frens, as you may know by now, I'm a bit of a nerd. One of the nerdy ones that plays Dungeons & Dragons regularly. There's a company trying to add NFTs to it in the worst ways possible...
GRIPNR - D&D 5e with NFTs
GRIPNR is the first ever Dungeons & Dragons 5e table top role playing game that's recorded on the Polygon blockchain. They refer to it as a "plat to progress" game, which nearly made me choke on my coffee. Isn't every game play to progress? That's like the whole point of playing literally any game. To progress through the game and eventually finish it. Am I crazy?
So basically, the GRIPNR protocol allows players to play D&D 5e while recording literally everything on the blockchain. Why? I dunno. It gets even more weird so strap in. Instead of creating your own character sheets like you would in normal D&D, you have to buy an NFT character sheet from GRIPNR. They refer to these Player Characters and NFT-PCs (NFT Player Characters) and they're 10,000 unique characters with different attributes such as race and class.
The outcomes of every session are settled on chain, as proof of gameplay (for whoever the fuck cares about that) and XP, items, and OPAL are distributed to the players. OPAL is the absolutely unnecessary token for the protocol that kinda makes it a play to earn scenario.
Being that this is going to run fully on-chain, there's going to be a lot of transactions. What does that mean? Well, it means a lot of gas fees, however small they may be on the Polygon blockchain. Why they opted for Polygon instead of something designed for gaming like WAX, which has no transaction fees, is beyond me. However, I'm just a dude on the internet so you know... What the hell do I know?
In order to play games, players are going to need to buy OPAL, and use that to purchase a character. Then if they want to purchase anything within the game sessions, they will also need OPAL. Don't forget about needing MATIC for thr gas fees on the transactions as well. OPAL is also used to start and end game sessions, again, more money out of the player's pockets.
Basically, unless you don't care about the money you're throwing at a totally unnecessary way to play D&D, you have to hope that your assets appreciate in value. It's like a sick way of tricking you into investing in assets in hopes that you can sell them for more than you spent to someone else later on. Little bit of greater fool theory.
Don't worry though, as you play and level up your character, it becomes more rare and thus worth more money... Lol. I guess the one thing I do like about the protocol is that it shares royalties for any sales with the art and game designers. That's really the only good thing I could find in my picking this thing apart.
As someone who plays D&D on the regular, I do like the idea of character sheets and possibly items in the game being NFTs. That creates a more stable (and hopefully fair) in-game economy. If you've ever played, you know that the GM basically controls the in-game economy and if the GM says something costs 1000 Gold, it costs 1000 Gold. With this being on-chain and there being some sort of marketplace, the greater audience could decide the value of these assets. That might actually be beneficial to the players.
How did this start?
If you've been around the space for a while, you might remember the Loot NFTs. These were 8000 Loot bags with no art or states. Just text on a background with randomized items listed in them. They were free to mint aside from Ethereum's exorbitant gas fees, and they went viral.
This was evidently the genesis of the on-chain D&D idea. Looking at the above Loot bag, you can see that it was obviously a tribute to the D&D community. There just needed to be a game or campaign built around these things to really bring them to life. Many projects did just that, but GRIPNR was the only one to really take it full circle.
With all that being said, though.. I really think this concept could work if it were done a little differently. At the end of the day, players don't want to pay to play. Players want to play the game that they know and love with their friends and not have to worry about money. Isn't the point of playing a role playing game like D&D to escape the reality and take on the life of adventurers?
I really don't know what else to say. I hope that the project works out but I just can't see it being very well received by traditional D&D players. I'm no expert, nor am I a game designer though so I could be totally wrong.
What do you think?
Thanks for reading! Much love.
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