Dungeons & Dragons 2024 - New core books, new evolution

https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1439-ogl-1-0a-creative-commons

When you give us playtest feedback, we take it seriously.

Already more than 15,000 of you have filled out the survey. Here’s what you said:

  • 88% do not want to publish TTRPG content under OGL 1.2.
  • 90% would have to change some aspect of their business to accommodate OGL 1.2.
  • 89% are dissatisfied with deauthorizing OGL 1.0a.
  • 86% are dissatisfied with the draft VTT policy.
  • 62% are satisfied with including Systems Reference Document (SRD) content in Creative Commons, and the majority of those who were dissatisfied asked for more SRD content in Creative Commons.

These live survey results are clear. You want OGL 1.0a. You want irrevocability. You like Creative Commons.

The feedback is in such high volume and its direction is so plain that we’re acting now.

They do. They’ve said numerous times they are only licensed to produce certain sub-classes and spells and if they wanted a certain one requested they would have to license them.

2e was a consolidation of AD&D rather than a whole new system. It removed some of the ridiculous stuff, made an attempt to balance things a bit better, but it was pretty much the exact same game. You could port a 1e module into 2e with almost no work at all.

3e felt like a much bigger departure mechanically.

Gotta love this news. I may still be secretly wishing for a a couple higher-ups in the company to pay the price for their attempted treachery, but I’m quite satisfied with outcome for the game itself. Rules lawyers, murderhobos, and roleplayers everywhere took on WotC & Hasbro and came out victorious. Honestly, it’s a pretty inspirational thing.

It really is a “best case scenario” outcome for sure. I think a lot of folks are surprised that they walked it all back.

Pedantic nit, but I wish people didn’t treat Creative Commons as one license, when there’s several to choose from, and could’ve let it fairly closed. It doesn’t matter here, but it still matters in general.

Good stuff. My kids are happy about it too. We will still check out pathfinder. Going to pick up that bundle of 5e compatible books on humble bundle too. But now we can resub to dndbeyond.

Hopefully we will get to hear story’s from people inside wotc that fought for this. Im sure that all kinds of pressure was building up in there, investor’s talking crap, hasbro laying off 1000 people because of holiday sales, the movie coming out, people canceling dndbeyond subscriptions, news coverage, pathfinder selling out 8 months worth of inventory. Who knows what their numbers are going to look like in a few months looking back at now. People may still be lose their jobs.

I’m surprised that “rules lawyer” didn’t originate with wargaming since it was common there, and if there was one thing in gaming to make you think a lawyer wrote it, it would be an Avalon Hill game rulebook.

Paizo says the ORC effort will continue regardless.

Also they announced that they sold through 8 months worth of the 2e physical core book in the last week.

I think the difference is that rules lawyering in an Avalon Hill game is the expected scenario, whereas when it comes to a free-form RPG rules are more suggestions than anything for the most part. Gygax and the boys would just make up shit all the time and encouraged people to do the same.

I think rules-lawyering really came into it’s own with 3rd Edition. Because 3rd Edition tried to have rules for literally everything. Thus people became accustomed to the idea of “well it must be in the rules someplace,” versus whipping up something on the spot and calling it good. It didn’t help that odds are it was in the rules someplace. You just had to find it and figure it out.

Of course, now the suspicion is that Hasbro/WotC will eventually abandon 5e so that when 6e/One comes out, they’ll do a 4e and publish it under much more restrictive rules so they can keep that grip on VTT/subscription revenue.

At least people will go into that knowing exactly whats up. If wotc expects 25% of gross on a future project thats dnd one adjacent, you can bake that cost into your plan.

Pretty much. If Hasbro/WotC wants to burn their house down with their next product, I don’t think anyone cares.
It was the part where they tried to Vader everyone and take their shit people had issues with.

And ultimately, the damage is done. No one trusts them or trusts them to not try this again.
All the good will they spent the last decade building is gone and most 3rd Parties are out. They’re wrapping up their D&D stuff and going to other things. Paizo comes out of this stronger than they’ve ever been and D&D will have to compete with dozens of direct competitors they created. Again.

3e had a lot of great improvements - removing THAC0 being the main bullet that desperately needed biting - but was a pretty big departure from a lot of other aspects. It felt like it depended more on balance, and being balanced, so it was always more if a shock when its balance fell apart (and it did).

4e I skipped, mostly as I just wasn’t around any D&D players.

5e seems like it went back towards 2e in a lot of ways, while keeping a lot of simplified language 3e introduced.

I think it’d going to be hard to pry 5e out of the hearts and minds of a lot of players, just as it was with 2e.

Nice, and I was a small part of that. Grabbed a pocket edition of the game masters guide. Super nice book, but a bit thinner than I expected from a GM book. Also grabbed The One Ring expansion and Basic set which is actually super nice and has a set of dice. Already had the base book. And then the physical copies of Ironsworn: Starforged became available again so obviously I grabbed it and the cards and Reference Guide. So I just blew close to $250 total on non-DnD stuff. Good job, WotC!

Yeah, I grabbed Bestiary 2, which I didn’t have yet, as well as the Advanced Player’s Guide.

It’s been a great month for other RPGs, Savage Worlds is sold out as well of a supply that should have lasted month.

5e has alot of internal engineering/balance built, for example all the balancing they did between the spell classes and melee classes so the power curve for both moves in a similar manner.

But your thesis is spot on…it will be hard to pry people out of 5e as its a good system.

4e I skipped. I was still playing 3.5e actually. I’d played a bit of 4e, and did not want to play a tabletop MMRPG. Such a total waste IMO.

I just found out the PF 2e inventor gets both a robot buddy and they can, at 6th level, have that robot buddy fire lightning with a feat that scales with your level.

Honestly, the only thing better is that the Inventor can take power armor instead, which at 6th level can throw out Lightning.

Hmm, so this is how 5e Archery works?