this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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Dungeons and Dragons

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[–] godot 90 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (6 children)

Everything people are scared Tencent might do to D&D has already been done by Hasbro: the MMORPG conversion (4th edition), canning all the staff (happens every few years, and to Magic too), adding DLC (just take a look at the current official app), walling off the garden (three tries on that one: once with 4th, once recently with the OGL stuff, and once with the limitations on animations in map applications), even the movie.

D&D the rules system has been a corpse for years, that the designers managed to make 5th into a passable game is a miracle. Play Pathfinder, Blades in the Dark, Call of Cthulhu, Savage Worlds, Fate, Vampire, GURPS, Shadow of the Demon Lord, Dread, Worlds Without Number, Mothership, Numenera, Mork Borg, Everyone is John, any of the dozen variations on those games, or one of the hundreds of other options not yet listed. They pretty much all run as well if not better than D&D.

[–] TheDeepState 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Don’t forget Shadowdark!

[–] Dultas 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)
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[–] IzzyScissor 70 points 5 months ago

Headline was so confusing because I never see it stylized like that. It's always D&D or DnD, never DND - that's 'Do Not Disturb'.

[–] Xatix 57 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

I just wish that Larian Studios would buy it. They could save their licensing fees for BG3 and could keep DnD community driven. Would also make it much easier for them to introduce new game mechanics into future games and pull those changes back into DnD.

Edit: I just read that tencent owns 30% shares of Larian which is kind of a bummer. Still would be much better with Larian directly, because tencent doesnt have a majority say then.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Larian isn't especially big though, even with the success of BG3, a purchase like this is likely would be well outside what they could hope to afford.

[–] Chriswild 13 points 5 months ago (4 children)

They have over 450 employees and operate in six different countries. I don't know what DnD would be worth but it's not like Larian is small.

Logically I think it makes more sense for Larian to want to buy the video game rights specifically as anything beyond that would be outside their scope.

[–] Gamoc 14 points 5 months ago

Imagine how much staff works for Hasbro or Tencent, because that's the league we are playing in here - after a quick Google, Hasbro has 6480, Tencent has 108,436. Larian is a dust mite to Tencent and DND has been around for half a century, had a film based on it recently, just had a game of the year based on it and a two decade old dnd IP. DND made $100-150 million in 2022.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I just learned about that as well. I hope Larian dilutes or buys back Tencent's shares.

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[–] Alteon 53 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Everything about that is absolute cancer.

Everyone's favorite TTRPG going world stage corporate. Fucking yay....

[–] [email protected] 42 points 5 months ago (31 children)

How is that different than now? DnD fell apart because Hasbro is a world stage corporation, they're just trading it to another world stage corporation which will kill it further until they pass it on too.

Whatever you remember liking is long long dead.

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[–] godot 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I get the spirit of the comment, but among people who often play multiple TTRPGs almost no one would call D&D their favorite. I would be worried if Tencent (or Hasbro) bought Arc Dream or Evil Hat, but in practice the John Harpers of the world leave and start another company using their corporate lucre. In fact that’s where Paizo started, from people peeling off of D&D after Hasbro acquired it.

Tabletop games are such a functionally cheap product to create and sell it’s impossible to truly stomp out competition. Tencent would have to buy Twitch and YouTube and disallow any other game, and even then every nerd convention in the world would have some guy selling stapled together zines that rips D&D a new asshole.

Tl;dr: I don’t give a shit if Tencent buys D&D.

[–] raynethackery 47 points 5 months ago (1 children)

We should petition the government to invalidate the copyright on D&D and send it to the public domain.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Literally no need. Take a rule book, modify it as desired. There's a huge creator ecosystem out there, paid or otherwise, and WoC just outright doesn't matter to it.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 5 months ago (10 children)

Definitely gonna get enshittified

[–] CosmoNova 27 points 5 months ago

I despise Tencent and the general business model of just buying up shit, but worse than Hasbro? Tencent played quite the part in BG3‘s making (By buying 30% of Larian years ago to keep cash flowing) and everyone loves it. They usually let western companies do as they please. If anything Hasbro selling it is yet another proof of why they shouldn‘t have it in the first place. And if WotC had anything left of a spine they would try to buy themselves free but that sure as hell is not going to happen because they do not care.

[–] Hrothgar59 12 points 5 months ago (5 children)

That would be anything produced after 3.5. The brand has been going down for a long time. That's not to say there is nothing good in the current 5e, just for me it seems like it lost its soul with corporate oversight.

[–] chemical_cutthroat 21 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I moved to Pathfinder 2e and I couldn't be happier. The only issue I have is that one of my players is Mercer-coded (is that a thing?) and really hates any time a skill, class, or spell isn't a 1:1 copy of DnD. He recently grabbed Bane as part of a feat for his barbarian and learned it isn't the same as DnD Bane and had a meltdown.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (2 children)

That sounds like a miserable person to play with

[–] chemical_cutthroat 10 points 5 months ago

We're all close friends outside of the game and we are all used to each other's quirks. It's a pain sometimes, but he does genuinely enjoy the game, though. He'd only played 2 campaigns of DnD before-hand (Strahd and Frostmaiden), but has listened to every episode of Critcal Role. I decided to homebrew a full 1-20 campaign for the group as an introduction to Pathfinder so we could all (GM included) get a taste for it across the entire span of character growth, and it's been a learning experience for us all.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 5 months ago (1 children)

yo fuck hasbro this is why critical role branched out

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[–] carl_dungeon 25 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] Tylerdurdon 26 points 5 months ago

Next edition comes with a free camera that may or may not be recording everything you're doing, comrade!

[–] TheSpermWhale 23 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Well they can’t handle it any worse

[–] kerrigan778 16 points 5 months ago

Yeah, they absolutely can...

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (5 children)

Hot take: the government should take D&D and give its rights to a non-profit to be managed for the benefit of the community and its employees.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (4 children)

would a federated open source d&d universe ever be reality? like have a whole world that is created by contributors, similar to openstreetmap (but not irl obviously)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like you're talking about a wiki?

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[–] Syris92 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Well, it seems the news was fake, originating from a Chinese news site. Both Wizard of the Coast and Larian (cited as the intermediary between Hasbro and Tencent) denied any interest in selling the brand.

Here's the article

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (5 children)

If tencent buys DnD I am quitting, full stop.

[–] hedgehogging_the_bed 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Great news! There are many, many tabletop role-playing games that are not Dungeons and Dragons that you can play! My favorite easy alternative is Dungeon World but there are literally hundreds out there.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (11 children)

Just asking, is there some sort of "Open Source DND"?

[–] xhieron 29 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Good of you to ask. It's entirely possible to play D&D without buying any official materials (and you should play it without buying anything Hasbro currently sells, but that's just my opinion).

In fact, you can find a more or less complete set of rules for most versions of D&D just by searching combinations of the version you want and terms like "SRD" or "wiki". Some of these will lead you to officially hosted sources, and some not, but the great thing about D&D is that Hasbro can't ever sell it away from players.

I'm not going to provide any links to anything because someone will accuse me of breaking the rules, but D&D isn't Hasbro, and it wasn't even really TSR. It's just collections of rules, and game rules are not patentable. Hasbro owns a copyright in the 5e PHB's written content, for example (and some trademarks on trade dress and some terms), but crucially it does not own the way people play D&D. Ergo, in a matter of speaking, Dungeons and Dragons is already open source. If you've got a pen, some paper, and a fistful of dice, you can play. Less is more.

Having said that, many folks believe that the best versions of D&D aren't in print anymore anyway, but even if 5e is your version of choice (and to its credit, it has a few marks in its favor), I'd recommend checking a used book store before getting worried about whether this rumor ever amounts to anything. Hasbro can sell D&D, or not, and millions of people will happily keep right on playing D&D every week without ever giving them a dime.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (2 children)

How close is Pathfinder to that?

[–] TootSweet 22 points 5 months ago (7 children)

Pathfinder 2e Remaster (which isn't out yet) is the most "open source D&D" thing there will be any time soon.

And Pathfinder 2e (non-Remaster) is the clostest thing there is right now.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

Pathfinder 1e had a good license and would be very familiar to D&D 3e players. Pathfinder 2e has a great license but would have a bit of a relearning curve for D&D 5e players.

Tales of the Valiant is probably the closest to 5e with a great license.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Here might be a good start for you: https://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Open_Game_Systems#Open_Game_License

Just because of the nature of those games, I would speculate that the page above is just a fraction of what is available.

[–] TootSweet 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

No. Don't trust the OGL. WOTC tried to "revoke" the OGL last year in a way that would fuck over all 3rd party publishers. People raised absolute Cain and WOTC kinda sorta backed down (kinda sorta) but there's no guarantee the OGL is safe moving forward. To the point that Paizo (makers of Pathfinder 2e) are reprinting all of their Pathfinder 2e materials to remove anything that could remotely depend on the OGL.

If you want something more trustworthy than OGL, look into ORC.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

D&D's 5e SRD was released under CC-BY. It only includes one subclass per class and a handful of monsters, but it's all the rules.

Tales of the Valiant and Pathfinder 2e both have SRDs licensed under the ORC license and are based in D&D-type gameplay.

FATE is a different type of TTRPG that has a SRD licensed both under OGL and CC-BY.

Powered by the Apocalypse is a different system and has a permissive, but hand-wavey license.

Of all of these, ToV is the most like 5e without being controlled by a multi-national, public company.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I struggle to think of a buyer that would be worse for the players than Tencent.

On the bright side, Hasbro's last big D&D blunder prodded the community into developing alternative gaming systems and licenses, so I think we'll be in good shape to carry on without the brand if this happens.

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[–] nezbyte 11 points 5 months ago

Happy 50th Anniversary, D&D!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

China buying up everything

[–] Hrothgar59 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This would never have been put up for sale if Hasbro had taken care of it, regardless of who buys the IP from them I doubt they can do worse. Let's says Tencent does buy the IP, they could bury it but where is the profit in that, there is also nothing to divide up and parcel off. Worse case we get what we have now and we all complain about the same things we are complaining about with Hasbro. Whoever buys the IP will want to make money, so let's hope they look at the community concerns and try to course correct the mess that Hasbro has made.

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[–] Nobody 8 points 5 months ago

Roll for a wisdom save.

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