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Dungeons & Dragons turns 50 this year, and there’s a lot planned for it
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
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WOTC is an evil company that is trying to milk D&D fans for all of their money as they tank their product quality. Highly recommend people who want to play D&D explore one of the several other fantasy rpg systems that are out there.
I cannot stress this enough. They are owned by Hasbro. Last year was a massive win for both Dnd and Magic the Gathering yet they still layed off thousands of the people that made this possible. Even Sven Wincke of Larian who developed Baldur's Gate 3 said he couldn't even properly thank the DnD people he worked with because they were gone short after release. BG3 is probably the best game of the decade if not more and MTG is more popular than ever yet the people making them still get fired. Meanwhile, Hasbro and WOTC CEO's personally made millions in salary and bonuses.
So no, you are not supporting workers and artists by buying their products. You are proving them right.
Between that and the OGL shitshow, I've been doing my best to stop giving them money. I'll even see new merch and think to myself "man if only WotC had just stfu, I would totally buy that".
I've already invested a ton of money into many different RPGs over the past year though, and Free League Publishing is by my far my favorite new publisher.
Unfortunately, not a lot of people are that involved in the game to care about OGL and its ramifications. Most only want to play what they've seen in Stranger Things or Critical Role, they don't give a fuck about the rent people they watch and like have to pay to WotC. I believe that's what Hasbro is banking on. They will not back out of OGL1.1 as they knew some more hardcore players would criticize them. But the way news and stories are consumed nowadays, they also knew this would quickly get buried by the unending stream of "information" people consume and ultimately be entirely forgotten or ignored. Most people don't care about businesses practices if it doesn't affect them directly. Mix that with the crazy amount of IP crossovers they made in the last couple of years and you start to see how they are setting up a model so basically anyone who's tempted to try table top gaming will most likely be funnelled into their ecosystem.
That may be partially true, but I think those that got into DnD from Stranger Things, Critical Role, etc., will either not stick with TTRPGs or stick with them long enough to eventually discover other games. Especially considering Critical Role is working on and actively showing other systems.
I've played for maybe 15 years since 3.5e, and in my experience, the few that seemed more adamant about sticking to DnD are the older players that have been with it since AD&D. Players my age or younger (that I've encountered) seem to be more open to at least trying other games. And the OGL is the biggest reason why I started branching out more, and I try to tell that to anyone that brings up TTRPGs in conversation.
The hardest part I've found is finding others willing to GM said other games.
But with all that said, Fuck Hasbro. You just had to be (obstructively) greedy.