They really haven't. Especially when you take into account the leaked internal email(s) on the subject, it's clear that this is merely postponing things to save their dwindling subscription numbers and hoping that people will forget about this so they can stealthily launch things later.

Even if you ignore the blatant lies (such as WotC wanting to 'solicit feedback' when the only reason this blew up before they launched it is because the new OGL leaked), the language in the WotC statement is pretty telling: They clearly want to cut out anyone else making money off of D&D and ultimately have authority over any independent creator's content. Note the examples they give for who 'the OGL is for', or what will 'remain unaffected by the OGL update', which by the way yes, 'it is coming'.

The creators they're seeking to 'protect themselves from' (LOL) IS Paizo, is Kobold Press, is TLG. They might change the language around or not put numbers into the licence agreement explicitly, but you bet they're still trying to go after anyone making money through third party content.

I especially love the little barb at Paizo about people incorrectly alleging WotC steals the work of independent creators.

Hopefully people will see past the gaslighting and just move to Foundry/Pathfinder 2E.

I'm happy to move away from D&D. i hated 4e and 5e feels so anemic and not nearly as customizable vs 3.5 or Pathfinder. Though i'd rather do something more like Herosystem, BESM, OVA or even ShadowRun (all template or point-buy abilities vs classes)

From what I'm seeing WotC is indeed wavering (the backlash has been larger than expected) -- weighing how much damage implementation of OGL 2.0 will do vs how much money Hasbro will potentially make -- but they have not given up 2.0 implementation altogether. Officially they are gathering information and further crafting 2.0 before ultimate implementation.

The question to me moving forward is...

... how can WotC ever move beyond this? Even if they trashed OGL 2.0 and never implemented it...

... who will trust them (again)?

Sure Hasbro will pay off big players like Critical Role to stay quiet, but will small creators and players trust WotC again?

The RPG world is learning the dire state of corporate-controlled marketplace. This is terrible, but valuable.

The D&D war has just begun.

Yong Yea covered this a bit ago too. Seems they ONLY took notice or made any decisions to change their stance AFTER tens (or hundreds) of thousands of people were canceling their D&D Beyond subscription, so much they hot-patched the service so you couldn't unsubscribe anymore (at least, not easily). They thought the D&D brand was SO BIG that they could wait out people complaining and then scoop up everything. And if the language of 'updating with 30 days notice' or anything like that, they'd prefer to back off enough until everyone signs on and then switch with the original one they had out.

But i think the damage is too great. Hasbro/WotC has slayed their golden goose.

Will check out Young Yea's video!

Yes... I watched that happen. Funny stuff from corporate. Quick, hide the cancel button! But only after they hit the iceberg.

Yes, there are definitely other systems out there (though sadly Shadowrun 6E is a tragedy of its own, thanks Catalyst). But for anyone coming from 5e/D&D and looking for familiar feeling rules and flavour, Pathfinder is probably the closest (and most well supported) you're going to get.

I remember reading Shadowrun (5E or 6E) a while back like 2000 or so, which actually helped me play the genesis game as certain rules explained made me understand how the system worked and hacking was easier to do.

And should note Pathfinder 1E is the version people want to go to for 'similar'. Pathfinder 2E is suppose to be a completely different beast. Apparently levels in 2E is vastly different in strength that goes quadratic in growth. Not that i wouldn't be willing to read and try it out if there's a group.

6E came out in 2019, so it's a pretty recent thing. 5E came out in 2013 and is generally the best edition to play if you want 'modern' Shadowrun (i.e. wireless technology, etc.) with a lot of third party content available.

What happened is that around the time 5e was finalised a lot of the original team behind the game left the company on bad terms (pay disputes, etc.). 6E marks the first major release since then and it is borderline unplayable - they arbitrarily decided the core rulebook was 'too long' so just randomly deleted sections that actually explain game mechanics (which are still referenced in other parts of the book) and since a lot of other systems are copied over from 5E a lot of the new content literally contradicts rules elsewhere in the book.

A lot of the changes with 6E are pretty silly as well, like armour being basically pointless and strength no longer affecting melee weapons (making a feeble elf mage and a street sam troll swing equally hard with a club or sword).


I'd say from a tabletop experience perspective Pathfinder 2E is probably more similar to 5E than Pathfinder 1E, which is very close to D&D 3.5. Yes, there are some differences, like the action economy and lack of some of D&D's lazier mechanics (like advantage) but it's a similar level of streamlined gameplay with generous character death rules and modern QoL conveniences.

So maybe it was 4E... I don't know.

Curious. I know something i really dislike in 5e as a spellcaster in a game i'm playing, concentration and 2nd spell has to be a cantrip...

Concentration is merely a tacked on 'you can only have 1 of these at a time' which is kinda dumb. There's multiple cases where trying to put a protection orb of someone i can't because i'm maintaining a firewall or something. Or just doing 'protectoin against N' and wanting to put it on the party but you got to do it 1 person at a time. With concentration there's no reason to do it on anyone but myself.

Then the cantrip one. Getting quicken lets me cast a fireball as a swift action for a minor cost, but my 'action' can only use a cantrip then. So if i want to do a big hit, i can do fireball... followed by acid splash or something piddly. WTF?? That means the quicken is nearly useless EXCEPT for like spellswords who want to do true-strike and attack in the same round with a weapon or something. Or if you want to shoot two cantrips, though you'd just split the spell instead to hit multiple targets and be more efficient.

Then bonus actions... why not just make them with a casting time of swift or something? in 3.5 you had like 7 types of actions, but most of them time only move/action mattered.

Pathfinder will certainly be the biggest winner in this whole thing (funny that Critical Role began as a Pathfinder show!).

I hear rumblings that a few devs are looking at potentially reworking their already released games toward Paizo's systems. Never heard of that before. Craziness... but understand

Again, what I think is so strange with this WotC scenario...

... game mechanics can't be copyrighted.

Does WotC think their designs and lore are so amazing that it's going to keep players in D&D?

Sure there are novels and some media (not dependent on their system to enjoy), but...

... the fantasy role playing hobby IMO -- with the homebrew ubiquity -- is rather system agnostic.

I asked a question on the boards recently... something akin to "What game is most like D&D?" And there were many different answers....

I love and play Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen. It has many D&D creatures with slight variations and has a D&D feel (to me) what with party creation, etc... but it's not D&D.

I think WotC has made a terrible mistake. Instead of fostering goodwill, they've taken a property that was already ill-defined and tried to run the screws for profit. And with that ill-defined form, it makes it easy for players to simply play the same adventures (or like adventures) in a completely different system / brand.

My guess is that WotC assumed that Pathfinder was based on WotC's copyrighted work, and found out along with the rest of us when Paizo said that Pathfinder 2E doesn't need the OGL. WotC were expecting people be forced into signing this new license, and a lot of backtracking happened after Paizo announced that they've been unencumbered since 2019.

I think concentration is kind of an attempt to make up for most spells being instantly cast in 5E, so you can interrupt casters 'after the fact' or at least stop them from snowballing/layering spells the same way earlier editions allowed. My personal favourite system in D&D was the supplemental rules in AD&D 2E where 'turns' were more simultaneous and casting time sort of worked like delay/initiative.

Once you got the hang of it, it made for interesting play where coordinating and planning out your actions in advance was more of a thing and combat felt more dynamic. Mages were incredibly powerful but at the same time you had to make sure they could actually get their spells off without being interrupted (pretty much taking any amount of damage while casting would do so, having the spell fizzle).

Purely sequential turns with everything being condensed to single action speed massively simplified the game, both in good ways and bad.

The Pathfinder 2E rules have an interesting spin on the modern format, where you get three 'actions' each turn, but different abilities can take up any number of those. It's still simple, but less restrictive than 5E's distinction between actions and bonus actions and what combinations are and aren't allowed.

The problem is rather that WotC and Hasbro are run by people who have no idea about the games they own, to the point of having to look stuff up on Wikipedia during the infamous fireside chat where the ominous 'D&D is undermonetised' comment was first made.

They're executives from backgrounds of working at Amazon or whatnot and at the end of the day, you're just a number on the balance sheet to them. It's really as simple as seeing that there are people making money in the TTRPG space and feeling like there is value to extract/they're owed a slice of the pie (not realising that they already get a larger-than-ever slice thanks to said content). They don't understand what the OGL is, what people are or aren't using that 'belongs' to D&D, they just see lost potential revenue.

It's the same kind of mismanagement that we've seen with their treatment of Magic the Gathering (right after the 30th anniversary debacle, no less). Just unlike MtG they don't actually 'own' tabletop roleplay so as you've said, it's much easier for players to just walk away and keep doing their own thing.

Personally, I prefer not to have (most) spells be interruptible. Thing is, if playing a spellcaster, it can be especially frustrating to have a spell fail this way because, due to the fast that spell casts are limited, you don't get to try again, and that can be quite frustrating. Consider that physical attacks can't be disrupted this way, and, if they're melee attacks, don't have a resource limit, either.

(To counterbalance this, spells should be designed with this in mind.)

Worth noting that:
* Attacking more than once in a round causes later attacks in that round to be penalized.
* Spells typically take 2 actions to cast, so you're not casting multiple spells in the same round, unless you use 1-action spells (or 1-action versions of spells, since some spells (like Heal (which replaces Cure Wounds here) and Magic Missile) can be cast with a variable number of actions, which also affects how powerful the spell is).

So, what happened with MtG?

Yeah, the head of D&D is from MicroSoft... speaks volumes.

I find it amazing WotC undermined the MtG economy and won't fess up to it. If I remember correctly, even investors were up-in-arms.