MU Podcast Episodes – Miskatonic University Podcast

This episode Keepers Bridgett, Dave and Murph riff on what it must be like to grow up as a deepone hybrid!

The Campus Crier is where we talk about recent Mythos-related events and happenings in the world. This episode was recorded on January 12, 2023. Happy new year everyone! 

The main topic of conversation for pretty much everyone in the whole TTRPG industry is the leaking of Wizards of the Coasts OGL 1.1 last week and coverage by Gizmodo in a story called The Dungeons & Dragons’ OGL 1.1 Tightens Grip On Competition. While Wizards has yet to release an official response to the leak and subsequent uproar and backlash, many prominent game publishers have already announced complete changes in their business models and game systems (including partnering with newer systems such as Mork Borg). The hashtag OpenDND was Trending earlier today on Twitter, and is an open letter to WOTC to back off.

Most prominently, Kobold Press and MCDM, both top publishers of supplemental 5e materials, have announced their own game systems that will be truly open and available for use by others. Other publishers have begun scaling back production and support for 5e materials,or shutter them entirely. Naturally, everyone has plenty to say about it all. Even Denis Detwiller and Arc Dream Publishing was forced to make a statement, which, to our listeners at least, should be funny as hell.

There’s a lot to unpack with the Wizard’s announcement, official or not. And they have not yet responded to the leak in any public fashion as of the time of recording, in fact they have delayed any such announcement several times. I know some of our audience may not know how this potentially affects them, but if you enjoy games or any other media products that rely on the OGL, then this affects you. There has been some claims that they are “dismantling the RPG Industry” which should raise alarmist concerns for those, like many of our listeners, that don’t deal with WOTC or DnD. But there are a few key things to take from Wizard’s proposed changes to the OGL:

• They are seeking to revoke OGL 1.0a, which as unpopular as it may be, is entirely legal as far as I can tell.
• They are taking a cut from the signers of the new OGL based on a tiered system that has the highest tier giving 25% of income to WOTC.
• Signees of the new OGL will give the irrevocable, non-transferable rights to their creations in perpetuity to WOTC to use however they wish.
• Any crowdfunding will also have to pay revenue to WOTC, as above,, and have additional strings attached
• Virtual Tabletops will no longer be able to support OGL products, as everything OGL will likely have to go through OneDnD’s own VTT instead.

We are still in the early parts of how this rolls out, and by the time this is live we will have certainly learned more. But however this lands, it is sure to cast a long shadow over how creators engage with Wizards and 5e going forward.

And Paizo comes in with some last second additions to the news, announcing the Open RPG Creative license (ORC for short) that will be “built system agnostic for independent game publishers under the legal guidance of Azora Law, an intellectual property law firm that represents Paizo and several other game publishers.” The idea is to provide a system-agnostic license that anyone can use with their own ruleset to publicly release. You can find out more about this and all of our news in the show notes, or on our Discord where this is a constant topic of discussion.

Modiphius recently announced a new addition to their community content program! In addition to the standard 2d20 World Builder program, Modiphius is now offering creators the chance to create content for their beloved Achtung! Cthulhu IP. The content guidelines are different to the standard ones. You can find the 2d20 Licensed World Builders Content Guidelines and creator resources in the link below.

https://www.modiphius.net/pages/2d20worldbuilders

In a bit of bad news for the weird fiction community, a GoFundME campaign has been started for the author Laird Barron who has been hospitalized in serious condition. Mike Davis from the Lovecraft eZine has organized this and so far they have managed to raise over 100k. Our thoughts and dollars

https://www.gofundme.com/f/laird-barron-hospital-costs-medication-costs

We have a Patreon! To back us you can click the button on the sidebar of our website, mu-podcast.com or head over to Patreon directly at www.patreon.com/mup!

Dave needs to schedule his own movie night! Right Dave?

Yes! I want to watch something as an inspiration for the Masks game, so we’ll find something on Prime probably. A quick look at my watchlist says – Indiana Jones, Hellraiser, and The Lost City of Z are all available now. I’ll talk with my scheduler and get something on the books for February!

We have our MUP Discord and we are all there! We invite all of our listeners to come and enjoy the community of horror gaming and cute pet pics.

MU Discord server invite link: https://discord.gg/vNjEv9D 

And thank you mucho mucho to Nate for editing this episode!

This episode I’d like to announce a rare sighting. HelloSpaceBoys’s nearly 20 year old cat, Mazikeen, was seen being adorable. Try not to make a big fuss– she’s super shy. Thanks for sharing your cat with us.

Let’s move onto the main topic. 

Deep one hybrids. What’s life like for children of two worlds?