, I don't kn
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Okay fair point. But WotC's original, unredacted OGL1.1 also went after anyone making more than 50k/yr on OGL products, and Paizo is the most-profitable of those publishers. In terms of who would stand to lose the most revenue and content wise, Paizo was first on the chopping block.
Left unchecked, WotC would be able to seize Pathfinder 2e and Starfinder and effectively force Paizo into vassal status.
Re:And all it took... (Score:5, Informative)
What content creator in their right mind would agree to that? Answer - none of them. And the reality is they don't have to either. WOTC owns trademarks on D&D and some other terms. It owns copyright of its books and artwork. It CANNOT prevent games copying its rules or methods. The OGL was just a convenience for creators to make reference to D&D from their own works, e.g. to quote rules or whatever, without running into copyright issues. If they don't do that then there is no need for the OGL. And if they do that, they can just change their content so it doesn't any more.
And that's exactly what will happen going forward. WOTC managed to anger and destroy its community in the space of a few weeks. Well done, I guess.
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At this point it's not clear that the old OGL can not still be used. The concept of "deauthorising" is not contained in its text.
The current response gives Hasbro what they wanted - the elimination of "competitors". They may find the cost/reward ratio is not what they expected, but that's not clear yet either.
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And no one cares that you don't care.
The people who don't care about your dumbass opinion are the ones who care about this issue. It shows that you are ignorant, and have a lack of perspective.
I don't care about model trains. But if some sort of licensing issue pops up between people who make Lionel trains for HO scale vs O scale vs N scale tracks, you bet your ass model train hobbyists will care, and the lawsuits will fly, because hobbyists care *intensely* about their hobbies. They spend their
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The thing is, yeah, you should care. Not for some fee-fee reason where you should side with someone because he's "in the right", but purely out of self interest. At least if you care about playing D&D in peace.
Because every cent either WotC or someone creating content wastes on this bullshit is one cent not spent on creating content for you. If content creators are unsure whether their ability to create is continuing forward, they will likely stop creating content and/or shift to another franchise that
Re:And all it took... (Score:4, Informative)
I think this comment is a bit at odds with the usual /. opinion.
WotC literally open sourced the rules of the game and released it under a sharing license for 20 years, and a vibrant ecosystem of both free and not-free content was created around that open, royalty-free ruleset.
Now they're saying "Hey, we're going to retroactively de-license that content you all have been using, and make it closed because you're making too much money and we're not making enough." This would be analagous to Linus Torvalds unlicensing his contributing to the linux kernel because he wanted a share of the money Google made from the linux kernel underlying Android and their enire cloud platform.
WotC has greatly benefitted from the Open Gaming License (OGL) and the thriving ecosystem that has built up around their d20 system. You paint this as a company wanting to benefit from their own work, but that's the stupid part: they are. The OGL is actually one of the most powerful modern corporate success stories for the benefits of copyleft licensing, and now they want to kill the golden goose.
They're free to release new content under any license they want. If they want to be stupid, and go back to a restrictive license for their new content, more (stupid) power to them. But allowing a large ecosystem to build up around their open license would be like a city charging $1 for perpetual land leases, and once a big, thriving, revenue-generating business sector develops changing their mind and saying 'Well, we didn't really mean perpetual leases...'
Re:And all it took... (Score:4, Informative)
Realize what this deal change means. It's a bait-and-switch of the worst kind.
First, they started this as an "open license". It's not like with, say, Disney. Who pretty much said from the get-go "Use our IP and there's legal pain for you". So you don't. Or at least, you don't unless you know what you're getting into. You first want an airtight contract with them, then work exactly within the tight confines of that contract. Not my cuppa java, but if that's how you want to work, you can.
What they handed their contributors was the opposite. They said to them "do as you please in the realms of our IP, just don't shit on it and don't fuck it up for everyone else". Which is a mighty generous offer, but one where both parties benefit greatly. It's a bit like creating a modding culture for your computer game. You get a bunch of people who create content and addons for your game that you don't have to create, making your IP larger without you having to invest in it. D&D already was large when WotC took it over, of course, but it really blew up the way it did when the OGL took hold and suddenly there was this absolutely stunning amount of content available. This world is huge. Even the biggest studio of the world could not produce that amount of content, at least not without having you pay through the nose for it, because it's simply not manageable.
The big issue here is now that this isn't a change that will affect people going forward. Because that could easily be remedied: We simply ignore it. From D&D version 6 and onwards, OGL 1.1 is in effect? OK. No problem. We'll treat v6 the same way we treated v4: We simply say it doesn't exist and continue making content for v5 as we did back with v3.5. That isn't the case though. WotC very obviously learned from the v4 debacle (even though I still say the v4 blunder was at the very least as much a fault of the mechanics that smelled a lot like they're trying to move D&D closer to WoW... but that's a topic for another discussion) and knew exactly that nobody would willingly use their "new and improved" licensing model. Neither content creators nor players.
This change is supposed to be retrofitted to the v5, and the way it looks right now, they will even try to apply it to the future of currently existing content.
Now, of course you can argue "their IP, their rules". And that may legally be ok. I'm not a lawyer. But if I lure someone into creating content for my IP by promising them that they could make a living that way, only to then go and want them to hand over what is pretty much the revenue they can generate with that content once they start producing, that certainly has a lot of a bait-and-switch scheme. If that's part of the contract from the get-go, that is fine. Because then I can look at my potential revenue, look at the cost and decide whether or not it's worth it. But changing the content after I have put in the investment and sunk my costs, that's a dick move.
That's even worse than dealing with Disney. At least they tell you up front that they're gonna rip you off.
And being worse than Disney when it comes to your licensing contracts ... that's pretty bad.
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It's not the first time something like this has happened. Back in the day there was a massive astroturf campaign between PKWare and System Enhancement Associates when PKWare blatantly stole SEA's program and passed it off as their own. PKWare launched a public relations campaign that painted the whole thing as a David vs. Goliath battle between a little guy and a corporate giant... when in fact they were both tiny companies at the time. SEA ended up winning in court, but lost the public relations war, and e
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"SEA ended up winning in court, but lost the public relations war"
Did they? They managed to convince you to misrepresent the facts of the case.
"everyone who had been using SEA's ARC switched to using PKWare's PKZIP... and all because people got bamboozled by corporate propaganda."
And because PKZIP was better.
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You fell for it! PKarc was definitely not a copy of SEAarc since it ran much faster. Both were derived from the same public domain code base, so there were necessarily similarities. SEA was 2 people vs. Phil Katz, so it wasn't David and Goliath but many assUmed SEA was larger for some reason, possibly because jackass lawsuits were more likely to come from larger corporations. It was better funded. PK settled due to lack of funds for a defense. That's not the same as losing in court.
SEA most certainly lost t
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Well, technically, that does affect the little guy as much as the big publisher. Because that big publisher publishes or he doesn't, depending on whether he can or not. For that publisher, 25% of his revenue may well be what's in it as profit. I don't know whether you ever created anything, but 25% of the revenue is a pretty big chunk. Publishing crap doesn't just mean throw a bunch of stuff you found lying in the street or brushed out of your own beard into a printer and sell that junk. There's a lot of pe
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Not true. Lets imagine a kickstarter to create a paper book. I doubt if the margin on of that would be 20%, so if the book is successful, all sales above $750k have a 20% fee (25% for non-kickstarter), so there is now a loss per book. The only thing to do is to jack the price from day one, or cap the sales.
Had it been 20%/25% of profit rather than revenue, then I wouldn't have been bothered by that part of the OGL 1.1. Getting a percentage of costs is abusive. I do agree that few make it to the $750k mar
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It would affect *any* publisher, as they demand a perpetual license to do whatever with any content you create that you tie in to their so-called "unlicensed content", in other words, SRD.
The revenue is a red herring issue, since the more worrying parts are that they reserve the law to unilaterally change the license in any way, *and* try to severely curb your ability to countersue.
Frankly, the license is unconscionable, and there's no way I'd ever enter any sort of produ
Re: And all it took... (Score:2)
Thousands. Not hundreds. Thousands.
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I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that the judge there is the CEO's second cousin twice removed...
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Um, well... Hasbeen-bro is a bit harsh.
While WOTC has screwed the pooch by trying these shenanigans, let us reflect upon why they did so: they did it because DnD is "under-monetised compared to MTG, which has absolutely BONKERS sales right now. And they have those gigantic sales because they make no shame about working with other IPs, like Warhammer 40K, to make MTG products. And while my MTG friends gripe up and down about how MTG produces too much product right now, threatening the golden goose, they ha
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"Right" is very relative in this context. Yes, from a commercial point of view it's of course right to fleece people with overpriced pieces of cardboard, but whether that's "right" is another matter.
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A new Paizo designed license means nothing unless its the one wizard adopts it (which is just not plausible)
Those new open systems--ORC from Paizo/Black Flag from Kobold Press--aren't for WoTC to license their own content under. That'd be pointless for them; they could just keep the original OGL unchanged if they wanted to keep the system open, but that'd ruin their plans to make a closed walled-off environment where "D&D" becomes a thing you can only do on DDB for $30 a month. ORC/Black Flag are for the rest of us who want to share and play with each others content, or use the VTTs we already have without
Re:I just want them to work it out. (Score:4, Interesting)
If they publish content for wizards systems without any license, then it will go to legal you would imagine.
Again, its not intended for WoTC; Paizo et al will be using it to publish content for Pathfinder, Black Flag, and whatever other systems people make that choose to adopt it and release corresponding SRD-equivalent documents. I highly doubt WoTC would want to pick it up for D&D, as it would mean people could create and use content out of the closed ecosystem they're going for now with DDB/OneDND. At this point people's concern is _replacing_ D&D in a legal/trademark sense and cutting out WoTC, not coaxing WoTC into not fucking with it; that clearly went nowhere after the OGL1.1 leak.
If people believe that DND is popular only because of OGL and those other big publishers (and if Paizo put their money where their mouth is) then I guess we will have an answer soon enough.
Probably would have died off post-TSR if not for the OGL and SRD, yeah. Wizards never released their own tools or accessories for anything. Everything good came from other people. PCGen never could have existed, or would have been useless. Lots of monsters have never had official minis, and even for the official ones there's never been a way to buy the ones you actually wanted. Fortunately we have Heroforge now, but that couldn't have existed (or at least used D&D-compatible races, monsters and items). Hell, even DDB probably wouldn't have existed as WoTC would have had to do it themselves rather than buy it after the fact. And for sure we wouldn't have actual play groups like Dimension 20 and Critical Role or TheVaktare out there creating the content they do.
Without the freedom afforded by those licenses around format conversion, we never would have had the great experiences playing remotely enabled by VTTs like Fantasy Grounds or Roll20 or Foundry. Or at least we wouldn't be able to play D&D on them.
So maybe someone out there would still be playing it with paper and pencils and a greaseboard, but I don't think it'd be the TTRPG cultural touchstone it is today if it'd never been opened up for third party creators and tooling. I assume it'd be more like what the AD&D community is today -- a small group of dedicated diehards keeping to 30-year-old content like Tomb of Horrors.
I think you have some hyperboles in your comments about DND, and honestly its part of the problem I see everywhere.
I mean, it'd be nice if I didn't have to worry about it. D&D is how my circle of friends relax and have fun, and a sudden drop that a short-sighted corporation might be killing off my favorite hobby because they're confident they can make 10x more revenue with 1/10th of the subscribers in pay-to-play schemes was not what I needed to start off this year.
While I'd love for WoTC to be like "yeah this was a terrible idea , the more time I spend looking into this, the less confident I get that'll happen. When the news dropped, my first thought was "Wow this is like what Microsoft would do if they suddenly came into owning D&D". Sure enough, turns out Cynthia Williams, made head of WoTC last year, is an ex-Microsoft manager...
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This isn't true at all.
Paizo has existed in the RPG universe for quite a while. They have co-existed in the same space because they have produced an extremely advanced, complex game system, *based* on DnD rules, that is quite different than DnD. Their worldbuilding is top-notch; you can buy all the books on Golarion and the history for that world rivals or exceeds Tolkien's.
Magic the Gathering is to Yu-Gi_oh as Pathfinder is to DnD. That is to say, the rules, complexity, and worldbuilding of the former a
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Oh right, that. Well, 1000$ booster's are pretty bad... but I'm not going to not buy the cards from the next set that comes out because of it.
MTG is different than DnD in that MTG hasn't licensed out it's game system to other folks like DnD did.
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I hope you're joking...
But I have no problem with that, to be fully honest. I took a look a how MTG works and I decided I do not want a part of it. But they were up front with it, they made it no secret and I could easily avoid it. There are other card games out there that allow you to print your own cards and legally play them, that's what I play.
If people want to play this because they like the thrill of buying what's the real world equivalent of loot boxes, that's fine by me, as long as they know up fron
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I agree with most of what you said, but not the bit about Golarion. It is a great setting, certainly one of my favorites, but it isn't top tier. You should look into Glorantha. As much as I admire James Jacobs, Erik Mona, and the rest, they're not in the same class as Greg Stafford.
Comparing it to JRRT's Middle Earth is difficult because the needs of a literary setting are different than a gameable world. The Silmarillion certainly is a tour de force, but it is more inspiration than usable content.
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Where did you get that idea? Had Hasbro/WotC left OGL1.0a alone, none of this would be happening.
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Poorly worded on your part. But yes, nobody would be complaining about One D&D if WotC had maintained the status quo.
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Not the same thing. But you probably know that which is why you're veering off-topic.
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Right, so, enfranchised folks who play MTG are well aware of this. Cocks spent a ton of money on Arena, which is a cash cow, and then opened up MTG to outside IPs like Warhammer 40K, which is a cash cow. I mean, I understand their business plan, in one sense. It's cheap to print stuff, and the margins are huge. And sales are through the roof, not just because of quantity, but because of the quality of the products. They get a ton of microtransaction sales from people buying shit on MTGArena.
But DnD is
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Well, it's a correct usage of "your"; it's just an incomplete sentence with a possessive.
"Your 'only a week behind here train schedule' is really useless to me; please provide an accurate train schedule." is maybe what he meant to say.