Soundside presents: NO SPOILERS

The Seattle area has a vibrant community of video-game playing, comic-book reading, dice-rolling geeks. And we think it’s time this widespread and influential side of pop culture gets its due on public radio.

So we’ve gathered a panel of experts to discuss nerdy news in our backyard — and we promise to follow the most important rule of all: "NO SPOILERS!"

Soundside host Libby Denkmann is joined by KUOW Arts and Culture Reporter Mike Davis, KUOW newsletter author and publisher of the NW Nerd podcast, Dyer Oxley, as well as Soundside Producer Jason Megatron Burrows.

First Topic: What's going on with Wizards of the Coast, and the kerfuffle over the Open Game License?

The company behind beloved tabletop role-playing game "Dungeons & Dragons" has been struggling to win back fans’ trust after a big dustup over changes to its copyright licenses.

Wizards of the Coast, based in Renton, makes D&D. It was bought by Hasbro 24 years ago and is run as a division of that company.

Jason: Since the year 2000, Wizards of the Coast was operating under the OGL, the Open Game License, which basically said, if you want to create content for "Dungeons and Dragons," you can do so without fear of being sued. So you could make adventures, maps, subclasses, anything you wanted, and sell it for a profit without fear of lawsuit or anything like that. It's gone through some ups and downs over the years, but recently, there were efforts to change it. And those efforts were widely regarded as terrible by the community.

In an interview this earlier last week, the executive producer of D&D, Kyle Brink, said that they were focused on companies like Facebook and Disney coming in and taking what was available through the OGL, then making their own stuff and profiting off of it as a multibillion dollar corporation. But the implications of that decision were affecting all of these smaller table top role playing games (or TTRPG) content creators, whose ability to profit off of their creations would be diminished.

The community was really outspoken that they did not want OGL 1.0a to change. After lengthy revisions and survey feedback, Wizards of the Coast decided not to revoke it and to add everything to Creative Commons.

Dyer: Following up on on your reporting here on Soundside, I reached out to a buddy of mine, a convention colleague, who has been making this Cybersymbiosis comic book indie project for years, and he was converting that into a role-playing game.

Everything was slated for Emerald City Comic Con coming up; he had books ready to go to print. And then THIS happened. He has spent the last few weeks essentially reworking everything.

It was originally based off of "Dungeons & Dragons," and he told me there was this goodwill that, "Hey, if you like 'Dungeons and Dragons,' this is something that you can easily relate to." There was this positive community association with it. And he says that's basically gone. It's devastated. They rolled a 1.

Even though Wizards of the Coast has made these concessions, and they've tried to put their best foot forward, he says he can't even go back to that now, because the reputation is so tarnished at this point. They really have some repair work to do with fans.

Mike: If I had to paraphrase this whole conversation that we've had up until now, I would say, "Capitalism kills community."

What they probably didn't anticipate is that community still cares about D&D, and that community is still the backbone of their product today. And when they see all of that backlash, and they see how it trended on everybody's Twitter timeline, not just the nerds, not just the geeks, like that'd became a national trending topic. Then they knew that they were in trouble and then they had to start walking it back and then they had to remember where all of this came from.

Second Topic: What's going on with movie theaters in downtown Seattle?

Last month movie theater chain Cineworld announced that it's filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and released a list of 39 Regal Cinema locations that it would be closing in the midst of this financial breakdown. On that list is Seattle's Regal 16 at the corner of Seventh and Pike. This would be a big blow to downtown, potentially another big commercial space sitting empty. But is it actually going away?

Mike: When you talk to the people that work inside that Regal movie theater, they're all saying that management has told them that their lease has been paid and that they are going to stay.

Regal executives are not responding to media, nor have they put out an official statement. Cineworld is not responding to local media, they have not put out a statement. So as a journalist, I can't say whether or not that movie theater is going to close for sure. Because until I hear from Regal, until I hear from Cineworld, or until I hear from the building management company, who I also reached out to to ask about this lease. None of them are saying anything and I'm just I'm not comfortable taking the words from the employees themselves.

I spoke with the Downtown [Seattle] Association, and what I hear from them is that engagement in the arts downtown has been increasing. It's begun to increase since the pandemic. It's not where it was in 2019, but they're seeing constant growth.

People are going to galleries. People are going to shows. People are going to events. And when it comes to the film industry as a whole, I think that's where it gets a little bit more interesting for me. I talked to the executive director of SIFF, Tom Mara. He pointed out that Seattle has so many movie theaters in our individual neighborhoods that people who enjoy film can still see films. That idea sparked a series of stories that I'm working on right now, so stay tuned.

You can listen to the entire panel discussion by clicking on the audio above. "No Spoilers" will return in March, and if you have any nerdy topics you'd like us to discuss, send an email to SOUNDSIDE@KUOW.ORG.