The secret economics of Dungeons & Dragons

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It should be noted at some point, the whole space will have a contraction. Even though the player base has expanded, there is still a limit to the target market. There has already been a significant decrease in the number of content creators covering primarily Dungeons and Dragons, but the TTRPG space as well.

I'm surprised not to see Brennan Lee Mulligan.

mz4250 has been the most incredible resource for my games. The fact that he printed the entire MM for free is still INSANE to me and the value he adds to the community is unmatched

Everybody's main takeaway from this should be that intellectual property laws should not apply to creative content created by large corporations that can suffer that short term loss in profit sacrificed to the altar of making a glorious, growing, vibrant, immortal third-party content creation ecosystem. Why would you want to create a walled garden where you control 100% of the revenue for ~5 years of IP relevancy, when you can release your seeds to the winds, and create an entire new, circular ecosystem, that will bring people back to your storefront for literal DECADES to come?

Was hoping to get "the weeds" here. An exploration of how the OGL and opening of IP actually affects things.

30:45 "even though they reversed course and put the OGL in Creative Commons."

Correction: no version of the Open Gaming License (OGL) was put in Creative Commons. It really wouldn't make any sense to put one open license under another open license. What was put into Creative Commons was a separate document called the System Reference Document (SRD). The SRD is related to the OGL, but they serve very different purposes.

Arguably, Hasbro never truly reversed the course to revoke OGL 1.0a, the original version of the license. They backpedalled by saying that they'll "leave it alone for now", but a true reversal would be to acknowledge that 1.0a is irrevocable. Their problem is that they want to force everyone to use a version of the license that's less permissible than the original 1.0a, but they can't actually do that while 1.0a is still available.

The 2023 OGL debacle lit a bomb under tabletop gaming creativity imo. A massive misstep but probably expected from people who treated D&D as IP rather than a game people played in all types of contexts and were attached too – social media can be a huge blessing or a curse as Hasbro is continuing to find out with controversy following controversy since then. Far from restricting 'Dungeons & Dragons' it's meant people comprehend it's THEM that really 'own' their own games. I'm sad I couldn't replay to this sooner. Great video!!

I was a D&D player back when Arneson and Gygax were taking their beige books to gaming stores and clubs and running dungeons to show off the game. We bought sets of books and the later expensions from them and had a great time at the gaming club at Mr. Gameways in Toronto alongside strategy games like Barbarossa and board games like Kingmaker. It was a much simpler time,

It sounds like Hasbro opened things up with the OGL and then, when the market had gotten going and there were a lot of products and services developed by others, on their own time and dime, Hasbro tried to swoop in and scoop up the profits from the little guys. This has obviously backfired and created an entire new market of D&D copycat products that have skirted Hasbro's license and taken away their leverage.

They underestimated the power of all those little guys as well as the backlash they would experience from their millions of customers to their decisions.

Fascinating video. You might be interested in what killed TSR too. In part, it was the lawsuit war they waged on GDW, the creators of Traveller, the first SF RPG. Things became hostile when they branched into each others genres and Gary Gygax wrote for GDW after splitting from TSR.

Let's not pretend the OGL changes WotC tried to push were justified. Hasbro and WotC were already making big bucks, but they were greedy. They could have not changed anything and still been fine
But they were greedy.

Thanks.

The OGL opened the playing field. The reason why so many game companies are taking a bigger bite of the pie than hasbro would like is because they are more often than not creating better games. If hasbro wants to get more pie they need to go back to school. The OSR is huge for a reason, people who know better are turning back the clock and going back to D&D's roots. At this moment in time if Hasbro got out of the D&D business it would be better for the game IMHO. I personally don't play todays D&D I play in the OSR. White Box and Swords & Wizardry are my jam these days. Thanks to Matt Finch, James Spahn, and Charlie Mason I can play OD&D without all the hasbro created nonsense.

What a unique and well done video… Thanks for taking the time to make this video and sharing it… All the best

in terms of the OGL scandal, it rly comes down to understanding the audience imo. the actual staff working on dnd were pretty solidly against the move, but the company barreled ahead anyway without understanding why and it came back to bite them. it’s crazy to outwardly become like a hoarding, money hungry entity with little regard for the impact of that when ur core audience spends large amts of their time playing pretend that they r heroes slaying dragons, the epitome of a hoarding and money hungry being. crazy to not foresee the backlash, but that’s the reason u gotta consult ppl with deep understandings of the community

D&D is way too "sophisticated" for mara lardo, get a grip

As a person who was there since the 70's and started my ADVENTURE and collection of TSR products of imagination and born and bred in the state of Dave Arneson I can honestly claim most ppl are unable to really define D&D nor really relate to it as TSR once did and somewhat of wotc/Hasbro can!!

First off D&D economics are crap because of the leeching that has happened due to vagrant license abuse. Too many eggs in the basket cause a dwindling market share for the original content and it basically offers smaller share for the company's profit margins. D&D should have stayed monopolized so polarization from those who aim to profit off someone else's work would be limited to TSR/wotc/Hasbro earnings from contract profits or royalties.

I find it strange that WOTC offers/ed D&D as OGL when wotc's own IP magic the gathering never had that option. The same could be said about the many IPs Hasbro themselves possess…………………….so what is the reality here!

Great video. I was not aware of your content prior to stubling on this video, but I will certainly have to check out some more now.

One of the best D&D docs I've seen. You should do more TTRPG related stuff.

Great video! Subscribed

Back in the mid-90s, my friend Ben started up a gaming group with my pals and I using the "TMNT & Other Strangeness" rulebook. 30 years later, and we still connect to talk about and jump into that world and our characters. There are other non-DnD systems out there that have deep roots in the TTRPG community 💪

The whole OGL debacle and everything around it is just a great example of what happens when a corporation loses sight of who its customers are and looks at nothing but the dollars.

Loved this video! I'm a longtime player of D&D and Magic, and I recently started developing a new tabletop game of my own.

Really interesting

This was very informative, thank you. I recently did a presentation about the business models behind different fantasy games, from Warhammer to D&D (buying books, subscription models, paid game masters). The options have certainly expanded in the last years due to the OGL and online gaming. Though I personally don't play D&D and prefer in-person gaming over online, I find these changes to the hobby fascinating.