Monday, January 16, 2023

Done shot themselves in the marketing.

 Wow it's been a rather interesting week or so in TTRPG. I'm sure almost anyone who'd read this is aware of the "breaking" news in regard to WoTC and TTRPG publishers. WoTC got too greedy too openly, they could have kept the OGL in place and retained their walled off garden and filled it with micro-transactions (and likely still will) leaving the largest competitors working for crumbs and still supporting their business but they have lost a whole lot of brand loyalty and lit a fire under publishers to move on.  

Some people chalk this up to the usual crankiness and resistance whenever a brand announces forthcoming changes and while there may indeed be some of that this is far more worse than anything I have seen before. Third party publishers are not standing around and waiting for what WoTC is doing next, it's already reached down to tiny contributors like me: I've already approved a publisher re-releasing content I wrote that they had published under the OGL so they may release it under a newer license. We are all seeing changes that would have taken months maybe a year or more happening at a pace a large business is unlikely structured to deal well with at all. 

Wizards of the Coast does indeed own the trademark and the specific IP but they have no real capacity to change how we play the games we like, how we talk about the games we like, and where we play the games we like. About the only think WoTC can really do is make sure we don't provide them with funds to purchase what they wish to sell. At this point DND is forever regardless of who owns the trademark, and it's future will be decided by the fan-base that has allowed business to build what it has.

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