Thread by @brentalicious

Let me tell you a story about fighting dragons and how #WotC and @Wizards_DnD don't understand NFTs, or perhaps they do, and wish to keep them all to themselves.

Time to go on an adventure 🧵

First a bit of background for those who don't know me. I'm the co-founder and CEO of @Gripnr. We're bringing #TTRPG to the blockchain, starting with our first game world, @The_Glimmering

I've never had more fun building a company, but it's not been without its detractors.

After building The Glimmering for nearly 6 months, mostly in private, we got some attention right as we were about to formally announce the project and launch our site, theglimmering.com

@lincodega had seen posts from my co-founder @comerpatrick and wanted to do an interview for Gizmodo. Based on research we could see Linda was no fan of NFTs. But, the story was going to happen regardless. And Patrick understands the importance of getting other peoples opinions

They spoke. The call went well. After, Patrick called to tell me he thought, at a minimum, the article would be fair. Well... with a headline like this I'd say he was mistaken.

We're here to "Ruin Dnd"? Really???

More on that in a sec.
gizmodo.com/dungeons-drago…

That got some attention. Overnight we went from building in private to having all kinds of folks flood into the server. Most of them were thrilled to find us. Some were down right frigin' mean and nasty.

Who cares. We move on. Keep building. What's next

In August we get a letter from @jeremyg2k stating his firm represents Wizards of the Coast, the owners of D&D.

My lawyer asked me not to share the letter here but the tl;dr is this....

They represent D&D.

They have "serious concerns that our past, present and future activity may violate their clients IP".

They "strongly encourage" us to stop all that we're doing while they "investigate"

Nah,hard pass. I don't respond & send to our legal team to file it away

Then, at the start of the year it leaks that D&D is going to revoke the Open Gaming License (OGL).

The OGL1.0a has been around for about 20 years. It's what's allowed every 3rd party publisher to create D&D style content. It's what helped D&D to grow to its current state.

But the leaked OGL 1.1 is very bad for 3rd party creators and there is massive uproar. People cancel their D&D Beyond subscriptions

NFTs are here to ruin D&D? No, it looks like WotC is.

Here are a few reasons why:

It demands 25% royalty from all publishers of a certain size.

It grants to WotC an "nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, sub-licensable, royalty-free license to use that content for any purpose."

Read: They could take your creations and resell them as their own, if they so choose.

And it gets worse. This is where NFTs come in

The leaked OGL says you can only create content for "print and static electronic files", (like PDFs) and nothing else.

Read: No NFTs for you.

On their website they said "replacing imagination with animations" and integrating D&D content into an NFT is "not the tabletop experience." It's "more like a video game"

NFTs are a video game? What? The "tabletop experience..." they get to decide what that is for you?

This article in @decryptmedia quotes WotC, “We wanted to address those attempting to use D&D in Web3, blockchain games, and NFTs by making clear that OGL content is limited to tabletop role-playing content like campaigns, modules, and supplements,” decrypt.co/119194/dungeon…

And this is where we realize that WotC doesn't fully understand NFTs, or perhaps they do and are just playing dumb. I'll explain.

First, it's not legally possible to create an NFT using Wizards of the Coast’s IP without complying with the OGL (which we did).

Second, the NFTs GRIPNR is creating for The Glimmering have no need for the OGL at all. They can and will live independent of that license.

And third, WotC has no broad right to prevent the use of Web3, blockchain, or NFTs in tabletop gaming. We deploy all of them and will not stop.

Here's the rub. Hasbro, WotC parent company, has already sold NFTs before, inspired from Power Rangers and My Little Pony.

Their CEO is also on record stating that D&D is "under monetized".

And they recently bought the platform D&D Beyond for $146M

Here's how I see it. D&D is actively building a VTT to compete with Roll20 and the rest. They made a massive investment to buy D&D Beyond and they feel the game is "under monetized".

Wizards’ unilateral proposal only serves to stifle innovation, creativity, and competition in the tabletop roleplaying game industry.

And I believe that's the goal, for WotC to have NFTs and animations, but not for anyone else.

Time will tell if I'm right. But, I'm on record. We ain't stopping.

GRIPNR is preparing to revoke all uses of the OGL and the SRD. But we aren’t building in a walled garden. The methods and mechanics we are developing will be freely and irrevocably given back to the community..

to use as they see fit, in the true sense of a perpetual, irrevocable, open source manner. In addition, we will continue to support & collaborate with other publishers in developing new and genuinely open gaming licenses to ensure that tabletop roleplaying games will remain open.

You can see our formal statement and legal analysis in this white paper.
medium.com/@gripnr/the-fu…

If you read this far. Thank you. I'm proud of all the work our team is doing. It's an honor to be on this adventure with them. If what we're building sounds interesting to you, come join us in our discord. discord.gg/gripnr

Finally, a quick shout out to @NFT_GOD who helped inspired me to write this, as part of the effort to share, learn and grow, becoming #1percentbetter every day. LFG !