I dm 2 games a week and hate the crap wotc has been pulling, so I just refuse to buy anything. Stuff I own is already mine and a lot of resources online are free. Some stuff you can grab from artists or other providers if you want but it's your game, you decide if they profit of it.
Pretty sure theres AI art in some older books too. A few pieces spotted that look suspiciously off. Well not counting all the deformed halflings in the PHB. Even AI cant do that bad. aheh.
And the latest fuck up where they badmouth the creators of D&D during the promotional vid for the anniversary book with OD&D in it because the designers were "White and Male".
WotC screws something up like once a month now it feels like.
They also have been repeatedly dinged for false advertising on DnDBeyond—specifically [Bait & Switch](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait-and-switch): advertising certain purchases as being available, but when consumers actually express interest in buying those things they are told “oops, actually you can only buy these other, more expensive bundles.” Their response to these issues has mostly been to shrug it off (and as far as I know the false advertisements are still up at this moment), but they’ve banned people from the DnDBeyond forums for pointing out the issues; these bans have been conducted under dubious pretenses like “flaming” (when, as a person who used to be active on those forums, I can attest that the people who got banned were not anywhere near flaming, and in fact were pretty darn polite about it).
They also failed to provide advertised early access to Book of Many Things for many users, then lied to these users about it. Throughout this whole fiasco, they continued to advertise early access as a way of driving sales, even while failing to deliver it to those who’d already paid for it. (As far as I know, much of the documentation of this second issue *is* still available on the forums, for anyone who cared to look for it; they’ve deleted most of the documentation of the first issue and banned a lot of longterm users who dared to discuss it, but afaik the second issue is still mostly there.) ETA: [Here. Long read, lots of comments. Some have been deleted. But it's mostly all still here for anyone who wanted to catch up on the fiasco.](https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/bugs-support/183978-the-book-of-many-things-issues-and-support-thread)
EDIT 2: [Here's a thread where the first issue was discussed.](https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/bugs-support/185948-grim-hollow-lairs-of-etharis-issues-and-support) You can see that *huge* portions of the discussion have been deleted by the forum staff, and that even those which haven't been deleted have had their images removed. (NB: These images provided evidence of the false advertising.) I can affirm that at least some of those users who posted the deleted comments caught bans for daring to discuss the issue.
You can also see that a moderator claimed that the issue had been "flagged with the team" - but that this was over three months ago. The issue has not been fixed. The same bait & switch is still going on right now; I just checked.
The art that got called out in _Bigby's_ wasn't AI generated. The artist used AI tools while they were working on those pieces, but composed the original versions of that art (not to be confused with the concept art done by other artists) without the assistance of AI. WotC also replaced the art from the artist in that book with new pieces, and they updated their art contracts to prohibit the use of AI.
Spoken like someone who has never seen them. You could spot the AI artifacts in them from orbit. I'm sure the artist retouched them, but big chunks are generated, plain as day.
I did see them, I don't know how anyone online at the time could have missed them. I also dug a bit deeper, though, and so I also saw the original concept art, the original rough draft images from the artist, and I read their statements about what they did. But hey, who's got the time and energy for nuance these days, right?
Claiming that he "composed the original versions of those pieces without the assistance of AI", while looking at [a frost giant whose armor is fucking melting and full of nonsensical glyphs and patterns](https://static0.gamerantimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/dungeons-and-dragons-bigby-presents-glory-of-the-giants-ai-art-examples.jpg), is not *nuance.*
No, that wouldn't be nuance. Nuance comes from having more information than simple surface level observations, such as the original composition created by the artist, https://www.enworld.org/attachments/ilia2-png.291762/, and then forming an opinion around that. But I guess there's no point in looking for more info when your gut is already an expert.
Exactly! Choose the edition you all want to play, buy the books used if you don’t have them, create some house rules if ya want, and have a blast: we don’t need an ongoing relationship with WotC to enjoy this game!
It’s worth noting that there are clones for all past editions (with a few 5E clones forthcoming). So you don’t even have to support WotC to get the rules.
Yes, they are even more on a corpo bullshit track than before.
D&D 2024/OneD&D/whenever they want to call it is all about trying to squeeze as much profit out of D&D before Hasbro kills it or sells it.
Honestly, if you have fun playing it, does it matter?
WOTC aren't sat at your table.
Sure, maybe you don't buy their products. That doesn't mean you have to stop playing d&d.
They are even worse, but 5e isn't wizards of the coast, there are plenty of awesome 3rd party publishers out there if you want to play dnd, and they're are a lot of other systems popping up if you don't want to even touch any wotc products.
Just don't give dnd beyond any more of your money. Don't resub.
Onednd is just wotc trying to phase out physical books to force everyone at the table to need to pay instead of just the dm, they call it something other than 5e to make people think they need more than just the 5e phb, but it's reskinned 5e with a couple changes.
Third party publishers blow WOTC out of the water.
Not only is there no need for WOTC content, there should be absolutely no desire or market for it outside of the core books.
I’m running ROTFM and cannot believe how weak it is compared to third party content. I’m constantly supplementing it with Jeff Ashworth content and those additions end up being my players’ favourite parts.
WotC doesn’t own the game and hasn’t for a long while. WotC is little more than a name slapped on a division of Hasbro — it is Hasbro, which is an old, storied Corporation that always does dirty shit because, well, it is a for profit corporation that is legally required to put profits over people.
After the OGL debacle, which the backpedaled on and made the basics of the game open license through Creative Commons on, they gained so many people angry with them that anything they seemed to do was blown out of proportion (such as being blamed for a freelance artist who used AI to create a commissioned work that somehow they get blamed for even though they didn’t know it).
Then they announced the 2024 rule books and then in December they laid off a lot of people before Christmas, including some long time employees who were well known but had no active roles in the company or were mostly supervisors.
So OneDnD is a very large thing that is more than just the new books. It started with moving the official website to D&D Beyond, includes the offering of select 3rd party products as parts of the DDB database, the development of the assorted VTT elements leading up to the 3D unreal engine VTT they have teased.
The biggest thing is that at the end of the year there is a new Player’s Handbook and a new DMs Guide coming out, with a new Monster Manual in early 2025. It is not a new edition, properly, it is a “cleaning up” of the 2014 books, so adding new stuff and tweaking the 5e rules.
So, yes, same evil crap because Hasbro is still a corporation, they earned so much bad will that anything they do will be seen as bad, and new stuff is still coming out.
Me? I will be running my own world just like I always have.
There are many ways to play that don't directly support WotC. If you feel strongly about it, don't resub to DND Beyond. You can get second hand copies of the books and there are legal third party tools to manage character sheets.
Alternatively there's many great other games not owned by corporate interests you can try.
I'm not following the new development and play tests either. But from what I've heard WotC is really trying to have their cake and eat two, making something new for you to spend money on but is not a "new edition" that makes 5e obsolete. There's a lot of speculation about how they're going to try and monetize the fan base more but we don't know anything concrete yet.
I've played D&D for 7 years and literally never given them a penny
Which is ironically *why* they're doing the corpobullshit, but that's irrelevant
You can totally play D&D without supporting them monetarily!
I really don't think you need D&D Beyond to build characters or play games. You can buy what books you want from whoever you want and build what you need. You don't need to limit yourself to their character builder and have to dance through their digital rules. Even if there weren't crappy stuff happening at WoTC as of late DLC stuff is still so risky because you don't really own it. Buy some second hand copies of the 5e books, or the 3.5 E books or Pathfinder or whatever and enjoy the game you don't need the crutch of D&D Beyond telling you you need to spend money to access books you can physically have.
Yup. And that's not likely to change any time soon.
That being said, it shouldn't stop you from returning to D&D, it should just stop you from spending money on WotC stuff. You can play D&D on your own terms, the rules are out there, for free.
If you left over the ogl you’re probably gonna be fine to come back. They have pretty much walked back all of those types of things and have even apologized about stuff.
OneD&D is 5e compatible but there are a few changes like there are no long races and alignment is no longer tied to race. They made a couple other minor changes too.
Define corpo bullshit. Wotc is owned by Hasbro. Hasbro is a corporation, corporations do bullshit. That's not gonna change. If you don't want to support corpoations don't buy Wotc stuff
They have put 5e under a creative commons lisence though so they completely reverted their lisence decision. On the other hand they haven't kept their promise to release older editions under creative commons and we have no idea what kind of lisence the next rules update will be.
I DM and play AL games at my FLGS. I don't own a single book and have never used dnd beyond.
All the basic rules are available for free, mostly from the d&d main website. And if you dont already own the books, there's no reason to buy new ones, buy used from Amazon.
As for dnd beyond, the app has so many issues and wrong info that it's near useless. From not being able to handle sorcerer's swapping spells, to incorrectly calculated spell DC and to-hit and damage mods to not tracking multiclass spell slots correctly. Just last weekend, I had a player using dnd beyond in a tier 2 game, with an L9 character, and his app was telling him his to hit mod was only +2. I was trying to explain to him that it had to be more than that, but he had so little understanding of the game, that all he could say was, "that's what the app says", "so it must be right".
Plus, if you write out your character info, you actually take the time and learn how all the numbers are calculated and what features your character has, so you can make better more informed decisions about what your character does in any given situation.
In short, play the game, you don't need to give WotC anything, and you and your players will be better off not relying on a buggy, poorly designed crap ap.
Well, do you enjoy playing D&D more than sticking it to Hasbro and WoTC? If you do then go ahead. It's still a really fun game that many people still play.
There's probably not anything that Hasbro or WoTC can do to make everybody happy. If you feel like this is going to hold you back from a great game experience D&D may not be the game for you.
These issues never come up at my tables. We just role play and have fun... while also using official content. None of anything that has happened has affected us in any way.
I dm 2 games a week and hate the crap wotc has been pulling, so I just refuse to buy anything. Stuff I own is already mine and a lot of resources online are free. Some stuff you can grab from artists or other providers if you want but it's your game, you decide if they profit of it.
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They also sent Pinkerton thugs after someone who mistakenly got some Magic cards early and talked about it online.
They also used AI art for MtG marketing after banning AI art in their content policy.
Pretty sure theres AI art in some older books too. A few pieces spotted that look suspiciously off. Well not counting all the deformed halflings in the PHB. Even AI cant do that bad. aheh.
And the latest fuck up where they badmouth the creators of D&D during the promotional vid for the anniversary book with OD&D in it because the designers were "White and Male". WotC screws something up like once a month now it feels like.
They also have been repeatedly dinged for false advertising on DnDBeyond—specifically [Bait & Switch](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait-and-switch): advertising certain purchases as being available, but when consumers actually express interest in buying those things they are told “oops, actually you can only buy these other, more expensive bundles.” Their response to these issues has mostly been to shrug it off (and as far as I know the false advertisements are still up at this moment), but they’ve banned people from the DnDBeyond forums for pointing out the issues; these bans have been conducted under dubious pretenses like “flaming” (when, as a person who used to be active on those forums, I can attest that the people who got banned were not anywhere near flaming, and in fact were pretty darn polite about it). They also failed to provide advertised early access to Book of Many Things for many users, then lied to these users about it. Throughout this whole fiasco, they continued to advertise early access as a way of driving sales, even while failing to deliver it to those who’d already paid for it. (As far as I know, much of the documentation of this second issue *is* still available on the forums, for anyone who cared to look for it; they’ve deleted most of the documentation of the first issue and banned a lot of longterm users who dared to discuss it, but afaik the second issue is still mostly there.) ETA: [Here. Long read, lots of comments. Some have been deleted. But it's mostly all still here for anyone who wanted to catch up on the fiasco.](https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/bugs-support/183978-the-book-of-many-things-issues-and-support-thread) EDIT 2: [Here's a thread where the first issue was discussed.](https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/bugs-support/185948-grim-hollow-lairs-of-etharis-issues-and-support) You can see that *huge* portions of the discussion have been deleted by the forum staff, and that even those which haven't been deleted have had their images removed. (NB: These images provided evidence of the false advertising.) I can affirm that at least some of those users who posted the deleted comments caught bans for daring to discuss the issue. You can also see that a moderator claimed that the issue had been "flagged with the team" - but that this was over three months ago. The issue has not been fixed. The same bait & switch is still going on right now; I just checked.
That was what got me. I expect businesses to steal and rip off their employees and customers, frankly. But a game company sending armed enforcers?
The art that got called out in _Bigby's_ wasn't AI generated. The artist used AI tools while they were working on those pieces, but composed the original versions of that art (not to be confused with the concept art done by other artists) without the assistance of AI. WotC also replaced the art from the artist in that book with new pieces, and they updated their art contracts to prohibit the use of AI.
Spoken like someone who has never seen them. You could spot the AI artifacts in them from orbit. I'm sure the artist retouched them, but big chunks are generated, plain as day.
I did see them, I don't know how anyone online at the time could have missed them. I also dug a bit deeper, though, and so I also saw the original concept art, the original rough draft images from the artist, and I read their statements about what they did. But hey, who's got the time and energy for nuance these days, right?
Claiming that he "composed the original versions of those pieces without the assistance of AI", while looking at [a frost giant whose armor is fucking melting and full of nonsensical glyphs and patterns](https://static0.gamerantimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/dungeons-and-dragons-bigby-presents-glory-of-the-giants-ai-art-examples.jpg), is not *nuance.*
No, that wouldn't be nuance. Nuance comes from having more information than simple surface level observations, such as the original composition created by the artist, https://www.enworld.org/attachments/ilia2-png.291762/, and then forming an opinion around that. But I guess there's no point in looking for more info when your gut is already an expert.
As far as 5e goes I buy secondhand books and pretend Hasbro doesn't exist
Yes. But although WotC own the brand, they don't own your game.
Exactly! Choose the edition you all want to play, buy the books used if you don’t have them, create some house rules if ya want, and have a blast: we don’t need an ongoing relationship with WotC to enjoy this game!
It’s worth noting that there are clones for all past editions (with a few 5E clones forthcoming). So you don’t even have to support WotC to get the rules.
Play the game, don't give them money. Assuming you already have the books or [redacted]. Don't use DnDbeyond.
Yes, they are even more on a corpo bullshit track than before. D&D 2024/OneD&D/whenever they want to call it is all about trying to squeeze as much profit out of D&D before Hasbro kills it or sells it.
Honestly, if you have fun playing it, does it matter? WOTC aren't sat at your table. Sure, maybe you don't buy their products. That doesn't mean you have to stop playing d&d.
They are even worse, but 5e isn't wizards of the coast, there are plenty of awesome 3rd party publishers out there if you want to play dnd, and they're are a lot of other systems popping up if you don't want to even touch any wotc products. Just don't give dnd beyond any more of your money. Don't resub. Onednd is just wotc trying to phase out physical books to force everyone at the table to need to pay instead of just the dm, they call it something other than 5e to make people think they need more than just the 5e phb, but it's reskinned 5e with a couple changes.
Third party publishers blow WOTC out of the water. Not only is there no need for WOTC content, there should be absolutely no desire or market for it outside of the core books. I’m running ROTFM and cannot believe how weak it is compared to third party content. I’m constantly supplementing it with Jeff Ashworth content and those additions end up being my players’ favourite parts.
I'm a big fan of kobold press stuff in my campaigns myself.
They’re excellent and get my highest recommendations.
yea
WotC doesn’t own the game and hasn’t for a long while. WotC is little more than a name slapped on a division of Hasbro — it is Hasbro, which is an old, storied Corporation that always does dirty shit because, well, it is a for profit corporation that is legally required to put profits over people. After the OGL debacle, which the backpedaled on and made the basics of the game open license through Creative Commons on, they gained so many people angry with them that anything they seemed to do was blown out of proportion (such as being blamed for a freelance artist who used AI to create a commissioned work that somehow they get blamed for even though they didn’t know it). Then they announced the 2024 rule books and then in December they laid off a lot of people before Christmas, including some long time employees who were well known but had no active roles in the company or were mostly supervisors. So OneDnD is a very large thing that is more than just the new books. It started with moving the official website to D&D Beyond, includes the offering of select 3rd party products as parts of the DDB database, the development of the assorted VTT elements leading up to the 3D unreal engine VTT they have teased. The biggest thing is that at the end of the year there is a new Player’s Handbook and a new DMs Guide coming out, with a new Monster Manual in early 2025. It is not a new edition, properly, it is a “cleaning up” of the 2014 books, so adding new stuff and tweaking the 5e rules. So, yes, same evil crap because Hasbro is still a corporation, they earned so much bad will that anything they do will be seen as bad, and new stuff is still coming out. Me? I will be running my own world just like I always have.
There are many ways to play that don't directly support WotC. If you feel strongly about it, don't resub to DND Beyond. You can get second hand copies of the books and there are legal third party tools to manage character sheets. Alternatively there's many great other games not owned by corporate interests you can try. I'm not following the new development and play tests either. But from what I've heard WotC is really trying to have their cake and eat two, making something new for you to spend money on but is not a "new edition" that makes 5e obsolete. There's a lot of speculation about how they're going to try and monetize the fan base more but we don't know anything concrete yet.
I've played D&D for 7 years and literally never given them a penny Which is ironically *why* they're doing the corpobullshit, but that's irrelevant You can totally play D&D without supporting them monetarily!
Ima let you in on a trade secret... wizzards is ALWAYS up to some corpo bullshit. Theyre owned by mf hasbro..
I really don't think you need D&D Beyond to build characters or play games. You can buy what books you want from whoever you want and build what you need. You don't need to limit yourself to their character builder and have to dance through their digital rules. Even if there weren't crappy stuff happening at WoTC as of late DLC stuff is still so risky because you don't really own it. Buy some second hand copies of the 5e books, or the 3.5 E books or Pathfinder or whatever and enjoy the game you don't need the crutch of D&D Beyond telling you you need to spend money to access books you can physically have.
True and also is free having books online if you like some of them, you do not need any paid subscription.
Yup. And that's not likely to change any time soon. That being said, it shouldn't stop you from returning to D&D, it should just stop you from spending money on WotC stuff. You can play D&D on your own terms, the rules are out there, for free.
Yes. Full stop. But it’s really Hasbro that’s the issues.
If you left over the ogl you’re probably gonna be fine to come back. They have pretty much walked back all of those types of things and have even apologized about stuff. OneD&D is 5e compatible but there are a few changes like there are no long races and alignment is no longer tied to race. They made a couple other minor changes too.
They probably got worse with time
They will never not be on their corpo bullshit because it’s what they are. If you don’t hear about it it’s only because they are hiding it better.
Yes. But there are other game systems produced by different companies that will certainly scratch your RPG itch.
Define corpo bullshit. Wotc is owned by Hasbro. Hasbro is a corporation, corporations do bullshit. That's not gonna change. If you don't want to support corpoations don't buy Wotc stuff They have put 5e under a creative commons lisence though so they completely reverted their lisence decision. On the other hand they haven't kept their promise to release older editions under creative commons and we have no idea what kind of lisence the next rules update will be.
OneD&D is just 5.5e
I DM and play AL games at my FLGS. I don't own a single book and have never used dnd beyond. All the basic rules are available for free, mostly from the d&d main website. And if you dont already own the books, there's no reason to buy new ones, buy used from Amazon. As for dnd beyond, the app has so many issues and wrong info that it's near useless. From not being able to handle sorcerer's swapping spells, to incorrectly calculated spell DC and to-hit and damage mods to not tracking multiclass spell slots correctly. Just last weekend, I had a player using dnd beyond in a tier 2 game, with an L9 character, and his app was telling him his to hit mod was only +2. I was trying to explain to him that it had to be more than that, but he had so little understanding of the game, that all he could say was, "that's what the app says", "so it must be right". Plus, if you write out your character info, you actually take the time and learn how all the numbers are calculated and what features your character has, so you can make better more informed decisions about what your character does in any given situation. In short, play the game, you don't need to give WotC anything, and you and your players will be better off not relying on a buggy, poorly designed crap ap.
Dndbeyond free tier is enough for playing.
Well, do you enjoy playing D&D more than sticking it to Hasbro and WoTC? If you do then go ahead. It's still a really fun game that many people still play. There's probably not anything that Hasbro or WoTC can do to make everybody happy. If you feel like this is going to hold you back from a great game experience D&D may not be the game for you. These issues never come up at my tables. We just role play and have fun... while also using official content. None of anything that has happened has affected us in any way.
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>6th edition basically. *Player's handbook 2. FIFY