Behind the DM's Screen

Tumblr has not been doing a great job at talking about this, but:

With OneDnD, Wizards of the Coast has decided to update the Open Game License (OGL). Said license is what allowed people to create homebrew DnD content and sell it, and even larger companies to use certain sorts of content. Pathfinder, for example, is built on said OGL. This also allows streamers and artists to exist and benefit from said content.

With OneDnD (sometimes called “dnd 6e”), WOTC wants to create a much more restrictive OGL, which will, amongst other things:

Make WOTC take a cut for any DnD-related work (according to Kickstarter, a whole 25% of the benefits)

Let WOTC cancel any project related to DnD up to their discretion

Let WOTC take ANY content made based on their system, and re-sell it without crediting you, or giving you a single cent

And most importantly, revoke the old OGL, which will harm any company or game system that used it as a base, such as Pathfinder. And it means they GET ownership over any homebrew content you may have done for 5e in the past!

It’s important to note that OGLs are supposedly irrevocable. They were planning to use it for OneDnD initially, but they want to apply it retroactively to 5e, somehow. Which is illegal, but lawyers have mentioned there’s a chance they may get away with it given the wording.

This means that anything you make based on DnD (A homebrew item? A character drawing? Even music, according to them?), can get taken and used as they deem appropiate.

These news come from a leak of the OGL, which have been confirmed by multiple reputable sources (including Kickstarter, which has confirmed that WOTC already talked with them about this), and was planned to be released next week.

So, what can we do?

Speak against it. Share the word. Reblog this post. Let people know. Tumblr hasn’t been talking much about this matter, but it’s VERY important to let people know about what is WOTC bringing. 

Boycott them. Do not buy their products. Do not buy games with their IP. Do not watch their movie. CANCEL your DnD Beyond subscription. (Btw, they ARE planning to release more subscription services too!). They do not care about the community, but they care about the money. Make sure to speak through it. 

However, WOTC trying to revoke one of the core building blocks that their game (not to mention the livelihoods of my fellow creators on this site) was built on is a serious issue. Please, do not give them any support in light of their errors. I plan to spread this post for the next week, and share some links to free sourcebooks. Anyone who has access to that kind of content, please shoot it my way so i can give it a boost.

Tumblr has not been doing a great job at talking about this, but:

With OneDnD, Wizards of the Coast has decided to update the Open Game License (OGL). Said license is what allowed people to create homebrew DnD content and sell it, and even larger companies to use certain sorts of content. Pathfinder, for example, is built on said OGL. This also allows streamers and artists to exist and benefit from said content.

With OneDnD (sometimes called “dnd 6e”), WOTC wants to create a much more restrictive OGL, which will, amongst other things:

Make WOTC take a cut for any DnD-related work (according to Kickstarter, a whole 25% of the benefits)

Let WOTC cancel any project related to DnD up to their discretion

Let WOTC take ANY content made based on their system, and re-sell it without crediting you, or giving you a single cent

And most importantly, revoke the old OGL, which will harm any company or game system that used it as a base, such as Pathfinder. And it means they GET ownership over any homebrew content you may have done for 5e in the past!

It’s important to note that OGLs are supposedly irrevocable. They were planning to use it for OneDnD initially, but they want to apply it retroactively to 5e, somehow. Which is illegal, but lawyers have mentioned there’s a chance they may get away with it given the wording.

This means that anything you make based on DnD (A homebrew item? A character drawing? Even music, according to them?), can get taken and used as they deem appropiate.

These news come from a leak of the OGL, which have been confirmed by multiple reputable sources (including Kickstarter, which has confirmed that WOTC already talked with them about this), and was planned to be released next week.

So, what can we do?

Speak against it. Share the word. Reblog this post. Let people know. Tumblr hasn’t been talking much about this matter, but it’s VERY important to let people know about what is WOTC bringing. 

Boycott them. Do not buy their products. Do not buy games with their IP. Do not watch their movie. CANCEL your DnD Beyond subscription. (Btw, they ARE planning to release more subscription services too!). They do not care about the community, but they care about the money. Make sure to speak through it. 

However, WOTC trying to revoke one of the core building blocks that their game (not to mention the livelihoods of my fellow creators on this site) was built on is a serious issue. Please, do not give them any support in light of their errors. I plan to spread this post for the next week, and share some links to free sourcebooks. Anyone who has access to that kind of content, please shoot it my way so i can give it a boost.

Paizo has made an official statement about the OGL 1.1:

We believe, as we always have, that open gaming makes games better, improves profitability for all involved, and enriches the community of gamers who participate in this amazing hobby. And so we invite gamers from around the world to join us as we begin the next great chapter of open gaming with the release of a new open, perpetual, and irrevocable Open RPG Creative License (ORC).

The new Open RPG Creative License will be built system agnostic for independent game publishers under the legal guidance of Azora Law, an intellectual property law firm that represents Paizo and several other game publishers. Paizo will pay for this legal work. We invite game publishers worldwide to join us in support of this system-agnostic license that allows all games to provide their own unique open rules reference documents that open up their individual game systems to the world. To join the effort and provide feedback on the drafts of this license, please sign up by using this form.

In addition to Paizo, Kobold Press, Chaosium, Green Ronin, Legendary Games, Rogue Genius Games, and a growing list of publishers have already agreed to participate in the Open RPG Creative License, and in the coming days we hope and expect to add substantially to this group.

This is massive news! Paizo has assured that their usage of the OGL for PF2 was optional, and meant to help third party content creators more than being something they relied on for their own system.

Now, they will be creating the ORC, which will be a successor to the OGL which many third party content creators will be able to benefit from. They will be taking measures to ensure the ORC won’t belong to any company, so this doesn’t repeat itself, and covering the legal costs of getting it coming to fruition. Which is massive news in these times.

A lot of third party content creators and smaller TTRPGs have already expressed their support to this new ORC already.

Amidst these news, I’d like to remind what has WOTC been doing currently instead:

DnD Beyond suddenly saw their option to unsuscribe disappear, which they blamed on servers. (Trust me: I have coded pages, and it’s not something that just casually can disappear because of server saturation)

A recurrent stream from DnD Beyond was cancelled. They claimed it is unrelated to the OGL news

WOTC has once again delayed a proper official statement about the OGL, and has been holding off from confirming it.

People have been ending their subscription for DnDBeyond as a form of protest, as it’s the metric WOTC is currently using to measure the impact of the new OGL.

Overall, employees have reported that the situation at WOTC right now is a massive mess, as the new OGL was not supposed to be leaked (contrary to what people had theorized). 

Keep pushing WOTC to revoke the OGL, of course. If all these changes have been happening, it’s thanks to the reunited effort from the community and creators to fight against it.

Tumblr has not been doing a great job at talking about this, but:

With OneDnD, Wizards of the Coast has decided to update the Open Game License (OGL). Said license is what allowed people to create homebrew DnD content and sell it, and even larger companies to use certain sorts of content. Pathfinder, for example, is built on said OGL. This also allows streamers and artists to exist and benefit from said content.

With OneDnD (sometimes called “dnd 6e”), WOTC wants to create a much more restrictive OGL, which will, amongst other things:

Make WOTC take a cut for any DnD-related work (according to Kickstarter, a whole 25% of the benefits)

Let WOTC cancel any project related to DnD up to their discretion

Let WOTC take ANY content made based on their system, and re-sell it without crediting you, or giving you a single cent

And most importantly, revoke the old OGL, which will harm any company or game system that used it as a base, such as Pathfinder. And it means they GET ownership over any homebrew content you may have done for 5e in the past!

It’s important to note that OGLs are supposedly irrevocable. They were planning to use it for OneDnD initially, but they want to apply it retroactively to 5e, somehow. Which is illegal, but lawyers have mentioned there’s a chance they may get away with it given the wording.

This means that anything you make based on DnD (A homebrew item? A character drawing? Even music, according to them?), can get taken and used as they deem appropiate.

These news come from a leak of the OGL, which have been confirmed by multiple reputable sources (including Kickstarter, which has confirmed that WOTC already talked with them about this), and was planned to be released next week.

So, what can we do?

Speak against it. Share the word. Reblog this post. Let people know. Tumblr hasn’t been talking much about this matter, but it’s VERY important to let people know about what is WOTC bringing. 

Boycott them. Do not buy their products. Do not buy games with their IP. Do not watch their movie. CANCEL your DnD Beyond subscription. (Btw, they ARE planning to release more subscription services too!). They do not care about the community, but they care about the money. Make sure to speak through it. 

However, WOTC trying to revoke one of the core building blocks that their game (not to mention the livelihoods of my fellow creators on this site) was built on is a serious issue. Please, do not give them any support in light of their errors. I plan to spread this post for the next week, and share some links to free sourcebooks. Anyone who has access to that kind of content, please shoot it my way so i can give it a boost.

Tumblr has not been doing a great job at talking about this, but:

With OneDnD, Wizards of the Coast has decided to update the Open Game License (OGL). Said license is what allowed people to create homebrew DnD content and sell it, and even larger companies to use certain sorts of content. Pathfinder, for example, is built on said OGL. This also allows streamers and artists to exist and benefit from said content.

With OneDnD (sometimes called “dnd 6e”), WOTC wants to create a much more restrictive OGL, which will, amongst other things:

Make WOTC take a cut for any DnD-related work (according to Kickstarter, a whole 25% of the benefits)

Let WOTC cancel any project related to DnD up to their discretion

Let WOTC take ANY content made based on their system, and re-sell it without crediting you, or giving you a single cent

And most importantly, revoke the old OGL, which will harm any company or game system that used it as a base, such as Pathfinder. And it means they GET ownership over any homebrew content you may have done for 5e in the past!

It’s important to note that OGLs are supposedly irrevocable. They were planning to use it for OneDnD initially, but they want to apply it retroactively to 5e, somehow. Which is illegal, but lawyers have mentioned there’s a chance they may get away with it given the wording.

This means that anything you make based on DnD (A homebrew item? A character drawing? Even music, according to them?), can get taken and used as they deem appropiate.

These news come from a leak of the OGL, which have been confirmed by multiple reputable sources (including Kickstarter, which has confirmed that WOTC already talked with them about this), and was planned to be released next week.

So, what can we do?

Speak against it. Share the word. Reblog this post. Let people know. Tumblr hasn’t been talking much about this matter, but it’s VERY important to let people know about what is WOTC bringing. 

Boycott them. Do not buy their products. Do not buy games with their IP. Do not watch their movie. CANCEL your DnD Beyond subscription. (Btw, they ARE planning to release more subscription services too!). They do not care about the community, but they care about the money. Make sure to speak through it. 

However, WOTC trying to revoke one of the core building blocks that their game (not to mention the livelihoods of my fellow creators on this site) was built on is a serious issue. Please, do not give them any support in light of their errors. I plan to spread this post for the next week, and share some links to free sourcebooks. Anyone who has access to that kind of content, please shoot it my way so i can give it a boost.

Tumblr has not been doing a great job at talking about this, but:

With OneDnD, Wizards of the Coast has decided to update the Open Game License (OGL). Said license is what allowed people to create homebrew DnD content and sell it, and even larger companies to use certain sorts of content. Pathfinder, for example, is built on said OGL. This also allows streamers and artists to exist and benefit from said content.

With OneDnD (sometimes called “dnd 6e”), WOTC wants to create a much more restrictive OGL, which will, amongst other things:

Make WOTC take a cut for any DnD-related work (according to Kickstarter, a whole 25% of the benefits)

Let WOTC cancel any project related to DnD up to their discretion

Let WOTC take ANY content made based on their system, and re-sell it without crediting you, or giving you a single cent

And most importantly, revoke the old OGL, which will harm any company or game system that used it as a base, such as Pathfinder. And it means they GET ownership over any homebrew content you may have done for 5e in the past!

It’s important to note that OGLs are supposedly irrevocable. They were planning to use it for OneDnD initially, but they want to apply it retroactively to 5e, somehow. Which is illegal, but lawyers have mentioned there’s a chance they may get away with it given the wording.

This means that anything you make based on DnD (A homebrew item? A character drawing? Even music, according to them?), can get taken and used as they deem appropiate.

These news come from a leak of the OGL, which have been confirmed by multiple reputable sources (including Kickstarter, which has confirmed that WOTC already talked with them about this), and was planned to be released next week.

So, what can we do?

Speak against it. Share the word. Reblog this post. Let people know. Tumblr hasn’t been talking much about this matter, but it’s VERY important to let people know about what is WOTC bringing. 

Boycott them. Do not buy their products. Do not buy games with their IP. Do not watch their movie. CANCEL your DnD Beyond subscription. (Btw, they ARE planning to release more subscription services too!). They do not care about the community, but they care about the money. Make sure to speak through it. 

However, WOTC trying to revoke one of the core building blocks that their game (not to mention the livelihoods of my fellow creators on this site) was built on is a serious issue. Please, do not give them any support in light of their errors. I plan to spread this post for the next week, and share some links to free sourcebooks. Anyone who has access to that kind of content, please shoot it my way so i can give it a boost.

Okay, it’s been a really intense couple of days. I have got a lot of weird anon hate over this, and I’ve seen people get super worked up with me. I’ve also seen people spread lies and weird takes, trying to say this is not concerning, so let me add some information on why is the OGL very worrying, based on corrections people have made and to clarify against some posts I’ve been seeing circling around.

Let me preface this: I am one of the many people that could get potentially affected by the OGL, as a creator aiming to work in the TTRPG industry. I have been able to get a bit of money from giving people usage rights over some images (and I haven’t officially started freelancing), all of which came from third parties that are at bigger risk of this OGL. I have been planning to get into battlemap making, specially aimed at FoundryVTT. So, let’s get to it:

To start with, I’ve seen people say this whole thing is a “dnd hate agenda” and some other takes that borderline conspiracy theories. I can’t stress this enough: DnD is one of my two main hobbies. It’s what has inspired most of my art. Go to my sygdomthings tag if you’d like, I have spent so many hours at this hobby. However, I can enjoy media and be aware of the problems from the company behind it, and it’s very important to talk about these.

I’ve seen claims that you “can’t really say anything because the leak may not be real”. There has been confirmation from big companies, like Kickstarter, that the leak itself is real. The OGL has already been sent to several big names, including Griffon’s Saddlebag (a fantastic source of homebrew content), which have confirmed this is not a draft, and that they have been sent contracts to sign already (they have refused.

So, about VTTs (Virtual TableTops, like roll20, Foundry, etc)

VTTs are probably getting hit. The new OGL would give WOTC the right to retire anything-dnd from VTTs, including roll20 and FoundryVTT. WOTC and Foundry have never got to reach a license (as of now), and they are not willing to work with them, because their goal is to release their own VTT in DnDBeyond. And I can’t stress this enough: WOTC having the only VTT with access to DnD would be very, VERY bad (and this OGL would allow them to do so!)

It’s bad for a plethora of reasons. It means they can charge anything they want for the VTT. Which will be a subscription service, according to their CEO, who has said the hobby is “undermonetized” and they want to put more “recurrent spending” (aka subscriptions and microtransactions)

They may put basic stuff behind paywalls. Roll20 has a subscription to have light sources and extra storage. They can put these behind a subscription, as they may put any sort of quality of life tool, and literally anything else they want. If they have the only VTT with DnD, they can do anything. Monopolies are bad for the consumer. 

They may also let you have temporal access to sourcebooks in exchange for a subscription, which leads to this horrible idea of you not actually owning what you pay for. You stop paying? You don’t have access to it.

Think about how DnD refuses to have PDFs, and instead forces you to be on DnDBeyond to access that content online. Think about how that could be a subscription service instead. I don’t know how likely it is to happen, but if they have the monopoly, they can do that.

They can fill their VTT with micro-transactions. They can make you pay extra to have a more comfortable sheet to fill. They can shove skins in it. They can shove exclusive “minis” (3d models) you’ll need to pay for if you want to use. 

They want to use UNREAL ENGINE 5 and it’s not going to be based on 2d battlemaps you can easily make, buy or download for free. Which means you may need to pay to make a custom mini of your character there, because you may be unable to import a lovely commission you got. You may need to pay for a battlemap. 

(This also hurts people who do minis, like Heroforge, people who do battlemaps, people who do commissions, etc!)

Also Unreal Engine 5 is a very heavy tool that may not be accessible for many lower-end computers. If they have the only VTT that gives support to DnD, and it’s one that consume heavy resources, anyone with a bad computer won’t be playing DnD in a VTT. Simple as that. 

No word of what will happen with people who have DnD campaigns in other VTTs that may get their access to DnD revoked. I DM a +90 sessions campaign, I play a +50 sessions campaign. We could potentially lose support for it before they finish. We can’t realistically input all of 5e’s content by ourselves now. Think about your campaigns, too.

Again: Monopolies are bad and don’t benefit the consumer. Speak against this.

On the 25% tax cut 

The 25% tax cut is MASSIVE. It’s not applied over net benefits, it’s applied over gross income. A company making $1,500,000 would have to pay 25% of the 750,000 bit, which is $187,500. The usual benefit margin for TTRPG companies is of 12%, which would be $180,000 in this case. Which means that a company making that income would be LOSING MONEY because WOTC’s cut outweights their benefit. The higher the income, the bigger the loss is.

I know 1,5millions sounds like a lot, but these companies are paying a lot of people, and the actual benefit margin (as mentioned) is quite small. These millions mostly go towards keeping workers… Fed. Making a living. 

Which also brings me to this: Third party companies have a lot of people working for them. A lot of them are freelancers. If you are starting in the TTRPG industry, you will probably start on a third party company or in a small TTRPG (a lot of which are also based in the OGL). This is hitting the very same small creators you love to see when you search for “dnd art”, because commissions rarely pay for a full income, and a lot of artists do TTRPG industry work on top of them.

Btw, I saw someone say they “don’t make anything out of DM’s Guild”. Plain untrue, they take 50% of every sale there!

On registering work using the OGL: (Source: https://gizmodo.com/dnd-wizards-of-the-coast-ogl-1-1-open-gaming-license-1849950634 )

Anything you make, regardless of your income, has now to be registered. Which means they can just tell you “no” if they don’t agree for whatever reason. Do they think you are a dangerous “competitor”? You can get stopped before you start. Or when you’re mid-project, too. They don’t agree with it on a moral level? You can also get kicked. 

(They have mentioned they won’t be allowing bigoted content under the OGL, which is nice in theory, but given how WOTC released the Racist Monkey Race in fucking 2022, I don’t know how much to trust this actually. Also as a Roma-descended person, I’m still waiting for an actual overhaul of the Vistani in Strahd, but oh well.)

They have censored people over extremely arbitrary things, like a DM’s guild module named “Eat the Rich”, which WOTC deemed too offensive for containing the word “anti-capitalist”. The idea behind this module is adventurers facing mega-corporations. Y’know, standard cyberpunk setting. But WOTC, being as they are, found that to be too much.

This is bad. This is really bad. Some people say this is “usual IP standard protection”, but now if you are registered under the OGL (and you’ll need to be), WOTC can just word-per-word copy whatever you make and sell it as their own. THIS IS BAD. I don’t want people to be like “but they probably won’t”, the important thing is that they can, and this gives them free reign to take whatever competitors make. Which, again, is giving them a monopoly. 

And this is also VERY, very bad. They can change any terms, which means anything you make under this new OGL is subject to their whims, and 30 days notice is a very small one, given most TTRPG projects can take years to come to fulfilment. Creators are scared of this, of course, because WOTC can change the terms at any point and destroy your project. Don’t like the 25% cut? They can change it to 50% instead. The old OGL was supposedly irrevocable, as confirmed by the writer, but this new one can change at any point.

It’s still unclear if they will be able to get away with revoking the old license. 

What about podcasts?

This is a more confusing area and I can’t give good advice. Some say they may be exempt from this because it’s “transformative” work, but any sort of homebrew content a podcast may release, is now also subject to this. 

I think the bigger podcast (CR) is probably not going to suffer from this, because they’ll get a special license with WOTC. CR is WOTC’s biggest advertising tool atm, and CR benefits from DnD’s widespread popularity. I doubt they’ll speak against this new OGL. I find it weird people want them to speak about this. CR is very, very closely tied with WOTC at this point. 

I REALLY don’t know what may happen with D20. Their content being behind a paywall may make this much different, since d20 isn’t as much of an effective advertising tool as CR is.

Smaller streamers are the ones getting hit the hardest. There are many of them who are getting ready to move systems or create their own. These streams often also employ artists and creators, so jobs are getting lost here, if this goes live.

I don’t know where this misconception came from, but no, the grand majority of streamers don’t have an agreement with WOTC at the moment.

Why “playing Pathfinder” is not a bad idea in this mess?

One of the wildest points I’ve seen in the post trying to dismiss the new OGL’s danger is that “people who tell you to try Pathfinder (or other systems) don’t actually want the best for you”. I am recommending people to try other systems because playing DnD (specially online), if the OGL goes live, may become very expensive. 

Pathfinder 2e is actually probably going to be safe about this, according to Paizo itself. I am not recommending you to jump into a sinking ship. Pathfinder 1e (which is not really active anymore) and Starfinder (this one is) are affected under this new OGL, but PF2 is an actual safe bet, even if it’ll give them a headache to update stuff.

I used to not be as eager as PF2 as I am nowadays. In fact, I antagonized my DM a bit over it, because I was comfortable with DnD. I’ve been realizing I’m wrong myself. So, please, trust me as someone who used to favour DnD very heavily.

Why you should not go silent about this?

Remember the whole “monopoly is bad for the consumer”? You need to speak against this because WOTC will get even more of a monopoly on TTRPGs after this. Which means they can get away with over-pricing their products, offering bad content, whatever.

WOTC does not have the need to do this. The company has been massively profitable, with record sales in the last years. They somehow still think it’s “under-monetized”. 

This comes from Hasbro, the parent company, which hasn’t been doing as well and wants to turn both DnD and Magic The Gathering into their cash cows.

As the consumer, you are going to get hit if WOTC has more of a monopoly than it already has. You need to care. You need to worry.

Also, a multi-millionaire company like WOTC does really not need people to “white-knight” for them, specially when these moves are only for their OWN benefit.

honestly I didn’t expect people who would go as far as “it’s capitalism baybee just cope”. You can and should call out businesses on bad practises. You don’t make excuses for Amazon just because “it’s a business, y’know”, right?

This move will put a lot of people out of their jobs. Most third party creators don’t have the lawyers to push against this. Artists you’ve loved all these years are going to lose steady sources of income. Homebrew content you have been using are going to get heavily hurt. I don’t know how to tell people that you need to care for others.

Since the other post I’ve seen circulating about this seems to be really aiming at my old one, I hope this serves as clarification. It has a good bunch of sources, it’s more thoroughly informed, and more accurate than my first one. Please be aware that information has been coming up with every passing day, and a lot of what I’ve quoted or mentioned here are recent finds. 

So, again: Boycott WOTC over this. Cancel your DnD Beyond subscription. Don’t buy their books. Don’t buy their products. Don’t watch the new movie. This is coming from a creator who is directly hurt by this OGL, and I am one of many. I know some of you follow Lauren Walsh, who has also expressed concerns over this OGL (and they have worked for WOTC, CR and third parties). If you don’t want to take my word on this, at least take it from them.

Here is a free pdf of xanathars guide to everything

Here is a free pdf to monsters manual

Here is a free pdf to tashas cauldron of everything

Here is a free pdf to dungeon master’s guide

Here is a free pdf to volo’s guide to monsters

Here is a free pdf of mordenkainen’s tomb of foes

including the books and campaigns

Tumblr has not been doing a great job at talking about this, but:

With OneDnD, Wizards of the Coast has decided to update the Open Game License (OGL). Said license is what allowed people to create homebrew DnD content and sell it, and even larger companies to use certain sorts of content. Pathfinder, for example, is built on said OGL. This also allows streamers and artists to exist and benefit from said content.

With OneDnD (sometimes called “dnd 6e”), WOTC wants to create a much more restrictive OGL, which will, amongst other things:

Make WOTC take a cut for any DnD-related work (according to Kickstarter, a whole 25% of the benefits)

Let WOTC cancel any project related to DnD up to their discretion

Let WOTC take ANY content made based on their system, and re-sell it without crediting you, or giving you a single cent

And most importantly, revoke the old OGL, which will harm any company or game system that used it as a base, such as Pathfinder. And it means they GET ownership over any homebrew content you may have done for 5e in the past!

It’s important to note that OGLs are supposedly irrevocable. They were planning to use it for OneDnD initially, but they want to apply it retroactively to 5e, somehow. Which is illegal, but lawyers have mentioned there’s a chance they may get away with it given the wording.

This means that anything you make based on DnD (A homebrew item? A character drawing? Even music, according to them?), can get taken and used as they deem appropiate.

These news come from a leak of the OGL, which have been confirmed by multiple reputable sources (including Kickstarter, which has confirmed that WOTC already talked with them about this), and was planned to be released next week.

So, what can we do?

Speak against it. Share the word. Reblog this post. Let people know. Tumblr hasn’t been talking much about this matter, but it’s VERY important to let people know about what is WOTC bringing. 

Boycott them. Do not buy their products. Do not buy games with their IP. Do not watch their movie. CANCEL your DnD Beyond subscription. (Btw, they ARE planning to release more subscription services too!). They do not care about the community, but they care about the money. Make sure to speak through it. 

However, WOTC trying to revoke one of the core building blocks that their game (not to mention the livelihoods of my fellow creators on this site) was built on is a serious issue. Please, do not give them any support in light of their errors. I plan to spread this post for the next week, and share some links to free sourcebooks. Anyone who has access to that kind of content, please shoot it my way so i can give it a boost.

Here is a free pdf of xanathars guide to everything

Here is a free pdf to monsters manual

Here is a free pdf to tashas cauldron of everything

Here is a free pdf to dungeon master’s guide

Here is a free pdf to volo’s guide to monsters

Here is a free pdf of mordenkainen’s tomb of foes

including the books and campaigns

Quintessence is the most elusive and greatest of the elements that make up the world, exclusively found in the deepest parts of the planet and hidden reaches of the heavens. Those who can master its use find that it greatly augments magic in many different ways, allowing acts of pure creation or immense power, but always at great cost. Humanoids can't handle using it long term, quickly becoming afflicted with terrible sicknesses, burns, and incurable organ failure that may even preclude magical resurrection. Rarely however, someone survives its use and instead mutates into something else, the quintessence almost seeming to have its own mind that supplants the original thoughts, irreversibly changing the person to something else.

A somewhat safer use of quintessence is to craft it into construct minions, as the infection seems to happen primarily through the active use of the material. The long term impacts of even being around quintessence are still unknown, but so long as you don't attempt to harness its power directly you're largely safe from its worst effects. Constructs created of quintessence gain incredible powers themselves, though channelling that energy is even destructive to the material the quintessence must be bound to.

A moderately stable quintessence construct known as the soldier has been developed, using the powerful element to reshape its body to better suit different combat needs. Their exact shape and weapons will vary based on the creator, but the most common form is a humanoid frame crafted from wood, bone, or metal, with plates of silvery quintessence attached to this frame. The quintessence flows and reshapes to the soldier's needs, growing additional limbs, thickening to heavy plates that protect the construct, or glowing with incredible heat. In order to prevent the quintessence from being harvested from the body of the construct if it is damaged beyond use, the quintessence can be overcharged with energy to cause it to all detonate in a deadly explosion upon the construct's destruction, obliterating all remaining quintessence and hopefully the enemy that overcame the construct.

Originally from the 3.5 Monster Manual V. I wrote largely entirely new fluff for the soldier, as the original monster it's associated with is one that's not OGL compliant (the mind flayer. It's a mind flayer monster). This week will have a few more quintessence constructs and the terrible result of too much quintessence contact. This post came out a week ago on my Patreon. If you want to get access to all my monster conversions early, as well as a spot on the Paper and Dice Discord server, consider backing me there!

Death's Oasis by Greg Rutkowski

Location: Dauthi's Retreat

“Death may come for all, but in Dauthi’s Retreat the process seems to be expedited.” – Silvio Berrara, wandering alchemist

The first thing you notice about Dauthi’s retreat is the stench. The vile smell of rot and decay so strong that it seeps into your nostrils and fills your mouth with bile. You’re not entirely sure what has died, no one is, but the stench of its rotting form permeates the land for miles. The second thing you notice is the quiet. There are no birds chirping. There is no rush of water from a stream. There is only silence. Combine the lack of noise with boots trekking on the slurping, muddy ground and even a small group of stealthy adventurers might as well be a herd of stampeding rothe.

Dauthi’s Retreat wasn’t always like this. It used to be a profitable trading post, mostly due to its varidium mine. The rare material used in crafting magical artifacts made the outpost a profitable asset. This led to the varidium wars. For a decade, the outpost was under threat of attack and constantly changed hands. When one warlord would claim the town for themself, it would not be long before another came along to challenge them. This is when the land began to change.

In a few short years, the land around the outpost transformed from a lush forest into a swamp that reeked of blood and rotting flesh. That was when the shadows came. Attracted by the scent of death and decay, hordes of creatures made of pure darkness descended upon Dauthi’s Retreat. These creatures spread death everywhere they went. Even the slightest touch would cause plants to wither and flesh to fester. In no time at all, life had ceased to exist in this place.

Something I’ve been considering doing for quite some time is creating alternative feature lists for all the base classes to make characters more varied even when they’re the same class, and the wizard is the first class I’ve actually done so with. The idea with this is that, whenever the wizard gains a new feature, they can choose to take that feature or replace it for one of the variant features presented here, and it doesn’t just cover the base class features but all of the core traditions as well. One of the reasons that vets start to get burnt out is because once you’ve seen a class so many times it becomes stale, but if you can change up the most basic components of that class to create something new within the old framework then maybe that mixup will be exactly what you need to breath new life into the game for you. Now, keep in mind that this is a whole lot of yet-to-be playtested content that ALSO hasn’t really been fully proofread because I kind of had some issues yesterday and had to file a police report today (long story), but if this is an idea that people like I will probably do it with other core classes as well.

As always, questions and comments are welcome. I’d love to hear your thoughts.