They are convinced the new virtual will be so awesome that it'll dwarf tabletop in members. Imagine if you are a player who has never played, going online and playing a semi-video game with a brain would seem amazing. You may not need to find a group, you don't really need to imagine things and like a video game you don't need to play in public to give it a try so worries of nerd-shame are gone. And everyone pays, not just DMs, and they'll pay to have cool armor and a better avatar and to join a game with higher ranked DMs or whatever they can think of.

Now this sounds like crap to those used to the tabletop because your choices will be restricted by the virtual assets (increasing those I was probably what the 'if you make its we own it' clause was originally about) but for those that have never played or know the game only from Critical Role it'll probably be pretty spectacular. So they are betting on a flood of new players and don't care much about the tabletop.

I suspect the cancelling subscriptions didn't do as much as people think but the growing 'boycott the movie' was what really got their attention. It'll be really hard to launch all of this on the back of a flop. Especially when failure would mean every news report/review would talk about how horribly managed the whole thing was.

They are correct in that a videogame-like VTT has a possibility of drawing in the videogame playing crowd of players.

What remains to be seen:

• Will a D&D bring-your-own-story videogame appeal to videogame players?
  

Thus far the successful D&D videogames are successful as singleplayer experiences. Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, etc. However, the VTT-side of D&D is pretty much all about the ruleset. Does anyone care so much about the D&D ruleset when it's being automated behind the scenes?

• Will a D&D bring-your-own-story videogame appeal to roleplayers?
  

One of my friends roleplays regularly in an F2P MMORPG which has more-or-less zero built in game rules or tools for roleplaying. They just move their avatars around in the world and talk. Sometimes they roll dice on Discord using a bot. Will they migrate to WOTC's VTT?

Quote from: Mistwell on January 28, 2023, 09:19:19 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 28, 2023, 12:12:29 AM
Completely? Did they put in writting the OGL is irrovocable and always was? Nope, they didn't.

Did they put the 3.0 / 3.5 SRDs under CC By? No, they didn't.

Yes, they DID put in writing it's irrevocable. By putting it into the Creative Commons, which is MORE irrevocable than anything WOTC lawyers could write.

You're wrong, they ONLY placed the 5.1 SRD under CC By, which has zero descriptions for lots of monsters. They did say they were leaving the OGL 1.0a as is untouched, and noithing else.

Quote from: Mistwell on January 28, 2023, 09:19:19 PM
They have not yet put 3.0, 3.5, and d20 Modern into the Creative Commons. I think they will, but we shall see.

No, they will not put it under CC By, because it does have the descriptions that they deleted from the 5.1 SRD, and that's what they care about

Quote from: Mistwell on January 28, 2023, 09:19:19 PM
But, and this is important: there is no meaningful way to "make OGL 0.1a irrevocable." NOTHING anyone can ever do could do that. By it's own wording that license cannot be expanded on, amended, or altered in any way by any future license.

What they can do is issue a 1.0b which is identical to 1.0a but adds that it's irrevocable. But, that does very little. Because it cannot retroactively make everything released in 1.0 and 1.0a irrevocably into it. Every publisher would need to re-publish with 1.0b to make it apply to their works.

And if they're going to do that, they would do better to re-publish with Creative Commons instead. Because CC is more clear, includes more SRD items like the names Beholder and Strahd, and is not controlled or written by WOTC.

Now again, they still need to stick 3.0, 3.5, and d20 Modern in it. But, they'd need to do that for an OGL 1.0b as well. We shall see if they do that. I suspect they will but let's see.

But this idea that WOTC could just "fix" 1.0a by issuing some sort of document doing that? Not real. Can't be done. Can't retroactively change 1.0a to add that. Can't move everything from 1.0a SRD into 1.0b by stating it. Can't function that way as doing that is barred by the words of 1.0a.

Like you said, they CAN'T change OGL 1.0 or 1.0a but they could release OGL 1.0b with the word IRREVOCABLE added to it and a new clause grandfathering the works published under 1.0/1.0a. BUT they won't do that nor will they put those SRDs (as they are right now) under CC By BECAUSE those SRDs have the precious IP they scrubed from the 5.1 SRD.

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 28, 2023, 09:45:57 PM
There were threads on this board about renaming things, at least that all goes away with the 5.1 SRD available as CC. You don't even need to mention it or include an OGL. It's out there as readily available so I don't think they can't really make any claims against anything within.

CC By = Creative Commons Attribution

You do have to give the correct attribution and say if you did modifications, meaning D&D keeps on being the "most influential RPG ever" because people keep using THEIR shit.

Even if, in the case of the 5.1 SRD you can only use the names for a lot of stuff BECAUSE they srubbed their precious IP from it.

So, in exchange of not creating your own floating eye monster's name, description and stat block and instead using THEIR Beholder (only the name, since it lacks stat blocks and description) you still have to create your own floating eye monster's description and stat block but with their name.

While giving them credit...

doesn't sound like a good deal to me but to each his own.

Hasbro has shown themselves to be bad actors. Fuck 'em!

No more WotC anything.

Quote from: The Spaniard on January 28, 2023, 12:09:54 PM
Isn't Kobold Press already painfully woke?

Yes, they are. I give a major recent example of their wokeness on my video.