AcidicBerry

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 stretch 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 stretch 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.

This license - even as a draft! - has basically guaranteed I will not write for Dungeons and Dragons again.

If you’re able to listen to podcasts, please listen to this podcast

I need someone to talk about it with

DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW HARD IT IS TO ?????

Lumberjacks, like most megafauna species generally require more space than the average hardware store, even a big box store could provide. The misconception is that Lumberjacks are a social species because of how they often work and live together.

This is a matter of necessity, not preference, and a survival technique for thriving under the LogBoss.

A “pack” of Lumberjacks, if not under the environmental pressure of a LogBoss will naturally disperse until they each have a wide territory.

Lumberjacks rarely fight for territory.

One on one, a Lumberjack could drive out a Dad or Lesbian, however the latter tend to travel in social packs.

Lumberjacks will passively retreat on the presence of large numbers of people. Kind of like Sasquatch.

Getting a “pack” of Lumberjacks assembled would be hard enough unless they were forced into a Hardware Store by a LogBoss. In that case, they would already be in a heightened and potentially agitated state far above their natural behavior. This artificial scenario can be likened to a circus animal running amok. If it had been in the wild, the incident would not have occurred.

Free-roaming Lumberjacks are the cryptids of the Hardware ecosystem. They are surprisingly quiet and unobtrusive.

Only experienced silverbacks or the boldest young Dads dare venture into a craft store for long without his mate or offspring to keep roving Craft Ladies at bay and guide him in this strange ecosystem. If a Dad enters with his mate and is separated from her, he will often scuttle for the seeming familiarity of Woodcrafts, Models, or Paints (the latter not to be confused with Fine Arts, unquestioned territory of art students), but he eyes Scrapbooking and Jewelry with trepidation and will usually venture into those exotic areas only in the company of females of his pack.

Lumberjacks are rarely spotted entering craft stores of their own volition, for while they do not fear it as Dads do, they know it is an environment unsuited for megafauna such as themselves.

Hardware store Lesbians generally adapt more easily to craft stores, although they may enlist another Lesbian of a subspecies more adapted to that environment to guide them until they find their niche. Lesbians have even been known to seek the aid of a Craft Lady, a native fauna that share similarities with Lesbians but are usually smaller and nimbler to suit their chosen habitat. Dads who witness this are often awed by the Lesbians’ temerity, for although larger, Dads are generally wary of the cunning and dexterous Craft Ladies and may mistake their enthusiastic pack greetings as predatory swarming.

Craft Ladies, secure in their ecological niche, have no fear of interlopers and take the presence of non-native beings in stride, although they may become territorial about scarcer resources.

fereldan nobles: 

As you may know, I am Ukrainian. I live in Kyiv. I have lived here since I was born and I love my country with my whole heart.

I see a lot of misinformation under the tag "Ukraine". Most of it comes from American people, who try to explain the conflict in their own words. They can't. It's impossible to explain if you haven't lived here. There are too many influences on this conflict. You keep looking from an american perspective, which is not crucial in understanding the conflict.

For example, have you ever had you language forbidden? Like straight up forbidden by the law? It happened to Ukrainian language a lot of times thought our history. And who did it? The Russian Empire. And it's not the end of it. The genocides, the assimilation, the deportation. Have you even researched Ukrainian history?

You do not uplift Ukrainian voices enough. And you should if you care about what's happening. If you don’t do it, you're just doing a performance of your support and activism.

Lucky for you, I am a Ukrainian person! And I am DYING TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS. I scored 191/200 points on my graduation exam in history, so you can suppose I know something about Ukrainian history.

I did another post on this topic last year, but I thought it could use an update with some more books! And yes, the last post had people repeatedly adding on queer books by white people, so I’m a bit salty about it.

Other queer SFF PowerPoints:

Massive queer SFF rec post

Trans SFF

F/F SFF

Bi and Pan SFF

Ace SFF 

I’m not transcribing all the text, but you can find the titles, authors, information on TW, etc beneath the cut.

When possible, I’m linking to my database of queer books. The page for each book includes the synopsis, content warnings under spoiler tags, and links to reviews from queer readers. If it’s not in the queer database at the time of posting (8/24/19), I’ll link to Goodreads instead.

Correction (6/14/20): Girls of Paper and Fire is Southeast Asian inspired, not East Asian inspired. 

Further edit: I’m officially blocking anyone who recommends white authors on this post, because it keeps happening. RESPECT SPACES SET ASIDE FOR POC. 

I got radicalized into the far-right on TikTok.  Well, technically I didn’t, but an account that I made did, and this is a graph of what that looked like.  I just published this study, and I’ll link it in the comments, but I’ll also break it down right now, here.

So I wanted to examine whether or not transphobia is a gateway prejudice that leads to like, broader far-right radicalization.  It’s been pretty clear for a while now that the far-right is transphobic, but we wanted to see whether being transphobic alone was enough to lead you to the far right.

So I made a brand new TikTok account and followed 14 creators known to post transphobic content.  Then I started scrolling my ‘For You’ page, and I started exclusively engaging with transphobic content, and I documented the main narratives of the more than 400 videos recommended to me.  We also double-blind coded this, meaning that another researcher also watched every video and coded the narratives, and then if we ever disagreed, more researchers would come in and perform a tie-breaker.  Once we removed sponsored videos and videos that had been taken down before they could be double-coded, we were left with 360 videos.

Of the 360 total videos, 103 were homophobic or anti-trans, 42 were misogynistic, 29 contained racist narratives or white supremacist messaging, and 14 endorsed violence.  Obviously, TikTok didn’t just like give us neo-nazi content immediately.  I actually didn’t get my first Nazi symbol until video 141.  But the more I interacted with transphobic content, the more I was fed not only more transphobic content, but also homophobia and misogyny and racism and antisemitism.  So I didn’t actually have to interact with racist content to be fed white supremacist content, I just had to engage with transphobic content.

What you see in this graph is the TikTok algorithm starting off with a normal feed — memes, recipes, whatever — and then going “OHH, you’re transphobic!  Have you tried hating the gays?  What about women?”

So, it appears that transphobia can radicalize a TikTokker.

Around video 400, you’ll notice an interesting spike in far-right figures, hate symbols, antisemitism and calls to violence.  That’s when I reached fascist TikTok and set my phone on fire.  400 videos might sound like a lot, but if a user watches each video for an average of 20 seconds, they would end up watching 400 videos in just over 2 hours.  So, a user could basically download the app at breakfast and be fed the overtly white supremacist, neo-nazi content before lunch.

-pauses, purses lips-

That’s not good!

/ end transcription]

Link to the study:

[Image 1: A Screenshot of an invitation to a Facebook group named: “A group where we all pretend to be ants in an ant colony.” Under that is a post in the group that reads: “We reached the center of the Earth. Now what?” Four people commented saying one word each in this order: scurry, dig, work, melt. These words are in capital letters and have spaces between each letter.]

[Image 2: Another Screenshot of a post in the group that reads: “It has come to my attention that when we put the spaces in-between letters it makes it difficult for visually impaired ants to know what we’re saying and so I was wondering if we could try to make this group more accessible for them. (The text to voice can’t figure out what we are saying with the spaces) (Picture of an ant for attention)” This text is then followed by a close up picture of an ant.]

[Image 3: A screenshot of some comments on the post in Image 2. Five people commented: adapt, adapt, inclusion, love adapt, adapt. These words are in capital letters and have no spaces between the letters.]