A Deep Dive into the World of Gamer Vlogs (Thanks to the OGL 1.1 controversy)

 As a result of the hoopla over the leaked OGL 1.1 plans from Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro, I have been exposed to an array of takes and spins that I never knew existed....the world of Youtube Vlogs! I think it started with a link someone left on ENWorld.org to a vlog by Roll for Combat, which I incidentally discovered led to a small rabbit hole of 5th edition and Pathfinder 2E books from the Battle Zoo line, which I have now ordered (for Pathfinder 2E) because dang these things look neat.

Anyway, as you may know with Youtube, the moment you watch a thing it's algorhythm immediately concludes you must want a tidal wave of exactly the same content, and as a result I have been flooded with Youtube chanels by a bewildering array of gamers talking about the subject. I have made my relationship with Youtube's algorhythm far worse as a result; at this point it assumes all I want to watch in perpetuity now are old and gray gamers (mostly, but not all) griping to various degrees of hyperbole about the OGL 1.1 in particular and WotC in general. It's going to take a while to fix its expectations.....ah well.

Anyway, I have learned the following: whether your channel has 200 subs or 100,000, this is a disastrous OGL change for everyone. In fact, most of the videos I watched were from creators with around a few hundred to a few thousand subs, which means none of them are doing Youtube for the money.....it is my understanding that you need to crest at least 100,000 subs  to have a chance of making Youtube look like a job. The biggest channel so far that I was referred to is a guy called The Rules Lawyer with 13,300 subs. So......yeah, not high profit channels here.

Interestingly, Youtube never broke away from OGL-related recent posts, so it never assumed I wanted to watch the "let's play" videos, which is pretty much the domain of my 11 year old son who watches them all the time (and shows me his favorite odd highlights). So I guess the algorhythm is trained to assume older gamers don't give a crap about let's play videos. 

Everyone is worried about the OGL 1.1 as presented, and rightly so. The big concern is language which essentially puts the user of the OGL at perpetual risk of WotC pulling the rug out from under them with a 30 day notice at any time. If this were a property lease agreement it would be in violation of state and local laws....but WotC figures they can get away with this, I suspect, because their target crowd for the most part does not make anywhere near enough money to fight them in court.

 It seems like those most in the know believe that the OGL 1.0a can't be revoked....but it will be interesting to see what happens if they try to make a legal move against someone who continues to use that license going forward. 

Some Youtubers are also publishers (all ones I had never heard of(, and are now indicating they will proceed with generating or even retooling content so it does not have to be released as OGL content going forward. This makes me suspect that, assuming WotC sticks to its guns and releases this, they are about to accidentally unleash a new and spooky era of the Fantasy Heartbreakers. I bet most of you reading this blog know what I mean....but if you're young, prior to the invention of the original OGL 1.0 back in 1999ish when someone wanted to make their favorite D&D-like game, they would release it, often as a vanity project, packed full of obscure and often poorly conceived homebrew rule variations. Some of the more infamous such heartbreakers were legendary for cringe weirdness and lack of playability, literal game versions of "The Room" if you will (Synnabar I am looking at you!) Others that might rightly be considered fantasy heartbreakers nonetheless held on their own and became real games....Palladium Fantasy 1st edition started as a competent fantasy heartbreaker, in my opinion (and for the record I loved that edition, played it a lot from 1985-1986 after I discovered it).

One thing I thought amusing: the vast majority of the vloggers I saw were old guys like me, and I did not get a lot of referrals of younger vloggers and only one woman, The Arcane Library, who plans to retool her own home system Shadowdark RPG to a non-OGL product. I suspect this isn't due to the lack of female gamer Youtubers, but rather Youtube's algorhythm trying to guess what I want to watch....and firehosing me with such.

TL;DR What I ultimately learned about all this is....

1. There are a lot of older gamers out there making videos, and none of them look better or healthier than me, so who knows, maybe I could vlog and not feel too self conscious about it;

2. I never saw any channel with more than 25K subscribers, so at least the average vlogger is not at immediate risk of paying royalties to the King WotC;

3. Even if WotC pulls back and goes "psych!" no one's going to trust them after this; the age of the Fantasy Heartbreakers is about to return.

Lastly....I haven't seen Paizo comment at all. I bet they are already lawyering up to assert their continued use of the OGL 1.0a. Most likely though they are waiting to announce something after WotC actually coughs up an official release, possibly on the January 13th date.....should be an interesting reveal. Like watching a trainwreck type of reveal. 

WotC better hope that movie does well! If it tanks or appears uncool and kills interest in the general crowd chasing fad trends, that could be the wooden stake in their vampiric golden goose. 

EDIT: Two other things I learned in seeing all these vlogs....first, you are required to have a large shelf full of various editions of D&D behind you (and some other RPGs to improve your street cred) - this is almost as important as the other item: you better have a beard! The beard appears to be super important for some reason.