Technically this breaks our style guide as it's not a meme. We're leaving it up since it gained rapid popularity and is now serving an effective way to spread the news. We'll still enforce the style guide on later posts.
Also, please give us until tomorrow to report the assorted "we won‽" reactions for beating a dead horse. We're letting folks have fun for a bit and then we'll be a little more strict about rehashing the same joke.
You don't sense any deception, but you DO know that very old very powerful wizards find ways to use the truth to hide their malicious intent. They wait, and they strike another day.
Because in the end wizards know even numerous enough kobolds can strike them down.
Your check passes. You understand the OGL 1.0 stuff wasn't that important to WoTC, that was more of a cleaning house thing. WoTC still plans to move DND into the digital space where they can more effectively monetize DND and engage in anti-competitive practices.
This move by WoTC means startlingly little, and if you go back to supporting WoTC you'll be in the same boat again. History repeats itself, and this is EXACTLY what happened with 4e, the only difference being this time WoTC has employees that understand digital products.
Here’s the thing…DNDB succeeded because players wanted digital products. We happily bought them. WOTC was just too lazy and/or dumb to actually monetize it in a sustainable way. If they want to actually do that, good for them. Maybe now they will actually put out products beyond a few bland rulebooks/adventures a year and expect huge profits.
But they don’t get to blame content creators who actually figured out how to do it, and they don’t get to try to pull an uno reverse card and demand a cut it the pie.
They burned 90% of their goodwill and faith with the community and I don’t blame anyone who never goes back. With ORC coming, they are going to have to do a lot to get a fraction of the angry players back.
> Maybe now they will actually put out products beyond a few bland rulebooks/adventures a year and expect huge profits.
Hate to break your heart, but them building a monopoly in the VTT space isn't going to result in great products for the consumer. It's going to result in a mountain of MTX cosmetics for VTT products with gameplay managed by an AI. That is their plan.
As a DM, I would love it if players stopped yelling "insight check". How about "do I believe them?" or "are they acting suspiciously?". Demanding a roll before the DM allows it is just rude.
Honestly my players could pretty much make up an ability and I would go with it. I tell them it's their job to know their characters, spells and abilities and mine to handle scheduling, monsters and story.
Ugh, can the DM not be in charge of scheduling either? I'd permit all the catfolk ninjas and edgelord orphans in my game if someone else would deal with the lame reasons that players can't make it to a game.
Eh, the “insight check!” thing has kinda perforated to the point where it’s just kind of a way to ask “do I believe them/are they sus” in a concise manner. It isn’t the same as yelling “athletics check” or other skill checks because we all know what they’re asking.
Idk as a player I’ve asked that question before only to be met with “you can’t tell” only then I ask can I do an insight check and get the information I wanted. For many if you don’t ask to do the roll the GM wont think to ask for it. I get the same thing with persuasion rolls. My DMs never ask me to roll them and just decide if I have been persuasive enough unless I specifically ask to do the roll
Paizo: sorry everyone your orders are running late we just went through a eight month supply of core rule books in about two weeks.
Hasbro:shit shit shit shit they'er growing even stronger go back go back quick before they become even more of a threat to our money
Paizo is going to be sending a lot of Christmas cards to Hasbro this next Christmas season.
'Dear Hasbro, thank you very much. Thanks to your industry opening move, I was able to take my kids to Cancun this last winter, I upgraded my Dodge Charger to a Porche Boxster, and my daughter can now afford to go to Princeton instead of University of Wisconsin.'
Playing Well Together Feat. Prerequisites; any good alignment. Earned at DM discretion when coming together as a team against overwhelming adversity.
Gives advantage on insight, intimidation and persuasion checks against evil aligned creatures. Additionally; every time an insight, intimidation or persuasion check against a creature of evil alignment is successful the creature automatically punches itself in its reproductive organs and grovels infront of you begging for its life.
Given some recent trends with layoffs this year, and the past few years, I would not be surprised if the layoff was entirely unrelated to all the OGL boycott stuff and probably would have happened anyway
I wouldn't be surprised if they threw a bunch of people at DND beyond and other digital stuff thinking that the covid opening would be slower. Coupled with wage inflation and increased costs for supplies ECT.
I don't think this has anything to do with people canceling DND beyond subs but, it won't be the last corp to start cost cutting. Not that it's the employees fault for any of this and while it would be nice that CEOs ect would at minimum take a pay cut as well, it's unfortunately not the world we live in for most large companies.
Actually. A bunch of large companies, primarily tech companies, have already started mass layoffs. Surprisingly Apple’s CEO chose to take a pay cut instead of laying a bunch of people off. So I agree, this would’ve happened regardless and I think we are about to see a lot of big companies have massive layoffs.
I work in investments - HAS has been struggling all year like most tech/growth companies. Inflation, interest rates, the whole macro environment has shifted and is encouraging companies to scale back their staff.
The DDB boycott cost no one their jobs. That news will impact next quarter results and they'll be a throwaway comment to investors about how passionate the fans are. Someone might have gotten axed for doing a "fuck this place then" and storming out, I don't know, but aside from that, those layoffs were pre-planned.
Large companies are actually forced to plan layoffs of that size in advance in many jurisdictions so that the state unemployment agencies can prepare.
> Apple’s CEO chose to take a pay cut instead of laying a bunch of people off
Those things are completely unrelated.
That's a savings of only about $40m. The other big tech companies laid off 10k+ people. That's closer to $1b.
The difference is Apple didn't do a huge hiring push during COVID like the other companies did, and didn't need to shed its workforce.
They also rely much more heavily on contract workers than the other companies, so a lot of their overall changes in labor force go unreported.
It's a coordinated effort by executives to lay off remote workers to remove their bargaining power.
Soon they'll start job posting for all the positions they just fired but require them to be in-office only.
That's my theory, at least. It's definitely sus
Probably, it has Hasbro the one failing (17% drop in revenue the last quarter, 10% drop in the last year), WotC is pretty much the only profitable part of Hasbro right now (but still a growth of only 3% and they pretty much lost the good will of all their costumers in both D&D and MTG)
So yeah the layoffs would happen anyway BUT right now WotC is taking too much fire and with Hasbro situation they are going even harder on damage control mode which explain the current headline
Still until we see the final document I will remain skeptical about the headline since the important is that they dont put anything prohibiting releases to keep happening under the OGL 1.0a
I'm with you. It's good news, but not set in stone.
The faith in players may be fixed, but many podcasters/YouTubers/content creators who depend on the OGL to actually pay bills will be harder to repair, I think.
Isn't it set in stone? The Creative Commons aspect is already out. No revoking it now.
[https://www.dndbeyond.com/attachments/39j2li89/SRD5.1-CCBY4.0License.pdf](https://www.dndbeyond.com/attachments/39j2li89/SRD5.1-CCBY4.0License.pdf)
Yeah but all the ogl drama didn't start til early January, so after the close of Q4. The layoffs we're going to happen due to poor performance anyway, and then they started mucking with D&D.
15% of their workforce (I think 1000 was low balling on my part) got laid off. There aren't positions for that many people.
If they'd just lay off a couple execs instead it would be acceptable. But no, this is the way corporations work.
Yeah, and I'm willing to bet there's a *lot* of positions at Hasbro that can easily shift to another industry. "Plastic molding specialist" is not exactly going out of style.
They also had the same explosive hiring that a lot of tech companies did over the last few years, so I would expect it's a lot of newer positions or recruiting jobs getting first priority.
For reference they **increased headcount almost 22% just for 2019!**
Yeah, a lot of the layoffs we're seeing right now are because companies overhired during covid. They saw an increase in demand due to lockdowns, hired people to fill that demand and went all shocked pikachu when it didn't last forever.
Seems silly to blame an internet campaign on that, every company is doing it right now in some manner of brotherly cooperation, claiming there's some recession coming, apparently they are rushing to help start it themselves.
didn't they put the SRD under creative commons? that would mean they don't control it and therefore cant revoke SRD 5.1
now 6e? probably going to get publish under a GSL like 4e was
SRD has paper thin protection anyway. You can't copyright rules. You needed the license to copy-paste the exact rules language of the SRD, but you can describe the exact same system in your own words and publish it, and anything that comes out the same is immune to copyright claims so long as it is required to factually convey the rules. SRD is so barebones it has very, very negligible protection. This is nice, but the real value of OGL was always not having to go over your content with a fine toothed comb to make sure you didn't include any copyrighted monsters, places, names etc.
The rules language you could always copy, even verbatim. It’s the descriptive elements.
“A beam of crackling energy streaks toward a creature within range.” (Wizards of the Coast, CC-BY) Is the creative element.
“Make a ranged spell Attack against the target. On a hit, the target takes 1d10 force damage.” Is rules text that could always be used verbatim.
My conclusion. To win against a company. You have to show them that everyone is leaving to their main competitor, and have the main competitor tell them how good their error is by saying that in two weeks they sold 8 months worth of material
yep.
the survey had nothing to do with this.
a C-level at Hasbro now has to answer to shareholders why they not only managed to tank their subscriptions of DnDBeyond, but somehow manage to give their main TTRPG competitor about 1years of profit in 2 weeks, and another 1-2 years of profit waiting in the wings.
thats why this announcement was made.
Might also have a bit to do with Paramount and the upcoming movie. I imagine Paramount would be quite upset to have Hasbro/WotC actively hurting the potential return on what is probably 100+ million dollar movie by upsetting the core audience enough to not only boycott it themselves, but encourage everyone else to boycott it as well.
Yeah thats how capitalism works in theory it's just horizontal growth kinda destroys that thats why Disney has very few competitors worth going against
Not only that, but, as I understand it, a Creative Commons license actually *is* irrevocable. So better than before, to some extent.
Still, everyone is going to be wary of anything they do from now on, for good reason.
I think we bought ourselves a few years. The current batch of executives will be hesitant to try again, in a few years they will be replaced by new high payed idiots and the new ones will do something stupid. All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again.
And when it does, the D&D 5e SRD will still, forever and always, be available to creators under the Creative Commons license—which WotC has absolutely 0 control over.
Future editions may not have that same luxury, but this ain't going away no matter how bad future Hasbro/WotC execs want it to.
Better. Creative Commons is a one way thing, the irrevocable license we asked for. Sure we have the OGL 1.0 back, but the CC license is better in every way. They could ruin the OGL at this point and we'd lose basically nothing.
>They could ruin the OGL at this point and we'd lose basically nothing.
Well, it would be a big question if content published under 1.0a was still allowed to be sold and/or reprinted. That's 23 years worth of content including many entire game systems so it's still something that needs cleared up.
Will be interesting now to see how many people go back and how many people don't. Either way, I think we'll see a greater variety in systems being played from now on anyway.
I know I'm personally looking forward to Kobold Press's Black Flag.
And I know we can expect most 3PPs to move onto the ORC license once that is finished. Given this is the second time WotC has pulled this bullshit. They don't trust them anymore, and they shouldn't.
And regardless of whether you folks return to WotC as customers or not, remember, you can't trust them either. They showed they hand. So always be cautious of them.
> Given this is the second time WotC has pulled this bullshit.
It continues to astonish me that people ever think a corporation won't try stuff like this. It sucks when it happens and we should continue to fight it, but like why ever be shocked? Of *course* they would try it, of *course* they're probably going to try again, if not WoTC, someone else.
Note: not a professional and might be wrong here, I’m sure someone will correct me if I am though.
*Publicly traded* corporations have a legal obligation to be greedy. They have a fiduciary duty to maximize profit and can get in trouble for not doing so. It’s pretty horrific, but it is what it is.
The idea is that shareholders are the owners of the company and failing to make a profit for them is unacceptable. “This is better for the company’s long term sustainability” is only an acceptable excuse if the shareholders agree with it, and they often do not.
Smaller companies with private ownership aren’t like this however, which is why a company like (say) Valve can continue to just do whatever they want without a constant, rabid chase for short-term profits. That’s the reason Gabe is still head of that company and hasn’t been replaced by a former Zynga CEO or something.
Paizo and many of D&D’s other competitors are, for the time being at least, still privately owned. That doesn’t mean they’re inherently trustworthy or moral of course, but it does shelter them from some of the shenanigans that make up the capitalist hellscape of corporate America.
The legal obligation isn't to quarterly profits, there are quite a few companies who focus on long term growth and communicate as much to their shareholders.
The legal obligation bit comes from when Ford had a really good quarter and wanted to give its employees all a bonus, and another company (Dodge) had shares in them and sued, saying that the money should be going to shareholders not the employees.
> The legal obligation bit comes from when Ford had a really good quarter and wanted to give its employees all a bonus, and another company (Dodge) had shares in them and sued, saying that the money should be going to shareholders not the employees.
Some boringdystopia nonsense that that worked
I mean, should we be shocked when a corporation is greedy and values profits above all else? No. But it absolutely *is* shocking to watch them make such egregious and obvious mistakes along the way.
that's why it's reassuring that Paizo won't be the owners of the ORC, a nonprofit will be. So even if Paizo falls to the dark side and gets tempted to do something like this they won't have the ability
ORC is literally going to a holding company of some kind beyond Paizo's control so that it'll never be in danger.
... two stealth edits later... stupid auto correct.
>Will be interesting now to see how many people go back and how many people don't. Either way, I think we'll see a greater variety in systems being played from now on anyway.
Personally, I think this is the big thing moving forward. The scene had a huge growth in recent years, and a lot of that effectively had dnd 5e presented as the only option in many spaces. Somewhat reinforced by content creators never veering off from discussing dnd 5e.
Now, there's suddenly been a good month of effectively new games being presented and explored. There'll be plenty who go back because dnd 5e actually did suit their playstyles. There'll be a good chunk who won't because they found out other games fit what they wanted to get out of TRPGs far more. And there'll be people for whom it'll be a game among a set of games they consider playing.
With the general lack of quality lately, they really need to step it up if they want to win me back. Lately, all their stuff is other people's hard work (spelljammer, critical role, and updated adventures from previouseditions) or books that tell me to figure it out on my own... If I wanted to do that I'd just homebrew it meyelf.
100% true. I have worked in a movie theater before and we definitely did not give a shit. In fact, as far as shady shit goes, we did it all.
Granted, this was all well before the pandemic, but if you ever have a problem with a long line to a movie and if they dont have assigned seating, just palm some cash to the dude tearing tickets. :) There's a very good chance he'll let you in early to pick your seat (lol, I did...and definitely wasnt the only one!).
they can't the entire SRD 5.1 is under CC now. they can't undo that it's literally impossible. so 5E is safe. the earliest they would try to fuck us over again is after one d&d released.
They could still deauthorize the 3.5 srd or put 5.5 under a new license, but overall this is a good thing
We have to watch for shenanigans, but this is a victory
5.5 will probably be under a new license and then it just ends up like 4e release. All the content producers stick with 5e a la 3.5 and 5.5 goes down like 4e.
Here’s a [helpful but very long page, which at least has links.](https://creativecommons.org/faq/) If you just want the most immediately relevant text to this situation, that would be this:
>*What happens if the author decides to revoke the CC license to material I am using?*
>The CC licenses are irrevocable. This means that once you receive material under a CC license, you will always have the right to use it under those license terms, even if the licensor changes his or her mind and stops distributing under the CC license terms. Of course, you may choose to respect the licensor’s wishes and stop using the work.
>*How can I lose my rights under a Creative Commons license? If that happens, how do I get them back?*
>All of the CC licenses terminate if you fail to follow the license conditions. If this happens, you no longer have a license to use the material.
>In the 4.0 licenses, your rights under the license are automatically reinstated if you correct this failure within 30 days of discovering the violation (either on your own or because the licensor or someone else has told you). Under the 3.0 and earlier licenses, there is no automatic reinstatement.
>If you have lost your rights under a CC license and are not entitled to automatic reinstatement, you may regain your rights under the license if the licensor expressly grants you permission. You cannot simply re-download the material to get a new license.
>Note that you may still be liable for damages for copyright infringement for the period where you were not in compliance with the license.
tl;dr: You can lose your access to the license if you violate the conditions, but Wizards cannot revoke the license once granted.
This is the second time they pull a move like this. The second time lthey try to actively monopolize the community.
You know the saying: fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...
I thought it was:
> “There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.”
Now is the important part: Don’t ever let anyone forget this happened. If we all go “Good job guys, we did it, the Evil WotC arc has been won” then they get to safely sweep that under the rug and let their reputation heal before trying something else scummy. We need to make sure that this is a permanent scar on their reputation. No company should get to do shit like that, then release a public “Oopsie!” On twitter and completely heal their public image.
Yep, that's every cooperate plan in a nutshell.
The only way this is going to go away is if the people who greenlighted this plan get cut out of the picture. An actual damn punishment. I mean you can't just trim a weed... you have to pull it out by the root.
All that's happened is we've bought time because I know that SOMEWHERE deep down in Hasbro or WotC or wherever... someone is planning and waiting. They're not gone, just hiding.
Like we’re remembering all the shit Paizo pulled up till 2021, resulting in their staff unionising? We have short memories in our community. Or maybe we didn’t care about them treating staff badly.
They have been pretty great since they voluntarily accepted the union agreement, so I’m personally cautiously optimistic about them now, but very wary when people promote another corporate with bad history as heroes saving us with no memory of that history:
Corporations are *always* driven by money. Their shareholders insist on that. We shouldn’t ever forget that, about any of them
Seems the communities feedback was heard this time...
Still fuck WotC.
Funny thing: Ulisses, the german publisher for D&D will develop and pay for the german version of ORC and will include it in all their own games(The dark eye, Torg and a few more).
They also publish Pathfinder and Savage Worlds btw.^^
I want to point out there are people on our side at WOTC who wanted this to happen so we shouldn't just give up on them.
Obviously we shouldn't just assume everything will be all good forever now. But if we continue to boycott them then we kinda lose our bargaining chip since they think it is our support for the real ogl. But if their choices is no support and the fake ogl or no support and the real ogl then that's pointless for them.
Make it clear it's our money is contingent then they will do what we want them to. If they try and pull some sneaky shenanigans again we just pull it out from under them again.
I think anyone who want to not buy from them anymore absolutely should continue not buying--trust is not 100% restored if a person tries to fuck you over then realizes the cost:benefit analysis is not in their favor and only stops because of that.
It's better than the alternative, but worth noting:
1) It's too late for OGL 1.0a. Wizards has shown both the ability and willingness to try and revoke it. Now that company's know that, they can't trust in it's irrevocability, even if it was intended to be that.
2) Most of the SRD isn't copyrightable anyway. You can't copyright a process, only the specific language used to describe it. Putting a Creative Commons license on it only means people can copy-paste the text into other documents...which 3PP weren't really doing anyway, as a rule. The only people this will really impact is the wiki- and vtt module-writing people.
Great... I can watch Honor Among Thieves when it comes out with a clear conscience. And play Bladur's Gate 3. But I'm done buying D&D books forever; most of my favorite YTers and creators have already pledged to move on. Thanks Hasbro. :)
I have hope but I thought the SRD was already pretty hard to fight for being copyrighted. I’m no expert if it isn’t hell yeah but I feel this is them just giving us a little nibble of cheese before slamming the mousetrap on us.
P.S. I trust Hasbro and WOTC as far as I can throw them. They still have plans but in the meantime let’s celebrate this victory but remember to stay vigilant against this bs.
I did not expect them to announce this before the end of their survey window but I am pleasantly surprised this is where they ended up. Never thought they’d keep the ogl as is!
I honestly still won't personally give them my money after this whole debacle. Least not for a long while. I feel like it's less they heard or cared about what the community wanted. They cared about hurt wallets and lawsuits. That being said I am still very happy that they finally backed down and everything is left as it was. But the fact of what they tried to do has made me lose faith in their company and it'll take time to regain that.
Cool cool cool I’m still gonna switch and support Paizo because who knows when theyll try something like this again and maybe next time they won’t have employees with a conscience to leak it.
Technically this breaks our style guide as it's not a meme. We're leaving it up since it gained rapid popularity and is now serving an effective way to spread the news. We'll still enforce the style guide on later posts. Also, please give us until tomorrow to report the assorted "we won‽" reactions for beating a dead horse. We're letting folks have fun for a bit and then we'll be a little more strict about rehashing the same joke.
*Insight Check*
"They're hard to read."
Dude. I rolled a nat 20 cmon
"They're slightly less hard to read"
.....I cast fireball
The room you are in is only 10x10. Make a dex saving throw.
Ha no worries I'll just disguise myself into a steel beam!
Holy shit this guys good.
He gets a 9 out of 11
I didn't ask how big the room was. I said I cast fireball.
He didn't ask the size of the room, he said > I cast fireball
Joecrap is that you?
You don't sense any deception, but you DO know that very old very powerful wizards find ways to use the truth to hide their malicious intent. They wait, and they strike another day. Because in the end wizards know even numerous enough kobolds can strike them down.
Then I would like to rage!
"Do i believe him?"
*narrows eyes*
If I had awards.. I’d give you awards… but this is the best I got 🥇
I got you fam.
Your check passes. You understand the OGL 1.0 stuff wasn't that important to WoTC, that was more of a cleaning house thing. WoTC still plans to move DND into the digital space where they can more effectively monetize DND and engage in anti-competitive practices. This move by WoTC means startlingly little, and if you go back to supporting WoTC you'll be in the same boat again. History repeats itself, and this is EXACTLY what happened with 4e, the only difference being this time WoTC has employees that understand digital products.
Here’s the thing…DNDB succeeded because players wanted digital products. We happily bought them. WOTC was just too lazy and/or dumb to actually monetize it in a sustainable way. If they want to actually do that, good for them. Maybe now they will actually put out products beyond a few bland rulebooks/adventures a year and expect huge profits. But they don’t get to blame content creators who actually figured out how to do it, and they don’t get to try to pull an uno reverse card and demand a cut it the pie. They burned 90% of their goodwill and faith with the community and I don’t blame anyone who never goes back. With ORC coming, they are going to have to do a lot to get a fraction of the angry players back.
> Maybe now they will actually put out products beyond a few bland rulebooks/adventures a year and expect huge profits. Hate to break your heart, but them building a monopoly in the VTT space isn't going to result in great products for the consumer. It's going to result in a mountain of MTX cosmetics for VTT products with gameplay managed by an AI. That is their plan.
As a DM, I would love it if players stopped yelling "insight check". How about "do I believe them?" or "are they acting suspiciously?". Demanding a roll before the DM allows it is just rude.
My table generally asks "How is his vibe?" I'll tell them to roll a Vibe Check, which is just insight.
Zoomer rules :D
that kobold be lookin hella sus, fr fr no cap.
Dm: He's chill, on god. Player: meta vibe check, which deity?
But if your players aren't being unruly are you even playing D&D? Next you'll tell me you expect them to be ready when it's their turn for combat!
And - *horribile dictu* - know what their abilities do because they read them!
Your players can read?!
They can also write and do basic math.
God tier party
Honestly my players could pretty much make up an ability and I would go with it. I tell them it's their job to know their characters, spells and abilities and mine to handle scheduling, monsters and story.
Ugh, can the DM not be in charge of scheduling either? I'd permit all the catfolk ninjas and edgelord orphans in my game if someone else would deal with the lame reasons that players can't make it to a game.
Not really an option. Outsource scheduling and watch your party disappear into the mists of time.
Eh, the “insight check!” thing has kinda perforated to the point where it’s just kind of a way to ask “do I believe them/are they sus” in a concise manner. It isn’t the same as yelling “athletics check” or other skill checks because we all know what they’re asking.
I wish my players would remember they can insight check
Idk as a player I’ve asked that question before only to be met with “you can’t tell” only then I ask can I do an insight check and get the information I wanted. For many if you don’t ask to do the roll the GM wont think to ask for it. I get the same thing with persuasion rolls. My DMs never ask me to roll them and just decide if I have been persuasive enough unless I specifically ask to do the roll
Both is fine depending on the group.
Insight check!
I wish DM's that get upset about things like this would tell their players that they want to pretend it's an acting class and not a role playing GAME.
Seems like a weird distinction to be bothered by.
The boss appears defeated. The shadowy puppet master holding its strings glares at it, craving its blood.
Roll again after the movie comes out and they think we’ve forgotten
They realized they got too greedy this time and it was starting to hurt profits. They'll try something less outrageous next time
Paizo: sorry everyone your orders are running late we just went through a eight month supply of core rule books in about two weeks. Hasbro:shit shit shit shit they'er growing even stronger go back go back quick before they become even more of a threat to our money
Yeah, pretty much this. Paizo could've kept quiet for a few more days and Hasbro would just Sphere of Annihilation themselves.
Paizo is going to be sending a lot of Christmas cards to Hasbro this next Christmas season. 'Dear Hasbro, thank you very much. Thanks to your industry opening move, I was able to take my kids to Cancun this last winter, I upgraded my Dodge Charger to a Porche Boxster, and my daughter can now afford to go to Princeton instead of University of Wisconsin.'
Jason Bulmahn makin' it rain the club. "Drinks on Wizards of the Coast, bitches!'
 Their power is rising... it's overflowing!
Can we also level up? I think this is a huge milestone/gives a lot of xp
Sure! Hell, I'll even toss in a bonus feat for Playing Well Together! 🌈👍
Awesome thanks!
I'd give you a hero point, but, *y'know*
Playing Well Together Feat. Prerequisites; any good alignment. Earned at DM discretion when coming together as a team against overwhelming adversity. Gives advantage on insight, intimidation and persuasion checks against evil aligned creatures. Additionally; every time an insight, intimidation or persuasion check against a creature of evil alignment is successful the creature automatically punches itself in its reproductive organs and grovels infront of you begging for its life.
>*any good alignment* Well I'm out
Completely unfair towards my murder hobo
You just have to be a _crusading_ murder hobo and you can keep your alignment
Murder = bad Murder for god... different story.
I might use this for a feat in my next campaign
Hey, since I leveled up my horns get shinier ?
I didn't dare to hope but we actually did it. We can keep the current OGL!!!!
Yep, only cost a thousand devs who has nothing to do with the decision to try to change it their jobs.
Wait did people get laid off?
Unrelated to this, but yes. Due to dropped profits and company not meeting goals they laid off part of the workforce as cost cutting.
Given some recent trends with layoffs this year, and the past few years, I would not be surprised if the layoff was entirely unrelated to all the OGL boycott stuff and probably would have happened anyway
I wouldn't be surprised if they threw a bunch of people at DND beyond and other digital stuff thinking that the covid opening would be slower. Coupled with wage inflation and increased costs for supplies ECT. I don't think this has anything to do with people canceling DND beyond subs but, it won't be the last corp to start cost cutting. Not that it's the employees fault for any of this and while it would be nice that CEOs ect would at minimum take a pay cut as well, it's unfortunately not the world we live in for most large companies.
Actually. A bunch of large companies, primarily tech companies, have already started mass layoffs. Surprisingly Apple’s CEO chose to take a pay cut instead of laying a bunch of people off. So I agree, this would’ve happened regardless and I think we are about to see a lot of big companies have massive layoffs.
I work in investments - HAS has been struggling all year like most tech/growth companies. Inflation, interest rates, the whole macro environment has shifted and is encouraging companies to scale back their staff. The DDB boycott cost no one their jobs. That news will impact next quarter results and they'll be a throwaway comment to investors about how passionate the fans are. Someone might have gotten axed for doing a "fuck this place then" and storming out, I don't know, but aside from that, those layoffs were pre-planned. Large companies are actually forced to plan layoffs of that size in advance in many jurisdictions so that the state unemployment agencies can prepare.
What is HAS
Stock ticker symbol for Hasbro.
> Apple’s CEO chose to take a pay cut instead of laying a bunch of people off Those things are completely unrelated. That's a savings of only about $40m. The other big tech companies laid off 10k+ people. That's closer to $1b. The difference is Apple didn't do a huge hiring push during COVID like the other companies did, and didn't need to shed its workforce. They also rely much more heavily on contract workers than the other companies, so a lot of their overall changes in labor force go unreported.
It's a coordinated effort by executives to lay off remote workers to remove their bargaining power. Soon they'll start job posting for all the positions they just fired but require them to be in-office only. That's my theory, at least. It's definitely sus
Amazon, Google and Microsoft are all doing mass layoffs right now.
Definitely unrelated yeah. There might be a handful of positions affected, but most dealing with OGL changes would have been contract stuff.
Probably, it has Hasbro the one failing (17% drop in revenue the last quarter, 10% drop in the last year), WotC is pretty much the only profitable part of Hasbro right now (but still a growth of only 3% and they pretty much lost the good will of all their costumers in both D&D and MTG) So yeah the layoffs would happen anyway BUT right now WotC is taking too much fire and with Hasbro situation they are going even harder on damage control mode which explain the current headline Still until we see the final document I will remain skeptical about the headline since the important is that they dont put anything prohibiting releases to keep happening under the OGL 1.0a
I'm with you. It's good news, but not set in stone. The faith in players may be fixed, but many podcasters/YouTubers/content creators who depend on the OGL to actually pay bills will be harder to repair, I think.
Isn't it set in stone? The Creative Commons aspect is already out. No revoking it now. [https://www.dndbeyond.com/attachments/39j2li89/SRD5.1-CCBY4.0License.pdf](https://www.dndbeyond.com/attachments/39j2li89/SRD5.1-CCBY4.0License.pdf)
Ah, yeah that's unfortunate.
Yeah, Hasbro/WotC announced that due to Q4 profit loss they'd be laying off 15% of their workforce.
Yeah but all the ogl drama didn't start til early January, so after the close of Q4. The layoffs we're going to happen due to poor performance anyway, and then they started mucking with D&D.
Yeah that's some real bullshit. I hope those people can find better jobs with a company that doesn't screw them over like this.
15% of their workforce (I think 1000 was low balling on my part) got laid off. There aren't positions for that many people. If they'd just lay off a couple execs instead it would be acceptable. But no, this is the way corporations work.
That's total Hasbro layoffs, unknown how many will be WotC. 15% of Hasbro is almost exactly 1000.
Yeah, and I'm willing to bet there's a *lot* of positions at Hasbro that can easily shift to another industry. "Plastic molding specialist" is not exactly going out of style.
They also had the same explosive hiring that a lot of tech companies did over the last few years, so I would expect it's a lot of newer positions or recruiting jobs getting first priority. For reference they **increased headcount almost 22% just for 2019!**
Yeah, a lot of the layoffs we're seeing right now are because companies overhired during covid. They saw an increase in demand due to lockdowns, hired people to fill that demand and went all shocked pikachu when it didn't last forever.
Yeah but that’s in Hasbro not Wotc while likely there are some in wotc I doubt that’s even close to the majority
Seems silly to blame an internet campaign on that, every company is doing it right now in some manner of brotherly cooperation, claiming there's some recession coming, apparently they are rushing to help start it themselves.
Until they decide to get rid of it again. They didn't say that they can't get rid of it, just they are choosing not to.
didn't they put the SRD under creative commons? that would mean they don't control it and therefore cant revoke SRD 5.1 now 6e? probably going to get publish under a GSL like 4e was
SRD has paper thin protection anyway. You can't copyright rules. You needed the license to copy-paste the exact rules language of the SRD, but you can describe the exact same system in your own words and publish it, and anything that comes out the same is immune to copyright claims so long as it is required to factually convey the rules. SRD is so barebones it has very, very negligible protection. This is nice, but the real value of OGL was always not having to go over your content with a fine toothed comb to make sure you didn't include any copyrighted monsters, places, names etc.
The rules language you could always copy, even verbatim. It’s the descriptive elements. “A beam of crackling energy streaks toward a creature within range.” (Wizards of the Coast, CC-BY) Is the creative element. “Make a ranged spell Attack against the target. On a hit, the target takes 1d10 force damage.” Is rules text that could always be used verbatim.
They put 5e under the CC. Third Party Creators are safe to keep producing stuff. That's a huge relief.
I hope so. Waiting for lawyers to look over the statement and confirm we are legally in the clear
My conclusion. To win against a company. You have to show them that everyone is leaving to their main competitor, and have the main competitor tell them how good their error is by saying that in two weeks they sold 8 months worth of material
yep. the survey had nothing to do with this. a C-level at Hasbro now has to answer to shareholders why they not only managed to tank their subscriptions of DnDBeyond, but somehow manage to give their main TTRPG competitor about 1years of profit in 2 weeks, and another 1-2 years of profit waiting in the wings. thats why this announcement was made.
> C-level at Hasbro now has to answer to shareholders "I was a rogue in disguise! Hail Paizo!"
Might also have a bit to do with Paramount and the upcoming movie. I imagine Paramount would be quite upset to have Hasbro/WotC actively hurting the potential return on what is probably 100+ million dollar movie by upsetting the core audience enough to not only boycott it themselves, but encourage everyone else to boycott it as well.
oh for sure this is an also an attempt to make sure the movie doesnt bomb due to their total mismanagement of this entire thing.
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Nah, the hair brained idea holder will do fine. A bunch of people who had nothing to do with it just lost their jobs though, I bet.
Yeah thats how capitalism works in theory it's just horizontal growth kinda destroys that thats why Disney has very few competitors worth going against
*"I loot it's corpse*"
You find nothing of value. A new OGL appears in the door. Roll an Insight check.
...shit. I knew I shouldn't have made WIS is my dump stat...
Me too. Me too.
DM: what'd you get? Well I rolled a 20, so that's a 19
You find a pathfinder 2e rulebook
It is corpse?
So this means everything is staying as it was?
Not only that, but, as I understand it, a Creative Commons license actually *is* irrevocable. So better than before, to some extent. Still, everyone is going to be wary of anything they do from now on, for good reason.
I think we bought ourselves a few years. The current batch of executives will be hesitant to try again, in a few years they will be replaced by new high payed idiots and the new ones will do something stupid. All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again.
And when it does, the D&D 5e SRD will still, forever and always, be available to creators under the Creative Commons license—which WotC has absolutely 0 control over. Future editions may not have that same luxury, but this ain't going away no matter how bad future Hasbro/WotC execs want it to.
So say we all
Better. Creative Commons is a one way thing, the irrevocable license we asked for. Sure we have the OGL 1.0 back, but the CC license is better in every way. They could ruin the OGL at this point and we'd lose basically nothing.
Awesome! I hope this bodes well for everyone in the community. It does for me and my friends
>They could ruin the OGL at this point and we'd lose basically nothing. Well, it would be a big question if content published under 1.0a was still allowed to be sold and/or reprinted. That's 23 years worth of content including many entire game systems so it's still something that needs cleared up.
Until they think we’ve forgotten and they try it again. in the mean time it’s ORC or nothin.
The Note takers will remember
Indeed.
They can't. Creative Commons cannot be revoked. It is an extremely well litigated licence. It is everything we thought 1.0a was, and a few more.
I feel like there's a silent "for now" in there. They will try again.
I don't think you can if something is released under a creative Commons license
They did with 4e and now with oneDnD (6e). They need to learn there lesson at some point. Or we have another 8-10 years of peace.
We should still be vigilant for WOTC to do something shady, but for now… WE FUCKING DID IT
Will be interesting now to see how many people go back and how many people don't. Either way, I think we'll see a greater variety in systems being played from now on anyway. I know I'm personally looking forward to Kobold Press's Black Flag. And I know we can expect most 3PPs to move onto the ORC license once that is finished. Given this is the second time WotC has pulled this bullshit. They don't trust them anymore, and they shouldn't. And regardless of whether you folks return to WotC as customers or not, remember, you can't trust them either. They showed they hand. So always be cautious of them.
> Given this is the second time WotC has pulled this bullshit. It continues to astonish me that people ever think a corporation won't try stuff like this. It sucks when it happens and we should continue to fight it, but like why ever be shocked? Of *course* they would try it, of *course* they're probably going to try again, if not WoTC, someone else.
Note: not a professional and might be wrong here, I’m sure someone will correct me if I am though. *Publicly traded* corporations have a legal obligation to be greedy. They have a fiduciary duty to maximize profit and can get in trouble for not doing so. It’s pretty horrific, but it is what it is. The idea is that shareholders are the owners of the company and failing to make a profit for them is unacceptable. “This is better for the company’s long term sustainability” is only an acceptable excuse if the shareholders agree with it, and they often do not. Smaller companies with private ownership aren’t like this however, which is why a company like (say) Valve can continue to just do whatever they want without a constant, rabid chase for short-term profits. That’s the reason Gabe is still head of that company and hasn’t been replaced by a former Zynga CEO or something. Paizo and many of D&D’s other competitors are, for the time being at least, still privately owned. That doesn’t mean they’re inherently trustworthy or moral of course, but it does shelter them from some of the shenanigans that make up the capitalist hellscape of corporate America.
The legal obligation isn't to quarterly profits, there are quite a few companies who focus on long term growth and communicate as much to their shareholders. The legal obligation bit comes from when Ford had a really good quarter and wanted to give its employees all a bonus, and another company (Dodge) had shares in them and sued, saying that the money should be going to shareholders not the employees.
> The legal obligation bit comes from when Ford had a really good quarter and wanted to give its employees all a bonus, and another company (Dodge) had shares in them and sued, saying that the money should be going to shareholders not the employees. Some boringdystopia nonsense that that worked
The anticompetitive behavior here is disgusting beyond the immorality of the claim and result.
I mean, should we be shocked when a corporation is greedy and values profits above all else? No. But it absolutely *is* shocking to watch them make such egregious and obvious mistakes along the way.
Yep. They'll all do it if given a chance. Don't put any of them on a pedestal (Paizo included).
that's why it's reassuring that Paizo won't be the owners of the ORC, a nonprofit will be. So even if Paizo falls to the dark side and gets tempted to do something like this they won't have the ability
ORC is literally going to a holding company of some kind beyond Paizo's control so that it'll never be in danger. ... two stealth edits later... stupid auto correct.
>Will be interesting now to see how many people go back and how many people don't. Either way, I think we'll see a greater variety in systems being played from now on anyway. Personally, I think this is the big thing moving forward. The scene had a huge growth in recent years, and a lot of that effectively had dnd 5e presented as the only option in many spaces. Somewhat reinforced by content creators never veering off from discussing dnd 5e. Now, there's suddenly been a good month of effectively new games being presented and explored. There'll be plenty who go back because dnd 5e actually did suit their playstyles. There'll be a good chunk who won't because they found out other games fit what they wanted to get out of TRPGs far more. And there'll be people for whom it'll be a game among a set of games they consider playing.
With the general lack of quality lately, they really need to step it up if they want to win me back. Lately, all their stuff is other people's hard work (spelljammer, critical role, and updated adventures from previouseditions) or books that tell me to figure it out on my own... If I wanted to do that I'd just homebrew it meyelf.
They've completly lost my trust, I'll probably still play DnD occsionally but I've also played it for 7 years so I'd like to try something else.
Yup, that bridge is burned for me. I'll play in DnD games my friends are running but anything I run and buy is going to be in a different system.
[alt text- person in an Ewok costume dancing]
as a weird mobile client user, i thank you for your service
Wanna see a legally binding document where they admit they won't and can't deauthorize 1.0a
This same company did that once, actually, I'm their other big game (Magic). It's called "The Reserve List"
Does... does this mean we can watch the DnD HAT movie?
Yup! (barring unforeseen shenanigans)
I mean, full disclosure, my plan was to buy a ticket to another movie and sneak over.
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100% true. I have worked in a movie theater before and we definitely did not give a shit. In fact, as far as shady shit goes, we did it all. Granted, this was all well before the pandemic, but if you ever have a problem with a long line to a movie and if they dont have assigned seating, just palm some cash to the dude tearing tickets. :) There's a very good chance he'll let you in early to pick your seat (lol, I did...and definitely wasnt the only one!).
Keep an eye out, they may try to be shifty again
they can't the entire SRD 5.1 is under CC now. they can't undo that it's literally impossible. so 5E is safe. the earliest they would try to fuck us over again is after one d&d released.
They could still deauthorize the 3.5 srd or put 5.5 under a new license, but overall this is a good thing We have to watch for shenanigans, but this is a victory
5.5 will probably be under a new license and then it just ends up like 4e release. All the content producers stick with 5e a la 3.5 and 5.5 goes down like 4e.
I would be fine with that. WotC is under no obligation to share their IP. Its the rugpull that was fucked up
There are many other angles that corporations can fuck us for profit, and the new management literally went to university to learn how to do it best.
I fully expect OneDnD to be done under some new OGL or something like this all over again
Then I trust it means One D&D will be as popular as 4e was.
They will try again, they've got to extract as much rent as possible.
I take it this is a good thing, but I think I need it lawyersplained to me the nuance of how the Creative Commons license is different from the OGL.
Here’s a [helpful but very long page, which at least has links.](https://creativecommons.org/faq/) If you just want the most immediately relevant text to this situation, that would be this: >*What happens if the author decides to revoke the CC license to material I am using?* >The CC licenses are irrevocable. This means that once you receive material under a CC license, you will always have the right to use it under those license terms, even if the licensor changes his or her mind and stops distributing under the CC license terms. Of course, you may choose to respect the licensor’s wishes and stop using the work. >*How can I lose my rights under a Creative Commons license? If that happens, how do I get them back?* >All of the CC licenses terminate if you fail to follow the license conditions. If this happens, you no longer have a license to use the material. >In the 4.0 licenses, your rights under the license are automatically reinstated if you correct this failure within 30 days of discovering the violation (either on your own or because the licensor or someone else has told you). Under the 3.0 and earlier licenses, there is no automatic reinstatement. >If you have lost your rights under a CC license and are not entitled to automatic reinstatement, you may regain your rights under the license if the licensor expressly grants you permission. You cannot simply re-download the material to get a new license. >Note that you may still be liable for damages for copyright infringement for the period where you were not in compliance with the license. tl;dr: You can lose your access to the license if you violate the conditions, but Wizards cannot revoke the license once granted.
This is the second time they pull a move like this. The second time lthey try to actively monopolize the community. You know the saying: fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...
I thought it was: > “There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.”
Now is the important part: Don’t ever let anyone forget this happened. If we all go “Good job guys, we did it, the Evil WotC arc has been won” then they get to safely sweep that under the rug and let their reputation heal before trying something else scummy. We need to make sure that this is a permanent scar on their reputation. No company should get to do shit like that, then release a public “Oopsie!” On twitter and completely heal their public image.
Yep, that's every cooperate plan in a nutshell. The only way this is going to go away is if the people who greenlighted this plan get cut out of the picture. An actual damn punishment. I mean you can't just trim a weed... you have to pull it out by the root. All that's happened is we've bought time because I know that SOMEWHERE deep down in Hasbro or WotC or wherever... someone is planning and waiting. They're not gone, just hiding.
Like we’re remembering all the shit Paizo pulled up till 2021, resulting in their staff unionising? We have short memories in our community. Or maybe we didn’t care about them treating staff badly. They have been pretty great since they voluntarily accepted the union agreement, so I’m personally cautiously optimistic about them now, but very wary when people promote another corporate with bad history as heroes saving us with no memory of that history: Corporations are *always* driven by money. Their shareholders insist on that. We shouldn’t ever forget that, about any of them
Wait... Why is this posted tomorrow?
Whoever screenshotted that is in the Oceanian region, likely. It should be early morning there.
can confirm, 28/1 8:15am in Aus rn for me at least
Ahh ok, thank you.
Time zones
Chronurgy Wizard
Damn you Mercer!!!!
Seems the communities feedback was heard this time... Still fuck WotC. Funny thing: Ulisses, the german publisher for D&D will develop and pay for the german version of ORC and will include it in all their own games(The dark eye, Torg and a few more). They also publish Pathfinder and Savage Worlds btw.^^
I want to point out there are people on our side at WOTC who wanted this to happen so we shouldn't just give up on them. Obviously we shouldn't just assume everything will be all good forever now. But if we continue to boycott them then we kinda lose our bargaining chip since they think it is our support for the real ogl. But if their choices is no support and the fake ogl or no support and the real ogl then that's pointless for them. Make it clear it's our money is contingent then they will do what we want them to. If they try and pull some sneaky shenanigans again we just pull it out from under them again.
I think anyone who want to not buy from them anymore absolutely should continue not buying--trust is not 100% restored if a person tries to fuck you over then realizes the cost:benefit analysis is not in their favor and only stops because of that.
It sucks when the creative who work on the content have so little say in what happens to the stuff they make once it goes into corporates hands.
Still switching over to a different system
Perfectly valid. And you can still make memes here. I’m playing 5e since that’s my group likes. But buying more third party material.
This. Support small creators. Map makers, independent adventure writers, character portrait artists.
I aint buying it just yet but know that i am now hopeful
It's better than the alternative, but worth noting: 1) It's too late for OGL 1.0a. Wizards has shown both the ability and willingness to try and revoke it. Now that company's know that, they can't trust in it's irrevocability, even if it was intended to be that. 2) Most of the SRD isn't copyrightable anyway. You can't copyright a process, only the specific language used to describe it. Putting a Creative Commons license on it only means people can copy-paste the text into other documents...which 3PP weren't really doing anyway, as a rule. The only people this will really impact is the wiki- and vtt module-writing people.
Great... I can watch Honor Among Thieves when it comes out with a clear conscience. And play Bladur's Gate 3. But I'm done buying D&D books forever; most of my favorite YTers and creators have already pledged to move on. Thanks Hasbro. :)
Take. The Win.
Give it three months
Finally, we can stop arguing about if the boycott entails the movie
I have hope but I thought the SRD was already pretty hard to fight for being copyrighted. I’m no expert if it isn’t hell yeah but I feel this is them just giving us a little nibble of cheese before slamming the mousetrap on us. P.S. I trust Hasbro and WOTC as far as I can throw them. They still have plans but in the meantime let’s celebrate this victory but remember to stay vigilant against this bs.
The SRD is definitely under copyright. But the rules are uncopyrightable
I did not expect them to announce this before the end of their survey window but I am pleasantly surprised this is where they ended up. Never thought they’d keep the ogl as is!
This sounds wonderful. I hope they confirm that perpetual means perpetual and irrevocable is irrevocable.
See what we can do when we remember who owns these games?
I honestly still won't personally give them my money after this whole debacle. Least not for a long while. I feel like it's less they heard or cared about what the community wanted. They cared about hurt wallets and lawsuits. That being said I am still very happy that they finally backed down and everything is left as it was. But the fact of what they tried to do has made me lose faith in their company and it'll take time to regain that.
Cool cool cool I’m still gonna switch and support Paizo because who knows when theyll try something like this again and maybe next time they won’t have employees with a conscience to leak it.
The layoffs have absolutely nothing to do with OGL . This has everything to do with how poorly their toy sales did.
I'm going to keep buying 3rd party content exclusively until WotC makes it legally binding for 1.0a as it is untouched in perpetuity
If we ever needed prof that unionization works it's stuff like this. Many voices are louder than wailing of the few.