The makers of D&D pulled an NFT ban after a wider fan outcry about royalties and content control.
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Fans of Dungeons & Dragons, and Fraggles, will soon be able to buy NFTs, according to a pair of announcements over the past few days.
While the price of NFTs tanked in 2022, they are an increasingly popular way to connect with fans — most recently by England's Premier League, which signed a $150 million deal with NFT-base fantasy football developer Sorare.
In the case of Dungeons & Dragons, the owner of the tabletop role playing game (RPG) reversed a ban on NFTs as part of a broader fan revolt over attempts to tighten control and gain royalties over a decades-old open game license (OGL) that allows fans and other companies alike to make games, books and digital content using the game's core rules.
After an uproar, D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast pulled back on components like mandatory royalties, but left a ban on using its content in Web3, blockchain games and NFTs. That was, in fact, one of three core reasons for the draft changes to the OGL, according to D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast. The others were to ban "hateful and discriminatory" content, and to keep OGL material for fans and small content creators, not large competing corporations, it said.
On Friday, it pulled back the rest of the way, announcing that the next version of its content — the core rule and game mechanics of D&D — will be released under an irreversible Creative Commons license.
So, it's not exactly an embrace of NFTs and Web3, but it's not a ban, either.
Fraggle Rock On
On the other hand, NFTs are being embraced by The Jim Henson Company.
The company is launching Fraggle Rock NFT trading cards based on the hit 80s TV series about dancing, singing, cave-dwelling Muppet creatures. A Fraggle Rock reboot has just been picked up for a second season by Apple TV+.
The Flow blockchain-based NFTs come via a partnership with Tibles, a Web3 digital collectibles firm that is also behind Seussables NFTs, featuring iconic characters like The Cat in the Hat and The Grinch.
Nor are they alone. In July, the producers of Care Bears launched a line of NFTs, Care Bears Forever, in a move to bring another 80s-era Saturday morning cartoon into the Web3 space.
The tradeable and collectible Fraggle Rock NFTs are being sold in fivepacks for $4.99.
