Control Your Reality

So, WOTC has released a new announcement (again, through DnD Beyond instead of other channels), which is another PR attempt to diffuse tensions. All while not actually providing much. Let me explain why is this entire announcement does not provide much:

For starters, none of these statements mean anything as long as they have the clause that allows them to change the new OGL with a 30 days notice. They can make a seemingly friendly OGL 1.1 (or OGL 2.0, whatever they wanna call it), and change it when people stop paying attention. And if you already signed it, you are thoroughly screwed up. 

Yet, let’s also revise the statements one by one, because most of them are purposefully ambiguous:

[ID: An image with text that reads “Your video content. Whether you are a commentator, streamer, podcaster, liveplay cast member, or other video creator on platforms like YouTube and Twitch and TikTok, you have always been covered by the Wizards Fan Content Policy. The OGL doesn’t (and won’t) touch any of this.”]

I wonder how this one works with paywalled streamed content, like d20. This statement does not mention anything about it. Let’s also recall most streamers (small and big) don’t only survive on streaming, but also sell homebrewed content of their own, which is impacted by the new OGL.

[ID: An image with text that reads “Your accessories for your owned content. No changes to the OGL will affect your ability to sell minis, novels, apparel, dice, and other items related to your creations, characters, and worlds.”]

This one talks about “your characters or your world”, but not exactly about how this overlaps with terms that may be getting hit by the OGL. Is the 6-stat array getting included in the new OGL as WOTC’s, for example? Can you sell merch using these terms? Is “drow barbarian” something they may will try to argue as being their content, not yours?

You can absolutely make any content using your creations, but this statement does really not say anything about stuff made pulling terminology taken from DnD. 

[ID: An image with text that reads “Non-published works, for instance contracted services. You use the OGL if you want to publish your works that reference fifth edition content through the SRD. That means commissioned work, paid DM services, consulting, and so on aren’t affected by the OGL.”]

This one does specifically clear that 5e content is included and not getting affected by the OGL. But not taking a cut out of commissions and paid DM sessions is, well, the bare minimum. I don’t think the new OGL ever asked for a cut of that.

Also, be aware that this does talk about 5e, but not OneDnD. I don’t think many people are planning to move to the new edition once it’s out, but the fact it is not mentioned here is worrying.

[ID: An image with text that reads “VTT content. Any updates to the OGL will still allow any creator to publish content on VTTs and will still allow VTT publishers to use OGL content on their platform.”]

This means absolutely nothing. If the systems themselves can’t be hosted in VTTs, the homebrewed content sold on them won’t work. It doesn’t even specify DnD-related content here, again.

[ID: An image with text that reads “Your OGL 1.0a content. Nothing will impact any content you have published under OGL 1.0a. That will always be licensed under OGL 1.0a.”]

This is the bare minimum. Doesn’t say the old OGL won’t be revoked though (and it will absolutely get revoked if they can), which means that products and companies built on the old OGL suddenly have to change their entire business model.

[ID: An image with text that reads “Your revenue. There will be no royalty or financial reporting requirements.”]

This would be “nice” (not if they reserve the right to use the content you made themselves). But let’s recall they haven’t said if they’ll still have the “can change this license whenever we want” clause. They can suddenly ask for royalties anytime.

It doesn’t say whether you still will need to sign a specific license for it either, and if they can forbid you from going forwards, which was something the OGL 1.1 absolutely allowed WOTC to do. 

[ID: An image with text that reads “Your ownership of your content. You will continue to own your content with no license-back requirements.”]

The new OGL didn’t touch your ownership of the content. However, it gave them a non-revocable perpetual license to use, sell, re-license and do whatever they wanted with your content. And also allowed them to copy it for their own use. This means NOTHING.

This is, again, another PR strategy meant to calm down people with statements that sound nice at first glance that just don’t hold much value once you read them properly. This also comes amidst leaks about their plans to monetize DnD Beyond further, which included:

Subscriptions for players, up to $30 a month

Inability to use homebrewed content without paying for a subscription

“AI-DMs”, in an attempt to lure players in without the need of an actual DM

So, remember: Keep your Dnd Beyond subscription cancelled, and if you haven’t yet, cancel it. Boycott the movie. Don’t buy their products. If you want to, buy books second-hand, which won’t give them money. You don’t need to stop playing 5e if you enjoy it, but don’t actively feed them. Consider investing that money on other TTRPG systems or third party content creators, which always are in dire need of it. And always remain sceptical of whatever PR movement WOTC seeks to unleash next in order to pretend the new OGL is fine.

We don’t need a compromise. The old OGL needs to stay.

Hasbro acquired Wizards of the Coast (WotC) recently. Hasbro is on the decline with finances, and WotC is its biggest cash cow. Why milk that cash cow through producing more content when you can instead revoke a legally irrevocable license that makes it impossible for 3rd party content creators to exist?

America loves a good monopoly. The old license that permitted the community to grow to what it is today was OGL1.0a, and without it, D&D would not be what it is right now, nor even close. They tried to shift to OGL1.1, a new license that is, in a word, PREDATORY. Horrific, nasty shit.

OGL1.1 was quietly sent to large creators to sign. It then got leaked. The community erupted. The backlash was loud and unanimous. WotC was radio silent for like two weeks. They finally gave a single-sentence "we'll explain soon" tweet on DnDBeyond's account. Then more silence.

A WotC employee reached out to large creators to blow the whistle on WotC. The source was verified, and they shared that WotC sees the community as an obstacle between them and their money, all they care about is bottom line, and they're delaying in hopes we forget and move on.

And also that they are mainly looking at DnDBeyond subscription cancelations to gauge the financial impact; they don't care about our sentiments, only our money. So everyone erupted into signal boosting for others to unsubscribe as the single and best way to make ourselves heard. Cue the mass unsubscribing.

Today (January 13th 2023), a shitty PR piece was posted on DnDBeyond full of blatant lies and, in my opinion, barely-contained saltiness. Right before that, though, OGL2.0 leaks came out; the tweaks they'd begrudgingly made following the backlash. 2.0 is basically just as bad as 1.1; they just spoke of it as being more changed than it was.

In other words, they keep bold-faced lying to a community of rules-lawyers who recreationally read fine print :)

Meanwhile, Paizo (creators of Pathfinder) has come to the rescue, vowing to release a truly open license that will allow everyone to continue pursuing the livelihoods they're passionate about; this is the Open RPG Creative License, or "ORC".

Canceling subscriptions immediately sends a potent message, even if you may have to resubscribe later for functionality in your games. You'll still have the remainder of your billing cycle to enjoy paid perks.

Everything's a little on fire, but I think we'll be okay ♥️

OGL1.0a was never meant to be revocable, as loudly stated in the past couple days by the very people who authored it. It is very likely that WotC is actually just bluffing and bullying, and is actually powerless to revoke it--something many lawyers more knowledgeable than myself seem to be suggesting. In which case, it is my greatest hope in all of this that 3rd party creators are able to continue doing what they love, with no further interruptions.

Remember: the majority of WotC and DnDBeyond employees feel the exact same way we do, but they don't have a choice. Hasbro is the enemy here. Be kind to each other, and know where blame should and should not be placed. If you want to stay up to speed, the account of @.DnD_Shorts seems to be a very active and informed voice, largely responsible for sharing the first leak. If Twitter makes you want to puke, I completely understand; DnD_Shorts also has a YouTube channel with frequent updates on the situation posted in video format.

So I'm sure almost everyone knows about the porn bot problem by now, so here's a post detailing why it's a problem, and what we need to do about it.

First off, yes, always block the porn bots. Don't be mislead into thinking they're ok to keep around because they 'inflate your follower count.'

Firstly, no one cares about, nor can anyone even see, your follower count. Be free from the shackles that are the bullshit other socials told you was important. Don't let your ego be tied to a number. Having a lot of followers won't earn you any clout here.

Secondly, bots only follow blogs to try and legitimize their malware (and other dodgy) links. This post goes into more detail about that.

Now that that's out of the way, you'll need to know how to recognize a porn bot. This round the template seems to be:

A profile photo of a pretty lady or guy, usually in their underwear, with a similar header photo.

A bio with some combination of: [Age] // [Name] // [Location] // [Emoji] // [Top Bullshit% OnlyFans]

URL consisting of a name followed by a number (i.e: firstlast999)

Typically an empty blog, or if there is content, it's all dodgy links. Visible, but empty, Likes Tab, & occasionally a visible Following Tab.

You likely recognize the pattern.

So, what you want to do is, first, report the blog as spam On mobile it'll look like this:

On mobile you'll need to report spam first, and then go back to the menu again to block.

On desktop it will look like this, and unlike mobile, you'll be able to report spam and block in the same motion:

If I remember correctly,* be sure to "Report Spam", not "Report sexually explicit material" to feed the bots to the proper channels. Because the blog is empty, they haven't posted anything explicit that would violate TOS. However, staff can recognize a bot, and if you report the blog for spam (the actual problem) they'll take a look, more than likely find that the blog is posting or DMing dodgy links, and dispose of it.

And I think that's it. Here's wishing you all a happy and safe blogging experience!

[UPDATE: It was suggested on another post that the bots track your IP if you click on them to send more your way. However, someone from staff corrected and said this is incorrect. They also corrected the 'guilt by association' myth that bots following you can get your blog flagged by tumblr.

That said, that trail all led to another, easier, way to report/block the bots all from your Follower Tab instead of visiting each blog separately, unfortunately it only works on desktop:

(For newbies, click on the little person icon at the top right of your screen and scroll to find the Followers tab under the blog/sideblog you need to block a pornbot from.)

As a polyglot, he is super passionate about learning and teaching languages and wants to help students and language learners succeed. He has been working on this project 24/7, so your feedback would make his day! Here is the problem:

His website is still young, so they have limited funds to obtain licenses for movies and television shows. To help as many people as possible, he is wondering what languages you would like to learn or have exams for, so he can focus on expanding the media collection for these languages. I really like him and want his project to succeed, so I created a form where you can vote.

The following languages are available at the moment: Japanese 🇯🇵, Korean 🇰🇷, Spanish 🇪🇸, French 🇫🇷, German 🇩🇪, Italian 🇮🇹, Portuguese 🇵🇹 and English 🇺🇸

When you copy a link (form your dashboard, not from their page), it'll come in the format https://at.tumblr.com/[blog name]/[post number]/[tracking junk] (brackets are just for show, don't include those!)

Delete the tracking junk. That's anything after the post number.

Replace the "at" before tumblr.com with [blog name]. Replace where [blog name] used to be with "post" (no quotation marks).

Your final format should be https://[blog name].tumblr.com/post/[post number]

Share the link! It should go directly to the post and not route through any app store or tracking nonsense.

This post has like 14k notes right now, and the tags and comments and reblogs are FULL of people who didn't know about fast-reblog, and -- you guys have been slow-reblogging this whole time!?!??!?!?

In the interests of a) making your lives easier, and b) encouraging you to reblog posts, which is what keeps this site alive, here's how you fast-reblog:

On mobile: press and hold the reblog button. Your blog icon will appear. If you have sideblogs, all of the different icons will appear. Drag to whichever blog you want to reblog to, and release. Job done.

On desktop: hold down the E key and click reblog. Job done.

 After seeing some interest in my last post, I’ve decided to open up commissions for character art! Down below are a few examples of art I’ve done recently, and the style you can expect.  Prices Torso Up- $20 Add a character- $10 +Intricate Embroidery or Metalwork for Jewelry/Armor- $5 + Detailed Magic Items/Magic Weapons- $5 + Feathered Bird Wings- $5

What I’ll do - Original Characters - Humanoids without extensive animalistic aspects (For DnD this means no animalistic races like aaracockra, dragonborn, kobold, kenku, lizardfolk, minotaur, tabaxi, or tortle) - Simple weapons and magic effects - Fantasy, Cyberpunk, or Horror themed characters. 

I accept Paypal or Venmo for payments. I take half up front and then the other half when the piece is completed, I will do 3 revisions (depending on complexity) for free, and beyond that, each revision will have a $1 fee added. I reserve the right to turn down a commission if I can’t portray the character adequately enough. 

DM me if you’re interested in commissioning a character! 

Ever wondered what Tulkaz’s grand plan was for the Multiverse, or how he came to such power only to be struck down by our heroes?

Ever had a burning question about the stories and adventures of the Shattered Souls Group? Ever wondered what possible fates they could have met if they had not chosen to become the liberators of Shekpia’s corrupt political elite, or what could have happened should they themselves have turned to darkness…

Well now is your chance to have those questions answered!

The Shattered Souls Group will be doing Live Q&A Session on our Discord Server! 

It’s been so long since we’ve had an update on here about the wonderful World of Vaire and it’s Adventures, and with Arc 2 of the World’s Narrative coming to it’s climatic close, we figured it was time for some kind of catch-up.

I’ll just get right to the point: We’ve been having so much fun lately, with the last Campaigns of Arc 2 coming to their ends, we’ve had Boss Fights against Campaign-spanning villains, dramatic discoveries of ancient mysteries and lost lands, and all in a wonderful world and a timeline that seems to be constantly expanding. 

We’ve just been blown away by what everyone has been doing, so much more that we don’t have time to fit all of it into a single update.

I personally feel that this second arc of the world and its narrative has had the most fun and wacky storylines, from plane-hopping puzzles to stop a Lich, to finding the pieces of a Dead God, all the way to hunting down and getting revenge on a very mean Archmage that stole some Magic Items, these stories have been great and I just wanted to thank everyone for making it as great as it was.

Now, after all that, it’s time to talk about the upcoming endings of Arc 2 and the beginnings of Arc 3!

Arc 2′s Climax! 

This is it! The Second big Story Arc of the World of Vaire’s Narrative is finally come to its grand conclusion.

As we’ve been anticipating for a while now, with the destruction of the final vestiges and remnants of The Cult of the Red Star and their schemes to drown the World now destroyed, the World’s been left to return to its own, peaceful cycle, with new stories to arrive on the World’s periphery.

Shattered Souls: A Glowing Finale!

After what could be years of conflict and over a year of games with this group, the strife, political intrigue and corruption they’ve been facing finally seems to be defeated, with the citizens of Shekpia and the World at large finally able find some peace after the death of the evil and amoral Queen Tuala, the defeat of the scheming Archmage Vekey, and the destruction of what seems to be the last of the Soul-swallowing magical stones the Party has been hunting down since their adventures began so long ago….

But the question remains, with their duties done and the world left in peace, what will our heroes do now, and how will this chapter of their lives come to its close?

It seems the only way to find out right now is to listen in to the  penultimate and final chapter of Shattered Souls in its Campaign Finale on our Discord Server! 

Debt & Darkness: Crescendo!

With the nightmare of the Tulkaz the Whisperer’s reign of terror now over and the future seemingly secured after the Lich’s defeat, our heroes return to the Underground Dark Elf City of Maydeen, where they take advantage of the situation to return to their normal lives, and finally rekindle their relationships with others, as this chapter of their life’s stories plays out to a final crescendo!

But can our heroes truly grow so comfortable, knowing that the Soul of Tulkaz has been sent to the depths of the Infinite Abyss, and that the Lich’s evil has only been temporarily contained? 

Will this period of peace be merely the lull before the storm of Tulkaz’s return? Or is their a worst nightmare just beginning?

It seems the end will only be known by those that join in on Debt and Darkness’s Campaign Finale in our Discord Server, as these final chapters of our ongoing adventures reach their climactic conclusion.

Arc 3 Begins!

Arc 3 is so soon to be in just a few short weeks of this Post going live!

As mentioned before, Arc 3 hopes to be one of the biggest, toughest and most interesting Arc of Games that the World of Vaire and its storytellers have ever seen: From a whole Crew of Sailors charging into the Astral Sea, to Divine Champions hoping to gain the favour of the very Gods they worship, these Games will take us across the Planes of the Shadowfell, Feywild, The Astral Sea and more as our heroes race against time to stop a New Cult and their malformed creations of un-life from completing their chaotic mission to release the powers of a Mad God upon the Multiverse!

And if you’re interested in joining us, either by listening in on the live sessions, chatting with the Players and DMs or even becoming a Player in the Games as they happen, check out Discord Server for more information on how to get involved and save the World of Vaire from the clutches of a Mad God’s Cult!

You can join our Discord Server right HERE and check out the schedule of what is going on and how to join in on the fun!

Heaven & Hel: Season 2 Begins!

With their acquisition of the Petrified Head of the Old God known as Baldur the Beautiful, our heroes head in Arc 3 with the hopes of reuniting the scattered Pieces of Baldur’s Body and Soul, so that the fallen god may return to the Halls of Valhalla and stop the quickly approaching darkness of the coming Ragnarök…

Season 2 of Heaven and Hel promises to be the toughest yet, as our duo of heroes, Maltuul the Elven Wizard and Saeunn the Tiefling Ranger, face the strongest forces of the Multiverse: From sailing the Astral Sea of Stars on a Githyanki Void Cruiser, to hunting down the Soul of a Fire Giant and even entering the Palace of the great Hela, Goddess of Death, with the hopes of stealing away Baldur’s trapped Soul from her grand banquet halls.

The time of cold and darkness is approaching, and there may not be easy victories for our heroes in the coming months of their adventures, but it seems they are the only hope for a Multiverse that doesn’t devolve into a chaotic, violent battlefield…

And if you’re interested in listening along to their adventures and hearing their latest news, be sure to join us on the Heaven and Hel channel of our Discord Server, and join in on our live sessions every week to hear of their latest adventures as they happen!

Skin & Fog: A New Story Begins!

With a Demonic Cult quickly rising in power to the West, Archmage Eitha Carandol-Norgalad, the Archmage of Benlochia, rushes to her country’s aid, hiring some of the greatest sailors and most knowledgeable scribes to sail the waves of the Astral Sea of Stars and bring back a collection of sacred tomes from the very depths of the otherworldly ocean.

Not much can be said right now about this Campaign (to avoid spoilers), but it definitely looks to set off the new Arc of Games in a big way, with a lot of focus on the Astral Sea of Stars, the Crew of ‘The Vendetta’, a magical star-sailing ship, and the powerful artifacts, experiments and space junk left behind in the Astral Sea from before the Wars of the Gods…

And if you want to jump right on this new Arc of Stories of Games, with no need to know of the previous Arcs, then hop on in to our Discord Server and join as this new Campaign starts!