Same....I've played "D&D" for 41 years. After switching to PF2e and enjoying the game again I have felt foolish for my brand loyalty. 5e is a horrible system and I've been slogging my way through it.
I would even dare to say, whenever a seller relies to any significant amount on something like "brand loyalty", then THROW THE CRAP AWAY. Old school D&D - or AD&D - how I played it back in the 90s did not need a "brand". It has substance!
Many people think that 3rd party material exist thanks to the OGL. I remember going at the local game store and finding compatible adventures, worlds, maps, setups done by anybody, even just photocopies sold for 2 bucks. 90% of D&D content is mythology and folklore, other 9% was stolen from Tolkien. The only thing they had is the one they cannot copyright, which is the *idea.* The OGL was never a gift to the community, it was only a way to contain the storm and protect the few IP and the Logo. Now they act like they invented the Fantasy genre altogether. Wot$ can rot off, for all I care.
The first time I remember seeing third party content for D&D was the Arduin Grimoire. Judge's Guild pumped out a bunch of content, too, but I was always under the impression they had an agreement with TSR. Not so, with Arduin. What was that? Late '70's? Early 80's? There certainly was no open OGL, then.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 As far as I know Bob Bledsaw drove up to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin from Chicago to seek a license from TSR to publish 3rd party stuff. Gygax and the rest of TSR were left scratching their heads: "Who the heck would want to buy adventures and maps and stuff? The whole point was that DMs would be creating that stuff! Sure, Bob, you have our permission to do whatever."
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 Arduin Grimoire was developed simultaneous to the brand that shall not be mentioned. Gary Gygax was in communications with the creator and the games differing aspects had to do with differing philosophy and needs in playing... Ardium was about player verses GM or power players and Gygax was story telling.
They stole from Tolkien, Moorcock, Howard, Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, hell, Weird Tales Magazine in general and so on. They need to drop this drippy act like they own anything, they're beginning to sound like Games Workshop.
I got introduced to the idea of tabletop role-playing through 3.5. Bopped around other systems. Enjoy a heavily modified 5e until recently. In my opinion, d&d is a folk activity, not a brand. I 100% love everything you've said and I greatly appreciate you posting this.
BINGO. D&D is a FOLK ACTIVITY. Perfectly distilled. I very much appreciate you being willing to sit through this. Your time is the valuable thing you have.
This just blew my mind. I've only ever played WotC fantasy editions of their fantasy RPGs so I never really have played any of the TSR era D&D editions. I have purchased some OSR RPGs but haven't gotten to play them yet either. You really said a lot of poignant things that I feel a lot of people today need to hear. I appreciate your words here and helped me to understand things better. Thank you. A lot of people claim that Castles & Crusades is what Gygax would have called AD&D 3e.
Friend, you will not be let down by OSR games. Let me tell you a tale of two wizards. DFK is a 5E wizard, he's 16th level and is parked there because nobody really plays higher than that at my weekly meetups. He's basically invincible and leaves a trail of destruction everywhere he goes. Proximatt is my OSE wizard. He has 1 hp, can cast light/darkness but hasn't yet because the only creatures we've had to handle have been robots and oozes and we're not sure that would work on them, and he has ambitions to become "the plant wizard" which have started with having a fence reach out to their connections for an academic text on industrial agricultural plants (so he can start inventing something like a tanglefoot bag). Guess which one is more fun to play? Guess which one feels more D&D?
Hey Brother just wanted to say thanks for posting this. 100% of what you said is also how I feel. Next year will be 40 years of me playing D&D and boy what a journey to see how things worked out and the repeat of history.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 Yeah I get that vibe. I remember a friend of mine telling me about his mom and how she worked for TSR back in the day. She shared a story with him about how WotC employees would bully (like in high school) the TSR employees at conventions. This would take on the forms of how D&D “sucked badly” and how “Magic was the ultimate game”. The funny thing is they bought D&D shortly thereafter and now have that same attitude has recycled itself in the last ~5 years with older players and we are problematic. -sorry for going down a rabbit hole memory. But theirs nothing new under the sun…
I cheered at "Stop being loyal to a logo!" That's true for so many other properties that have been run into the ground by huge corporations. I just tell new players: we're playing Dungeons and Dragons, but with a little simpler ruleset (I'm a BFRPG guy)
I still play 1E/2E. I also really love running C&C. The older rules were much more in line with the spirit of roleplaying. I've run 5E. It's not as bad as, say, 4E. I just it wasn't so relentlessly mediocre.
Ok, I finished watching... still haven't been pissed off. Great video! I was too young to get into the original 3 little books but I started off with Basic, Expert, and 1st Ed D&D. Only ever bought and used TSR material and never bought anything 3rd ed or later. WOTC is being squeezed by Hasbro for more and more money. I see this with Magic the Gathering which I've played since 93. I bet Hasbro is seeing all the money MTG makes on the secondary market and D&D 3rd party creators make and they want that cash since they own the IP. All their are doing is slaughtering the golden goose for a short term meal but killing themselves in the long term.
I have no doubt you're right, but I also think they are badly misreading their customers. I won't be surprised if the transition to 6E makes the 4E rollout look like an act of marketing genius.
Not even a little mad. You are spitting 100% truth. I actually think this debacle is waking up the community and we're going to be tighter knit against a common foe.
Shout out for the OSE classic and advanced, I play that with my older son and looking forward to playing it with his younger brother when he gets a bit older. I have a group of players who don’t know anything but 5th edition and after we play a few games of OSE which really is just the BX edition they really don’t have an interest in the new editions, they say it’s not as much fun and no excitement as they race to try and get out of the hole before the last torch burns out. Explorations mean so much to them.
I have it for Fantasy Grounds so I'm afraid to use OSE. If the OGL 1.0a gets deauthorized I'm not sure that they will be able to continue supporting it.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 hopefully as you said the big dogs will fight it and they can continue. i need to look through it again because its a fairly stripped down version that im pretty sure is only mechanics, not their IP which includes such things as mindflayer or displacer beast or as you commented Melf's in the acid arrow. so they might be safe regardless.
I’ve been a player since white box days and the truth you dropped blew my mind! Thank you sir for articulating what has been bothering me for all these years. I worked through all of the changes over the years but it was like the spirit of our games died and none of us could figure out why. We’d all survived the Satanic Panic but not the coming of the soulless math. And now I know the truth. We stopped playing the game we loved years ago! Wow! Farewell WOTC. I won’t miss you. Time to return to “the ancient paths”. We’ll dust off our old tomes and go on an adventure again. Who knew? We had it right the first time. Subscribed!
I agree with what you said, with one caveat. If you're talking about a rules set, then yes, 3rd, 4th and 5th Edition are not D&D, because they do not use the same (or nearly the same) rules as the TSR editions of the game, with are all mostly compatible with each other. In the same way that a game like baseball or football would cease to be those games were the rules radically changed. However, while the WOTC editions do not feature the same rules, they do include certain elements that many people consider to be part and parcel of D&D, such as iconic monsters, spells, and magic items that did not appear in any other game. Things like Beholders, Mind Flayers, Melf's Acid Arrow, Mordenkainen's Sword, the Hammer of Thunderbolts, the Wand of Orcus, the 17 named Outer Planes, and associated lore like how Dragons are divided into Metallic and Chromatic varieties and have gods named Bahamut and Tiamat, stuff like that. This is why some people still consider those editions to be "real" D&D, because they include the lore - though they have a distressing habit of changing bits of it, and of course 4th Edition threw it out the window almost entirely. Of course, you could argue that this would be like changing the rules of baseball or football, but letting the teams keep their old uniforms, names and logos, so that it might look like the same game, but not really. Naturally, (real) D&D did not have all of those elements from the beginning, but gradually the lore built up over the years until the end of 2nd Edition, and I find it hard to imagine playing without using said lore and still thinking of it as D&D. Certainly I would not use any OSR set of rules without making use of my collection of D&D lore and monster books (mostly 2nd Edition). However OSR makes it much easier to do so than the WOTC rules sets!
I only know AD&D 2nd edition and haven't played in 20 years but I have to agree completely on every point. As far as the OGL 1.1 goes, WotC is hoping they can feed us this Elmer's Glue and we'll thank them for the ice cream. Everyone ask yourselves, what are they giving the community and creators that they don’t already have, and what are the community and creators giving up in return? The answers are "everything" and "nothing."
It hardly matters. As soon as the phrase "D&D" was taken over by people who neither understood nor cared about what it meant, it lost all meaning. We really are better off without WotC.
I'm not even a little mad. Your video sits us down and tells us what's up. Like a father telling his child life isn't fair but you can go make your own way.
So just my linguistic quirk. When I say “Dungeons and Dragons” I am referring to anything made by TSR. When I say D&D with a # and the word Edition at the end I am referring to anything made by WotC. They are two separate games, or how ever many games make up the latter. Except for 4e. I just call it 4e and file it in the garbage.
I find your argument compelling. You’ve finally diagnosed what was bothering me about 5e. Subbed. Dungeons & Dragons is dead, long live Dungeons & Dragons!
Well Grognard, you are speaking the truth again, which is why I love ya!! Honestly, your take on this is perfect. I started arguing with TSR when they were coming up with plans for 2nd ed. and (like you) feel they really jumped the shark with 3rd ed. 4th made me laugh out loud, and I was barely able to stay attached to 5th (last two years it has been an embarrassment). Anyway, love your takes.
I tried to like 5E. I really did. I ran a campaign for two years myself. Unfortunately, the more I got to know it, the more I began to hold its relentless mediocrity in contempt.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 /agree! 5e was incredibly mediocre. My first version of D&D was the Blue Box set, and I agree entirely with you that anything after WOTC took over isn't really D&D. 3e was a good game, and 3.5 wasn't bad. 4e was a disaster and 5e is just meh as far as I'm concerned. I personally prefer Pathfinder 1e over any of them. Their adventure paths are awesome, and the base system is a major improvement over 3.5 in my opinion.
@@SouthernGuy5423 I am curious why you feel the base system of Pathfinder is a Major Improvement over 3.5 There are certainly improvements, there's no arguing there, but honestly I feel like for every 2 improvements I find there is something they made worse.
@@priestesslucy3299 The actual game play is practically the same. What Pathfinder does a million times better, in my opinion, is character creation. The Alternate Advancement Path system that Pathfinder used - BEFORE 5e 'borrowed' the idea - is a MASSIVE improvement over the Prestige Class system that it essentially replaced. Yeah, you can still take prestige classes, but no one really does because AAPs are just better! On top of that, each and every Feat in Pathfinder is just better, too. Let's take Power Attack in 3.5; you took -1 to hit per 5 levels and gained +1 to damage. In Pathfinder, the same Feat you take -1 per 4 levels to hit and gain +2 to damage - +3 if its a 2-handed weapon or a few other things, including having it do more damage if you use Dragon Style to attack unarmed. Some people may not like the added complexity, but for me it's all the difference in the world! What was, essentially, a completely useless prereq Feat you HAD to take to get access to Cleave and the Feat chain from it is now valuable and desirable all on its own! So, yeah, in my opinion, Pathfinder is pretty much an across the board upgrade to 3.5.
I started with the old blue book back in the late 70s. Still playing RPGs today even if I’m a grumpy old grognard. Lol. You didn’t loose me or piss me off. In fact I just subscribed. Hope to see more.
@Grumpy Old Grognard My 12 year old son asked me to run D&D for him and his friends, and in the lead up to that, I bought over $150 worth of WotC books and other stuff to prepare. THEN, the OGL fiasco hit. I admit, I wasn't aware of the contempt WotC had for the community or what they've done to the game over time since I was never a D&D guy (I played other RPGs). Even after WotC backed off of their OGL stance, they still showed their contempt for the people who play their games by comments said by their management in interviews. Well, when I was trying to educate myself on the OGL thing, I came across your video, and your explanation of what D&D was and what D&D was not really made sense. I bought some Old School Essentials books and will run THAT kind of D&D!
Hello, I'm 42 years old but I only started playing tabletop RPGs in 2016. Unfortunately, in my youth I didn't have the opportunity to do so. On some occasions I even saw people playing, but I didn't quite understand what was going on. So in 2016, I started researching the various systems on the market and after a lot of analysis, I was faced with the choice between D&D 3.5e and 5e. I chose 5e for the flexibility of customization and for its popularity and availability, after all, I would have to find people to play with. Now, after 7 years I watch this video. I am a lawyer in my country. I love to write. At the end of 2016 I already started narrating and the last session was last Tuesday. I started creating a universe. I have a map, a pantheon, the creation myth, more than 40 complex npcs, countless plots, classes, sub-classes, chronology of two eras with their main events and house rules to correct the poor service done by the developers in 5e. And now, after all this time, I find I've never played the real D&D. All this time, despite having no major pretensions, I always left open the possibility of publishing this material, always concerned about copyright, reading contracts and licenses. Therefore, I say to you: this gentleman is right. Sooner or later, big corporations do what they do best: crush those at the bottom. They lie with great ease, they are patient when they have to be and aggressive in what they want. Thank you for opening my eyes before too late.
If you think my message here is, "don't publish," you've missed my point. Publish. Just... Do it with your eyes open. You don't need a license to publish game compatible content. Also... The laws in your country are probably very different than the laws here. In many countries, if someone files a frivolous lawsuit against you and loses, they can be held liable for your legal costs. We can't do that, here. That would make it much easier to find an IP lawyer willing to help you out, No?
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 I understood. I just said that I spent a lot of time and effort on something that I don't measure well the external factors. Here is civil law and not common law like US or UK. Anyway, I have some knowledge about internacional law and IP. And I can adapt my material to any system. As I said, a lot of effort to be stabbed. Thank you very much for your reply. I come back to say: the good part that is the major content that I produce aren't connect specially to RPG. I can easily convert to a romance or other fictional content or any Tabletop RPG. But I work a lot in 5e, repairing stuff, implement others. That's my point, the waste of time, because, knowing all these things that I know now, I think that "work" with WoTC don't make any sense. I'm reading OSRIC right now, and a small publisher be working in a portuguese version of Old School Essentials.
Rolemaster is, IMHO, another system that is unfairly maligned by the same "Maffs is hard" crowd who think THAC0 is too complicated. It's a GREAT game. My first great love affair after AD&D was a MERP campaign I ran using the full RM rules.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 yeah after I graduated high school in the late 80s I went looking for an alternate game to replace AD&D as my primary game system. Quickly ran across Rolemaster and soon adopted that as one of my go to games. Didnt look back at D&D after that until just 2 years ago to run a game for my kids. Now that RM has come out with a new edition, I might try to get back into it. Their Shadow World campaign setting is my favorite setting to this day.
I left the bobby in the late 90s and returned full time with the release of 5E which just never did it for me. At the risk of losing all of my players I recently informed them I'd never again run a game published by WOTC. So I couldn't agree more.
Brave move. I still play my older editions. But I am pretty much done with 5E. I won't be getting on board with 6E, and I certainly won't be buying anything new from them.
Almost inappropriately for someone my age (26), I entirely agree, admittedly I've been a part of the general tabletop community since I was first blooded against goblins by my father in something vaguely D&D abjacent (a heavily custom system him and his friends had used since the early to mid-80's) and I may have wargame with him before that sending my Uruks against his elves. The first books I actually read TTRPG wise where probably the AD&D DM guide, and the basic rules (I preferred the former), amongst a trove I was leant by an uncle. First book I brought was pathfinder 1E (back when the scope of available local books was that or DND 4E) I hadn't actually played WotC D&D (5e) until about 19 months ago when I got invited to a game my friend was DMIng. Now during this whole greed-fuelled self-execution I'm happy to sit and watch the fire tear it down. I've never actually brought a D&D book, miniatures or anything, there are at least 12 systems within melee distance of me (some inherited and some brought), and even without those I can play. ... That ended up being longer than I intended, I guess what I'm saying is I agree, The false dependence on a brand has always annoyed me, for exactly that reason here's a dice role it we'll make a game, the point is to have fun with friend and not to take it too seriously
Amen. It really doesn't take much to run an RPG. I travelled a lot as a kid back in the late 80's and carrying around a full set of hardcover AD&D books was... impractical. Instead, I would travel light, and I did some of my best work with a handful of OD&D booklets and a graph pad.
I started playing 1st ed. around 1980-81 and continue to use that version to this day. I completely ignored 2nd ed. when it was released since we didn't see any reason to switch. Several years ago, I found an almost complete set of 3E books in a used book store and got them for a ridiculously low price. Not that I had any intention of using them, I just wanted to see what all the chatter was about. I did a marathon read through of the entire set, and honestly, I had no idea what I had just read. It was a bit depressing to see the direction they had taken the game in. All in all, it looked like a very playable game, and it is---but it had been stripped of everything that made it D&D and replaced it with this "d20" system---which I am still not a fan of to this day.
I have never run a 3E game at the table. I agree that 1E is the best edition, but I did adopt a few 2E rules. I did use my 3E books though. I DM'd a Neverwinter Nights campaign for a few years. While 3E did not interest me as a tabletop game, it made a great core system for a DM'd video game.
You're right. But the TTRPG business isn't driven by players. It's driven by DMs. DMs are not casual players. You think there's a DM shortage NOW? Wait until WotC starts stealing their ideas right off their own VTT builds.
Amen, fellow old guy. I started playing with the Holmes blue book in 1978. Almost immediately added Traveller to my collection as well. Got the AD&D books as Christmas presents. I've been watching the current kerfuffle as an interested bystander. I've played 3 and 3.5 although I never bought any books. Never played 4. Never played 5. There are so many other great games out there and I'm not a fan of the core D20 mechanic. Like you, Grumpy Old Grognard, I've been thinking this last week or so, "This all seems very familiar." I hadn't made the connection to the Satanic panic, though I agree with you now you've pointed it out. I've been recognizing death throes TSR trying to secure it's market via anti-competitive legal tactics rather than making great product. And I've recognized the cynicism around the original OGL (which I fully participated in) which was WotC "granting" you rights already guaranteed you under law in exchange for the promise not to sue you. Hey masses, D&D is not THE RPG. There are hundreds. WotC is not THE creator of RPGs. There are dozens. And if you do love 5e and 5e only, you still have your books, your imagination, and pen and paper. You're set for life.
New sub here and fellow grognard. I enjoyed this, but you currently have 11 dislikes vs. 179 likes, so you're going to have to work much harder if you want to piss people off.
A long time ago I was involved in negotiating a software licensing deal with another company. At the last minute they sent a contract update in that our lawyer explained was a trap. Of course, we immediately wanted to send back a counter offer to remove it, but our lawyer gave us advice I remember to this day. "Once someone shows you what they are like, believe them." He then explained that it's fine negotiating a contract under the assumption both parties are trying towards the same goal, but as soon as someone shows they are going to scr-w you over, its not worth it. He'd have to go through the entire contact thinking of every possible why someone could scr-w with you under they assumption they were trying to. Ultimately, it is never worth it. You also have to consider the viability of a company needing to do that. We took his advice, sent a "No thank you" letter, and went with another not-as-good company. Three years later, the first company folded, and the not-as-good company bought their brand and customer-base. Any company working under OGL anything is just too risky now. GoG is correct. Even if WotC back peddles, you can't trust them, as they are only doing it to avoid short-term consequences. IMO, it would take the sale of D&D or WotC to someone else to 'trust' them again, but even then, you have no reason to. As GoG says, just don't publish under the OGL. That said, I can argue about whether 3e is D&D. It's still a roleplaying game, based on die with dungeons and dragons. However, I get your point and that's an argument for another day.
You had a good lawyer. No need to argue. I am more than happy to accept the premise that the phrase "Dungeons and Dragons" describes more than just a single game. If you want to define it as an idea, I am totally down with that. What I am NOT down with is treating it as "just a brand." If D&D represents an idea, and not just a game, then WotC doesn't own it, anymore. It is a generic term, and their own actions encourage this interpretation.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 He probably made as much money signing off on the second company, but yes, he was good. I'll agree with you that D&D isn't just a brand. IMO, 4e proved that. No matter how much our group tried that game, it didn't work for us and we weren't alone saying it didn't feel like D&D. I did a long break after 1e and only started back with D&D under 3e, so it wasn't that jarring to me. It still had roleplaying, dice, classes, and characters. Yes, I noticed to grid system and slower combats, but it still felt like D&D. 4e didn't... yet you could argue it had roleplaying, dice, classes, and character and the same setting. So, I agree you can't slap a logo on it and call it D&D. I'm not sure where the line is, or whether you can argue that 3e crossed it, but I do know that 4e went right off the cliff, so clearly something about it wasn't D&D.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 oh didn't mean it in a bad way. Love me a grumpy old grognard, you're oozing passion for the game anyway, nothing to blame there, and I grew up in the 3.X era
You didn't piss me off at all. 100% agree with every word you said, which is why I only play up to 2nd edition and OCR games. What they play now is fluffy, Woke, Cos Play, with a D&D logo slapped on it.
Love your words: I say we should write our government officials - Congress, Senate: Letters, polite, concise, to the point; 1 - demand Hasbro and Wotc and really any media company get NO tax breaks, subsidies, "Small business loans" or any sort of bailout 2 - that they be investigated by the SEC in case any "Short-Selling" has been done. Really they are so spectacularly bad we should have it looked into if this was set up to collect bets against the stock. Before any hecklefish say it's a "Conspriacy Theory" - well yes - look at Gamestop early 2021 the few times this is exposed. 3 - there be NO "Copyright Extensions" this year. More to also punch a MOUSE in the face but also that this year and this decade it has been proven that big companies only sit on existing IP and grind it to dust and keep down anything new. It does no good and ensures most writers and artists will see no reward in their lifetimes. We - Grognards and 1st gen Munchkins grew up drawing endless dungeons on graph paper, we can write a few letters. Or use the printer - but sign and date them and mail them. Be polite, they know someone who does this is someone who votes and spreads the word!
I honestly don't see that mattering one jot. Congress is bought and paid for. It's not an accident that the entire system is built to accommodate the kind of corrupt malfeasance that these corporate a-holes routinely exploit. But hey... It can't HURT.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 Thanks! I know it's asking SO much of others to write a few letters but I think this will work. I assure you, Sir, that I am COUNTING on the crooked Swamp dwellers especially! They might believe 100% a letter as such is worthless in terms of any real effect in their world but they'll bookmark for when Hasbro comes in "Hallp uss! Weez ah Small bizinezz! Needs Loan!" ready to write a bribe $ check. (campaign contribution) Especially the corrupt ones will whip out these letters and say they are worth thousands of dollars to break even. Meaning if they don't want them to go against Hasbro to appease active votes they'll have to at least pay a few thousand each letter. Double that if they want them to bend the other way. Statistical correlation to $ spent even for disgusting+corrupt guys. I imagine Hasbro's lawyers/lobbyist paying the first few guys then going "Uh, how many more...?" and before they leave to asses bribes Vs just Bankruptcy and moving $ they get assailed by reps of many other politicians... "Senator ... says Can Haz bribe money?" Also, just perhaps I'm right that they did "Short Sell" -that is bet the stock will go down and sabotaged the product. Gamestop 2021 again. The SEC could lock everything up until inflation makes a dollar a dime even if they somehow didn't break laws and would because of all the Madoff exposes... THEN - when a MOUSE comes later this year asking for another "Copyright Extension"...it is already an issues and...!
AFAIC it's a brand name that has been absorbed by the common vernacular, and (like I said in the video) WotC has nobody to blame but themselves for that. D&D has become the Kleenex of TTRPGs. When someone needs to blow their nose, they may ask for a "Kleenex", but they don't really care what brand of facial tissue you offer them.
I'm so happy I completed my collection when they phased out AD&d 2nd. Never regretted not getting the newer stuff. Has there ever been a replacement for the "Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog" ? That thing is amazing and I don't know why no one nowadays makes stuff like that anymore... Or the "Priest's Spell Compendium", the "Wizard's Spell Compendium" and "Encyclopedia Magica" ?
I can't say for sure. I don't think so. They don't seem to produce much setting specific material. It almost seems as if they make an effort to avoid making settings specific, at all. I'm not a fan of 5E though. I just don't know their catalog, that well. I never played much WotC D&D. I ran 5E for a few years, big three books only, and a few modules. I never use their mods because WotC modules are worthless. They are wall to wall campaign modules. Some can be used as regional reference books. I used tomb of annihilation as a setting reference when my campaign was in Chult, for example.
Don’t know about the ‘Whole Realms Catalog’ but was (and always will be) a huge fan of the Encyclopedia Magica. To me that was the remaining old guard TSR people getting attention to as much of the stuff they created as possible. Also one of the best computer programs for use with any D&D edition came out for second edition (or 2.5) in the AD&D Core Rules and Core Rules 2.0 because it allowed soooo much customization, was the last gasp of the late TSR employees.
1978 for me. White box, and shortly after, the 1E MM. There was a couple of decades there, at the beginning, when changes really were exciting and inspiring. Not any more. Not from the official content. D&D has become the McDonalds of TTRPGs. Soggy. Bland. Devoid of flavor, and very unhealthy.
You're not pissing me off.. I happen to agree with you and haven't loved D&D since 2nd editions demise.. not that 2nd was my first go (I got into D&D in 1981) but I happened to really love DarK Sun which was by far my favorite D&D setting, I love Brom and everything about it was so evocative to me. I am happy to see the OSR explosion and I long ago moved on to other games and other system.
Yeah, you'll never see a WotC reboot of dark sun. Unless we can put Tieflings in it. Can we put Tieflings in it? The extensive exploration of themes like slavery, genocide, etc aside... The elimination of whole races in the Cleansing Wars alone is reason enough not to touch it. God forbid Dark Suns players are not able to incorporate some module or supplement into the setting because it uses trolls.
Yeah I don't see them doing a Dark Sun reboot nor do I care, the 4th edition D&D Dark Sun was a trash fire. I've been thinking of playing it again using the Old School Essentials rules or Porting Hyperborea ASaSoH into it. There is so much goodness in the RPG world right now between easy self publishing, Kickstarter and POD services that I don't imagine it drying out any time soon, the OSR community is very niche anyway and the community will still push out content. I don't need to be drip fed WotC settings anyway, I've never been a huge fan of the Forgotten Realms or any of their kitchen sink settings even before WotC took over, I'm more of a Swords and Sorcery, Grim Dark or just gritty fantasy guy myself.. Newcomers are not the target audience for OSR style games anyway though they may pull a few of them in eventually as they are introduced by older players such as ourselves, it's never going to threaten WotC D&D on any level or it's ability to push whatever flavor of the production cycle they are pushing as D&D. The only one that could kill the D&D brand were themselves and they shot themselves in the foot, they didn't get it when they said "We all won" over the OGL debacle what they really should have said is "We all lost" WotC is following in the footsteps of another mammoth gaming company that's also similarly from time to time antagonized their customer base with shady moves and that's Games Workshop. I'm actually happy this all went down because WotC has had a stranglehold over much of the RPG industry for too long and produces watered down products that are purposely created with the intent to not offend anyone, and perhaps more alarming to me is to not challenge anyone, to not provide any kind of psychological or ethical conundrums to think about. It's safe, it's easy but worst of all it cheapens the Role play experience reducing it to sitting at a table acting out the most cheesy elements of the experience while putting out more and more books to expand options you didn't need in the first place to have a good time and which ramp up the difficulty of running and tracking a game until it sucks all the joy out of it for me. If I need 1200 pages of material in front of me to run a basic or intermediate game I'm definitely playing the wrong game (I'm looking at you Pathfinder 😂)
Good stuff... I'm another antediluvian RPGer, having started with C&S Red Book (of Death) and LBB Traveller in 1979. Having come into the hobby/community through non-TSR systems, I never felt the pull of D&D and remained an interested spectator throughout the decades. As a non-player, the current perfidy doesn't hurt me personally, although, as GOG says, - the conduct of WOTC does show that any "gamer" spirit they ever had has been exorcised. GOG is also bang-on correct that whatever tactical retreats WOTC makes, they've dropped the mask and - yes - they're coming for everything. It's Abandon Ship time.
That's SO cool. You're an odd duck! Back in the late 70's there were so few choices it was almost unheard of for RPG to exist outside of the TSR space! Unfortunately, with 1.0a, WotC has wrapped it's tentacles around almost the entire industry. Even games that have ZERO to do with WotC's copywrite use it to protect themselves from the potential of being hit by frivolous lawsuits from Wizards.
This was such a good video. Thanks for this. I'm hoping that the action economy ends up causing D&D as a subsidiary of WotC withers on the vine from a production standpoint. The way I see it, WotC just labotomized 5e by driving almost all of the best creators away. What creators do they have? Perkins and Crawford?
Okay, now ya went an' dun it! I ain't gotta take this! I'm sharin' this video, ya hear me? I'm Sharin' This Vidya, Dagnabbit! ...cuz basically I agree. Ya clinched it at C&C.
I am one of the little guys. I pulled my book from DriveThru for the time being, I can't afford the fight. I think everything you said is absolutely right. It costs less for me to not have it up right now. Eventually I will re-tool my work to make sure it is legit but I am a one man show, I don't have the time to do it yet.
Don't take anything down YET. 1.0a is still an authorized license! If that should change, you do what you think is best. If I were you, I'd wait for a cease-and-desist letter. But you really should talk to a lawyer before making any important decisions.
I liked your vid and your outtake (~36:37) just made my day :D so I did hit subscribe too. Thanks for sharing words of wisdom. In that your are not pissing anybody off, but are a river to your people. I started with the red box and RPG´s that were around at that time like Traveller, Call of Cthulhu and Midgard to name a few. You are 100% spot on not to trap yourself into being loyal to a logo. WOTC 5e is a lost case to me, the OGL issue is just the iceing on the cake. Somehow it became an Orwellian nightmare: Hitpieces like "orcs being racists" and even the term "race" as in human, elf or dwarf is now problematic e.g. forbidden to be used by the Ministry of Truth and will be replaced with "species" which is a goodthink newspeak term safe to use for the inclusive and diversity friendly modern gaming community. All i can do is vote with my wallet.
I was a teen in the early 2000s, and didn't have a ton of money, but the only reference for ttrpgs was an old copy of MERPs my uncle gave me haha. We sorta homebrew'd our own game, until my friends and I could afford 3.5 books. I didn't hate that edition, but I sorely missed our hombrew'd way of gaming. Even though it wasn't "DnD" proper, it had so much more heart and charm to it. Unbalanced? very much so, but I'll cherish those memories always. Currently, I'm not that big into the new "DnD" stuff, I'm actually trying to adapt 1e/basic into my games, mixed with some of my own homebrew'd ideas.
MERP was a great game, as is it's parent game, Rolemaster. We were all running home brew back in the early days. The OD&D rules were so badly written and incomplete that we didn't have much choice. ;)
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 I guess much didn't change from one generation of players to another. There aren't many old school players in my local area, but its nice to have the internet so I can learn these old systems. I really like your videos, keep up the great work!
I disagree with one point. WotC did publish new material for AD&D 2nd ed. that discarded the censorship of TSR's AD&D 2nd edition. Demons and Devils returned, you could play evil, etc. It was the best thing that happened to that edition of the game. It was also, sadly, very short lived, and before their purchase by Hasbro. I find it extremely sad that the company that ended the misguided censorship of one edition is now advocating renewing censorship in their next edition. But well put. I've boycotted Hasbro since the late 1990s -- pre WotC purchase -- and have no regrets. Just gotta add that the Finieous Fingers thumbnail is perfect.
As a TTRPG and played D&D the basic and expert sets as well advanced. I agree with you on the fact WOTC versions of D&D aren't D&D (even though i love D&D 3rd edition). So i actually agree with all your point in this video. been gaming since the 80's
I agree the rules changed drastically. Honestly we didn’t play some D&D editions after WotC took over. Why do I have 4E a rule set I did not play, a game store owner couldn’t sell the books, so one day my family was in buying rpg stuff and he was all you guys want free 4E books, and I said sure, then people noticed them in my house and like lost puppies they brought me theirs… now I have a surprisingly huge collection of 4E which has given me insight into WotC marketing tactics, but also some fun ideas to adapt… 5E happened because I found the starter set cheap and friends played it so why not we thought (hubby plays RPGs too), again a bunch of free books followed and I bought a few to fiddle with. 😂 Since I started converting and hodpodging systems as a kid, converting doesn’t bother me and logos are just that, if a Gurps or any game book had something cool in it for a setting I was running under a different system, I would just convert and drop it in my game, doesn’t matter to me. Pick your rules and then pillage the other games as needed. Arghhh. 🏴☠ But yeah I am sort of done with WotC on this new direction and their lashing out at the OGL and old school community means I don’t need much if anything more from them. ✌
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 being me I am ordering a few new games too including one with Roller Skating Wizards… got to play that! Lol 😂 WotC doesn’t get it…
Ok, here to tell you that you are correct. It made me upset, that you said, that 3.5 is not D&D - i grew up with it and still love it. But, i very much respect you for your opinion and telling it to us. I'm not vertain i agree. But you make some fair poinits. Tahnk you for sharing your thoughts - much love from the balckwood forest
Thanks. If just a few more people were willing to expose themselves to ideas they don't like and disagree civilly, the global ruling class would crumble.
I'm not as old school as white paper books, but I got my start in 1rst edition, but my first purchase was the red book box set. Of course I loved 1rst edition, I wish i could get my hands on the entire 1rst edition set and content again. ( house fire long ago, robbed me of my treasures.) , 2nd edition too as it progressed. As Dm I kept the 1rst edition ways, just adopted for the second edition additions. The WotC happened. 3.0 I never bought into. It wasn't until later when NWN came out, i even experienced 3.0 ... when the conversion happened, groups split and disbanded. Suddenly , there wasn't a "universal" DnD game... like you said, basic players, 1rst, 2nd ... still had commonality, it was the same game. 3.0 caused a rift... not only in system use, but in affordability as well. Lets face it, many players played DnD because, it was affordable, or relatively cheap. You might spend a bit up front, but from there you could play with your friends, at no cost. So, once 3.0 became the mainstream thing ... I fell off the beaten path. I personally picked up games like Earthdawn and Shadowrun by Fasa. But, it was very difficult in the USA here, attracting players to completely alien system mechanics. Shadowrun had more success, but the fantasy side of Earthdawn never gained much traction. And I think most players that had played DnD seen systems like GURPS to be somewhat a joke back then. You had players that loved it, and those that scoffed because it "wasn't DnD". you always had those types, if it wasn't "officially printed and published" , it wasn't worth time to read and use as well. Many factors , including life changing event of a housefire ... put me out of role-playing table top playing for over 25 years now. My ears perked up over this OGL thing. I got curious as to the state of the game, and coincidentally had just recently looked for a VTT way to possibly get back into group table play, without inconvenience of having to physically go to a group. But i can't really find content I'd like to use. You picked up books, doing google search, all i see is PDFs at the most , or out of stock on any hard copied. are there any actual good sources for those content books that are the same as basic and 1rst edition DnD? Drivethru seems ok, but filtering through content and lack of clear description in most cases, makes one wonder if that's the actual product, or a fan made creation that might not have what it is was being sought out in first place. I lost the 1rst edition DMG and color pencil Monster manuals in that housefire, and have never found replacements. The 1rst edition DMG was far superior to 2nds slim lined version. It's probably the one book or book set I miss the most. Yeah, I tried ebay and amazon, got bad experiences and scammed, including paying high price for a 1rst ed dmg hard cover, that had no pages in it. It is very ... surreal, stepping from back in time , into this modern age of ttrpgs for me.
Look... As much as I am LOATHE to encourage anybody to give money to WotC right now, you can get almost anything from 1E, 2E, and BX from drivethrurpg.com as a Print on Demand. These are the actual products reprinted exactly from their TSR originals. You can also get almost everything you're looking for, cheaper, in the form of "retro clones." Links below... 1E: OSRIC www.lulu.com/shop/stuart-marshall/osric-a5/paperback/product-20695839.html?page=1&pageSize=4 Also available as a free download 2E: Of Gold and Glory www.drivethrurpg.com/product/338979/For-Gold--Glory-2e-Core-Rules Free Download (PDF only) B/X Basic Fantasy www.amazon.com/Basic-Fantasy-Role-Playing-Game-3rd/dp/1503334945 EVERY book in the basic fantasy series is also available as a free download here: www.basicfantasy.org/ OD&D Swords and Wizardry www.drivethrurpg.com/product/62346/Swords--Wizardry-Core-Rules?filters=180_0_45322_44294_0_0 Free PDF download. This is also available as a box set direct from the publisher, but they are currently sold out.
I am a big 4e fan, and I will be the first to say that yes, you are correct. It is NOT D&D, it is a significantly different game. Does it have problems? Oh hell yes - and not just the GML. But one of the biggest problems IMO is that it should have been called something else - better to say "we made a jRPG by mistake, but it's kinda neat, so we're making a sister game we'd like you to try" than the crap they tried to pull. Trying to destroy the old setting instead of being intelligent and introducing a new setting was a stupid idea, too.
You know, if they had done what you suggest I think it really may have sold better. I never gave it a look - I don't need a new DnD system - but with that marketing I would have at least checked it out.
Excellent video. Only just got this on my feed and have subbed after viewing. I started with the original game and played AD&D, went through the house rules phase. After a gap of many moons, I played 3.5 and 5E, and they felt like a video game. It also felt like having your arm twisted to accept their philosophy. I don't buy from WotC anymore.
C&C is dungeons and dragons? I took a look at it last week for the first time and it seemed way closer to 3e than your (admittedly good and transparent) definition of D&D. What did I miss or overlook?
1982 The Basic magenta or pink box was the first I played then the expert and then onward with AD&D harcover books. I did buy the holmes set a few years later. When I think D&D I think friends ,dice,IRL play not the online digital stuff where they are taking this. I have also bought some older games and Do like the OSR games coming out and have bought some DCC,Basic Fantasy ect. Thanks to bad weather last year and ebay I have been able to find some other older ttrpgs, like James Bond, Tunnels and trolls and TopSecret/ Top Secret SI . I have also have bought some gurps books which can expand ttrpgs in some interesting ways. Corporate greed has killed other hobbies as well like the car companies who wanted a cut of model car sales.I loved building model cars as a kid and became priced out pretty quickly. Greed kills a lot of good things in life.Making a profit is fine but trying to own every penny and the world it is just greed on Steroids.Saddly through life I have learned that .
Everything that goes mainstream turns to shit. Fortunately, my personal tastes almost never lie with the mainstream. Unfortunately, the mainstream is almost never content to leave those of us with more eclectic preferences alone.
I find your outlook really funny. Very cyberpunk. I largely agree with you and I've been moving away from wotc for theblsst few years. If only my gaming group would as well.
If I can take your rules and play Keep on the Borderlands, it's D&D. OD&D is D&D, 1e is D&D, B/X and BECMI are D&D. OSRIC is also D&D. Labyrinth Lord, Old School Essentials, and all the other clones are D&D. D&D isn't dead. It's just taken a different form, and frankly has better organization and clearer rules than ever before.
My opinion is that nothing has really changed, and in the end 6E is just a new way of selling a string of completely different games with a D&D logo on it. The only difference is that now the change will be slow and constant instead of one big "edition" change at a time.
3rd edition and beyond and Mathfinder are for power gamers that need to feel powerful right out of the gate. It started in 2nd Edition with some later revisions and modules, but it got out of hand after that.
I agree... But I don't really have a problem with that. If that's what some customers want, by all means, write a game that meets that consumer demand. The problem isn't that they are writing content to appeal to new customers. The problem is that they are abandoning their old ones. I have no doubt that they are doing all of this on purpose. They are turning D&D into video game, and in so doing they are abandoning their new theater kid customers the same way they abandoned the OSR grognards with 3E. Wizards hasn't changed. The younguns are just seeing them, mask off, for the first time.
They want to remove any possible competition to their latest mess. And it is a mess as for them to get their profit it will require DMs being unable to share the stuff they own online ala D&D beyond and will eventually turn this into pay to win except nobody wins as long as they're involved. Weird part of late the stuff I've been buying has been from earlier editions I had the chance to run Hoard of the Dragon Queen but went with Against the Cult of the Reptile God and feel it was the right decision. Strange how that happens, maybe one day I will find another group to play or run games for but until then I don't see Wizards learning from this mistake.
Don't even get me started on their intentions. I don't want to get into the deets, but suffice it to say I think even WotC's harshest critics are underestimating how nefarious they are. I will say this much... I'll wager they are going to tip their hand again when they publish the TOS for their 6E VTT.
Watched the whole video. Nope. Not mad. Pretty much agree with everything here. And I didn't even play the original DnD (I'm mostly a Pathfinder guy when it comes to "typical" fantasy rpgs). I did read about the ADnD stuff back in the 90s, and thought it all looked pretty cool, though Rifts was actually the first RPG game I ever got into (I'll wait till you finish laughing). Then when 3rd edition came out, I decided to try it... and was shocked at how much had actually changed. I may have liked the d20 system in the end (again: Pathfinder fan), but I agree. From 3rd edition onwards, the games that WotC put out are not DnD. The mechanics and the feel of the game are just completely different. I can't say I'm surprised with what they are currently doing, either. I saw the writing on the wall with 4th edition (similar circumstances, too). When players didn't bite and went elsewhere, they came out with 5th and brought back use of the OGL to trick people into buying their stuff again. And people fell for it. Now they are doing exactly what they were trying to do with 4th, and because people have no memory (nor any ability to realize what large corporations always do), they're shocked. One would have thought that what they were doing with Magic the Gathering would have got them paying attention, but I guess they were happy eating at the feast of 5th edition to care. Despite the crap that Hasbro/WotC is trying to pull, I think the smaller content creators may do ok in the end. For one thing, nobody can stop us from playing what we want to play, and creating/sharing whatever content we want amongst ourselves. Plus, with the announced ORC license coming out, people can just put out commercial work under that... hopefully anyway (it's still being put out by a company, and companies are only as ethical as the people running them). Ultimately, corporations do not govern this hobby. The players and content creators do. As long as that is understood, then it won't matter whether Hasbro/Wotc, Paizo, Kobold Press, or whatever business decides to continue putting out these games fairly, or if we have to start making and playing these games underground. As long as we keep our passion for these games, the hobby will live. By the way, just for the statement "Freedom and justice for all who can afford it", you got a sub.
I'm not terribly familiar with Rifts. I have only dipped my toe into the post-apocalypse genre a few times, mostly using Gamma World. I like the Palladium FRPG, though, and my friends and I had a great mini campaign in college using TMNT and Other Strangeness. Palladium has a good base system. I agree that the creators will be OK in the long run, but I am very worried about them for the immediate future. Lean times are coming, and these are not wealthy people. Many of them are not going to have an easy time weathering the coming storm.
I started with Robotech on the palladium style system, Rifts is basically d20 resolution rolls at its core but all of its rolls are Opposed rolls rather than vs static DC, at least for combat.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 Wow... TMNT takes me back. That was the second RPG system I played, though unfortunately I didn't play it for too long. I thought it was really cool though, and I still have the book to this day. I appreciated the fact that at the time, it was the ONLY other form of media connected to TMNT that was actually faithful to the original comics, at least as far as the original characters were concerned. I also agree that lean times are coming for creators, but the fact that most of us are banding together and keeping our eyes open (for the time being, anyway) will help them out in the long run. For the short term, it be best for us to do what we can to support what products they have already put out; they're going to need the revenue.
I don't have a major problem with WotC prior to this event. "Hasbro purchased Wizards of the Coast in September 1999 for $325 million." I also think that the leakers prove there may be still a few good protectors of D&D in WotC.
I have no doubt that many people on WotC's dev and middle management teams are on our side, here, but that really doesn't mean anything. Corporations are not democratic institutions. They have hierarchical command structures, and WotC's executive management has been taken over completely by corporate sharks.
It can be put down to the American football syndrome. There was a time in the past when people enjoyed playing the game with friends. Then monetization created a situation of formalized gameplay and increasingly complex rules.
I agree Wizards of the Coast threw Dungeons and Dragons out from day one. I have always been loyal to 2nd edition Advance Dungeons & Dragons / Red box Dungeons & Dragons and always will be. Wotc can stick there logo where the sun doesn't shine. All roleplaying rpg are D&D .
Great words!!!! In my humble opinion, the first nail in the coffin of "real" D&D came from Loraine Williams. After she wrangled her way into a place of power and got rid of Mr. Gygax everything seemed to be on a downhill slide. The "What-see" product known as" D&D " is something completely different in both substance and spirit. Also, it is VASTLY inferior.
Lorraine Williams was actually hired by Gygax, himself. I know, right? She didn't push him out, Brian Blume did. Brian Blume's dad was heavily invested in TSR, and when he died Blume inherited his shares and got controlling interest. He pushed Gygax out and put Lorraine Wiliams in charge. And yes... It was under her leadership that TSR was driven into the ground.
We were discussing this (well not this specifically but the spirit of it) during our Basic Fantasy game. I was big into Pathfinder 1e for quite a while and I thought it was a good game but the issue with it (and by extension 3.X and 5th) is that the character creation process determines the character while OSR based games the adventuring process determines the character. That is, the player invests in the creation of the character (which is why character death can cause meltdowns, I have seen it) while in Basic Fantasy and older versions the player invests in the adventuring of the character and it can be painful to lose a character that has achieved higher levels. So on that point I concede your view of it.
I don't think 5E characters are even supposed to die. I ran my 5E group through Tomb of Horrors from Yawning Portal. I made them use pregen characters (I'm not a total a-hole). My campaign was up to about lvl 8 but I gave them lvl 14 characters. At lvl 8 the characters are already too OP, but I was still shocked how nerfed the game is at 14. They fell into every trap on the board, but not one character was killed until they messed with Acerrerack.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 with old school D&D there always was a problem with the game character playability starting to fail around 10 level best level as far as I was concerned was 7th level because all the classes were of equal impact on game play....face it 1st level sucked as a wizerd
Hey! Just want to let you know that you did kind of put me off when you insisted that fifth edition isn't D&D, mostly because it forces me to ask "Well then what was I playing?" I think you have a good point about how games have slowly been dying out, but I will be completely honest when I say that I have become far more of a fan of other TTRPG systems than fifth edition, including Pathfinder and Savage Worlds. We have moved past the need for the game of D&D, and now the community can decide to move past the brand of D&D to newer and greater things.
I don't think games are dying out. I think the D&D brand has been murdered by its corporate overlords, but gaming is thriving in the hands of the third party creative community.
I nearly rose up and cried out "Amen!" when I heard you say "STOP BEING LOYAL TO A LOGO". I'm not even religious.
Well, I am religious, so I understand how much that means. Thanks!!!
He got me there.
Same....I've played "D&D" for 41 years. After switching to PF2e and enjoying the game again I have felt foolish for my brand loyalty. 5e is a horrible system and I've been slogging my way through it.
I would even dare to say, whenever a seller relies to any significant amount on something like "brand loyalty", then THROW THE CRAP AWAY.
Old school D&D - or AD&D - how I played it back in the 90s did not need a "brand". It has substance!
Many people think that 3rd party material exist thanks to the OGL.
I remember going at the local game store and finding compatible adventures, worlds, maps, setups done by anybody, even just photocopies sold for 2 bucks.
90% of D&D content is mythology and folklore, other 9% was stolen from Tolkien.
The only thing they had is the one they cannot copyright, which is the *idea.*
The OGL was never a gift to the community, it was only a way to contain the storm and protect the few IP and the Logo.
Now they act like they invented the Fantasy genre altogether.
Wot$ can rot off, for all I care.
The first time I remember seeing third party content for D&D was the Arduin Grimoire. Judge's Guild pumped out a bunch of content, too, but I was always under the impression they had an agreement with TSR. Not so, with Arduin. What was that? Late '70's? Early 80's? There certainly was no open OGL, then.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561
As far as I know Bob Bledsaw drove up to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin from Chicago to seek a license from TSR to publish 3rd party stuff. Gygax and the rest of TSR were left scratching their heads: "Who the heck would want to buy adventures and maps and stuff? The whole point was that DMs would be creating that stuff! Sure, Bob, you have our permission to do whatever."
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 Arduin Grimoire was developed simultaneous to the brand that shall not be mentioned. Gary Gygax was in communications with the creator and the games differing aspects had to do with differing philosophy and needs in playing... Ardium was about player verses GM or power players and Gygax was story telling.
They stole from Tolkien, Moorcock, Howard, Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, hell, Weird Tales Magazine in general and so on. They need to drop this drippy act like they own anything, they're beginning to sound like Games Workshop.
Tolkien pulled from Northern lore & myth.
I got introduced to the idea of tabletop role-playing through 3.5. Bopped around other systems. Enjoy a heavily modified 5e until recently. In my opinion, d&d is a folk activity, not a brand. I 100% love everything you've said and I greatly appreciate you posting this.
BINGO. D&D is a FOLK ACTIVITY. Perfectly distilled.
I very much appreciate you being willing to sit through this. Your time is the valuable thing you have.
Ah, the good ol' Monster Manual where Bahamut had a breath weapon measured in inches, because the book was directly referencing the play space.
All movements and ranges were measured in inches back in the old days. That was just a wargaming standard rule. It still is.
This just blew my mind. I've only ever played WotC fantasy editions of their fantasy RPGs so I never really have played any of the TSR era D&D editions. I have purchased some OSR RPGs but haven't gotten to play them yet either.
You really said a lot of poignant things that I feel a lot of people today need to hear. I appreciate your words here and helped me to understand things better. Thank you.
A lot of people claim that Castles & Crusades is what Gygax would have called AD&D 3e.
Thanks for not taking it personally. It really is ALL D&D. The phrase "D&D" isn't just a brand, no matter how much WotC wants it to be.
Friend, you will not be let down by OSR games.
Let me tell you a tale of two wizards.
DFK is a 5E wizard, he's 16th level and is parked there because nobody really plays higher than that at my weekly meetups. He's basically invincible and leaves a trail of destruction everywhere he goes.
Proximatt is my OSE wizard. He has 1 hp, can cast light/darkness but hasn't yet because the only creatures we've had to handle have been robots and oozes and we're not sure that would work on them, and he has ambitions to become "the plant wizard" which have started with having a fence reach out to their connections for an academic text on industrial agricultural plants (so he can start inventing something like a tanglefoot bag).
Guess which one is more fun to play? Guess which one feels more D&D?
Hey Brother just wanted to say thanks for posting this. 100% of what you said is also how I feel. Next year will be 40 years of me playing D&D and boy what a journey to see how things worked out and the repeat of history.
It really does feel like the death throes of TSR, huh?
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 Yeah I get that vibe. I remember a friend of mine telling me about his mom and how she worked for TSR back in the day. She shared a story with him about how WotC employees would bully (like in high school) the TSR employees at conventions. This would take on the forms of how D&D “sucked badly” and how “Magic was the ultimate game”. The funny thing is they bought D&D shortly thereafter and now have that same attitude has recycled itself in the last ~5 years with older players and we are problematic. -sorry for going down a rabbit hole memory. But theirs nothing new under the sun…
I cheered at "Stop being loyal to a logo!" That's true for so many other properties that have been run into the ground by huge corporations. I just tell new players: we're playing Dungeons and Dragons, but with a little simpler ruleset (I'm a BFRPG guy)
I still play 1E/2E. I also really love running C&C. The older rules were much more in line with the spirit of roleplaying. I've run 5E. It's not as bad as, say, 4E. I just it wasn't so relentlessly mediocre.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 I find 5E is really fiddly to run, with diminishing returns. I'd play C&C in a heartbeat.
Ok, I finished watching... still haven't been pissed off. Great video! I was too young to get into the original 3 little books but I started off with Basic, Expert, and 1st Ed D&D. Only ever bought and used TSR material and never bought anything 3rd ed or later. WOTC is being squeezed by Hasbro for more and more money. I see this with Magic the Gathering which I've played since 93. I bet Hasbro is seeing all the money MTG makes on the secondary market and D&D 3rd party creators make and they want that cash since they own the IP. All their are doing is slaughtering the golden goose for a short term meal but killing themselves in the long term.
I have no doubt you're right, but I also think they are badly misreading their customers. I won't be surprised if the transition to 6E makes the 4E rollout look like an act of marketing genius.
Not even a little mad. You are spitting 100% truth. I actually think this debacle is waking up the community and we're going to be tighter knit against a common foe.
I hope you're right.
Shout out for the OSE classic and advanced, I play that with my older son and looking forward to playing it with his younger brother when he gets a bit older. I have a group of players who don’t know anything but 5th edition and after we play a few games of OSE which really is just the BX edition they really don’t have an interest in the new editions, they say it’s not as much fun and no excitement as they race to try and get out of the hole before the last torch burns out. Explorations mean so much to them.
I have it for Fantasy Grounds so I'm afraid to use OSE. If the OGL 1.0a gets deauthorized I'm not sure that they will be able to continue supporting it.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 hopefully as you said the big dogs will fight it and they can continue. i need to look through it again because its a fairly stripped down version that im pretty sure is only mechanics, not their IP which includes such things as mindflayer or displacer beast or as you commented Melf's in the acid arrow. so they might be safe regardless.
nothing you said offended me.
also im so taking "wokanic panic" it is bloody brilliant.
Sounds like fair use to me. ;-)
Ahhh the good ol Dragonmyrth strips. I miss Wyrmy.
14:41 Ahh...Rolemaster. Or as my group calls it ChartMonster.
Sometimes I likes it crunchy.
I’ve been a player since white box days and the truth you dropped blew my mind! Thank you sir for articulating what has been bothering me for all these years. I worked through all of the changes over the years but it was like the spirit of our games died and none of us could figure out why. We’d all survived the Satanic Panic but not the coming of the soulless math. And now I know the truth. We stopped playing the game we loved years ago! Wow! Farewell WOTC. I won’t miss you. Time to return to “the ancient paths”. We’ll dust off our old tomes and go on an adventure again. Who knew? We had it right the first time. Subscribed!
Beautifully said. The spirit of the game is EXACTLY what has been lost.
The King is dead… LONG LIVE THE KING!! ❤
I agree with what you said, with one caveat. If you're talking about a rules set, then yes, 3rd, 4th and 5th Edition are not D&D, because they do not use the same (or nearly the same) rules as the TSR editions of the game, with are all mostly compatible with each other. In the same way that a game like baseball or football would cease to be those games were the rules radically changed.
However, while the WOTC editions do not feature the same rules, they do include certain elements that many people consider to be part and parcel of D&D, such as iconic monsters, spells, and magic items that did not appear in any other game. Things like Beholders, Mind Flayers, Melf's Acid Arrow, Mordenkainen's Sword, the Hammer of Thunderbolts, the Wand of Orcus, the 17 named Outer Planes, and associated lore like how Dragons are divided into Metallic and Chromatic varieties and have gods named Bahamut and Tiamat, stuff like that. This is why some people still consider those editions to be "real" D&D, because they include the lore - though they have a distressing habit of changing bits of it, and of course 4th Edition threw it out the window almost entirely. Of course, you could argue that this would be like changing the rules of baseball or football, but letting the teams keep their old uniforms, names and logos, so that it might look like the same game, but not really.
Naturally, (real) D&D did not have all of those elements from the beginning, but gradually the lore built up over the years until the end of 2nd Edition, and I find it hard to imagine playing without using said lore and still thinking of it as D&D. Certainly I would not use any OSR set of rules without making use of my collection of D&D lore and monster books (mostly 2nd Edition). However OSR makes it much easier to do so than the WOTC rules sets!
I only know AD&D 2nd edition and haven't played in 20 years but I have to agree completely on every point. As far as the OGL 1.1 goes, WotC is hoping they can feed us this Elmer's Glue and we'll thank them for the ice cream. Everyone ask yourselves, what are they giving the community and creators that they don’t already have, and what are the community and creators giving up in return? The answers are "everything" and "nothing."
It hardly matters. As soon as the phrase "D&D" was taken over by people who neither understood nor cared about what it meant, it lost all meaning. We really are better off without WotC.
I'm not even a little mad.
Your video sits us down and tells us what's up.
Like a father telling his child life isn't fair but you can go make your own way.
That's really a nice way to look at it. Ask your mom about the personal stuff, though. OK?
Beginning of the video: Calm down edgy Greybeard.
End of video: I love you Grandpa!
OK... Nicest reply of the week. Thanks, David.
So just my linguistic quirk. When I say “Dungeons and Dragons” I am referring to anything made by TSR. When I say D&D with a # and the word Edition at the end I am referring to anything made by WotC. They are two separate games, or how ever many games make up the latter. Except for 4e. I just call it 4e and file it in the garbage.
I find your argument compelling. You’ve finally diagnosed what was bothering me about 5e. Subbed. Dungeons & Dragons is dead, long live Dungeons & Dragons!
Thanks for the time, the sub, and the positivity!
Well Grognard, you are speaking the truth again, which is why I love ya!! Honestly, your take on this is perfect. I started arguing with TSR when they were coming up with plans for 2nd ed. and (like you) feel they really jumped the shark with 3rd ed. 4th made me laugh out loud, and I was barely able to stay attached to 5th (last two years it has been an embarrassment). Anyway, love your takes.
I tried to like 5E. I really did. I ran a campaign for two years myself. Unfortunately, the more I got to know it, the more I began to hold its relentless mediocrity in contempt.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 /agree! 5e was incredibly mediocre. My first version of D&D was the Blue Box set, and I agree entirely with you that anything after WOTC took over isn't really D&D. 3e was a good game, and 3.5 wasn't bad. 4e was a disaster and 5e is just meh as far as I'm concerned.
I personally prefer Pathfinder 1e over any of them. Their adventure paths are awesome, and the base system is a major improvement over 3.5 in my opinion.
@@SouthernGuy5423 I am curious why you feel the base system of Pathfinder is a Major Improvement over 3.5
There are certainly improvements, there's no arguing there, but honestly I feel like for every 2 improvements I find there is something they made worse.
@@priestesslucy3299 The actual game play is practically the same. What Pathfinder does a million times better, in my opinion, is character creation.
The Alternate Advancement Path system that Pathfinder used - BEFORE 5e 'borrowed' the idea - is a MASSIVE improvement over the Prestige Class system that it essentially replaced.
Yeah, you can still take prestige classes, but no one really does because AAPs are just better!
On top of that, each and every Feat in Pathfinder is just better, too. Let's take Power Attack in 3.5; you took -1 to hit per 5 levels and gained +1 to damage.
In Pathfinder, the same Feat you take -1 per 4 levels to hit and gain +2 to damage - +3 if its a 2-handed weapon or a few other things, including having it do more damage if you use Dragon Style to attack unarmed.
Some people may not like the added complexity, but for me it's all the difference in the world!
What was, essentially, a completely useless prereq Feat you HAD to take to get access to Cleave and the Feat chain from it is now valuable and desirable all on its own!
So, yeah, in my opinion, Pathfinder is pretty much an across the board upgrade to 3.5.
"He's out of line....but he's right."
Memes aside, you're spot on.
I started with the old blue book back in the late 70s. Still playing RPGs today even if I’m a grumpy old grognard. Lol. You didn’t loose me or piss me off. In fact I just subscribed. Hope to see more.
I'll be around, on and off. Life can get in the way, y'know?
Outstanding video. Hard truths and no B.S. Keep making more!
Thanks, will do!
This is why I refer to the WotC game as 5E rather then as D&D 5th edition.
Hey... I get it. Personally, I think the phrase "D&D" has become kinda meaningless, anyway... But I get it.
I absolutely love this video. I've watched it four times already over the course of three months and shared it with others. THANK YOU.
I absolutely love this comment. I've read it four times already over the course of three minutes. THANK YOU.
@Grumpy Old Grognard My 12 year old son asked me to run D&D for him and his friends, and in the lead up to that, I bought over $150 worth of WotC books and other stuff to prepare. THEN, the OGL fiasco hit. I admit, I wasn't aware of the contempt WotC had for the community or what they've done to the game over time since I was never a D&D guy (I played other RPGs). Even after WotC backed off of their OGL stance, they still showed their contempt for the people who play their games by comments said by their management in interviews.
Well, when I was trying to educate myself on the OGL thing, I came across your video, and your explanation of what D&D was and what D&D was not really made sense. I bought some Old School Essentials books and will run THAT kind of D&D!
Hello, I'm 42 years old but I only started playing tabletop RPGs in 2016. Unfortunately, in my youth I didn't have the opportunity to do so. On some occasions I even saw people playing, but I didn't quite understand what was going on. So in 2016, I started researching the various systems on the market and after a lot of analysis, I was faced with the choice between D&D 3.5e and 5e. I chose 5e for the flexibility of customization and for its popularity and availability, after all, I would have to find people to play with. Now, after 7 years I watch this video. I am a lawyer in my country. I love to write. At the end of 2016 I already started narrating and the last session was last Tuesday. I started creating a universe. I have a map, a pantheon, the creation myth, more than 40 complex npcs, countless plots, classes, sub-classes, chronology of two eras with their main events and house rules to correct the poor service done by the developers in 5e. And now, after all this time, I find I've never played the real D&D. All this time, despite having no major pretensions, I always left open the possibility of publishing this material, always concerned about copyright, reading contracts and licenses. Therefore, I say to you: this gentleman is right. Sooner or later, big corporations do what they do best: crush those at the bottom. They lie with great ease, they are patient when they have to be and aggressive in what they want. Thank you for opening my eyes before too late.
If you think my message here is, "don't publish," you've missed my point. Publish. Just... Do it with your eyes open.
You don't need a license to publish game compatible content.
Also... The laws in your country are probably very different than the laws here. In many countries, if someone files a frivolous lawsuit against you and loses, they can be held liable for your legal costs. We can't do that, here. That would make it much easier to find an IP lawyer willing to help you out, No?
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 I understood. I just said that I spent a lot of time and effort on something that I don't measure well the external factors. Here is civil law and not common law like US or UK. Anyway, I have some knowledge about internacional law and IP. And I can adapt my material to any system. As I said, a lot of effort to be stabbed. Thank you very much for your reply. I come back to say: the good part that is the major content that I produce aren't connect specially to RPG. I can easily convert to a romance or other fictional content or any Tabletop RPG. But I work a lot in 5e, repairing stuff, implement others. That's my point, the waste of time, because, knowing all these things that I know now, I think that "work" with WoTC don't make any sense. I'm reading OSRIC right now, and a small publisher be working in a portuguese version of Old School Essentials.
You just touched my heart when you picked up the Rolemaster book.
Rolemaster is, IMHO, another system that is unfairly maligned by the same "Maffs is hard" crowd who think THAC0 is too complicated. It's a GREAT game. My first great love affair after AD&D was a MERP campaign I ran using the full RM rules.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 yeah after I graduated high school in the late 80s I went looking for an alternate game to replace AD&D as my primary game system. Quickly ran across Rolemaster and soon adopted that as one of my go to games. Didnt look back at D&D after that until just 2 years ago to run a game for my kids.
Now that RM has come out with a new edition, I might try to get back into it.
Their Shadow World campaign setting is my favorite setting to this day.
"5th Edition isn't even an edition" you got my sub sir
Thanks!
I left the bobby in the late 90s and returned full time with the release of 5E which just never did it for me. At the risk of losing all of my players I recently informed them I'd never again run a game published by WOTC. So I couldn't agree more.
Brave move. I still play my older editions. But I am pretty much done with 5E. I won't be getting on board with 6E, and I certainly won't be buying anything new from them.
I don't know who you are, I don't know how I got here, but you have my respect, Ancient Sage. Thank you for your wisdom.
Thanks, Z!
You sir preach the truth! I have a copy of Runequest and always wanted to explore it more but you tweaked my interest in some other games too!
Good! There is no better way to prevent DM burnout than to change systems every now and then.
Wokanic Panic... I LOVE IT!
Self-righteous puritanism has many flavors.
Good take. Glad you are making videos and stuff still!
JOHN! Love hearing from you, dawg!
Yup. Got my ass banned from Twitter. AGAIN. Give my best to the crew!!!
Almost inappropriately for someone my age (26), I entirely agree, admittedly I've been a part of the general tabletop community since I was first blooded against goblins by my father in something vaguely D&D abjacent (a heavily custom system him and his friends had used since the early to mid-80's) and I may have wargame with him before that sending my Uruks against his elves.
The first books I actually read TTRPG wise where probably the AD&D DM guide, and the basic rules (I preferred the former), amongst a trove I was leant by an uncle.
First book I brought was pathfinder 1E (back when the scope of available local books was that or DND 4E)
I hadn't actually played WotC D&D (5e) until about 19 months ago when I got invited to a game my friend was DMIng.
Now during this whole greed-fuelled self-execution I'm happy to sit and watch the fire tear it down. I've never actually brought a D&D book, miniatures or anything, there are at least 12 systems within melee distance of me (some inherited and some brought), and even without those I can play.
... That ended up being longer than I intended, I guess what I'm saying is I agree, The false dependence on a brand has always annoyed me, for exactly that reason here's a dice role it we'll make a game, the point is to have fun with friend and not to take it too seriously
Amen. It really doesn't take much to run an RPG. I travelled a lot as a kid back in the late 80's and carrying around a full set of hardcover AD&D books was... impractical. Instead, I would travel light, and I did some of my best work with a handful of OD&D booklets and a graph pad.
You said some good stuff in a well reasoned tone. Solid advice for being creative in an atmosphere of corporate greed.
And you just condensed my entire 38 minute video into two sentences. Thanks for that. I think. ;-)
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 brevity is my thing. 😊
I started playing 1st ed. around 1980-81 and continue to use that version to this day. I completely ignored 2nd ed. when it was released since we didn't see any reason to switch. Several years ago, I found an almost complete set of 3E books in a used book store and got them for a ridiculously low price. Not that I had any intention of using them, I just wanted to see what all the chatter was about. I did a marathon read through of the entire set, and honestly, I had no idea what I had just read. It was a bit depressing to see the direction they had taken the game in. All in all, it looked like a very playable game, and it is---but it had been stripped of everything that made it D&D and replaced it with this "d20" system---which I am still not a fan of to this day.
I have never run a 3E game at the table. I agree that 1E is the best edition, but I did adopt a few 2E rules.
I did use my 3E books though. I DM'd a Neverwinter Nights campaign for a few years. While 3E did not interest me as a tabletop game, it made a great core system for a DM'd video game.
Oh, watching Arch at the end! Based!
Dude's awesome!
I don’t think the casual player or their target audience care
You're right. But the TTRPG business isn't driven by players. It's driven by DMs.
DMs are not casual players.
You think there's a DM shortage NOW? Wait until WotC starts stealing their ideas right off their own VTT builds.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 I said exactly the same thing to somebody today. Players are often normys-- DMs are not
Amen, fellow old guy. I started playing with the Holmes blue book in 1978. Almost immediately added Traveller to my collection as well. Got the AD&D books as Christmas presents. I've been watching the current kerfuffle as an interested bystander. I've played 3 and 3.5 although I never bought any books. Never played 4. Never played 5. There are so many other great games out there and I'm not a fan of the core D20 mechanic.
Like you, Grumpy Old Grognard, I've been thinking this last week or so, "This all seems very familiar." I hadn't made the connection to the Satanic panic, though I agree with you now you've pointed it out. I've been recognizing death throes TSR trying to secure it's market via anti-competitive legal tactics rather than making great product. And I've recognized the cynicism around the original OGL (which I fully participated in) which was WotC "granting" you rights already guaranteed you under law in exchange for the promise not to sue you.
Hey masses, D&D is not THE RPG. There are hundreds. WotC is not THE creator of RPGs. There are dozens.
And if you do love 5e and 5e only, you still have your books, your imagination, and pen and paper. You're set for life.
Amen, brother. I literally have nothing to add.
I love your bookshelf, and loved what you had to say. You should come around more often... 😉 (not every day, just more often)
Wow. Thank you. I will try.
New sub here and fellow grognard. I enjoyed this, but you currently have 11 dislikes vs. 179 likes, so you're going to have to work much harder if you want to piss people off.
I really thought my crack about the OD&D rules "sucking" would put me on the outs with my peer set. What can I say? I underestimated peeps.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 It could be that in the wake of all this OGL business people simply have no more rage to give.
A long time ago I was involved in negotiating a software licensing deal with another company. At the last minute they sent a contract update in that our lawyer explained was a trap. Of course, we immediately wanted to send back a counter offer to remove it, but our lawyer gave us advice I remember to this day. "Once someone shows you what they are like, believe them." He then explained that it's fine negotiating a contract under the assumption both parties are trying towards the same goal, but as soon as someone shows they are going to scr-w you over, its not worth it. He'd have to go through the entire contact thinking of every possible why someone could scr-w with you under they assumption they were trying to. Ultimately, it is never worth it. You also have to consider the viability of a company needing to do that. We took his advice, sent a "No thank you" letter, and went with another not-as-good company. Three years later, the first company folded, and the not-as-good company bought their brand and customer-base.
Any company working under OGL anything is just too risky now. GoG is correct. Even if WotC back peddles, you can't trust them, as they are only doing it to avoid short-term consequences. IMO, it would take the sale of D&D or WotC to someone else to 'trust' them again, but even then, you have no reason to. As GoG says, just don't publish under the OGL.
That said, I can argue about whether 3e is D&D. It's still a roleplaying game, based on die with dungeons and dragons. However, I get your point and that's an argument for another day.
You had a good lawyer.
No need to argue. I am more than happy to accept the premise that the phrase "Dungeons and Dragons" describes more than just a single game. If you want to define it as an idea, I am totally down with that. What I am NOT down with is treating it as "just a brand." If D&D represents an idea, and not just a game, then WotC doesn't own it, anymore. It is a generic term, and their own actions encourage this interpretation.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 He probably made as much money signing off on the second company, but yes, he was good.
I'll agree with you that D&D isn't just a brand. IMO, 4e proved that. No matter how much our group tried that game, it didn't work for us and we weren't alone saying it didn't feel like D&D. I did a long break after 1e and only started back with D&D under 3e, so it wasn't that jarring to me. It still had roleplaying, dice, classes, and characters. Yes, I noticed to grid system and slower combats, but it still felt like D&D. 4e didn't... yet you could argue it had roleplaying, dice, classes, and character and the same setting. So, I agree you can't slap a logo on it and call it D&D. I'm not sure where the line is, or whether you can argue that 3e crossed it, but I do know that 4e went right off the cliff, so clearly something about it wasn't D&D.
Thanks for that great and simple video. OSE is my current favorite. Cheers
I can't honestly say I have a current favorite. There is just SO much great community content doing SO many different, amazing things!
I started myself with Second Edition and Dragonlance. Loved your video! 👏😎
Awesome! Thank you! I never really adopted the DL Saga as a campaign setting, but I loved the books.
I like your opinion, I like how you say them. I wish the full rant was on....
You didn't miss much. It was pretty much a long string of loud f bombs. My son is going to watch these videos someday. :-/
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561
Understandable
But isnt he already a adult by now. Maybe grabdson ?
@@dnaseb9214 My son is 11. Hey... Shit happens.
I'll say, the channel name is NOT clickbait
The truth rarely is. ;-)
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 oh didn't mean it in a bad way. Love me a grumpy old grognard, you're oozing passion for the game anyway, nothing to blame there, and I grew up in the 3.X era
You didn't piss me off at all. 100% agree with every word you said, which is why I only play up to 2nd edition and OCR games. What they play now is fluffy, Woke, Cos Play, with a D&D logo slapped on it.
I don't care what you call it as long as you are playing the game you love. ;-)
Love your words:
I say we should write our government officials - Congress, Senate: Letters, polite, concise, to the point;
1 - demand Hasbro and Wotc and really any media company get NO tax breaks, subsidies, "Small business loans" or any sort of bailout
2 - that they be investigated by the SEC in case any "Short-Selling" has been done. Really they are so spectacularly bad we should have it looked into if this was set up to collect bets against the stock. Before any hecklefish say it's a "Conspriacy Theory" - well yes - look at Gamestop early 2021 the few times this is exposed.
3 - there be NO "Copyright Extensions" this year. More to also punch a MOUSE in the face but also that this year and this decade it has been proven that big companies only sit on existing IP and grind it to dust and keep down anything new. It does no good and ensures most writers and artists will see no reward in their lifetimes.
We - Grognards and 1st gen Munchkins grew up drawing endless dungeons on graph paper, we can write a few letters. Or use the printer - but sign and date them and mail them. Be polite, they know someone who does this is someone who votes and spreads the word!
I honestly don't see that mattering one jot. Congress is bought and paid for. It's not an accident that the entire system is built to accommodate the kind of corrupt malfeasance that these corporate a-holes routinely exploit.
But hey... It can't HURT.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 Thanks!
I know it's asking SO much of others to write a few letters but I think this will work. I assure you, Sir, that I am COUNTING on the crooked Swamp dwellers especially!
They might believe 100% a letter as such is worthless in terms of any real effect in their world but they'll bookmark for when Hasbro comes in "Hallp uss! Weez ah Small bizinezz! Needs Loan!" ready to write a bribe $ check. (campaign contribution) Especially the corrupt ones will whip out these letters and say they are worth thousands of dollars to break even. Meaning if they don't want them to go against Hasbro to appease active votes they'll have to at least pay a few thousand each letter. Double that if they want them to bend the other way. Statistical correlation to $ spent even for disgusting+corrupt guys.
I imagine Hasbro's lawyers/lobbyist paying the first few guys then going "Uh, how many more...?" and before they leave to asses bribes Vs just Bankruptcy and moving $ they get assailed by reps of many other politicians... "Senator ... says Can Haz bribe money?"
Also, just perhaps I'm right that they did "Short Sell" -that is bet the stock will go down and sabotaged the product. Gamestop 2021 again. The SEC could lock everything up until inflation makes a dollar a dime even if they somehow didn't break laws and would because of all the Madoff exposes...
THEN - when a MOUSE comes later this year asking for another "Copyright Extension"...it is already an issues and...!
I think we should now refer to D&D as the brand that should not be mentioned.
AFAIC it's a brand name that has been absorbed by the common vernacular, and (like I said in the video) WotC has nobody to blame but themselves for that. D&D has become the Kleenex of TTRPGs. When someone needs to blow their nose, they may ask for a "Kleenex", but they don't really care what brand of facial tissue you offer them.
I WANT THE DELETED RANT!
It's really just a string of loud f bombs.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 those can be the best. Inflection, tone, emphasis can make the simple f bomb into a symphony!
This is the best video I have seen on the matter, thank you!
Thanks. It's good that you don't spend all day watching TH-cam. ;)
I'm so happy I completed my collection when they phased out AD&d 2nd. Never regretted not getting the newer stuff.
Has there ever been a replacement for the "Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog" ?
That thing is amazing and I don't know why no one nowadays makes stuff like that anymore...
Or the "Priest's Spell Compendium", the "Wizard's Spell Compendium" and "Encyclopedia Magica" ?
I can't say for sure. I don't think so. They don't seem to produce much setting specific material. It almost seems as if they make an effort to avoid making settings specific, at all. I'm not a fan of 5E though. I just don't know their catalog, that well.
I never played much WotC D&D. I ran 5E for a few years, big three books only, and a few modules. I never use their mods because WotC modules are worthless. They are wall to wall campaign modules. Some can be used as regional reference books. I used tomb of annihilation as a setting reference when my campaign was in Chult, for example.
I know lot of third edition books get some love
Don’t know about the ‘Whole Realms Catalog’ but was (and always will be) a huge fan of the Encyclopedia Magica. To me that was the remaining old guard TSR people getting attention to as much of the stuff they created as possible. Also one of the best computer programs for use with any D&D edition came out for second edition (or 2.5) in the AD&D Core Rules and Core Rules 2.0 because it allowed soooo much customization, was the last gasp of the late TSR employees.
I bought D&D in 1989, long before Wot$ did.
1978 for me. White box, and shortly after, the 1E MM. There was a couple of decades there, at the beginning, when changes really were exciting and inspiring.
Not any more. Not from the official content. D&D has become the McDonalds of TTRPGs. Soggy. Bland. Devoid of flavor, and very unhealthy.
The white box set was my first find of D&D, in 77.
Mine, too! I started in '78, so I didn't have to wait long to integrate the 1E MM.
You're not pissing me off.. I happen to agree with you and haven't loved D&D since 2nd editions demise.. not that 2nd was my first go (I got into D&D in 1981) but I happened to really love DarK Sun which was by far my favorite D&D setting, I love Brom and everything about it was so evocative to me. I am happy to see the OSR explosion and I long ago moved on to other games and other system.
Yeah, you'll never see a WotC reboot of dark sun. Unless we can put Tieflings in it. Can we put Tieflings in it? The extensive exploration of themes like slavery, genocide, etc aside... The elimination of whole races in the Cleansing Wars alone is reason enough not to touch it. God forbid Dark Suns players are not able to incorporate some module or supplement into the setting because it uses trolls.
Yeah I don't see them doing a Dark Sun reboot nor do I care, the 4th edition D&D Dark Sun was a trash fire. I've been thinking of playing it again using the Old School Essentials rules or Porting Hyperborea ASaSoH into it. There is so much goodness in the RPG world right now between easy self publishing, Kickstarter and POD services that I don't imagine it drying out any time soon, the OSR community is very niche anyway and the community will still push out content. I don't need to be drip fed WotC settings anyway, I've never been a huge fan of the Forgotten Realms or any of their kitchen sink settings even before WotC took over, I'm more of a Swords and Sorcery, Grim Dark or just gritty fantasy guy myself.. Newcomers are not the target audience for OSR style games anyway though they may pull a few of them in eventually as they are introduced by older players such as ourselves, it's never going to threaten WotC D&D on any level or it's ability to push whatever flavor of the production cycle they are pushing as D&D. The only one that could kill the D&D brand were themselves and they shot themselves in the foot, they didn't get it when they said "We all won" over the OGL debacle what they really should have said is "We all lost" WotC is following in the footsteps of another mammoth gaming company that's also similarly from time to time antagonized their customer base with shady moves and that's Games Workshop. I'm actually happy this all went down because WotC has had a stranglehold over much of the RPG industry for too long and produces watered down products that are purposely created with the intent to not offend anyone, and perhaps more alarming to me is to not challenge anyone, to not provide any kind of psychological or ethical conundrums to think about. It's safe, it's easy but worst of all it cheapens the Role play experience reducing it to sitting at a table acting out the most cheesy elements of the experience while putting out more and more books to expand options you didn't need in the first place to have a good time and which ramp up the difficulty of running and tracking a game until it sucks all the joy out of it for me. If I need 1200 pages of material in front of me to run a basic or intermediate game I'm definitely playing the wrong game (I'm looking at you Pathfinder 😂)
Good stuff... I'm another antediluvian RPGer, having started with C&S Red Book (of Death) and LBB Traveller in 1979.
Having come into the hobby/community through non-TSR systems, I never felt the pull of D&D and remained an interested spectator throughout the decades. As a non-player, the current perfidy doesn't hurt me personally, although, as GOG says, - the conduct of WOTC does show that any "gamer" spirit they ever had has been exorcised.
GOG is also bang-on correct that whatever tactical retreats WOTC makes, they've dropped the mask and - yes - they're coming for everything. It's Abandon Ship time.
That's SO cool. You're an odd duck! Back in the late 70's there were so few choices it was almost unheard of for RPG to exist outside of the TSR space!
Unfortunately, with 1.0a, WotC has wrapped it's tentacles around almost the entire industry. Even games that have ZERO to do with WotC's copywrite use it to protect themselves from the potential of being hit by frivolous lawsuits from Wizards.
This was such a good video. Thanks for this.
I'm hoping that the action economy ends up causing D&D as a subsidiary of WotC withers on the vine from a production standpoint.
The way I see it, WotC just labotomized 5e by driving almost all of the best creators away. What creators do they have? Perkins and Crawford?
I can't honestly remember the last time WotC published anything that I actually wanted. Their content quality has been overshadowed by 3pp for years.
Okay, now ya went an' dun it! I ain't gotta take this! I'm sharin' this video, ya hear me? I'm Sharin' This Vidya, Dagnabbit! ...cuz basically I agree. Ya clinched it at C&C.
Oh YEAH? That's how it is, is it? FINE! Do what you gotta do! 😏
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 I dun tol' ya that's how it's gon' be! LOL I can't keep a straight face with this one ...oh hell.
Loved this video, thank you!
YVW! And thank YOU!
I mean, He's not wrong.
Thanks. I guess we'll see.
I am one of the little guys. I pulled my book from DriveThru for the time being, I can't afford the fight. I think everything you said is absolutely right. It costs less for me to not have it up right now. Eventually I will re-tool my work to make sure it is legit but I am a one man show, I don't have the time to do it yet.
Don't take anything down YET. 1.0a is still an authorized license! If that should change, you do what you think is best. If I were you, I'd wait for a cease-and-desist letter. But you really should talk to a lawyer before making any important decisions.
I liked your vid and your outtake (~36:37) just made my day :D so I did hit subscribe too.
Thanks for sharing words of wisdom.
In that your are not pissing anybody off, but are a river to your people.
I started with the red box and RPG´s that were around at that time like Traveller, Call of Cthulhu and Midgard to name a few.
You are 100% spot on not to trap yourself into being loyal to a logo.
WOTC 5e is a lost case to me, the OGL issue is just the iceing on the cake.
Somehow it became an Orwellian nightmare:
Hitpieces like "orcs being racists" and even the term "race" as in human, elf or dwarf is now problematic e.g. forbidden to be used by the Ministry of Truth and will be replaced with "species" which is a goodthink newspeak term safe to use for the inclusive and diversity friendly modern gaming community.
All i can do is vote with my wallet.
I'm right there with you, Art.
I was a teen in the early 2000s, and didn't have a ton of money, but the only reference for ttrpgs was an old copy of MERPs my uncle gave me haha.
We sorta homebrew'd our own game, until my friends and I could afford 3.5 books. I didn't hate that edition, but I sorely missed our hombrew'd way of gaming. Even though it wasn't "DnD" proper, it had so much more heart and charm to it. Unbalanced? very much so, but I'll cherish those memories always.
Currently, I'm not that big into the new "DnD" stuff, I'm actually trying to adapt 1e/basic into my games, mixed with some of my own homebrew'd ideas.
MERP was a great game, as is it's parent game, Rolemaster.
We were all running home brew back in the early days. The OD&D rules were so badly written and incomplete that we didn't have much choice. ;)
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 I guess much didn't change from one generation of players to another.
There aren't many old school players in my local area, but its nice to have the internet so I can learn these old systems.
I really like your videos, keep up the great work!
Thank you for that, we all needed to hear it.
Finally I'm here also, so many channels to appreciate of our gaming breathren!
This is 100% correct! WOTC D&D is the D20 system, not D&D.
You're right, thanks to Gary and Dave, We the People own D&D, the real D&D !
Thanks for having a fair take on 2nd edition.
You won a like for saying the term, 'wokanic panic.'
The similarities are remarkable. The nature of their puritanism is a little different, but they really are the same self-righteous hypocrites.
I have been making the comparison for years now but I never had a term for it. Now I do. Thank you sir! I can dismiss these… people with flair.
Great take and even greater collection.
Thanks so much. I do love my bookshelf!
I disagree with one point. WotC did publish new material for AD&D 2nd ed. that discarded the censorship of TSR's AD&D 2nd edition. Demons and Devils returned, you could play evil, etc. It was the best thing that happened to that edition of the game. It was also, sadly, very short lived, and before their purchase by Hasbro. I find it extremely sad that the company that ended the misguided censorship of one edition is now advocating renewing censorship in their next edition.
But well put. I've boycotted Hasbro since the late 1990s -- pre WotC purchase -- and have no regrets.
Just gotta add that the Finieous Fingers thumbnail is perfect.
That's a FANTASTIC observation!
Great commentary, my friend.
Thanks. Gotta admit I am completely overwhelmed by the responses to this one.
As a TTRPG and played D&D the basic and expert sets as well advanced. I agree with you on the fact WOTC versions of D&D aren't D&D (even though i love D&D 3rd edition). So i actually agree with all your point in this video. been gaming since the 80's
I agree the rules changed drastically. Honestly we didn’t play some D&D editions after WotC took over. Why do I have 4E a rule set I did not play, a game store owner couldn’t sell the books, so one day my family was in buying rpg stuff and he was all you guys want free 4E books, and I said sure, then people noticed them in my house and like lost puppies they brought me theirs… now I have a surprisingly huge collection of 4E which has given me insight into WotC marketing tactics, but also some fun ideas to adapt… 5E happened because I found the starter set cheap and friends played it so why not we thought (hubby plays RPGs too), again a bunch of free books followed and I bought a few to fiddle with. 😂 Since I started converting and hodpodging systems as a kid, converting doesn’t bother me and logos are just that, if a Gurps or any game book had something cool in it for a setting I was running under a different system, I would just convert and drop it in my game, doesn’t matter to me. Pick your rules and then pillage the other games as needed. Arghhh. 🏴☠ But yeah I am sort of done with WotC on this new direction and their lashing out at the OGL and old school community means I don’t need much if anything more from them. ✌
Yup. I agree. I run a heavily house-ruled game, too. Play what gives you joy, and to heck with anyone who has a problem with that.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 being me I am ordering a few new games too including one with Roller Skating Wizards… got to play that! Lol 😂 WotC doesn’t get it…
I mean skateboarding Wizards… but maybe we will create a roller skating class too… 😂
Ok, here to tell you that you are correct. It made me upset, that you said, that 3.5 is not D&D - i grew up with it and still love it. But, i very much respect you for your opinion and telling it to us. I'm not vertain i agree. But you make some fair poinits. Tahnk you for sharing your thoughts - much love from the balckwood forest
Thanks. If just a few more people were willing to expose themselves to ideas they don't like and disagree civilly, the global ruling class would crumble.
man i miss 3.5
Who is this old man and why is he so wise?
Old? Oh yeah... I forgot. I'll try to sound more bitter and disillusioned from now on.
I jumped out of editions after AD&D 2nd edition I started with the red box
I'm not as old school as white paper books, but I got my start in 1rst edition, but my first purchase was the red book box set. Of course I loved 1rst edition, I wish i could get my hands on the entire 1rst edition set and content again. ( house fire long ago, robbed me of my treasures.) , 2nd edition too as it progressed. As Dm I kept the 1rst edition ways, just adopted for the second edition additions.
The WotC happened. 3.0 I never bought into. It wasn't until later when NWN came out, i even experienced 3.0 ... when the conversion happened, groups split and disbanded. Suddenly , there wasn't a "universal" DnD game... like you said, basic players, 1rst, 2nd ... still had commonality, it was the same game. 3.0 caused a rift... not only in system use, but in affordability as well.
Lets face it, many players played DnD because, it was affordable, or relatively cheap. You might spend a bit up front, but from there you could play with your friends, at no cost.
So, once 3.0 became the mainstream thing ... I fell off the beaten path. I personally picked up games like Earthdawn and Shadowrun by Fasa. But, it was very difficult in the USA here, attracting players to completely alien system mechanics. Shadowrun had more success, but the fantasy side of Earthdawn never gained much traction.
And I think most players that had played DnD seen systems like GURPS to be somewhat a joke back then. You had players that loved it, and those that scoffed because it "wasn't DnD".
you always had those types, if it wasn't "officially printed and published" , it wasn't worth time to read and use as well.
Many factors , including life changing event of a housefire ... put me out of role-playing table top playing for over 25 years now.
My ears perked up over this OGL thing. I got curious as to the state of the game, and coincidentally had just recently looked for a VTT way to possibly get back into group table play, without inconvenience of having to physically go to a group.
But i can't really find content I'd like to use. You picked up books, doing google search, all i see is PDFs at the most , or out of stock on any hard copied.
are there any actual good sources for those content books that are the same as basic and 1rst edition DnD?
Drivethru seems ok, but filtering through content and lack of clear description in most cases, makes one wonder if that's the actual product, or a fan made creation that might not have what it is was being sought out in first place.
I lost the 1rst edition DMG and color pencil Monster manuals in that housefire, and have never found replacements. The 1rst edition DMG was far superior to 2nds slim lined version.
It's probably the one book or book set I miss the most. Yeah, I tried ebay and amazon, got bad experiences and scammed, including paying high price for a 1rst ed dmg hard cover, that had no pages in it.
It is very ... surreal, stepping from back in time , into this modern age of ttrpgs for me.
Look... As much as I am LOATHE to encourage anybody to give money to WotC right now, you can get almost anything from 1E, 2E, and BX from drivethrurpg.com as a Print on Demand. These are the actual products reprinted exactly from their TSR originals.
You can also get almost everything you're looking for, cheaper, in the form of "retro clones."
Links below...
1E: OSRIC
www.lulu.com/shop/stuart-marshall/osric-a5/paperback/product-20695839.html?page=1&pageSize=4
Also available as a free download
2E: Of Gold and Glory
www.drivethrurpg.com/product/338979/For-Gold--Glory-2e-Core-Rules
Free Download (PDF only)
B/X
Basic Fantasy
www.amazon.com/Basic-Fantasy-Role-Playing-Game-3rd/dp/1503334945
EVERY book in the basic fantasy series is also available as a free download here:
www.basicfantasy.org/
OD&D
Swords and Wizardry
www.drivethrurpg.com/product/62346/Swords--Wizardry-Core-Rules?filters=180_0_45322_44294_0_0
Free PDF download. This is also available as a box set direct from the publisher, but they are currently sold out.
I am a big 4e fan, and I will be the first to say that yes, you are correct. It is NOT D&D, it is a significantly different game. Does it have problems? Oh hell yes - and not just the GML. But one of the biggest problems IMO is that it should have been called something else - better to say "we made a jRPG by mistake, but it's kinda neat, so we're making a sister game we'd like you to try" than the crap they tried to pull. Trying to destroy the old setting instead of being intelligent and introducing a new setting was a stupid idea, too.
LMAO @ the description of 4E as a "jRPG!!!"
You know, if they had done what you suggest I think it really may have sold better. I never gave it a look - I don't need a new DnD system - but with that marketing I would have at least checked it out.
Excellent video. Only just got this on my feed and have subbed after viewing. I started with the original game and played AD&D, went through the house rules phase. After a gap of many moons, I played 3.5 and 5E, and they felt like a video game. It also felt like having your arm twisted to accept their philosophy. I don't buy from WotC anymore.
I agree. I ran 5E for 2 years and the more I got to know the system, the less I liked it.
C&C is dungeons and dragons? I took a look at it last week for the first time and it seemed way closer to 3e than your (admittedly good and transparent) definition of D&D. What did I miss or overlook?
1982 The Basic magenta or pink box was the first I played then the expert and then onward with AD&D harcover books. I did buy the holmes set a few years later. When I think D&D I think friends ,dice,IRL play not the online digital stuff where they are taking this. I have also bought some older games and Do like the OSR games coming out and have bought some DCC,Basic Fantasy ect.
Thanks to bad weather last year and ebay I have been able to find some other older ttrpgs, like James Bond, Tunnels and trolls and TopSecret/ Top Secret SI .
I have also have bought some gurps books which can expand ttrpgs in some interesting ways.
Corporate greed has killed other hobbies as well like the car companies who wanted a cut of model car sales.I loved building model cars as a kid and became priced out pretty quickly.
Greed kills a lot of good things in life.Making a profit is fine but trying to own every penny and the world it is just greed on Steroids.Saddly through life I have learned that .
Everything that goes mainstream turns to shit. Fortunately, my personal tastes almost never lie with the mainstream.
Unfortunately, the mainstream is almost never content to leave those of us with more eclectic preferences alone.
I'm glad to have discovered your channel, and I can't agree more with your statements.
I find your outlook really funny. Very cyberpunk. I largely agree with you and I've been moving away from wotc for theblsst few years. If only my gaming group would as well.
Thanks for that. Just enough people seem to find me humorless that sometimes I wonder if I'm joking.
If I can take your rules and play Keep on the Borderlands, it's D&D. OD&D is D&D, 1e is D&D, B/X and BECMI are D&D.
OSRIC is also D&D. Labyrinth Lord, Old School Essentials, and all the other clones are D&D.
D&D isn't dead. It's just taken a different form, and frankly has better organization and clearer rules than ever before.
I agree with you about the game. You're not a heretic. Grognards rant for good reason. Grognards of the future take note.
What is your opinion now that the dust has settled a little?
My opinion is that nothing has really changed, and in the end 6E is just a new way of selling a string of completely different games with a D&D logo on it. The only difference is that now the change will be slow and constant instead of one big "edition" change at a time.
Well said, sir!
3rd edition and beyond and Mathfinder are for power gamers that need to feel powerful right out of the gate. It started in 2nd Edition with some later revisions and modules, but it got out of hand after that.
I agree... But I don't really have a problem with that. If that's what some customers want, by all means, write a game that meets that consumer demand.
The problem isn't that they are writing content to appeal to new customers. The problem is that they are abandoning their old ones. I have no doubt that they are doing all of this on purpose. They are turning D&D into video game, and in so doing they are abandoning their new theater kid customers the same way they abandoned the OSR grognards with 3E.
Wizards hasn't changed. The younguns are just seeing them, mask off, for the first time.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 You are correct, sir.
They want to remove any possible competition to their latest mess.
And it is a mess as for them to get their profit it will require DMs being unable to share the stuff they own online ala D&D beyond and will eventually turn this into pay to win except nobody wins as long as they're involved.
Weird part of late the stuff I've been buying has been from earlier editions I had the chance to run Hoard of the Dragon Queen but went with Against the Cult of the Reptile God and feel it was the right decision.
Strange how that happens, maybe one day I will find another group to play or run games for but until then I don't see Wizards learning from this mistake.
Don't even get me started on their intentions. I don't want to get into the deets, but suffice it to say I think even WotC's harshest critics are underestimating how nefarious they are. I will say this much...
I'll wager they are going to tip their hand again when they publish the TOS for their 6E VTT.
I really enjoyed your video.
Thanks for taking the time to watch it!
Watched the whole video.
Nope. Not mad. Pretty much agree with everything here. And I didn't even play the original DnD (I'm mostly a Pathfinder guy when it comes to "typical" fantasy rpgs). I did read about the ADnD stuff back in the 90s, and thought it all looked pretty cool, though Rifts was actually the first RPG game I ever got into (I'll wait till you finish laughing). Then when 3rd edition came out, I decided to try it... and was shocked at how much had actually changed. I may have liked the d20 system in the end (again: Pathfinder fan), but I agree. From 3rd edition onwards, the games that WotC put out are not DnD. The mechanics and the feel of the game are just completely different.
I can't say I'm surprised with what they are currently doing, either. I saw the writing on the wall with 4th edition (similar circumstances, too). When players didn't bite and went elsewhere, they came out with 5th and brought back use of the OGL to trick people into buying their stuff again. And people fell for it. Now they are doing exactly what they were trying to do with 4th, and because people have no memory (nor any ability to realize what large corporations always do), they're shocked. One would have thought that what they were doing with Magic the Gathering would have got them paying attention, but I guess they were happy eating at the feast of 5th edition to care.
Despite the crap that Hasbro/WotC is trying to pull, I think the smaller content creators may do ok in the end. For one thing, nobody can stop us from playing what we want to play, and creating/sharing whatever content we want amongst ourselves. Plus, with the announced ORC license coming out, people can just put out commercial work under that... hopefully anyway (it's still being put out by a company, and companies are only as ethical as the people running them). Ultimately, corporations do not govern this hobby. The players and content creators do. As long as that is understood, then it won't matter whether Hasbro/Wotc, Paizo, Kobold Press, or whatever business decides to continue putting out these games fairly, or if we have to start making and playing these games underground. As long as we keep our passion for these games, the hobby will live.
By the way, just for the statement "Freedom and justice for all who can afford it", you got a sub.
I'm not terribly familiar with Rifts. I have only dipped my toe into the post-apocalypse genre a few times, mostly using Gamma World. I like the Palladium FRPG, though, and my friends and I had a great mini campaign in college using TMNT and Other Strangeness. Palladium has a good base system.
I agree that the creators will be OK in the long run, but I am very worried about them for the immediate future. Lean times are coming, and these are not wealthy people. Many of them are not going to have an easy time weathering the coming storm.
I started with Robotech on the palladium style system, Rifts is basically d20 resolution rolls at its core but all of its rolls are Opposed rolls rather than vs static DC, at least for combat.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 Wow... TMNT takes me back. That was the second RPG system I played, though unfortunately I didn't play it for too long. I thought it was really cool though, and I still have the book to this day. I appreciated the fact that at the time, it was the ONLY other form of media connected to TMNT that was actually faithful to the original comics, at least as far as the original characters were concerned.
I also agree that lean times are coming for creators, but the fact that most of us are banding together and keeping our eyes open (for the time being, anyway) will help them out in the long run. For the short term, it be best for us to do what we can to support what products they have already put out; they're going to need the revenue.
I don't have a major problem with WotC prior to this event. "Hasbro purchased Wizards of the Coast in September 1999 for $325 million." I also think that the leakers prove there may be still a few good protectors of D&D in WotC.
I have no doubt that many people on WotC's dev and middle management teams are on our side, here, but that really doesn't mean anything. Corporations are not democratic institutions. They have hierarchical command structures, and WotC's executive management has been taken over completely by corporate sharks.
It can be put down to the American football syndrome. There was a time in the past when people enjoyed playing the game with friends. Then monetization created a situation of formalized gameplay and increasingly complex rules.
My ADD sweet spot is somewhere between 1e and 2e
Mine, too. Leaning towards 1E for me.
I agree Wizards of the Coast threw Dungeons and Dragons out from day one. I have always been loyal to 2nd edition Advance Dungeons & Dragons / Red box Dungeons & Dragons and always will be. Wotc can stick there logo where the sun doesn't shine. All roleplaying rpg are D&D .
Great words!!!! In my humble opinion, the first nail in the coffin of "real" D&D came from Loraine Williams. After she wrangled her way into a place of power and got rid of Mr. Gygax everything seemed to be on a downhill slide. The "What-see" product known as" D&D " is something completely different in both substance and spirit. Also, it is VASTLY inferior.
Lorraine Williams was actually hired by Gygax, himself.
I know, right?
She didn't push him out, Brian Blume did. Brian Blume's dad was heavily invested in TSR, and when he died Blume inherited his shares and got controlling interest. He pushed Gygax out and put Lorraine Wiliams in charge.
And yes... It was under her leadership that TSR was driven into the ground.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 That's one messed up irony, isn't it?
We were discussing this (well not this specifically but the spirit of it) during our Basic Fantasy game. I was big into Pathfinder 1e for quite a while and I thought it was a good game but the issue with it (and by extension 3.X and 5th) is that the character creation process determines the character while OSR based games the adventuring process determines the character. That is, the player invests in the creation of the character (which is why character death can cause meltdowns, I have seen it) while in Basic Fantasy and older versions the player invests in the adventuring of the character and it can be painful to lose a character that has achieved higher levels. So on that point I concede your view of it.
I don't think 5E characters are even supposed to die. I ran my 5E group through Tomb of Horrors from Yawning Portal. I made them use pregen characters (I'm not a total a-hole). My campaign was up to about lvl 8 but I gave them lvl 14 characters. At lvl 8 the characters are already too OP, but I was still shocked how nerfed the game is at 14. They fell into every trap on the board, but not one character was killed until they messed with Acerrerack.
@@grumpyoldgrognard9561 with old school D&D there always was a problem with the game character playability starting to fail around 10 level best level as far as I was concerned was 7th level because all the classes were of equal impact on game play....face it 1st level sucked as a wizerd
Hey! Just want to let you know that you did kind of put me off when you insisted that fifth edition isn't D&D, mostly because it forces me to ask "Well then what was I playing?"
I think you have a good point about how games have slowly been dying out, but I will be completely honest when I say that I have become far more of a fan of other TTRPG systems than fifth edition, including Pathfinder and Savage Worlds. We have moved past the need for the game of D&D, and now the community can decide to move past the brand of D&D to newer and greater things.
I don't think games are dying out. I think the D&D brand has been murdered by its corporate overlords, but gaming is thriving in the hands of the third party creative community.
Totally Correct