People are misunderstanding the OGL stuff
Guys this is about Wizards of the Coast making their own VTT. I mean there’s a little bit more, but that’s absolutely the core reason for the new OGL.
Why do you think it says it only covers printed documents or static PDFs? Why do you think the VTT policy is its own separate document that they can change at will?
They’re already saying that VTTs can’t use any D&D content if it doesn’t meet some arbitrary “feels like playing old school pen and paper D&D at your dining room table” metric. Spell animations are one thing they call out specifically as unacceptable, I assume dynamic lighting and fog of war and animated tokens or backgrounds would all apply as well.
OGL 1.1 was terrible. OGL 1.2 is also terrible, but they were a little sneakier about it so they could trick typical players into thinking things have improved - they are desperate for people to stop cancelling DnDBeyond.com subscriptions because that’s where they want all the microtransactions and other shitty monetization stuff to go through.
They don’t care about what random players say in the survey beyond the ability to cherry pick positive comments (and maybe a few select negative ones where they can superficially change the OGL and say “look we listened to your feedback!”) and of course they love the survey because it lets them stall for a month.
One way or another, Hasbro is going to drive D&D into the ground by trying to make as much money as possible with it. They’re already scaring away 3rd party creators and let’s be honest about the quality of the official D&D materials they’ve been putting out. Yikes. Next it’ll be war against the VTTs so they can not only make sure theirs comes out on top but force people to use DnDBeyond.com for everything online.
Anyway. I’m off to Pathfinder second edition. Good luck to everyone trying to stick around, it’s just going to get worse.
