#fuckHasbro

[greatpurpledumbass]

New Reason to Hate WotC Just Dropped

https://twitter.com/wizards_magic/status/1743014711820476536?t=brb19M7NncrF7uJ_6CpKdA&s=19

I know they sponsor real artists, but this is an insult to them and their base, many of whom are into MTG because of the real art, and inspiration one can gather.

It's dead.

Their community Trust should be dead after Pinkertons and the OGL thing how the fuck are these companies (Hasbro, WotC) still fucking alive.

[sometimeskaiju]

We're about to start a Necessary Evil Campaign, and so I wanted to cover the characters in this game. The PCs, the NPCs will come up organically. Now, other read throughs I have read and groups on Facebook that talk about this campaign have all had what I would say are fairly normal, evil human who has superpowers batman or the flash style villains. But not my group of chaos goblins.

We start with the seemingly normal "The Gift".

The Gift, or Carl as he usually goes, teleports. This sounds pretty normal right? No. Carl explodes when he teleports, or rather, the concussive force of the spontaneous displacement... look, he has a Damage Field that's Permanent, but also Contingent on Teleport, so he can't not explode on tele-- I'm not getting into the rules but teleport makes explode. So when he activates his teleport the equivalent of a grenade goes off hurting everything and everyone in the area. And no, he can't choose not to hurt things or people, so he can't like, teleport to the hostage or teleport you out of danger. Oh, and his weapon of choice? He throws grenades.

Then alphabetically we have Glocktopus. A genetically engineered gun toting Octopus. Literally an octopus with telepathy, guns, aand some disguise as human skills, like Octodad but also al Capone. I don't remember whether he always walks on 2 tentacles aand has 6 guns, or usually has 8.

Then Grave Mistake, a cursed necromancer who summons zombies and has bad luck powers, causing people to make mistakes and also machines to break but also he is throwing zombies at you. He may be the least insane.

Next is Major Zen'cha. The Major is a slug like alien which came to Earth to conquer it, only to have his thunder stolen when the V'Sori conquered it first. Bad timing. So he has a super suit that looks like a human but is nigh indestructible. Zen'cha isn't the fiercest in combat, but he is quite the tank and skill monkey (skill sluggy). All of his points went into being skilled and smart, aand all of his powers went into being hard to kill.

And finally, Ufrek. Ufrek is a malleable silvery robot, think the T1000 from T2 except it's always shiny silver and never has a color. Ufrek turns it's body into blades and spikes and has no ethics or morals, and is really really good at close combat. He is a Cuisinart with legs.

So that's it. That's my crew, as it stands now.

Right now they're in a V'Sori prison being transported to a lab, where some of them will be dissected and others will simply be destroyed.

But unbeknownst to them (but beknownst to us!), Baron Blade has a mighty need for exactly the kind of distraction our Protagonists can provide!

Wait? Baron Blade? Like from Sentinels of the Multiverse? Yes. I'm setting this particular iteration of Necessary Evil: Invasion in the SotM universe, which mostly means changing a few NPC names.

[daarka]

Obligatory: The situation, if you're not up to speed. Courtesy of CritCrab. Shout out to the anon who said I was spreading misinformation lmfao; the OGL1.1 leak has been validated by one of the higher-ups at Kickstarter, who confirmed WotC reached out to them to discuss their upcoming royalty fee. o/

The Twitter post was not the reassurance they thought it'd be. Also cool of them to have the @.DnDBeyond account post it instead of @.Wizards_DnD -- make DDB take the heat like a meat shield. That was intentional.

It was also intentional to word it the way they did.

"We know you have questions about the OGL and we will be sharing more soon. Thank you for your patience."

This is the statement you make when you are going to plow forward with your plans, but can at least commit to explaining those insidious plans soon (once your lawyers and PR team get done finding ways to rephrase things so it's the least overtly shitty it can possibly be).

This is not what you would say if you are making overhaul changes to the license you had written based on community feedback. Maybe it's just me, maybe it's things I've heard from my own very reputable sources, but I'm sorry man--if I was WotC rn, and I was intending to heed the community backlash, my statement would look more like "We know you have concerns about the OGL. We are listening and making sure your voices are heard, and we will have a formal statement in full for you soon. Thank you for all you've contributed."

Hear the difference?

Whatever. My optimism has dimmed significantly in light of various things. Hasbro's stock was down 40% in 2022, and D&D is by far their largest-earning franchise. But despite it making over $1 billion, Hasbro only saw a little over $100 million in profits. Hasbro is feral.

WotC/DnDBeyond doesn't have a choice. Trust me when I say that the people working at WotC/DDB want to deliver a game they're passionate about--but it's not up to them anymore. Hasbro is the new ownership, and Hasbro is sinking financially. These OGL changes are Hasbro clawing at the person holding them afloat, and drowning them in the process.

There might be a way forward for 3rd party creators in spite of OGL1.1. If so, I'm not smart enough or knowledgeable enough to know what it is. But the more I hear, the more rare insights I'm granted, the less optimistic I am that any amount of community outrage will matter. And holy fuck is that depressing lmfao

We'll just see, I guess. I'm very tired :)

[daarka]

My post covering this stuff is here. If you prefer to listen instead of read, CritCrab's videos cover just about everything up to the time of me writing this. Only thing he hasn't mentioned in a video

Paizo (creators of Pathfinder), Kobold Press, and a sizeable collection of other large name creators have joined together to make the Open RPG Creative License (or ORC License). It will be a system-agnostic license that is irrevocable, and will never be owned by a company that makes money off of publishing RPGs to ensure it can never be jeopardized. Their full statement is on their website, the link for that is here.

My sincere hope is that this will allow creators who love 5e and don't want to leave that system if they can help it to continue publishing 5e-compatible content that they're passionate about, under ORC instead of any bullshit OGL at Hasbro's control. The path forward will require time and effort and, more than likely, some manner of adjustments... but as someone who absolutely Does Not Want to leave 5e despite being thoroughly repulsed by WotC's behavior, I actually have a shred of hope again. I am deeply, deeply appreciative of Paizo today.