Silver Lining to Hasbro's Debacle [+]

[Sacrosanct]

In this debacle, there is a silver lining. Regardless what they do now, the trust is broken. You've heard many 3PP say they are working on their own systems. I'm not different.

This is an opportunity to re-tool Bugbears&Borderlands. Most of the original scope still in place: keep it simple, streamlined, and easy to learn. What's being removed is the stepping stone to 5e. By removing the OGL from it (and thus any reference to SRD material), the game mechanics are being re-tooled as well. It's allowing me to do things I didn't do for the sake of keeping it 5e compatible. Without that yoke, some really nice changes are coming, such as:

• no saving throws. It's even simpler now as everything is a skill check.
• no Vancian magic. Spell point system. This allows greater flexibility, both in how you use your magic (not tied to preparation or slots any longer) and in that you can overcharge spells for greater affect
• desperation mechanic. If you drop below half your hit points, you gain a feature or trait that kicks in, inspired by desperation. Warriors get damage reduction, infiltrators (previously experts) gain additional movement speed and skill bonuses, and wizards gain a reduction in spell point costs. Monsters get them too, something thematically fitting for the monster.
• Heroic and Villain points. Earn heroic points by doing something cool or exceptional. Use them to reroll any one dice and take either result, or to cancel out a monster's use of villain points. Monsters get villain points. Same thing, only they can use them to force you to reroll. Only epic monsters get them, so don't worry about cannon fodder screwing up your crits.

Those are just some of the changes. While I won't enjoy the market or branding of 5e, it's kinda liberating to feel more free in game design. I'm curious to hear from other publishers how they are approaching this, and from other gamers as to what they are hoping to see come out now that more games won't be tied to the OGL. + thread please.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Thrilled. Keep us posted with this conversion.

I think it will be a great time for creativity.

I announced to my friend that, in time, I'll probably go over and change every little rule of the D&D they so love, and build our own game, with the not-so-bad name DayDream of the 5 Enchanters (DD 5E) I jokingly posted yesterday in some thread or another ;P

 

[Benjamin Olson]

5e was a "Newbie Boom". A huge number of people were brought into the hobby or back into the hobby with 5e (partly for extraneous reasons, but it is a good compromise system for a broad group of people), and eventually some were going to "grow up" into people who designed games. We are now getting to the point when a sizeable chunk of them would probably naturally evolve as gamers to seriously trying their hands at their own game design. And really I already felt like the anemic "improvements" of the proposals for 5.5 were likely to spur an unusually large number of 5e fans to think "well they're just making semi-aimless tweaks. I could do that! Why am I buying their books?"

So I think there was a bumper crop of new games destined to come in the not too distant future even before all this OGL revocation nonsense. But now that it has happened we also will get all sorts of people who have been designing for D&D working on their own games instead, and many of the "soon to become game designers" of the unusually large 5e generation who would have moved into designing for the next iteration of D&D will also do their own things instead.

Which is all to say I think there is a renaissance era for new table top games on the horizon. It was destined to be before the OGL debacle, but now it will be much more extensive, and the chances of a few of the games picking up critical mass and actually being successful is much higher now that there will be both an exodus of refugee D&D players looking for a new home and more third party developers interested in creating content for games not made by WotC.

I announced to my friend that, in time, I'll probably go over and change every little rule of the D&D they so love, and build our own game, with the not-so-bad name DayDream of the 5 Enchanters (DD 5E) I jokingly posted yesterday in some thread or another ;P

Currently the name I'm toying with for a D&D knockoff is Freedoms and Dangers, shortened to "Free&D". As you might imagine it'd be open source.

 

[Greg Benage]

I'm not sure it's what you mean by a "silver lining," but Elon's Algorithm suggests the counter-backlash has already begun. There are still a lot of people out there who love D&D, even if they don't love Hasbro's corporate forkery, and are starting to give some statements by competing corporations the side eye.

 

[aco175]

Maybe they will try harder to make products that will keep people around and buying books. The last few campaign books have been bummers to me and only the Phandalin book may be something I will buy this year. Make a campaign book that will get me excited.

It is sad the I find the box sets some of the best stuff the company comes out with. I get to pull at them and expand them to make a decent campaign but they have the bones. Wish they would just not make me work so hard. Here is hoping.

 

[rcade]

I'm not sure it's what you mean by a "silver lining," but Elon's Algorithm suggests the counter-backlash has already begun. There are still a lot of people out there who love D&D, even if they don't love Hasbro's corporate forkery, and are starting to give some statements by competing corporations the side eye.

People mad on behalf of D&D are going to have trouble competing with the sound and fury of the open gaming community. That's what happens when you create a network effect for 23 years and then try to bring down the entire network.

 

[Greg Benage]

People mad on behalf of D&D are going to have trouble competing with the sound and fury of the open gaming community. That's what happens when you create a network effect for 23 years and then try to bring down the entire network.

To be clear, I'm seeing almost no one actually defending Wizards. Just partisans hunkering down in their corners, and any anger is directed at the competing corp...okay, it's Paizo. They're mad at Paizo.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

In this debacle, there is a silver lining. Regardless what they do now, the trust is broken. You've heard many 3PP say they are working on their own systems. I'm not different.

This is an opportunity to re-tool Bugbears&Borderlands. Most of the original scope still in place: keep it simple, streamlined, and easy to learn. What's being removed is the stepping stone to 5e. By removing the OGL from it (and thus any reference to SRD material), the game mechanics are being re-tooled as well. It's allowing me to do things I didn't do for the sake of keeping it 5e compatible. Without that yoke, some really nice changes are coming, such as:

• no saving throws. It's even simpler now as everything is a skill check.
• no Vancian magic. Spell point system. This allows greater flexibility, both in how you use your magic (not tied to preparation or slots any longer) and in that you can overcharge spells for greater affect
• desperation mechanic. If you drop below half your hit points, you gain a feature or trait that kicks in, inspired by desperation. Warriors get damage reduction, infiltrators (previously experts) gain additional movement speed and skill bonuses, and wizards gain a reduction in spell point costs. Monsters get them too, something thematically fitting for the monster.
• Heroic and Villain points. Earn heroic points by doing something cool or exceptional. Use them to reroll any one dice and take either result, or to cancel out a monster's use of villain points. Monsters get villain points. Same thing, only they can use them to force you to reroll. Only epic monsters get them, so don't worry about cannon fodder screwing up your crits.

Those are just some of the changes. While I won't enjoy the market or branding of 5e, it's kinda liberating to feel more free in game design. I'm curious to hear from other publishers how they are approaching this, and from other gamers as to what they are hoping to see come out now that more games won't be tied to the OGL. + thread please.

Those changes sound rad. I’m definitely interested in the game.

As a soon to be publisher of an indie game, I’m actually really excited about how creators seem to be reacting to the debacle. While I don’t hold out hope that the bulk of newer D&D players will significantly explore indies, I do feel confident that I will be able to get more eyeballs on my game as I lead up to launch and then afterward.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

People mad on behalf of D&D are going to have trouble competing with the sound and fury of the open gaming community. That's what happens when you create a network effect for 23 years and then try to bring down the entire network.

Also, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, "they did something wrong, they are a villain" is always going to be a stronger rallying cry than "the complaints are overblown" or "I still like them anyway". There is just no way anyone can get as animated on behalf of the giant soulless corporation who did something creepy as people will get against them.

Now is possible in this sort of situation for a vastly larger number of "unconcerned by the ill deed" people to drown out the animated minority, especially if the minority seems animated over something that doesn't really matter. This might seem like a likely scenario for the OGL debacle since the underlying dispute is inside baseball about something most D&D players weren't even aware of. However while WotC might have pulled that off if they were just screwing over a few larger, semi-faceless 3rd party publishers, the problem is that basically every D&D-oriented internet personality with a sufficient following has also developed 3rd party products because that's how you monetize your brand as a internet D&D personality (and, to be fair, also because most of them had D&D-related creative impulses to begin with), including many people that WotC has used as D&D brand ambassadors. And of course there are all the long time game designer luminaries of the industry who are affected or at least offended. And so while not many people are directly affected by crimes against the OGL, it concerns basically everyone with a sizeable platform in the D&D community so it ain't going away.

But, that's all getting off-topic for this + thread on where the creative energies will go. Suffice it to say that even if there is a meaningful counter-backlash, every upcoming game not called D&D is in a better position today than it was a couple weeks ago.

 

[Zardnaar]

Heh and people yelled at me when I said their recent efforts are lacklustre. Basically Spelljammer, most of their adventures, maybe Tasha's (mixed bag).

They peaked Quality wise Xanathars to Eberron at least mechanically. Adventures probably first two years.