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OGL 1.1 and One D&D VTT 🔑 Foretold by Matt Colville and James Haeck 🔮 Flutes Loot's future
Jan 20, 2023
The D&D OGL controversy unleashed mayhem in the TTRPG community, but is the One D&D Virtual Tabletop (VTT) the real enemy? This video takes commentary from respected TTRPG third-party publishers and commentators to piece together why this is happening and what can be done about it. #opendnd
@GhostfirePodcasts full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=415u1ro524k
@DungeonMasterpiece VTT video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wlSCwp_JVA
@legalkim revolutions video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76eOdYTf9s0
⏰Time Stamps:
00:00 See my hat? No? Because I threw it in the ring.
00:39 Matt Colville's first prophecy
02:29 WotC's VTT is the future
02:57 Two wolves in every company...
04:35 James Haeck predicts no old OGL
05:29 Actual goal of OGL 1.0a
06:27 PDFs and shipping have emptied shelves
07:38 Dungeon Masterpiece explains VTT impact
10:06 Flutes Loot plans
12:20 Can Hasbro be beaten?
13:06 How to win the OGL fight
13:35 Hasbro's win condition
13:57 Bidoof
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
I don't know about you, but it feels really good to finally take off my tinfoil hat and be accepted by the masses
0:07
I assume you're already familiar with the OGL 1.1 controversy. I'm not going to rehash that for you, but I am going to contextualize it
0:13
With the words of people, you probably respect a lot more than myself. Matt Colville, you may have heard of him
0:18
He predicted this state of affairs in August 2022. He was on the Ghostfire podcast here on YouTube, and they were talking about and speculating about the VTT that might be announced
0:28
when Wizards did their Wizards Direct. I'm going to share some clips from that podcast with my commentary overlaid so that I can illustrate how not only is history repeating itself, but it wasn't that far fetched to see this coming
0:40
Fourth edition was designed from the ground up to be used with a virtual tabletop. And they went and they hired a team of ex-Microsoft people to design that software
0:49
And so they had their own internal development, which was going to be a virtual tabletop designed to be used with fourth edition, which was designed to be used with a VTT
0:57
We've never seen that, right? We don't have any examples in the marketplace of a VTT that was explicitly designed for this one RPG
1:04
And that RPG was designed to be used with the VTT. There was no release
1:08
We got the TT RPG, but we didn't get the VTT. I sort of assume that sooner or later, we're going to see the VTT announcement from Wizards of the Coast
1:15
Which means, by the way, if you're a company like MCDM and you make third-party content, the clock is ticking
1:19
Your audience is only going to go down. Unless they do something remarkable, like they go the Steam route, which would surprise the hell out of me
1:26
but they could do it right where anybody third-party companies are free to publish their
1:31
stuff there um without like draconian you know audible terms where it's we take 70 my base
1:37
assumption is it's going to be like dnd beyond where you can't get third-party content on there
1:40
you just can't do it the number of people using the vtt that's only going to go up this is the
1:45
power of the vtt right like i i don't think the normal dnd consumer really understands the issue
1:52
here nor nor should they frankly because they're not the head of a giant company in seattle but
1:57
there's always been and there always will be i think way more people that want to play dnd
2:02
than no other people i rl that want to play and so the vtt is what would allow dungeons and
2:08
dragons to just explode to a degree that i don't think we've seen yet there's no i can't i cannot
2:14
imagine any scenario under which covet happens and it doesn't accelerate that process internally
2:19
And they're like, you know what? If we had released our own VTT just for D&D in 2019, this wouldn't be a problem
2:26
In fact, it would be good for the business because everybody would be using the VTT now
2:30
This VTT that Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast are planning for is the future
2:34
They have bet everything on it. I've been known to speculate that 1D&D's design choices are trying to balance pleasing the current fans of 5e
2:43
while being easily programmable for a VTT. More than ever, I believe this is true, that 1D&D is trying to simplify certain aspects of the game to be as programmable as possible
2:54
Now let's go back to Matt, where he has posited the question. What winning motivation is there over having complete control of the system and complete control of the product and opening it up for third parties to be able to contribute it to potentially bring in more audience
3:08
There are two wolves inside every company like this, right? There is the one wolf who's like, look, making adventures does not make a lot of money for us
3:17
You know, Wizards of the Coast is an expensive team. There is always going to be content that you can't imagine for 5th edition that would find an audience, but that just isn't worth the development time for Wizards of the Coast
3:28
So for that wolf for that faction inside the company the OGL is a huge boon It allows Wizards of the Coast to make the stuff that they think needs to be made and everything else that they think well this is yeah I sure some people would use this but is it going to do you know 100 units Well then no let a
3:44
third party company handle that. So that's one argument in favor of doing the Steam approach
3:48
But then there's always going to be somebody, usually at the C level and there's somebody in
3:51
the C suite who's going to see a project like Strongholds and Followers or Flea Mortals and
3:56
go, I don't understand. Why did we let them make $2 million on their Kickstarter? We want that
4:02
We want that money. So no, no, you can't do that. And it's literally just down to who's in charge
4:07
today and how long are they in charge for? And when they leave, there'll be a new vice president
4:13
or CEO or whatever. These attitudes and approaches, they rarely last longer than
4:19
the tenure of the people who are pushing them forward. So executives are going to do what
4:23
executive's going to do. They're going to grab for more money and more market share. So has the
4:27
market changed enough that Hasbro would once again try this 4E GSL tactic with a VTT to go along with
4:34
it? The story of, you know, why 3rd had one, why 4th didn't, and why 5th has one again is a very
4:39
interesting one. Namely, that that conflict that Matthew were talking about played out in real time
4:44
within Wizards. The 3rd edition OGL was, I'll editorialize and say wildly successful. It certainly
4:51
created a lot of products. And it also eventually led to a glut, a third-party glut of stuff that
4:55
was just kind of filling shelf space at friendly local game stores. And between that glut and that
5:01
sort of feeling at Hasbro that we were losing out on money, 4th Edition's open license was
5:06
incredibly, incredibly, incredibly restrictive. And so I think it's frankly a miracle that 5th
5:11
Edition has an OGL at all. And because D&D is top dog again, I don't think we'll see one for a
5:17
future edition. I think the only reason why fifth edition got an OGL is because it was building
5:22
itself back up. It had to kind of recover a lot of good faith that fourth edition had, you know
5:27
unintentionally frittered away. The goal of the OGL, which I just was talking about, was the idea
5:32
that, okay, now we don't have to make adventures anymore. Because adventure, you have to have adventures for your RPG, but they're super not profitable because only dungeon masters buy them
5:40
and only some dungeon masters, right? But go look at Wizards of the Coast's slate for those years
5:46
2000 to 2000, whatever. They made a load of adventures and they did it because they just
5:51
didn't think the quality of the third party adventures was that good. Look at a book like the Draconomicon. Like they came out with this gorgeous hardcover book that literally had
5:58
everything you could ever want that was related to dragons in one book. And the utility value of
6:04
that book was through the roof. I was a dungeon master and I was like, damn, that they knocked it
6:08
out of the park. This is the only dragon book you need. And there's literally nothing in that book that a third party could not have done in the third edition era. I don't think there was demand
6:15
for third-party content. I mean, compared the third edition slate of releases to the fifth
6:19
edition slate, they were putting out orders of magnitude more content, official content
6:24
than any one group of players could ever use. We don't need to stock physical shelves anymore
6:29
PDFs and shipping get products right to the consumer. In addition to going straight to
6:33
consumer, the quality of modern third-party designers has been considerably better than
6:39
what happened in third edition, arguably better than what Wizards of the Coast designs and puts
6:44
out for sale. If third-party publishers are doing better work than Wizards of the Coast
6:48
that starts to make Wizards of the Coast look bad, and they're slowly having that good faith
6:52
they gained with 5e eroded. I bet they want to do something about that. They could try to regain
6:57
the faith, or they could cash it out. If they cash it out, they don't have to improve the quality of
7:02
their design they just have to flex their lawyers I guarantee they want to corner and control the market while funneling everyone to their VTT with one D to rule them all It not just a meme anymore it literally is what they are trying to do Sure they have to make the VTT good and people need to love it and not know or not care about all this controversy
7:21
so they must be really confident in that gamble. If you're still not convinced that the VTT is Hasbro's big play, their big investment
7:27
that is everything they are betting on, watch this video from Dungeon Masterpiece, also from last year
7:32
I think you'll see how things have shifted in the industry and how Wizards of the Coast is trying to get a grip on that
7:38
The issue with WotC's in-house VTT development, however, is that for the past half century
7:44
Dungeons and Dragons has been played around a table with friends and family
7:48
and largely without the concept of mobile devices or virtual tabletops existing in the D&D zeitgeist at all
7:54
Therefore, Wizards of the Coast pivoting from a tabletop first to a virtual first business model
8:00
and yes, they're absolutely going to do that. One D&D VTT wouldn't be worth the investment to shareholders as a side project
8:08
Obviously, I'm aware virtual tabletops have existed in the past. Roll20 has been around since 2012, after all
8:14
But never have these platforms had such direct and clear access to players that the One D&D project will enjoy
8:21
It's only a matter of time before the digital sales of D&D content
8:25
will largely be pulled from One Bookshelf's DMs Guild and drive-thru RPG platforms, so as to be shifted to a 1D&D virtual tabletop store
8:34
And as much as indie game developers may dislike this, the jagged pill to swallow here is that
8:41
DriveThruRPG does a huge service to the independent game community by simply exposing 5th edition
8:47
players to these smaller fringe RPGs. But when 5th edition content is no longer available on
8:53
platforms which sell content for these other games, the organic discovery of these smaller
8:58
franchises will become more and more difficult to carry out. And it's not just smaller independent RPGs which will have their discoverability nerfed
9:07
Game writers who use the DM's Guild Content License Agreement to create Faerun, Eberron
9:13
or Ravenloft content, sign a contract between Wizards of the Coast and One Bookshelf, the
9:18
company that owns DM's Guild, to earn 50% of any published content sales while using WotCIP
9:25
while Wizards of the Coast retains rights to the created content. This might be a fine trade-off
9:31
for people who are happy to make adventures for one of D&D's campaign settings in exchange for
9:36
the visibility, but these creators, at the very least, are able to maintain some kind of tangible
9:42
record that can persist over decades. However, adventures programmed in this virtual first
9:48
oriented 1D&D system, instead of creating generation and generation, generation, generation, generation, and during written content will instead be wound up in a non-durable, non-migratable
10:00
system with microtransactions. You just can't make a PDF or a booklet out of a programmed event
10:06
tree. Hasbro is making sure this VTT succeeds and consolidates all D&D into one. It's in the name
10:16
So before I tell you what we can actually do about this, let me just quickly tell you what this means
10:20
for Flute Sloot, for me and Opal. Opal has always been suspicious of Wizards of the Coast, to the
10:25
point where we've wanted to avoid making certain moves in the space. Not that we're huge, but we
10:31
were making plans. Here's what Opal had to say to Oren Cohen when he interviewed us and we were
10:35
talking about, what if Wizards of the Coast just took away our ability to keep making content
10:40
But there always that fear of the fan content policy getting taken away right Like if Dungeons and dragon suddenly decided no you can write about dnd being specific about mechanics or characters or whatever what would we
10:54
do then would we just talk about fantasy in general or would we like make our own system like there's
10:59
always that fear of we don't own wizards of the coast or dnd so what if we can't talk about that
11:06
anymore at some point in 2023 our plans were to start a shopify store that would integrate with
11:11
our YouTube channel, and we can sell PDFs of some of our best work. We've been warming up by making
11:15
things for our patrons on Patreon, and I think we're getting pretty good at it. It's why I've
11:19
been working so hard on this new homebrew class, The Inquisitor, because I wanted to get it out
11:23
before this OGL took effect, but it seems like it might not matter if I rush it out, so maybe I'll
11:28
just wait until I'm happy with it. So those plans are on hold. We're not going to leap headstrong
11:32
into Shopify until we know more. For now, we'll continue covering the game we enjoy and new games
11:37
that we happen to enjoy. We'll keep making videos and keep writing about it. Right now, the core of
11:41
our content is only based on the fan content policy and fair use. From a moral and ethical
11:46
standpoint, we will be considering if we want to give a voice and give publicity to D&D going forward
11:53
so that'll be something that we'll be watching the community for very closely. I might talk more
11:58
about improv principles to help anyone from any TTRPG, and we might make content that's more
12:02
neutral, giving advice in that way. We really don't know, and I'm not making a hard statement
12:06
here. We will still cover some 5e stuff, and I probably still will talk about the 1D and DUAs
12:11
just because they interest me, but, you know, I think we all get that there's a little bit of a
12:15
tainted feeling to it. So in other words, Opal and I, Flute Slute, we're going to be fine. So what
12:20
can we do? I want to talk about Legal Kimchi's YouTube channel for a moment and how he talks
12:24
about geopolitical concepts as well as D&D and TTRPG stuff that interest him because that's his
12:30
hobby. He's also a lawyer by trade. He made a video about revolutions in human history and human
12:35
nature. I'll share some of my takeaways from his video that are my interpretation of it. If you want
12:39
a revolution to get going, you need the nobles, the rich, to be on board. So far, I think we're doing
12:45
good in that because we've been looking to the big TTRPG influencers and businesses to rally
12:51
together, and so far it seems like they are doing that. But the second thing is that revolutions are
12:55
messy. People are often opportunistic in them, and the wealthiest are the ones who drive those
13:01
revolutions in the directions that they want. Not only that, but many revolutions fail to create real
13:06
change. I posit to you that the only way to change Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast mind is to convince
13:12
them that their VTT will be more successful if they change that OGL. Trekkeros made a tweet about
13:18
it that I responded to, completely agree that the VTT is a huge focus, but Zipperon Disney tweeted
13:23
about how his group that he plays with has no idea about what's going on. They don't see the
13:28
controversy. They're just playing their game. It doesn't affect them. Ignorance and indifference will get in the way of this revolution where we try to fight against OGL 1.1. If Hasbro doesn't
13:36
see a way out to make us happy and make themselves financially happy, then they won't budge and they
13:41
will just bank on the next generation with a foggy memory or a fresh mind that doesn't care about all
13:47
this OGL stuff because it's all they ever knew. They'll just see a flashy VTT and a cool game
13:51
they can play that's featured on Stranger Things. They will let nothing get in the way of this VTT
13:55
because they have bet everything on it. So can the VTT even exist properly
13:59
and get them a return on their investment without ruining the industry or vice versa
14:05
I don't know, but we'll see what happens. How do you think this will shake out? How will Wizards of the Coast get out of this
14:09
when they've badoofed things up so hard
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