Now Blockchain Wants to Monetise Playing D&D

[davidgillon]

You couldn't make it up:  NFTs Are Here to Ruin D&D

TLDR: Rather than create a character, you buy an NFT of a character, which could be a newbie, or, if you're willing to pay for it, could be someone else's levelled-up killing machine with a +20 Sword of You're Dead Now. (And you'll have to pay extra for their gear, which is also NFTs),

It's a pretty good article, but it misses one of the fundamental problems, which is that for Gripnr to succeed it has to turn D&D into a Pay to Win system. Which isn't why people play RPGs.

The whole idea of stripping character creation out of D&D so that you instead buy an NFT of a character means removing one of the most enjoyable parts of the game. And even if you do buy someone else's carefully nurtured high level NFT, blockchain can't deliver you the delight of getting them there - their story isn't yours, because you don't know it.

The 'pay to win' model will appeal to a certain kind of gamer, the kind everyone hopes they never end up playing with....

And as for the idea of making everyone play on twitch and have other GMs monitor their streams to make sure no one's cheating to inflate the value of the NFTs, who is going to pay those other GMs for their time?

Even at minimum wage the economics don't work, and I'm certainly not sitting through a 10 hour stream of a bunch of random teens playing D&D unless someone is paying me. (And I can well imagine people for whom putting their face on twitch is an absolute no).

The article does talk about blockchain's ruinous energy usage, but it misses the more personal cost - that this ramps up the entry cost of D&D (currently zero if one of your mates has the rulebooks) and turns success at D&D into a game of how big is your allowance for buying fripperies (and high speed internet).

Comments

[davidgillon]

I am now amusing myself with the picture of some Gripnr GM turning up to audit someone else's Twitch stream and finding everyone talking in ASL or BSL (or Hmong, or whatever)

And if you're going to start a business which will necessarily cross into the sub-teen market, maybe choose a company name that isn't quite so close to Grindr...

[vass]

The 'pay to win' model will appeal to a certain kind of gamer, the kind everyone hopes they never end up playing with....

Munftins.

[davidgillon]

Munftins.

Don't know that one. I was thinking of the worst kind of powergamer, who wants the game to revolve around their character being the toughest. It's difficult enough to roleplay around them, now imagine what happens if they can buy their way to leveling up, and leveling everything they encounter.

GM: Next week's session needs everyone to bring a character who's level 5 or 6.
Powergamer: I just bought a level 75 Chaotic Evil Assassin who rides an ancient red dragon, I'll be bringing him.

ETA: Oh, hang-on, just realised that's probably speech to text mangling munchkins! Yeah, them!

[vass]

I was trying for "munchkins but with an NFT".

[davidgillon]

Aha! I was a bit too tired to work that one out (I ended up collapsing into bed and sleeping for five hours not long after).

[havocthecat]

That's ...entirely not the point of what DnD is about. Yikes. That sounds awful.