#ONE D&D

[dailyadventureprompts]

Alright, guess it’s time to address the apocalyptic legal elephant in the room:

For those who might not know, WotC plans were leaked to “update” the OGL in what is basically a scorched earth policy with regards to 3rd party material/creators in the hopes of cutting out the competition and forcing people to use their new products. 

As someone who lived through the 4th edition/pathfinder schism, the situation is laughably similar:  D&D is flourishing more than it ever has (thanks primarily to the OGL) but the execs at Hasbro want more of the money spent on the hobby to wind up in their pockets. Oblivious to the fact that the opensource nature of the game is what draws people to it,  they task the design team with creating a proprietary virtual tabletop through which they can sell d&d content without having to worry about books or pdfs being pirated. This rightfully outrages the fandom and burns every scrap of good will they had towards WotC, resulting in a dead edition that’s maligned years afterword as folks hop to the newer, easier game system. 

The thing that’s different this time is that the d&d playerbase has grown exponentially since the days of the first OGL, with 5th edition being the easiest version of the game to run/pick up and so many resources online, there’s almost no barrier to entry besides finding a stable/accommodating group.   Hell, with the explosive popularity of liveplay series you don’t even need to be actively playing in order to be in the fandom.  All of these people are networked together in a fandom hivemind spread across twitter/reddit/youtube and WotC just made an enemy of every single one of them with its shameless and destructive cashgrab.  No streamer or 3rd party publisher wants to give Hasbro 25% of their revenue, to say nothing of having their project “cancelled” if WotC sees it as a threat to any of their current projects ( see the huge number of spelljammer materials published after the company dropped the ball). 

It took about two years after the announcement of 4th edition for Paizo to come out with pathfinder, and I have no doubt the OGL leak kickstarted every major 3rd party publisher brainstorming some legally distinct version of the 5e ruleset. In the coming months I expect to see a number of these surrogate systems floating around the internet in much the same way that the onednd playtest content, but spurred on with the added “fuck you Hasbro” energy. After that, it’s only a matter of time till one of the big streamers picks up one of these systems and popularizes it, not wanting to pay the 25%tithe to WotC. Personally my money’s on Critical Role: they were one of the major factors in popularizing 5th edition and they’ve got the fandom pull to legitimize any claimant to the throne. 

To step away from playing oracle for a bit, I’d like to finish up this post by dunking on WotC:  

*ahem*

HOW FUCKING DUMB TO YOU HAVE TO BE TO TURN YOUR ENTIRE CUSTOMER BASE AGAINST YOU IN ONE NIGHT? This is some new coke/Reynolds pamphlet/invading Russia in winter levels of shooting yourself in the foot. Wizards was on shaky ground to begin with given that they’re coming off a series of notably disappointing products AND trying to launch a new edition/virtual tabletop/battlepass system, but to follow that up with a retroactive rules change that lets them outright steal from or shut down creators? It’s laughable.  Maybe, MAYBE they could have made this work if they were knocking it out of the park with new releases every year and cultivating a base of diehard WotC loyalists, but the fact of the matter is that aside from the brand name, the hobby has largely passed them by. Everything that Wizards does, from player options to settings to monsters to rules modules, someone else does better because they’re willing to take risks and put in the effort. Aside from the elegant simplicity of 5e’s base system, I can count maybe two pieces of actual game design (piety from Theros, ship combat from Saltmash) that I consider usable at my table, which is SAYING SOMETHING considering we’re nearing the end of the game’s ten year golden age. 

I know we’ll weather this storm, we always have, and regardless of what happens I still know my friends and I will enjoy gathering around the table and slinging dice even though we might not be playing “dungeons and dragons” in a couple years time.  I’ll keep my eye on the horizon, and let you know where I find safe harbour.

[brewerssupplies]

Go forth kingmage and wield magic in a way that truly exhibits your mastery and command over the arcane. I've been making it a goal to make subclassess for classes I don't often make them for, so here's my offering for wizard. I hope you enjoy!

[Drive]

[Homebrewery]

[rpgtoons]

A simple guide to using the new and old Player's Handbook for D&D 5e. Let me know if I missed anything, I'll update the reference with any good tips!

[lostinludens]

There are a lot of crazy things happening right now with developing information about Wizards of the Coast, Hasbro, and the future of Dungeons & Dragons. If you are confused about ONE DND or what is the OGL (open game license) and why it's so important to pay attention to what is being done to it I highly recommend watching the video below.

He gives a great breakdown of what has happened, what information we currently have, and possibly what this mess can lead to. Truly, the future of the DND community is at stake, with so many creators at risk AND any system or content even partially related to DND (such as Pathfinder) is also in the crossfire. So many people are talking about the crazy legalities of it all, and it's a lot and complicated and we just don't have all the info because it just isn't out there yet. So, if you care about DND, about TTRPGS, about communities and people who enjoy a thing being able to continue to enjoy it, watch this video.

[racefortheironthrone]

Question about One D&D discussion post-Reddit

Hey, does anyone know where the One D&D community went post the Reddit crash? Pretty much all the D&D subreddits went dark and I don’t see an increase of activity on EN World or rpg.net. 

[theoutcastrogue]

[D&D PLAYTEST] Pleasant surprise: 5.5 is actually getting good! And in combat I can FINALLY do something more exciting than "hit it again"

So this was my biggest issue with 5e: when I play a character who's good at hitting things, as opposed to flinging spells at things, I want to do cool shit! I love tactical combat, and I can't stand it when "I hit it again" is the only option of a martial character. Everyone should have options, but especially the Rogue. (I'm biased, yes, but the Rogue is conceptually the one class that fights dirty.) And disappointingly, not even the Swashbuckler got manoeuvres in 5e. For everyone other than Battle Masters and monks with Stunning Strike, our only options in 2014 were a measly Shove / Grapple / Disarm IN PLACE of an attack (for many of us, our only attack), and that was WITH optional DMG features. And Tasha's additions were only a marginal improvement.

You couldn't impose conditions with an attack, which, from a simulation aspect, is just silly. Any two-bit caster could do the craziest shit with spells, but an epic level martial couldn't even say "I hit 'em so hard or so deftly that they got a headache". For the most part, they could only say "I hit it again" and deal damage. And I hate that. It's boring. I even had an unfinished homebrew project of Called Shots, where you could spend a resource to do interesting shit with your attacks (give 'em disadvantage, make 'em dazed, reduce speed, that sort of thing). For Rogues, that resource was Sneak Attack dice. And guess what! In the latest version of the 5.5 playtest, WE GET THAT!

Can I get a fuck yeah, and also a fucking finally.

It's not an automatic win button, and that's good! I don't want win buttons (that's also boring), I want options. Cunning Strike is situationally useful, and that's ideal: if it's always good, you'd do it every time (so why isn't it a standard rule?), and if it's always bad, you'd never do it (so why does it exist at all?). If it's potentially good, depending on the situation, it means I get to THINK what I'm gonna do on my turn, and that's such a joy.

For years now, the only combat decisions my Rogues made in 5e were about movement/positioning, and how to get advantage. And co-ordinating with the others, which always happens, I mean it's a group game. But I had very little to contribute in that department other than flanking, I usually just waited for THEM to help ME to get advantage or something.

With this feature (which I'll be stealing as is, regardless of what happens to the playtest, or if I'm gonna adopt 5.5 as a whole or not), I can set up moves for others, I can impose conditions, so many things. Plus, it's customisable. Now that this basic framework is in place, anyone can fiddle with it and come up with new effects that fit their game and style. (I am NOT in favour of perfect rulesets that cover all bases, needs, and preferences, since that's an impossible and silly thing to ask. I am in favour of solid frameworks, that can be easily tweaked and built upon.) So I am ecstatic. I don't have to hit it again every time! Holy shit!

This is not a blanket endorsement of "One D&D" (I'll keep calling it 5.5, thankyouverymuch). It's still a work in progress, I haven't even read all of it in yet, and I do have issues with it, big and small. (And if my favourite class was the Monk, I'd be thumbs down right now: this one needs a lot of work, oof.) But with Weapon Mastery rules (another interesting development for martial characters), and better feats, and with this enormous improvement, I feel that some of the fundamental problems I had with 5e get... kinda solved. The new Rogue simply KICKS ASS. The whole class, not just Cunning Strike, it's a huge improvement. [Go read it, here's the PDF link.]

It's not overpowered, mind you. In terms of damage output it still lags behind Fighters and Barbarians and whathaveyou (which I'm perfectly okay with: Rogues are experts and skillmonkeys, they got stuff to do out of combat, meanwhile Barbarians have ONE JOB so they better be scary good at it), and full casters still slay. It just does cool shit, and I ask you: why do we even bother with the fuckton of combat rules in D&D if not to do cool shit?

See treantmonk's video below for a nice breakdown of the new Rogue. It's a few months old, and a couple of things have been revised since then: there's no "Arcane" spell list any more, so the Arcane Trickster presumably reverts to the Wizard spell list, and the Weapon Mastery rules are slightly different now. But they're very minor changes, and all the conclusions, with which I wholeheartedly agree, stand: this is simply FANTASTIC.

[oldschoolfrp]

(Someone asked for my thoughts about the current OGL debacle, and compared it to how TSR handled its properties in its final years as a company; Tumblr twice ate my reply and deleted the original question)

From the earliest days of D&D a big part of its appeal has been the way it encourages players to create and share their own worlds. The initial appearance of the game sparked the rise of a host of amateur fanzines and third-party small press publishers whose efforts helped increase the popularity of TSR's core product. As TSR grew, it extended various licenses for official supplements, with an uneasy tolerance of ‘generic’ material that didn’t claim to be official.

As competition increased, Gygax seemed more irritated with others engaging with his game on their own terms.  Instead of writing as much about imagination and creativity he often focused on promoting the right way to play. He wasted pages of space in Dragon magazine railing against the small presses and accusing them of making inferior unauthorized products that deceived unsuspecting gamers in the marketplace.

After forcing Gygax out in the mid-80s, Lorraine Williams saved TSR through aggressive expansion, but an attempt at total market dominance helped cause its final financial crisis in the 90s.  The company produced too many of its own new games and official supplements split between too many different genres and campaign worlds, dividing its own customer base among an unsustainable number of products that competed with each other.

That was back then. As for now, I think:

As a consumer of some recent third-party content for 5e and B/X D&D I've been pretty happy with the thriving community of creators making free and commercial supplements, and I hope no one tries to place roadblocks in their way.

That’s about it.  I think I'm not the best person to comment on the details of the allegedly more restrictive leaked OGL 1.1 because:

I have no inside information or contacts with the legal representation of Hasbro, Inc, and

I myself am not a publisher of OGL-based material who would be directly threatened with financial loss by any of the changes that might occur.

It's understandable that independent authors and publishers would be worried about a possible threat to their businesses. It is especially concerning that the company at the center of all this has mostly remained silent for several weeks while anger and fear has been amplified. The last official statement was back on December 21, in which they insisted that independent creators would still be able to keep doing what they have been doing, and mentioned new threats like NFTs as an example of why they felt the old legal language needed an update:

https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1410-ogls-srds-one-d-d

Unfortunately when I see this topic being promoted on Twitter and YouTube, many of the top suggestions are clearly bad-faith click-bait performance art by people selling anger as entertainment, which isn’t going to help anyone understand the actual issues.  I won’t engage with the worst of those.

There are some good takes on the topic here -- @mostlysignssomeportents explained some reasons why publishers probably never needed the OGL and could be better off without it, and @prokopetz has some observations on why the OGL made people more comfortable about quoting the official rules and where things might be headed.

[assistant-honcho]

Does anyone else think that D&D has a power creep problem? The new 2024 Player's Handbook is intended to make the classes more balanced and interesting to play, which I believe it does, but it's also a buff to players across the board. Some of the strongest classes, like the wizard and bard, got buffed despite already outshining other characters in 5e!

This might be a ploy to get more tables to buy the new books. If new content is technically compatible with old, but there's a major power mismatch, lots of people will just want the new books.

Or it could be an attempt simply to attract players. For whatever reason, most players love all new content that makes PCs stronger and hate nerfs no matter the context. This might be down to how most of the D&D community plays and doesn't DM.

Anyway, I wish the new PHB kept power levels similar to 5e by cutting character features that are powerful but not fun or interesting to use. Also by nerfing powerful casters overall.

[thesunderedrealms]

Edward Harrison Compton (German, 1881-1960), Motiv aus Rothenburg ob der Tauber

The Great City of Redrock

Gulls clatter upon the rooftops - I watch as they squark & squabble over a long rotted fish, their hunger persistent, ever much like my own. I was hoping to be settled into some warm fresh bread & honeyed butter down at Haddocks Hope, alas plans do change. Shame they had to change on my day off though, especially when the sun decided to finally play so fair.

Some highborn dip seems to have gotten themselves roughed up in the alley below. What they thought they were doing 'ere is its own matter, yet the Viscounts Men… Well, seems they be naturally more insistent to pass the blame to one of us. Sounds like they're busy roughing up some poor sod below. Well, good luck to ‘em and Wives be willing their arms tire by the time they reach me.

For now suppose I'll try finish me pipe and savour Redrock’s pungent Summer smells. It ain't such a bad life. Could always be worse.

-H.H

[hypothetical-karma]

My genuine reaction now days after barely playing d&d in a full year whenever someone tells me whatever the most recent WotC/Hasbro controversy is just say, "So? Go play literally anything else."

Seriously, if you don't like the company, don't buy their shit.

[keplercryptids]

"WOTC backed off on the OGL nonsense with 5e but we need to stay vigilant so they don't try this with 6e--"

nah. nope. i mean, if you want to put your energy towards that, fine. but tbh, if WOTC wants to create a walled garden for their new game, that's their prerogative. if 6e and its eventual VTT are good enough to warrant the exclusivity, the micro transactions, the price of entry to the garden, then cool. people will play. and if not, other systems including 5e will remain open and accessible. i believe they're shooting themselves in the foot if they make 6e less open and accessible, but! they can technically do that and it's fine.

the issue was never "WOTC shouldn't be allowed to put restrictions on their game/IP." the issue was that WOTC was trying to delegitimize a 20-year-old agreement with the ttrpg community and retroactively lay claim to shit they had no right to claim.

if they create a new version of the OGL for 6e, fine. the consumers will decide if it's worth it and thus will decide 6e's fate. the point is that now nothing will stop you from continuing to play 5e (or any other system!).

[dailyadventureprompts]

We've known for a long while that people find different things about d&d to be fun and what archetypes they fall into, but I'd posit that within the framework of everything that is "Dungeons and Dragons" there exists several wildly different games/forms of fun that all from a part of the d&d ecosystem.

This was brought up during a discussion with my partner when we were talking about the build for her bard. She LOVES playing d&d, it's one of the highlights of her week, but her brain just doesn't give her the happy chemicals when it comes time to do anything related to character building: levelling up, managing her inventory and spell list, charting out what her abilities do, all these things are a chore she puts up with so she can play at the table with our friends. Compare that to me, who loves building characters so much that I have an ever growing stable of concepts I'm never going to get to play, some of which are so developed I not only have them planned out from low to high level but have gone so far as to make playlists about them.

My brain clearly does give me the happy chemicals when dealing with character stuff, to the point where one of my favourite things as a Dm is trawling through my vast archive of 3rd party content to help a player realize a mechanical/flavor concept that might otherwise be hard to nail. Further contrast that with the older generation of tabletop characters who invest almost nothing into characters and throw that into meat-grinder dungeons, or the folks who spend years debating build optimization on forums but seldom ever rolling dice at the table. We're all playing very different FORMS of d&d.

This variance applies to nearly every aspect of the game: dungeons, combat, roleplay, story, but because we don't have strong terms for as many of these variables as we should we end up with mismatches, especially when narrowmidned folks start talking about how the way they play d&d is the RIGHT or ONLY way to play it.

There's a lot of communities that are guilty of this ( anyone who's ever complained about the Critical role effect for instance) but strangely enough one of the biggest ones is WotC, who's trying to make OneDnD for a VERY specific group of people

They play online

They play official modules almost exclusively

They don't use much 3rd party material, if any

They are willing to accept limited character customization for sake of ease.

Not only does no one I play with fit inside that group of people, it's a profile that more accurately fits MMO players, a group of people that broke off from d&d's target audience somewhere around the 90s. You have to wonder how much of the shitshow OD&D has amounted to is all just a reaction to world of warcraft biting into Wotc's bottomline

[magicturtle]

I guess my main take is the old grampy take of: I saw this a-comin'

WotC, like most corporations hates it when other people make money off of their intellectual property. For the past decade Magic: The Gathering has been at turns trying to destroy or capitalize on its secondary market. Do you think that there's a twice-a-year commander product because WotC sees the fans and wants to support what they do? No. WotC saw this very popular format and realized that they were making ~0 money off of it because commander players buy singles, rather than packs.

Do you remember the Brawl format? The one that is commander except it has cards rotate out 3 times a year? Yeah, they tried to make that stick a couple times.

So no, I'm not surprised about Hasbro's executives looking at the chaotic whirlpool that is OGL content for 5e and saying "How can we get THAT money?"

So, as someone who has seen this happen at least once before, it's hard for me to look at everyone that has been making content for D&D at no cost to WotC and not say "What did you think was gonna happen?"

But that's kinda mean and not helpful, because I know the answer to "Why did you make all this content for this brand?" is "Because I trusted them." And that IS a mistake, but I can't really blame people for believing someone when they say "We love you, we love this community, we love your work."

I think the gentleman in this video is right in his observations and expectations; the only point I disagree with is that 'splintering of the D&D community would be a bad thing'. It wouldn't be, if you follow, I don't know, Ginny Di and Zee Bashew and... (I don't know who else the kids are following these days) others? and each one of them went off and started creating content for a different game, you would now have access to content from those games. And If you didn't like their new content, you'd be free to go find content you did like.

However, I expect that in the next few months you'll likely see the bigger influencers throw their support behind WotC on this. He mentions that if Critical Role made their own game people would jump in immediately (and he's right), but what's more likely to happen is that Wizards will offer money, exclusivity and a token place at the table, and many influencers will jump at the chance.

[bergdg]

One D&D Guesswork

Now that we’ve had a few playtest documents released, we can begin to see the direction the game designers of One D&D are heading. Using what we’ve seen so far, I have some thoughts and guesses on what we will see for the rest of the classes that will be released: what we will see for the different groups and some potential directions for some of the class without playtest documents.

As a sidenote – I know there’s a lot of discussion going on right now concerning the future of the Open Game License (OGL) and other associated documents. Recent developments point towards a few different directions, and, having been both part of a 3rd-party content project in 2021 and the consumer of 3rd-party content, I’m waiting with the rest of the community on what it will all look like in the end, and how it will affect community content going forward. But, I am not going to go into that discussion as part of this post.

Read on past the line to see my thoughts on what might lie in store. Mayhap they will spark some thoughts of your own.

Group Abilities

In the Expert document, it was revealed that each class in the Expert group was going to have the Expertise ability, either at 1st or 2nd level. I think there will be a similar ability granted within each group moving forward.

For the Priest group, we already saw that the Cleric’s Channel Divinity ability had received an upgrade. Paladins also have Channel Divinity in 5th Edition, although it differs based on the subclass. I think we will see Paladins gaining Channel Divinity at an earlier level, with Divine Sense being a class-wide Channel Divinity ability. For Druids, I think that Wild Shape will be flavored as their Channel Divinity ability, with the alternate Wild Companion rule from Tasha’s being a second Channel Divinity option.

For the Warrior group, their group feature needs to be about combat. And, other than Extra Attack, the Fighter’s Action Surge ability is a great way to get some extra damage in. My guess is that Action Surge will be extended to all classes in the group and the number of uses will be tied to your character’s proficiency bonus. Monks can sort of do this with Martial Arts, and Barbarians would enjoy the buff that some extra actions would allow.

For the Mage group, their group feature needs to be about spellcasting, and I think it will involve recovering Spell Slots. Wizards have Arcane Recovery, Sorcerers can use Sorcery Points to regain spell slots, and Warlocks recover all of their spell slots during short rests instead of having to wait for a long rest. I could see the One D&D team finding a way to merge these abilities in some way, even if it is just the same ability name with differences noted for each class.

Subclasses

I'm already writing a series of what subclasses I think we'll see for classes that have already been released as playtest material: Bard, Cleric and Ranger (with Rogue coming next week). I give some initial thoughts in some of the sections below, and I plan to continue with each class after they are released.

Fighters

Many would argue that the Battle Master subclass is the best of the Fighter subclasses, and maneuvers really enhance what Fighters are capable of. With the desire to equalize spell casters and non-casters, I could see all Fighters getting access to something like Manuevers to up their tactical advantage. That would be a great differentiator: Monks would have access to Ki, Barbarians would Rage, and Fighters would have “tactics” (using this term to differentiate it from maneuvers gained via the Battle Master subclass). I could see ‘tactics’ giving you bonuses / abilities based in your Strength / Dexterity modifier and having a number of uses equal to your proficiency bonus.

Monks

With Rangers getting some major upgrades in recent updates, I am really hoping that Monks get some love in the same way and become the ultimate unarmed warrior. With the Unarmed Fighting style as a template, I could see a d6 being the base Martial Arts die instead of a d4, making a d12 be the die for high-level monks instead of a d10. The higher average damage from the get-go paired with access to Action Surge would be a major boon already to this class. And then with the right polish on the 4 subclasses that will be included (probably Astral Self, Open Hand, Mercy, and Shadow), we would have a solid option again.

Sorcerers

While I don’t know if it would stick, I could see a future playtest where, instead of being a Charisma-based spellcaster, sorcerers would become Constitution-based. This would better play into the flavor of it being a natural ability, whether inherited from their bloodline or their surroundings or gained from some entity that wasn’t giving their power through a pact (which is Warlock territory).

Wizards

When Jeremy Crawford announced that each class would only have 4 subclasses in the “One D&D Player’s Handbook,” a lot of people got to wondering what that would mean for Wizards, as there are 8 schools of magic and those made up the core subclasses in 5th Edition. My guess is that we won’t see any subclasses in One D&D based around the schools of magic, especially with the move to differentiate between Arcane, Divine, and Primal spells. Instead, we will see something like the Holy Orders from the Cleric playtest document, in which you would have an ‘area of study’ for your wizard. Then, you would say something like “I’m an Order of War Magic Wizard specializing in Evocation and Abjuration magic.” Subclasses would then be modeled after the existing non-school subclasses: Order of Bladesinging, Order of Scribes (which I think will be the “base” wizarding subclass), Order of War Magic, and Order of Runecraft (which is a “live” 5E playtest subclass, most likely showing up in Bigby Presents Glory of the Giants).

Warlocks

In all the playtest material currently released, all classes are now getting their subclass at 3rd level. Of all the classes, this goes against the flavor of the warlock (as we currently understand it) the most. You make your deal with your patron, right? But the same could have been said for Clerics, who pick a deity to follow. However, with the handling of Clerics in their playtest document, I could see this pattern still working – you would still pick your patron at first level, but that pact isn’t fully realized until 3rd level, where the patron would then grant unique abilities based on their type (and beginning your true subclass path). This would fit the flavor, as many patrons could be seen as being of multiple types – like a Demonic Archfey or a Fathomless Old One. In addition, I think Eldritch Blast will now be the 1st level Feature of the Warlock class, making it a cantrip no longer. This will be the first way to begin expressing your connection to your patron.

Wrap-Up

Anyways, what do you think we'll see with the future of One D&D? How much of my guesswork will really happen?

@dailyadventureprompts - would be interested to hear your ideas

[lostinludens]

BOYCOTT WOTC AND D&D BEYOND, CANCEL YOUR SUBS

https://twitter.com/DnD_Shorts/status/1613576298114449409?t=DLX6kL3IZeFTWFq3CxKJhg&s=19

[topaz-mutiny]

Was looking at a video discussing the One D&D changes to Druids and I thought it was funny how much of a coincidence the changes are:

Wild Shape - basically useless worse Polymorph (no features from yourself OR the animal you change into) - no additional HP for tanking anymore - Moon Druids only slightly less useless Wild Shape - No more elemental forms for Moon Druids Spells Druids Lose Access To Blight, Confusion, Divination, Fire Shield, Hallucinatory Terrain, Cone of Cold, Contagion, Geas, Planar Binding, Flesh to Stone, Heroes Feast, Mirage Arcane, Plane Shift, Symbol, Antipathy/Sympathy, Feeblemind, Incendiary Cloud, Foresight

I say coincidence because I don’t think it was intentional, but this is basically a “fuck everything cool Keyleth ever did as a Moon Druid” change.