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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Turret_Run on 2024-03-16 14:41:34.
It’s now been a little over a year since the ttrpg community experienced an event that rocked it to its core, when Wizards of the Coast, the developers of Dungeons and Dragons, attempted to enforce a policy that would all but destroy its flourishing third-party publishing community. After the dust settled, many were unsure about how things would look going forward. Would D&D collapse as players and publishers abandoned it? Would nobody care? Would a new system rise to prominence? Time will tell, but we can talk about what’s happened since.
What happened
If you want a great deep dive into the events, I highly recommend the hobbydrama done by u/ pandamarshmallows For a short(ish) version:
The OGL, (short for Open Game License) is a longstanding licensing agreement between Wizards of the Coast, the publishers Dungeons and Dragons, and publishers who want to make content using the system as a basis. As is the name, it was incredibly open, giving free reign to make D&D content so long as it didn’t include a handful of creatures and terms, with no need to compensate Wizards of the Coast. It’s been incredibly beneficial for both parties, helping cement D&D as the TTRPG. However as the guard at WOTC changed, it’s been seen less as a cornerstone and more giving money away. While there were efforts to quietly kill it, they didn’t get brazen until the end of 2022.
On January 5th, 2023, former io9 and now Rascal reporter Lin Codega published an article on tech blog io9, detailing how in a leaked press release, Wizards intended to announce the “OGL 1.1” . Along with a lot of other things, this new license required developers to effectively give full rights of whatever they made to Wizards of the Coast, that you could be subject to a 25% royalty fee on revenue, with a loose promise to only go after folks who make 750k or more in revenue, and saying you could no longer use the original OGL. Needless to say, it didn’t go well. The community banded together, rocked their shit, and Wizards backed off, even putting all of 5e under a creative commons license as an apology. However, that wasn’t enough for a lot of folks.
Even if it was never officialized, attempting to put something like this in place was a massive breach of trust. People’s livelihoods relied on that promise of a free and open system, and they were planning to change it out of the blue. Even if 5e is under Creative Commons, it’s also reaching the end of its life, so nothing was stopping them from using loopholes to make 3rd party publishing difficult like they did with 4th edition. While players didn’t have the same financial concerns, they recognized that a lot of D&D’s value is from those third-party companies, or they just didn’t like the idea of their game being fucked over by C-suite decisions. Either way, people on both ends announced their intention to leave 5e behind. Now that a year has passed, we can see how well that’s going.
Honor Among Thieves
In March of 2023, Wizards/Hasbro released a feature-length film D&D: Honor Among Thieves. When things went down, one of the first things people did was announce their intention to boycott the film. Since it was a few months out, many people thought it could serve as a litmus test for whether the sentiments of the event held firm. The result? Debatable! As of writing, they’ve made $208 million against a $150 million budget. In terms of “we made more than we spent” it’s a dub, but if you go by the 3x budget metric used by a lot of hollywood it’s a flop. You could go on about how much it may have made were it not for the OGL and what is a theatrical success in a post-COVID/streaming world, but it’s perfectly in that spot where you can make a claim either way.
The dice popcorn buckets, however, are still wildly overpriced on eBay so if anyone wants to sell theirs for 30-50 bucks please DM me I’ll cover shipping.
Wizards: Kinda forgive and hope you forget
In terms of PR, Wotc’s plan seemed to be “pretend it never happened”. They continued to chug along, releasing a new adventure book Keys from the Golden Vault, which didn’t sell well but I’ll get to that later.
In April of 2023, Wizards had a Creator Summit, a conference between them and major D&D creators. It was the first direct interaction people had with Wizards since it all went down. The company tried to just ignore it but at the urging of the creators, they got into the OGL along with longstanding issues with diversity, which based on writeups went pretty well. It was the first step in healing the rifts between Wizards and the community.
They would bring the controversy back to 5e when it was discovered that several of the illustrations for their upcoming book Glory of the Giants, were made using AI. After outcry, they banned the use of AI artwork… for D&D, Magic got caught using it for marketing. It seems that the company isn’t planning any more efforts to return to players good graces, but is trying to woo back publishers.
At the start of December, Wizards quietly announced a collaboration with Ghostfire Gaming, one of the most popular 5e publishers, andhad famously said back when the OGL happened they were considering transitioning to a new system. Two of their books, Dungeons of Drakkenheim and Grimm Hollow: Lair of Erathis, are now available on D&D Beyond, allowing for easier play.
On February 13th They did the same with Hit Point Press,putting their Humblewood campaign setting on the site. We can talk about how they’re only doing this after they’re planning to move to a new edition, but we have to recognize this is a shakeup. However we’re not sure if people are biting
Insert hype pun here
While there isn’t exactly something quantifiable, it’s become increasingly obvious that the dynamic between players and WotC has shifted, at least in terms of response to new content. While people are still big on talking about D&D, they’re not savoring new sourcebooks in that same fashion anymore. Even the adventure books aren’t getting much talk. Not too long after the fiasco, they released a new adventure book, Keys from the Golden Vault. For a while, it was being outsold not by another D&D book, but by Fever Knights, a ttrpg published by comic artist Adam Ellis. The people who wouldn’t stop talking about a new book aren’t there for it anymore.
Nat OneDnD
In my defense, the joke’s right there!
As I mentioned earlier, part of the reason people didn’t care much about the OGL win is because there’s a new edition on the horizon, OneDnD. Whether it’ll be a 5.5 for a 6th edition is sort of unclear. There have been a lot of business peak promises throughout its development, including AI, “backward compatibility” with 5th edition, and this being a “forever edition” but with the release on the horizon, we’re seeing how that’s forming.
Over the remainder of 2023, Wizards released playtest content for OneD&D, with surveys to gauge satisfaction. The responses on the surveys have been nonplussed. The response in forums like r/DNDnext have also been less than stellar, with many at best uninterested in the new edition, and some restating their intention to move to leave D&D for a new system once they finish their campaigns. People are also not excited about the release schedule, which has the Players Handbook releasing in September, the Dungeonmasters Guide in November, and the Monster Manual in… February 2025. While they had a similar release timeline with 5th edition, they also didn’t seriously kick off until someone else lit the matches. And those guys are heating up on their own now.
New competitors
After the events of the OGL, several developers came forward with their intention to make a new game that would fill the same long-form fantasy niche of D&D. There are three that are of note:…
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1bg6cov/ttrpgs_the_ogl_11_years_later/