D&D Beyond Changes

[Unoriginal]

My impression is that D&D orcs drifted closer to WoW/Warhammer orcs over time. Were orcs explicitly green in 1e/2e like they became later?

D&D orcs did drift closer over time, yes, but always remained radically distinct.

1e/2e orcs were not green, even when they weren't pig people, 3.X had them as grey or green depending on the illustrations, 4e has them greenish I think and 5e has them as grey.

[KorvinStarmast]

The problem with Tolkien these days, more people have watched the movies, and half followed social media, have not read Tolkien and fewer still know much more about him than 4 books. I remember reading someone talking about how Tolkien had borrowed from Harry Potter, or some other more modern work once!

Robin Williams had a saying for people like that (back from his early stand up days)

Spoiler: What Robin said about people like that

Show

Morons do vex me!

And Warcraft's inspiration for orcs come from Warhammer's orcs, which are radically non-Tolkien-like and non-D&D-like (although closer to D&D-like than Tolkien-like). I've seen people blame D&D for things Warcraft did with their orcs.

I run into such ill informed folks like that all over the internet, including on GiTP.

Obligatory: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2...-you-like-text

I am with Tycho on this one.

[TaiLiu]

I mean, they might. Personally I don't know anyone who uses Roll20's integrated voice, it's awful and Discord exists. (Similarly, I don't know anyone who uses World of Warcraft's integrated voice, it's awful and Discord exists.) But I'm sure there are folks out there who do.

Right. And having your players rely on a third-party service isn't great.

[Witty Username]

My take is why bother with D&D beyond or Roll 20 when Discord exists.

[ToranIronfinder]

Robin Williams had a saying for people like that (back from his early stand up days)

Spoiler: What Robin said about people like that

Show

Morons do vex me!

I run into such ill informed folks like that all over the internet, including on GiTP.
I am with Tycho on this one.

If I understand Warhammer, which I likely don't, they sound like the mythical servators of deities devoted to destruction in myth, such as the followers of Dionysus. Historically they are reminiscent of various sea raiders and the fears they engendered at various points in human history, with a dash of Nietsche and perhaps Wagner thrown in. I could be wrong, but I always see a bit of Tolkien's experiences in the trenches of the first world war when I read LOTR, particularly their mechanistic bent.

[Aimeryan]

The reality is, until we get official word, the rest is all nonsense and sky is falling.

At first I looked at it this way too, however, objections, or the lack of them, to suggestions can be as important as objecting to something officially announced - more so, perhaps, because there is still time to change.

The Beyond leak appears to be either false or at least not verifiable, which is good. However, we can still react to the 'suggestion'.

[Mastikator]

At first I looked at it this way too, however, objections, or the lack of them, to suggestions can be as important as objecting to something officially announced - more so, perhaps, because there is still time to change.

The Beyond leak appears to be either false or at least not verifiable, which is good. However, we can still react to the 'suggestion'.

Given the dndbeyond subscription for $30/month leak turned out to not be true. And the "wotc don't read D&D1 UA written feedback" leak also turned out not to be true, I sincerely hope people, including me, stop believing in so called leaks from so called confirmed sources.
AFAIK the only actually confirmed bad action from wotc was the OGL1.1 being pushed on 3rd party creators. Which is really bad. But all the other stuff isn't true.

I don't think it's fair to punish wotc for things that aren't true.

[Aimeryan]

Given the dndbeyond subscription for $30/month leak turned out to not be true. And the "wotc don't read D&D1 UA written feedback" leak also turned out not to be true, I sincerely hope people, including me, stop believing in so called leaks from so called confirmed sources.
AFAIK the only actually confirmed bad action from wotc was the OGL1.1 being pushed on 3rd party creators. Which is really bad. But all the other stuff isn't true.

I don't think it's fair to punish wotc for things that aren't true.

The 'don't read' leak is a matter of perspective; the design team don't read the comments - they have dedicated staff that do that. Think community managers. Then they get summarised feedback, much like the numerical results. So, they may get feedback like 'people don't understand the Ardling'. Personally, it kind of matters to me who is doing the reading and how that info is used.

At best, it means that if the majority share a common opinion it will likely make it to the design team. At worst, it means well-thought out and comprehensive comments are largely wasted since it wont be remembered by the time the meeting comes around to pass on the summary. In a value-to-time analysis, you may as well stick to 'tis good', 'tis not good' and 'me don't understand' for your comments.

---

That said, I agree, we should save actual ire for actual facts. However, we can still react to potential paths forwards, we just need to remember they wont necessarily come to pass.

[Psyren]

Right. And having your players rely on a third-party service isn't great.

As someone who has been playing MMOs for 20 years, I don't see this as being particularly onerous or negative. Sometimes that's just the best way to keep things moving.

My take is why bother with D&D beyond or Roll 20 when Discord exists.

Why not both? Or should I say, all three!

Given the dndbeyond subscription for $30/month leak turned out to not be true. And the "wotc don't read D&D1 UA written feedback" leak also turned out not to be true, I sincerely hope people, including me, stop believing in so called leaks from so called confirmed sources.
AFAIK the only actually confirmed bad action from wotc was the OGL1.1 being pushed on 3rd party creators. Which is really bad. But all the other stuff isn't true.

I don't think it's fair to punish wotc for things that aren't true.

I'm just glad the leakers got caught with their trousers around their ankles for a change and now people in the fanbase (who wouldn't have otherwise) are beginning to exercise at least some critical thinking.

[Theodoxus]

I'm just glad the leakers got caught with their trousers around their ankles for a change and now people in the fanbase (who wouldn't have otherwise) are beginning to exercise at least some critical thinking.

Given the dndbeyond subscription for $30/month leak turned out to not be true. And the "wotc don't read D&D1 UA written feedback" leak also turned out not to be true, I sincerely hope people, including me, stop believing in so called leaks from so called confirmed sources.
AFAIK the only actually confirmed bad action from wotc was the OGL1.1 being pushed on 3rd party creators. Which is really bad. But all the other stuff isn't true.

I don't think it's fair to punish wotc for things that aren't true.

This is all a lot of bother over nothing, to be frank. The OGL has zero impact on me directly, and minimally indirectly. While I appreciate a few 3PP works and incorporate their ideas into my campaign world, not having their brilliance because they quit writing for 5E over rumors won't really be an issue for me.

I seriously doubt there are more than a dozen content creators on here that would be directly impacted if the most dire of changes occur. But people sure do love drama. And stirring up drama, and being overly dramatic with their drama. So, not shocked at the plethora of threads, and how deep into the page count they go... but it'd be super duper swell if y'all stopped wringing your hands over every. single. leak. This isn't aging well, and might very well end up killing the company that everyone swears they don't want to happen.

Self fulfilling prophecy, writ large.

[Mastikator]

I'm just glad the leakers got caught with their trousers around their ankles for a change and now people in the fanbase (who wouldn't have otherwise) are beginning to exercise at least some critical thinking.

TBH I kinda doubt it. This circus has turned into a monetized outrage factory and money/views/clicks from doubling down outweighs admitting you were wrong. Every time.
Most of the people who corroborated the fake news? They will stick their heads in the sand, pretend like they never did anything wrong, and then go right back into milking the internet hate machine for profit.

I wish I could say "I called it a month ago, for-profit-fake-news would take over", which BTW I did. But I also stupidly believed the fake news about the $30/month sub cost and nobody reading the UA. Even I, who was employing critical thinking from the start, fell for it. I have no hope for those who didn't.

[KorvinStarmast]

My take is why bother with D&D beyond or Roll 20 when Discord exists.

Isn't Avrae linked to WotC/DDB? I don't have it in my channels, but I think I could fold it in. IIRC, I have to get a sub or Nitro on Discord if I want to use their native die rolling tool.

This isn't aging well, and might very well end up killing the company that everyone swears they don't want to happen.

If the company fails (which may happen is Hasbro spins it off/sells it as the BofA analyst suggested, someone else will but the brand. Happened when TSR failed.

[skyth]

My impression is that D&D orcs drifted closer to WoW/Warhammer orcs over time. Were orcs explicitly green in 1e/2e like they became later?

There used to be a line of AD&D 'action figures' back in the early 80's. If memory serves, the orcs from that had black skin.

Yep, they did.

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/QZEAA...zT/s-l1600.jpg

[Sigreid]

Isn't Avrae linked to WotC/DDB? I don't have it in my channels, but I think I could fold it in. IIRC, I have to get a sub or Nitro on Discord if I want to use their native die rolling tool.
If the company fails (which may happen is Hasbro spins it off/sells it as the BofA analyst suggested, someone else will but the brand. Happened when TSR failed.

I'm OK if they go out of business. Not because of the OGL/subscription stuff but just because it's been too long since they created content I thought was worth buying. If they're not generating content I consider worthwhile, their existence or not really doesn't matter.

[Psyren]

This is all a lot of bother over nothing, to be frank. The OGL has zero impact on me directly, and minimally indirectly. While I appreciate a few 3PP works and incorporate their ideas into my campaign world, not having their brilliance because they quit writing for 5E over rumors won't really be an issue for me.

I seriously doubt there are more than a dozen content creators on here that would be directly impacted if the most dire of changes occur. But people sure do love drama. And stirring up drama, and being overly dramatic with their drama. So, not shocked at the plethora of threads, and how deep into the page count they go... but it'd be super duper swell if y'all stopped wringing your hands over every. single. leak. This isn't aging well, and might very well end up killing the company that everyone swears they don't want to happen.

Self fulfilling prophecy, writ large.

If *WE* stopped wringing our hands over every leak??? Is this aimed at me and Mastikator?

Isn't Avrae linked to WotC/DDB? I don't have it in my channels, but I think I could fold it in. IIRC, I have to get a sub or Nitro on Discord if I want to use their native die rolling tool.

Avrae is and so is Beyond20 (I linked both above.)

[Segev]

I find the moralizing about how horrible it is that everyone (but whoever is posting the moralizing) is so stupid for "believing the leaks" because that means they're "not engaging critical thinking" to sound a lot like it's meant to shame people into backing down and go away. There's no reason for that.

Frankly, insulting each other like that isn't useful. Unless, of course, the goal is to support WotC's efforts to specifically accomplish their true core goals of creating a walled garden and barring all third parties from participating without paying ruinous fees and quelling all competition. Or, alternatively, to cynically "help" WotC self-destruct.

Yes, it's bad when false rumors are taken as gospel. But to say, "Critical thinking would tell you this isn't true!" is just plain incorrect. Critical thinking told me that, for example, the $30/month would be a horribly stupid idea, and I gave analysis as to why. I also gave analysis as to why it wouldn't be unbelievable, given what we've already seen that it might happen. I'm honestly unsure what anybody was supposed to "wait and see" about regarding such things. "WotC is making bad decisions!" is the current problem. People engaging in critical thinking aren't going to STOP pushing back just because some of the things WotC is allegedly doing turn out not to be true. The ones we KNOW they're doing still need pushback.

And it isn't like saying, "WotC, c'mon, don't do this OTHER stupid thing we're hearing you're planning," is in any way slowing down the needed pushback against the bad things we know they're doing.

And it is perfectly reasonable to both understand how utterly foolish a rumored move would be and to still think WotC would do it based on some of the things they're already doing.

"Come on, people, how could you possibly think that Snidely Whiplash would blow up an orphanage to get the deed to the mine? Nobody's that evil!" "Uh, he already tried tying the orphans individually to railroad tracks for the exact same goal."

"Come on, people, how could you possibly think that Victor von Dumkopf would send his men to the moon to mine it for cheese? Everybody knows that isn't what the moon is made of!" "We think that because von Dumkopf has already tried to turn peasants into gold statues by staking them out in the sun after he heard that they would tan 'golden brown.'"

Yes, we agree, the ideas are so dumb that nobody should be trying them. No, we don't agree that it's obvious WotC would therefore not try them; they're already trying things we consider equally foolish.


Also, where is this "confirmation that it is a hoax?" I keep hearing people say that, but the only actual rebuttal to it I have seen is WotC saying, "What? No! We never planned that!" in the same breath they're telling us that they never planned for v 1.1 to be anything but a "draft" and that they wanted the community's feedback on it from the get-go. Which is obviously why they sent it to organizations with NDAs. You know, so they would violate the NDAs and share them with the community.

My take is why bother with D&D beyond or Roll 20 when Discord exists.

Discord is good for gaming, either voice or text, and supports dicebods, but it is not a VTT and doesn't have a VTT, and has no functionality for online character sheets/management. D&D Beyond has the character sheet and book resources, as does roll20, and roll20 also has a VTT.

I tend to use roll20 + Discord when gaming online in a fashion that I would want minis IRL. I often use Discord alone if I am doing Theater of the Mind.

[Cheesegear]

This is all a lot of bother over nothing, to be frank. The OGL has zero impact on me directly, and minimally indirectly. While I appreciate a few 3PP works and incorporate their ideas into my campaign world, not having their brilliance because they quit writing for 5E over rumors won't really be an issue for me.

I'm always fairly annoyed by this statement, because it means one of two things:

1. It's not a problem for me, so therefore it isn't a problem at all, or
2. It's not my problem, so I'm going to sit this one out.

The first is...Asinine.
The second is good people doing nothing - it's good for business! *thumbs up*

but it'd be super duper swell if y'all stopped wringing your hands over every. single. leak.

The whole point of a leak is to wring hands.

The issue is whether or not the leaks are true. And the great things about leaks - always - is that a portion of the community (and the corporation itself) can - and will - apologise for leaks because they aren't "official". Because if the leak - some "leaks" are even intentional, and not leaks at all - is received poorly, the corporation can always backpedal, and run defense and PR spin, about how the leaks wasn't real - even if there's ****loads of evidence and precedent that says that the leaks, in whatever form they take, seem legit.

Corporations want to dismiss leaks. In whatever rationale you can think of. When the leaks happen, and after.

When leaks happen, or if "fake news" happens, you have to run damage control. And you have to run damage control so hard that people forget what they heard previously. Which isn't really possible. A big part of damage control, is saying that leaks weren't real. After all, how can anyone verify a leak if the whistleblower doesn't reveal themselves? And if the whistleblower reveals themselves, what are the consequences?

A leak doesn't have to be fake. It just has to be not verifiable. The whistleblower wont reveal themselves. Therefore the leaks are fake. Prove it otherwise.
It's a very simple defense.

Anyway,

This isn't aging well, and might very well end up killing the company that everyone swears they don't want to happen.

I don't want Dungeons & Dragons to go away. Give me some of that sweet SRD, all day, every day.

I also don't want a large corporation to have a draconian stranglehold on a community-driven game, though. If that lowers the market value of the IP? I'm perfectly happy with that. I was happy with D&D long before the pandemic, I was happy with D&D during the pandemic. But...Something happened...During the pandemic that I think WotC intends to capitalise on (but wont be able to) - The market skyrocketing.

But that skyrocketed market is - and always was - temporary. People need to go back to work. People are cancelling their subscription services to anything that isn't essential (and D&D, assuredly isn't).

I know a bunch of people who cancelled their D&D Beyond subscription. To be clear, they were going to anyway, they were just on the fence as to when they should, and this *waves hand* fell into their lap and up made their mind for them. D&D Beyond isn't necessary for paper play. The only thing I really need are spells and- Oh. Gale Force Nine made spell cards. Yep I'm good.

I've hated D&D Beyond-for-paper play, from the start.

I'm OK if they go out of business. Not because of the OGL/subscription stuff but just because it's been too long since they created content I thought was worth buying. If they're not generating content I consider worthwhile, their existence or not really doesn't matter.

The last book I actually liked was Rime of the Frostmaiden, Sep 2020.
But Cheesegear, Tasha's came out in Nov 2020, after Rime. ...I know what I said.

[Batcathat]

I'm always fairly annoyed by this statement, because it means one of two things:

1. It's not a problem for me, so therefore it isn't a problem at all, or
2. It's not my problem, so I'm going to sit this one out.

The first is...Asinine.
The second is good people doing nothing - it's good for business! *thumbs up*

The world has countless problems, of all shapes and sizes. No one cares about all of them, no one even cares about most of them.

So what's the preferred behavior here? Everyone caring about every problem?

[MarkVIIIMarc]

-$30 a month isn't extreme for the new economy. My bet is they announce a $10 a month advertisement aided plan.

-AI DMs have been near possible for some time if a group was willing to settle for a more video game like experience.

-Are these the same folks still who couldn't figure out how to make money off War At Sea? If so they'll likely mess it all up lol.

[Theodoxus]

My point isn't that WotC may or may not be so dumb to do X Y or Z. My point is that forumites here have ZERO impact on what WotC ultimately does. I guess it's fun to dramatize as Monday morning quarterbacks and "if I ran the zoo" types - but crying foul isn't doing nothing other than stirring up folks who then turn it into a positive feedback loop.

Given that every time something bad get leaked turns out to be a nothingburger just proves my point.

[Mastikator]

If *WE* stopped wringing our hands over every leak??? Is this aimed at me and Mastikator?

If it is directed at me then the criticism well deserved. Looking back at me just believing it is embarrassing.

[stoutstien]

-$30 a month isn't extreme for the new economy. My bet is they announce a $10 a month advertisement aided plan.

-AI DMs have been near possible for some time if a group was willing to settle for a more video game like experience.

-Are these the same folks still who couldn't figure out how to make money off War At Sea? If so they'll likely mess it all up lol.

Foundry has a one time cost of $50 and roll20 has different levels but the top end is $100 or $10 a month. There are a bunch of established options that would make this a hard sell. Even if they introduced a new VTT that was better somehow they would have to find a way to make it the only way to play X online.

Since it's impossible to block 5e material from working on other platforms that means this is only applicable moving forward with a different.

That means even if they offered a free option they aren't likely to bring in a lot of *new* spenders to beyond and will likely drive a sizable portion away in the process.

[Aimeryan]

Given that every time something bad get leaked turns out to be a nothingburger just proves my point.

The OGL leak was correct. The Beyond leak was stated as incorrect by WotC. The facts of Feedback leak was ultimately correct, but the opinions arguable.

For me, thats 2 for 3, with the possibility of the other being covered up. Thats not 'every time'.

[Sigreid]

Foundry has a one time cost of $50 and roll20 has different levels but the top end is $100 or $10 a month. There are a bunch of established options that would make this a hard sell. Even if they introduced a new VTT that was better somehow they would have to find a way to make it the only way to play X online.

Since it's impossible to block 5e material from working on other platforms that means this is only applicable moving forward with a different.

That means even if they offered a free option they aren't likely to bring in a lot of *new* spenders to beyond and will likely drive a sizable portion away in the process.

What they can, and should do if they go ahead with a VTT; is required their writers to format all of their work in a way that easily transposes into their VTT.

[Arkhios]

The last book I actually liked was Rime of the Frostmaiden, Sep 2020.
But Cheesegear, Tasha's came out in Nov 2020, after Rime. ...I know what I said.

Daymn, is it 2 years (and 4 months) already since RotF?! Phew.... time flies!

[Segev]

I am actually pro-IP protection. I am pro-business, in general, though I have my problems with...well, that goes into board-disapproved topics. Suffice it to say that I don't approve of business just because business does it, but I AM pro-people-profiting-on-things-I-like-that-they-produce. This includes big companies like WotC.

I have both a principled and a pragmatic reason for this: Principled, in that I think people deserve to be paid for what they do, regardless of how much they already have; pragmatic, in that if they make money doing what I like them doing, they'll do more of it!

If it truly were a problem that WotC was going to lose money due to others "sniping" their customers with things that aren't WotC-profiting but consume the money that otherwise would've gone to WotC, then I would reluctantly be agreeing that something needs to be done, and trying to help them figure out how to handle it. But that isn't what's going on, here. Everything that WotC would best be able to do to monetize more of D&D has to do with the IP, not with the SRD. Unless and except if they're looking at the actual game design as something they want to dictate, and don't like the idea that they might have to actually consider the quality of the game and the appeal to their customers. That is, if they fear that D&D Beyond will not be able to compete with other products, because they don't want to invest what it would take to make it do so, so they're going to try to quell the ability of other products to exist.

That's not good for anybody. Honestly, not even WotC, because they literally cannot succeed at forcing people to play with D&D Beyond. It has to be able to provide services worth what they ask. And if it does, then competition won't hurt it, because they'll be able to iterate off of what competitors do to improve their own features.

[stoutstien]

What they can, and should do if they go ahead with a VTT; is required their writers to format all of their work in a way that easily transposes into their VTT.

Which will probably make any material they produce even poorer quality than it is now (IMO at least). The things that make TTRPGs great are also the things that prevent easy translation into media such as VTT.

The push for for Dnd One now is probably for this very reason.
While they have some good ideas here or there, as a whole so far it looks like a bland pile of more blandness.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Which will probably make any material they produce even poorer quality than it is now (IMO at least). The things that make TTRPGs great are also the things that prevent easy translation into media such as VTT.

The push for for Dnd One now is probably for this very reason.
While they have some good ideas here or there, as a whole so far it looks like a bland pile of more blandness.

Strong agree with all of this. OneD&D seems to be going down the "make it more computer-implementable" route at the expense of anything else. Along with dumping a bunch of bland-sauce over everything.

[Raven777]

The 'don't read' leak is a matter of perspective; the design team don't read the comments - they have dedicated staff that do that.

They can have even better than that if they want: they can have AI do the crunch on qualitative longform feedback. For exemple, Behaviour Interactive (the Dead by Daylight studio) developed an in-house natural language processing system to parse long form player tickets or survey feedback. It reduces text to keywords and valence, and then you can do regular statistics on the frequency and positive or negative slant of any given topic. They presented it at MIGS2022 in Montreal last fall (I was in the room), it was really clever.

That does not make them evil or disconnected! Humans still do select and read some player feedback. But when you get thousand of individual takes of it, including some hundred words essays, feedback becomes "big data", and you have to wrangle it somehow. The useful insight from knowing feedback is gonna be more and more machine processed as AI gains prevalence, is that as a user you know the most effective use of your time is to write short feedback with strong topical and emotional keywords. Essay-length "gamer rants" are a poor use of your energy unless you can literally drop it on a developer's desk.

[Sigreid]

Which will probably make any material they produce even poorer quality than it is now (IMO at least). The things that make TTRPGs great are also the things that prevent easy translation into media such as VTT.

The push for for Dnd One now is probably for this very reason.
While they have some good ideas here or there, as a whole so far it looks like a bland pile of more blandness.

I was thinking more a table layout and format convention to make it easy for the VTT to extract damage modifiers, buffs etc. Possibly by requiring metatags.