There’s a lot of churn and chop in the TTRPG industry thanks to Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro trying to change the foundation of the Open Game License. There’s a lot of coverage on lots of web sites about this. If you need more background, check out the Youtuber DndShorts at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4kGMsZSdbY

My opinion:

The game Dungeons and Dragons has been in a toilet spiral since the fourth edition and WotC is still trying to migrate the TTRPG game to a video-game style of play. 5e was an attempt to stifle Paizo and other companies who were trying to fill the space of table top, paper and pencil, printed book games. Now in the 2020s WotC thinks they can try this again with software (video-game engine VTT with AI DMs) and XboxLive/PSN style subscription fee for pdf over printed books. In order to make this transition complete WotC/Hasbro needs to make the traditional TTRPG market place undesirable and that means doing away with 3rd party content and making home-brew content difficult to use in the new setting.

My prediction:

How will this all play out? Badly for Hasbro. There is already an entire industry pushing out solo role playing experiences using video-game engines. There’s another entire industry pushing out team based playing experiences. Assassin’s Creed to Horizon Zero Dawn, Grand Theft Auto to World of Warcraft. In fact some of those video games produce paper and pencil TTRPGs. Why make a TTRPG out of Sea of Thieves or add a Conan Exiles source book to the Conan TTRPG?

Because people WANT to sit around a table (physically or virtually) with other people and IMAGINE. They want to tell their own stories using an intellectual property that they love.

In Conan Exiles you cannot talk to the dragons on the map. They just bite you. Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a chat with them and find out why they sit in ruins at a bottom of a hole in the desert surrounded by undead hyenas? Perhaps they are lonely and doubtless annoyed with all the yowling dogs.

The silver lining

Just like the birth of Paizo during the 4e idiocy we will see a birth of something new as a result of this OGL/One D&D idiocy. Some of the vendors who are committed to printed books and paper and pencil will gain market share. Games that should be household names (7th Sea, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Savage Worlds, etc) will fill the void left when DnD becomes as half-assed quasi-MMO with no player agency and stifling IP rules and the players just wander off.

That’s WotC/Hasbro’s silver lining here. The public outcry is a gift. If they had just rolled out One DnD they have just faded into obscurity with other niche MMOs. WotC/Hasbro here’s your chance not to suck…