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.
Don’t forget Shadowdark!
And my Traveller!
And Pugmire!
And my axe!
I love the world of Numenara
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’.
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.
I just learned about that as well. I hope Larian dilutes or buys back Tencent’s shares.
Why would they do that, though? They’re a private company. They didn’t have to let Tencent buy in in the first place, which means it was purposeful.
And the reason companies give Tencent a cut of themselves is to have better access to the Chinese market. You need a Chinese publisher or partner to operate there, and Tencent offers that to software companies in exchange for letting them buy in. They always buy minority stakes, and they don’t take over editorial control of anything.
They’re actually a good business partner for anyone wanting to have their games distributed in China.
They’re just also a really aggressive F2P developer.
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Everything about that is absolute cancer.
Everyone’s favorite TTRPG going world stage corporate. Fucking yay…
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.
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.
We should petition the government to invalidate the copyright on D&D and send it to the public domain.
yo fuck hasbro this is why critical role branched out
Pretty much. Their Candela Obscura game has already been used to make thousands in charity for Doctors Without Borders and there’s more to come.
Well they can’t handle it any worse
Yeah, they absolutely can…
If tencent buys DnD I am quitting, full stop.
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.
Pathfinder 2nd edition is a great alternative for players who prefer a simulation style of play with detailed rules. There is a big learning curve but it can be worth it.
Dungeon World is great for players who enjoy less complexity and collaborative storytelling. Getting new players stated with Dungeon World was easy, fast, and fun my group.
Tons of great alternatives!
So nothing Hasbro has done up to this point turned you off of D&D? All corporations are evil, some just have more power than others.
Move to DCC
There’s no way Tencent are as bad as Hasbro
Fucking tencent?
Next edition comes with a free camera that may or may not be recording everything you’re doing, comrade!
Just asking, is there some sort of “Open Source DND”?
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.
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.
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.
There are other licenses listed besides the OGL. Good feedback though.
How close is Pathfinder to that?
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.
I think Tales of the Valiant is closer to D&D 5e and also licensed under ORC. Either is a great option for people looking to leave D&D though.
vOwOxel didn’t ask anything about 5e. Just about “DND”.
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.
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.
I’d suggest checking out the EN World Advanced 5E. It’s open source, way better than basic 5E, and the creative team is very pro-player.
I prefer Dungeon World which has D&D flavor on different dicing mechanics but others have posted other systems closer to familiar D20 system.
Try DC20
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.
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.
I can easily think of three buyers worse for players than tencent. Blizzard, Epic Games, Apple.
Happy 50th Anniversary, D&D!
China buying up everything
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.
I just don’t trust tencent. They are to China like Facebook is to America in terms of casting large nets for data gathering. I agree Hasbro should let dnd go to a better care taker, but if it’s Tencent I don’t know if I’d be able to trust any official dnd software.
Luckily, dnd is well established as a physical medium, so the impact wouldn’t be too big, but the principal still stands
Roll for a wisdom save.
