Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 1/13/23
David vs Goliath Edition
Everyone in Administration is happy to report that the transition out of holiday mode is now complete and all branches of the N.T.A.B. are back to their normal settings and configurations. We hope the same is going on at your bunker; if you need any assistance with reconfiguring anything, please call us on the Green hotline and Press Option 3. We’re happy to help out!
The short but intense holiday schedule has played merry hell with our production timeline and plans are underway to get everything back on schedule by the end of the month. We have, in fact, sequestered ourselves at a work-based retreat in the mutant-infested vicinity of Oklahoma City to get caught up and, if possible, a little ahead of our own projected due dates. Fingers crossed, and good luck!
Dumbasses and Dickishness
If you’re reading this newsletter, there’s a better than even chance you’ve heard something about the blow-up over Dungeons & Dragons in the past two weeks. But just in case you don’t know about the Open Game License and what Hasbro (the owners of D&D) are trying to do, this video by The Alexandrian is super clear and about as concise as it can be, given all of the twists and turns of the last twenty years.
As you might guess, their attempt to de-authorize a document they stated was irrevocable has sent shockwaves through the entire tabletop RPG biome, since the OGL had a direct hand in stimulating and growing and sustaining the largest third-party publishers on down to *ahem* guys making a few hundred gaming zines to sell at conventions, and all points in between.
Passions and tempers have run incredibly high, and it’s produced, um, a few memes.
In the ten days from the “leaked draft” bombshell and now, the entire ttrpg community has banded together and several third party publishers are hard at work creating new OGLs for their systems that will be completely devoid of verbiage from the extant OGL and available for all to use in perpetuity. Paizo (the publishers of Pathfinder) have started calling their version the Open RPG Creative License (ORC). You just gotta love that.
It's hitting me in the bread basket, too. My ZineQuest 5 project was to be entwined with the OGL for making 5th edition content. Even if I fly my pirate flag in open defiance (they can’t legally keep me from using the old OGL), will anyone even buy a quarterly gaming zine full of fresh content for your 5th edition game? I’m THIS close to chucking out about 100,00 words worth of content and starting over, re-writing for Dungeon Crawl Classics, a D&D retroclone I love, but don’t regularly play, because everyone still wants to play “official” (like that’s even a thing) D&D. But, after all this, is that going to be the case? I don’t know. No one knows.
As of this morning, the rocket surgeons at over at Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro have issued a statement that buys them no more than two weeks. They claim that
When we initially conceived of revising the OGL, it was with three major goals in mind. First, we wanted the ability to prevent the use of D&D content from being included in hateful and discriminatory products. Second, we wanted to address those attempting to use D&D in web3, blockchain games, and NFTs by making clear that OGL content is limited to tabletop roleplaying content like campaigns, modules, and supplements. And third, we wanted to ensure that the OGL is for the content creator, the homebrewer, the aspiring designer, our players, and the community—not major corporations to use for their own commercial and promotional purpose.
When I read that last bit, my first and only thought that came to mind was the 5th edition-based Sorta-RPG game that Wendy’s put out a few years ago that made use of some D&D mechanics. Who knows what that refers to, but either way: The above statement is bullshit. It’s either an outright lie, or it’s the most naïvely-devised cock-up of a mission statement that it defies categorization. So, they are either assholes, or idiots, and neither one is a good look, really.
If it’s a lie, then it’s because while the aforementioned NFTs and corporations were mentioned in the leaked draft, the language was very broad and sweeping (because corporate lawyers are blunt instruments, and they write that way to try and get away with it, on purpose) and ended up applying to most of the third-party publishers in the marketplace.
If it’s idiocy, then they asked lawyers to give them this, without thinking, “Wow, I just handed a chainsaw to a toddler and told that kid to make some Lincoln logs.” Sure, you might get a few blocks, but that little shit will cut the whole forest down to do it, because corporate lawyers are blunt instruments, and they write that way to try and get away with it, on purpose.
Maybe the truth is in the middle and maybe it’s not. Given that they have done this before and will very likely try to do it again, I’m not buying that they made an innocent and honest mistake. And neither should you. They are a corporation, owned by a board of directors, with only one goal in mind: to make more money in the current quarter than they did the last quarter. That’s it. All other goals are a distant second. These people will do whatever they can, however they can. They are not looking at cultivating and nurturing a cottage industry. They want what Marvel Comics has, what Disney has, what Star Trek has. They want that name brand transference, where playing D&D becomes the shorthand for any rpg, like how Xerox is now a verb.
They were so close, too. That D&D movie looks pretty good—at least, it looks like a D&D game, with monsters players instantly recognize as integral to the game-playing experience, which is exactly the right thing they should have done—anyone watching the trailer sees the owlbear and the gelatinous cube and gets instantly zipped back in time to whatever game they were playing when that thing happened with the stuff...you get the idea.
Now I don’t know what they are going to do, or how they will build their brand back up. It’s been tarnished to the point of tarring and feathering. I know they can get it back, and if their own history is any indicator, they will figure out a way to build back, over years, better than ever. I wish them good luck with that.
In the meantime, I’m going to distance myself from them, their brand, their game, their products, etc., at least until I know that I am no longer standing in the middle of the rug they are trying to yank out from under me.
Martha and I have been playing Pathfinder every friday night for a year or more now, online with friends from Austin and California. Been so long since my D&D days I can't properly compare the two, but we've enjoyed it. I've always believed the secret is not in the rules, but in how the DM and players run the game. I think of the rules and mechanics as "suggestions." They're rough templates that should be liberally changed to fit the group playing. "Game Lawyers" who show up with their manuals and ready to argue every little point should have their characters killed off frequently. If you stifle 3rd party modules and gaming accessories, you'll kill your customer base.
I'd love to see your own game, Mark.