Dungeons & Dragons Publisher Denies Selling Game To Chinese Firm: Here’s What To Know [was: Hasbro Seeks to Sell IP “DND” and Has Had Preliminary Contact with Tencent]
Dungeons & Dragons Publisher Denies Selling Game To Chinese Firm: Here’s What To Know [was: Hasbro Seeks to Sell IP “DND” and Has Had Preliminary Contact with Tencent]
American toy company Hasbro is seeking to sell its well-known IP
Everything people are scared Tencent might do to D&D has already been done by Hasbro: the MMORPG conversion (4th edition), canning all the staff (happens every few years, and to Magic too), adding DLC (just take a look at the current official app), walling off the garden (three tries on that one: once with 4th, once recently with the OGL stuff, and once with the limitations on animations in map applications), even the movie.
D&D the rules system has been a corpse for years, that the designers managed to make 5th into a passable game is a miracle. Play Pathfinder, Blades in the Dark, Call of Cthulhu, Savage Worlds, Fate, Vampire, GURPS, Shadow of the Demon Lord, Dread, Worlds Without Number, Mothership, Numenera, Mork Borg, Everyone is John, any of the dozen variations on those games, or one of the hundreds of other options not yet listed. They pretty much all run as well if not better than D&D.
I love the world of Numenara
That's a ton of names dropped. I wonder what is the best way to have a brief understanding of each one.
Yeah, to be honest my point is there are many good games out there. That said...
- Pathfinder: Fantasy in the classic D&D style, branched off after 3.5ed. Three action economy is gooooood once you're used to it. Lots of dice.
- Blades in the Dark: Steampunk horror fantasy. The most beautifully designed system I've played. Dice pool game that's easy to pick up and master, flavor for days, fantastic narrative control for the players and GM, easy to run. Even people who will never play Blades need to read the book, it has several concepts that can change how any GM or DM runs their games.
- Call of Cthulhu: d100 horror game about staring into the face of a cold, uncaring universe. The cashmere scarf of tabletop RPGs, just oozes luxury. The way the math on skills works is so perfectly suited to CoC's style of horror it's uncanny. Delta Green is a great variant if you want to an SCP or X-Files game.
- Savage Worlds: Action Movie! The Game. Universal system, can be used for most any genre. When it was written it was considered pretty fast to play, now it's about average. Swingy combat. I use it when I run a system not covered by other games, for me mostly 1920-1950s era detective stories. The surface level rules are intuitive, but the GM needs better system knowledge.
- Fate: Very high concept storytelling game. Players and GMs both have the ability to influence the narrative of the scene. The game I had the hardest time learning, not because of the game itself is hard but because I had to change the way I think about TTRPGs.
- Vampire: Vampires in the modern world. Dice pool system. I like the newest edition a lot, I think it's pretty elegant. Can get weird.
- GURPS: The ultimate multipurpose game. Build any character in any setting. ANY setting. Building characters is a horrible slog, but the rules are... surprisingly simple in practice, at the discretion of the GM. A lot of work in prep, but when it's right, it's very right. The Film Reroll podcast plays through movies using it, highly recommend listening to a movie run by Paulo (Home Alone, maybe) to get an idea of the system.
- Shadow of the Demon Lord: Grimdark or horror fantasy. d20 system, very easy for D&D players to learn.
- Dread: Extreme rules light horror game. Tasks are resolved with a Jenga tower. The GM creates a horror scenario. Anytime the GM wants to increase the tension or the players are in danger trying to do something, a player pulls a block (or two, or three). When the tower falls the player who knocked it over dies. Players can sacrifice their life to accomplish a heroic action by knocking over the tower intentionally. That's all the rules.
- Worlds Without Number: Fantasy. Sort of another branch off AD&D. A nicely designed mix of Old School Renaissance and some modern conveniences. Very, very good worldbuilding tools. Free, to some extent.
- Mothership: d100 sci-fi horror system, more barebones than CoC. Very easy to pick up and build characters fast, which is good, 'cause they're going to die.
- Numenera: Weird sort of futuristic/fantasy setting. One of the easiest systems I've ever run, super easy to adjust on the fly. Maybe a little too complicated to explain in a few sentences.
- Mork Borg: Old school, original D&D turned emo. Can be played straight or as satire.
- Everyone is John: A comedy game, very rules light, where the players take turns controlling the same character, John. They try to accomplish hilarious tasks. Gets weird. My John flew the USS Enterprise-D into a sun once. Free.
For people who want high fantasy but not D&D, I'd recommend Pathfinder 2e. For people who want something a little more dangerous and stripped down and are coming from D&D, Worlds Without Number. For anyone I recommend Call of Cthulhu and Dread. Everyone should read Blades in the Dark, even if they don't want to play in the setting.
Also, from the other comments below: Traveller: Space Adventures! The Game. The rumor is Firefly was based on Joss Whedon's Traveller game, and that's how Traveller plays. Amazing character creation system that lets players control some of their background, but mirrors real life in that not everything goes as planned. The setting is very, very deep. I admit I would probably play Scum and Villainy (Blades in the Dark in Space) or Stars Without Number (the predecessor to WWN) instead, but it's up there. The One Ring Roleplaying Game: Very much a system to play stories not just in Middle Earth but in the style of LotR. I have not played this and have no intent to do so, but it's clever in its own little hobbit hole way. I have read it. Cool dice.
I haven't read Shadowdark or Pugmire. Shadowdark looks, for my purposes, similar to Worlds Without Number or Shadow of the Demon Lord. As for Pugmire I use Mouseguard for my Redwall adjacent stuff, but I would sit in a few sessions for sure.
Headline was so confusing because I never see it stylized like that. It's always D&D or DnD, never DND - that's 'Do Not Disturb'.
I just wish that Larian Studios would buy it. They could save their licensing fees for BG3 and could keep DnD community driven. Would also make it much easier for them to introduce new game mechanics into future games and pull those changes back into DnD.
Edit: I just read that tencent owns 30% shares of Larian which is kind of a bummer. Still would be much better with Larian directly, because tencent doesnt have a majority say then.
Larian isn't especially big though, even with the success of BG3, a purchase like this is likely would be well outside what they could hope to afford.
I just learned about that as well. I hope Larian dilutes or buys back Tencent's shares.
Why would they do that, though? They're a private company. They didn't have to let Tencent buy in in the first place, which means it was purposeful.
And the reason companies give Tencent a cut of themselves is to have better access to the Chinese market. You need a Chinese publisher or partner to operate there, and Tencent offers that to software companies in exchange for letting them buy in. They always buy minority stakes, and they don't take over editorial control of anything.
They're actually a good business partner for anyone wanting to have their games distributed in China.
They're just also a really aggressive F2P developer.
Tell them! Tell them naow!
Everything about that is absolute cancer.
Everyone's favorite TTRPG going world stage corporate. Fucking yay....
I get the spirit of the comment, but among people who often play multiple TTRPGs almost no one would call D&D their favorite. I would be worried if Tencent (or Hasbro) bought Arc Dream or Evil Hat, but in practice the John Harpers of the world leave and start another company using their corporate lucre. In fact that’s where Paizo started, from people peeling off of D&D after Hasbro acquired it.
Tabletop games are such a functionally cheap product to create and sell it’s impossible to truly stomp out competition. Tencent would have to buy Twitch and YouTube and disallow any other game, and even then every nerd convention in the world would have some guy selling stapled together zines that rips D&D a new asshole.
Tl;dr: I don’t give a shit if Tencent buys D&D.
Definitely gonna get enshittified
I despise Tencent and the general business model of just buying up shit, but worse than Hasbro? Tencent played quite the part in BG3‘s making (By buying 30% of Larian years ago to keep cash flowing) and everyone loves it. They usually let western companies do as they please. If anything Hasbro selling it is yet another proof of why they shouldn‘t have it in the first place. And if WotC had anything left of a spine they would try to buy themselves free but that sure as hell is not going to happen because they do not care.
That would be anything produced after 3.5. The brand has been going down for a long time. That's not to say there is nothing good in the current 5e, just for me it seems like it lost its soul with corporate oversight.
I moved to Pathfinder 2e and I couldn't be happier. The only issue I have is that one of my players is Mercer-coded (is that a thing?) and really hates any time a skill, class, or spell isn't a 1:1 copy of DnD. He recently grabbed Bane as part of a feat for his barbarian and learned it isn't the same as DnD Bane and had a meltdown.
We should petition the government to invalidate the copyright on D&D and send it to the public domain.
Literally no need. Take a rule book, modify it as desired. There's a huge creator ecosystem out there, paid or otherwise, and WoC just outright doesn't matter to it.
yo fuck hasbro this is why critical role branched out
Pretty much. Their Candela Obscura game has already been used to make thousands in charity for Doctors Without Borders and there’s more to come.
Fucking tencent?
Next edition comes with a free camera that may or may not be recording everything you're doing, comrade!
Well they can’t handle it any worse
Yeah, they absolutely can...
Hot take: the government should take D&D and give its rights to a non-profit to be managed for the benefit of the community and its employees.
would a federated open source d&d universe ever be reality? like have a whole world that is created by contributors, similar to openstreetmap (but not irl obviously)
That’s essentially what the ORC License does. Paizo wrote it, but then gave it to a law firm that represents several developers so no one RPG owns it.
Let's just make an SCP tabletop
Well, it seems the news was fake, originating from a Chinese news site. Both Wizard of the Coast and Larian (cited as the intermediary between Hasbro and Tencent) denied any interest in selling the brand.
Thank you kind soul for the updated information.
Honestly the original article didn't make a ton of sense... Why would Hasbro approach Larian to buy the entirety of the DnD IP? I was originally assuming it was misreporting a possible sale of rights to make video games only, not the entire IP, which might have made more sense to approach Larian about.
Just asking, is there some sort of "Open Source DND"?
Good of you to ask. It's entirely possible to play D&D without buying any official materials (and you should play it without buying anything Hasbro currently sells, but that's just my opinion).
In fact, you can find a more or less complete set of rules for most versions of D&D just by searching combinations of the version you want and terms like "SRD" or "wiki". Some of these will lead you to officially hosted sources, and some not, but the great thing about D&D is that Hasbro can't ever sell it away from players.
I'm not going to provide any links to anything because someone will accuse me of breaking the rules, but D&D isn't Hasbro, and it wasn't even really TSR. It's just collections of rules, and game rules are not patentable. Hasbro owns a copyright in the 5e PHB's written content, for example (and some trademarks on trade dress and some terms), but crucially it does not own the way people play D&D. Ergo, in a matter of speaking, Dungeons and Dragons is already open source. If you've got a pen, some paper, and a fistful of dice, you can play. Less is more.
Having said that, many folks believe that the best versions of D&D aren't in print anymore anyway, but even if 5e is your version of choice (and to its credit, it has a few marks in its favor), I'd recommend checking a used book store before getting worried about whether this rumor ever amounts to anything. Hasbro can sell D&D, or not, and millions of people will happily keep right on playing D&D every week without ever giving them a dime.
How close is Pathfinder to that?
Pathfinder 1e had a good license and would be very familiar to D&D 3e players. Pathfinder 2e has a great license but would have a bit of a relearning curve for D&D 5e players.
Tales of the Valiant is probably the closest to 5e with a great license.
Here might be a good start for you: https://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Open_Game_Systems#Open_Game_License
Just because of the nature of those games, I would speculate that the page above is just a fraction of what is available.
No. Don't trust the OGL. WOTC tried to "revoke" the OGL last year in a way that would fuck over all 3rd party publishers. People raised absolute Cain and WOTC kinda sorta backed down (kinda sorta) but there's no guarantee the OGL is safe moving forward. To the point that Paizo (makers of Pathfinder 2e) are reprinting all of their Pathfinder 2e materials to remove anything that could remotely depend on the OGL.
If you want something more trustworthy than OGL, look into ORC.
D&D's 5e SRD was released under CC-BY. It only includes one subclass per class and a handful of monsters, but it's all the rules.
Tales of the Valiant and Pathfinder 2e both have SRDs licensed under the ORC license and are based in D&D-type gameplay.
FATE is a different type of TTRPG that has a SRD licensed both under OGL and CC-BY.
Powered by the Apocalypse is a different system and has a permissive, but hand-wavey license.
Of all of these, ToV is the most like 5e without being controlled by a multi-national, public company.
I'd suggest checking out the EN World Advanced 5E. It's open source, way better than basic 5E, and the creative team is very pro-player.
I prefer Dungeon World which has D&D flavor on different dicing mechanics but others have posted other systems closer to familiar D20 system.
Try DC20
Seriously.. where's the repo? Lol.
If tencent buys DnD I am quitting, full stop.
Great news! There are many, many tabletop role-playing games that are not Dungeons and Dragons that you can play! My favorite easy alternative is Dungeon World but there are literally hundreds out there.
Pathfinder 2nd edition is a great alternative for players who prefer a simulation style of play with detailed rules. There is a big learning curve but it can be worth it.
Dungeon World is great for players who enjoy less complexity and collaborative storytelling. Getting new players stated with Dungeon World was easy, fast, and fun my group.
Tons of great alternatives!
So nothing Hasbro has done up to this point turned you off of D&D? All corporations are evil, some just have more power than others.
Move to DCC
I'm like twenty steps ahead of you. My last DnD campaign should end in June. then it's "bye bye forever DnD" 😎
There's no way Tencent are as bad as Hasbro
I struggle to think of a buyer that would be worse for the players than Tencent.
On the bright side, Hasbro's last big D&D blunder prodded the community into developing alternative gaming systems and licenses, so I think we'll be in good shape to carry on without the brand if this happens.
I can easily think of three buyers worse for players than tencent. Blizzard, Epic Games, Apple.
Happy 50th Anniversary, D&D!
China buying up everything
This would never have been put up for sale if Hasbro had taken care of it, regardless of who buys the IP from them I doubt they can do worse. Let's says Tencent does buy the IP, they could bury it but where is the profit in that, there is also nothing to divide up and parcel off. Worse case we get what we have now and we all complain about the same things we are complaining about with Hasbro. Whoever buys the IP will want to make money, so let's hope they look at the community concerns and try to course correct the mess that Hasbro has made.
I just don't trust tencent. They are to China like Facebook is to America in terms of casting large nets for data gathering. I agree Hasbro should let dnd go to a better care taker, but if it's Tencent I don't know if I'd be able to trust any official dnd software.
Luckily, dnd is well established as a physical medium, so the impact wouldn't be too big, but the principal still stands
Roll for a wisdom save.
Damn, imagine if Larian took over... Also I didn't know they're Tencent's lol
Eh, minorly. Swen and his wife still have massive majority control of Larian.
Is that how this kind of thing usually works?
Fire all of the talent that made the brand great and THEN sell the brand?
Wait, I guess it makes sense. Fire everyone, sell to another company, then that company can try to rehire at a reduced salary.
Wait, I guess it makes sense. Fire everyone, sell to another company, then that company can try to rehire at a reduced salary.
Nah. They'll sell in a leveraged buy-out, which will give the shareholders at Hasbro tons of money, cost Tencent nothing, and put the new D&D LLC in tons of debt. Then they'll piecemeal out any IP or assets that can make them any money before letting D&D LLC go bankrupt. See what happened to Toys R' Us for a past example.
ah the toys r us and kb toys model
Can you share some companies that Tencent has done this to?
Fair enough.
The name is all they are after.
Sell the rights to the name to existing smaller companies who will want to buy it.
DnD will never be what it was, but its name will live on.