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Curious have you thought of making an expanded/supplement of 2e with all the "crazier" stuff or just more tables of stuff ? Like 50 more things for each table , firearms and mounts and of course more monsters and all that or you leaving that to the community ?
@@manda60 Local producers here found out the same thing. Publishing an RPG is not like publishing a novel that people read and then put down. Player groups got one, maybe two sets of books. They got the special math dice. Something players here liked was additional published adventures, but then they would also just maybe buy one per group. Very few of the writers here quit their day jobs. The work on an adventure never quite matched the profit. I think they soon figured out that the digital game side of the company subsidized the RPG side, for less work.
@@manda60 Something that always fascinate me are all the people who wrote in little bits to Dragon, Strategic Review, White Dwarf, Challenge etc. Not a lot but little things like an archer class. One of the sides I didn't like with old TSR was their tendency to sometimes forget or omit credit here.
This is a cope. There existing prior versions isn't an argument against wanting the actual current edition not to suck, it represents the hobby and sets the vast majority of the culture going forward.
@@Epic501 This is whining. If you do not understand that playing older versions or rolling your own is what you do when the current edition sucks, I have a bridge to sell you.
No it isn't like at all... It was it wouldn't be a niche hobby and baulders gate 3 would have sold more and so would have tghe movie and the lego set... Which while it was the first RPG it still is made of exclusive elements even now with New 5Ee... Soi exclusive Baulder gate doesn have them... Like D&D isn't an Abrahamic holy book, an acent myth, a legnd from a time lonmg forgotten... It isn't lord of the ring or star wars... D&D in reality has had little culrtual impact beyond the few elements all RPGs since have... Which by the way D&D likes as by far the only like genre to massively differ from the game that it was imspeared from... It's aklso the longest leike to not turn into a genre... Like D&D likes share very little with any D&D edition but are not generic TTRPGs which is very weird... But still D&D simply isn't folk lore by any sense of the word...
@@GreenBlueWalkthrough I mean if you want to be pedantic, sure. But his point was it works like a folk tradition, it's passed down several generations now and is more of a (sub)cultural entity than it is a commercial one in the way people engage with it.
For all the talk about WotC burying older editions... You do know that Dark Sun, Planescape etc is available as print on demand? We bought two print on demand 2e PHBs to play. What I do not trust is techbros and their love for subscription models. I'm still surprised when my younger friends who play digital games describe some new digital store feature.
Just because the books are available doesn't mean they arnt burying it. Remember burying is an old Pro wrestling term for killing a push or the momentum a setting has for success. Ways this can be done is bad mouthing it, and the original creators.
They also sold textiles, sewing equipment, archeology, minis, tv shows, video games, dice games, and about everything else the Blumes invested in to funnel money to their family members.
@@katherineberger6329 That's the part I'm always a little nervous about. WotC did remove OGL, but I have not seen them aggressively go after Paizo. And we guessed that they just don't care for little micro projects that barely break even. I was a few decades late and an ocean away, where the amount of litigation was low. There was a moment when it was uncertain who owned what parts of previous editions of Dragonbane, but the people involved had their day jobs to care for and did not press the issue.
@@AeonVoom Games Workshop tried to be a game company that sold miniatures, and hit the same snag. An army of wood elfs is a lot more components, but when you have that wood elf army... Well, you are likely not buying a second. You might buy a new character or special unit, maybe the new rules edition. Maybe start a second army.
The OGL was the largest concern here. I was worried WotC would pick up the old TSR habit of litigating against other publishers. WotC did not go all out on that at the time. I am a little insulted by the suggestion that a techbro must come teach me how to play the game. And that I am supposedly in some sort of brand war with others. My general impression of techbros themselves are monopolistic people who do not trust others, only top-down black box corporate nightmares with themselves on top.
All the OGL did was speedrun bloat-related sales death. They can say "it was for the good of the industry" all they want, but it was clearly an attempt to get everyone on the same ecosystem - killing off other games. Also, given the fact 90% of the guys who drafted it wound up at Paizo, it's pretty clear that they intended to just copy/paste D&D all along.
I'm a little more insulted that some third-rate 'developer' that WotC hired from the bottom of the barrel must come and teach me how to behave like a well-adjusted adult. Guys, you wouldn't believe this but you probably shouldn't sit around with a group of people and just yell out the N word and roleplay out some S.A.! And did you know you should also get a feel for the kind of people you're playing with, so you know what bothers them? Wow! You see I was on my way to my local Klan rally, and had just put the fist to my wife because she had an opinion outside of the kitchen, and since I had disowned my gay son- I didn't have anyone to hurl slurs at, so I decided to go and buy a pretendy-time game book after running down some minorities in my Confederate flag truck. And then, when I read what it said? Changed my life, I never knew any of that stuff was bad.
@@z2ei It looked a little like a repeat of TSR and Mayfair. Like a balance where TSR sways between wanting to be the standard and fretting that others use their standard. OGL was not widely used here, D&D never became the standard. The local OSR people were the ones most worried. And not a lot, we didn't think WotC would care for micro projects that barely broke even.
In the short run i ageee, but in the long run i'm not so sure. I think you're right that hasbro and musk can't affect those of us already fully entrenched in the hobby, but they can certainly turn off a lot of new or more casual players. 5e is the entry point for the vast majority of new players and it shapes their first impression of ttrpgs. If they don't like it they're more likely to play a videogame than try Pathfinder or OSE.
exactly! I feel like this video and most of the comments are not thinking this through. A vast number of brand new players are going to accept whatever WOTC spews out which will affect getting a good gaming group down the road.
@@sadius24 Our great fear in the 90's was to go the way of Märklin train collectors and historical wargaming. A slowly aging, non-regenerating group of collectors who have resources and time to spend but slowly age out. Things were not as company and brand dependent here. Being an association meant we could do our own outreach.
Bro, it’s owned by a company that called the PINKERTONS on someone over Magic the Gathering. Musk can’t really tank a reputation much farther, because WoTC already threw it into the bottom of a trash can. If we want to bring in new players, we should find them ourselves.
Yeah, this is basically the problem. Sure, as existing players with existing groups, we can keep playing D&D (or find other RPGs) whatever happens to the D&D IP, but it's naive as hell to think the D&D brand doesn't affect the hobby as a whole. Historically, D&D slumps have been slumps for the whole rpg world and D&D resurgences have been boosts. D&D has the brand recognition and ad budget to bring in new players on a scale other games simply don't. And some of those new players, if they hang around long enough will pick up other systems, home brew their own or just keep playing the old version when a new edition comes out they don't like. But that only works when the version of D&D being pushed does appeal to those new players. If they bounce off the first experience, they're not likely to try others.
Absolutely nailed it. The "persons" in control of D&D are the people at your gaming table, use the things you love, ignore the things you hate, steal things from other games, make up your own stuff and let people do what they want. Totally agree that more games should be Creative Commons licensed, thanks for licensing your stuff that way. CC licensing gives people the freedom to remix, revise and make a given game their own.
@@BillSmithBooks It might be a thing with Scandinavia, but everyone is part of associations here. When RPGs arrived, players naturally formed clubs and associations. Most of it is pretty boring. Use of community centers, ministry of culture funds, newsletters etc. The tedious bits not directly part of games.
I mean this guy to my knowledge only uses the basic I made it it's mine copywrite lisnce on all his stuff... Which D&D 5e and New D&D 5E use one of the most open pre made copywrite lisnces their is well above they bvasst majority of media... Only exclipsed by a few people and c ompanies who don't use copyright at all... which is most common in the linuux softear space and amouyng a few Vidoe game muisic cproducers... Also we all know that isn't true as it it was most D&D player would make an OG game foer their group like historical war gamers tend to do... But they don't so however owns the IP does... Which is WOTC at the momet... Which even if you want to play the older pre WOTC editions you are still under WOTC control as directly as giving them money for a legel PDF or indirectly of spreading the word about D&D... Like their is a reason why copywrote law exists... IT's because like patants they are extremely powerful and can set up a family for life if they own the copywrite like in the lord and rings case... Which the only reason why Copyright can be bad if it's abused like what disney,nintendo and GW are known for as well as TSR and old WOtC not current....
3:37 This is the main reason why my group primarily plays pathfinder. I'm not an elitist for the system, but it's just so much more convenient to play when all the important information is freely accessible online.
@@asepsisaficionado7376 The possibility of making your own wiki with references, or collaborating on one, has changed a lot. I think print on demand changed things too. A lot of the risk in self-publishing went away. Instead of a min 500 prints and fear that you would need to store a pallet at home you could let someone like Drivethru do it.
@@wesleystreet I sometimes like fewer spells, with little variation. You get one level 1 zap, no almost-duplicates. Spells is usually something new players need instruction in. They can intuitively understand "Torch illuminates room" or "Shotgun shoots goon" but they have probably never heard of Sleep. I can do so with three random starting spells.
Nah. I agree that the OSR should position itself as the quasi punk/counter cultural alternative to the current year corporate IP, but we can’t ignore the sheer hegemonic influence brand name DnD has, especially on influencing and drawing in new players, not to mention the majority of players on any given day are 5e players by far and wide. That amount of influence can’t be ignored no matter how you slice it. I mean, what’s the point of having thousands of little zine and boutique variants of DnD when hardly anyone is playing them?
I was converted to a Folk D&Der by this very channel some time ago. I used to be a Corpo D&Der. Which I think stemmed from my history as a Wargamer. In Wargaming it tends to be important to play the same rules the same way, because you often play with people at a club or shop that you don't know. House rules etc become difficult. But, after the OGL fiasco I called quits on Corpo D&D. And was sold that Folk D&D is the way to go. I landed on Worlds Without Numbers as my game to GM. It's a nice bridge between Nu D&D and OSR which I like. And I couldn't be happier.
I still would say I'm "into D&D" but I haven't bought a D&D book since 2nd edition. Nothing against any of the writers, it's just not how I engage with it
Yeah, D&D has only ever been getting better and better over 50 years, because there are ever-evolving and ever-growing options, systems, settings, and ideas to draw upon throughout the hobby.
@@z2eiCthulhu horror is also massive and CoC is the second or third largest game and there are great adjacent games. d20 fantasy is the largest spectrum by far when combining dnd, pathfinder and all the smaller systems but not the only one.
Precisely. I've been DM'ing a 2E campaign now for 30+ years. I've never understood a lot of these contemporary debates. The game is 'owned' by the players. Full stop.
Dungeons and Dragon's is a brand owned by a company. The folk tradition we engage is is called Role Playing. D&D is a Role Playing Game, and there are other companies (privately held) that make games like Traveller, Runequest, They Came From..., Exalted, Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk, GURPS, and more.
Intellectual property is fake. The government gives WotC a monopoly on the use of that name, but that doesn't mean I have to respect it. Any d20-based game I play about fantasy characters looting dungeons is D&D to me, regardless of system.
This I agree with. People are so eager to say "Roleplay games = DND." They don't. DND can and Has been ruined by the current owners. But that doesn't ruin ttrpg and that doesn't stop you from playing other versions of DND.
I agree with this if we are talking about the game itself, but I think many people are (rightly) concerned about the brand as well as the game--people who care about the Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance, people who care about Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. I think just as people argue over what's good and proper for these games, the same people fear what will happen to these things should there be a change in management. People already complain about how these things have changed over the years and each person invested in these IPs endemic to D&D cares that the owners at the very least let them enjoy those things as well. And what about books? What if POD and PDFs for certain books is killed off? What if it could be improved? What if companies maintaining good working relationships with the brand like Goodman Games lost the ability to make their cool reprints of classic adventures? These are not end of the world situations, but I think the constant issue of who owns D&D and how they are handling it does matter for those reasons if nothing else.
Whether or not Elon purchases Hasbro or WotC, the leadership needs to change. I have lost all faith in Hasbro and WotC after the recent controversies regarding the OGL, the Pinkertons, and the bad blood with Larian Studios.
@@jeffmacdonald9863 Elmo’s brand these days seems to be mostly attention-whoring for adulation from fash and fash-adjacent social media muppets. If he actually had the first clue about what’s actually going on in the hobby, he’d have been funding NuTSR in their copyright shitfest
I agree. They'll end up going to various 5e hacks at the end of the day and about half of them will just not care and continue playing D&D but it would likely give us another mass exodus that would break a few more chunks off that D&D hegemony which is always, always a good thing. D&D is an aggressively lukewarm ruleset owned by a predatory company and it deserves to lose its strangle hold on the entry point of the TTRPG market.
@@Jeebus-un6zz D&D wasn't the dominant game here. RPGs went big when local language publishers picked up in the late 80's. If people have nostalgia for anything, it's Dragonbane etc. The whole discussion feels weird. Am I supposed to be on a different team than my mate who plays 5e when they aren't DMing Dolmenwood with our circle.
@@Jeebus-un6zzD&D is synonymous with roleplaying games for the same reason that "Nintendo" was synonymous with video games in the late 80s and early 90s. It's "good enough" to provide a baseline experience, and entertaining enough that people are willing to stick with it. If you don't give it that credit, you won't understand how to change things.
"The idea of monolithic entity that controls (things) is comforting... (they) could stop... the bad ideas... the bad people... IS AN ILLUSION." If people could escape this belief the world would be a much better place. Not just D&D... but politics and religion. Just like D&D... what makes things good... is what you do with those people at your table and in your reach.
Thank you for pointing that out! The continuing idea that the illithids have always controlled D&D was one of my must favorite secret conspiracies which no one else believed! Oh those deviously tricky Mindflayers!❗
The reason I began writing Out Of The Box Encounters was to give others out there a tool that was missing at that time. What started as an online series of articles was free to access. That was something I personally needed when I started, so I made it for others like me who needed that content. And so it goes for many others. Be the change you want to see, they say
Unfortunately, Ben, while you're certainly correct that D&D is a folk tradition - you are stubbornly ignoring the fact that the vast majority of people who play the game do not bring the level of creativity, effort, or DIY experimentation to bear on the game that you are describing. And the perspective you are representing here is a kind of very-dedicated gamer POV. And so, for the vast majority of the hobby - people who play off the shelf modules and hew very close to the rules as written in the PHB because it's all they know or all they choose to know or all they have time and inclination to know - what WotC does very much IS the hobby. We can wish it weren't so. We can assert that it's not the best way to game. We can point to the many other systems and ways of playing we think are better. But what we cannot do is change the fact that the way we wish it were is very much NOT the way it IS. And so, for that reason, what happens to the D&D game and the IP very much does matter - to hundreds of thousands - and even millions of people. People who don't conform to your (or my) idea of what the hobby should be, or is at its best. But people who are not therefore idiots or pariahs or monsters. People who matter. People whose games matter.
@@1979fsa 3.5e and 5e are still OGL. 5e is also CC-BY. Licensees can choose between them for 5e. In theory WotC could try to revoke the OGL again but they have no incentive to do so given that 5e (which is what is commercially valuable) would still be CC-BY (which is more favorable to licensees than OGL).
The OGL was not something WotC did. You cannot copyright game mechanics, according to the US Supreme Court. The OGL was WotC pretending they were doing everyone a favor, because they'd hoped it would steer sales back to D&D 3e. The OGL cannot go away, because it does not exist. Anyone can make anything that uses D&D's mechanics (or any other game's mechanics, for that matter). Also- >Paid verification is objectively better than 'Selective Special People' account verification
I feel like I am almost crisis fatigued when it comes to D&D. The OGL was a legit crisis, but now it seems like every D&D issue is a new "crisis" and its dialed up to 10. I just feel indifferent towards it all now. Which makes me think, if all these "crisis" continue and there is another OGL crisis, am I going to care? I am already worn out, 60-70% of D&D stuff on RUclips for me is negative. I wanna enjoy the hobby.
I might be unusually lucky, but on a few separate occasions I've found new players are quite open-minded about the rule-set presented, as long as the style and atmosphere is what they expected (and as long as I'm prepared to guide their use of the dice).
There seems to be a lot of hand-wringing from the tolerant and inclusive lot about being told to be more tolerant and inclusive (if you know what i mean). I'm not a fan of being told how to behave, what i can and can't say/do etc in a fantasy realm in case it triggers another player because we have a SESSION ZERO to sort all that stuff out! For example, in my first campaign i played a female drow rogue and somewhere along the line our DM decided that a gnoll mage wanted to marry her. This was not communicated at all prior to that session, so i reluctantly agreed to progress the game. This was a relatively clean game up to this point, but when i privately asked our artificer to make me a chastity belt for the gnoll to prevent nighttime shenanigans (i'm not into ERP) the DM seemed a bit taken aback and subsequently killed the gnoll a couple of games later. I was a bit annoyed but what was more annoying was bothering our wizard to cast speak with animals just so we could understand what he was saying every time. If you are so poorly socialised that you need those kinds of 'rules' in order for your game to function, maybe some introspection and emotional processing is in order.
I spent some time in prison and ended up DMing a campaign because of this. I don't have it that memorized though I basically just did the 3e adventure game rules with some extra stuff I remembered/made up. For dice we used a mixture of d6 and coins.
Yes. If he was serious about saving D&D, he'd just buy WotC or just D&D itself from them. No need to put in $8B when you only need $100M for D&D and $300M for WotC - probably less.
@@BW022 Hasbro absolutely would not divest WotC. In 2023, WotC was the only division of Hasbro that was turning a profit (largely from royalties from BG3). Looking holistically, Hasbro's biggest problems are that (a) they short-sightedly divested the long-term relationship of Power Rangers with the Super Sentai franchise and Bandai and brought Power Rangers TV and toy production in-house, which backfired hugely because the Dino/Cosmic Fury toys were AWFUL (Power Rangers has always been a "cheap" production because the production company saved money by reusing the expensive action sequences from Super Sentai) and (b) a decade and a half of awful Transformers movies that chased the peripheral audience of 19-49 year old men over focusing on presenting a good movie to the core audience of kids 18 and under meant that the Transformers toyline was cratering at the same time. Those two lines were the biggest sellers in the toy world.
To be fair he wasn't being serious when he said he would buy Twitter, but the idiot somehow managed to bumble his way into a legally binding contract to buy the platform for a meme amount way higher than it's actual worth, so you never know
Absolutely agree. I can't pretend to know him, but he strikes me as someone who's desperate for attention and validation; the type of person who'll jump on whatever topic his followers are talking about, and often lose interest when a new one comes along.
TSR hit a limit on books as well, in its older era. A group of players can buy the core books, maybe two sets if they want to speed things up. A few special math education dice. But then what? They got pretty much all they need. Very few local designers here could quit their day jobs. It wasn't a job you made money on.
Perhaps I've had an unusual experience with gaming, but even back in the 80s, virtually everyone I knew played RAW and if a new edition came out, making changes that they didn't like, they played it in a desire to play the "official" game. Even if someone is willing to ignore the official rules in favour of house rules, it may still matter to them who owns the IP because maybe they are hoping to see someone release an adventure featuring the Orcs that they know and love, but those Orcs no longer exist (in the official game). Ultimately, it doesn't impact me either way, as I no longer play D&D, or if I do, I play using my old Rules Cyclopedia. Mostly, I would be playing ShadowDark or Dragonbane for that D&D- style experience, or a game like Savage Worlds, Fate, or something else.
Most people play RAW or at slight variance to it. The social element of playing the 'same game' is important to a lot of people, and some want to defer to alleged expert authority.
@@NevisYsbryd that's interesting because I am constantly hearing that "no one plays RAW because the whole point of old-school gaming is to make your own rules."
Yeah, it is very much not the case that this desire to play the official game comes from modern video gaming as Ben suggested. All the edition wars since even the advent of AD&D and hell all the arguing over house rules and gaming principles for the original game in the 1970s prove that idea wrong. I think the real issue comes from consumer culture, of which both pen and paper games and video games take part in. There are always people who want to argue about the rules, but people who approach the rules uncritically will certainly be affected by the wind changes in the hobby and that grinds the gears of the ones obsessed with the rules one way or the other.
@@kolardgreene3096 We thought 2e tried to finally answer all the questions so they wouldn't need an FAQ. It was very wordy on special situations. Reading OD&D is just hard. It's like reading a combination of personal reference notes and stream of consciousness. I can understand if players then kept asking stuff.
@@jcraigwilliams70 Chaosium did not change Call of Cthulhu that much, but each edition would have little polishing. They would gather up spot rules, little rules for specific situations, and add ones they believed generally useful to the rules. Like a rule for car chases, so you knew if a T-Ford can outrun a byakhee. Spot rules were usually written in adventures where a weird situation was not covered in the main rules. My favourite is the rule for how long a fed firing a pistol in space will tumble and roll from the recoil.
Ben, I watch every single one of your videos and I barely ever comment but I feel compelled to say something about this one. What a wonderful take on the broader world of "Dungeons and Dragons" as a hobby. It's inspiring to think about it in these terms. Thank you.
Yeah, just have to be careful of those players that hear you're playing D&D and go buy a bunch of books from the current edition after you repeatedly told them not to buy any books and that you were planning on playing 1st Edition. (And WOTC has *always* been scared that *someone, somewhere was having unregulated fun.* Or "not-organized-play-league-approved fun," I guess.)
In my opinion. If you have a set of rules you like (or a few as most do) A group of pals. Dnd will always be alright for you. The better you get, the more you’re able to homebrew and mix things in. That’s when you’re truly free.
I created a Rogue Trader game set in GW’s Warhammer 40k universe using FASA’s Shadowrun 3rd edition. My players still called it D&D night when we played it. I have 800 lbs of roleplaying books. Do you have any clue how many books that actually is? I can’t even tell you how many different games there are in my library, because some of them are still packed away in boxes that haven’t been opened in years. WotC can’t control what I do with my books. They can do whatever they want with the books they release, but that doesn’t change my game in the slightest. I control that.
I basically buy zero hasbro/wotc content to run any ttrpgs - that being said if WOTC was steered in a better direction, and started pushing out better content than the slop they've been putting out I'm on board. Talented 3rd party creators could get more widespread recognition if they were brought on board and stuff.
Why would a man who loves AI generated slop, do any of that? No all he will do is replace most of the art with AI generated trash that is filled with 4chan memes.
The greatest thing Gary did for games was to create the greatest tomes ever. Ben, you or someone like you pointed out Gary had a quality requirement for the 1st edition publishing. Mistakes he maybe made, but we can find little fault in him since NO ONE had gone where he did. It is easy to look back and judge. But if you didn't live back then, then you don't know what you are talking about.
I agree 100% that you can play your own game, and so you don't have to buy the official WotC rules. I disagree with your assertion that the ownership of the biggest brand in RPGs doesn't matter. Like it or not, D&D dominates and represents our entire hobby both in terms of participants and to those outside of the hobby. The ownership determines the rules set, the look, feel, reach and legacy of the hobby. Do we even have an OSR if different owners came in before 4e and decided to put forth a reorganization of previous rules sets (OSE, OSRIC, S&W, etc.) rather than 4e? Do we have D&D 5e if they had just fired everyone associated with 4e (which they essentially renamed parts of 5e...) and just made something else? Does 5e have a DM shortage if different owners hired creatives with a different philosophy? Does the legacy of D&D look different if different ownership had fired staff that disparaged a large swath of their customers? How does the hobby look if there was no OGL crisis (do to a different direction by ownership)? There's too many examples to name. I agree that most players don't read the rules. I would also add that the vast majority of people not in favor of Elon Musk taking over Hasbro don't play the game, aren't worried about game mechanics, and/or being prevented from playing D&D. I also think it's funny that suddenly WotC and Hasbro aren't the villains anymore. I guess proven bad actors are still better than the unknown actor.
I agree that in principle Musk doesn't change to reality of DnD. What he brings to the table is a possible reduction of "forced liberal ideology" in the brand... Potentially reverting it back to just a fantasy game system. He also reopens the door to connecting with Larian Studios. He also has deep enough pockets to help with new DnD media stuff like a second DnD movie or Dragonlance series. And he's more likely to not feel threatened by small creators who help build the brand. I'm struggling to think of a negative. So for me... It's either positive, or a wash. For investors it's definitely positive. For people who hate Elon Musk... I guess they're going to be feeling negative about it.
We still run 3.5 with a bunch of stuff taken from Pathfinder and 5e. After so many years the game runs exactly like we like it. Bringing in a new player (which we just did recently) is a nightmare as there is a ton of house rules and changes but he doesn't need to know that stuff to enjoy playing.
People are so eager to say "Roleplay games = DND." They don't. DND can and Has been ruined by the current owners. But that doesn't ruin ttrpg and that doesn't stop you from playing other versions of DND.
D&D was never my piece of cake as a roleplayer for about 40 years I run so many games I lost count. No one I Know was socialized in D&D. I was the only reading some of the stuff. It is mainly anAnerican phenomenon that touched more with the computer games as they have with pen and paperm
I can imagine Elon Musk, with his peculiarly retro-futuristic ideas, moving D&D _completely_ away from those old books and create a purely digital subscription model. Remember, his driverless taxi has no pedals nor steering wheel. It is not a huge stretch from a car you can't drive to a D&D that players cannot tinker with. I don't think he actually cares about D&D, Magic: the Gathering, Monopoly, or Jenga. He cares about getting his name in the news.
I think that it's good to have structure. Especially for people who are younger or more inexperienced. However, this is one of those hobbies. That's really cool because you don't need to spend a lot to get into it.
I think there is some importance to the first-party D&D. Like, if the product degrades, then “Playing D&D” might be said to refer to playing Pathfinder, kinda like “take and Uber” means to take a Lyft now. Granted, my experience with the game is exactly what you described here.
I don't know that I agree. Yes, D&D is a series of thousands, millions of games. But WoTC decides where the general of averages of those games centers. And every iteration, every shift from art direction, it pulls the game in a certain direction that is not what D&D should be. As that anchor keeps shifting, as more players age out, the landscape will be almost irrevocably changed. The only thing I can say, is that Musk probably will not change the game rapidly. The change will be slow and ongoing; just as they have been so far, through future editions, but there will be change. For better or worse. As an older player you know what D&D is, you've been exposed to prior editions. You know what you can get from the game, what you want from the game, how to stylize it because you see the anchor where it was. Newer generations who see this new D&D, they don't see the grit and the epic fantasy of old unless they go out looking for it. Instead they see the new editions, they see plastic characters, they see something very fake and manufactured. They will build their worlds on the perspective of that anchor point, and unless they do the actual legwork to look into the past editions and see what D&D has been like, they'll never know it's a completely different game they're playing. It's not about the rules. It's about the culture, the image, the perspective. The vision of the game. I don't think you can tell me with a straight face that if you look at a D&D book; the player manual, DM guide, and especially the Monster Manual; that what you see there, the art and the theme, does not influence your perspective of what kinds of worlds or adventures you would create. And that's what is at jeopardy. Once you crack open the book, you're already influenced and directed before you even read word, before you even express a syllable of text. Just from the images you see there. This isn't at all about us as veteran players, it's about those who come after us and how they perceive the game. Our perspective is different because we have the vision, we of course can say "Well, I'll just run my game like X", because we've perceived and therefore have been able to conceive "X" before. Expecting this from newer generations is similar to trying to explain the color orange to someone who's never seen it. They might get around to understanding orange, in a roundabout way, but it's not where the path D&D currently leads will take them, not willingly.
underrated comment, I'm continously shocked how educated people like Ben could have such a blindspot for the cultural drift that is UNDENIABLY happening despite the idea of a "folk tradition" (which incidentally is nonsense, its an inherently niche subculture)
"The only thing I can say, is that Musk probably will not change the game rapidly." Like the only thing Musk has consistently done is fuck shit up at high speeds. He doesn't buy something to make slow and careful changes to it.
Elon Musk is a talent manager. If all he does is get rid of all the blue-hairs and DEI hires, and brings in good fantasy writers, he would have saved D&D.
The only real concern I would have is that he gets lawsuit-happy against the other RPGs. My first major hobby was guitar and let me tell you: if you're not familiar with Gibson Guitars and their fascistic attempts to "protect" their IP, then you'll be in for a surprise of what a company will do with the right asshole in charge. That's what I'd be worried about in this situation: if Musk gets his mitts on D&D, who's to say he won't sue the bejesus out of every other TTRPG publisher for "infringing" on what he considers to be D&D's "copyright." That's not saying he's making justified claims, but say if he thinks the d20 system or certain class or race names should be D&D exclusives, he can just keep filing frivolous lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit until these publishers either run out of money or patience, whichever happens first. God forbid what would happen to the retroclones and the countless modules and supplements made for them. And these are just the afterthoughts from how he would drive the game into the dirt and cause a mass exodus of the greater D&D community. Even if people stick with 5e and 2024 despite Musk's interference, you're still going to see people swear off of it because he'd mess up D&DBeyond: forcing whatever nonsense he wants into the system without offering an ability to opt out of it, and they won't want to give him their money for 5e materials, if they even still make them. I'd also be banking on him reversing the OGL, so players would be forced to only buy official D&D products.
Stop using D$D has a word for TTRPGs. Every time you do that around a normie, you advertise for WoTC. It's Marketing 101. There is a reason Hasbro bought D$D and changed it completely instead of making their own game.
What I "buy into" is D&D being created by passionate people who actually care about its legacy, and think of it more like an artform as opposed to a product. Hasbro/WotC see it as a product first (objectively at this point, and I would love to see one argue otherwise because it would be complete comedy), and therefore are acting accordingly. Perhaps, though I do doubt this, Musk could course correct. WotC, IMO, are assholes and not worthy of respect because they took my game (and the game many others rightly call "their game") and turned into McDonalds for pussies. If that upsets you, you are part of the problem. There is NO POSSIBLE way Musk does a worse job.
I seriously do not understand why this getting so much traction. Waiting for some billionaire edgelord to swoop in and "save" D&D is...well, pathetic. If the fans don't like the direction wotc is taking, then STOP lapping up all the garbage they are putting out. Vote with your wallet. That is the only way you will necessitate change.
Pretty big blindspot here in that you're just talking about home games. Lots of casual modern D&D players just go with what the books say. Lots of Adventurers League, convention games, and other organized public games end up going with the official rules either willingly or unwillingly. I ran an open table at my university for a year and the things wotc put out directly came up and impacted my table because they are official publications built into dndbeyond. Stuff the Brand does impacts the AP shows that lots of people watch, that act as the gateway for many people into the hobby, and can even trickle its way out into wider society.
i find it downright cynical when people like Ben refuse to acknowledge this. whether you like it or not, what wotc is doing will damage and already has damaged even his own game table in ways that aren't immediately obvious, and that we cannot predict. that, and on wotc's side, historical revisionism is an eternal disgrace of the contemporary man, a show of lacking empathy and ultimately of lacking moral intelligence.
Great video. Agreed that once you have the books, you have "D&D for life" - unless you only got D&D Beyond, in which case you are renting the rules and good luck with that. The one side effect of WotC / Musk / Any new owner making new editions of D&D has though is that it continues to slice up the playing community. At this point, walking into a friendly local gaming store and asking "Do you have any D&D games being run here?" is virtually pointless. What version of D&D? B/X? BECMI? AD&D, 2E 3E, 3.5E, 4E, 5E, 5E2024? Or the off-shoots and near clones they have spawned: OSE, Shadowdark, Pathfinder 1E, 2E, White Box, Basic Fantasy, DCC, etc, etc, etc. Every new edition further slices up the playing community making it harder to find someone actually playing the version of "D&D" that you enjoy. The ironic end result is while the TTRPG hobby has never been more popular, its also never been harder to find a group playing the D&D you love.
I see this a bit differently. Mostly because I am in the camp that defines Dungeons and Dragons(or any other system) as the products officially releases by the rights holder. The thing you describe as Dungeons and Dragons I call "the table top experience". It's independent of what products/systems you use. Also independent of homebrew or by the book play.
This is the Kleenex vs. facial tissue or Dumpster vs. commercial trash bin argument. D&D has been around for so long and IP laws have changed so much that saying something is D&D if it only has the D&D (TM) logo on it is silly. D&D and its clones are so much of the TTRPG hobby that everything else is a statistical rounding error. The table top role-play experience is D&D with a few other games thrown in for people who prefer different genres or want a different play experience. When Pathfinder was released at the same time as D&D 4E, people went to Pathfinder because it felt "more like D&D" than the miniatures strategy game-with-randomized-box-sets that WotC released, precisely because it WAS more like D&D than 4E. At least the D&D most people knew. Pathfinder 1E was essentially D&D 3.75. D&D falls so far into the "feelings not facts" realm that there are gamers who consider D&D a completely separate hobby from every other TTRPG on the market.
@wesleystreet Why do you say that? Let me guess you are American and think McDonalds is the only place to eat? No one in my circle of friends ever even played D&D but all are roleplayer. You play a trademark. If one wants to eat well then a trademark is the last. place to gom
I resonate with the thought since ultimately, what brings D&D down is the logic of capitalism. It is a brand that thrives in being the biggest and better at selling the idea of RPGs, while not necessarily being the better system nor being particularly profitable at its core. The OSR community thrives because they are ultimately not interested in shareholder value, they are interested in sharing their ideas. Not a lot of market there, but a lot of innovation. That said, it would be a shame to see the premier brand in the RPG segment being overtaken by a billionaire edgelord in his quest for power and who knows what else (respect of the family that despises him? Who the hell knows), especially as the brand is a strong entryway into all other forms of RPG
@@vincerp The largest national publishers in my nation rarely quit their day job. The dream is to not operate at loss. I don't think it's just OSR people. PbtA looks like it allows people to screw around and experiment with basic rules.
Well said. I've seen a couple different opinions about this whole thing, and I'm glad to see that there is still some sanity that recognizes that ownership changing from one corporate owner to another is not going to "fix" D&D
because D&D is a collection of games. That's why I did my own frankestein with card games. Flesh and Blood for combat, Earthborne Rangers for exploration, Fiasco for social, Cartographer for maps to explore.
I could not agree more. The fact that there was any sort of melt down about D&D on either side is mental to me. Your imagination is the game. Hasbro or anyone else who isn't sitting at your table doesn't matter.
The game is a SHARED world of imagination, the DM being the custodian of said world. When half the participants want to work as a barista and go to prom, there is a serious disconnect.
That's exactly what I missed in the pen & paper discussions. The freedom, to play how ever the player wants and that it doesn't matter, if rules are 'offical'. Good video!
Well, said. We have never played RAW ever at any table I have ever played at. Then as new gaming concepts come up we merge edition rules or other game system mechanics into our game.
He is a disingenuous troll. He doesn't care about DnD or Gygax. He just wants attention, so he's deliberately incendiary. It's just culture war posturing. Trolls just want attention, don't give it to em
'It is the spirit of the game, not the letter of the rules which is important. Never hold to the letter written, nor allow some barracks room lawyer to force quotations from the rule books upon you, if it goes against the obvious intent of the game.' - Gary Gygax 1979
It is interesting how much of this comment section is some version of "I have no horse in this race, but the pain this could inflict to hypothetical people I don't like is funny to me." I figured most people outgrew 4chan when they stopped being 16, but there is a whole lot of "ebin lel I'm gonna get the popcorn for the meltdowns xD" among the retroclone crowd, huh?
The "WotC is erasing Gygax!" thing feels really arbitrary and instituted from someone on high trying to cause hatred, because it's literally based on the animated part of the credits of the D&D movie going "Hasbro's Dungeons & Dragons" in the same way that the Battleship movie said "Hasbro's Battleship" or the Transformers movies say "Hasbro's Transformers." Standard brand-identification language for the same series of films, in other words.
I think the problem with this take is that people play in groups and not everyone has the luxury to just pick and choose a group that precisely matches every aspect of how they want to play the game. Compromises are needed. Furthermore there's only so much you can really homebrew stuff before it becomes too much or even before you just have a different game entirely. Yes, WOTC can't dictate how you play dungeons and dragons. But it can actually change what content we have access to as a baseline in the first place. Sure I could just not buy new content that doesn't please me, but WOTC has shown a willingness to retroactively change things and erase content and to promote a baseline rework of the rules not as a new edition but as an extension of the original. Thus who "controls" D&D is important. Even if they don't dictate what happens at the table they can influence the available options.
I think you misunderstood the point. WotC does not control those things: game groups control those things. WotC can't change what content you have access to as long as you have books and a willingness to either homebrew or buy content from other distributors (Paizo, KoboldPress, Chaosium, idk). But maybe I'm misunderstanding your point. How could WotC change things retroactively? As a gaming group, you could just say, "we're not doing that", right? Same with D&D 5.5: if you want to play the 2014 edition, you can. To me, that's the difference between Folk D&D and Corpo D&D. If your local yarn store doesn't carry purple anymore, there are plenty of other yarn stores who do.
@@WhiteOwlet I did understand the point, but I think you misunderstood mine. Yes, **I** may have a willingness to homebrew or maybe to look for other systems or anything of the sort. But that doesn't mean that whatever players and/or GM you may realistically be able to play with do. Further even if you are willing, overhauling any major change by introducing something new or restoring the old is a lot harder than it may seem. How much time can you really waste making it all from basically scratch? Another assumption you're making is that we have the physical books. I can't speak for everyone but I haven't been able to justify the purchase of a D&D group because I'm finishing my master's degree and I had neither the income nor the time to justify it. But groups can go out of print or be changed in future prints, and especially online. In fact what content you can purchase on D&D beyond has been changed. But even if this wasn't the case just the fact that instead of adding new content (or in addition to be fair) WOTC wants changes to core components of the game without actually going into a new edition means some players will want to use the changes or just be used to them if they are newer. Unless your entire group is on the same page about everything then what the default sanctioned by WOTC is will have an influence on what gets played at the table. Even if you are on the same page you'll often need to use existing resources for simple pragmatic reasons that there's only so much effort you can put into it, only so much a single or couple of people can create, only so much time in the day. The video is right that WOTC can't dictate what you do at the table, but I disagree with the idea that it doesn't matter who's in control because no one individual has that kind of control either and those decisions are not made in a vaccuum.
@@opinionofmine3238 It seems like we're in very different situations, then. For example, I do have the time and energy to make changes to games if I want to, I do have the physical books, and I have conversations with my group about rules and expectations. It's a shame you have to rely on D&D Beyond, and I feel for you. I hope you're able to find a stable group in the future and either switch to a cheaper system or get some money to buy the physical books, if you want.
Hear hear! I figured this out when I was six...and Gygax quietly acknowledged it himself...the books and dice are just PROPS. All you need to play is imagination
There are far more things that the video game mindset has crept back into than just what you mention. This hobby got them started and influenced their development. Several years later, a generation or two of people growing up with access to that "style" of playing a game has come full circle.
Very inciteful, I have often looked at how video game rpgs simply cripple my experience vs what my ttrpg enables me to create. Love the folk tradition idea, very true. I have often argued that the game "you" have at "your" table is unique regardless how closely or loosely you follow rules.
I've never understood the "Hasbro is ruining D&D" people...I hate Hasbro since they're an awful company (something that Elon Musk definitely wouldnt fix LoL), but whatever they do with it has never really affected me (granted, I don't like D&D to begin with) but I see it exactly like you do, what Hasbro sells me is a package of rules that I can use or disregard as I please, and if they stop making things I like I never need to buy anything they do again. Personally I think people just want things to be angry and outraged about 🤷♀️ I understand the MtG players, since MtG has more structure (tho even then you can run your own tables with whatever expansions and cards you want). But TTRPGs? I don't get it at all.
Yeah, a lot of people tend to like to complain about stupid stuff. People forget that the old editions of D&D will always exist. So even if you hate 5E or the hypothetical 6E is a total disaster, nothing is stopping anyone from going out and getting their favorite older edition and playing it.
@@terryr9052 Well keep in mind that Pathfinder rose to popularity mainly because a lot of D&D fans didn't like 4E. In fact one of 5E's main goals was to reunite the fanbase. While inevitably whatever is called D&D will always be popular, there's already evidence of what happens when the latest edition isn't well liked and it's not some apocalypse to the hobby in general.
How can you call a Great Value Ultra Soft Facial Tissue a Kleenex if you don’t buy the Kleenex brand? A very similar reason. It means something more to society than a brand. Matthew Colville has a great video called “Arguing about D&D in the 1970s” it shows how even when Dungeons & Dragons was the only published role-playing game. It was still played differently by everyone. So from the beginning of Dungeons & Dragons, the game developed in a culture where you played it how you wanted to, and the rules meant something different to every group. That is the core of D&D.
People can identify with and engage with hobbies as they see fit, IMO. I'm not out here to gatekeep folks on what does and doesnt consitute playing DnD, I'm just advocating for em to try indie RPG's too!
@@QuestingBeast Well yes, but by that definition they are also simultaneously playing Soccer, Hockey, Basketball, Water Polo, Backgammon, Poker and I Spy. Announcing "I am using none of the rules from this game but am still playing it" is nonsensical.
I agree with your main point. I do think there are things that could be done to improve D&D from the top down. The current rule system is not that easy to hack well, just because of the sheer number of player facing options. It also doesn't support lots play styles anywhere near as much as it could to the point where I kinda don't mind throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I think your argument is directionally correct - we don’t need a corpo for our hobby to survive. But I also think it’s a little naive to say WoTC isn’t the most influential stakeholder across D&D and RPGs generally. So though poor leadership won’t destroy d&d, good leadership can revitalize D&D and steer the ship towards being more consumer friendly.
Really.... so TSR was some sort of massively successful company when WotC bought them out back in 1997? And 5e did not revitalize the game at all? It is fading again but it is still stronger today than when WotC bought it.
@@nctpti2073 sure WotC made it bigger.....did they make the game better? most of us old people will tell you no. 5e sucks dude. they had an ok thing going with 3.5 and then poof its gone. just look at final fantasy from the 80s and 90s and then look at the last 10 years of them and you will see where I'm going. removing complexity and dumbing things down to appeal to more people is great for the bottom line and shareholders and the intellectually lazy or folks that cannot or will not learn what it takes to run and play mechanically deep games and it comes with a cost of the core players who can just play the version they want and not buy books lol. you can like the new story telling above combat and resource management , its cool. we will see in 20 years when my generation is dead or still playing AD+D2E in the nursing home how many young people will stay with it and keep the lights on I guess
@@douglasseelye5073 Define 'better' or 'worse.' Most objective measures would say the more commercially successful version must be more commercially successful for some actual reason. If it was just really good marketing, they could have sold more 3.5 or 4 without having to spend a dime creating anything new. You say it is dumbed down, but I remember the ranting over THAC0, over having to do simple math. D&D has never been Rolemaster or Fantasy Hero. And we are that much further from WWII or even from 'Nam. Finding *anyone* with any real concept of tactics seems easier said than done. But can you give some examples as to what was so tactically deep with 3.5? I don't remember it.
One of the main reasons I find the OSR to be so compelling is the fact that it truly is grassroots in origin. The movement isn't guided by a faction or officials (as much as some people might believe it to be). It's of, by, and for the community and grows and breathes with it, incorporating ideas, advice, and mechanics after rigourous tinkering. A corporate approach, while a unified front, could never adapt as meaningfully as a collective based on decades of accumulated wisdom.
I'd be apt to disagree it is very much guided by individuals at a fundamental level. Notice the rampant support for mothership? If you dig into it you quickly begin tracing everything back to the same groups, mods and publishers.
I agree, but two contrary points: (1) Most new players come to D&D through the current edition of the game. Over time, that affects a shift in what the average player thinks D&D is. There's only so much that us old-school DMs can do to hold back the tide. (2) Non-tabletop D&D properties (PC games, etc.) will use the current edition rules and aesthetics. Not only does this reinforce point #1, but it requires us to either get on board or bow out. I don't care for 5e, but I have to tolerate it if I want to play Baldur's Gate 3, for example.
I have played D&D since 1981 and still have my first edition books. Although the game has been updated many times, I have never felt the need to update to another version, so I have no idea what the current controversy is about. Its not like they can repo the ideas for adventures that exist in my mind.
It's not a matter of ruining or saving. You obviously can homebrew. The point is a lot of people want quality products to purchase for the game they enjoy. Something Wotc has been failing at
The biggest difference though that I don't think was mentioned this video is that if Elon Musk was personally in charge add Dungeons & Dragons he could totally take away the osr and anything else that allows third-party content to make D&D . He is absolutely that much of a greedy, vindictive Man baby
"It's this very fact that made DnD so notoriously difficult for corporations to monetize" Is because of this I published my system like open domain content.. I think it's the way that fit better for this kind of product. And yes, if you are a worried about getting money, you always can PYW putting the price (not the value) in the customers, according to "how much they think they received", pushing you to focus in offering a good tool/experience and not just become rich (yes.. we know who you are....). Edit: I finish the video and realized he ended talking about this 😅
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Curious have you thought of making an expanded/supplement of 2e with all the "crazier" stuff or just more tables of stuff ? Like 50 more things for each table , firearms and mounts and of course more monsters and all that or you leaving that to the community ?
"Remember, only YOU can save D&D"
That sounds like a Smokey Orc PSA...
@@benrositas8068 I’m a big fan of Smoky the Bugbear, Circle of the Public Land Druid
We NEED Tshirts.
truth
Exactly. And this was Gary's original idea. It is YOUR fantasy. The books are a guideline indeed.
I have played D&D for years with the B/X rulebooks and a 1st edition Monster Manual. D&D is what you make of it.
@@manda60 Local producers here found out the same thing. Publishing an RPG is not like publishing a novel that people read and then put down. Player groups got one, maybe two sets of books. They got the special math dice. Something players here liked was additional published adventures, but then they would also just maybe buy one per group. Very few of the writers here quit their day jobs. The work on an adventure never quite matched the profit. I think they soon figured out that the digital game side of the company subsidized the RPG side, for less work.
@@manda60 Something that always fascinate me are all the people who wrote in little bits to Dragon, Strategic Review, White Dwarf, Challenge etc. Not a lot but little things like an archer class.
One of the sides I didn't like with old TSR was their tendency to sometimes forget or omit credit here.
This is a cope.
There existing prior versions isn't an argument against wanting the actual current edition not to suck, it represents the hobby and sets the vast majority of the culture going forward.
@Epic501 What is missing in older 2e etc?
There's OSE, Lamentations, ACKS etc.
@@Epic501 This is whining. If you do not understand that playing older versions or rolling your own is what you do when the current edition sucks, I have a bridge to sell you.
I switched to Shadowdark and I run B/X modules in it. It works great and I love it.
I encourage you also to check out Ruins of Symbaroum by Free League! I run that setting with Shadowdark rules.
This is the way
Awesome combo! "The Keep on the Borderlands" is so much fun with that system...
@@lionelhutz3142 Yes! I prefer "Return to the Keep on the Borderlands" and ran that as a full campaign for Shadowdark. It's perfect.
The better life.
"At its core Dungeons and Dragons is a folk tradition."
+1 inspiration
DnD is the game at your house!
No it isn't like at all... It was it wouldn't be a niche hobby and baulders gate 3 would have sold more and so would have tghe movie and the lego set... Which while it was the first RPG it still is made of exclusive elements even now with New 5Ee... Soi exclusive Baulder gate doesn have them... Like D&D isn't an Abrahamic holy book, an acent myth, a legnd from a time lonmg forgotten... It isn't lord of the ring or star wars... D&D in reality has had little culrtual impact beyond the few elements all RPGs since have... Which by the way D&D likes as by far the only like genre to massively differ from the game that it was imspeared from... It's aklso the longest leike to not turn into a genre... Like D&D likes share very little with any D&D edition but are not generic TTRPGs which is very weird... But still D&D simply isn't folk lore by any sense of the word...
I like those traditions
@@GreenBlueWalkthrough I mean if you want to be pedantic, sure. But his point was it works like a folk tradition, it's passed down several generations now and is more of a (sub)cultural entity than it is a commercial one in the way people engage with it.
This is the best take on the subject I've seen (with the possible exception of the people who ignored it entirely.)
Absolutely. This seems to be someone who actually plays D&D and doesn’t need or want controversy to boost views.
For all the talk about WotC burying older editions... You do know that Dark Sun, Planescape etc is available as print on demand? We bought two print on demand 2e PHBs to play.
What I do not trust is techbros and their love for subscription models. I'm still surprised when my younger friends who play digital games describe some new digital store feature.
Dark Sun is one of the best settings ever made.
Subscription models like WotC currently peddles?
No one says that.
Where can you get them on POD?
Just because the books are available doesn't mean they arnt burying it.
Remember burying is an old Pro wrestling term for killing a push or the momentum a setting has for success.
Ways this can be done is bad mouthing it, and the original creators.
"The biggest flaw of TSR was that it was a gaming company that tried to sell books"
Hahahaha, oh no. Oh no no no. I was there at the time. We called TSR "T$R" and "They Sue Regularly" for years.
They also sold textiles, sewing equipment, archeology, minis, tv shows, video games, dice games, and about everything else the Blumes invested in to funnel money to their family members.
I have read it described as a book publisher who thought they were in the game business.
@@katherineberger6329 That's the part I'm always a little nervous about.
WotC did remove OGL, but I have not seen them aggressively go after Paizo. And we guessed that they just don't care for little micro projects that barely break even.
I was a few decades late and an ocean away, where the amount of litigation was low. There was a moment when it was uncertain who owned what parts of previous editions of Dragonbane, but the people involved had their day jobs to care for and did not press the issue.
@@AeonVoom Games Workshop tried to be a game company that sold miniatures, and hit the same snag. An army of wood elfs is a lot more components, but when you have that wood elf army... Well, you are likely not buying a second. You might buy a new character or special unit, maybe the new rules edition. Maybe start a second army.
"... any more than a yarn manufacturer could ruin knitting."
on a side note look up yarn drama..
yes the knitting community has the best drama and im here for it
That was excellent.❤
@@wiltonhall if the yarn company had a large monopoly / vast majority of users, then sure it could
The OGL was the largest concern here. I was worried WotC would pick up the old TSR habit of litigating against other publishers. WotC did not go all out on that at the time.
I am a little insulted by the suggestion that a techbro must come teach me how to play the game. And that I am supposedly in some sort of brand war with others.
My general impression of techbros themselves are monopolistic people who do not trust others, only top-down black box corporate nightmares with themselves on top.
THIS
@@Wizardjudd Google reached too big to fail, and figured out this was the time to be crap.
All the OGL did was speedrun bloat-related sales death. They can say "it was for the good of the industry" all they want, but it was clearly an attempt to get everyone on the same ecosystem - killing off other games. Also, given the fact 90% of the guys who drafted it wound up at Paizo, it's pretty clear that they intended to just copy/paste D&D all along.
I'm a little more insulted that some third-rate 'developer' that WotC hired from the bottom of the barrel must come and teach me how to behave like a well-adjusted adult.
Guys, you wouldn't believe this but you probably shouldn't sit around with a group of people and just yell out the N word and roleplay out some S.A.! And did you know you should also get a feel for the kind of people you're playing with, so you know what bothers them? Wow!
You see I was on my way to my local Klan rally, and had just put the fist to my wife because she had an opinion outside of the kitchen, and since I had disowned my gay son- I didn't have anyone to hurl slurs at, so I decided to go and buy a pretendy-time game book after running down some minorities in my Confederate flag truck. And then, when I read what it said? Changed my life, I never knew any of that stuff was bad.
@@z2ei It looked a little like a repeat of TSR and Mayfair. Like a balance where TSR sways between wanting to be the standard and fretting that others use their standard.
OGL was not widely used here, D&D never became the standard. The local OSR people were the ones most worried. And not a lot, we didn't think WotC would care for micro projects that barely broke even.
We currently are playing Mutant Crawl Classics, but its still D&D night.
In the short run i ageee, but in the long run i'm not so sure. I think you're right that hasbro and musk can't affect those of us already fully entrenched in the hobby, but they can certainly turn off a lot of new or more casual players. 5e is the entry point for the vast majority of new players and it shapes their first impression of ttrpgs. If they don't like it they're more likely to play a videogame than try Pathfinder or OSE.
exactly! I feel like this video and most of the comments are not thinking this through. A vast number of brand new players are going to accept whatever WOTC spews out which will affect getting a good gaming group down the road.
The game being associated with Elon would be a disaster.
@@sadius24 Our great fear in the 90's was to go the way of Märklin train collectors and historical wargaming. A slowly aging, non-regenerating group of collectors who have resources and time to spend but slowly age out.
Things were not as company and brand dependent here. Being an association meant we could do our own outreach.
Bro, it’s owned by a company that called the PINKERTONS on someone over Magic the Gathering. Musk can’t really tank a reputation much farther, because WoTC already threw it into the bottom of a trash can. If we want to bring in new players, we should find them ourselves.
Yeah, this is basically the problem. Sure, as existing players with existing groups, we can keep playing D&D (or find other RPGs) whatever happens to the D&D IP, but it's naive as hell to think the D&D brand doesn't affect the hobby as a whole. Historically, D&D slumps have been slumps for the whole rpg world and D&D resurgences have been boosts. D&D has the brand recognition and ad budget to bring in new players on a scale other games simply don't. And some of those new players, if they hang around long enough will pick up other systems, home brew their own or just keep playing the old version when a new edition comes out they don't like.
But that only works when the version of D&D being pushed does appeal to those new players. If they bounce off the first experience, they're not likely to try others.
Absolutely nailed it. The "persons" in control of D&D are the people at your gaming table, use the things you love, ignore the things you hate, steal things from other games, make up your own stuff and let people do what they want.
Totally agree that more games should be Creative Commons licensed, thanks for licensing your stuff that way. CC licensing gives people the freedom to remix, revise and make a given game their own.
@@BillSmithBooks It might be a thing with Scandinavia, but everyone is part of associations here. When RPGs arrived, players naturally formed clubs and associations.
Most of it is pretty boring. Use of community centers, ministry of culture funds, newsletters etc. The tedious bits not directly part of games.
I mean this guy to my knowledge only uses the basic I made it it's mine copywrite lisnce on all his stuff... Which D&D 5e and New D&D 5E use one of the most open pre made copywrite lisnces their is well above they bvasst majority of media... Only exclipsed by a few people and c ompanies who don't use copyright at all... which is most common in the linuux softear space and amouyng a few Vidoe game muisic cproducers... Also we all know that isn't true as it it was most D&D player would make an OG game foer their group like historical war gamers tend to do... But they don't so however owns the IP does... Which is WOTC at the momet... Which even if you want to play the older pre WOTC editions you are still under WOTC control as directly as giving them money for a legel PDF or indirectly of spreading the word about D&D... Like their is a reason why copywrote law exists... IT's because like patants they are extremely powerful and can set up a family for life if they own the copywrite like in the lord and rings case... Which the only reason why Copyright can be bad if it's abused like what disney,nintendo and GW are known for as well as TSR and old WOtC not current....
3:37 This is the main reason why my group primarily plays pathfinder. I'm not an elitist for the system, but it's just so much more convenient to play when all the important information is freely accessible online.
As a GM, spells are an absolute pain to understand without a database or a huge stack of index cards to reference.
@@asepsisaficionado7376 The possibility of making your own wiki with references, or collaborating on one, has changed a lot.
I think print on demand changed things too. A lot of the risk in self-publishing went away. Instead of a min 500 prints and fear that you would need to store a pallet at home you could let someone like Drivethru do it.
@@wesleystreet I sometimes like fewer spells, with little variation. You get one level 1 zap, no almost-duplicates.
Spells is usually something new players need instruction in. They can intuitively understand "Torch illuminates room" or "Shotgun shoots goon" but they have probably never heard of Sleep. I can do so with three random starting spells.
Nethys is a god send.
I love the SSRD
Nah. I agree that the OSR should position itself as the quasi punk/counter cultural alternative to the current year corporate IP, but we can’t ignore the sheer hegemonic influence brand name DnD has, especially on influencing and drawing in new players, not to mention the majority of players on any given day are 5e players by far and wide. That amount of influence can’t be ignored no matter how you slice it.
I mean, what’s the point of having thousands of little zine and boutique variants of DnD when hardly anyone is playing them?
I was converted to a Folk D&Der by this very channel some time ago. I used to be a Corpo D&Der. Which I think stemmed from my history as a Wargamer. In Wargaming it tends to be important to play the same rules the same way, because you often play with people at a club or shop that you don't know. House rules etc become difficult.
But, after the OGL fiasco I called quits on Corpo D&D. And was sold that Folk D&D is the way to go. I landed on Worlds Without Numbers as my game to GM. It's a nice bridge between Nu D&D and OSR which I like. And I couldn't be happier.
I still would say I'm "into D&D" but I haven't bought a D&D book since 2nd edition. Nothing against any of the writers, it's just not how I engage with it
I play the 2nd edition with some home rules. For me D&D is at its golden age.
Yeah, D&D has only ever been getting better and better over 50 years, because there are ever-evolving and ever-growing options, systems, settings, and ideas to draw upon throughout the hobby.
This is definitely the golden age of TTRPGS. Never been better from the business or consumer side.
2E supremacy
@@Jeebus-un6zz I'd have to disagree - there was such a variety of systems in the 90s pre-OGL. Now it's just all everyone's flavor of D20 or OSR.
@@z2eiCthulhu horror is also massive and CoC is the second or third largest game and there are great adjacent games. d20 fantasy is the largest spectrum by far when combining dnd, pathfinder and all the smaller systems but not the only one.
You don't need anything but imagination, dice, paper and pencil to play D&D.
Breaking news! Elon is a twat!
Precisely. I've been DM'ing a 2E campaign now for 30+ years. I've never understood a lot of these contemporary debates. The game is 'owned' by the players. Full stop.
yeah likely a joke
@@steved1135 If it is why do all D&D players use a book owned by someone else instead of their own?
@@GreenBlueWalkthrough I don't understand the question. All players I know own a book.
Dungeons and Dragon's is a brand owned by a company. The folk tradition we engage is is called Role Playing. D&D is a Role Playing Game, and there are other companies (privately held) that make games like Traveller, Runequest, They Came From..., Exalted, Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk, GURPS, and more.
Nah. We play D&D at my table. We don't use any official books, but we call it D&D, so it is D&D.
Intellectual property is fake. The government gives WotC a monopoly on the use of that name, but that doesn't mean I have to respect it. Any d20-based game I play about fantasy characters looting dungeons is D&D to me, regardless of system.
@@FreeBroccoli exactly
This I agree with. People are so eager to say "Roleplay games = DND." They don't. DND can and Has been ruined by the current owners. But that doesn't ruin ttrpg and that doesn't stop you from playing other versions of DND.
@@chrislefler3554I drive a Ford f150 but I call it a Toyota Corolla. So it's a Toyota Corolla. 🤡
I agree with this if we are talking about the game itself, but I think many people are (rightly) concerned about the brand as well as the game--people who care about the Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance, people who care about Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. I think just as people argue over what's good and proper for these games, the same people fear what will happen to these things should there be a change in management. People already complain about how these things have changed over the years and each person invested in these IPs endemic to D&D cares that the owners at the very least let them enjoy those things as well.
And what about books? What if POD and PDFs for certain books is killed off? What if it could be improved? What if companies maintaining good working relationships with the brand like Goodman Games lost the ability to make their cool reprints of classic adventures? These are not end of the world situations, but I think the constant issue of who owns D&D and how they are handling it does matter for those reasons if nothing else.
Whether or not Elon purchases Hasbro or WotC, the leadership needs to change.
I have lost all faith in Hasbro and WotC after the recent controversies regarding the OGL, the Pinkertons, and the bad blood with Larian Studios.
Deep problems with Hasbro, but Musk certainly won't improve any of that.
Yeah. If Elon bought it, I'm sure he would put good people in charge. But someones gotta do it if it isnt him.
@@GawainSSBJust like he saved Twitter right? 😁
Agreed WotC is bad, but Elon will make it so much worse.
@@jeffmacdonald9863 Elmo’s brand these days seems to be mostly attention-whoring for adulation from fash and fash-adjacent social media muppets. If he actually had the first clue about what’s actually going on in the hobby, he’d have been funding NuTSR in their copyright shitfest
Ttrpg is so much bigger than DnD.
Worst case scenario, a lot of people would steer away from DnD, which is kinda good lol
Not even D&D, just some rather useless parody that happened to steal the name of that game.
I agree. They'll end up going to various 5e hacks at the end of the day and about half of them will just not care and continue playing D&D but it would likely give us another mass exodus that would break a few more chunks off that D&D hegemony which is always, always a good thing. D&D is an aggressively lukewarm ruleset owned by a predatory company and it deserves to lose its strangle hold on the entry point of the TTRPG market.
@@Jeebus-un6zz D&D wasn't the dominant game here. RPGs went big when local language publishers picked up in the late 80's. If people have nostalgia for anything, it's Dragonbane etc.
The whole discussion feels weird. Am I supposed to be on a different team than my mate who plays 5e when they aren't DMing Dolmenwood with our circle.
@@SusCalvin"Am I supposed to be on a different team-" that's a whole new sentence. No one told you that.
@@Jeebus-un6zzD&D is synonymous with roleplaying games for the same reason that "Nintendo" was synonymous with video games in the late 80s and early 90s. It's "good enough" to provide a baseline experience, and entertaining enough that people are willing to stick with it. If you don't give it that credit, you won't understand how to change things.
"The idea of monolithic entity that controls (things) is comforting... (they) could stop... the bad ideas... the bad people... IS AN ILLUSION."
If people could escape this belief the world would be a much better place. Not just D&D... but politics and religion.
Just like D&D... what makes things good... is what you do with those people at your table and in your reach.
Thank you for pointing that out! The continuing idea that the illithids have always controlled D&D was one of my must favorite secret conspiracies which no one else believed! Oh those deviously tricky Mindflayers!❗
The reason I began writing Out Of The Box Encounters was to give others out there a tool that was missing at that time. What started as an online series of articles was free to access. That was something I personally needed when I started, so I made it for others like me who needed that content.
And so it goes for many others. Be the change you want to see, they say
Unfortunately, Ben, while you're certainly correct that D&D is a folk tradition - you are stubbornly ignoring the fact that the vast majority of people who play the game do not bring the level of creativity, effort, or DIY experimentation to bear on the game that you are describing. And the perspective you are representing here is a kind of very-dedicated gamer POV. And so, for the vast majority of the hobby - people who play off the shelf modules and hew very close to the rules as written in the PHB because it's all they know or all they choose to know or all they have time and inclination to know - what WotC does very much IS the hobby. We can wish it weren't so. We can assert that it's not the best way to game. We can point to the many other systems and ways of playing we think are better. But what we cannot do is change the fact that the way we wish it were is very much NOT the way it IS. And so, for that reason, what happens to the D&D game and the IP very much does matter - to hundreds of thousands - and even millions of people. People who don't conform to your (or my) idea of what the hobby should be, or is at its best. But people who are not therefore idiots or pariahs or monsters. People who matter. People whose games matter.
Does anyone really think that the guy who introduced PAID account verification to Twitter would keep the OGL?
EXACTLY!
😂😂😂
There's no ogl. The rules are cc now.
@@1979fsa 3.5e and 5e are still OGL. 5e is also CC-BY. Licensees can choose between them for 5e. In theory WotC could try to revoke the OGL again but they have no incentive to do so given that 5e (which is what is commercially valuable) would still be CC-BY (which is more favorable to licensees than OGL).
The OGL was not something WotC did.
You cannot copyright game mechanics, according to the US Supreme Court. The OGL was WotC pretending they were doing everyone a favor, because they'd hoped it would steer sales back to D&D 3e.
The OGL cannot go away, because it does not exist. Anyone can make anything that uses D&D's mechanics (or any other game's mechanics, for that matter).
Also-
>Paid verification is objectively better than 'Selective Special People' account verification
I feel like I am almost crisis fatigued when it comes to D&D. The OGL was a legit crisis, but now it seems like every D&D issue is a new "crisis" and its dialed up to 10. I just feel indifferent towards it all now. Which makes me think, if all these "crisis" continue and there is another OGL crisis, am I going to care? I am already worn out, 60-70% of D&D stuff on RUclips for me is negative. I wanna enjoy the hobby.
Having an agreed upon rules helps form groups.
I concur. Sure, the D&D game at your table is your own, but without the unified set of rules, it's a lot harder to find that table initially.
I might be unusually lucky, but on a few separate occasions I've found new players are quite open-minded about the rule-set presented, as long as the style and atmosphere is what they expected (and as long as I'm prepared to guide their use of the dice).
The rules still exist, you can use them.
There seems to be a lot of hand-wringing from the tolerant and inclusive lot about being told to be more tolerant and inclusive (if you know what i mean). I'm not a fan of being told how to behave, what i can and can't say/do etc in a fantasy realm in case it triggers another player because we have a SESSION ZERO to sort all that stuff out!
For example, in my first campaign i played a female drow rogue and somewhere along the line our DM decided that a gnoll mage wanted to marry her. This was not communicated at all prior to that session, so i reluctantly agreed to progress the game. This was a relatively clean game up to this point, but when i privately asked our artificer to make me a chastity belt for the gnoll to prevent nighttime shenanigans (i'm not into ERP) the DM seemed a bit taken aback and subsequently killed the gnoll a couple of games later. I was a bit annoyed but what was more annoying was bothering our wizard to cast speak with animals just so we could understand what he was saying every time.
If you are so poorly socialised that you need those kinds of 'rules' in order for your game to function, maybe some introspection and emotional processing is in order.
Your point I think is lost in this cringe anecdote.
@@sjwarhammer4039 My point is both at the start and the end. Maybe you need to improve your reading comprehension.
I have 3.5 edition burned into my brain, it's mine
I could write it all down in my own DM guide
I spent some time in prison and ended up DMing a campaign because of this. I don't have it that memorized though I basically just did the 3e adventure game rules with some extra stuff I remembered/made up. For dice we used a mixture of d6 and coins.
"Who can save D&D?" "You have selected you, referring to me, that is incorrect, the correct answer is you"
I get the feeling that Musk wasn't being very serious when he asked how much Hasbro would cost.
Yes. If he was serious about saving D&D, he'd just buy WotC or just D&D itself from them. No need to put in $8B when you only need $100M for D&D and $300M for WotC - probably less.
@@BW022 Hasbro absolutely would not divest WotC. In 2023, WotC was the only division of Hasbro that was turning a profit (largely from royalties from BG3).
Looking holistically, Hasbro's biggest problems are that (a) they short-sightedly divested the long-term relationship of Power Rangers with the Super Sentai franchise and Bandai and brought Power Rangers TV and toy production in-house, which backfired hugely because the Dino/Cosmic Fury toys were AWFUL (Power Rangers has always been a "cheap" production because the production company saved money by reusing the expensive action sequences from Super Sentai) and (b) a decade and a half of awful Transformers movies that chased the peripheral audience of 19-49 year old men over focusing on presenting a good movie to the core audience of kids 18 and under meant that the Transformers toyline was cratering at the same time. Those two lines were the biggest sellers in the toy world.
To be fair he wasn't being serious when he said he would buy Twitter, but the idiot somehow managed to bumble his way into a legally binding contract to buy the platform for a meme amount way higher than it's actual worth, so you never know
just like when his dumb ass wasn't serious about how much twitter would cost
Absolutely agree.
I can't pretend to know him, but he strikes me as someone who's desperate for attention and validation; the type of person who'll jump on whatever topic his followers are talking about, and often lose interest when a new one comes along.
TSR hit a limit on books as well, in its older era. A group of players can buy the core books, maybe two sets if they want to speed things up. A few special math education dice. But then what? They got pretty much all they need.
Very few local designers here could quit their day jobs. It wasn't a job you made money on.
Perhaps I've had an unusual experience with gaming, but even back in the 80s, virtually everyone I knew played RAW and if a new edition came out, making changes that they didn't like, they played it in a desire to play the "official" game.
Even if someone is willing to ignore the official rules in favour of house rules, it may still matter to them who owns the IP because maybe they are hoping to see someone release an adventure featuring the Orcs that they know and love, but those Orcs no longer exist (in the official game).
Ultimately, it doesn't impact me either way, as I no longer play D&D, or if I do, I play using my old Rules Cyclopedia. Mostly, I would be playing ShadowDark or Dragonbane for that D&D- style experience, or a game like Savage Worlds, Fate, or something else.
Most people play RAW or at slight variance to it. The social element of playing the 'same game' is important to a lot of people, and some want to defer to alleged expert authority.
@@NevisYsbryd that's interesting because I am constantly hearing that "no one plays RAW because the whole point of old-school gaming is to make your own rules."
Yeah, it is very much not the case that this desire to play the official game comes from modern video gaming as Ben suggested. All the edition wars since even the advent of AD&D and hell all the arguing over house rules and gaming principles for the original game in the 1970s prove that idea wrong. I think the real issue comes from consumer culture, of which both pen and paper games and video games take part in. There are always people who want to argue about the rules, but people who approach the rules uncritically will certainly be affected by the wind changes in the hobby and that grinds the gears of the ones obsessed with the rules one way or the other.
@@kolardgreene3096 We thought 2e tried to finally answer all the questions so they wouldn't need an FAQ. It was very wordy on special situations.
Reading OD&D is just hard. It's like reading a combination of personal reference notes and stream of consciousness. I can understand if players then kept asking stuff.
@@jcraigwilliams70 Chaosium did not change Call of Cthulhu that much, but each edition would have little polishing. They would gather up spot rules, little rules for specific situations, and add ones they believed generally useful to the rules. Like a rule for car chases, so you knew if a T-Ford can outrun a byakhee. Spot rules were usually written in adventures where a weird situation was not covered in the main rules.
My favourite is the rule for how long a fed firing a pistol in space will tumble and roll from the recoil.
Ben, I watch every single one of your videos and I barely ever comment but I feel compelled to say something about this one. What a wonderful take on the broader world of "Dungeons and Dragons" as a hobby. It's inspiring to think about it in these terms. Thank you.
Sure man, but without good new content, no one will want to get into the hobby.
Take it from a 3.5 player.. it's rough out here.
This! For so many reasons... Thank you, Ben!
Yeah, just have to be careful of those players that hear you're playing D&D and go buy a bunch of books from the current edition after you repeatedly told them not to buy any books and that you were planning on playing 1st Edition.
(And WOTC has *always* been scared that *someone, somewhere was having unregulated fun.* Or "not-organized-play-league-approved fun," I guess.)
In my opinion. If you have a set of rules you like (or a few as most do)
A group of pals.
Dnd will always be alright for you.
The better you get, the more you’re able to homebrew and mix things in. That’s when you’re truly free.
I created a Rogue Trader game set in GW’s Warhammer 40k universe using FASA’s Shadowrun 3rd edition. My players still called it D&D night when we played it.
I have 800 lbs of roleplaying books. Do you have any clue how many books that actually is? I can’t even tell you how many different games there are in my library, because some of them are still packed away in boxes that haven’t been opened in years.
WotC can’t control what I do with my books. They can do whatever they want with the books they release, but that doesn’t change my game in the slightest. I control that.
My niece is about to start running the BECMI module Castle Amber for us--after converting it to 3.5/PF1.
I basically buy zero hasbro/wotc content to run any ttrpgs - that being said if WOTC was steered in a better direction, and started pushing out better content than the slop they've been putting out I'm on board. Talented 3rd party creators could get more widespread recognition if they were brought on board and stuff.
Why would a man who loves AI generated slop, do any of that?
No all he will do is replace most of the art with AI generated trash that is filled with 4chan memes.
“Improving a ruleset” is essentially what gave birth to the OSR movement.
The greatest thing Gary did for games was to create the greatest tomes ever. Ben, you or someone like you pointed out Gary had a quality requirement for the 1st edition publishing. Mistakes he maybe made, but we can find little fault in him since NO ONE had gone where he did. It is easy to look back and judge. But if you didn't live back then, then you don't know what you are talking about.
I agree 100% that you can play your own game, and so you don't have to buy the official WotC rules. I disagree with your assertion that the ownership of the biggest brand in RPGs doesn't matter. Like it or not, D&D dominates and represents our entire hobby both in terms of participants and to those outside of the hobby. The ownership determines the rules set, the look, feel, reach and legacy of the hobby. Do we even have an OSR if different owners came in before 4e and decided to put forth a reorganization of previous rules sets (OSE, OSRIC, S&W, etc.) rather than 4e? Do we have D&D 5e if they had just fired everyone associated with 4e (which they essentially renamed parts of 5e...) and just made something else? Does 5e have a DM shortage if different owners hired creatives with a different philosophy? Does the legacy of D&D look different if different ownership had fired staff that disparaged a large swath of their customers? How does the hobby look if there was no OGL crisis (do to a different direction by ownership)? There's too many examples to name.
I agree that most players don't read the rules. I would also add that the vast majority of people not in favor of Elon Musk taking over Hasbro don't play the game, aren't worried about game mechanics, and/or being prevented from playing D&D. I also think it's funny that suddenly WotC and Hasbro aren't the villains anymore. I guess proven bad actors are still better than the unknown actor.
We completely agree! Well said (especially about the linier, railroady adventures).
I agree that in principle Musk doesn't change to reality of DnD. What he brings to the table is a possible reduction of "forced liberal ideology" in the brand... Potentially reverting it back to just a fantasy game system.
He also reopens the door to connecting with Larian Studios.
He also has deep enough pockets to help with new DnD media stuff like a second DnD movie or Dragonlance series.
And he's more likely to not feel threatened by small creators who help build the brand.
I'm struggling to think of a negative.
So for me... It's either positive, or a wash.
For investors it's definitely positive.
For people who hate Elon Musk... I guess they're going to be feeling negative about it.
Yep
We still run 3.5 with a bunch of stuff taken from Pathfinder and 5e. After so many years the game runs exactly like we like it. Bringing in a new player (which we just did recently) is a nightmare as there is a ton of house rules and changes but he doesn't need to know that stuff to enjoy playing.
People are so eager to say "Roleplay games = DND." They don't. DND can and Has been ruined by the current owners. But that doesn't ruin ttrpg and that doesn't stop you from playing other versions of DND.
D&D was never my piece of cake as a roleplayer for about 40 years I run so many games I lost count. No one I Know was socialized in D&D. I was the only reading some of the stuff. It is mainly anAnerican phenomenon that touched more with the computer games as they have with pen and paperm
Musk is not buying Hasbro and never had any intention to do so
I can imagine Elon Musk, with his peculiarly retro-futuristic ideas, moving D&D _completely_ away from those old books and create a purely digital subscription model. Remember, his driverless taxi has no pedals nor steering wheel. It is not a huge stretch from a car you can't drive to a D&D that players cannot tinker with.
I don't think he actually cares about D&D, Magic: the Gathering, Monopoly, or Jenga. He cares about getting his name in the news.
And I bet he doesn't care about Transformers either. Luckily for robot-nerds like me, that brand is co-owned by Takara-Tomy.
I admire Ben’s ability to remind me what I find exciting about this hobby. I love that I am part of this folk tradition.
Based.
I think that it's good to have structure. Especially for people who are younger or more inexperienced. However, this is one of those hobbies. That's really cool because you don't need to spend a lot to get into it.
"...Dungeons and Dragons is a folk tradition."
I think there is some importance to the first-party D&D. Like, if the product degrades, then “Playing D&D” might be said to refer to playing Pathfinder, kinda like “take and Uber” means to take a Lyft now.
Granted, my experience with the game is exactly what you described here.
I don't know that I agree. Yes, D&D is a series of thousands, millions of games. But WoTC decides where the general of averages of those games centers. And every iteration, every shift from art direction, it pulls the game in a certain direction that is not what D&D should be. As that anchor keeps shifting, as more players age out, the landscape will be almost irrevocably changed. The only thing I can say, is that Musk probably will not change the game rapidly. The change will be slow and ongoing; just as they have been so far, through future editions, but there will be change. For better or worse.
As an older player you know what D&D is, you've been exposed to prior editions. You know what you can get from the game, what you want from the game, how to stylize it because you see the anchor where it was. Newer generations who see this new D&D, they don't see the grit and the epic fantasy of old unless they go out looking for it. Instead they see the new editions, they see plastic characters, they see something very fake and manufactured. They will build their worlds on the perspective of that anchor point, and unless they do the actual legwork to look into the past editions and see what D&D has been like, they'll never know it's a completely different game they're playing.
It's not about the rules. It's about the culture, the image, the perspective. The vision of the game. I don't think you can tell me with a straight face that if you look at a D&D book; the player manual, DM guide, and especially the Monster Manual; that what you see there, the art and the theme, does not influence your perspective of what kinds of worlds or adventures you would create. And that's what is at jeopardy. Once you crack open the book, you're already influenced and directed before you even read word, before you even express a syllable of text. Just from the images you see there. This isn't at all about us as veteran players, it's about those who come after us and how they perceive the game. Our perspective is different because we have the vision, we of course can say "Well, I'll just run my game like X", because we've perceived and therefore have been able to conceive "X" before. Expecting this from newer generations is similar to trying to explain the color orange to someone who's never seen it. They might get around to understanding orange, in a roundabout way, but it's not where the path D&D currently leads will take them, not willingly.
underrated comment, I'm continously shocked how educated people like Ben could have such a blindspot for the cultural drift that is UNDENIABLY happening despite the idea of a "folk tradition" (which incidentally is nonsense, its an inherently niche subculture)
"The only thing I can say, is that Musk probably will not change the game rapidly."
Like the only thing Musk has consistently done is fuck shit up at high speeds. He doesn't buy something to make slow and careful changes to it.
The path is people roleplay and use games written in their life time not some tactical war game in dungeons with elves.
I agree. The right person to save D&D is leave it to the culture. Let the Grognards, Munchkins and even Lil' Bronies save their D&D.
Elon Musk is a talent manager. If all he does is get rid of all the blue-hairs and DEI hires, and brings in good fantasy writers, he would have saved D&D.
The only real concern I would have is that he gets lawsuit-happy against the other RPGs. My first major hobby was guitar and let me tell you: if you're not familiar with Gibson Guitars and their fascistic attempts to "protect" their IP, then you'll be in for a surprise of what a company will do with the right asshole in charge. That's what I'd be worried about in this situation: if Musk gets his mitts on D&D, who's to say he won't sue the bejesus out of every other TTRPG publisher for "infringing" on what he considers to be D&D's "copyright." That's not saying he's making justified claims, but say if he thinks the d20 system or certain class or race names should be D&D exclusives, he can just keep filing frivolous lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit until these publishers either run out of money or patience, whichever happens first. God forbid what would happen to the retroclones and the countless modules and supplements made for them. And these are just the afterthoughts from how he would drive the game into the dirt and cause a mass exodus of the greater D&D community. Even if people stick with 5e and 2024 despite Musk's interference, you're still going to see people swear off of it because he'd mess up D&DBeyond: forcing whatever nonsense he wants into the system without offering an ability to opt out of it, and they won't want to give him their money for 5e materials, if they even still make them. I'd also be banking on him reversing the OGL, so players would be forced to only buy official D&D products.
Stop using D$D has a word for TTRPGs. Every time you do that around a normie, you advertise for WoTC. It's Marketing 101. There is a reason Hasbro bought D$D and changed it completely instead of making their own game.
They didn't change it completely
What I "buy into" is D&D being created by passionate people who actually care about its legacy, and think of it more like an artform as opposed to a product. Hasbro/WotC see it as a product first (objectively at this point, and I would love to see one argue otherwise because it would be complete comedy), and therefore are acting accordingly. Perhaps, though I do doubt this, Musk could course correct. WotC, IMO, are assholes and not worthy of respect because they took my game (and the game many others rightly call "their game") and turned into McDonalds for pussies. If that upsets you, you are part of the problem. There is NO POSSIBLE way Musk does a worse job.
I seriously do not understand why this getting so much traction. Waiting for some billionaire edgelord to swoop in and "save" D&D is...well, pathetic. If the fans don't like the direction wotc is taking, then STOP lapping up all the garbage they are putting out. Vote with your wallet. That is the only way you will necessitate change.
"No one can destroy D&D". WotC: "Hold my Beer".
Pretty big blindspot here in that you're just talking about home games. Lots of casual modern D&D players just go with what the books say. Lots of Adventurers League, convention games, and other organized public games end up going with the official rules either willingly or unwillingly. I ran an open table at my university for a year and the things wotc put out directly came up and impacted my table because they are official publications built into dndbeyond. Stuff the Brand does impacts the AP shows that lots of people watch, that act as the gateway for many people into the hobby, and can even trickle its way out into wider society.
i find it downright cynical when people like Ben refuse to acknowledge this. whether you like it or not, what wotc is doing will damage and already has damaged even his own game table in ways that aren't immediately obvious, and that we cannot predict.
that, and on wotc's side, historical revisionism is an eternal disgrace of the contemporary man, a show of lacking empathy and ultimately of lacking moral intelligence.
Great video. Agreed that once you have the books, you have "D&D for life" - unless you only got D&D Beyond, in which case you are renting the rules and good luck with that. The one side effect of WotC / Musk / Any new owner making new editions of D&D has though is that it continues to slice up the playing community. At this point, walking into a friendly local gaming store and asking "Do you have any D&D games being run here?" is virtually pointless. What version of D&D? B/X? BECMI? AD&D, 2E 3E, 3.5E, 4E, 5E, 5E2024? Or the off-shoots and near clones they have spawned: OSE, Shadowdark, Pathfinder 1E, 2E, White Box, Basic Fantasy, DCC, etc, etc, etc. Every new edition further slices up the playing community making it harder to find someone actually playing the version of "D&D" that you enjoy. The ironic end result is while the TTRPG hobby has never been more popular, its also never been harder to find a group playing the D&D you love.
I see this a bit differently. Mostly because I am in the camp that defines Dungeons and Dragons(or any other system) as the products officially releases by the rights holder. The thing you describe as Dungeons and Dragons I call "the table top experience". It's independent of what products/systems you use. Also independent of homebrew or by the book play.
Does that include TSR era releases? Or am I somehow not playing D&D when I play B/X?
@@johnschwartz1641 My take: if the box/book cover rightfully said "Dungeons and Dragons" on it, that is Dungeons and Dragons
This is the Kleenex vs. facial tissue or Dumpster vs. commercial trash bin argument. D&D has been around for so long and IP laws have changed so much that saying something is D&D if it only has the D&D (TM) logo on it is silly. D&D and its clones are so much of the TTRPG hobby that everything else is a statistical rounding error. The table top role-play experience is D&D with a few other games thrown in for people who prefer different genres or want a different play experience.
When Pathfinder was released at the same time as D&D 4E, people went to Pathfinder because it felt "more like D&D" than the miniatures strategy game-with-randomized-box-sets that WotC released, precisely because it WAS more like D&D than 4E. At least the D&D most people knew. Pathfinder 1E was essentially D&D 3.75.
D&D falls so far into the "feelings not facts" realm that there are gamers who consider D&D a completely separate hobby from every other TTRPG on the market.
@wesleystreet Why do you say that? Let me guess you are American and think McDonalds is the only place to eat? No one in my circle of friends ever even played D&D but all are roleplayer. You play a trademark. If one wants to eat well then a trademark is the last. place to gom
If you have a bad DM and/or bad players it doesn't matter who owns the IP.
I resonate with the thought since ultimately, what brings D&D down is the logic of capitalism. It is a brand that thrives in being the biggest and better at selling the idea of RPGs, while not necessarily being the better system nor being particularly profitable at its core. The OSR community thrives because they are ultimately not interested in shareholder value, they are interested in sharing their ideas. Not a lot of market there, but a lot of innovation.
That said, it would be a shame to see the premier brand in the RPG segment being overtaken by a billionaire edgelord in his quest for power and who knows what else (respect of the family that despises him? Who the hell knows), especially as the brand is a strong entryway into all other forms of RPG
@@vincerp The largest national publishers in my nation rarely quit their day job. The dream is to not operate at loss.
I don't think it's just OSR people. PbtA looks like it allows people to screw around and experiment with basic rules.
Well said. I've seen a couple different opinions about this whole thing, and I'm glad to see that there is still some sanity that recognizes that ownership changing from one corporate owner to another is not going to "fix" D&D
D&D is more like McDonald. It is surely nit the place for a good game, but it is easy to consume and widely available.
@@lexj4747 I'm much more interested in how US players organise. In my nation I'm part of an association not bound to a company.
because D&D is a collection of games. That's why I did my own frankestein with card games. Flesh and Blood for combat, Earthborne Rangers for exploration, Fiasco for social, Cartographer for maps to explore.
I could not agree more. The fact that there was any sort of melt down about D&D on either side is mental to me. Your imagination is the game. Hasbro or anyone else who isn't sitting at your table doesn't matter.
The game is a SHARED world of imagination, the DM being the custodian of said world. When half the participants want to work as a barista and go to prom, there is a serious disconnect.
That's exactly what I missed in the pen & paper discussions. The freedom, to play how ever the player wants and that it doesn't matter, if rules are 'offical'. Good video!
Seriously WTF is wrong with that nepo baby ghoul?!
*LITERALLY* the only option worse than WotC 😐
Well, said. We have never played RAW ever at any table I have ever played at. Then as new gaming concepts come up we merge edition rules or other game system mechanics into our game.
He is a disingenuous troll. He doesn't care about DnD or Gygax. He just wants attention, so he's deliberately incendiary. It's just culture war posturing.
Trolls just want attention, don't give it to em
Shown us on the doll where the bad Musk man touched you.
he, as a sexist person, is angry that people are speaking poorly of a sexist.
'It is the spirit of the game, not the letter of the rules which is important. Never hold to the letter written, nor allow some barracks room lawyer to force quotations from the rule books upon you, if it goes against the obvious intent of the game.' - Gary Gygax 1979
It is interesting how much of this comment section is some version of "I have no horse in this race, but the pain this could inflict to hypothetical people I don't like is funny to me."
I figured most people outgrew 4chan when they stopped being 16, but there is a whole lot of "ebin lel I'm gonna get the popcorn for the meltdowns xD" among the retroclone crowd, huh?
The "WotC is erasing Gygax!" thing feels really arbitrary and instituted from someone on high trying to cause hatred, because it's literally based on the animated part of the credits of the D&D movie going "Hasbro's Dungeons & Dragons" in the same way that the Battleship movie said "Hasbro's Battleship" or the Transformers movies say "Hasbro's Transformers." Standard brand-identification language for the same series of films, in other words.
I’m more interested in the ramifications on mtg than dnd.
I think the problem with this take is that people play in groups and not everyone has the luxury to just pick and choose a group that precisely matches every aspect of how they want to play the game. Compromises are needed. Furthermore there's only so much you can really homebrew stuff before it becomes too much or even before you just have a different game entirely.
Yes, WOTC can't dictate how you play dungeons and dragons. But it can actually change what content we have access to as a baseline in the first place. Sure I could just not buy new content that doesn't please me, but WOTC has shown a willingness to retroactively change things and erase content and to promote a baseline rework of the rules not as a new edition but as an extension of the original.
Thus who "controls" D&D is important. Even if they don't dictate what happens at the table they can influence the available options.
I think you misunderstood the point. WotC does not control those things: game groups control those things. WotC can't change what content you have access to as long as you have books and a willingness to either homebrew or buy content from other distributors (Paizo, KoboldPress, Chaosium, idk).
But maybe I'm misunderstanding your point. How could WotC change things retroactively? As a gaming group, you could just say, "we're not doing that", right? Same with D&D 5.5: if you want to play the 2014 edition, you can. To me, that's the difference between Folk D&D and Corpo D&D.
If your local yarn store doesn't carry purple anymore, there are plenty of other yarn stores who do.
@@WhiteOwlet I did understand the point, but I think you misunderstood mine. Yes, **I** may have a willingness to homebrew or maybe to look for other systems or anything of the sort. But that doesn't mean that whatever players and/or GM you may realistically be able to play with do. Further even if you are willing, overhauling any major change by introducing something new or restoring the old is a lot harder than it may seem. How much time can you really waste making it all from basically scratch?
Another assumption you're making is that we have the physical books. I can't speak for everyone but I haven't been able to justify the purchase of a D&D group because I'm finishing my master's degree and I had neither the income nor the time to justify it. But groups can go out of print or be changed in future prints, and especially online. In fact what content you can purchase on D&D beyond has been changed.
But even if this wasn't the case just the fact that instead of adding new content (or in addition to be fair) WOTC wants changes to core components of the game without actually going into a new edition means some players will want to use the changes or just be used to them if they are newer.
Unless your entire group is on the same page about everything then what the default sanctioned by WOTC is will have an influence on what gets played at the table. Even if you are on the same page you'll often need to use existing resources for simple pragmatic reasons that there's only so much effort you can put into it, only so much a single or couple of people can create, only so much time in the day.
The video is right that WOTC can't dictate what you do at the table, but I disagree with the idea that it doesn't matter who's in control because no one individual has that kind of control either and those decisions are not made in a vaccuum.
@@opinionofmine3238 It seems like we're in very different situations, then. For example, I do have the time and energy to make changes to games if I want to, I do have the physical books, and I have conversations with my group about rules and expectations. It's a shame you have to rely on D&D Beyond, and I feel for you. I hope you're able to find a stable group in the future and either switch to a cheaper system or get some money to buy the physical books, if you want.
Hear hear! I figured this out when I was six...and Gygax quietly acknowledged it himself...the books and dice are just PROPS. All you need to play is imagination
There are far more things that the video game mindset has crept back into than just what you mention. This hobby got them started and influenced their development. Several years later, a generation or two of people growing up with access to that "style" of playing a game has come full circle.
Very inciteful, I have often looked at how video game rpgs simply cripple my experience vs what my ttrpg enables me to create. Love the folk tradition idea, very true. I have often argued that the game "you" have at "your" table is unique regardless how closely or loosely you follow rules.
I've never understood the "Hasbro is ruining D&D" people...I hate Hasbro since they're an awful company (something that Elon Musk definitely wouldnt fix LoL), but whatever they do with it has never really affected me (granted, I don't like D&D to begin with) but I see it exactly like you do, what Hasbro sells me is a package of rules that I can use or disregard as I please, and if they stop making things I like I never need to buy anything they do again.
Personally I think people just want things to be angry and outraged about 🤷♀️ I understand the MtG players, since MtG has more structure (tho even then you can run your own tables with whatever expansions and cards you want). But TTRPGs? I don't get it at all.
Yeah, a lot of people tend to like to complain about stupid stuff. People forget that the old editions of D&D will always exist. So even if you hate 5E or the hypothetical 6E is a total disaster, nothing is stopping anyone from going out and getting their favorite older edition and playing it.
@@taragnor but the vast number of new players WONT do that. They will go to wotc and accept that as the standard.
@@terryr9052 Well keep in mind that Pathfinder rose to popularity mainly because a lot of D&D fans didn't like 4E. In fact one of 5E's main goals was to reunite the fanbase. While inevitably whatever is called D&D will always be popular, there's already evidence of what happens when the latest edition isn't well liked and it's not some apocalypse to the hobby in general.
Honestly, YES! This is the definitive answer. What need is there for any further discussion on this topic?
Fantastic. Thank you for spreading the rational argument against “company owns DND”. WE own DnD. We always have. I have for 40 years. Cheers
How can people even say they are playing DnD when they don't read the books and they homebrew all the rules?
Because "DnD" can many several different things depending on context.
How can you call a Great Value Ultra Soft Facial Tissue a Kleenex if you don’t buy the Kleenex brand? A very similar reason. It means something more to society than a brand.
Matthew Colville has a great video called “Arguing about D&D in the 1970s” it shows how even when Dungeons & Dragons was the only published role-playing game. It was still played differently by everyone. So from the beginning of Dungeons & Dragons, the game developed in a culture where you played it how you wanted to, and the rules meant something different to every group. That is the core of D&D.
People can identify with and engage with hobbies as they see fit, IMO. I'm not out here to gatekeep folks on what does and doesnt consitute playing DnD, I'm just advocating for em to try indie RPG's too!
@@QuestingBeast Well yes, but by that definition they are also simultaneously playing Soccer, Hockey, Basketball, Water Polo, Backgammon, Poker and I Spy.
Announcing "I am using none of the rules from this game but am still playing it" is nonsensical.
I agree with your main point. I do think there are things that could be done to improve D&D from the top down. The current rule system is not that easy to hack well, just because of the sheer number of player facing options. It also doesn't support lots play styles anywhere near as much as it could to the point where I kinda don't mind throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I think your argument is directionally correct - we don’t need a corpo for our hobby to survive. But I also think it’s a little naive to say WoTC isn’t the most influential stakeholder across D&D and RPGs generally. So though poor leadership won’t destroy d&d, good leadership can revitalize D&D and steer the ship towards being more consumer friendly.
lol all WotC has done has been to run D and D into the ground since they bought it.
Really.... so TSR was some sort of massively successful company when WotC bought them out back in 1997? And 5e did not revitalize the game at all?
It is fading again but it is still stronger today than when WotC bought it.
@@nctpti2073 sure WotC made it bigger.....did they make the game better? most of us old people will tell you no. 5e sucks dude. they had an ok thing going with 3.5 and then poof its gone. just look at final fantasy from the 80s and 90s and then look at the last 10 years of them and you will see where I'm going. removing complexity and dumbing things down to appeal to more people is great for the bottom line and shareholders and the intellectually lazy or folks that cannot or will not learn what it takes to run and play mechanically deep games and it comes with a cost of the core players who can just play the version they want and not buy books lol. you can like the new story telling above combat and resource management , its cool. we will see in 20 years when my generation is dead or still playing AD+D2E in the nursing home how many young people will stay with it and keep the lights on I guess
@@douglasseelye5073 Define 'better' or 'worse.' Most objective measures would say the more commercially successful version must be more commercially successful for some actual reason. If it was just really good marketing, they could have sold more 3.5 or 4 without having to spend a dime creating anything new.
You say it is dumbed down, but I remember the ranting over THAC0, over having to do simple math. D&D has never been Rolemaster or Fantasy Hero.
And we are that much further from WWII or even from 'Nam. Finding *anyone* with any real concept of tactics seems easier said than done. But can you give some examples as to what was so tactically deep with 3.5? I don't remember it.
One of the main reasons I find the OSR to be so compelling is the fact that it truly is grassroots in origin. The movement isn't guided by a faction or officials (as much as some people might believe it to be). It's of, by, and for the community and grows and breathes with it, incorporating ideas, advice, and mechanics after rigourous tinkering. A corporate approach, while a unified front, could never adapt as meaningfully as a collective based on decades of accumulated wisdom.
I'd be apt to disagree it is very much guided by individuals at a fundamental level. Notice the rampant support for mothership? If you dig into it you quickly begin tracing everything back to the same groups, mods and publishers.
All of the major OSR games are published by corporations...
To the best of my knowledge, Basic Fantasy is the only game that isn't profit driven.
@backcountry164 I think it's more there's a set group of in publishers and writers that have a severe chokehold on the community
I agree, but two contrary points:
(1) Most new players come to D&D through the current edition of the game. Over time, that affects a shift in what the average player thinks D&D is. There's only so much that us old-school DMs can do to hold back the tide.
(2) Non-tabletop D&D properties (PC games, etc.) will use the current edition rules and aesthetics. Not only does this reinforce point #1, but it requires us to either get on board or bow out. I don't care for 5e, but I have to tolerate it if I want to play Baldur's Gate 3, for example.
I have played D&D since 1981 and still have my first edition books. Although the game has been updated many times, I have never felt the need to update to another version, so I have no idea what the current controversy is about. Its not like they can repo the ideas for adventures that exist in my mind.
Gnarly! I had no idea this was happening. Thanks for putting the situation in context.
It's not a matter of ruining or saving. You obviously can homebrew. The point is a lot of people want quality products to purchase for the game they enjoy. Something Wotc has been failing at
The biggest difference though that I don't think was mentioned this video is that if Elon Musk was personally in charge add Dungeons & Dragons he could totally take away the osr and anything else that allows third-party content to make D&D . He is absolutely that much of a greedy, vindictive Man baby
Boy I entered the vid in fear about what you were gonna say. And I'm leaving with a great reflection. You the man!
Yeah. A very bait-ey thumb =(
"It's this very fact that made DnD so notoriously difficult for corporations to monetize" Is because of this I published my system like open domain content.. I think it's the way that fit better for this kind of product. And yes, if you are a worried about getting money, you always can PYW putting the price (not the value) in the customers, according to "how much they think they received", pushing you to focus in offering a good tool/experience and not just become rich (yes.. we know who you are....).
Edit: I finish the video and realized he ended talking about this 😅
In other news, the sky is blue, and water is wet. This would be utterly catastrophic.
He’s talking about D&D but he’s talking about modern society, culture, and politics. Well said Ben.