I had quite a bit of input from yesterday's post (a huge thanks to all of you who responded) and I've got a bit of a hybrid between both options.
Below are an Orc and an Orc Shaman so I could showcase powers.
Further input is greatly appreciated.
I had quite a bit of input from yesterday's post (a huge thanks to all of you who responded) and I've got a bit of a hybrid between both options.
Below are an Orc and an Orc Shaman so I could showcase powers.
Further input is greatly appreciated.
Here is an Orc Warrior
Options A
Parry 6; Toughness 9 (3 chain); Fighting d8 (battle axe d10+d8); Shooting d6 (bow 2d6); Athletics d8; Pace 6; Ag d6; Sm d6; Sp d6; St d10; Vi d8; Skills Intimidation d6, Notice d6, Survival d8; Edges Brute, Mighty Blow
Option B
Parry 6
Toughness 9 (3 chain)
Fighting d8 (battle axe d10+d8)
Shooting d6 (bow 2d6)
Athletics d8
Pace 6;
Ag d6; Sm d6; Sp d6; St d10; Vi d8;
Skills Intimidation d6, Notice d6, Survival d8;
Edges Brute, Mighty Blow
I've taken some time as a store owner, a blogger, and a fan to really look hard at what WotC has done to the rest of the industry in the past month and I've reached a decision on how I plan to go forward this year.
As a store owner, I've restocked Savage Worlds, Deadlands, Savage Pathfinder, Savage Rifts, Numenera, The Cypher System, GURPS, Complete Champions, Call of Cthulhu 7E, Fallout 2d20, RuneQuest, Shadow of the Demon Lord, Transformers RPG, Starfinder, Pathfinder 2E, Modern AGE, Scion 2E, and Vampire: the Masquerade. Sales have been stronger than expected and I'm glad. I won't lie, I still stock the full line of DnD 5E but I am only giving it about 10% of the face-out space it occupied before this whole fiasco. I am not telling anyone to abandon 5E, but if someone asks me about the OGL situation I will answer them with my personal opinion while emphasizing that is all it is a personal opinion. 5E is a very good game and you should play what you like. I hope the right people are put in charge of WotC and I hope they stick to the plans they announced last week, but we'll see.
As a blogger I'm going to switch over to Savage Worlds and The Cypher System for the time being. Maybe adopt some "Old School" ideas for both. I've published for both of them before so maybe I'll do that again. Either way, I'm taking a break from the OGL and DnD. I mean how many "skill systems" or "thief classes" can I keep coming up with? Most of its been covered at least as well as I have.
As a fan, I don't want to say I'll never try One DnD or I'll never run DnD again, but I was bored with it and this just gives me an excuse to move on. I'm in a Curse of Strahd campaign and another of our DMs is planning a City of Brass campaign so I'm sure we'll be playing it. We like 5E and will always have it to use if 1DnD isn't our jam. I'm sure at some point I will miss it and maybe I'll go back? At the same time, I think Shadow of the Demon Lord is a better game overall and maybe I'll just use it for dungeon fantasy since I like horror in all of the games I run and really love the "Old World" Warhammer vibe it has.
I am very interested in Kobold Press' Black Flag and will playtest it. In my opinion, Kobold and other 3rd party 5E publishers have been doing the coolest stuff for the last couple of years. Their monster books are used by all of the DMs in our group. I hope what they do is just as cool.
I don't think WotC will miss me as a fan or a blogger and they are a large part of my professional life so they will continue to deal with me. At the same time, I rarely deal with anyone at WotC and have great reps at several distributors that make my life easy. I would like Hasbro and WotC to learn from this situation but I doubt they will. Lets be honest, if the new DnD movie is a hit and the playtest numbers for 1DnD aren't too low they will eventually segment their section of the industry, a substantial segment, behind some pay wall. Its inevitable in my opinion.
I will add that I really enjoyed the most recent trailer for the new DnD film and will probably see it within the first 2 weeks of release. I hope it's fun because DnD is fun. Maybe if DnD is successful we will get a Deadlands movie! Right? I can't be the own one who wants it, right? Right?
As a vanity publisher and someone who loves the DIY nature of the OSR this new OGL 1.1 debacle has gotten me down quite a bit. If you are looking for alternatives to DnD or an OSR clone might I suggest Monte Cook Games' Cypher System which powers Numenera, The Strange, The Stars Are Fire, Ptolus, Planebreaker, etc.
I've always been a guy who loves lots of RPGs and you never know when you might find your next favorite game.
Here is an 8 minute YouTube video going over the basics of the system.
The Mercenary Class is a combination of a fighter and a thief in the tradition of Conan and at 2nd Level you gain the Crude Medic ability: As an Action, heal yourself or one creature within 5 feet using old bandages smeared with a salve. Gain HP equal to 1d6 + your Mercenary level. Some of their abilities use a mechanic powered by Fortune that requires you to roll a d6 and on a 1 the ability fails and you take damage equal to 3 x your Mercenary Level.
By level 20 a Mercenary gains 7 new Actions, 6 new Bonus Actions, and 5 new Reactions and all of the other classes, the Necromancer, Occultist (think Hellboy, Simon Belmont, or John Constantine), and the Spyder (assassin/thief), gain similar mechanical abilities.
Here are a few examples:
For the Necromancer at Level 6: Animate Greater Thralls which is powered by their Mortis mechanic: As an Action, choose any dead creature that is Medium or smaller within 60 feet and animate it as a Undead version of its original form. Use the Ghost stat block for this thrall. It obeys you and acts on your turn. It endures until you dismiss it or it is destroyed. A destroyed thrall cannot be animated again. At any one time, you can have a maximum number of ghastly thralls equal to half your Int modifier rounded up. Since it uses Mortis that means you roll 1d6 and on a 1 you take damage.
Here is an example of an Occultist ability at Level 2 called Bell of Law and it is powered by the Doom mechanic: As a Bonus Action, ring this small copper bell. All creatures within 60 feet that can hear suffer Psychic damage equal to 1d6 + your Occultist level. Lawful creatures are immune to this damage. Doom works the same way as Fortune and Mortis.
For the Spyder at Level 5 they gain the Metal Hair ability: You infuse your own hair with the iron in your blood. This natural helmet makes you immune to Charm effects and Psychic damage. This effect works no matter how short you cut (or shave) your hair. Their equivalent to Fortune and the others is Spyder.
These classes pair old school pulp archetypes with 5E's modern mechanics as full classes but they lack of sub-classes and I don’t mind that choice as much as I thought I would. I’ve never complained about sub-classes but its a mechanic I’ve grown bored of and would happily run a game using just these Essential Classes. I’m going to add that Joseph is very clear that these classes aren't balanced against the traditional classes and that was not one of his design goals.
I hope we see more of these and I'm trying to find time to see them in play with one of his many great adventures.
I heartily recommend this or any other Dungeon Age product.
First, we don't know if the leak of the proposed OGL 1.1 is actually real and until we all see it everything here is pure conjecture. However, I really think this the path Wizards of the Coast will pursue.
The main reason I'm processing it is that I have products both on the DMs Guild and on OneBookShelf using the OGL 1.0a for OSR products.
While the money I make helps me with Kickstarters and action figures I'm not going to create a headache for myself in any way. This is a hobby at best and not my livelihood, thankfully.
Second, I've dealt with Wizards of the Coast for close to twenty-five years as a vendor. I own two comic and game stores and I sell a lot of their products. Hasbro has spent the last five years or so trying to find their customers floors and ceilings. I've noticed the Magic: The Gathering team doing this in the last three years and I think they are now turning their attention to Dungeons and Dragons.
The CEO of Wizards of the Coast was promoted to CEO of Hasbro earlier this year due to the unexpected death of the previous CEO and we also learned that WotC was responsible for 70% of their profit in 2021. Think about that for a minute, Magic and DnD made them more money than Transformers, GI Joe, Star Wars, My Little Pony, etc.
Hasbro was ecstatic with the millions of people DnD has brought in and its growth is important to them. Sadly, they don't realize that Critical Role did more for DnD than anything WotC did. They have projected that they can double their profits by 2025 from $1 billion to $2 billion, however Hasbro's earning report fell short of their goal which caused some concerns amongst their stockholders. Another complication occurred when they announced a Magic release that cost $1000 for four boosters packs and were only available through direct order from WotC, these cards are not playable in tournaments or organized play which led to Bank of America down grading Hasbro's stocks because they believed that WotC was trying to "kill Magic: the Gathering".
WotC then had a "fireside" chat where they claimed everything was fine, that yes, some customers were "price sensitive" but everything was great. Additionally, they mentioned that 20% of DnD's fanbase are Dungeon Masters who account for 80% of their sales. They want to better monetized the other 80% of DnD's base. For December's Dragonlance release you could order a version direct from WotC and got access to it on DnD Beyond two weeks early. This echoes what they have done with HasbroPulse for toys and print on demand sets for Magic: the Gathering.
The unusual part is that WotC used to be a distributor but converted that infrastructure to only fulfilling product to Amazon, Target, and Walmart about five years ago. I foresee, as demand grows for DnD fulfillment, that this will be a customer service challenge for them because a few of those Magic direct to consumer products are months late for fulfillment. They keep releasing several of those print on demand products every month and last year around 70 were released. Those sales are full profit for WotCs as there is no middle-man in that chain of sales while it also trains their customers to be fulfilled by them not a local store or an online retailer. It's ironic because part of Pathfinder 1E's success was their implementation of subscription services too so obviously, WotC was watching.
If this leak is real I think WotC has decided to gain more of that 80% of DnD's player money by trying to get royalties from publishers who use the OGL rather than make cool and interesting projects. They have data from 3E and 4E that told them multiple releases each month was competing with themselves so maybe this is their "killer app"?
Royalties are an easy money grab and doesn't really affect most DnD players (who know little about what is going on by WotC). I also think that they might be content with the DMs Guild for 5E material but want to own any marketplace they develop for One DnD or "6E". I have a feeling that a benefit of using the OGL 1.1 could gain access to your material being available on DnD Beyond, which is huge for some publishers.
Hasbro wants to protect its IP and make sure that if something is cool they get access to it via the new OGL. We won't see another Pathfinder 1E or Critical Role without them getting some of that money.
At the end of the day Hasbro is a corporation with stockholders and it is their job to make those people as much money as possible and that is what they are going to do.
I'm uncertain how to proceed as a publisher but I'm currently thinking about altering all of my products to exist without the OGL and contact the publishers of the games they support to see if this is acceptable and if not, I'll pull them down until another solution presents itself.
I'm really torn about what is happening and the development of 1DnD. I think WotC is picking a fight with our whole industry but I don't think most DnD players are going to know about it. Yes, social media is prevalent but if you aren't looking for this kind of thing does it cross your radar?
I had quite a bit of input from yesterday's post (a huge thanks to all of you who responded) and I've got a bit of a hybrid between ...