January 2023 was a rough year for the TTRPG industry. 5e developers found ourselves dividing our time between protesting and planning for a nebulous future. When WotC finally waved the CC-BY white flag, we celebrated like the end of Return of the Jedi. But experience doesn’t make you wiser. It makes you older. Learning from experience makes you wiser. So how can we gain XP from this experience to level up?

D&D is HUGE

If this had happened fifteen years ago, nobody would have noticed, and nobody would have cared. In fact, it did when WotC released D&D 4th Edition with a GSL instead of an OGL in 2008. That led to the release of Pathfinder. But nobody outside the TTRPG community had any idea. But thanks to the success of Fifth Edition, D&D has firmly entrenched itself in the mainstream consciousness. As a result, mainstream news and financial analysts took notice, and the final nail in the OGL 1.2 coffin may have come from Alta Fox Capital, Hasbro’s largest investors, who recognize the size and value of the fanbase. The upcoming movie and TV show could never have had their big budgets without the size of the 5e fanbase. We are legion.

D&D ≠ WotC

I’ve said it often. Mike Shae says it so often, he should trademark it. And it’s 100% true. WotC isn’t D&D. WotC owns the D&D trademark, but they don’t own the game. D&D is more than a fancy ampersand — it’s a global community of 50 million TTRPG players who play 5e more than anything else, but we also play many other systems. But even in the 5e community, we don’t need WotC. We can either start with the free Basic Rules or another 5e-based game and develop our own content for it or purchase high quality content from over 8500 options.

But even at the height of these shenanigans, we knew that they couldn’t take our books away, and no matter what changes they make in the future, we’ll just keep on playing what we want to play. And if they intend to replace book releases with microtransaction-based digital content and slap the ampersand on it, they can do that, but they don’t get to define what D&D is. Every table, whether stone, formica, or VTT, decides what D&D is for them, even if there’s no ampersand to be found on any of your resources. And you don’t have to buy their latest products or update to new editions if you don’t want to!

The players are heroes too, not just the characters

When the community learned of the plot to wipe out other 5e creators, we rolled initiative. In 8 hours, a Discord assembling to defend the OGL had 500 members, and at its peak, it had about 1700 sharing information, writing letters to Hasbro, WotC, the EFF, the FTC, and more. 77,407 people signed a petition. YouTube and every social media platform came alive with reports and shared information so powerful, it crashed D&D Beyond with a flood of 40,000 unsubscriptions. OSR and 5e fans set aside their edition preferences to take up arms together. We fought. We fought hard. It was exhausting. But we won. You don’t just play a hero. You are a hero. Don’t ever think you’re not.

Trust the action economy

According to the cliché, it’s always darkest right before the dawn, and in this case, that was true. Many believed the battle was lost, and we all planned our contingencies, when WotC suddenly dropped their treasure and fled. They made the mistake of trying to slip legal shenanigans past Rules Lawyers, a group of people who scrutinize word usage as a hobby. They presented a seemingly unstoppable force to people who strategize ways to overcome impossible odds for a living.

We challenge the schemes of dragons and archdevils for fun! WotC, did you really think you were more powerful than that?!

No single player had the power to defeat this BBEG ourselves. But the most powerful among us, bards like Linda Codega, Ginny Di, and Indestructoboy, were only as powerful as those they inspired. The true power came from the action economy, the 5e principle that multiple weaker actors can defeat a more powerful being based on the number of actions each can take in a given round, which is why multiple monsters multiply the XP in an encounter. We continued to act while they struggled to move.

5e is the final version of D&D

OneD&D was already touted as the final unifying version of D&D, which seems like a bold claim, but this event may have solidified that, yet not in the way WotC intended. Instead of unifying around WotC products, including their online strategy, by releasing SRD 5.1 into Creative Commons, an entire industry of creators can keep making 5e content forever, modifying, tweaking, expanding, or pantomiming, and while system overhauls are inevitable, the 5e flywheel’s momentum is seemingly unstoppable.

Unless we have a reason to unite against it.

Last week, I wrote letters to Chris Cocks, CEO of Hasbro, Dan Rawson, VP of D&D at Wizards of the Coast, and via the Wizards of the Coast support form.

After taking some time to process and listen to others about their announcement Friday, I wrote this follow-up message via the support form.

Hello. Please send this message to the extent of your ability to those in charge of making decisions regarding the future of the OGL, and thank-you for the extra work you have to do because of all this:

Hi, I’m a dad and a commercial OGL content creator dedicated to using TTRPGs (usually 5e so far) to help you make lives better.

This weekend, I spent a lot of time thinking about the future of the OGL and our company’s ability to continue our work to improve disability inclusion and accessibility at the tabletop and the rest of the world. And I worried about what it meant for my ability to continue to feed my disabled children.

As our family was cleaning the house over the weekend, I was having trouble keeping my kids on task, and the combined stress eventually led to me yelling at my kids. Especially given my wife’s sensitivity to loud noises, yelling only made things worse.

So I sat down, had a cup of tea and a cookie, and apologized to my family. I could’ve made excuses and claimed I wasn’t really yelling or justified my behavior, but none of those would make things better. My family already knew how I was acting and that it was hurting our relationship. The only way to reconcile was for me to apologize.

I’ve been happily married for 28 years, so I can assure you that a sincere apology goes a lot further than excuses to restore relationships, especially when I demonstrate sincere contrition and change my behavior.

You have hurt the D&D community worse than any past action in its history.

Lies won’t fix things. Don’t say you were looking for community feedback by sending OGL 1.1 to 20 people under NDA. Don’t say you’re concerned about D&D NFTs when the OGL already prohibited that, but you’ve announced Power Rangers NFTs. Don’t say you’re trying to keep people from producing harmful D&D content after the Hadozee incident and an updated OGL that forbids producing content with accessibility technology. Don’t say we all won when truly, we all lost. The whole world, including your company’s future, is worse off due to your actions.

But speaking of the Hadozee incident, pay attention to what happened. You apologized sincerely. You changed the offensive content. You implemented policies to keep it from happening again. And while you broke our trust, we’re quick to forgive when we believe that you realize the harm you’ve caused. Forgiveness isn’t saying you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s specifically acknowledging that harm was done but allowing the relationship to continue in spite of that harm.

While this is worse, if you follow the same pattern you did last time, while thousands are understandably too hurt to come back, many of us will. But you need to admit the harm you caused if you want that to happen, nothing like Friday’s announcement.

You need to keep the promise you made in the OGL FAQ that was on your website and leave it alone or improve it to show you care about your fan base — add to the SRD, but the only change added to the OGL should be the word, “Irrevocable,” to show us you mean it and learned from this. That would be the policy change to keep this from happening again.

That would show that you care about our relationship even if only as customer and creator.

We as a community have a deep connection to our relationship with D&D, and we hope you want to be a part of that. But you need to show us that you actually care about D&D if you expect to be part of this relationship. We’re trying to make it the best it can be. We hope you will too.

Hopefully but skeptically,

Dale Critchley

Wyrmworks Publishing

If you’re willing to communicate your concerns to Hasbro/WotC, you can use the same feedback form.

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to sign the OpenDnD Petition. While you’re at it, Ryan Dancey, the crafter of the original OGL, has written a petition of his own that’s worthy of consideration. You can read and sign it here.

DM: As you open the door, a thick green gas billows out but does not dissipate.

Wizard: I cast Gust of Wind to dissipate the gas.

DM: Nothing happens. The feeling you normally experience when you cast a spell is gone. As you reach out to manipulate the Weave, you sense its complete absence, like a magical vacuum. As the gas swirls around you, you notice four bipedal silhouettes approaching quickly. In a moment, their long pointed ears, furry bodies, and grins brimming with confidence and menace take shape as they raise their morning stars to attack. Roll initiative….

Barbarian: I rage and draw their attention. Let’s see how well those morning stars match my ax!

Bard: I give Bardic Inspiration to the rogue

Rogue: I use the cover of the mist to hide and prepare for a snaeak attack.

Wizard: I…use my dagger, I guess.

The executives at Hasbro have taken the unconscionable initiative to attempt to eliminate their perceived competition, believing that they can play the Dungeons & Dragons game and everything it entails by themselves. It’s not going well. But why are standard corporate monetization strategies failing so catastrophically?

Hasbro sees D&D primarily for its intellectual property, as if people will pay just as much for the D&D ampersand on anything as the Nike Swoosh®. But D&D was never about the brand. Yes, its recognition holds substantial power in the industry, but its power is ultimately rooted in its core concept. From the free Basic Rules:

There’s no winning and losing in the Dungeons & Dragons game—at least, not the way those terms are usually understood. Together, the DM and the players create an exciting story of bold adventurers who confront deadly perils. Sometimes an adventurer might come to a grisly end, torn apart by ferocious monsters or done in by a nefarious villain. Even so, the other adventurers can search for powerful magic to revive their fallen comrade, or the player might choose to create a new character to carry on. The group might fail to complete an adventure successfully, but if everyone had a good time and created a memorable story, they all win.

Basic Rules, p. 3

The TTRPG industry is unlike any I’ve ever experienced in a commercial industry, because it functions under this same principle. We work together. We don’t compete with each other. Cross-promotion is the single most effective form of marketing, as we show others the cool things our “competition” makes, help each other, share tips, and buy and enjoy each other’s products. We recognize that we are all one big adventuring party.

Because Hasbro doesn’t understand its own product, its executives also don’t understand how to market it. They set themselves up as competition in a non-competitive space, thus establishing themselves as the Big Bad Evil Guy (BBEG), at which point an entire industry and their fans who spend their whole lives developing creative solutions to every insurmountable problem imaginable all roll initiative. We use our diverse skills from every direction and with unique approaches. The third party publishing community fills in the gaps of unique products for niche needs that a large company like Wizards can’t meet due to the difference in scale. It takes an entire diverse party to succeed at this game, and the action economy, the power of multiple smaller actions against one larger action, will be their undoing.

But more than that, by setting themselves up as our adversaries, they’re missing the point that this game is all about fun. It’s about community. It’s about helping each other out of jams (or oozes…). It’s about taking those lessons and applying them to real life, where we don’t just find friends, but staunch allies. And it’s that fulfillment that keeps bringing us back for more.

What a miserable life to sit alone in your castle as a decaying lich, desperately trying to protect an ampersand-shaped soul cage, while allies fight together and celebrate their victories with songs, drinks, and experience points! Even as they destroy themselves and attempt to destroy everyone around them, I can’t help but pity whatever motivates that kind of desperation. As angry as I am that they’ve chosen to deliberately remove the promises associated with the OGL from their website so they could lie about its purpose to betray us, I wish they would go down to their closest FLGS, join in a few games, and experience the true magic of D&D. Maybe the oathbreaker could be redeemed. But until then, we reluctantly raise arms, use memes of Bardic Inspiration to build each other up, and call for the healers to restore those with exhaustion, not until they declare a winner to try to call off the fight, but until the battle is truly won.