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And the circus that has erupted makes me remember. I'm so old, I remember New Coke.
Y'see, one day, when Coke did double blind taste tests? They discovered that their control AND sample group liked Pepsi better. So they said, "Well, we'll just make Coke more like Pepsi." So they changed the formula.
This was serious business. Coke had a number of contracts hinging on being The Number One Soda Brand On The Planet. And they didn't want to lose ground to Pepsi.
But a thing they didn't expect was people going, "What the hell is THIS? It's not Coke. We want the old Coke back!"
And this is where the Coke people made a BAD mistake. They said, "Tough bananas. This is Coke, now. Deal with it."
That might have worked, at one point. But they screwed up. They thought Coke was just a product. It was, once, certainly, but Coke has become more than a product, more than just a brand name and a logo and a formula you mix with carbonated water. Coke had become part of the CULTURE, part of the social landscape, and more important to its consumer base than a mere product.
...and the people who drank Coke said "Well, since MY Coke is now DEAD, I might as well drink something else." And sales plummeted. And gradually... and I DO mean GRADUALLY, as this took several YEARS... the Coke people pulled their heads out of the sand and said, "Well, let's bring back Original Coke, and sell it alongside New Coke."
...and gradually... their sales came back. And eventually, New Coke dried up and vanished. And now, there is simply Coke, based on the old formula, that doesn't taste like Pepsi.
The message was simple: you don't crap on the legend in front of the True Believers, not if you want to stay in business. No matter HOW big you think you are.
It is a lesson that Coke has never forgotten. And this brings us to Fourth Edition.
Dungeons and Dragons had been through three and a half editions before Hasbro bought out the company, and when they were firmly in charge, Wizards of the Coast was under pressure, as a fully owned subsidiary, to show value and produce profit. So they released a new edition, with much noise and ballyhoo, and some really NICE art by Wayne Reynolds, among other worthies. The FOURTH EDITION, wahoo!
And within a month... the faithful were disenchanted. It was... different. It was ... wrong. It wasn't backwards compatible, it screwed around BAD with the lore, it made MAJOR changes, it... didn't feel like Dungeons and Dragons any more. Lot of people took issue with that.
A side note: Paizo, a company that had USED to be part of TSR and then Wizards of the Coast, got spun off into its own company. Its flagship product: the print magazine, Dragon, the D&D Magazine, the gaming organ, with a free game or adventure in nearly every issue!
And when Hasbro took over, they said, "We're going to publish the magazine electronically from now on. We're pulling the rights, leaving you without a product. You may die at your leisure. Good day."
And the last thing Hasbro did? They pulled the rights from all vendors publishing legal PDFs of old D&D product. "We're scared of piracy, so we're going to make sure that no one can get these products, except by piracy."
And they stood atop their corporate mountain, and said, "This is Dungeons and Dragons, now. This is what we sell. Buy it. There are no alternatives."
Problem is? There were alternatives. In desperation, Paizo whipped up a game out of the OGL and the SRD, and called it Pathfinder. It was essentially D&D 3.5 edition, dusted off, brightened up, with a few new features.
And it was tailor made for the people who loved 3.5 edition, and were disenchanted with 4th edition, and with Hasbro's imperious behavior. And it took off. Paizo became a major player in the industry overnight. For those who didn't want to play Pathfinder? Piracy soared. And for some reason, no one wanted to buy the new electronic edition of Dragon magazine. It died, unlamented. Fourth Edition product sat on the shelves. It committed the cardinal corporate sin: IT LOST MONEY. And the merry gamers went on about their business, uncomplaining.
If a product doesn't meet the need or demand... it's not much of a product, is it? And, in time, Hasbro relented. Public playtests were held to test new ideas and public perception and acceptance of Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition... and Hasbro wanted YOUR INPUT!
It worked. The faithful came back. In dribs and drabs and groups and colonies, but most of them did come back. And for a decade or more, things were well. Pathfinder went into a second edition. The legally available PDFs came back. Dragon Magazine didn't come back, but, well, you can't have everything. It did come back in a free PDF version that wasn't all that great and was a Hasbro house organ, but, like I said...
And 2022 came and went. In its dying days, some announcements were made... about "D&D is undermonetized," and "we need to find a way to get the players to pay, as well as the DMs," and "We're coming out with One D&D, but it's not sixth edition, it's just like fifth edition, but different, but not really, but better..."
The faithful were disturbed. Debate broke out on the interwebs.
And then... the new OGL leaked, in the opening days of 2023. It didn't have much good to say. In a nutshell, it said that all previous OGLs were going to be null and void and retracted and redacted, and that if you wanted to create and publish content for D&D, you were going to need to sign the NEW OGL... and perhaps pay royalties... and have your stuff preapproved... and be subject to corporate scrutiny... and, theoretically, simply have your material taken from you and sold by Hasbro, because... well, they own it now. Everything published under the new OGL is supposedly Hasbro IP.
Hasbro made a big mistake once. They tried to command the faithful, to control what they did with Hasbro IP. They failed. Paizo published a product better than Hasbro's. The pirates pirated. And the faithful just went to the other guy's temple, instead of Hasbro's.
Coca-Cola learned an important lesson about crapping on the legend in front of the faithful. They never forgot that lesson.
And it disturbs me to think that all of Hasbro's takeaway from THEIR New Coke Moment was "We're going to do the same thing we did last time, but THIS time, we'll burn down the other guys' temples, first!"
