Quote from: S'mon on January 28, 2023, 07:41:19 AM
...
The OGL specifically forbade use of Product Identity terms, including
beholder, gauth, carrion crawler, tanar'ri, baatezu, displacer
beast, githyanki, githzerai, mind flayer, illithid, umber hulk, yuan-ti.
Under the CC licence that no longer applies.

But we have yet to see what version of the 5.1 SRD that they put under CC.

They may yet go through and 'sanitize' it.

Seeing is believing from Wotzi from this point forward.

Quote from: Jaeger on January 28, 2023, 12:40:29 PM

Quote from: S'mon on January 28, 2023, 07:41:19 AM
...
The OGL specifically forbade use of Product Identity terms, including
beholder, gauth, carrion crawler, tanar'ri, baatezu, displacer
beast, githyanki, githzerai, mind flayer, illithid, umber hulk, yuan-ti.
Under the CC licence that no longer applies.

But we have yet to see what version of the 5.1 SRD that they put under CC.

They may yet go through and 'sanitize' it.

Seeing is believing from Wotzi from this point forward.

You can download it right now, in fact you could since they announced it, the link is in their announcement.

It has the same page count as the one that had the CC By ONLY covering parts of it, is it there any good stuff?

Doubt it, but it's a guarantee for those who want to create shit for 5e they can do so safely.

As for the missing fluff some have mentioned... Create your own, different from theirs, and put it under CC By.

Next, create a new SRD stripping it back to the ruleset of 3.0/3.5 including all your own fluff.

Next create a totally not 0D&D, AD&D, BX, BECMI SRDs porting back all the fluff but changing the rules and put it under CC By.

We could do it as a collaborative effort if we wanted to.

Hell we could create a totally new SRD without ANY of their shit and put it under CC By, but it needs lots of people.

I can already hear the Reeeeeeeeing if we created a new SRD and lots of people started using it because it's more complete than Wotzi's·

This is not a trap.  It's a distraction.  5th was already on the way out, releasing the SRD has negligible impact on them and buys back goodwill.  They're gonna keep their heads down and make nice until OneD&D hits, and that will be restrictively licensed like you wouldn't believe, with no recourse for anybody since it's their perfect legal right to assign whatever license they like on new content.  They will refrain from selling the new stuff to any competing VTT and doll up their own with as many microtransactions as it can hold.

And there's nothing unethical about that, though their attempt to do that with 4e didn't go great for them.  I suspect their attempt to torpedo the OGL was to sabotage people keeping 5th around as a competitor to OneD&D.  Guess we'll see how this pans out.

Quote from: Valatar on January 28, 2023, 02:24:31 PM
This is not a trap.  It's a distraction.  5th was already on the way out, releasing the SRD has negligible impact on them and buys back goodwill.  They're gonna keep their heads down and make nice until OneD&D hits, and that will be restrictively licensed like you wouldn't believe, with no recourse for anybody since it's their perfect legal right to assign whatever license they like on new content.  They will refrain from selling the new stuff to any competing VTT and doll up their own with as many microtransactions as it can hold.

And there's nothing unethical about that, though their attempt to do that with 4e didn't go great for them.  I suspect their attempt to torpedo the OGL was to sabotage people keeping 5th around as a competitor to OneD&D.  Guess we'll see how this pans out.

This is exactly how I see it.

Their big mistake was opening their big mouths in the first place. The herd would follow them into their next iteration of D&D regardless. Sure they would lose people that don't want to play that way, but they would have had more buy-in, had they not said shit about updating the OGL and nuking the old one... the irony being they should have known it was impossibly without losing millions upfront fighting in court.

Now they're trying to backtrack and pretend everything is cool, lets go back to the way things were. "Honey, sorry I threatened to kill you and ended up shooting myself in the head. I promise I won't wave the gun around anymore and threaten to kill you. Can we just pretend it never happened? Let's not scare the kids anymore!"

I honestly don't see the draw to anyone wanting to play what they're going to offer unless you just *have* to slavishly follow a brand name. In which case... whatever. It's not going to stop anyone that's already working on their own OGL... nor should it. Trusting WotC (or any of these others that have proven to *not* like you) is folly.

Quote from: tenbones on January 28, 2023, 02:50:24 PM
Their big mistake was opening their big mouths in the first place. The herd would follow them into their next iteration of D&D regardless. Sure they would lose people that don't want to play that way, but they would have had more buy-in, had they not said shit about updating the OGL and nuking the old one... the irony being they should have known it was impossibly without losing millions upfront fighting in court.

Now they're trying to backtrack and pretend everything is cool, lets go back to the way things were. "Honey, sorry I threatened to kill you and ended up shooting myself in the head. I promise I won't wave the gun around anymore and threaten to kill you. Can we just pretend it never happened? Let's not scare the kids anymore!"

I honestly don't see the draw to anyone wanting to play what they're going to offer unless you just *have* to slavishly follow a brand name. In which case... whatever. It's not going to stop anyone that's already working on their own OGL... nor should it. Trusting WotC (or any of these others that have proven to *not* like you) is folly.

  Well, they didn't 'open their mouths'--it looks like they were trying to bring the big players along with a carrot-and-stick approach, but the stick leaked, and now they're just trying to figure out some way to smooth everything over.

Quote from: tenbones on January 28, 2023, 02:50:24 PM


Their big mistake was opening their big mouths in the first place. The herd would follow them into their next iteration of D&D regardless. Sure they would lose people that don't want to play that way, but they would have had more buy-in, had they not said shit about updating the OGL and nuking the old one... the irony being they should have known it was impossibly without losing millions upfront fighting in court.

They way that it got leaked suggested they desperately need 3pp to be on board, and they wanted to get them under some kind of control for extra profit. They also had to give some lead info, because part of the reason Paizo got started with PF1e was WotC was too tight lipped about what 4e would be like and what the GSL would be like. So trying to keep quiet about what they planned would have likely caused defection and lack of 3pp support as well.

Quote from: Zelen on January 28, 2023, 09:07:34 AM
The saddest aspect of this whole episode are the pathetic men so desperate to copy D&D just because it has some terms that you grew up liking as a child ("Mind Flayer", "Beholder"!) instead of creating literally anything new.

We took any mosnter that was IP and respun it in unique ways that we wanted to use them and make them even more interesting. WOTC gave us the base ingrediants and we crated a Julia childe's souflette.

have not bothered to use the original creation again and the players enjoy it that way as they have no idea what these things ARE even though mechanically they could guess.

Quote from: Valatar on January 28, 2023, 02:24:31 PM
This is not a trap.  It's a distraction.  5th was already on the way out, releasing the SRD has negligible impact on them and buys back goodwill.

There is one thing I don't genuinely understand:

Let's say that WotC pulls some stunt with 6E or similar. With 5.1 out in the open, anyone can counter-stunt the way we already saw with the OGL fiasco.

Hasbro/WotC may have one advantage: the money they can put in an advanced VTT using UnrealX, VR and Olphat Tech. However, even if we discard the fact that Hasbro just squandered a lot of faith all around, is an advanced VTT really an incentive?

Maybe it is just me, but RPGs are a social hobby. The pandemic was a fluke (and I still met with my group - it was very therapeutic in those dark days). Today, social hobbies are returning to normal, Zoom-only games are a good alternative, and the VTT alternatives out there are just fine.

To me, TTRPGs are games were the tabletop is your imagination. This is why I never used miniatures (and I could argue that the boardgamish nature of 4E killed it on the spot even before I became aware of how dire the whole package was). The presentation of Wizards' "Advanced" VTT left me cold, because I don't need any kind of visual aids when my imagination is always better). And I guess that if one needs aids... we'll, miniatures didn't disappear and - as I said - other VTTs are already there. If anything, they could be stimulated to innovate and welcome new subscriptions with open arms.

OGL and D&Done were tied by a nice knot. This is what made them work. Now that knot was broken and there is no way in hell that the community will put back all their eggs in WotC. As soon as they will attempt to toe outside the line a tons of alternatives will spring up. D&D Digital is in probation and I don't think that the stray stunt will be looked at much differently than "very dimly".

Quote from: Reckall on January 28, 2023, 09:50:36 PMHasbro/WotC may have one advantage: the money they can put in an advanced VTT using UnrealX, VR and Olphat Tech. However, even if we discard the fact that Hasbro just squandered a lot of faith all around, is an advanced VTT really an incentive?

Yes, but the people in charge are from videogames.

If Hasbro really want to monetize D&D they should find a way to make people show up ready and on time.  Find a way to prevent that one guy from destroying groups.  Find a way to reward DMs for buying and providing everything.

Quote from: David Johansen on January 28, 2023, 10:06:25 PM
If Hasbro really want to monetize D&D they should find a way to make people show up ready and on time.  Find a way to prevent that one guy from destroying groups.  Find a way to reward DMs for buying and providing everything.

They couldn't even manage to do that with their Organized Play.

Quote from: David Johansen on January 28, 2023, 10:06:25 PM
If Hasbro really want to monetize D&D they should find a way to make people show up ready and on time.  Find a way to prevent that one guy from destroying groups.  Find a way to reward DMs for buying and providing everything.

If you can figure out how to do that you'll have solved RPG's biggest design flaw.

Quote from: THE_Leopold on January 28, 2023, 06:35:32 PMWe took any mosnter that was IP and respun it in unique ways that we wanted to use them and make them even more interesting.

What did you do with the beholder?

Quote from: David Johansen on January 28, 2023, 10:06:25 PM
If Hasbro really want to monetize D&D they should find a way to make people show up ready and on time.  Find a way to prevent that one guy from destroying groups. 

I never have these issues. We play at a set time with whoever turns up. We start on time, if you're late you miss the start.

The main thing is to have a campaign structure not dependent on any particular PC or player. Old school dungeon delving works great for this. The PCs assemble in the tavern just like the players assemble at the game venue, go to the dungeon, adventure a few hours, then return and separate until next time - all closely mirroring the real life play session.

QuoteWhat did you do with the beholder?

It's all ears.

QuoteMaybe it is just me, but RPGs are a social hobby. The pandemic was a fluke (and I still met with my group - it was very therapeutic in those dark days). Today, social hobbies are returning to normal, Zoom-only games are a good alternative, and the VTT alternatives out there are just fine.

I guess they count that with 6e being only on their VTT the brand name will be enough to hook up many newbies willing to pay.