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Continue readingMonth: February 2023
Wizards of the Coast Took a Step Toward Restoration
Just when I thought we had time to breathe before anything else happened, I got knocked upside the head by perhaps the biggest surprise of them all. After weeks of controversery and a lot of absolutely fucking up their response multiple times, the person representing Wizards of the Coast and Dungeons and Dragons to the Tabletop Roleplaying Game community announced that they were cutting feedback short. In only one week, over 15,000 people responded to the survey they put out about the latest proposed changes to the OGL (this one was version 1.2) and almost ninety percent of responses said they should just go back to the original OGL (that has stood for some twenty-plus years). As a result, rather than continue to let negative sentiment build, they announced they’re not attempting to revoke the OGL, not releasing a new version of it, and are even releasing a bunch of content from their current version of Fifth Edition (titled 5.1 as they work to incorporate a decade of material and prepare it for compatibility with their next major version of the game) under a creative commons license.
Continue readingLooking Toward Future TTRPGs With My Friends
At this point, I’ve talked to almost all of my Dungeons and Dragons groups about the on-going issues with Wizards of the Coast and we’ve determined that we’re collectively moving on to new games. It was nice to hear that the pretty much universal response to the conversation was “I don’t care what we play, I just want to keep playing with this group” since that makes me feel good about the groups I’ve put together over the years. We’ve got a ton of games to play; most people had ideas, suggestions, or an active interest in a game I suggested during my monologue; and I’ve turned two D&D groups into a single Tabletop Roleplaying Game group that I might try expanding to accomodate people who aren’t up for weekly games. I might even do a long day (for me) of TTRPGs by runing two groups in separate parties through the same campaign as allies, rivals, or something else! The sky is the limit!
Continue readingReturning to Animal Crossing New Horizons
As I’ve struggled with falling asleep at night, I’ve returned to one of the games I used to soothe my anxiety during the peak of the pandemic: Animal Crossing. I bought a digital version of the game at some point last year, to ease the disruption I felt during the cold winter evenings when I was forced to leave my cocoon of blankets in order to change the cartridge in my Switch, and then wound up not playing it much more than I had previously. It turns out that even removing the one incredibly minor inconvenience preventing me from playing the game wasn’t enough to get me back into it in a dependable manner. This time, though, I swore it would be different. This time, I needed the calm music and friendly NPCs to soothe my spiraling mind.
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