James Maliszewski's Blog, page 86

Experience a Legend

Despite my well-known dislike of the way that the Dragonlance series changed AD&D (and roleplaying), the fact is that I actually looked forward to the appearance of the first Weis and Hickman novel in November 1984. As a TSR fanboy, I dutifully bought it, along with its two sequels, though, in retrospect, it's difficult to say exactly why. I suspect the sheer novelty of a "D&D novel" – Quag Keep doesn't really count in my estimation – was enough to inflame my interest. 

I had just turned fifteen at the time and Dungeons & Dragons meant a lot to me. I suppose I saw the advent of the Dragonlance novels as some kind of validation of all the time, energy, and love I poured into this rather odd pastime. From the vantage point of middle age, it's mildly embarrassing, but adolescent enthusiasms often are. 

White Dwarf: Issue #64

Issue #64 of White Dwarf (April 1985) features a cover by Peter Andrew Jones that, as so many previous covers of the magazine have, mixes elements of fantasy and science fiction. Meanwhile, Ian Livingstone's editorial discusses his visit to Planet Photon in Dallas, Texas, the originator of the "laser tag" phenomenon of the '80s and '90s. What I find interesting is that Livingstone seems to think, as many people did at the time, that "real" roleplaying was an inevitability and that venues like Planet Photon were the first steps on that road. Nearly forty years later, I'm still unconvinced that even VR technology will ever prove more than a novelty.
"News of the World" by Jon Smithers is a lengthy article that looks at "government, law, and conflict in fantasy campaigns." It's basically an extended examination of how the referee can use governments and their laws to foster compelling conflicts in a RPG campaign. It's a worthy topic and the article is decent enough. My main complaint is that Smithers devotes a lot of space to a single type of conflict, war, while reducing less blatant forms of conflict to afterthoughts.
Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" is, as I've commented before, a source of frustration to me. Most columns I find rather dull, in large part because it's difficult to muster much interest in decades-old reviews of books I've never read (and, in many cases, never heard of). At the same time, it's clear that Langford is a talented and often witty writer, though I have long suspected that, like many reviewers, he played to his audience by amping up his negativity and general curmudgeonliness – not that I'd know anything about that. Amusingly, this month's column begins by noting that readers have complained he has become "too nice." Langford is, of course, mock appalled at this and explains that, if the charge is true, it's only because that "publishers have hit on the idea of offering [him] good stuff." He then proceeds to gush over Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic, thereby undermining what he just said. (I kid ... maybe? I realize I'll be a pariah by admitting this, but I've never liked Pratchett's writing and find the Discworld series rather puerile, but there it is, my dark secret revealed.)
"Open Box" devotes most of its two pags to a massive review of the third edition of RuneQuest. This is the edition published by Avalon Hill, which caused a stir at the time for both its price and its removal of Glorantha as the default campaign setting of the game in favor of "Mythic Earth." Overall, the reviewer, Oliver Dickinson, seems pleased with the new edition (9 out of 10). Also reviewed is Secret of the Ancients for GDW's Traveller, an adventure the reviewer, Marcus L. Rowland, liked better than I did (7 out of 10). That said, he recognizes its many flaws and recommends it primarily for completists and those deeply invested in the backstory of the Third Imperium setting.

If you're looking for something in a Traveller vein that's more fun, I present you with the issue's installment of Mark Harrison's The Travellers comic. This month, we're treated to "Gavin's Swan Song," as the titular xeno-hating psychopath indulges in ultra-violence while singing the following: I'm sure it speaks poorly of me that I found – and still find – this quite funny. This issue's "Thrud the Barbarian" and "Gobbledigook" are amusing, too, but it's The Travellers I still remember all these years later.
"Starfall" by Marcus L. Rowland is a terrific (and long) adventure written for use with FASA's Star Trek. The scenario involves a distress call from a civilian Klingon vessel in the vicinity of the Neutral Zone. The twist is that, while the distress signal is genuine and the Klingons aboard are political dissenters fleeing execution by the Empire, they're also extreme hardlines who believe that the Empire is too soft in its dealings with the Federation. The whole thing has a delightfully late Cold War quality to it – go figure; it's from 1985 – making it one of my favorite Star Trek adventures of all time. I had a lot of fun using it back in the day.
"Megavillains" by Simon Burley and Peter Haines is the inaugural entry in the new "Heroes & Villains" feature for Games Workshop's Golden Heroes (which I really must write a post on someday). The article presents Earthlord, an angry elemental earth-spirit angry at the despoiling of the Earth. Ho-hum. Much more interesting is "Dawn of Unlight" by Graham Staplehurst, which presents an adventure in Middle-earth's Mirkwood for both AD&D and Middle-earth Role Playing. The scenario features a cult of Men devoted to Ungoliant, which creeped me out as a younger person, but then I hate and fear spiders. Because of that I was weirdly fascinated by this adventure, as well as by its AD&D conversion. Around this time, I was in the midst of one of my periodic fits of obsession with Tolkien and "Dawn of Unlight" scratched that itch.
"Dark Agents of the Night" by Phil Masters is yet another article about ninjas, this time focusing on modern, science fiction, and superhero games. For what it is, the article is fine, even good, because it includes examples of how to make use of ninjas in these genres. However, I simply cannot understand why White Dwarf published so many articles about ninjas in its pages – oh, right, yes I do: it was the 1980s. "Trogaar" is the name of this month's "Fiend Factory," presenting four new (A)D&D monsters themed around the desert: sand golem, desert orc, cactus cat, and sand sniper. I hate to snark at these, since they're all serviceable but mostly obvious additions to D&D menagerie and I find it hard to muster any enthusiasm for any of them.
"Bearers of the Mark" by Steve Williams and Mark White is a cult for use with Call of Cthulhu. It's fine but rather vague in its immediate utility. For example, many details are left (intentionally?) undescribed, meaning that the Keeper will need to do a fair bit of work before including the cult in his own campaign. "Proxy Painting" by Joe Dever and Gary Chalk is another good piece relating to minis painting. This time, they tackle the subject of painting services that, for a fee, will paint your figures for you. The article is accompanied by photos of these services' handiwork. As a non-painter, I found this article particularly fascinating. Finally, there is "Spells for Friends" by Martin Fowler and David Marsh, which offers up six new D&D spells that provide benefits to two individuals bound by the spell. It's a solid idea and some of the spells look like they'd be handy in certain campaigns.
Issue #64 is one of those issues that I remember quite well, primarily because of its two big adventures, both of which I liked a great deal. Re-reading them now in preparation for this post was enjoyable. They served as great reminders of why I subscribed to White Dwarf during my high school years. It's a pity the magazine would, within a few more years, become little more than an advertisement for Warhammer. 

Where Things Stand

Over the last few days, there have been a number of developments in the saga of Wizards of the Coast's plans to "de-authorize" version 1.0a of the Open Game License and replace it with a more draconian (i.e. effectively non-open) version 1.1. Perhaps the most significant of these is the announcement by Paizo, publisher of Pathfinder, that it intends to create "a new open, perpetual, and irrevocable Open RPG Creative License (ORC)." At its announcement, Paizo was joined by numerous other RPG companies, including Chaosium. Later, Goodman Games, publisher of Dungeon Crawl Classics, indicated that it too would be adopting ORC. 

For its part, Wizards of the Coast issued "an update on the Open Game License" that was clearly intended to dampen the outrage through feigned conciliation. While WotC appears to have walked back some of the provisions of v.1.1, their update is notably silent on the matter of whether they still intend to proceed with their attempt to "de-authorize" v.1.0a. I suspect that's a deliberate attempt at obfuscation on their part, in the hope people will somehow forget this crucial part of their plan. I say "crucial," because so many of the OSR's publications made use of the OGL and the d20 SRD. Without it, creators, both large and small, will need to make appropriate adjustments.

At the same time, one of the things that I hope has become clearer to more people is that there is no need to use any kind of open license to create new old school games, let alone products for use with an existing one, provided copyrights and trademarks are respected. The OGL was never necessary, though it was certainly useful, given what was included in the d20 System Reference Document. Certainly, the uncertainty regarding the status of v.1.0a makes things potentially difficult for the creators behind retro-clones like Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, and Old School Essentials, but they are not insurmountable. Both Basic Fantasy and Swords & Wizardry have already announced plans to proceed without the OGL in the future and there is no reason why other creators cannot do the same.

The OSR is much too small a portion of the hobby for Wizards of the Coast to care about us. I don't for a minute believe that their proposed changes to the OGL had us in their sights. Why should they? I've now sat out two editions of Dungeons & Dragons in a row. I'm not one of their customers and likely never will be, so my feelings and preferences are none of their concern. Nevertheless, a part of the hobby that matters to me may suffer significant collateral damage due to their shenanigans and that's a shame. I almost wish I had been a customer of WotC so that I could somehow register my disapproval of their intended actions.

Until something of significance happens on this front, this is my last post on the matter for a while.

A Face Only a Child Could Love

Since I was talking about LJN's AD&D toys last week in connection with Quest for the Heartstone, I thought readers might enjoy being reminded of the Fortress of Fangs playset, which was released in 1983. For once, I'll keep me snobbery to myself in commenting on these toys. Instead, I'll focus on something a little different, namely, that these were Advanced Dungeons & Dragons-branded rather than merely Dungeons & Dragons-branded. I have long suspected that this was done for legal/financial reasons relating to TSR's settlement with Dave Arneson about royalties for D&D, but I've seen no solid evidence that my suspicion is true. Even if it is, I still find the whole situation odd purely from a brand-building perspective, doubly so when you're dealing with a product aimed at kids.

In any case, as toys of this kind go, I can't deny this one looks pretty fun. I'm not exactly certain what it's supposed to be, but that rarely matters to an imaginative 8-year-old. 

Pulp Fantasy Library: The People of the Pit

As many of you no doubt already know, Gary Gygax not only includes Abraham Merritt in Appendix N of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide but also includes him among a select handful of authors whom he deems as "the most immediate influences upon AD&D." With Merritt's 139th birthday looming later this week (January 20), I thought it fitting to take a look one of his earliest stories – his second, as it turns out – as a way to celebrate him and the influence he had upon the Gygaxian conception of Dungeons & Dragons.

"The People of the Pit" first appeared in the January 5, 1918 issue of All-Story Weekly, though it was much reprinted from the late 1920s onward. It is, in many ways, a prototype for many of Merritt's most well-known tales, in that it involves a lost world and a hidden, subterranean city – themes to which he and those influenced by him would return again and again. H.P. Lovecraft, for example, was an avowed admirer of Merritt's works. He frequently cited "The Moon Pool" as a favorite, though I can't help but wonder if the snowy boreal setting of "The People of the Pit" might have contributed in some small way to his At the Mountains of Madness. 

The story concerns a pair of prospectors, Starr Anderson and the unnamed narrator. While on an expedition somewhere north of the Yukon River, they observe a peculiar shaft of light.

North of us a shaft of light shot half way to the zenith. It came from behind the five peaks. The beam drove up through a column of blue haze whose edges were marked as sharply as the rain that streams from the edges of a thunder cloud. It was like the flash of a searchlight through an azure mist. It cast no shadows.

As it struck upward the summits were outlined hard and black and I saw that the whole mountain was shaped like a hand. As the light silhouetted it, the gigantic fingers stretched, the hand seemed to thrust itself forward. It was exactly as though it moved to push something back. The shining beam held steady for a moment; then broke into myriads of little luminous globes that swung to and fro and dropped gently. They seemed to be searching.

The comrades continue to observe this oddity and theorize about its nature. Not long thereafter, the two men hear first an "eager" whispering sound and then something else entirely.

Through the whispering had broken a curious pad-pad and a rustling. It sounded as though a small bear were moving towards us. I threw a pile of wood on the fire and, as it blazed up, saw something break through the bushes. It walked on all fours, but it did not walk like a bear. All at once it flashed upon me—it was like a baby crawling upstairs. The forepaws lifted themselves in grotesquely infantile fashion. It was grotesque but it was—terrible. It grew closer. We reached for our guns—and dropped them. Suddenly we knew that this crawling thing was a man!

It was a man. Still with the high climbing pad-pad he swayed to the fire. He stopped.

"Safe," whispered the crawling man, in a voice that was an echo of the murmur overhead. "Quite safe here. They can't get out of the blue, you know. They can't get you—unless you go to them—"

He fell over on his side. We ran to him. Anderson knelt.

"God's love!" he said. "Frank, look at this!" He pointed to the hands. The wrists were covered with torn rags of a heavy shirt. The hands themselves were stumps! The fingers had been bent into the palms and the flesh had been worn to the bone. They looked like the feet of a little black elephant! My eyes traveled down the body. Around the waist was a heavy band of yellow metal. From it fell a ring and a dozen links of shining white chain!

Anderson and the narrator are baffled by the sudden appearance of the man and ponder the nature of his injuries. They also ponder the band around his waist, from which the narrator frees him by filing it. 

It was gold, but it was like no gold I had ever handled. Pure gold is soft. This was soft, but it had an unclean, viscid life of its own. It clung to the file. I gashed through it, bent it away from the body and hurled it far off. It was— loathsome!

When the man awakes later, he says that his name is Sinclair Stanton, a graduate of Yale University and an explorer, who'd "gotten too far North." He asks his rescuers a couple of odd questions:

"Was there any light up there last night?" He nodded to the North eagerly. "Any whispering?"

"Neither," I answered. His head fell back and he stared up at the sky.

"They've given it up, then?" he said at last.

"Who have given it up?" asked Anderson.

"Why, the people of the pit," replied the crawling man quietly.

We stared at him. "The people of the pit," he said. "Things that the Devil made before the Flood and that somehow have escaped God's vengeance. You weren't in any danger from them—unless you had followed their call. They can't get any further than the blue haze. I was their prisoner," he added simply. "They were trying to whisper me back to them!"

Stanton insists that he is not insane. He then tells the story of his ill-fated expedition, starting with his partner, who had "sickened" along the way. He sent him back south with some of their Indian guides, as he pressed onward. As he got closer to a place he called Hand Mountain, all his remaining guides abandoned him, believing it cursed – correctly, as it turned out. 

Stanton, however, was undeterred and inexplicably discovered "a fine smooth stone road" that "passed between two high rocks that raised themselves like a gateway."

"They were a gateway," he said. "I reached them. I went between them. And then I sprawled and clutched the earth in sheer awe! I was on a broad stone platform. Before me was—sheer space! Imagine the Grand Canyon five times as wide and with the bottom dropped out. That is what I was looking into. It was like peeping over the edge of a cleft world down into the infinity where the planets roll! On the far side stood the five peaks. They looked like a gigantic warning hand stretched up to the sky. The lip of the abyss curved away on each side of me.

"I could see down perhaps a thousand feet. Then a thick blue haze shut out the eye. It was like the blue you see gather on the high hills at dusk. And the pit—it was awesome; awesome as the Maori Gulf of Ranalak, that sinks between the living and the dead and that only the freshly released soul has strength to leap—but never strength to cross again.

"I crept back from the verge and stood up, weak. My hand rested against one of the pillars of the gateway. There was carving upon it. It bore in still sharp outlines the heroic figure of a man. His back was turned. His arms were outstretched. There was an odd peaked headdress upon him. I looked at the opposite pillar. It bore a figure exactly similar. The pillars were triangular and the carvings were on the side away from the pit. The figures seemed to be holding something back. I looked closer. Behind the outstretched hands I seemed to see other shapes.

"I traced them out vaguely. Suddenly I felt unaccountably sick. There had come to me an impression of enormous upright slugs. Their swollen bodies were faintly cut—all except the heads which were well marked globes. They were—unutterably loathsome. I turned from the gates back to the void. I stretched myself upon the slab and looked over the edge.

"A stairway led down into the pit!"

What Stanton finds when he descends the stairs and reaches the bottom of the pit I'll leave to the reader to learn. I will say only that, in the best pulp tradition, Merritt does an excellent job in building tension and holding the reader's interest till the end of his story. 

Reading "The People of the Pit," it's easy to see why someone like Lovecraft admired Merritt so much, combining as he does a superb adventure story with elements of cosmic horror. That the story has directly inspired not one but two different old school fantasy adventure modules, both of which share their title with Merritt's tale, is, I think, another point in its favor. It's a fun and enjoyable yarn.

To the Daemon

Tell me many tales, O benign maleficent daemon, but tell me none that I have ever heard or have even dreamt of otherwise than obscurely or infrequently. Nay, tell me not of anything that lies between the bourns of time or the limits of space: for I am a little weary of all recorded years and charted lands; and the isles that are westward of Cathay, and the sunset realms of Ind, are not remote enough to be made the abiding-place of my conceptions; and Atlantis is over-new for my thoughts to sojourn there, and Mu itself has gazed upon the sun in aeons that are too recent,
Tell me many tales, but let them be of things that are past the lore of legend and of which there are no myths in our world or any world adjoining. Tell me, if you will, of the years when the moon was young, with siren-rippled seas and mountains that were zoned with flowers from base to summit; tell me of the planets gray with eld, of the worlds whereon no mortal astronomer has ever looked, and whose mystic heavens and horizons have given pause to visionaries. Tell me of the vaster blossoms within whose cradling chalices a woman could sleep; of the seas of fire that beat on strands of ever-during ice; of perfumes that can give eternal slumber in a breath; of eyeless titans that dwell in Uranus, and beings that wander in the green light of the twin suns of azure and orange. Tell me tales of inconceivable fear and unimaginable love, in orbs whereto our sun is a nameless star, or unto which its rays have never reached.

Ryan Dancey Speaks

While I'm sure that some readers have already tired of hearing about the Open Game License and Wizards of the Coast's rumored plans to undermine it, it's nevertheless a potentially significant topic for those of us in the old school world, given the role the OGL and the d20 SRD played in the production of OSRIC, Basic Fantasy, Labyrinth Lord, and Swords & Wizardry, among others. That's why I'm especially keen to hear what Ryan Dancey, co-creator of the OGL, has to say on the matter. 
Fortunately for me, the Roll For Combat YouTube channel sat down with Dancey for more than two hours yesterday and he answered numerous questions about the OGL, WotC, and Hasbro that are very illuminating. He even mentions that the advent of retro-clones was something that genuinely surprised him. If you have an interest in this topic and the time to devote to it, I recommend taking a look.

Beware the Gifts of Dragons

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, no stranger to the hobby, has posted an article on its blog about the ongoing Open Game License controversy. It's not a formal legal opinion on the matter, though the author, Kit Walsh, is an attorney and clarifies a few points about copyrights, open licenses, and contracts from a legal perspective. 

My main takeaway from the post, aside from the obvious fact that Wizards of the Coast is behaving in a "rude and unfair" way, is that the existing version 1.0a of the OGL is, unfortunately, not written as clearly as one might like, if the goal is for its terms to be legally irrevocable. This is a criticism I've seen of the Open Game License before, but, until now, it's never really mattered, because WotC seemed content to let the situation stand as it had for more than two decades. However, it seems quite possible that the terms presented in the draft of version 1.1 are completely legal, however much that flies in the face of the previously stated intent of the original OGL.

As more and more creators and publishers publicly state that they intend to drop the OGL from their current and future publications, I'm not certain that Wizards of the Coast can say or do anything that will undo the fear, uncertainty, and doubt engendered by the last few days. The cynic in me wants to believe that that was always WotC's intention, but I suspect the truth is that they simply didn't think the consequences of this action through and are quite surprised by the intensity of the public backlash.

Yesterday, Ray Winninger, the former Executive Producer in charge of Dungeons & Dragons at WotC, had this to say in response to a question about the OGL situation:

I believe it's not in the long-term interests of either the D&D community or the D&D business for WotC to move forward with something like the leaked plan. I hope the people running the show either reverse course or prove me wrong. https://t.co/0eVAZ8CCX3

— WinningerR (@WinningerR) January 11, 2023

There's still no response from Wizards of the Coast about this, though they will apparently be "sharing more soon," whatever that means. In any case, this story is far from over and I expect there will be a few more twists and turns before the week is done.

Retrospective: Quest for the Heartstone

1984 marks a significant turning point in the history of both TSR Hobbies and its most popular and successful game, Dungeons & Dragons. By my reckoning, it's the start of D&D's Silver Age. It's a year marked by the advent of Dragonlance and the continued exile of Gary Gygax to Hollywood. 1984 also sees the increased brandification of D&D, as well as its kiddie-fication, much to the chagrin of my snobbish adolescent self.

The latter point is what's most relevant to this post, because the D&D module Quest for the Heartstone was self-avowedly "designed to be compatible with the ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® Action Toys from LJN, Ltd." Indeed, there are multiple passages in the adventure where the text suggests things like "You may use the HOOK HORROR™ Monster produced by LJN Toys, Ltd. for this encounter." Likewise, all of the module's pre-generated characters, like STRONGHEART™, MERCION™, and RINGLERUN™ are "based on the Official ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® Action Toy figures produced by LJN Toys, Ltd." 

If you're already tired of seeing all the needless capitalizations, trademark symbols, and references to LJN Toys, Ltd. in this post, just try to imagine what it's like reading the entire text of this 32-page adventure, where they appear again and again. Even by the low standards of grasping corporate brand-building, this is beyond ridiculous. I can't help but feel a deep sympathy for Michael L. Gray, who had the dubious honor of having to write this, no doubt with the brief that he find a way to shoehorn in every Action Toy from LJN, Ltd. 

The scenario presented in Quest for the Heartstone is an odd one. King Ganto of Ghyr died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 82 without an heir. His widow, Queen Leahra, is still a young woman – in her mid-thirties, according to the text – and is expected to remarry in order to provide Ghyr with a successor to her deceased husband. However, she has no desire to do this, since her "heart belongs only to Gantos." For that reason, she has rejected numerous suitors from among the nobility of the kingdom. Patriarch Loftos communes with his deity, He Who Watches, and learns the location of the legendary heartstone, which true to its name, enables its possessor to "see into the hearts of men." If the heartstone could be recovered, the queen could find an appropriately worthy man to marry and thereby make the king of Ghyr. Naturally, Loftos decides to enlist a party of adventurers to retrieve the heartstone and save the kingdom.

The module's set-up leaves me with a lot of questions that are probably best not asked. In the end, the initial situation exists solely to provide an excuse for the characters to travel from Castle Ghyr across the Northern Marsh to the Mountains of Ice, where Loftos says the heartstone lies. This is an Expert Rules adventure, intended for characters of levels 5–10, so a wilderness trek is therefore obligatory before reaching the dungeon proper. The dungeon itself is interesting in that it becomes more difficult as one ascends it, since the whole thing is a sort of tower built into the mountainside. As dungeons go, it's nothing special, but it's neither is it awful. The whole thing is a vaguely funhouse affair, with little rhyme or reason to its contents beyond being a "challenge" for those who wish to retrieve the heartstone.

The bigger issue for Quest for the Heartstone is its audience. Who was this module written for? The D&D toys it regularly references were likely aimed at children younger than even the ages 10 and up favored by TSR's D&D line. Meanwhile, regular players of D&D, including older children, would probably find all the references to the toys more than a little annoying – never underestimate the desire of older kids to distance themselves from anything they deem to be "baby-fied." And so I ask again: who is this for? What did TSR think they were doing by publishing this module and how did it advance even their ill-considered mid-1980s plans to turn Dungeons & Dragons into a multimedia property?

These questions are even more baffling to me, given that the module is pretty well made. The maps of the dungeon are nicely executed isometric ones by David "Diesel" LaForce. Likewise, the adventure is profusely illustrated by Jeff Easley. Easley provides not only the interiors of many of the rooms of the dungeon but also his takes on several iconic AD&D monsters that have been converted for use with D&D, like the dragonne and roper. Whatever the wisdom in making this adventure, it is not a low-quality effort on the part of TSR. Quest for the Heartstone looks every bit as good as any other TSR publication of the era.

As I said, 1984 is something of a turning point for TSR. The successes of the late '70s and early '80s enabled increasingly foolhardy decisions that put the company in a very precarious situation whose ultimate outcome was handing control of the company over to Lorraine Williams, a woman whose decisions were no better than those of Gary Gygax or the Blume brothers, even if her errors of judgment were of a very different kind. Given the current state of affairs regarding D&D and its current corporate master, this is an instructive reminder that the game has rarely been well managed for long and yet it has somehow endured despite it all.

Let Chaos Reign

While there has not yet been any official comment from Wizards of the Coast in response to the supposed draft of version 1.1 of the Open Game License, a number of other creators and companies whose publications depend on the continued viability of the existing 1.0a version have made the current state of their plans known. Here are some of those of which I am aware. Please feel free to add more in the comments below.

Arc Dream, publisher of Delta GreenArcane Library's upcoming Shadowdark Chris Gonnerman's Basic Fantasy Christian Mehrstam's Whitehack Kobold PressNecrotic Gnome, publisher of Old School EssentialsTroll Lord's Castles and CrusadesThat may not seem like a long list but consider the titles. Both Basic Fantasy and Castles & Crusades, two games that play important roles in the prehistory of the OSR, are there, which says a lot, I think, about how much this situation has the potential to up end even our little corner of the wider hobby. Equally important on that front is Old School Essentials, an elegant restatement of the Moldavy/Cook/Marsh rules that has deservedly received a lot of praise – and play – over the last few years. I would not be the least bit surprised to see many more creators and companies issue similar statements in the days to come, particularly if WotC continues its silence on the matter.
At this point, I feel that the damage has been done and is irreparable. Even in the event that Wizards of the Coast issues a repentant mea culpa and presents a new draft of version 1.1 of the OGL that does not attempt to "de-authorize" its predecessor, I'm not sure anyone would believe them. And why should they? The reality is that WotC is a subsidiary of a huge, multinational conglomerate; expecting it to behave in a fashion where anything but the bottom line matters has always been a fool's bet. We might somehow dodge this particular bullet, but there's no guarantee that WotC won't try to pull something similar – or worse – in the future. Why take the risk?
I'd originally planned to keep my Secrets of sha-Arthan fairly close to the conventions of Dungeons & Dragons and its clones. Now, though, I'm less inclined to do so, even if that necessitates rewriting portions of my current draft. As it is, I already don't use any of the character classes, races, spells, monsters, or magic items of D&D, so the rewrites might not be unduly onerous. Plus, it'll give me the chance to make the final game much more its own thing, which is probably what I should have done in the first place. 
Looks like 2023 has already started with a bang. I wonder what more will unfold in the days and weeks to come.