sock-mind

[sock-mind]

This is what my dreams look like.

I'm a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

[sock-mind]

[sock-mind]

Never thought I'd be back here, but the call..

Of boops..

[sock-mind]

Dispense boops upon my snoot

[sock-mind]

platypus?

VEGGIE THE PLATYPUS!? 

I think I might have a problem guys

[sock-mind]

theres people watching me now o.o;

i have so many people to disappoint now

[sock-mind]

The D&D Clusterfuck™ Summary

By Sock Mind

This will be as concise as I can make it, any errors will be corrected when/if they are pointed out. Wizards of the Coast (WotC) was supposed to make a live statement regarding the new Open Game License or "OGL". To very briefly summarize what the OGL was: 

"The Open Game License is a public copyright license by Wizards of the Coast that may be used by tabletop role-playing game developers to grant permission to modify, copy, and redistribute some of the content designed for their games, notably game mechanics. However, they must share-alike copies and derivative works." (source: Wikipedia )

They were going to make some changes to the OGL to be far more restrictive as the shareholders of Hasbro (aka, DICKHEAD) discovered that WotC was actually an overwhelming majority of their revenue and was "under monetized" and steps were being taken to make D&D a live service type game that was entirely digital. Eventually this leaked.

To keep a VERY FUCKING LONG story short, any creative project made within the confines of OGL 1 (eg. Critical Role, Dimension 20, Pathfinder 1st Edition) would retroactively belong to Dickhead Hasbro as would a retroactive royalty payment across the projects entire history of revenue. For the entire leaked OGL 1.1, click the following link: http://ogl.battlezoo.com

This was leaked and "confirmed" (without an official statement, nothing is certain) by a whistleblower inside WotC that the order was coming from Hasbro because now their entire existence was only to turn higher and higher profits by literally any means they could or couldn't legally accomplish. More on this in a moment though as we haven't even gotten to the livestream debacle..

The Livestream Day

When news of this caught on a few weeks ago, at first the outrage was easy to ignore, but quickly spiraled out of control when major players in the Tabletop Gaming sphere broadly started sounding the alarms. This snowballed quickly as more and more information regarding OGL 1.1 was being leaked and allegedly confirmed. During this entire clusterfuck, hasbro was dead silent on all platforms which really only made things worse.

It all came to a head yesterday (12/1/2023) at about 4pm EST when WotC was slated to make a live statement regarding the rumors, but between announcing the livestream and the time it was slated to start is when the whistleblower statement came out basically confirming everything we were seeing. They contacted a number of community creators via email which read as follows: https://twitter.com/DnD_Shorts/status/1613576298114449409?s=20

During this time it was clear WotC was scrambling to distract people from what was happening and just before the livestream started their website appeared to crash from the sheer number of people cancelling their D&D Beyond subscriptions. What ACTUALLY happened, and I swear to Loki I am not making this up, was they took the site down to REMOVE THE UNSUBSCRIBE BUTTON FROM THEIR WEBSITE. cite: bird-app 

At 30 mins past the start time of their livestream on twitch, D&D Beyond twitter page abruptly deleted the livestream announcement and said on their community Discord server that they never actually slated this livestream and it was an error on the side of twitch. At this time I cannot confirm or deny that, this is only what they said.

Them cancelling the livestream was the kill shot.

Paizo, the company behind the Pathfinder game system, dropped an announcement. I will link the entire statement below but to summarize it, here are the important takeaways:

1. The original OGL was nonrevocable and their source was that they literally fucking wrote it. 2. Pathfinder Second Edition (P2e) was not created using any materials from D&D but still included the OGL 1 so that other creative projects could use Paizo's materials. And for the big one 3. They were willing and able to take WotC to court over this, they are no longer interested in WotC's OGL in literally any capacity, and they were going to create a brand new OGL of their own which will be owned by the same people that own the open license for Linux to ensure it stays free of corporate fuckery. And just to really twist the knife, they announced their core rulebooks were on a discount.

Full statement from Paizo: Click Here (please be aware their site is being slow at the time of posting)

[My Personal Opinion: PAIZO WITH THE RKO OUTTA NOWHERE!!!]

This was the most concise and brutal dickslap to the face of Hasbro and WotC, and will likely be talked about decades from now as a key moment in tabletop gaming history. But we're not freaking done yet!!

The Follow up Fuckup 

Today (13/1/2023) at about 10am EST, D&D Beyond made a statement on their website which will be linked below. Key takeaway is the typical corporate speak of "N-nuh uhh, we were doing this to keep bigots out and make the tools more accessible (read: monetized)  for you all. Was that convincing?" The entire post reeks of corporate gaslighting.

WotC Statement: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1423-an-update-on-the-open-game-license-ogl

Sadly the damage has been done and the bridges have been burned. Entire new TTRPG gaming systems have been created and given away for free in the last few days to such a degree that we are all now spoiled for choices. It is regrettable to see such a titan of tabletop gaming that had a very accessible ruleset be torched for the Hasbro cocaine bucket fund, but it's done now.

For the future we can look to Paizo's new Open RPG Creative License (ORC, hah that had to be intentional xD) for the next big company. However if you wish to support independent TTRPG systems, here are some recommendations from myself.

-For general high fantasy, Pathfinder 2e by Paizo link: https://paizo.com/pathfinder

-For science fiction mixed with high fantasy, Starfinder by Paizo link: https://paizo.com/starfinder

-For gritty neon-noir, Cyberpunk Red by Talsorian Games link: https://rtalsoriangames.com/cyberpunk/

-For Fallout universe pen and paper: The Fallout RPG by Modiphius link: https://www.modiphius.net/en-us/pages/falloutrpg

-For classic vampire and werewolf mystery: The World of Darkness series of games including Vampire: The Masquerade / Werewolf: The Apocalypse / Hunter: The Reckoning by White Wolf Publishing link: https://www.worldofdarkness.com

There are many others that I am certain will be brought up. If you wish to offer your favorite, please do so with a link to the publisher. I would much prefer this over amazon so that the publisher doesnt get robbed by Bezo's cut.

[sock-mind]

awoo

[sock-mind]

i have never experienced desire this strong

I know a lot of people already created an alternate evolution/fakemon for Wooloo based on the concept of “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”, but the other day I thought of “Awoo” (spelling out how a howl sounds), and it made “Awooloo” click in my head, so I had to draw something for it!

Occasionally, Wooloo and Dubwool will share their coats with young orphaned Pokemon, who slowly take to living with them as part of the flock. Some of these Pokemon would have otherwise been predators, but become protective of their adoptive family.

Awooloo are believed to be distant cousins of Rockruff, but have spent so many generations living with Wooloo, they now grow their own wool and have more in common with the sheep Pokemon, though they tend to be more nocturnal and still adept at hunting/tracking. They communicate with different howls, letting parental Pokemon know where lost infants are, or to warn the group of danger.

Werewool is the evolved form of Awooloo, made possible with a Moon Stone. Easier to distinguish from the sheep Pokemon it tends to live with, Werewool are fiercely protective of anybody they consider family, and are willing to adopt any young Pokemon in need, regardless of what it looks like. Occasionally, they will even rescue lost humans in the woods. Werewool see perfectly in the dark, when they defend their territory and hunt, but are generally docile during the day.

[sock-mind]

elon big gay

[sock-mind]

@lackadaisycatsats reposted a bunch of her Lackawolves

So I guess I gotta remind everyone of the time I did a whole comic-fic on Rocky's "lycanthropy"

Spawned from goofy Halloween conversations with Tracy in 2020, posted over the course of Halloween 2020 and Halloween 2021 (for the conclusion)

[sock-mind]

Brisk afternoon 🍂☕️🍂

[sock-mind]

my mom reading to my dad as he drives

[sock-mind]

is it cool to post here yet?

[sock-mind]

i cleaned up laika doodles from various warmups

[sock-mind]

Into the woods

by Even Tryggstrand

Music: Second Light - Into the Woods

[sock-mind]

The air is thick with the scent of algae and mud as you proceed up the trail to the silent shrine. Moss and plant life have all but overtaken this long forgotten stairway, rain having been constant for the last 12 years. Your footing is slick and you gaze back down the path, a sickening sense of quiet panic sets in. 

The archway stands as a barrier to keep contained the spirits of this shrine, spirits that you have now awoken. It’s not too late, you can make it back down in time!  (DEX saving throw, skill AC 16 at disadvantage)

Visual Writing Prompt #343