One of the things in the background of my life last week (mostly because I didn’t have the time or emotional capacity for it to be anything else until last Friday) was the on-going destruction of the reputation of Wizards of the Coast in the tabletop gaming community. For those of you unaware, you can read the full context here. In short, though, Wizards of the Coast was planning to replace something called the Open Gaming License (or OGL) with an updated version full of incredibly shitty terms. In addition to disallowing anything like a Virtual TableTop (VTT) or most media related to Dungeons and Dragons (like podcasts or youtube videos), this verion also laid claim to anything produced by a 3rd party and 25% of any revenue produced over $750,000 (which would bankrupt most companies in that position). The version that existed for over two decades, that has allowed so many people to make a career out of third party content creation, was going to be replaced by what was a shameless cashgrab by people only interested in increasing their own company’s revenue rather than continuing to foster the tabletop gaming communities that exist in and around Dungeons and Dragons.
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