Wizards of the Coast is working with a new licensee, Trapdoor Technologies, to deliver digital tools for Dungeons & Dragons 5e. In May, Wizards of the Coast announced Kobold Press designed two of the adventures to support the Tyranny of Dragons storyline. DriveThruRPG has been powering Dungeons & Dragons Classics for awhile now. I think this may represent a subtle shift in how Wizards of the Coast is handling Dungeons & Dragons.
I’ve already talked at length about how I feel Wizards of the Coast should focus on their core competencies and let others develop tools for the game in the context of the OGL. It looks like Wizards of the Coast is doing this, except instead of an open source model they are planning to work with specific licensees to fill the void.
While I would personally prefer an open source model, this makes sense from Wizards of the Coast’s point of view. They can focus their internal resources on the rules and farm tasks that go outside their core competencies to other groups while still maintaining a tight control over how their intellectual property is used. Seriously, this is win-win for them.
Hopefully, they will open things up a bit more down the road, as Mike Mearls said they would in 2015. I still maintain that a robust gaming license is good for the hobby, and that what is good for the hobby is good for Dungeons & Dragons.
2 comments:
Like I said before, they have been doing many things right. We will see what 2015 brings. It may pleasantly surprise us.
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