#wizards of the coast | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kirain · 1 year ago

Note

Wall of the faithless isn't canon in bg3. They changed alot of things actually. So no Gale isn't "scared" he's just an obsessed asshole who doesn't learn from his mistakes.

Oof...

There's really nothing I can say except: you're wrong. The City of Judgement and the Wall of the Faithless are canon to BG3. If you don't like Gale, that's fine, but you don't have to make things up or completely disregard the lore to do it. Larian Studios literally hired people from Wizards of the Coast—the company responsible for all the canon lore, characters, and campaigns in D&D—to help them with the story. It took them five years, I believe, to fully study and understand the lore. They constantly conferred with the team to double, triple, and quadruple check every slice of content they added to the game, and parts of the game are now considered canon to D&D 5E.

As for Gale "not learning" from his mistakes ... when you first meet him, he literally admits he made a mistake with Mystra. Though personally I don't see it as the "power-hungry" move people seem to think it is. Gale simply wanted to be considered an equal to his partner (really his groomer), which is a perfectly healthy and normal desire for anyone in a relationship. Your partner should treat you like an equal, but Mystra very clearly saw Gale as a pet. A trophy. A worshipper. Subservient. Beneath her. A silly mortal with delusions of grandeur (which she cultivated), which is really rich when you learn she was once mortal herself. Mystra is a hypocrite.

Gale tried to prove himself worthy of equality by trying to bring Mystra what he thought was a piece of her missing Weave. For anyone who doesn't know, the current Mystra was torn to pieces by Cyric and Shar, then put back together by her Chosen. Though back to full power by the events of BG3, she's still technically missing pieces of herself, and Gale mistook the Karsite Weave for one of those pieces. Instead of simply telling Gale it was corrupted Weave, she let him go on believing it was hers. Personally I think that's because she was tired of him (maybe he got too old for her 😒) and was hoping he would do something that, in her mind, would justify abandoning him—but I admit that's full conjecture on my part. What is true is that she knew the orb wasn't hers, but for some reason she let Gale think it was. Even after she abandoned him and left him to die, she never told him. Not until she realised she could use him.

In Act 3, while the argument can certainty be made that he's thirsty for power, Gale ultimately becomes fed up with the gods because, as he knows better than anyone, they treat people like commodities. While I have no intention of ever ascending him myself, it looks like he actually makes good on his word. He doesn't threaten or toy with his followers, he inspires people to walk their own path, he only asks for prayers as payment (as without some form of devotion, gods in D&D cease to be), and if you romance him ... he ascends you into godhood as his equal. Mystra could have done this for him, she just didn't want to. And if you don't want him to ascend, it's genuinely so easy. I don't understand what people are complaining about. It takes one conversation with zero checks to convince him to completely abandon his ambitions. One. If he was truly "power hungry", it wouldn't be that easy.

Again, I would argue that Gale's true goal isn't really power, it's freedom, and divinity gives him that freedom. He has many conversations where he makes it clear he doesn't want to live under the gods' thumbs anymore; which, in a world like Faerûn, is extremely understandable. As I said in my Wall of the Faithless post, he's scared. Eternal torment for a simple mistake, one of which could've been avoided if Mystra told him the truth or treated him like an equal? When your partner is a goddess, how can you not feel inadequate? And if you convince him to give up the crown, he's perfectly content with Mystra's forgiveness. Even in the Early Access, that's all he really wanted.

Gale's far from perfect. He's arrogant and overconfident and insecure and he can be prone to emotional outbursts (most of which he apologises for, however), but he's nowhere near the heartless, power-hungry monster the haters seem to think he is. He is, in fact, one of the most compassionate companions in the entire camp, to the point that he accepts everyone, including Minthara. He votes for Astarion to stay when you find out he's a vampire. He gets mad at you if you surrender him to the Gur. He's one of the only companions who will openly marry/stay with you if you become a mindflayer. He's willing to sacrifice himself to save the world, and willing to damn himself to be with you. He loves every act of kindness, while hating every act of cruelty. I understand that the bugs from launch ruined a lot of people's perception of him ... and unfortunately some of those glitches are still present even now, but he is a good man.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios #karlach #karlach cliffgate #wall of the faithless #city of Judgement #wizards of the coast #dnd #d&d #dungeons and dragons #astarion #minthara

2K notes · View notes

rpgsandbox · 3 months ago

Text

I drafted a legal argument against Wizards of the Coast - and you can too!

WotC is trying to pull off a licensing clawback just two years after the OGL Debacle, and I figured out how to punch back.

If you've played Dungeons & Dragons for any length of time, you've probably heard of the legendary "Deck of Many Things" – one of the game's most iconic magical items. It’s a lot of fun, and it has always been something associated with brand-name Dungeons and Dragons.

This article is about the legal usage of “Deck of Many Things,” and about how Wizards of the Coast seems to be trying to take it back in 2025 after giving it to the community in 2023. And it’s about how you can hit them where it hurts.

The History of the Deck

The "Deck of Many Things" has been a staple of D&D since the earliest days of the game. It's been included in every edition and is as much a part of D&D lore as dragons themselves. For years, this term was effectively the property of TSR and then Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro.

But something important happened in January 2023. After the massive backlash to their proposed OGL changes, Wizards of the Coast – through Executive Producer Kyle Brink – announced that they would be releasing the Systems Reference Document version 5.1 under a Creative Commons license:

Kyle’s announcement goes on to say: “This Creative Commons license makes the content freely available for any use. We don't control that license and cannot alter or revoke it. It's open and irrevocable in a way that doesn't require you to take our word for it. And its openness means there's no need for a VTT policy. Placing the SRD under a Creative Commons license is a one-way door. There's no going back.”

This was huge news! For those who don't know, releasing something under Creative Commons essentially means giving it to the public with very minimal restrictions. In this case, they used the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which allows anyone to share, copy, redistribute, adapt, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially – as long as appropriate credit is given.

The SRD 5.1 document, which spans hundreds of pages, explicitly includes "Deck of Many Things" on page 216, along with a full description of what it is and how it works. By releasing this under CC 4.0, Wizards effectively released this term into the public domain, allowing anyone to use it in their own works.

The gaming community praised this move as a step toward rebuilding trust after the OGL debacle. It seemed like Wizards had learned their lesson and was committed to supporting the community that had grown around their game.

The Betrayal

Fast forward to April 2025. WotC announced that they were revising their SRD 5.1 with a new and improved SRD versioned 5.2. For 5.2 they listed a bunch of milquetoast fantasy terms that I’m sure they’re very proud of, and kind of squeeze in a couple of footnotes. Those footnotes say that they’re going to be clawing back the term “Deck of Many Things,” as well as “Orb of Dragonkind.”

Well lo and behold, on the USPTO’s trademark search database, Deck of Many Things is in fact a pending word mark, with the latest application updated in April of 2025.

The serial number is 97260475, and you can look it up yourself on the USPTO website. This is what it looks like:

So here’s the problem. This application effectively attempts to claim exclusive rights to a term that Wizards had already released under Creative Commons just two years earlier.

Why They Can’t Do This

So why can't Wizards of the Coast trademark "Deck of Many Things" now? Let me break it down:

The Creative Commons 4.0 license they chose is explicitly IRREVOCABLE. Here's what the license actually says in Section 2(a)(1):

"The Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable license to exercise the Licensed Rights in the Licensed Material."

That means once Kyle Brink proudly published the SRD 5.1 under this license on that fateful day in January of 2023, they could never take any of it back. The license explicitly prohibits imposing "additional or different terms or conditions" on the licensed material.

Attempting to register a trademark on material you've already licensed to the public represents an attempt to impose additional restrictions on that material, a violation of a term of the Creative Commons 4.0 license. Specifically it is a violation of Section 2(a)(5):

“No downstream restrictions. You may not offer or impose any additional or different terms or conditions on, or apply any Effective Technological Measures to, the Licensed Material if doing so restricts exercise of the Licensed Rights by any recipient of the Licensed Material.”

My Attempt to Challenge the Trademark

When I discovered this trademark application, thanks to Dark Kelsey, I decided to take action. The USPTO has a process called a "Letter of Protest" that allows anyone to submit evidence showing why a trademark shouldn't be granted.

I drafted a carefully formatted Letter of Protest following all the USPTO guidelines. My evidence was straightforward:

The official announcement of SRD 5.1 being published under Creative Commons

A copy of page 216 through 218 from SRD 5.1 showing "Deck of Many Things"

The full text of the Creative Commons 4.0 license highlighting its irrevocability, etc.

I TRIED to submit this through the USPTO's electronic filing system, confident that the evidence was clear and compelling.

The Setback

Unfortunately, when I tried to submit the Letter of Protest, I received this error message:

"This form cannot be submitted because it has been more than 30 days from the date the application published in the Official Gazette."

I had missed the narrow window to submit a Letter of Protest. The USPTO only allows these submissions either before publication or within 30 days after publication in their Official Gazette. By the time I discovered the application, this deadline had already passed.

This was frustrating, but it doesn't mean the fight is over.

The Path Forward

If the USPTO does grant this trademark – which they shouldn't if they're properly interpreting the prior Creative Commons licensing– there's still another option: filing a Petition for Cancellation with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB).

A cancellation petition allows anyone who believes they would be damaged by a trademark registration to challenge it even after it's been granted. The filing fee is $600, and the process typically takes about three years.

For this specific case, the grounds would be:

The mark doesn't function as a trademark because it was published under an irrevocable Creative Commons license

The applicant's actions in seeking the trademark contradict their prior grant of rights

The process is more involved than a Letter of Protest, but it's completely doable even without an attorney. The TTAB provides clear guidelines, and everything can be filed electronically through their online system.

Conclusion

What Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast are trying to do here is repugnant but not surprising. They're attempting to double back on a license they've already granted – something they've developed a pattern of doing every couple of years now.

First it was the OGL controversy, where they tried to revoke a 23-year-old license. The community pushed back and won. Now they're pursuing trademark terms they explicitly released under Creative Commons, trying to AMEND a creative commons license that they just published (5.2 amending 5.1), perhaps hoping no one would notice or care.

This is more than just a legal technicality – it's about trust. When a company publicly garners praise for licensing away intellectual property, only to sneakily try to reclaim it later, they're betraying the very community that supports them.

The irony here is that Wizards didn't even need to do this. They could have trademarked specific implementations or product lines featuring the Deck of Many Things without trying to claim ownership of the term itself after releasing it to the public.

So why am I telling you all this? Because you don't need to be a lawyer to challenge corporate overreach. The systems exist for regular people to participate in these processes. Whether it's a Letter of Protest or a Cancellation Petition, the tools are there for you to use.

If you care about not getting bamboozled by incompetent, dishonest corporations, consider getting involved. Watch for these kinds of trademark applications, be ready to file your own challenges, and spread the word when companies try to walk back their commitments.

Simon Says: An Addendum

After publishing this article, I received some valuable feedback here from Simon, an academic lawyer in the UK who teaches trademark law. Simon pointed out an even more straightforward legal issue with Hasbro's trademark application that deserves attention, one that transcends the Creative Commons argument.

The fundamental problem? "Deck of Many Things" likely isn't even eligible for trademark protection in the first place.

Under trademark law (both in the US under the Lanham Act and similarly in the UK), a valid trademark must be distinctive – it must have the capacity to identify goods as coming from a specific source and not another. But here's the kicker: "Deck of Many Things" products have been created by numerous publishers over the years, not just Wizards of the Coast.

This widespread use means the term has essentially become descriptive or potentially generic within the gaming industry. It no longer primarily signals "this is a WotC product" but rather "this is a type of magical card deck with random effects" – a concept that's been implemented by countless game creators.

Think about it – when you hear "Deck of Many Things," do you automatically associate it exclusively with Wizards of the Coast? Or do you think of the general concept that's been part of gaming culture for decades?

This distinctiveness requirement exists for a good reason. Trademark law isn't supposed to give companies monopolies over common terminology in an industry. It's meant to prevent consumer confusion about who made a product, not to let corporations fence off widely-used concepts.

So beyond the Creative Commons issue, there's this even more basic problem: Hasbro is trying to trademark something that likely fails the fundamental "distinctive" requirement of trademark law.

This remains an example of a corporation trying to claim exclusive ownership over community cultural elements that have been widely used and understood for decades. Whether through Creative Commons “revisions” or by ignoring basic trademark principles, the effect is the same – an attempt to monopolize what should remain in the public sphere.

#RPG #Dungeons and Dragons #gaming news #Wizards of the Coast #SRD5.2 #Deck of Many Things #trademark #creative commons #legal bullshit

186 notes · View notes

anim-ttrpgs · 1 year ago

Text

Help Save the World of TTRPGs and Their Creators.

Okay I’m being a little dramatic, but at the same time I’m pretty serious. This is a call to action, and the livelihoods of myself and lots of other people, many of them (like myself) disabled, are depending on it. This is a post about why, what you can do about it, and (perhaps least often answered) how.

This post is actually an accompaniment to another discussion by someone else. If you don’t want to listen to a 90-minute in-depth discussion of much of what I’m about to tell you, you can just keep reading. Otherwise, click here or here and listen to this either before or after you read this post. (They’re the same thing, just different sources.)

If you have ever made or reblogged posts urging people to switch from Google Chrome to Firefox, you should be willing to at least give a try to other TTRPGs besides D&D5e for much the same principle reasons. I’m not telling you you have to hate D&D5e, and I’m not telling you you have to quit D&D5e, I’m just asking you to try some other games. If you don’t like them, and you really want to go back to D&D5e, then go back to D&D5e. But how can you really know you won’t like other games if you have literally never tried them? This post is a post about why and how to try them. If you’re thinking right now that you don’t want to try them, I urge you to look below to see if any of your reasons for not wanting to try them are covered there. Because the monopoly that WotC’s D&D5e has on TTRPGs as a whole is bad for me as a game designer, and it’s bad for you as a game player. It’s even bad for you if you like D&D5e. A fuller discussion of the why and how this is the case can be found in the links above, but it isn’t fully necessary for understanding this post, it’ll just give you a better perspective on it.

If you’re a D&D5e player, I’m sure at some point or another, you’ve been told “play a different game”, and it must get frustrating without the context of why and how. This post is here to give you the why and how.

[The following paragraph has been edited because the original wording made it sound like we think all weird TTRPGs suck.]

Before that though, one more thing to get out of the way. I'm going to level with you. There’s a lot of weird games out there.

You are gonna see a lot of weird TTRPGs when you take the plunge. Many of them try to completely reinvent what a TTRPG even is, and some fail spectacularly, others really do even up doing something very interesting even if they don't end up being what a core TTRPG player wants. But not every indie RPG is a Bladefish, lots and lots of them are more 'traditional' and will feel very familiar to you, I promise. (And you might even find that you like the weird experimental bladefish type ones, these are usually ideal for one-session plays when your usual group can't play your usual game for any reason.)

You're also going to probably see a lot of very bad games, and man have I got some stories of very bad games, but for now I'm just saying to make sure you read the reviews, or go through curators (several of which will be listed below), before you buy.

Now that that is out of the way, I’m going to go down a list of concerns you may have for why not, and then explain the how.

“I don’t want to learn a whole new set of rules after I already spent so much time learning D&D5e.”

Learning a new set of rules is not going to be as hard as you think. Most other TTRPGs aren’t like that. D&D5e is far on the high end of the scale for TTRPGs being hard and time-consuming to learn and play. If you’ve only played D&D5e, it might trick you into thinking that learning any TTRPG is an overwhelmingly time-consuming task, but this is really mostly a D&D5e problem, not a TTRPG problem as a whole.

“D&D5e has all of these extra online tools to help you play it.”

So what? People have been playing TTRPGs without the help of computers for 50 years. To play a well-designed TTRPG you won’t need a computer. Yes, even if you're bad at math. There are some TTRPGs out there that barely even use math.

“I’m too invested in the narrative and characters of my group’s current ongoing D&D5e campaign to switch to something else.”

There are other games, with better design made by better people for less money, that are the same kind of game as D&D5e, that your current characters, lore, and plot will fit right into and do it better. And no, it's not just Pathfinder, there's others.

“I can’t afford to play another TTRPG.”

You probably can. If you’ve only played D&D5e, you might have been made to think that TTRPGs are a very expensive hobby. They aren’t. D&D5e is actually uniquely expensive, costing more than 3x more than the next most expensive TTRPG I can think of right now. Even on the more expensive end, other TTRPG books will cost you no more than $60, most will cost you less than $20, and a whole lot of them are just free. If you somehow still can’t afford another TTRPG, come to the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book club mentioned below, nominate the game, and if it wins the vote we will straight up buy it for you.

(By the way, if you had any of the above concerns about trying other games besides D&D5e, that really makes it sound like you are in a textbook abusive relationship with D&D5e. This is how abusers control their partners, and how empires control their citizens, by teaching you to think that nothing could ever get any better, and even though they treat you bad, the Other will treat you even worse.)

“If I don’t play D&D5e, which TTRPG should I play?”

That’s a pretty limited question to be asking, because there will be no one TTRPG for everything. And no, D&D5e is not the one TTRPG for everything, Hasbro’s marketing team is just lying to you. (Pathfinder and PbtA are not the one system for everything either!) Do you only play one video game or only watch one movie or only read one book? When you finish watching an action movie like Mad Max, and then you want to watch a horror movie, do you just rewind Mad Max and watch it over again but this time you act scared the whole time? No, you watch a different movie. I’m asking you to give the artistic medium of TTRPGs the same respect you would give movies.

“I want to play something besides D&D5e, but my friends won’t play anything else!”

I have several answers to this.

Try showing them this post.

If that doesn’t work: Make them. Put your foot down. This works especially well if you are the DM. Tell them you won’t run another session of D&D5e until they agree to give what you want to do at least one try instead of always doing only what they want to do. This is, like, playing 101. We learned this in kindergarten. If your friend really wants to play something else, you should give their game a try, or you’re not really being a very good friend.

If that doesn’t work, find another group. This doesn’t even mean that you have to leave your existing group. A good place to start would be the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club which will be mentioned and linked below. You can also go to the subreddit of any game you’re interested in and probably meet people there who have the same problem you do and want to put together a group to play something other than D&D5e. You might get along great with these people, you might not, but you won’t know until you try. Just make sure to have a robust “session zero” so everyone is on the same page. This is a good practice for any group but it is especially important for a group made of players you’ve just met.

“I only watch actual plays.”

Then watch actual plays of games that aren’t D&D5e. These podcasts struggle for the same reasons that indie RPGs struggle, because of the brand recognition and brand loyalty D&D5e has, despite their merit. I don’t watch actual plays, or else I would be able to list more of them. So, anyone who does watch actual plays, please help me out by commenting on this post with some non-D&D5e actual plays you like. And please do me a favor and don’t list actual plays that only play one non-D&D5e system, list ones that go through a variety of systems. The first one I can think of is Tiny Table.

“I can just homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e.”

Even though I want to, I’m not going to try and argue that you can’t actually homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e. Instead, I’m going to ask you why you’re buying two $50 rulebooks just to throw away half the pages. In most other good RPGs, you don’t need to change the rules to make them fun, they’re fun right out the box.

“But homebrewing D&D5e into any kind of game is fun! You can homebrew anything out of D&D5e!”

Firstly, I promise that this is not unique to D&D5e. Secondly, then you would probably have more fun homebrewing a system that gives you a better starting point for reaching your goal. Also, what if I told you that there are entire RPG systems out there that are made just for this? There are RPG systems that were designed for the purpose of being a toolbox and set of materials for you to work with to make exactly the game you want to make. Some examples are GURPS, Savage Worlds, Basic RolePlaying, Caltrop Core, and (as much as I loathe it) PbtA.

“I’m not supporting WotC’s monopoly because I pirate all the D&D5e books.”

Then you’re still not supporting the smaller developers that this monopoly is crushing, either.

Now, here’s the how. Because I promise you, there’s not just one, but probably a dozen other RPGs out there that will scratch your exact itch.

Here’s how to find them. This won’t be a comprehensive list because I’ve already been typing this for like 3 hours already. Those reading this, please go ahead and comment more to help fill out the list.

First, I’m gonna plug one of my own major projects, because it’s my post. The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club. It’s a discord server that treats playing TTRPGs like a book club, with the goal of introducing members to a wide variety of games other than D&D5e. RPGs are nominated by members, then we hold a vote to decide what to read and play for a short campaign, then we repeat. There is no financial, time, or schedule investment required to join this book club, I promise it is very schedule-friendly, because we assign people to different groups based of schedule compatibility. You don’t have to play each campaign, or any campaign, you can just read along and participate in discussion that way. And if you can’t afford to buy the rulebook we’re going to be reading, we will make sure you get a PDF of it for free. That is how committed we are to getting non-D&D5e RPGs into people’s hands. Here is an invite link.

Next, there are quite a few tumblr blogs you can follow to get recommendations shown to you frequently.

@indierpgnewsletter

@indie-ttrpg-of-the-day

@theresattrpgforthat

@haveyouplayedthisttrpg

@indiepressrevolution

Plenty of podcasts, journalists, and youtubers out there do in-depth discussions of different systems regularly, a couple I can think of off the top of my head are:

Storyteller Conclave (I’m actually going to be interviewed live on this show on April 10th!)

Seth Skorkowsky

Questing Beast

The Gaming Table

Rascal News

Lastly, you can just go looking. Browse r/rpg, drivethrurpg.com, indie press revolution, and itch.io.

Now, if you really want to support me and my team specifically Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, our debut TTRPG, is going to launch on Kickstarter on April 10th and we need all the help we can get. Set a reminder from the Kickstarter page through this link.

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, there’s plenty of ways to get one!

Subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

Donate to our ko-fi and send us an email with proof that you did, and we’ll email you back with the full Eureka prerelease package with the most updated version at the time of responding! (The email address can be found if you scroll down to the bottom of our website.)

We also have merchanise.

1K notes · View notes