The OGL is Dying

"You can't copyright game mechanics."

I see this in the increasing number of Kickstarter game projects, which are abandoning the OGL for better licenses and cloning the content they want from the old SRD. Nobody wants to be exposed to the OGL, and publishers feel it is toxic waste as they migrate away from it.

None of this is legal advice; it is just an opinion of what I see.

It's funny how a good thing, once loved and supported by the community, is now seen as a dark stain on gaming. One of the original reasons for trying to pull the licenses was, "Social media companies will come along and clone our game!" MMOs such as World of Warcraft and EverQuest have already done "generic swords and sorcery" decades ago, monetized the concept better, and continue to this day.

The content published under the SRD is being removed, and the SRD is becoming meaningless. This is another reason for Wizards to hurry up and publish earlier-edition Creative Commons works, since they still have some chance to gather all these ideas and put their names on them. Given how most of these monsters and ideas were in the public domain, to the public domain they shall return.

I added a Kickstarter link to the sidebar for a book converting old Pathfinder SRD monsters to Shadowdark, which looks like a great project to support. The monsters only share the names, and the numbers and abilities are different enough from the source material, so this is more of an "inspired by" work, practical for Pathfinder adventure conversions.

This is the same creator of the Westlands game (now defunct, but I loved this one) and the Sword of Cepheus 2 game (which is the current 2d6 fantasy game, and according to a comment by him in the Kickstarter, this same creator worked with the original publishers at Stellegama Publishing to update and unify the fantasy rules). It is nice seeing his projects and supporting them, and seeing him as a creator for Shadowdark is a good thing. I would love to see more Pathfinder 1e content converted over, like classes, races, and magic items.

Shadowdark is becoming what Pathfinder 1e was: the fantasy game everyone plays by default.

You can mod Shadowdark to play more pulp and heroic, so you can get that "Pathfinder 1e" heroism feeling, and the casting rules are better than the Vancian system found in 3.5E. Want to be OP? Give the character a new talent roll every level. It is your game.

Shadowdark is the better "figures on a map" game than any current standard-bearers for the hobby. The gameplay is tight, the dungeons are small, and the "get in and get out" challenge is highly compelling and depends on teamwork around the table.

D&D 5.5E and Pathfinder 2 have become too rules-intensive and are not "games for everyone."

And Shadowdark's license is far more permissive and open, allowing the community to step in and write books like this. Where the OGL is dying, Shadowdark is a lush garden that supports the creators creating for the game. We are seeing a shift in the market, and the creators are leading the way.

Grimdark Pathfinder 2: Rules

I want a darker, more horror-infused game full of suspicion and hard times.

Pathfinder 2E defaults to a lighthearted world mood, sort of an "everyone gets along" neutral-positive setting where no controversial subjects exist, everyone gets along, there is universal acceptance for every point of view, and controversy and conflict - in the setting - are written out of the rules. This broadens the game's age range, so eliminating many of these topics extends the game's range and longevity.

I get it; the game is a neutral base, blank sheets of paper that make no assumptions about your world. The Remaster books are much better setting-neutral rulebooks with the OGL stripped out and binned. If you don't like the presentation of a particular Remaster monster, reskin and rename it. Designing new monsters is easy, so we are back in D&D 4E, where groups were expected to develop their own monsters and build encounters that way.

And I am done with 5E; the more dungeon-focused games of 3.5E and the better experience of Pathfinder 2E are where my tactical dungeon gaming is these days. If it isn't that, then the first-edition rules speak to me the most. Also, I have tried setting-neutral 5E, and once you start mixing in 3rd-party content, things start to break down since every book attempts to rewrite the core rules to make setting-specific ideas work with the rules. Setting-neutral 5E seems to gravitate back towards "Wizards reality," and I can't get that feeling out of the game.

I am coming to see the OGL and SRD as chains, not expressions of my imagination.

Ideas and concepts that come from outside the tabletop gaming community are superior. Too often, we endlessly recycle the same dog food of "things in old games" and convert it to new rules, never ask questions, and endlessly repeat the past. When I saw the work the Paizo team did in the Monster Core Remaster book by "doing their own thing" with the monsters they supposedly "lost," I was shocked.

Then new stuff is ten times better since the team actively put their imagination into rebuilding these and, in many cases, went back to the original lore and made something more faithful to the myths and legends than a 50-year-old SRD hand-me-down.

If we enshrine the past too much, it becomes a tomb of dreams and ideas that we end up living inside.

This is the "rot" that lives within the hobby. Gygax and his team pulled ideas from "outside roleplaying" to make the first edition D&D game. The entire "Appendix N" thing comes into the discussion here. When those ideas first went in, they were new—fresh from outside sources.

Every edition of D&D past AD&D was a rewrite that included the previous edition without adding too much new. As we enter the "nostalgia era" of D&D, where they endlessly recycle a cartoon and mass-market strategy that nearly bankrupted the company in the 1980s, we get more of the same. The same 50-year-old ideas are recycled, and nothing fresh is pulled in. The game becomes a buffet of artificial and recycled foods. Nothing fresh. Nothing new. Nostalgia is recycled and repackaged. The 50-year-old mutant ideas, once the "original source derived," are seen as more authentic to the myth than the original myths themselves.

You can reprocess food so much that it turns into poison.

I am trying to fund this mythical Pathfinder 2 Grimdark game, but I must reflect deeply on my inspirations and sources. Once upon a time, I saw other horror games as inspirations. Now, I know those are false sources. They are a few times removed from the original sources of horror, fear, suspicion, and the darkness inside the human spirit.

These games also need to be stripped of their whitewashing and happy-game narrative style. As for the guardrails and safety tools, I don't need them, and they will get in the way.

This is why I like the first edition and OSRIC; they are one level removed from the original inspirations, and Appendix N is in there, so I can go back to those works and "find them for myself." Every future edition tried to hide these and present these "nostalgia pass-downs" as the original IP. Appendix N is the Rosetta Stone, so I can look those things up and find what they mean to me.

I love Dungeon Crawl Classics, but that, again, is Appendix N written through someone else's eyes when it is always better to return to the source and find meaning for yourself. My ideas, pulled from an original source and translated into any game of my choice, are always superior to a game trying to translate them for me. Or worse, going back to the SRD, which has ideas passed through hundreds of designers and now an unrecognizable blob of numbers and text that maybe has "the flavor" of the original idea but no soul and nothing else.

But Grimdark Pathfinder 2 is more than Appendix N. That is just an example and a warning to not rely on sources inside the hobby too much, to lean on nostalgia, and to ignore the truth you can only find in reading an original source and creating new ideas through that synthesis.

The goal of today's entertainment companies is to strip your imagination away, deeply plant the seeds of nostalgia, turn the past into golden calf idols, and instill a culture of dependency on them as the primary source for your imagination. D&D 5.5, with its booze-like nostalgia-infused imagery, pours those feelings down your throat and shamelessly recycles your memories into reprocessed factory food.

Parts of the OSR are just as tied to nostalgia, so this isn't just a Wall Street thing. It is a more profound idea that we don't question or submit to without thinking. Yes, I love my nostalgia, too, but I understand how it can turn into a diet of the past and never think about the future—or even the things inside myself.

Seeing OGL-free games breaks the chains in my mind.

New myths and legends exist.

You can pull in ideas from original sources, run them through your mind a few times, and create something more meaningful to your truths and feelings than this endless stream of nostalgic drool.

Another Bad Decision Reversed

This is why I don't like commenting on Wizards drama. D&D Beyond will allow you to keep what you paid for, and the 2014 content will stay in the system. It is a good move, but...

Every major decision this team makes seems to have to be course-corrected a few weeks after community outrage. If I were a shareholder, this would be my first question to this team: "What is going on over there? Are you that out of touch with your customers?"

It's disheartening to see D&D YouTube claiming victory when the community never truly wins; they just manage to push back another misguided decision. Most YouTube comments on these videos say, "Never going back."

D&D Beyond should be a home to any player who owns any edition to come and call the system home. If you play AD&D or 0e, a 4.0 or 3.5, 4E, 5.0 or 5.5, or AD&D 2nd, a character sheet, books, and rules should await you. You should be able to buy any module and have assets, maps, and conversions for any D&D game right there, 0e to 5.5E. Other VTTs have character sheets for these games. The PDFs exist. They own these games. Why isn't this happening?

This is the dream platform fueled by nostalgia and decades of back content.

There is a massive difference between a company that makes rules and a social technology platform, and the company still needs to figure that out. There is a point where the rules don't matter, but the platform is everything. Every year, this team keeps acting like a "rules company," and it is another year they hand over to their competitors.

2024 is 1984

D&D Beyond removed all the individual data entries for the 2014 spells, gear, and other "low-level" items and is forcing you to use the 2024 versions instead.

If you're a user of the service, it's hard not to feel a sense of loss. The '2014' content you've invested in, the ability to play the 2014 game 'as was', is now out of your control. You may own the 2014 book, but everything in it will be from the 2024 books. It's a frustrating situation, possibly due to something in an EULA that limits your rights.

Don't play games that force you to use a website to play it or hide the game's "true complexity" behind online tools.

Nothing beats a pencil, paper, books, and an imagination.

Castles & Crusades: Reforged (OGL Free)

https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/UdtYMs1

Troll Lord is celebrating OGL-free books and giving away a PDF of the 10th printing of Castles & Crusades Player's handbook - but you must sign up via the above page. This is a limited-time offer before they roll out the Kickstarter for the three core books, which are OGL-free and forging their destiny.

The link above came from Troll Lord's official Facebook page, which is legit.

The OGL disaster succeeded in balkanizing the hobby; good job, Wizards. Maybe they wanted to divorce their legacy, non-digital players, and go after the mobile gaming market. In that case, they succeeded. Tabletop D&D is dying. Even though it is still huge, like a dying whale, the time it takes for significant things to die can be pretty long. They are going to mobile gaming, and D&D has had its time in the sun.

C&C is my game; even without the OGL, the best parts are still here.

Ones We Lost Along the Way

I was sad to see the hardcover options for Spec Ops and The Ruin pulled from Drive Thru. This is likely by the author's choice since, in the comments section, he says he can re-enable them for a little while. You can still grab the PDFs, and they are fun little games.

These weren't the definitive games in their genre, but they were fun. It makes me sigh and think of all the cool 5E games we lost along the way and all the dreams shattered by the OGL mess last year. The Ruin was very cool, a tight 5E implementation of an Aftermath-style game (and that is even mentioned in the forward).

And I can't find my Ruin hardcover - somewhere around here. I hate that feeling.

The game felt basic, like it was searching for a game in the concept, but could not quite pinpoint where the fun was. It went metaphysical when it should have stuck to the basics, and ideally, a game like this should look and feel like one of those 'survival manuals' on Amazon. You feel slightly queasy about buying books like this since they feel like 'scary books' to buy.

To me, the fun of an Aftermath game was in the black humor of trying to do the impossible, mainly around the ordinary, such as opening a can of beans. Throw in killer robots, ATMs trying to kill you, a minefield, laser turrets, marauding raiders, diseased giant rats, boobytraps left by nobody you know and for no reason, collapsing rotted floors, and random crossbow attacks by other survivors. You have a fun Aftermath game if you can live to see the Van Camps.

You weren't surviving the adventure; you were surviving the rules.

Again, you need rule rules support to run a survival game, and 5E does not come with batteries included in this regard. Level Up A5E is far better for a post-apocalypse game since it has survival and exploration rules built into the classes and options. 5E needs much work to support other genres; it is not a GURPS and can't do everything out of the box.

Amazing Adventures 5E was another clearance-aisled shortly after release and the OGL mess. There are a few series where a few of the books are missing POD options for their 5E versions, and the cancellation of this was probably related to the mess caused in January 2023. I have seen the PDF of this on DTRPG for 40 cents. The hardcovers are likely out of print forever.

I don't blame Troll Lord for pulling the ejection seat on 5E; Castles & Crusades is fantastic. It is a shame this fun 5E implementation had to end up like this. This was one of the best 3rd party pulp modern 5E games, and it is a shame to see it go.

I was looking at the 5E version of Savage Thule, but one of the books does not have a POD option, and I could never have a complete set on my shelf. Same thing with Esper Genesis; the hardcover for the Master Technicians Guide is MIA, and I doubt that it will ever go back in print. Some of the Lost Lands adventures for 5E are only available in PDF, and the print versions are out of stock.

And many of these 5E OGL books probably never made enough money to make a Creative Commons conversion feasible. What we got was it.

Most everyone left the 5E market or started their own game last year. We have entirely incompatible systems clocking millions of dollars on Kickstarter. Many have walked away from 5E and all the 3rd party 5E publishers. In many places, it looks like a total market collapse.

Even if all you play are Wizards books, this should concern you.

You won't be able to play MCDM RPG or WHFRP game adventures with 5E. Many have moved to the Dragonbane, Cyberpunk, Free League games, Castles & Crusades, and other hobby parts. Many will never return to D&D, myself included.

Tales of the Valiant and A5E? Those adventures can still be played with 5E books, 2014 or 2024. All the Kobold Press content will be cross-compatible. Other publishers are hedging bets with dual-release 5E and PF 2 books, like Roll for Combat - and they make some good stuff.

The mid-market publishers are still holding firm, and the best they can do is make their own Open 5E games, hedge their bets on the most popular, and move forward.

Many 5E players don't want the drama and want to pretend none of this happened.

I get it.

I just want to play a game with dragons and magic. Please don't bring the real world into it.

We didn't. Wall Street did. We can guess what's coming next. I am trying to weave through this mess with a clear conscience and not have to sell a thousand dollars in 5E books. The ultimate end is "I don't care," I sell them all, even A5E and ToV. Goodbye.

I have other games.

I don't need your drama or YouTube telling me that D&D 2024 is inevitable. You know, the people who hate something the most will be the ones that come right back and tell you "how it can be saved." They will "try to find the good in the situation." They get codependent on their enemy. If what they hate disappears, they won't have a channel anymore. Beware of all those gaming and culture channels on that site. They will play that hate-hope game with your emotions and string you along for views.

GURPS has, like, what, 6-7 active YouTubers that are constantly positive? I will play that and enjoy their positivity. I don't care if nobody plays it; I am. I will unsubscribe from all of the 5E channels and join them.

In the end, I did something positive.

But I care about the 3rd party people making a living from great stuff. I can't abandon them with a good conscience. I have done good if my struggles help others through this. Other people have 5E groups, too, and they want to still play with friends and not be forced to sign up and pay monthly fees.

Those people matter, too.

So I stay in the fight.

Many 5E books are being clearance-aisled, taken out of print, and abandoned for a few dollars here and there in PDF sales. And 5E is slowly drifting back into "just" fantasy gaming, and the system is stagnating, feeling that it can't do much else than fantasy. While I am optimistic for Level Up A5E and Tales of the Valiant, I will mourn all the dreams that went down in flames with the 5E market as it was up to 2022.

This is what the OGL mess did. They sucked the life out of the 3rd party 5E market. Unless you are bought in heavily on Tales or A5E and on those trains, the prospects outside that world are bleak. What choices do you have? Pathfinder 2? Shadowdark? MCDM RPG? DCC?

Outside of D&D, it feels better to stay away from 5E entirely. This may be what Wizards wanted. But in reality, this may be what kills the game. Without strong 3rd party support, your game is no longer the market leader; the wave has crested and is breaking on the shore. Nobody is putting a vote of confidence in you. Players are moving on to other games and eventually losing interest.

This reminds me of peak World of Warcraft; people played that game just to be near other people who played. After it peaked, people drifted away and never recovered that 'pop culture mindshare' position ever again. The OGL mess gave people a reason to leave, especially the hardcore players. Once people drift away in that macro sense, you never get them back.

But I have not given up hope on A5E or ToV. These are the future of 5E. An Open 5E. The market will never be as big, but the games, community, and adventures will be unique.

I liked the "also" 5E games, and they were easy ways to get 5E players looking into different genres and experiences. With the D&D VTT clearly fantasy, we are moving into players isolated in one genre only and camps forming dividing us - instead of having a game bring us together.

The Ruin game is an apt metaphor for the 5E market these days. With other systems taking players away, I doubt the market will recover like it was in 2022. Even if the 2024 version is massive (I expect a loss leader strategy, great books, and generous releases), there is still that pressure to monetize hanging over our heads.

Once you buy in, it will be hard to escape being trapped by that website. You and your players. Open 5E is like Linux; it will win in the end. There will be giant "consumer game releases" just like Windows did in the past, but give it 5-10 years. Open 5E will still be here. All my books will still be usable when 6E rolls around. Give it 20 years. Same story when we get the mythical 7E. Open 5E will be here. Like Linux, our distribution may differ, but it will still be open and accessible for distribution and improvement.

B/X and the OSR proved the model. They are already there.

We just need to believe in it for 5E.

People may want to forgive and forget the OGL mess, but if you open your eyes, the destruction and piles of abandoned and failed games litter the gaming landscape.

And it hurts 5E more than any other game.

Necrotic Gnome, OGL Statement

https://necroticgnome.com/blogs/news/an-update-on-old-school-essentials-and-the-ogl

Necrotic Gnome, the excellent Old School Essentials creator, has posted about OSE, the future, and how they are moving away from the OGL. This was posted last year, but I came by it again, and it brought up thoughts a year later.

The hurt and fear are still there more than a year after that disaster. Now you can see why I am selling all my Wizards books and going hard into Open 5E. I walk in both worlds, as do many old-timers, especially experienced DMs. When this started, D&D already had a DM shortage, and burning the bridges of the veteran DMs who "make your game work" is a colossal disaster few talk about.

Can I play D&D with good conscious hearing this news? No. There must be a leadership change at the top and going down. Anyone involved must go. Steps must be taken to make the OGL 1.0a permanent. Then, I may give D&D another chance, which is a fair position.

Holding people to an ethical standard for your business is not wrong. And it is your choice. Don't let people on social media make it for you; you could be talking to a bot.

I will support Necrotic Gnome in whatever they do, and I am happy they are considering a future for OSE beyond the OGL. Swords & Wizardry did a CC version of their game, so it is possible.

For me, Open 5E will be here 30+ years from now. The books I have and love will not be replaced or "stealth edited" because we can't download a PDF. I own both. They are mine. Open 5E allows them to continue to be mine forever.

Sad news, but hopeful.

A Terrible Situation

It is funny with the horrible move by the Unity game engine; everyone I see online is comparing it to Wizards of the Coast and the proposed OGL changes in early 2023. This was the first thing that popped into many people's minds,  so much it trended on X/Twitter.

They are trying to WoTC us!

When your company name becomes an Enron-like verb, it is time to pack it up. You have lost the goodwill of not only the community but a good part of the entire world. This is why I feel a leadership change at all levels (WoTC and Hasbro) is needed to move forward because it will be unfair to the new people to burden them with the old mistakes. We will never be able to move forward, and it will keep getting brought up. They need to go for the health of the game and hobby.

Ethics matter.

They do.

5E the WoTC game, is dead to me; and Baldur's Gate 3 owns the goodwill and idea space for the 5E game. To many people, BG3 is D&D to them, and that is all D&D will ever be. The game is so good it killed the VTT before it was even released, if not now, in the future when the next BG3-like RPG is released. 

And remember, BG3 will be modded and stay around for a long time. Skyrim comes to mind, and we are in for a long (and fun) road with just this game.

Very few games or VTTs will ever live up to that masterpiece.

I have this relationship with the game where I have many books- very few of them WoTC - mostly by 3rd party publishers I support. I play Level Up Advanced 5E since the game supports all the pillars of play and the math is tight. It is the best clean-room version of 5E out there, and I am more excited about this than Tales of the Valiant (at the moment).

I played a little with 5E sci-fi, but like Starfinder, it wasn't working for me. Cool art, but art is art, and it isn't genre support. 5E sci-fi is something you play only to compare it to better sci-fi games in the OSR. I still like Esper Genesis, there are a lot of cool ideas, but I wish it used the A5E rules instead of the old 5E.

So I see WoTC coming up again and I thought it was something they did. Here we go again.

I was surprised when it wasn't.

And saddened when this was the first association people made.

It is hard to be a 5E fan right now.

I get by and support 3rd party publishers. They need communities and love more at this time.

Otherwise, I feel my interest in 5E slipping away. The negativity alone ruins it for me. I tell myself, there are more positive and friendly communities I can be a part of and matter.

The Great Unhappening

https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/pathfinder-remaster-drow-ogl-retcon/

Drow, chromatic dragons, and so many other concepts are being weeded out of the Pathfinder 2E revision and, as I suspect, many other games.

Wizards and D&D used to have this "soft lock" on expectations of what constitutes a fantasy world and setting. Therefore, anytime a game repeated the "familiar old things," it was an admission that "D&D would always be the best representation." The "kiss on the king's ring" and a soft admission of loyalty cemented D&D as the mindshare leader. It kept people from making their own video games and online experiences, as they were still determining ownership, yet they were okay to use in printed games.

Kiss the ring.

The drow and chromatic dragons are Creative Commons now - but, as I suspect, Paizo wants to break free from that and plant the seeds of a new license. This means doing away with the legacy concepts in the CC 5E SRD so they have a "clean base" to build upon. They do not want to include the CC content, so it is all being purged. I do see a fork between the CC games (Swords & Wizardry) and the ORC games, and this is likely one of the most significant splits in the community to have ever happened.

This was the ultimate "soft lock" on a mental IP - fantasy gaming - ever. The most critical virtual mind-space would be fantasy gaming and superheroes. Control those mental concepts, and control billions.

Now that everyone is rewriting their games, the D&D mindshare is being tossed into the bin.

This will be the most significant impact of the OGL disaster and one Wizards could have never predicted.

The lore they let everyone use was the lore that kept them the market leader.

Now, all that is gone. People are making their own stuff. The idea of what fantasy "is" will be many different things. The language and concepts will be different. The "open source" monsters and "dark elves" will diverge from "the Wizards versions." These new things will be open, which will be used more and eventually replace the closed source versions.

Don't get mad or depressed; they did this to themselves. It does prove why the current crowd there aren't the best stewards of the game. They lost what is arguably the most crucial jewel in that crown.

The one that made them a king.

The OGL and SRD Hold Us Back

When you look at it, we don't need the OGL and SRD at all.

An argument can be made they hold us back. We are putting our ideas of fantasy gaming inside the box D&D and Wizards made. Yes, sure, the "network effect" argument can be made, but on the flip side, you can argue that "it only benefits the market leader."

Plenty of other games use rules that are nothing like D&D; people learn and play them just fine, and they do everything D&D does.

• Runequest
• GURPS
• Forbidden Lands
• Pathfinder 2e
• Conan
• Cypher System
• Warhammer
• Dungeon Crawl Classics
• Sword of Cepheus
• Castles & Crusades
• Mork Borg
• Blades in the Dark
• Dungeon World
• Savage Worlds & Savage Pathfinder

And that is just a small list. Those games are very different than D&D, yet they do the same things just fine. Within the D&D-like games, there are too many to list (OSE, Labyrinth Lord). A few of the above are arguably close (DCC, PF2, C&C), but they are so far removed from the core experience they can be called entirely new games.

And some of these 5E has borrowed from (C&C), so 5E and the 5.1 SRD should be asking the question, "Who made who?" It looks pretty petty for Wizards to have tried anything like what they did, and many people still need better tastes in their mouths - especially since no changes at the top were made.

Same Wall Street corporation, different day.

The same "delayed implementation" rollout.

Wall Street's plans do not change THAT quickly.

And honestly, moving away from the OGL and SRD will free many games to follow their creator's dreams rather than being judged strictly on how closely they follow ideas created 20 to 50 years ago.

Why do we chain ourselves to the past?

Why is what Wizards says about fantasy gaming gospel?

Nostalgia?

Is nostalgia enough to say today's creators' dreams are worth less or somehow invalid?

There is such a thing as SRD fatigue, that if all you play and see fantasy as comes from between the covers of books and documents created by Wizards, then your world is tiny, limited, and restricted to the ideas of a few people in the past plus a small subset of inputs.

Yes, D&D opens the door to your imagination and gives you that framework to express yourself, but on the other hand, the longer you stick to those ideas, the more you limit your dreams and fantasy vocabulary. Why are everything magic missiles, sleep, and fireball? Is that all fantasy magic can be?

Or can it be something more?

Something uniquely you and me?

Betrayed

I am still not feeling any goodwill towards 5E or Wizards. Their mistruths, actions, and silence have caused so much hurt by their actions it is hard to forget those days in January. The emotional damage they caused to a community is immeasurable.

Even with the Creative Commons thing and the statement supposedly ending this disaster, the damage has been done. I don't think an SRD 3.5 released into the Creative Commons, though it would be welcome and a good move, would help all that much.

The damage is done.

Every one of the games they affected fed into their status as market leaders. There were "those other games," but there was always the "latest version of the one they were based on" to check out.

Now, that isn't so.

Many of these games are going their separate ways, and many players have been hurt; they will think twice about joining - or DM'ing - a game of 5E. The "DM crisis" worsens as experienced and long-term veterans leave the 5E market.

And I checked out a few 5E live-streamed games, and the views on those are way down. Few want to watch the game being played these days. That might change, but the secondary "blast zone" of Wizards' actions is evident, even among live-streamers in the middle of campaigns, and I feel bad for the position they have been put in.

I see tremendous interest in competitors, games like Dungeon Crawl Classics and Castles & Crusades are seeing a resurgence in interest. Pathfinder 2e is growing to become a viable alternative and possibly a market leader, which is nice.

Me? All my old OSR adventures and Castles & Crusades go together like rum and coffee. It is a solid alternative, has fewer charts than B/X, and is simple enough to play off 3x5 cards. It replaces Pathfinder 1e (I still love that version). I can house rule back in just because of any complexity I lose, and it feels more like AD&D than Pathfinder without the complexity and 4-page print-out character sheets.

And all my OSR modules play as-written with no changes in stats, hit points, damages, or much else.

The TSR worlds?

Anything Wizards did with a TSR world (beyond the original 3E collected materials) has been terrible, and the campaign settings are mostly unsupported except for a few adventures "set" there. I could still play in them, but the shadow of Wizards would still hang over the world.

I am considering The Lost Lands or Aihrde for my next C & C games. Lost Lands does a better Greyhawk than Greyhawk with all of the old-school adventures to collect there, plus it has Rappan Athuk as an anchor for a mega-dungeon, which every good world needs. The quality and quantity of dungeon crawling here from Frog God games make the original AD&D run of classic modules look weak by comparison.

Aihrde does a Forgotten Realms setting easily, minus the GMNPCs. Any "concept area" in FR can be replicated or found worldwide. Need a Candlekeep? Put one down. Need a Waterdeep? Pick a city. Want a Baldur's Gate? Make a place like it. Want GMNPCs? Make some, or just drop in your favorites from the Forgotten Realms. There have been enough "times of trials" in that world that copies of those GMNPCs from earlier editions can probably be found anywhere in the multiverse.

Golarion and Pathfinder 2e do everything better than any Wizards campaign setting. That world is a like a classic comic book, ready to deliver any adventure.

OGL Fallout: 5E's Problems

I hear this on many post-OGL videos about people exploring other systems, taking an objective look at 5E, and asking themself the question, "Could I walk away from this?"

And many people finally see the broken parts and weaknesses of the 5E design.

The required level dips and multiclassing to make classes viable are huge problems. A straight class without a dip here and there just doesn't work, and it does not even feel like a viable option. You feel you are holding yourself back. The base classes are boring without mix-and-match multiclassing.

And that is just one issue. The difficulty in playing a DM is another big issue and critical to the game's ecosystem. The amount of telling people to "just make it up" in a crowd that wants answers to basic questions. The ambiguity of spells and powers. The difficulty in creating and balancing encounters. The helpless feeling some weapons have. It takes little time to find these problems with a few play sessions.

Now that people have walked away, going back highlights a lot of problems with the system. These need to be addressed in 6E, but the backward compatibility claim and the few playtest releases don't seem like the "big solutions" the game needs.

The game is 10 years old, and there are better systems out. Patches and minor fixes will not last you another 10 years, not in this market with so much innovation going on. At best, I feel One D&D will last a few years, five at best, before the company realizes they are trying to support a 15-year old game that has fallen far behind in terms of ease-of-use, features, and fun factor.

I know, contrast this with a lot of OSR games which have emulated systems four to five times older, and those are still fun. You can't change what earlier games got right, and every edition Wizards has put out has eventually broke under its own weight and complexity, and the best support for their games comes from outside of Wizards.

Pathfinder 2E manages to build a system that keeps single classes viable, allows for incredible levels of customization within a class, and allows dips into other classes' powers as options without requiring multiclassing. The design is a hundred times better, balanced, and easy to understand.

Even Pathfinder 1E feels like a step up in a few areas compared to 5E, just in terms of system depth and options.

My problem with One D&D is if they keep it backward-compatible, they are grandfathering in a broken system. They need a complete rebuild and refresh of the rules. The door to other systems has been opened, and a good percentage of the hobby is off playing other things. They can look back and have perspective, and returning to a system with systemic problems will be difficult after people have seen and tried new things.

Playing other games is good for the hobby, and I welcome this.

But with One D&D, the bar needs to be raised, and the game's design becomes more critical with the SRD 5.1 in the Creative Commons. We need a revolution in rules, play, character builds, and how the game is played and thought about.

Without that creative refresh, you will be asking players to return to a 10+-year-old game that seriously needs a lot of rebuilding and cleaning up. That will be a massive ask for many after playing other systems and experiencing new things.

And in five years, they will really start to feel the problems of skipping this moment to rebuild the game for fun and ease-of-play.

Good Video: DTRPG Was Prepared to Remove OGL 1.0(a) Titles

 

So Wizards are "good stewards" of the hobby? We can trust them again, right?

Their actions almost removed hundreds, if not thousands, of indie games from online PoD and PDF stores, and those stores would go along with it? Paizo and everyone else would have been hit.

And you know this would have sparked a massive increase in "illegal online sharing" as a result? And not just the books people couldn't get would be shared illegally - but everyone's, including Wizards? I do not condone or support piracy, but what do you think will happen if you take these books down?

Everyone dodged a bullet here. Indie creators and market leaders. Wizards almost destroyed the PoD and PDF fantasy gaming market and hurt their sales.

This entire situation keeps getting worse, not better. The more we learn, the worse it gets. This also looks horrible for the companies that went along with this and did not fight for us as a community.

Anyone involved needs to be replaced from the top down.

And this gives me more reasons not to trust companies who put greed ahead of customers.

Nope, not going back.

Good Video: The Aftermath of Wizard's OGL Decision

Got a good one today; why doesn't the victory over greed feel good? Please head over and subscribe; I greatly like this creator and their conversational and thoughtful style.

Because greed will never go away. Evil exists in the world. Part of having a nice place to call home is the sacrifice of those in the community willing to stand up and fight for what is good.

It is precisely why people gather together in civilizations and agree on the common good. Why do we have soldiers who defend our people? Why do we have rules we all agree upon that hopefully help everyone and make our lives better, and also, in a larger sense, make the place we call home a better place too? The tabletop community is just like any other civilization that developed through history, it has a "language" and a "culture" of its own, and we were hurt by this move.

The same greedy people who started this are still at Wizards.

There is a feeling they are changing tactics, and they may try something else, so we need to stay vigilant. The sense of trust is broken, and at this point, the only thing that can change this feeling is a change of leadership - or ownership. I hate to see people get fired over this, but this also happens in a just and civil society to restore trust in the system.

The people in charge that everyone disliked are removed, and we get someone else in there and give them a chance. We don't trash the system we built and believe in for one person or a small group of troublemakers.

The greater good is a thing, and we support and believe in it.

But this is why we have diverse opinions and seats at the table for many views since diversity is a strength. And diversity also does not mean "one viewpoint, all the same." Diversity is the conversation, not the people having it. It is a huge tent full of different people and opinions, and the greater whole is all of us discussing things and coming to agreements and compromises to make us all happy.

That "common ground" thing seems so impossible these days.

The community is diversifying its interests and looking at new games - this is good. When one company has too much power, this stuff inevitably happens. This is not "the D&D" community anymore; this is the "tabletop gaming community." D&D is still a part of this community, but they have a long road to walk if they want to rebuild trust, and it will be up to them and their future actions.

I don't control that.

But the community can let them know, and it should.

But until then, I welcome the expansion of our community of gamers and commentators and all of the new groups we suddenly find ourselves in a larger group with. The tribe over the hill that plays GURPS is now a part of our community, along with those who play Pathfinder. The tribe that lives on the coast and plays Savage Worlds is also part of this community. Wargamers, like World War II, Car Wars, Warhammer, and Battletech, are invited to be a part. CCG players too! Those who enjoy OSR. People who play C&C, Swords & Wizardry, ACKS, and other games are also part of our community.

The tent is open.

Did we have tribal feelings about some of these groups before? Yes, we did. But we also grew up a little inside and realized that our personal feelings should be tempered by the needs and belief in something greater than just "us" and our divided and factional tribalism that we grew up with. We must put aside petty tribal differences because what we see now is more significant.

We have the chance to build a truly great civilization that brings many peoples of diverse beliefs and lifestyles and brings them together.

The D&D tribe is no longer the D&D tribe. We realize we are a part of something larger and have the freedom to choose what place we choose to inhabit, and having choices makes our lives so much better.

We are the tabletop gaming community and support choice and diversity in gaming.

And we raise a big tent, welcoming all.

The Community Won

Over the past few weeks you, the community, have made your voices heard. And we’ve listened. OGL 1.0a will remain untouched AND the entire SRD 5.1 is now available under a Creative Commons license.🧵 https://t.co/hJTm2Rgruo pic.twitter.com/qiBODaB7oj

— D&D Beyond (@DnDBeyond) January 27, 2023

I am happy about this.

I still believe a healthier gaming hobby is one that is diverse and plays many games.

Pathfinder, GURPS, C&C, OSE, Palladium, Savage Worlds, and every other game under the sun needs to be represented. Diversity includes all games and creators.

Still, I would like an addendum to 1.0a stating irrevocable. This should never happen again. That is a small price and would build that bridge. ORC should still go on. We need a variety of licences for creators to use. This creates a healthy ecosystem and creator community.

The SRD 5.1 as CC is a great step too, thank you.

There is still an open question on OGL 2.0, and I would like to see those terms. They need to be equitable and fair to the creator community, just having 5E is not enough, the creators need certainty going forward.

It is going to take a long time for me to trust them again. They have done a lot of hurt to this community.  Projects, artists, and creators have uncertain futures in these hard times. But these are good first steps on the road back. Wizards is not the company that controls the community, they are a member of one. They should act to grow, help, and nourish our community, and seek to be a valuable participant.

Creating and playing with us.

Not telling us how we should.

How quickly they return to our community depends on them. Also, let this also be a lesson to us, to be able to forgive and invite people back into gaming so we can all play together.

United and together is better than angry and apart.

Pathfinder 2e: Going Forward

I still play Pathfinder 1e, and my copy of 2e is back on the shelf. I had a few issues wrapping my head around 2e, especially the tag system, but I am pushing through and learning this with the excellent Beginner Box game.

I can't deal with D&D anymore. I pick up the books, and I feel sadness and hurt towards the broken promises made to creators who weren't even on the same level as Wizards and Hasbro. Garage and basement operations, many orders of magnitude smaller, were crushed by the corporate doublespeak and threatened with contract law.

And it didn't even need to happen. They weren't even threats to the brand. They kept people in the hobby.

And Wall Street still can't see that.

It isn't surprising. Blindness is a symptom of greed.

Good and talented people still work there, and I feel bad for them too. All I can say is look for opportunities elsewhere, and I look forward to seeing your work with other creators - as my sales won't be happening with who you work for anymore, and I suspect many others feel the same way. It is not their fault, and they have to clean up the mess being handed to them by the higher-ups.

I have been there in companies where the stress and pressure come down from the top. Lots of tears, ruined health, deep sighs at random moments, and that feeling of pain inside you can't ignore. And you go Joan of Arc and try to improve the situation, taking it all upon yourself to make things right. The stress will likely ruin people's health and be too much for a few.

And it is a quixotic endeavor, a fool's errand, and you can't make the hurt done to so many any better.

I know.

Oh, do I know...

This is a disaster for everyone.

D&D and the worlds they built are dead to me. I no longer see the classic adventures as classics; at best, they are memories that fed a nostalgia addiction. 40 years of my life gaming are at an end, and I accept that. That is a lot of pain to process, and I am moving on, selling my books, and never looking back. I needed to move on anyway, as I felt that clinging onto the past was hurting me more than helping.

A New Beginning

So I am looking forward to new beginnings and new adventures.

I go back to Pathfinder 1e and play 2e to have fun and learn, and I have room for both in my life. I also have Starfinder and GURPS for anything else, and those are my games. I put C&C and ACKS to the side for a while just to avoid that feeling of clinging to things too similar to the past. I still support them and love them too.

Then why are you still playing Pathfinder 1e?

Well, 3.5 was a great system and abandoned; that game did not deserve the fate it was handed, and like a phoenix, it was reborn into something beautiful in Pathfinder 1e - the children of which became Pathfinder 2e. I don't consider Pathfinder 1e even 3.5-is anymore; it is the early 2000s roleplaying, and Paizo owns 3.5 because they earned it.

There is the concept of someone owning something just due to the amount of joy and happiness they create in the world, a sort of destiny created by the people of the world and the love they give back to creators and artists. This is like the love of music and your favorite songs and bands. There comes the point where the world owns something, and it is more than just money.

We love it so much. It is a part of who we are.

And then there is the concept of owning something because of law and money, and the power of governments and eventually armed force and violence to enforce the will of paper wealth. You can put all the nice words, friendly faces, and social media spin on that system and sweep violent enforcement under the rug, but it still is what it is.

You must decide which side your soul is on and what you are comfortable supporting.

To me, this is like the revelation of a truth I knew but could never really accept.

Until it hit home.

The OGL: No Saving Throw

My D&D books are in storage, and I am likely selling them all. I don't care if I get pennies on the dollar, I am done with Wizards and their threats to the OGL 1.0a, and I am done with the OGL in any version entirely.

It is like someone borrowing and wrecking one of your cars and wanting to start a "discussion" on them borrowing the other.

Why should I participate in their silly OGL 1.1 discussion? To me, the OGL 1.0a is forever, but I have stopped caring about it - who cares what they do - because the community and the rest of the industry are moving on to better things. At this point, Wizards uses silly used-car salesman tactics to pull people back into D&D Beyond.

"If you don't return, we may cancel the OGL 1.0a! Please join the discussion!"

So what? Everyone is moving on. I am not interested in discussing what you will graciously allow me to do. I can already do it elsewhere, with people that want my business.

And I have renewed my full-court-press Pathfinder 2e and Starfinder subscriptions.

I support the good guys. The union shop there is run by the workers. Not Wall Street. Period.

D&D and the OGL are over to me; no saving throw allowed.

I have gaming and adventures to look forward to, not drama to chase.

There's No Going Back...

Part of me thinks the contracts are already signed. Not between Wizards and 3rd party content creators, who got crushed, but between Wizards and Hollywood. The movies, the streaming services, the TV shows, the pop culture phenomenon they want to push...the OGL isn't something we can push back on at this point; it is already dead.

Even if they backslide, I feel it will only delay the terms, and we will be right back to where 1.1 wanted everything after a year or two when everyone forgets.

TSR tried going Hollywood with D&D in the 1980s, and it failed.

The D&D movies of the 1990s failed. And TSR was notorious then because, guess what they were trying to do? Same thing today, chase Hollywood.

And here we are again, trying to capture lightning in a bottle.

I do not feel any streaming service, or movie company will drop big money on the D&D brand without a highly restrictive OGL to "keep the brand safe." Hollywood wants to avoid risk, and if a 3rd party supplement comes out that "tarnishes the brand," it not only screws D&D but hundreds or thousands of million-dollar investors into entertainment properties out of their money.

Imagine if a 3rd party supplement comes out that is a humorous "Kill all the Orcs!" adventure. And the module has you deciding if you should slaughter everyone in an orc village - and old-school players will know this since this sort of topic of "adventurous barbarism" was in many old-school modules. Now imagine if that hit the media and the stink a few people could cause...

...and the damage it would do to every movie released, in development, and every show on a streaming service. That is a lot of potential harm Wizards wanted control over.

In that scenario, I can't blame Wizards for doing what they did.

I don't condone or excuse it, and it really sucks, but we live in a crappy world where "it is what it is." I am also on the side of the small publishers and people working out their bedrooms, trying to side-hustle and make a dream become a reality. I can't play D&D anymore because of all the shattered dreams; if you can, go have fun, and I can't take that away from you. It is your personal choice and right.

What Wizards did was wrong but inevitable. But this is what "selling out" means and does to a community. And this is a community that put far too many eggs in one basket. Yes, we bear part of the blame, and this could have happened to any game that gets "too big" for the hobby. Let's say any TTRPG became a huge thing, a billion-dollar enterprise. I don't think it really would be much different.

Hollywood comes in, and we are all screwed.

Welcome to nerd-dom, where what we love and do lives in a fleeting moment, and we seek the unpopular and out-there games and subjects - just because we know the vultures of Hollywood will have reservations about ruining things for everyone.

And I also feel D&D is dead for most little people. You will no longer make a living off this game, and the dreams and concepts you can explore through roleplaying will be heavily corporatized and sanitized. I feel D&D is now the Simpsons, which used to be cool and fun, and now just drags on and on in an undead state to support the profit margins of Wall Street.

And the movies are already done, and the streaming service shows are ink-drying on paper.

The OGL changes were probably a precondition to these deals.

If they change the OGL, I feel all those deals will be in jeopardy. The best Wizards can do is delay the inevitable and "push the message" with a smile on their faces, and I think, at this point, the entire Wizards organization is powerless to change anything. And I feel if you are streaming D&D games professionally, watch out and get out early before they bring it all in-house. Personally, I am done with D&D, 5E, and things in that orbit.

You know who wins when it is a choice between the little people and the rich.

More OGL 1.1? The "Statement"

The video above is the fastest way to keep up on the daily insanity that is Wizards and the OGL 1.1 or 2.0. The "statement" came out today.

All I can say is LOL. What a mess.

You mean to tell me the "draft" agreements were sent out - with NDAs and contracts?

A "draft" agreement with a "signed" contract? You're kidding me? It raises the question if this is true, does Wizards even know what it is doing? And the defensive ameateur tone of, "we win too!" Who wrote this? Tumblr?

I see some D&D players wanting all this to be over, but please, do not put your heads in the sand. And do not let them slow roll this and hope we "forget." The OGL 1.0a is still revoked for new products, they backed off a few parts, but the language they can "update" the deal is still in there. A year from now, I feel all the stuff they removed will likely be right back in there, and those who signed on will have been taken for a ride.

And the current Wizards president used to work for big tobacco? I get turning over a new leaf and all, but those leaves caused so much death and sickness it makes me wonder.

When I roll that d20 I want to know I am not causing harm or taking away choice.

What a disaster.

Implosion.

Paizo: Open RPG Licence Announced

 From Paizo, they are announcing the Open RPG license and pressing forward. More good news: While Wizards have divorced us as customers in chasing the mainstream entertainment and streaming services market, the hobby is divorcing Wizards and their games as fast as possible.

I am amazed, and the hobby is one community again.

Thank you, everyone, for pulling together and supporting dreams and those trying to live one.

True diversity is the freedom of choice.