D&D Exec. Opens Up about OGL & One D&D | My Interview with Kyle Brink

[@BobWorldBuilder]

💥 Lair Magazine! www.patreon.com/thedmlair ✅ LIKE & SHARE: kzbin.infovideos ✅ PATREON: www.patreon.com/bobworldbuilder

[@GetIntoItDuhh]

good vid, but the movie bit at the end was really weak. i wish they had made a good movie, but i can tell you you're going to waste your money.

[@zensuufu]

The "wasn't hasbro" OGL comment was from Ginny Di's interview. c:

[@BobWorldBuilder]

@@GetIntoItDuhh It's extremely possible for us to have different opinions about a movie

[@isaacgraff8288]

I watched GinnyDi's video with him and I believe he did say that was from WotC. That is probably where the OGL initiative came from.

[@GetIntoItDuhh]

@@isaacgraff8288 Kyle is a known gaslighter at this point; lot's of what he says contradicts itself/ is provably false. He's isn't here to be real, he's here to stop the corp hemorrhaging cash. He will say anything / whatever he thinks is right at the time to get people to believe his yarn. Like Bob points out a couple times in this vid, he acts open and up-front, but hides important details, and has ZERO issue lying straight to the interviewer's face. Typical corpo-slug C:

[@themajk7]

I love that they chose you because you are calm and willing to discuss and you still put a great critique without pulling back. GJ!

[@BobWorldBuilder]

Thank you!

[@justice4most]

Calm people are often needed, other times you need a mf to chuck a brick through a window.

[@canis2020]

This is exactly why he and Jorphdan are the only ones I still follow.

[@RylanStorm]

They should have gone to D&D Shorts though. Kyle says he'd be uncomfortable talking to, not the person breaking all the news. Yeah, people are usually uncomfortable speaking to people who have proof they're full of shit.

[@silasrobertshaw8122]

​@RylanStorm I don't see anything good coming out of that. I find him obnoxious, and not just the coverage of the OGL. His need to sensationalize everything would lead to nothing constructive in my opinion, and that's what this interview tour really is about.

[@davidcox4687]

I appreciate Kyle's willingness to be interviewed and put himself in the crosshairs on WOTC's behalf. However... Kyle Brink was the director brought on board to de-transition player expectations from Guild Wars 1 to Guild Wars 2. In that role he was deliberately instructed to change what GW1 players loved about the game. He is very familiar being in roles where he needs to be the guy that takes flak when his company knows they're pissing off their playerbase. His involvement in the OGL debacle made me personally much more wary of this whole situation.

[@BobWorldBuilder]

I didn't know about that history. Thanks for the insight!

[@tntori5079]

Oh interesting! And well noted! Thanks for sharing

[@MrPaulZeen]

In my mind GW2 is a far better game than GW1. It doesn't mean much I know, but just want to make the point that transitioning from one thing into another thing isn't automatically a bad thing (obviously OGL was bad).

[@tntori5079]

@Chase Polzin I actually play GW2 a bit and I tried GW1 but never got very far. They are both good games but different. The previous comment was the first I've heard anyone point out context or history with regard to Brink that might influence how we see him in this current situation. I like having context because nothing is made in a vaccum, and it's helpful to have it in the back pocket.

[@kimberlyc5391]

Oh! I did not know this. I am a long time GW1 and GW2 player. I am *very* interested in learning more about that if you have any sources you'd recommend.

[@Xenibalt]

professional recognition .... that is what you deserve bob holy shit mad props for this

[@BobWorldBuilder]

I really appreciate that! :)

[@whiskeygamesnerdstuff789]

Agree 100%

[@tibarto3067]

I want to say thank you. I really appreciate you asking some hard hitting questions and trying to get a real answer out of Kyle Brink.

[@BobWorldBuilder]

Thanks very much! This was definitely out of my comfort zone!

[@bc4198]

​@@BobWorldBuilder Gained some XP on that one!

[@Swensonryan1]

Excellent work Bob! I really have appreciated your level-headedness and ability to not forget the positives throughout all your coverage of the OGL debacle. Love the channel, and keep up the great work!

[@BobWorldBuilder]

Thank you very much! :)

[@nerscyllam4735]

I genuinely hope that they keep their word on making the earlier SRDs fall under CC because that can help substantially with making OSR style games and supplements easier to make, and my play group migrated completely to 3.5 last year and it's been a vastly better experience than 5e for us.

[@BobWorldBuilder]

Yeah it would be an actual good move for getting people to trust them again!

[@DDCRExposed]

I will say that I've avoided all of the interviews from this drama except for this one. I fell that Bob had the right mentality to present the interview fairly while still calling out WotC's underhanded moves and sneakiness. Thank you for presenting this shortened interview with an even amount of understanding and care. Edit: I'm also extremely surprised to hear that One D&D will be published under the same license they've moved everything too (if I understand correctly). I honestly thought they would have locked this version down so hard that it would have been another deterrent. Time will tell, I suppose.

[@7ninjasstudios808]

Of the 3 interviews I've watched, all 3 KZbinrs have come away much like Bob: ok yeah this was a good answer, ok no that was a dodge and this answer was terrible...

[@notallwhowanderarelost4797]

While I agree 100% that Bob has the “right mentality” (and think he was a surprisingly good choice on WotC’s part) I think you are being rather unfair to the others who have put out interview videos so far. They’re all good. One of the silver linings of this whole debacle is my discovery of some YT channels I never saw before, especially the channel the first interview was on. I’m pretty sure 3 Black Halflings never appeared in my feed before, which doesn’t speak well of the algorithm. Also, I was surprised too by that statement about 6/5.5e (I don’t like the name One D&D)

[@houndgirl7365]

...the thing is if this creator did what the others did he watched the other videos to see what questions were already covered and then further gained ground by asking other questions. I have only fully watched Ginny's video, but that one is also neutral with a hint of 'warning' if you will. If you haven't even seen the other videos you can't say which is more fair and which is best as that would call for you to actually watch all videos.

[@notallwhowanderarelost4797]

Yes, and not only did he potentially (depending on timelines) have the opportunity to watch previous interviews, he coordinated with a couple of the other interviewers to reduce redundancy. At least, some said they were planning to do that. That's another good reason to watch more than one interview. Thanks for pointing that out @hound girl

[@moonpalace.mp3]

22:04 "Somewhere, Kyle said that these OGL changes were almost certainly not a Hasbro initiative" He could have said it in other places as well, but this was mentioned in Ginny Di's interview with him at 7:04 on her video! :)

[@TheShelbyTheShelby]

Glad I ctri+f'd for Ginny - was going to say this!

[@Door_to_the_North]

Outstanding! The coordination between the pointed questions of all the interviews is just fantastic. What he says the same is interesting what’s different between the interviews is fascinating!

[@EricSRiley]

I'm loving this conversation, and thank you so much Bob for sharing this with all of us. I had to pause it around the 23 minute mark to comment on the "Creators" conversation. If you look closely at the OGL in its definitions right at the beginning, that's exactly what the OGL defines everyone who uses it as, Creators. It's never been a WOTC exclusive license, and the fact that Wizards was treating it as such just changed the entire spirit and purpose of the license in the first place. So, in a sense, we're all back in the world we've known for the last 22 years. But with WOTC putting the SRD into the Creative Commons I feel was intended to still move away from the OGL. I don't understand their hostility to it, especially when they openly express sentiments like "we're all creators" which is the exact language IN the OGL. I'm coming at this from the perspective of a person who plays systems that used the OGL to build entirely different games, and to open their content up into the same common space. By moving their stuff to CC I feel like WotC doesn't want to actually play in the same sandbox as everyone else anymore, and I find that disheartening. It's also created this wild rush to create a flurry of licenses, which wouldn't have needed to happen if they hadn't tried to play the villain of the piece here. So, while I appreciate that they put their SRD into Creative Commons I feel like it was still a move to distance themselves from the OGL. I feel like they still don't understand what the OGL does, and their responses here are still showing that ignorance.

[@Ramperdos]

Excellent video and coverage about the situation! So far I've bought every single official 5e book that has come out (except the Rick&Morty weirdness), but from now on I'll focus on 3rd party products and only look at the official books again if they ACTUALLY offer me something other than just taking space on my shelf.

[@BobWorldBuilder]

Excellent decision going forward!

[@eriadorranger2196]

Thanks for doing this Bob, you really represented the community well and asked the big questions that we all wanted answers to

[@Gafizal1]

I've watched all of these and I really appreciate your questions and I think you did a great job, Bob!

[@searchforsecretdoors]

Well done, Bob. You said a lot of what we were all thinking. I especially appreciate you pointing out when he dodged the question or gave a non-answer. At this point, my main takeaway is just that WotC dethroned themselves as undisputed King of RPGs.

[@MetaGrave]

Ooo! Ooo! Let me ask it! Let me ask it! Ahem... Kyle. "Do you though?" *re: ORC license* Awesome interview, Bob! Nicely done!

[@BobWorldBuilder]

Good question!

[@tntori5079]

Many thanks Bob for a wonderfull video. I love your approach/style the best. I love the honesty and openess, yet positive and reasonable outlook. I look forward to seeing the full interview!!

[@paulfelix5849]

Seen too many of these interviews to care anymore. Gonna focus on Bob's comment about playing other games. I've been playing for 46 years. Not long ago I had reason to make a list of all the game systems I'd played in that time. I stopped after fifty. Not because that was all, but because that was all I could remember the names of. And those were all *before* the advent of 3e. That massive library of data in my head gave me a particular advantage over others; I could assess the quality of a game rules system by just reading it and comparing it to what I had already experienced. I could visualize how most of it would shake out in live play. That's why I commented that 3e had 'comic booked' D&D, and that 4e has 'video games' it... and why I stayed with A2e until Covid forced me to 5e and VTTs just to keep playing. Variety of experience is essential to a good gaming experience, whether as a player or DM. Everybody should have at least a dozen different game systems under their belt to use as a basis for critical judgment, not only of new content, but of in-game situational decision making. I choose to stay with D&D because I have a long, comfortable relationship with it. But no one should deprive themselves of the broader horizons because of excessive brand loyalty.

[@BobWorldBuilder]

Very well said!

[@jacobcrespin6745]

I love the discussion here, and thank you for doing your best to represent our community. That being said, it still frustrates me so very much that WoTC’s best approach to “we need to make more money” is to just destroy community goodwill instead of finding a way to build it up. I studied business in college and I can think of like 11 or 12 ways WoTC could increase revenue without this inane stunt. It’s just sad.

[@gamewrit0058]

I really appreciate this format, edited for time and clarity. 👏❤️

[@andrewhallock2548]

Thank for sharing this interview and pointing out not only when Kyle is dodging questions or using corporate-speak but pointing out when you miss a distraction or dodge. Your calm, up-front approach helped me better parse this interview.

[@Waffelkuchen]

The best of those interviews I've seen yet with some really great questions. Well done and thank you for putting yourself out there!

[@SkylerLinux]

Ooh that Artificer SRD mask slip. We were going to give you SRD Artificer, however you made us put all that stuff in CC so now you can't have it. Man that is just pure gold

[@mr.cauliflower3536]

I think the Ronald The Rules Lawyer would be their worst nightmare. Professional and very knowledgable

[@velinion1]

Great interview! Kyle is certainly a slippery interviewee, but you kept him to the question more often than not.

[@Glareflare]

Thank you for digging into this

[@BobWorldBuilder]

Thank you for watching!

[@nickfulwood6384]

Glad we have the Bob Ross of gaming on our side. Thanks Bob!

[@alexanderkreitner8275]

I love that his smile dropped and he started shuffling back and forth the instance the word "DRAFT" came up. Clearly that was back-peddling, i.e. lying.

[@JonasGreenFethr]

Great interview! Healing takes time and they have a long way to go to show they learned a hard lesson. If WotC is/was really committed to supporting ‘the community’, an integration of the physical, VTT, and D&DB ecosystems would demonstrate that. With a weighting towards the physical (gotta support LGS)… Meaning if a physical book or mini was purchased it would have a voucher to the digital realms for that publication or virtual figure. ‘You bought the physical book? Great, here’s the code to get in on your app of choice, thanks for supporting our brand!’ For each of the digital purchases, a ‘rebate’ of 5-10% could be sent at the end of the year for their customers to support their LGS’s (REI does it, so it does work; also late-stage capitalism doesn’t wholly have to suck…) At the end of the day, corporations are going to corporate, and they will secede as little as the are made to for the largest return they can get. A publicly traded company doesn’t care about ‘the community’, they care about their share price [Hard Stop]. Everything else is a means to that end.

[@Abelhawk]

As of right now, that DnDBeyond article ("An Update on the Open Gaming License (OGL)" from January 13th works fine for me without redirecting. Not sure if they fixed it or if there was a glitch on your end.

[@generatoralignmentdevalue]

A conversation is exactly what they're avoiding by not letting DnD Shorts, Roll of Law, etc grill them about the details and break through Kyle's PR prep. All the channels they chose made their criticisms in post-interview commentary, sparing him from responding. If Kyle is uncomfortable talking to DnD Shorts, send Cynthia. Send the people whose decision this even was. All that said, I do think you handled this well. It's not your job to change your whole channel vibe and public persona just to push harder on this one interview. It's Hasbro's job to seek interviews with the channels who criticized them most.

[@BobWorldBuilder]

I appreciate this take!

[@atsukikuroe2613]

This must have been so stressful and yet, in my point of view, you made it look easy somehow. This interview was… Interesting and very very insightful for the least… You did great and I’m glad you, even if at first it was hard to believe they reached out to you, I’m really glad that you accepted the offer of doing this interview. Kudos to you! And chapter close, you can go back to your usual format, which will be more fun for everyone :3

[@skytek7081]

It's great how a mystical outside force who is unaccounted and unmentioned and somehow unrelated to any action taken or untaken is still in place to take actions to reach the same goals at any time in the future whether nice-thing-saying fall guy Brink is quietly displaced or left hanging out in front again.

[@yougottateachyoself]

You pushed harder than many others. Well done

[@beersontap]

Conducting an interview is a difficult and very skilled task. Great job!

[@Thanatos--]

Thanks for making a hot cut (or at least a half cut) of the interview. I would have liked to hear you (or anyone) ask what "One D&D" even offers at this point as a product?

[@thomasfplm]

I really liked your first question. For me, it seems a bit like they were trying to avoid people who would make trickier questions. If you only talk to friendly people, it looks like you are trying to hide something. About the date, I've seen some contract negotiations and things that are already going to be defined later usually receive a placeholder, like: "I, [name of the signataire] declare that at [mm/dd/yyyy], have no pending action against me for any financial..." So it wouldn't make sense to have that short date. Your question and analysis about the cancellations is on point. When he said about not wanting another edition ever, a problem I see with that is that it makes nearly impossible to make certain improvements if it becomes necessary, and considering that everyone have their favourite editions they consider the best one, it becomes strange. I like the creative liberty in the development and characterization of characters from 3.5 much more than 5e. The background in 5e is nice in the beginning, I love that idea, but later it becomes very small in comparison with 3.5, where I can have my character have different levels of proficiency in various skills, I can chose to be a master in only a few ones, or only one, but be decent in ten different things, while in 5e you have to chose an exact number and is equally good in all of them. For me, it makes sense for someone to study a little bit about some useful stuff that is not essential and a lot about more important things than to equality study all they study and know nothing about the rest. And that's just one aspect of this difference in personalisation. Certain changes would be impossible without a new edition, so if what players like change, it becomes impossible to give them what they want. I don't really have a problem with his answer about the people leaving or being fired (supposing it was sincere). He was clear that no one on his team exited or was fired for anything related to the OGL and that he couldn't say about people in other teams, because he didn't have the information. About the selling of digital miniatures, for me, the way described is one of the most fair ones possible, I don't have a lot of problem with it. But I would be interested to know about people who want to bring their own digital miniatures. On table top, if I want to make a miniature that represents my character in such a specific way that no mini on the market does it, I can, as long as I do the work for it. Would I be able to do the same in D&DB? About buying more stuff from them, I have to say that even if I don't intend to boycott them, this fiasco left such a sour taste that at last for now I can't see myself buying from them. It is not a desire to punish (at least it is not a big factor anymore), but that Wizards kind of lost it's magic. I'll keep playing with what I already have (not right now, because my group have been playing on another system for the last few campaigns, but we could come back), and I have about 20 books just related to D&D.

[@lordgrendell]

I love you, Bob. Well done!

[@TheRyanjones]

on the microtransactions answer my thoughts are this I'm okay with it and like this approach with TWO caveats. 1. Sourcebooks and Adventures COME with VTT stuff attached, for example minis and maps needed to run the adventure or 1/2(or more please) of the minis from a monster manual. 2. They are relatively speaking cheap 1$ or 50c for medium or large and maybe 2-3$ for huge or giant minis (artists deserve good pay for their 3d modeling)

[@BrianOxleyTexan]

I have been in senior consulting for a long while, at other regulated public companies before that. Some of the lines of questioning around material non-public information (subscriber base), staffing (employees firing or quitting), and others are things we trained for to be discreet and handle well. In your role as a reporter correspondent you are right to ask these questions. Kyle is right to avoid them. Kyle may have given better responses for some questions, but was spot-on in how he handled the interview. Do consider that the legal department may have coached him beforehand, and that is the right thing to do so that companies may follow the law when they are publicly traded. Also consider his kindness in throwing no one under the bus publicly while he navigates the issues: this is what I expect of my company, and they resolve issues privately. No one likes to discuss things that went poorly, and Kyle was an exemplar of calm and cool while thinking on his feet, and as transparent as his constraints permitted. I really appreciate this interview. Thank you!

[@Fernando_Cabanillas]

Amazing interview, probably my favorite out of all the ones I have watched so far. If I were to travel back in time and be able to change anything about this interview, I would warn you of the diversion regarding what is wotc planning to do for players... That is probably the only thing that bothered me: not getting that question properly answered... Then again, i would probably have also fallen for that dodge or others so not really faulting you for it. I am really enjoying seeing you be critical. Keep the good work :)

[@BlazeMakesGames]

Yeah honestly the biggest thing is just going to see what truly ends up happening in the next few years. Words are nice but actions always speak louder. And moving the 5e SRD to the CC was a really solid move (though please please please put Artificer there too it's my favorite class you can't just leave me out to dry like this). And I'll be super happy if they also move 5.5e SRD to CC on release and at some point do the same for the older edition SRDs as well. And that will all be pretty great. But the two biggest things beyond that are going to be how they present their VTT and how they handle new content going forwards. If the VTT is chock full of shitty MTX and requires a sub to even play and stuff like that then I think most people are going to just look the other way. But the one bright spot is that now that they're no longer trying to shut down other VTTs then at least basic competition will determine how that plays out. If what they put out is worse than what things like Roll20 and Foundry offer for free, then people will just continue to use those systems instead. And I already play with mostly homebrew settings and lots of third-party content so I haven't really noticed this much myself, but it seems like a lot of people are fairly dissatisfied with the amount and quality of content being released for 5e. With fewer and fewer feats and subclasses being printed in each book and the quality sometimes being all over the place, I've heard a lot of dissatisfaction with how new books have been handled. So I hope they're working on improving the quality of that content going forwards. --- And finally to try and explain some of the weirdness you were talking about, another thing worth noting about these kinds of situations, is that often the people making these decisions have no real understanding of how anything actually works. You talked about how strange it was that they would be afraid of things like some company releasing some VR platform that would totally reshape the way people see D&D and would completely warp people's perception of it, and how that doesn't make any sense because they wouldn't be allowed to use the D&D name in any way. Or how the TTRPG community does more than a good enough job policing itself and stopping offensive content from being produced. And various other nonsensical things that were hard to understand why they were coming down so hard on it. Well the thing is that the person putting down these decrees almost certainly doesn't understand that. There's another video I watched by someone who was working on making a Star Trek RPG for paramount, and to give you an idea of how clueless these people are, Paramount's representatives legitimately asked him "Do people really have to be able to make their own characters in this game?" because they were legitimately afraid that someone might make a character that they didn't approve of for the Star Trek branding. And that that would somehow damage the Star Trek Brand as a whole if they gave players the freedom to make their own characters. So yeah, that's the level of understanding and intelligence that is being worked with here with these CEOs sometimes. I do legitimately think that a lot of the reasons they claim to have been trying to make all these changes for, were the actual reasons from on-high that they *thought* were good ideas, but were just so clueless that they had no idea just what they were forcing these people to do.

[@BobWorldBuilder]

Great points. I totally agree that now we just have to watch and see what they really do going forward

[@whiskeygamesnerdstuff789]

Great Video, Thank you.

[@dannyp3333]

Appreciate the incite and calmness

[@FamBoren]

Good questions and even better answers from Kyle. They have done a lot and I think he speaks so easily about this, because this is it. There is no hidden agenda, just a nice outcome of a bad (first) call. Getting stuck on the draft OGL seems futile.

[@Centaur255]

This was so well-handled Bob! You asked really good questions that got to the heart of the issue while being extremely easy to talk to and fostering a calm, supportive environment for conversation. A huge thank you to you for this! :) And a huge thank you to Kyle Brink - it can't be easy to go into an interview knowing that you're talking to people who are collecting questions from people who don't like a decision your company made, and grateful for his willingness to answer some tough questions

[@TakaD20]

Well, Kyle decided to talk to nice Bob "Ross" Worldbuilder and not to mean Shorts... only to get roasted by Bob's knife sharp questions and conclusions.

[@OMentertainment]

The older editions is what REALLY interests me, as an AD&D person

[@SmileyTrilobite]

On mini add-ons: I’m happy for the lack of randomized blind boxes. I’m not savvy to the particulars of running a shared online space, but as a consumer I’d prefer either a subscription for all content or one time purchases for each piece of content - not both. If both, you could look at it as a rental of game space plus all your miniature purchases, but that’s not what I do in real life for a reason.

[@Tuskbumper]

I kinda don't like how Kyle does the deflection thing several times in the the interview and I think I would have liked for him to have a conversation with one of the more "hostile" content creators along with the conversations we received but oh well I guess. This was well done though thanks for asking some interesting questions and peeping the bull within the interview. Let's hope the promises in these interviews are kept

[@YelloDuzzit]

Alright! Now you got'em!! The screening questions thing, especially under the guise of "being prepared." Also, "they premeditated" his ignorance, is a bit of a stretch, not that I putnit past them... but over all, this is at least a clear example of negligence, at best

[@seth-tanner]

I love the argument about “the OGL would let other companies use the D&D brand” as if Dungeons and Dragons (and also D&D) are not already trademarked terms.

[@tdpod6109]

Idea. Each LGS that buys Dnd books is issued unique discount codes. When you buy a book from the LGS,they give you it's Discount code. Then when you pop into Dnd beyond, you can use that discount code to get the digital version of the book or at least a discount to buy it. Then those redeems could get a little something something to the game store since it's something that can be tracked instead of just book purchases.

[@Wasserbienchen]

Interesting and very corporate answers for the most part. I'd already moved on from DnD a while back but I'm at least glad to see that there's some degree of accountability.

[@logan9189]

Thanks, Bob.

[@Sylanael]

I know it's isn't really OGL related, but I do wish one of you all did ask about how they plan supporting the non-Western countries moving forward. Cause here in South East Asia, they (Hasbro/WOTC) literally dont send over the books and stuff, and we (players and game shops) are stuck with importing ourselves at such a high prices. Digital is a good way to reach globally, but they refuse to have local pricing. One of the ways would be to make it have regional pricing (similar to how Netflix or Steam does it) so more people can purchase

[@shelbybayer200]

As long as they don't screw up again I'm willing to listen to their ideas in the future, With full sense of watching out for Ideas that might be the least bit Of a speck of a bad idea I'm glad they're not going the Gacha route for Digit-Miniature

[@_evillevi]

Answering questions with questions. Ah, yes, the Zootopia school of PR.

[@riculfriculfson7243]

Currently loving the dice 😁

[@kevinkingmaker7395]

"It was a terrible mistake." In retrospect, because the backlash is hurting WotC's bottom line. In other words, it was a mistake because we didn't get away with it.

[@AJBernard]

24:29 "Hi, I'm Kyle, the executive producer of D&D, and I don't know anything at all about any of the corporate decisions that are being made at D&D or by the D&D team, please stop asking me, I don't know, I just got here, I wasn't part of that, please just buy our game we didn't do it."

[@loqsmyth]

With the new understanding of what the microtransactions will look like, and their purpose, I support them. Its a solid and, quite literally, the next logical step in the evolution of digital content for the game. No harm. The issue: dodging several of the questions without the staying totally within the realm of transparency. What is surprising however is that they continue to act in ways that prove that they don't believe that we are clever enough to see through their bullshit...truly WoTC, transparency is the only way to go when nearly the entirety of your customer base has an above average intelligence. Things will work out far better...promise =)

[@ambrosewetherbee8301]

Great interview! I enjoy 5E for what it is but there are so many great games, especially in the OSR realm, that people should try.

[@ralphengland8559]

Weasels and Worms... that's all I can think of now. It's like a pizza shop trying to have the best pizza in town by sabotaging other shops ovens.

[@derekthornton9645]

Thanks for asking direct questions, sticking to your guns, and stating when you didn't like his answers. Also, an even bigger thank you for doing so in a respectful manner without name calling or starting a smear campaign. Those types of games are never fun in the long run.

[@ekashotersen]

Pressure without offenses. I like it.

[@elfbait3774]

As a minis guy, I was never too bothered by the "microtransactions" talk. I have boxes and boxes of these microtransactions purchased for decades. Add to that, paints, brushes, hobby tools, storage materials and yeah, likely cheaper for me to buy virtual minis :)

[@BobWorldBuilder]

Well said!

[@RylanStorm]

You own those items in those boxes and nobody can take them from you.

[@elfbait3774]

@@RylanStorm while true, that is a value decision anyone makes on any purchase, virtual or otherwise. Many of those miniatures I have purchased have sat in boxes either in disuse or unused since the day they were purchased. Some are even still in the original packaging they were in decades ago. The point is that the idea of microtransactions in hobbies isn't all that wild an idea. We have all been doing it for ages for physical media. There are plenty of people who could care less about physical media and for them, the value may be much greater for virtual purchases.

[@RylanStorm]

@@elfbait3774 I just don't think you can equate buying a physical object with a production cost to a virtual object with a single design cost. By that logic, the carrots I bought earlier today are a microtransaction.

[@collinkelch7764]

Whether he drew the short straw or was a volunteer to step up and smooth things over, it is clear that Kyle was not the guy calling the shots on this OGL change direction until it was in damage control. He seems genuine in his interest in the hobby but it is clear that all not all of the executives care about the game as much.

[@irrevenant3]

21:56 I *think* that might've been in the Ginny Di interview?

[@MeemBeen]

Kyle says the absolute **best** line for taking completely out of context at 30:45. "We did it once so that suggests we'd be willing to do it again." -- Kyle Brink

[@sharkyshark1]

Great job interviewing. Showing everything is danced around or avoided means we should assume the worse answer possible to. Meaning they haven't learned anything yet and just trying to do the minimal to try to save face. With lots of people saying the players of DnD have won(and they in no way have) looks like them covering the eyes of many by doing the minimal is sadly working to a large degree :(

[@freddaniel5099]

"Stop digging" yourself deeper...good advice. I hope the higher-ups take that advice and let gamers take care of the game things.

[@coalcreekdefense8106]

I have been freeform roleplaying since '96. I was aware of tabletop, but I never really looked at it until around 2018. By the time I was interested in actually starting to play, WOTC was already pulling a bunch of shady crap. I chose to avoid them from the start, and everything they've done since makes me glad I did.

[@serrasedai]

Well handled interview, great job! My only tip: don't judge him too hard for avoiding questions that aren't business feasible to answer anyway. Ex: products under development.

[@Rodrigo_Vega]

I'm skeptic about the localization here you did very well to ask. He wouldn't have mentioned an asterisk if there wasn't a HUGE one. Here in Latin America, it seemed they approached community leaders and quickly stopped replying even when these reached all their vaguely implied goals. Eventually it came to light they fired the people involved with those programs. We suspect the region as been completely abandoned as anything more than a second thought.

[@draxxzakuto5735]

I've bought around 100 or so 5th edition books lately. Not from WotC though. They already needed to step their game up before this mess. But the last thing that I have any interest in is digital books. If you can't hold it, it isn't a book, and I'm damn sure not rebuying a digital version of something I already have on my shelf. 🤷‍♂️

[@mitchellberg6953]

One thing that I have been thinking about that I haven't heard anyone else mention is about the age of Kyle's account the day he posted his first statement. His account was made 20 minutes before the statement went live. Kyle claims in his statements to be a dedicated member of the community. If so, how come I've never heard of him before? How come he was never interviewed in a video on DNDBeyond when he was hired? Why was his account so young? How come the Executive Producer of DND wasn't more present on the platform that the majority of people use to play the game? I would have loved to put a face to the name earlier and in a much better situation. Its poor decisions like this that makes me feel like I can't take anything he says seriously. Do you have any thoughts on this, Bob?

[@GreenBlueWalkthrough]

26:28 2 weeks after this video was posted it's not better for TT shop owners... Like I just talked to my local TT shop owner and he mentioned the OGL crisis causing him issues with only my grandpa asking how has the shop been?

[@lynnskelton7971]

Great questions. However, I would have liked to have heard him answer a question on resources they are working on to make it easier for DMs to create adventures and campaigns and run games, especially new DMs AND in light of the greater power creep of PCs they are providing for players. Also, how can they truly say new version will be compatible with 5e with that same higher level of power creep for players, especially if not providing DMs the resources on managing that power creep when running 5e? The new version will basically make 5e modules incompatible and obsolete. Just my thoughts.

[@EliotHochberg]

There’s actually something very interesting in that artificer response that maybe you didn’t pick up on. It’s been suggested in several quarters that wizards of the Coast didn’t care about players. I think from a corporate financial perspective that was probably true, and it seems pretty clear to me that there is at least one executive somewhere, either in wizards of the Coast or Hasbro that takes a typical corporate attitude which is I don’t care if part of what we’re doing a shitty will still end up with enough people paying that will make more money overall. But the way he responded to the artificer Question suggests to me that they were going to punitively not include that class as a response to some of the backlash of this whole situation. Otherwise, why would he have said “they were plans before, I don’t see why we wouldn’t have plans in the future.“ Why did those plants stop?

[@khanktinga]

I think that much of the "corporate BS" in this interview is fairly understandable. Especially as to the numbers of people that cancelled D&D Beyond subscriptions. Even saying "I can't give you those numbers because we are a publicly traded company" is essentially admitting that it hurt their bottom line significantly. I think that is a perfectly legitimate question to ask, but I also think that it is a question that virtually no company executive would ever answer honestly, no matter how transparent they are or how much they want to rebuild trust. Really, the only honest answer we could have hoped for him to give would be something like, "I can't really answer that, sorry. Next question."

[@jeffreymelendez8497]

Way to fight for Dark Sun!

[@jamessimmons9998]

What background music are you using? It sounds like hearthstone, lol.

[@jocelynnielsen9154]

Physical miniatures are not locked to one game. You can substitute say a Warhammer figure for the big ogre you're missing physically, and later you can use them for a different game, or leave them on a shelf or a diorama between games. It's different from online miniature microtransactions in that way (as well as cost of production and distribution, and risk that the digital miniature just vanishes one day if the virtual service goes offline or is shut down). I think it's not reasonable to pay for individual figures in a virtual space, unless there is absolutely no ongoing cost (eg subscription) to access the virtual space.

[@MisterDiceGuy]

I appreciate the questions you asked. I did find that some of your response was a little over critical, not that criticism wasn't warranted in general, but over questions I felt was answered such as the monetization question, where he provided the why and how because the answer deserved more than a simple response to the question, especially given all the skepticism and the issues surrounding the statement about the brand being "undermonetized." Which the strategy to be "provide options" is something I think is fair for the consumer, and I was happy to hear him mention the feature about being able to upscale a virtual figure, instead of requiring you just buy a larger one.

[@cybrdroyd]

I have a question: Why would I play on WotC's VTT rather than an already existing VTT?

[@Khaliljt]

How is Dark sun problematic? It doesn’t do any thing that the forgotten realms hasn’t done in terms of “problematicness” and wotc didn’t abandon that

[@SoaresPatrick]

I came for the interview and stayed for the chess match.

[@waywornwyrm8135]

The not answering about where it came from could be it came from Chris Cox who was the head of WotC, now CEO of Hasbro. Not only is that in line with my understanding of who he is as a person, but it would make the question hard to answer without saying “While it came from WotC, the people behind it are now in Hasbro.” Thus letting everyone know the name of the person who started it. Note the above is complete speculation and is meant as a hypothetical to explain why that particular question was dodged so hard.

[@jakenameson5422]

No excuses or promises will bring my custom back to Hasbro. When someone tells you who they are with actions (especially after they tried to spring it on even their own people) you should believe them. Their shareholders wanted them to screw the creators that made their product what it was. They /will/ do it again if this settles down and people come back.

[@BobWorldBuilder]

I respect that

[@generalZee]

Not to sound like a shill for WotC, I still definitely think they made some huge mistakes, but I actually believe them about the draft. I used to work with Verizon, and it wasn't actually uncommon for them to come up with draft contracts that they handed to their biggest partner or 2 for negotiating purposes before they would release a full version to multiple partners at once. (This happened a lot with cable channels, which often caused smaller channels to get really screwed.) Now, that doesn't mean I believe that WotC were going to be getting wider feedback from everyone in the community, but I do believe it was actually a draft. What's more, because it was a negotiative draft, it was set up as a purposeful overplay. They knew that the companies were going to push back on some things, so WotC put a lot in there to probe the strength of responses to different issues. I truly believe that WotC never intended to publish OGL 1.1, and that it was meant as a negotiating tactic with some of their biggest content creators.

[@EliotHochberg]

I’m not entirely sure why players are that concerned about trust being broken. The people who were materially affected by this change to OGL are the independent creators. From the perspective of a player, I think his answer made sense to me. The only other thing I could say is if they are going to move into a virtualized D&D space, will I still be able to play the way I play and not have to do that. It may not have been a big announcement, but I think he was answering that concern. if I want to buy a physical book so I can have it, and anything new will be available in that format. Will I? I’m not entirely sure what else affects Players directly in that way. In other words, there are two things that I would care about as a player from the perspective of changes being made to the game. First, is it going to change from I make a purchase and then I can play as long as I want, to now I have to pay every time I play? The second is am I going to continue to get more interesting and useful contacts that I can add to my plane experience, or more importantly, that a GM can add to our group playing experience? To me, supporting in the creators, and allowing them to continue to do whatever they feel is best, and committing to physical books, answers both of those questions. And even if Hasbro decided at some point to never again release new books and to go full, micro transaction, having the in the Ecosystem continue to exist. Unfettered means that I am my friends can continue to play the way we want to play. I’m not entirely sure how much more wizards of the Coast owes us.

[@EliotHochberg]

To be fair, I do agree, that if they ask you some questions that they would have a date ahead of time, and you submitted a question which they did not give you therefore, they could’ve had a better answer. It is corporate, speak, and I don’t think honestly, he was technically line. So it was probably a situation where he may have even said you know what I don’t wanna know that because I wanna be able to be honest we could’ve gone that far.

[@BithraxX]

One thing he says here that I haven't seen talked too much about in my circles is he states they are looking into more content for players, which means more classes, races, spells, etc. it lines up with how they have done the last couple of books meant for GM's that have been barely fleshed out, i.e. Spelljammer and Dragonlance (there is literally a part in there that tells you to use a board game [not included] to help with a part of combat in it) seems to sound like the norm for WoTC published content in the future?

[@robotictaco2663]

Hey Bob World Builder, I enjoy your content, and following recent events would you be open to creating content about Index Card RPG? Its a system I found recently and was curious your opinion on it.

[@Akuzeru3D]

I feel like its crazy that D&D arent looking at ways to add '3rd party' content to their own library and monetising that, sites already exsist that you can go and buy content from and charge an upload / sellers fee for using their platform, I could see a future especially for people to create content for their unreal engine VTT too, such as 3d models and miniatures, providing the storefront was monitered properly to avoid copyright and piracy.

[@Keaggan]

"I would be uncomfortable talking with anyone that is too critical of WotC because we are the champions of wholesome light and do not walk in the dark!"

[@Grimlore82]

We deserve to know who wrote the smart ass comment, "They think they won, but we won too..."

[@caseynorton6243]

I would love to see WotC license out or sell off the Dark Sun setting so someone else can reboot it. Goodman Games seems a likely candidate since they already have the original adventures reincarnated line.

[@chickane5586]

I still love D&D. D&D isn't WotC - D&D is the people you play with. But I'm totally hooked on Monster of the Week now too!

[@UrMom-bc6pd]

22:00 ginny actually asked the question and I think that's where you heard this version of his answer

[@BobWorldBuilder]

Ahh, thank you!

[@UrMom-bc6pd]

@Bob World Builder thbak you for your amazing coverage! I started watching just before the debacle, and I'll stay long after