When WotC finally backed down and dual-licensed the SRD OGL 1.0a and Creative Commons, I decided to end my boycott. They were cooperating with the community's demands. (Finally.)
And then they sent the Pinkertons after one of their MTG customers.
So, fuck Hasbro. (Hasbro owns WotC.) I'm not giving them another dime. I DM a 5e game, but I'm not purchasing anything 5e again.
I have less investment in the Unity situation, but fuck those assholes too.
I highly recommend Pathfinder 2e if you want something else. I think the action system is a lot of fun and gives ample room for roleplaying. Having played both, I don't think I'll ever go back to 5e
The action system is definitely way better. It's simultaneously simpler and more flexible. No confusion about whether something is an action vs bonus action (and how movement ties in). You just have multiple action units and abilities have a written number of action units they use (and some are variable).
I also like how Pathfinder approaches levels. Proficiency bonuses add your character level in, so higher level characters feel much more powerful at what they're supposed to be good at.
And critical success/failure is neat. You need 10 over/under DC to have a crit success/failure respectively, but nat 20/1 moves you up a class. If you're 10 over DC, a nat 1 becomes a normal success. Plus many abilities have modifiers on crits success/fail.
I played Pathfinder (1e) before I played Dnd 5e. It's more complicated, but even then it was the better system. From what I've seen of 2e it's even better. 5e is easier for new players and has name recognition though. I hope more people switch to Pathfinder evenentually. They deserve it far more.
Can't agree with this more.
Our longtime TTRPG group just started a PF2E campaign and it's been a whole lot of fun!
There are so many options available to you - everything feels really fresh and new, while still being familiar. The action economy especially feels so much better compared to 5e.
I just don't know why you would forgive a corporate entity, especially one that already tried to fuck you over, on some promise they'll never do it again?
ORC all the way
My thought process for deciding to end my boycott (before doubling back down on my boycott) was that the point of a boycott was to get a company to change its behavior. They changed their behavior and continuing to punish them would eliminate any reason they had to continue to cooperate with the community.
Roughly speaking, every company is evil. But there are companies I boycott and companies I don't. The difference is (and I don't think this is an unreasonable way to think of it) that some boycotts have a chance of making a difference and some don't. (And even if changing behavior isn't likely, putting a company out of business or reducing it to perpetual irrelevance can be a very positive difference.)
The OGL1.1 boycott did make a positive difference. 5e is safer than it was before. ORC is a thing. The better-licensed Pathfinder 2e got a huge bump in popularity.
In short, I guess I feel justified in having ended (and reestablished) my boycott. That said, while I was decided not to boycott any more, I didn't actually buy anything from or otherwise patronize Hasbro. So in practice, I have been boycotting consistently since the OGL1.1 BS went down.
I never bought anything official anyways. Always used my own models and stuff not form WoTC and torrented all the books I wanted. Switched to Pathfinder when the situation started since even that felt like supporting them.
WotC "just" fucked over their free advertising via their open license. Unity fucked over their entire client base and poisoned any future trust they try to establish with future clients. It's like the CEO saw WotC and just went "Hold my golden parachute".
Not to mention that hasbro got BTFOd so fucking hard that not only did they reverse course on OGL 2.0, they turned it into an ironclad open license for creators to do whatever the hell they wanted forever AND threw a ton of monsters and game mechanics into creative fucking commons. Granted, the damage is done and paizo had to print like the wind to keep up with demand for pathfinder books, but that's a proper backtrack.
So if unity is truly following their footsteps, all they gotta do is make the base tier absolutely free forever and also pay the devs for every install.
Hasbro's problem was confusing the Excel sheet with reality because the management doesn't have a single clue about the product. Once the Excel sheet was modified to be closer to reality by including some representation of the user base's trust, they worked with their new reality to maximize the long term profits.
Unity, on the other hand, adopted the contempt for their own customers philosophy from EA, which requires them to have an adversarial relationship with them. Riccitiello probably can't even sleep properly at night knowing that his customers aren't basically working for him.
Considering they sent the literal Pinkertons after someone, I wouldn't give hasbro much credit about anything. People can do whatever they like, but in my circle of 10 or so ttrpg players, we've moved to other games.
It's more like the ex-CEO of EA thought "how can I make Unity more like EA"?
And every other company will try the same thing until people get apathetic and the backlash becomes manageable, then more companies will follow suit because theres money to made until eventually its just the norm and most people dont give a shit or actively defend it because "They're a business, they need to make money somehow!!!!" or some other apologist bullshit.
Its the same way we went from Bethesda Horse armour being a big deal that people pushed back against, to the same type of shitty DLC being the expected industry norm now.
I really hate those apologetic corp shills with a passion. Like how with OW2, when they introduced anextremely expensive shop system and a BP you can't earn in game (after buying OW1 for money). Then they crawl out of their little holes and proclaiming "last time I checked OW2 is f2p, why do you all complain so much???" Ugh...
WOOHOO another Shen comic! That dude makes a ton of great comics.
here's the source for this one.
there's also Live With Yourself which is mostly run by his associate David Catman, but still a fun read.
Thanks for the source, here are the RSS feeds:
If you just want to make games, Unity doesn't want you as a customer.
They spent around a billion dollars on IronSource, a company who's entire business model is telling devs "why don't you make your game really unfun and grindy and fill it with funbucks?" Apparently that idea is worth a billion dollars.
They just want shitty mobile games, and for that, they can fuck off.
It's a real shame, because Unity had built itself a niche among indie devs trying to get their games on PC and consoles. Some of my favourite games in the last few years have been made in Unity, from The Outer Wilds to Death's Door.
"Customer feedback and engagement numbers have never been this good!"
Before WotC there was Bethesda trying to make a profit on community mods. These companies love to recycle bad ideas.
Like microtransactions, they just need a single win to get all of them through the door forever. The horse armor wasn’t the first microtransaction, but it was what normalized it in people’s mind, and the fight was lost for customers.
What did Wizards of the Coast do?
Something similar to Unity, a draft version OGL 1.1 was leaked and had a lot of bullshit in it. companies that utilized the OGL to publish stuff related to dnd would have to pay a subscription of 25% if they made more than $750k per year, the right for wotc to utilize anything created on the OGL for any purpose, a ban on virtual recreations of dnd, and removing the ability to publish on the previous OGL version.
It ended with Hasbro completely backing down and Paizo starting the process to create a decentralized license called ORC that served the same purpose of OGL 1, with more control for creative companies
Don't forget Hasbro also sent the actual Pinkerton company after a MTG content creator
Edit: And keep in mind that everyone and their dog who based their livelihood on dnd diversified their portfolio. People are making new games, publishing different types of content, playing other games, etc. WOTC and Hasbro have killed people's trust in them.
Something like wanting to change the D&D licensing so that they can share in any profits made by 3rd parties, anyone making user content, adventures, etc.
Thanks for the new response pic, Shen Comix! <3 (top-right panel)
Reddit said they liked how Musk was operating Twitter
It’s much easier to be 2nd to implement anti-user policies than it is to be 1st
