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Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

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Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#91

My TTRPG group has been playing together for several years - on and off. We'd been mostly playing D&D 5e, even though we had members clamoring for other systems. After the WotC fiasco started blowing up, we finally bought a couple of Pathfinder 2e books, ran a few trial characters and one-shots. We are now in process of starting a new campaign entirely based on Pathfinder that we expect could take a couple of months…

They spent enough time with this license issue a lot of people have had time to jump over to Pathfinder 2E and settle into a campaign. Its not particularly difficult to do so and when the ORC arrives with 150 independent companies releasing content they likely will never leave. Some of the exodus is going to be permanent especially since in many ways Pathfinder solves a lot of the rules issues people have in DnD.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#92
post #90
post #48

A bit more context: * Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has been tasked by Hasbro (which owns WoTC) to drastically increase profits over a few years. * WoTC has been aggressively increasing prices on Magic the Gathering (MTG) and drastically increased the diversity of products. This overwhelmed even people who follow and produce MTG news. Wallet fatique is rampant and people are disgruntled. * WoTC releases the 30th aniver…

I’d say the real problem is that WoTC is a lifestyle business that should not be owned by Hasbro.

WoTC (and really, Magic The Gathering specifically) is actually the profitable bit of Hasbro. They were hoping to get similar levels out of Dungeons and Dragons.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#93
post #48

A bit more context: * Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has been tasked by Hasbro (which owns WoTC) to drastically increase profits over a few years. * WoTC has been aggressively increasing prices on Magic the Gathering (MTG) and drastically increased the diversity of products. This overwhelmed even people who follow and produce MTG news. Wallet fatique is rampant and people are disgruntled. * WoTC releases the 30th aniver…

>WoTC releases the 30th aniversary edition for MTG, which is 60 random cards for 1000 $ which are officially marked as non-tournament legal. The MTG community is furious and for once people from all corners of the community come together to boycott this product. The rage is great and enduring. Yet somehow the product completely sold out in under an hour. I really don't understand the outrage on that decision, would y…

Read the sale ended early [1], not necessarily sold out.

[1] https://dotesports.com/mtg/news/magic-30th-anniversary-editi...

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>WoTC releases the 30th aniversary edition for MTG, which is 60 random cards for 1000 $ which are officially marked as non-tournament legal. The MTG community is furious and for once people from all corners of the community come together to boycott this product. The rage is great and enduring. Yet somehow the product completely sold out in under an hour. I really don't understand the outrage on that decision, would y…

> I really don't understand the outrage on that decision What decision are you claiming people were outraged? Because the actual reason people where outraged is the very existence of the magic 30th edition in the first place. It is one of the clearest and starkest examples of a company disrespecting it's customer, ever.

Also the fact that WotC has promised over and over that these cards would never get reprints, not even non-tournament legal reprints.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they've completely misunderstood their product. The execs in charge of running the show come from video games, and watching what they're trying to do with DnD beyond makes it pretty obvious they're trying to introduce micro transaction hell and loot boxes into the product. Matt Colville whacked the nail on the head when he said D&D isn't really a game, it's a folk tradition and storytelling. Those are two ver…

Yes, that is a critical part. They want to make DnD Beyond the core of the product. The main channel, where "ideally" both, DMs and players, have to buy each little piece of content and an expensive subscription to create their own scenarios instead of books, which are expensive to produce, ship etc. and then are shared in a group (or kept for DM's eyes only) And they "have to" extract as much revenue from third part…

They either want microtransactions and loot boxes, or 30% of the overall revenue like Apple and Google do in their app stores.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#96
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be that they are out of touch but there is another very sensible reason for all this. They view D&D as extremely under-monetized (pretty reasonable, they don't make much off each player on average) and they have a huge influx of new fans and interest. So why does everyone assume they care about the existing fans, who don't give them money, so much? Maybe they just decided they don't care, they'll get new fan…

That was certainly their gamble... and it clearly didn't work. The problem for WotC is that Dungeon Masters (DMs) are the decision-makers for the playerbase. DMs are higher information consumers than players. They are the ones looking up obscure 3rd party homebrew fixes for issues inherent in 5e's design. They are the ones memorizing hundreds of pages of rules _for fun_. And if your DM says, "I'm going to switch us o…

When I was a player the story was way more important than the mechanism.

Many times we just reduced to a few D6 tbh

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#97
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be that they are out of touch but there is another very sensible reason for all this. They view D&D as extremely under-monetized (pretty reasonable, they don't make much off each player on average) and they have a huge influx of new fans and interest. So why does everyone assume they care about the existing fans, who don't give them money, so much? Maybe they just decided they don't care, they'll get new fan…

That was certainly their gamble... and it clearly didn't work. The problem for WotC is that Dungeon Masters (DMs) are the decision-makers for the playerbase. DMs are higher information consumers than players. They are the ones looking up obscure 3rd party homebrew fixes for issues inherent in 5e's design. They are the ones memorizing hundreds of pages of rules _for fun_. And if your DM says, "I'm going to switch us o…

I'm not sure these are the same market segments. Generally though, I agree. DMs are also the people buying most of the merchandise (books, supplements, etc) so they're going to drive more of the conversation around systems.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#98
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be that they are out of touch but there is another very sensible reason for all this. They view D&D as extremely under-monetized (pretty reasonable, they don't make much off each player on average) and they have a huge influx of new fans and interest. So why does everyone assume they care about the existing fans, who don't give them money, so much? Maybe they just decided they don't care, they'll get new fan…

That was certainly their gamble... and it clearly didn't work. The problem for WotC is that Dungeon Masters (DMs) are the decision-makers for the playerbase. DMs are higher information consumers than players. They are the ones looking up obscure 3rd party homebrew fixes for issues inherent in 5e's design. They are the ones memorizing hundreds of pages of rules _for fun_. And if your DM says, "I'm going to switch us o…

Why didn't it work? Paizo had a big jump in sales ... for Paizo, the numbers are a rounding error for WotC.

Same with the DnDBeyond boycott drive, did that actually make a dent? To me there is basically no evidence for this supposed level of consumer power that the fandom is claiming they have. WotC's response was the most half-assed, who-gives-a-shit, PR statement I've ever seen. They did not treat it like a real PR issue at all.

> They are the ones looking up obscure 3rd party homebrew fixes for issues inherent in 5e's design.

Well yes, they will definitely be losing those people. However it's a small percentage of DMs who are even aware of 3rd party stuff in the first place. Single digit percentage and on the lower end, at best.

I think it's hard for lots of old players to realize that post Critical Role/Stranger Things, they are a tiny minority of the market now, and they kinda suck as consumers if you are trying to extract video game level profits from your players.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#99
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was certainly their gamble... and it clearly didn't work. The problem for WotC is that Dungeon Masters (DMs) are the decision-makers for the playerbase. DMs are higher information consumers than players. They are the ones looking up obscure 3rd party homebrew fixes for issues inherent in 5e's design. They are the ones memorizing hundreds of pages of rules _for fun_. And if your DM says, "I'm going to switch us o…

Why didn't it work? Paizo had a big jump in sales ... for Paizo, the numbers are a rounding error for WotC. Same with the DnDBeyond boycott drive, did that actually make a dent? To me there is basically no evidence for this supposed level of consumer power that the fandom is claiming they have. WotC's response was the most half-assed, who-gives-a-shit, PR statement I've ever seen. They did not treat it like a real PR…

My friend, WotC tried to make this change, was hit with backlash, and backed down. That’s a fact. Their statement of backing down is literally the article that you’re commenting on.

Saying “but you didn’t make a dent” is clearly not correct in WotC’s judgement. If they felt they could have made this change and made more money, then they absolutely would have. That’s why they tried. And it didn’t work, per WotC’s own reversal.

Re: Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, they did a huge thing that can't be backed out of, they released SRD 5.1 under creative commons. Yeah they did some not great stuff, but let's celebrate the successes when we get them!

Isn't SRD 5.1 essentially just 5e? Unless they start releasing all the 5.5e/One stuff under the same license I can see them just not releasing that under a permissive license. Of course I could be wrong.

Sure, but the outrage from this change came about revoking the license for past works. By putting SRD 5.1 under CC, the situation for many indie creators of working with the SRD becomes clean and clear. Hasbro can do whatever they want going forward with D&D.
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