Divorcing Dungeons and Dragons
June 2023
If you've been playing with me or talking TTRPGs online at all, you've probably heard the memo: I'm done with DND and anything Wizards of the Coast touches. I haven't put any of my thoughts to paper in a consolidated form, so why not here?
Thesis
Fuck Wizards, Fuck Hasbro, Fuck Dungeons and Dragons, and Fuck 5e. I support nothing that leads to the proliferation of Dungeons and Dragons, including non-Hasbro 5th-Edition games.
I believe that Wizards of the Coast-Hasbro is irredeemable and a blight on the hobby, and believe the sooner their stranglehold on the industry is broken, the sooner it enters a second golden age. Also, indie games are awesome, and DnD 5e has the most undeserved reputation for accessibility that I've ever seen. I firmly believe most 5e players' hesitance to try new systems is due to the hell they caught learning DnD, and the mistaken belief that every game is that hard to learn and navigate.
Reasons
1. The Book of Cylinders and @POCGamer
My misgivings with DnD started with the stumbling into the writings of Graeme Barber, a freelance writer who shared their experience writing for the company. In short, they pared down a marginalized writer's labor into more colonial fantasy drivel and did so in a disgustingly opaque way. In short, their work was twisted to the point of requesting their name removed from the credits, and they were left out of the post-drafting process in a way that was notably different from other writes on the book. Read more here.
2. Hadozeegate
This was the first public shitstorm Wizards provoked during my time as a fan. A new Spelljammer book is coming out, awesome! Flying, space-faring pirate ships, awesome! New playable races, cool! Playable simians with a slavery background that screams white-savior and art that is uncomfortably similar to 19th century minstrel art? Less cool.
3. OGL + Pinkertons
This firestorm has been well-documented by many, so I'll just briefly summarize. Wizards attempted to revoke the Open Game License that stood as the pillar on which hundreds of game systems and dozens of companies leaned on for legal protection of their art. They either knew how much damage doing so could do, or got far enough in the process to send out "draft" contracts without realizing it. They then proceeded to go silent for two weeks then come back with a full-on gaslighting campaign. This was the last straw for many and I'd been checked out by then but proceeded to get loud about it. They've since walked the decision back and released much of the 5e system into the Creative Commons, but the damage has been done.
The Pinkertonian nonsense involved unreleased cards being sent to someone as a result of an admin error on their part, and they sent the Pinkertons (yes, those slavecatching pinkertons) by to collect their merchandise, with threats of legal action and to the terror of people inside the household. Again, widely documented if there's interest in the details.
Moving Forward
I've made a point to ritualistically purge myself and my credit cards of the 5e bug and burn all books by them on a bone pyre. My physical library was all-indie and Wizards-Competitors with a single exception, so the transition wasn't super painful, and I'm no longer running Tabletop games to pay the bills. The gulf in popularity between 5e and every other system would have proven a challenge if I were.
I currently run a digital EZD6 game weekly, and am attempting to start a Dungeon World table in person at the site of my old dojo later this week. You'll hear back soon, I'm sure.
I'm also hard at work procrastinating on the design of a HeroQuest-inspired board game and writing an adventure module, a magic item supplement, and a novelization of a previous campaign.
This post was released early on Patreon, alongside plenty of subscriber-only posts.