Friday, January 27, 2023

DnD Shenanigans

Those of us who pay any attention at all to tabletop role playing have been embroiled in the Hasbro-Wizards of the Coast (Has-Wiz) controversy over deauthorising the Open Gaming License 1.0a.  TL;DR:  Giant megacorp is seeking paradise through monopoly by breaking contracts and attempting to steal what they can't ban.  No, really.  (IANAL, and this is not legal advice or analysis.)

People, especially those who have been eeking out a living creating third party content, are understandably upset.  Has-Wiz products have been increasingly woke, lame, and, well, boring, when they're not downright (unintentionally) silly.  Third party content has been better (and much cheaper) than the official content for years.

I guess this is what we must expect when every high level executive at a gaming company is a former Microsuxx executive.  Including the person who founded the microtransaction division.  They intend to make D&D a pay-to-play online gaming experience.  In their words, "gamers are gamers", meaning they see no difference between playing an adventure video game and playing a pencil and paper RPG with your friends.  Also in their words - "D&D players are under monetized."  Meaning that since only the game master really needs to own the rules, players don't spend much money on the game.

Screw them.

In the spirit of benevolent anarchy, here is a link to Panza (tilting at windmills again),  "Grim" Jim Desborough's rewriting of a certain game's core rules.  From scratch, without any copyrighted or trademarked content.  Released freely to the world.

We don't need no $30 a month paywalls to play with our imaginations!

1 comment:

  1. The best meme I saw of this was to the effect of a company trying to pull something with obscure rules... on a group that OBSESSES on such things in excruciating detail *for fun*.

    ReplyDelete

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