On Thu, 4 Jan 2024 11:48:53 +0100, kyonshi <
gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:
"If Hasbro/WotC tries to make the new edition a subscription-based,
highly monetized walled garden, with radically increased
direct-to-consumer sales, they will likely blight the market and the >hobby--this is likely to happen whether they succeed or fail. This kind
of move will roll back the overall audience for everyone and could well >remove RPGs from many stores that rely on D&D sales in order to justify >devoting the shelf space to RPGs."
I am expecting THIS. ^^^
My 2 cents from reading the tea leaves of Hasbro's moves:
Hasbro has looked at all the book sales on D&D Beyond and decided to go
all digital. Digital publication has larger margins; it's exactly what
the beancounters want. Squeeze that stone. Stop paying for paper. Stop publishing stuff and destroying overstock when sales are overestimated.
In addition, OneD&D, 6e, or whatever you want to call it, if all goes to
plan, is going to be "the last version of D&D" because they will move
into D&DaaS (D&D as a Service). You pay your rent and they change the
rules continuously. The very name OneD&D suggests this. I think accepting
new rules will be optional to start, but slowly there will be no way to
pick and choose which rules go into your VTT. You'll have to keep paying
for the content on a monthly basis.
I also think the name is quite ironic, as D&D started out heavily
indebted to Tolkien, and now they're pushing "One D&D to rule them all"
without so much as a wink or a tap on the nose.
And what of books, you might ask? Books are too static. If you want to be
a *real* D&D player, you've got to keep up with the latest rules. I
already have a friend who keeps injecting OneD&D playtest stuff into the campaign hot off the presses. Some players are very trendy and want to
have all the material they can get their hands on.
This also clarifies Hasbro's blunder with the OGL. What they were really talking about when they tried to change it is getting their cut in the
D&D Beyond Store -- the only way to play (TM) -- similar to Valve. It's a thriving digital market. Time to get a 30% cut of everything, including
OGL stuff. They are hoping and praying dead trees and/or PDFs go out of
style. The OGL revision shot across the bow indicates their desire to be
the gatekeeper -- and sole point of access -- and the ability to take a
toll for passage. You know, like trolls under bridges.
So Real Tabletop (RTT), if all goes to plan, dies. Players may be
expected to sit together around a VTT even when they play FtF. They don't
want people sitting around playing with a stable game, purchased as a set
of books. No constant revenue stream there. Pay once and play for years
is bad, in their plan. They don't want to sell stable, durable books.
They certainly don't want to pay for a physical publication business.
They probably don't even want to sell physical products like miniatures.
What they want is rent, all digital consumption, and the ability to
retcon any aspect of the system that is politically inviable, too
challenging, or allows the customer to stop, think, and wonder why they
have accepted the limitations of WoTC content without question. They want
an ever changing game that requires a monthly subscription and pleases everyone.
And that is going to result in a VERY bland WoTC D&D game. 3rd party OGL publishers will either spin off into oblivion as the core game is no
longer a stable, printed SRD, or they will have to pay a tithe to
participate in the D&DaaS Store. The OGL move was a feint. This is what
the plan always was: control of access to the means of play and the point
of content distribution.
I suggest we all reject it, go back to our Pathfinder and 3.5e
splatbooks, and forget 5e ever existed. I already have several games I participate in that do just this and we don't get bored. Or you just hang
onto your 5e books until they pry them from your cold dead hands and
ignore the plethora of crap they are going to firehose all over the game
as the official way to play: OneD&D (R). A successful game, moreover a
*social* game, needs stable rules you can port from house to house and
campaign to campaign. We are going to lose that if all goes to Hasbro's
design. There will be no future SRDs to write games from.
And that may contribute to the demise of D&D. It's a radical plan that
could radically fail.
Moreover, I suggest we go back to engaging our imaginations. You don't
need books to tell you what and how to play. The original game was
entirely homebrew with a skeleton structure of rules so that you could
bring characters from homebrew campaign to homebrew campaign. The first
AD&D books were compilations of the best homebrew stuff. The original
Greyhawk setting was literally EGGs campaign. It was also released as a skeleton structure. It was a map and loose descriptions to fill in as you preferred. You were expected to bring your own imagination to it, and if
that was too much work, plug in prepared, published materials where they
fit on the map and world overview. This supplemental plug-in content is
the "module." That's why they're called modules in the first place.
Gygax is spinning in his fucking grave. He expected people to generate
more D&D as a community, not have it spoon fed to them by accountants.
Let's all engage our brains and imagine a better FRPG world. It's the
only sane response.
--
Zag
No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had
spent more time alone with my computer.' ~Dan(i) Bunten
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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