Tag Archives: Indie TTRPG

Moving into a Post 5e Era

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The fallout from the OGL 1.1 leak as been snowballing from a serious gaffe into a full-blown avalanche of bad press and burnt bridges over the last week. Companies like Kobold Press and MCDM, among the heaviest hitters in the 5e OGL third party publishing world have announced that they’re moving forward with their own proprietary systems after completing their scheduled 5e contents. Other publishers are taking this opportunity to expand their community content programs, such as Pinnacle Entertainment Group (Savage Worlds) and Modiphius (2d20), or are expanding their OGL and SRD documents like Monty Cook Games. So what’s an OGL, what’s Open Source, and what’s available to creators and end users alike in terms of finding new systems to work with?

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The Modern TTRPG Battlespace

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Through its nearly 50 years of existence, Dungeons & Dragons has changed the battlespace of the hobby several times. TSR pioneered supporting media as a cartoon, various comic book series, and extensive novel collections. In 2001, now under Wizards, they broke the taboo of controlling your game’s core mechanics and introduced the OGL, launching the d20 era and many careers. In 2016, they pioneered a new level of community content creation with the DMs Guild, creating a closed ecosystem for creators to have free rein on allowed IP. Then in 2017, Wizards did it again with D&D Beyond. Now, as we approach 2024, they’ve announced One D&D, a comprehensive single portal for all things D&D and the best deals on official D&D stuff. But what does any of this mean from the level of A list small publishers to Indie level creators in the hobby?

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