They're trying to kill Paizo for being too based. Allowing the first unions in our TTRPG market? No fucking way! Don't buy from Wizards ever again you hogs
They're trying to kill Paizo for being too based. Allowing the first unions in our TTRPG market? No fucking way! Don't buy from Wizards ever again you hogs
Thing is I feel Stranger Things did the most heavy lifting on making DnD mainstream by way of having characters styled as 80s nerds doing basic gygaxian dungeon delving, nowadays though I feel WotC has the possibility of strangling content creators if they get their hand stuck in the proverbial cookie jar because lets face it capitalists aren't smart on understanding factors of long term success. DnD as all lifestyle brands requires a avid community acting as a self feeding oroborus (YouTubers, supplement OGL makers, streamers). The tightening of the OGL to DnD 6 gives a hint though that WotC wants more at the cost of harming part of their community ecosystem (i.e. people able to make some income from making in certain cases far better supplements and adventures than the WotC writing team). For those that remember 4e a similar thing occurred in which WotC created subpar crap, had a game system that sucked, and tried to monetize DnD with everything you can imagine (remeber DnD heroclix or the weird card game?).
Idk if Stranger Things bouyed D&D or just jumped on the bandwagon. But its notable that they're playing a TSR game rather than Warhammer or Rolemaster or GURPs or even some made-up generic analog. It isn't as though the 80s had a deficit of table-top alternatives.
Disney works as a lifestyle brand despite being rigorously litigated and enclosed. If anything, it works precisely because so much historically public content (everything from Grim's Fairy Tales to Greek Tragedy to Shakespeare) is cornered off into an exclusive private domain.
But it does also hinge on WotC vomiting up a Disney-tier of high quality production and regular content. If they just abandon the old TSR game formula, an audience nostolgic for 80s-era content isn't likely to follow.
One reason Paizo had so much room to grow was because WotC abandoned the 2e/3e framework for a more MMORPG style of game in 4e. Suddenly, Pathfinder was the D&D alternative that actually felt like a D&D game. 5e reclaimed a bunch of that space (and pf2e didn't really do Paizo any favors). If they walk away again, I imagine either Paizo or some other developer will happily milk the old 1.0 OGL for all its worth in their absence.
I think Stranger Things introduced a lot of newbies to the TTRPG scene and also removed some of the leftover satanic panic and 1980s revenge of the nerds stigma to it by incorporating it well into a 80s send off series about kids growing up (something that resonates with millennials and zoomers and tbh even genxers and boomers). This injection of new blood also coincided with the new financialization of DnD (mugs, books, tshirts, all the branded lifestyle crap we now and love). As of now I honestly feel that the most likely outcome is that if DnD is truly horrible on OGL designers then we could see a mass exodus of popular OGL makers to Paizo or other systems which could then drag along Youtubers and eventually streamers (especially if DnD tries pushing the liveservice digitized market they always seem to dance around but also mention is there and ready to be used to extract more from the IP during investor statements).
I'm still upset that VLARP let's plays never really took off. So... fingers crossed