#nojasontondro — Public Fediverse posts

We NEED Indie TableTop RolePlaying Games!

Dear Luke from DM’s Lair…

This was not the article I had planned for Wednesday or Friday. I had Worldbuilding Wednesday on lock. Fantasy Friday was right around the corner. Then I found this video from The DM’s Lair. Some of us don’t enjoy crapping all over Dungeons & Dragons 5E. Although that having been said? I’m going to take this opportunity to vent my opinion of D&D 5/5.5E again because holy crap I’m annoyed now.

Luke was apparently upset because us old guys on X (Twitter) said we preferred (smaller-game-than-D&D-name-here) over his beloved D&D5E. Oh, and did he mention his latest 5E project on Kickstarter? Yeah, homes, we heard you. After his comments about us “old guys” and our “obscure systems,” I wouldn’t give old Luke a dime for that thing on Kickstarter or anything he ever does again after this. Oh, and he’s got some “new” game that he’s working on that will totally not look like 5E at all, I’m sure.

Look if the only reason you’re going to make a DungeonTube video is to shill Wizards of the Coast and pimp out your own projects? Save yourself the time and effort, okay. I seem to recall a time when DM’s Lair was doing the cute comedy skits and giving out at minimum/mediocre Dungeon Master advice. What happened to that stuff? Don’t just go on the air just to dog people like me and games that aren’t your precious D&D5E.

But wait, there’s more.

I swear someone at Wizards of the Coast or one of the marketing/talent agencies must have been going around with some kind of bribe and a script that day. I saw Luke’s thing, one from good old Bob Worldbuilder, and one from DM With a Day Job that were all basically the same video.

The narrative of, “Drop whatever you’re playing and just run D&D5E,” ain’t gonna fly with some of us. And I don’t care what the fans sent into Wizards of the Coast because we all know they only cherry pick the responses they want to hear. I completely disagree with the idea that D&D 5E is the greatest game on Earth. Maybe it’s the loudest mainstream gaming brand (barf) in the TTRPG industry.

I think a misbegotten fallacious narrative has sprouted up that D&D5/5.5E can be bolted onto any genre, campaign setting, or story and everything will work out fine. Well, there might have been a GURPS sourcebook for everything, but it doesn’t mean everything worked in GURPS. D&D is a fantasy first game, which means the mechanics start to break down around the time you introduce firearms, tanks, jets, 40-foot-tall robots, starships, etc. Fantasy game designers tend to struggle with firearms because guns are icky, scary, and dangerous in the real world, so they never bother to look into them.

Just because we can do something with a game system, it doesn’t mean we should do the thing. Some games try to do everything but inevitably fall off somewhere. Other games pick up that slack but manage to fall off somewhere else. D&D5/5.5E can’t do it all any more than FATE/FUDGE, W.O.I.N, GURPS, D6, Cypher, Cortex, Savage Worlds, or anything else.

So, “Just play 5E,” just ain’t gonna cut it with me.

Remember back during the Great Wizards of the Coast Dungeons & Dragons Open Game License Debacle of 2023 when everyone was commenting on YouTube, “Just play Pathfinder 2E?” Look how well that sh*t turned out. Sure, Paizo sold out entire warehouses full of product and then promptly turned around and made Pathfinder 2E Remastered. Then upped the price on everything, and more recently they upped it again by about $10 per book. As a side note, do they really expect me to buy into that line about Diamond Distributors causing all of their financial woes? Seriously? What happened to all your big OGL alternative money, Paizo?

If D&D5.5E or Pathfinder 2E Remastered were so good, affordable, easy-to-teach, easy-to-understand, etc.; then why in the flippity flop would I ever want to buy another fantasy game, like Dragonbane? Could it be that D&D5.5E is bloated, over produced, full of fluff, and the people who are normally associated with said game come off as a lot flakey these days? Could it be that the lead Pathfinder designer literally told us not to buy his game a few years ago? (I haven’t forgotten, and I’m not even a conservative.) Seriously—WotC, Paizo, if your act was so together and everything is so perfect, how come your sales are in the toilet?

Yes this is exactly what Luke was crying about in his video.

I’ve seen it. I think Timothy Imholt commented on it a few years ago. Basically someone goes on X (Twitter) and says how WotC is too woke and we should drop D&D5E in favor of (insert-name-of-game.) We get the same thing on YouTube quite a bit. I’m guilty of it as much as anyone.

Does it mean that D&D truly is superior and we should all abandon our “obscure games” in favor of it? I wouldn’t be here if I agreed with that. If I were just another DungeonTuber shill, I probably wouldn’t be in the state of affairs I find myself in these days. (My next therapist is going to need therapy.) But seriously,

I’m not going back to D&D of any flavor any time soon. I might use Mists of Akuma and Iron Kingdoms as references. I might still beg, borrow, and steal from various 5E or Pathfinder 2E monster books. I’m not abandoning the hobby or anything. But I’ll be damned if I hand WotC, Hasbro, Paizo, Kobold Press, Renegade Game Studios, Luke from DM’s Lair, Ginny, Bob, or any other DungeonTuber shill a single dime for their stuff again, possibly ever.

I’m done spending money on people who evidently hate me.

This was not the article I had planned for today. It’s not the article I had planned for Wednesday, either. I’m less than thrilled this piece seems to have a negative angle to it.

But let’s put this in perspective from my point of view. D&D5/5.5E has a lot of inherent flaws. That’s before you get to Critical Role and all these knuckleheads who try to brag it up. That’s before we get to the company who makes D&D and all of their fake social media shenanigans just to gain them notoriety. That’s before you start to realize that D&D Beyond has become the walled garden that was predicted in 2023.

Dragonbane, as much as I love it, has a few issues of its own, too. As a GM who has been immersed in many different game systems and even more settings, I’ll be the first one to tell you no game is perfect. Twilight Sword already has a few gaps that are popping up. My educated guess is that Ruttigers Almanac will, too. It’s just the nature of the beast. My favorite game (Dragonbane) might be better than D&D.

You won’t know until you try it.

It just happens that D&D5E has more flaws, obvious defects, and mismanaged mishaps than probably any other TTRPG on the market today. Loud, popular, and well-known amongst the “mundanes” (non-gamers) does not make a better game. It just makes for a more obvious one. Being mainstream often seems to make a product worse than when it started. I would cringe if something I really enjoyed, like TTRPGs, became a mainstream thing worse than D&D already is.

Let me ask this: Is it more important to be popular or have a quality TTRPG? Logically, a good game should become popular, and a bad one should sink. Yet here we are with D&D5.5E. I dislike 5.5E because I’ve looked through the books. Compared to older editions, it stinks.

This hobby has been one of acceptance, understanding, and forgiveness.

I’ve had plenty of people from all different walks of life and backgrounds at my gaming table over the years. I’d like to think this massive divide we’re seeing in the TTRPG fan base right now has more to do with social media and DungeonTube influencers than it does with anyone’s actual opinions. The common game shop or online customer doesn’t see all the bickering and politicking that goes on in social media unless they too are plugged in. .

The TTRPG niche is a fractured and divided mess. It has been this way since social media became popular. We don’t just pick one another’s games apart. We don’t just have people saying things like, “You’re playing it wrong.”

No. No. We have to have a go at one another on social media and YouTube, too. We have to go after someone’s game, obscure or otherwise. You like chocolate. What’s wrong with vanilla? You have something against strawberry pancakes, too? And on and on it goes. The TTRPG niche seems to have more of it for some reason.

I miss when games felt like coming home after a long day. Games felt like every day was Christmas vacation on the weekends. I miss running marathon Star Wars RPG game sessions. I miss running convention games. I so dearly wish we could get back to that feeling anywhere.

So what if someone thinks D&D5.5E sucks. Run it anyway as long as that’s what your group prefers. I just think people should be willing to give other TTRPG systems and settings a try. Having some DungeonTuber influencer shill pushing the mainstream corporate narrative that D&D5E is the only game you should run doesn’t matter as long as your group is having fun at the table.

I’m leaving my usual closing statements off of this particular article. Try to be kind to one another, regardless of what you might think of D&D5E, the Fifth Edition of the “World’s Most Popular” (because Hasbro says so) Roleplaying Game.

We NEED Indie TableTop RolePlaying Games!

Dear Luke from DM’s Lair…

This was not the article I had planned for Wednesday or Friday. I had Worldbuilding Wednesday on lock. Fantasy Friday was right around the corner. Then I found this video from The DM’s Lair. Some of us don’t enjoy crapping all over Dungeons & Dragons 5E. Although that having been said? I’m going to take this opportunity to vent my opinion of D&D 5/5.5E again because holy crap I’m annoyed now.

Luke was apparently upset because us old guys on X (Twitter) said we preferred (smaller-game-than-D&D-name-here) over his beloved D&D5E. Oh, and did he mention his latest 5E project on Kickstarter? Yeah, homes, we heard you. After his comments about us “old guys” and our “obscure systems,” I wouldn’t give old Luke a dime for that thing on Kickstarter or anything he ever does again after this. Oh, and he’s got some “new” game that he’s working on that will totally not look like 5E at all, I’m sure.

Look if the only reason you’re going to make a DungeonTube video is to shill Wizards of the Coast and pimp out your own projects? Save yourself the time and effort, okay. I seem to recall a time when DM’s Lair was doing the cute comedy skits and giving out at minimum/mediocre Dungeon Master advice. What happened to that stuff? Don’t just go on the air just to dog people like me and games that aren’t your precious D&D5E.

But wait, there’s more.

I swear someone at Wizards of the Coast or one of the marketing/talent agencies must have been going around with some kind of bribe and a script that day. I saw Luke’s thing, one from good old Bob Worldbuilder, and one from DM With a Day Job that were all basically the same video.

The narrative of, “Drop whatever you’re playing and just run D&D5E,” ain’t gonna fly with some of us. And I don’t care what the fans sent into Wizards of the Coast because we all know they only cherry pick the responses they want to hear. I completely disagree with the idea that D&D 5E is the greatest game on Earth. Maybe it’s the loudest mainstream gaming brand (barf) in the TTRPG industry.

I think a misbegotten fallacious narrative has sprouted up that D&D5/5.5E can be bolted onto any genre, campaign setting, or story and everything will work out fine. Well, there might have been a GURPS sourcebook for everything, but it doesn’t mean everything worked in GURPS. D&D is a fantasy first game, which means the mechanics start to break down around the time you introduce firearms, tanks, jets, 40-foot-tall robots, starships, etc. Fantasy game designers tend to struggle with firearms because guns are icky, scary, and dangerous in the real world, so they never bother to look into them.

Just because we can do something with a game system, it doesn’t mean we should do the thing. Some games try to do everything but inevitably fall off somewhere. Other games pick up that slack but manage to fall off somewhere else. D&D5/5.5E can’t do it all any more than FATE/FUDGE, W.O.I.N, GURPS, D6, Cypher, Cortex, Savage Worlds, or anything else.

So, “Just play 5E,” just ain’t gonna cut it with me.

Remember back during the Great Wizards of the Coast Dungeons & Dragons Open Game License Debacle of 2023 when everyone was commenting on YouTube, “Just play Pathfinder 2E?” Look how well that sh*t turned out. Sure, Paizo sold out entire warehouses full of product and then promptly turned around and made Pathfinder 2E Remastered. Then upped the price on everything, and more recently they upped it again by about $10 per book. As a side note, do they really expect me to buy into that line about Diamond Distributors causing all of their financial woes? Seriously? What happened to all your big OGL alternative money, Paizo?

If D&D5.5E or Pathfinder 2E Remastered were so good, affordable, easy-to-teach, easy-to-understand, etc.; then why in the flippity flop would I ever want to buy another fantasy game, like Dragonbane? Could it be that D&D5.5E is bloated, over produced, full of fluff, and the people who are normally associated with said game come off as a lot flakey these days? Could it be that the lead Pathfinder designer literally told us not to buy his game a few years ago? (I haven’t forgotten, and I’m not even a conservative.) Seriously—WotC, Paizo, if your act was so together and everything is so perfect, how come your sales are in the toilet?

Yes this is exactly what Luke was crying about in his video.

I’ve seen it. I think Timothy Imholt commented on it a few years ago. Basically someone goes on X (Twitter) and says how WotC is too woke and we should drop D&D5E in favor of (insert-name-of-game.) We get the same thing on YouTube quite a bit. I’m guilty of it as much as anyone.

Does it mean that D&D truly is superior and we should all abandon our “obscure games” in favor of it? I wouldn’t be here if I agreed with that. If I were just another DungeonTuber shill, I probably wouldn’t be in the state of affairs I find myself in these days. (My next therapist is going to need therapy.) But seriously,

I’m not going back to D&D of any flavor any time soon. I might use Mists of Akuma and Iron Kingdoms as references. I might still beg, borrow, and steal from various 5E or Pathfinder 2E monster books. I’m not abandoning the hobby or anything. But I’ll be damned if I hand WotC, Hasbro, Paizo, Kobold Press, Renegade Game Studios, Luke from DM’s Lair, Ginny, Bob, or any other DungeonTuber shill a single dime for their stuff again, possibly ever.

I’m done spending money on people who evidently hate me.

This was not the article I had planned for today. It’s not the article I had planned for Wednesday, either. I’m less than thrilled this piece seems to have a negative angle to it.

But let’s put this in perspective from my point of view. D&D5/5.5E has a lot of inherent flaws. That’s before you get to Critical Role and all these knuckleheads who try to brag it up. That’s before we get to the company who makes D&D and all of their fake social media shenanigans just to gain them notoriety. That’s before you start to realize that D&D Beyond has become the walled garden that was predicted in 2023.

Dragonbane, as much as I love it, has a few issues of its own, too. As a GM who has been immersed in many different game systems and even more settings, I’ll be the first one to tell you no game is perfect. Twilight Sword already has a few gaps that are popping up. My educated guess is that Ruttigers Almanac will, too. It’s just the nature of the beast. My favorite game (Dragonbane) might be better than D&D.

You won’t know until you try it.

It just happens that D&D5E has more flaws, obvious defects, and mismanaged mishaps than probably any other TTRPG on the market today. Loud, popular, and well-known amongst the “mundanes” (non-gamers) does not make a better game. It just makes for a more obvious one. Being mainstream often seems to make a product worse than when it started. I would cringe if something I really enjoyed, like TTRPGs, became a mainstream thing worse than D&D already is.

Let me ask this: Is it more important to be popular or have a quality TTRPG? Logically, a good game should become popular, and a bad one should sink. Yet here we are with D&D5.5E. I dislike 5.5E because I’ve looked through the books. Compared to older editions, it stinks.

This hobby has been one of acceptance, understanding, and forgiveness.

I’ve had plenty of people from all different walks of life and backgrounds at my gaming table over the years. I’d like to think this massive divide we’re seeing in the TTRPG fan base right now has more to do with social media and DungeonTube influencers than it does with anyone’s actual opinions. The common game shop or online customer doesn’t see all the bickering and politicking that goes on in social media unless they too are plugged in. .

The TTRPG niche is a fractured and divided mess. It has been this way since social media became popular. We don’t just pick one another’s games apart. We don’t just have people saying things like, “You’re playing it wrong.”

No. No. We have to have a go at one another on social media and YouTube, too. We have to go after someone’s game, obscure or otherwise. You like chocolate. What’s wrong with vanilla? You have something against strawberry pancakes, too? And on and on it goes. The TTRPG niche seems to have more of it for some reason.

I miss when games felt like coming home after a long day. Games felt like every day was Christmas vacation on the weekends. I miss running marathon Star Wars RPG game sessions. I miss running convention games. I so dearly wish we could get back to that feeling anywhere.

So what if someone thinks D&D5.5E sucks. Run it anyway as long as that’s what your group prefers. I just think people should be willing to give other TTRPG systems and settings a try. Having some DungeonTuber influencer shill pushing the mainstream corporate narrative that D&D5E is the only game you should run doesn’t matter as long as your group is having fun at the table.

I’m leaving my usual closing statements off of this particular article. Try to be kind to one another, regardless of what you might think of D&D5E, the Fifth Edition of the “World’s Most Popular” (because Hasbro says so) Roleplaying Game.

We NEED Indie TableTop RolePlaying Games!

Dear Luke from DM’s Lair…

This was not the article I had planned for Wednesday or Friday. I had Worldbuilding Wednesday on lock. Fantasy Friday was right around the corner. Then I found this video from The DM’s Lair. Some of us don’t enjoy crapping all over Dungeons & Dragons 5E. Although that having been said? I’m going to take this opportunity to vent my opinion of D&D 5/5.5E again because holy crap I’m annoyed now.

Luke was apparently upset because us old guys on X (Twitter) said we preferred (smaller-game-than-D&D-name-here) over his beloved D&D5E. Oh, and did he mention his latest 5E project on Kickstarter? Yeah, homes, we heard you. After his comments about us “old guys” and our “obscure systems,” I wouldn’t give old Luke a dime for that thing on Kickstarter or anything he ever does again after this. Oh, and he’s got some “new” game that he’s working on that will totally not look like 5E at all, I’m sure.

Look if the only reason you’re going to make a DungeonTube video is to shill Wizards of the Coast and pimp out your own projects? Save yourself the time and effort, okay. I seem to recall a time when DM’s Lair was doing the cute comedy skits and giving out at minimum/mediocre Dungeon Master advice. What happened to that stuff? Don’t just go on the air just to dog people like me and games that aren’t your precious D&D5E.

But wait, there’s more.

I swear someone at Wizards of the Coast or one of the marketing/talent agencies must have been going around with some kind of bribe and a script that day. I saw Luke’s thing, one from good old Bob Worldbuilder, and one from DM With a Day Job that were all basically the same video.

The narrative of, “Drop whatever you’re playing and just run D&D5E,” ain’t gonna fly with some of us. And I don’t care what the fans sent into Wizards of the Coast because we all know they only cherry pick the responses they want to hear. I completely disagree with the idea that D&D 5E is the greatest game on Earth. Maybe it’s the loudest mainstream gaming brand (barf) in the TTRPG industry.

I think a misbegotten fallacious narrative has sprouted up that D&D5/5.5E can be bolted onto any genre, campaign setting, or story and everything will work out fine. Well, there might have been a GURPS sourcebook for everything, but it doesn’t mean everything worked in GURPS. D&D is a fantasy first game, which means the mechanics start to break down around the time you introduce firearms, tanks, jets, 40-foot-tall robots, starships, etc. Fantasy game designers tend to struggle with firearms because guns are icky, scary, and dangerous in the real world, so they never bother to look into them.

Just because we can do something with a game system, it doesn’t mean we should do the thing. Some games try to do everything but inevitably fall off somewhere. Other games pick up that slack but manage to fall off somewhere else. D&D5/5.5E can’t do it all any more than FATE/FUDGE, W.O.I.N, GURPS, D6, Cypher, Cortex, Savage Worlds, or anything else.

So, “Just play 5E,” just ain’t gonna cut it with me.

Remember back during the Great Wizards of the Coast Dungeons & Dragons Open Game License Debacle of 2023 when everyone was commenting on YouTube, “Just play Pathfinder 2E?” Look how well that sh*t turned out. Sure, Paizo sold out entire warehouses full of product and then promptly turned around and made Pathfinder 2E Remastered. Then upped the price on everything, and more recently they upped it again by about $10 per book. As a side note, do they really expect me to buy into that line about Diamond Distributors causing all of their financial woes? Seriously? What happened to all your big OGL alternative money, Paizo?

If D&D5.5E or Pathfinder 2E Remastered were so good, affordable, easy-to-teach, easy-to-understand, etc.; then why in the flippity flop would I ever want to buy another fantasy game, like Dragonbane? Could it be that D&D5.5E is bloated, over produced, full of fluff, and the people who are normally associated with said game come off as a lot flakey these days? Could it be that the lead Pathfinder designer literally told us not to buy his game a few years ago? (I haven’t forgotten, and I’m not even a conservative.) Seriously—WotC, Paizo, if your act was so together and everything is so perfect, how come your sales are in the toilet?

Yes this is exactly what Luke was crying about in his video.

I’ve seen it. I think Timothy Imholt commented on it a few years ago. Basically someone goes on X (Twitter) and says how WotC is too woke and we should drop D&D5E in favor of (insert-name-of-game.) We get the same thing on YouTube quite a bit. I’m guilty of it as much as anyone.

Does it mean that D&D truly is superior and we should all abandon our “obscure games” in favor of it? I wouldn’t be here if I agreed with that. If I were just another DungeonTuber shill, I probably wouldn’t be in the state of affairs I find myself in these days. (My next therapist is going to need therapy.) But seriously,

I’m not going back to D&D of any flavor any time soon. I might use Mists of Akuma and Iron Kingdoms as references. I might still beg, borrow, and steal from various 5E or Pathfinder 2E monster books. I’m not abandoning the hobby or anything. But I’ll be damned if I hand WotC, Hasbro, Paizo, Kobold Press, Renegade Game Studios, Luke from DM’s Lair, Ginny, Bob, or any other DungeonTuber shill a single dime for their stuff again, possibly ever.

I’m done spending money on people who evidently hate me.

This was not the article I had planned for today. It’s not the article I had planned for Wednesday, either. I’m less than thrilled this piece seems to have a negative angle to it.

But let’s put this in perspective from my point of view. D&D5/5.5E has a lot of inherent flaws. That’s before you get to Critical Role and all these knuckleheads who try to brag it up. That’s before we get to the company who makes D&D and all of their fake social media shenanigans just to gain them notoriety. That’s before you start to realize that D&D Beyond has become the walled garden that was predicted in 2023.

Dragonbane, as much as I love it, has a few issues of its own, too. As a GM who has been immersed in many different game systems and even more settings, I’ll be the first one to tell you no game is perfect. Twilight Sword already has a few gaps that are popping up. My educated guess is that Ruttigers Almanac will, too. It’s just the nature of the beast. My favorite game (Dragonbane) might be better than D&D.

You won’t know until you try it.

It just happens that D&D5E has more flaws, obvious defects, and mismanaged mishaps than probably any other TTRPG on the market today. Loud, popular, and well-known amongst the “mundanes” (non-gamers) does not make a better game. It just makes for a more obvious one. Being mainstream often seems to make a product worse than when it started. I would cringe if something I really enjoyed, like TTRPGs, became a mainstream thing worse than D&D already is.

Let me ask this: Is it more important to be popular or have a quality TTRPG? Logically, a good game should become popular, and a bad one should sink. Yet here we are with D&D5.5E. I dislike 5.5E because I’ve looked through the books. Compared to older editions, it stinks.

This hobby has been one of acceptance, understanding, and forgiveness.

I’ve had plenty of people from all different walks of life and backgrounds at my gaming table over the years. I’d like to think this massive divide we’re seeing in the TTRPG fan base right now has more to do with social media and DungeonTube influencers than it does with anyone’s actual opinions. The common game shop or online customer doesn’t see all the bickering and politicking that goes on in social media unless they too are plugged in. .

The TTRPG niche is a fractured and divided mess. It has been this way since social media became popular. We don’t just pick one another’s games apart. We don’t just have people saying things like, “You’re playing it wrong.”

No. No. We have to have a go at one another on social media and YouTube, too. We have to go after someone’s game, obscure or otherwise. You like chocolate. What’s wrong with vanilla? You have something against strawberry pancakes, too? And on and on it goes. The TTRPG niche seems to have more of it for some reason.

I miss when games felt like coming home after a long day. Games felt like every day was Christmas vacation on the weekends. I miss running marathon Star Wars RPG game sessions. I miss running convention games. I so dearly wish we could get back to that feeling anywhere.

So what if someone thinks D&D5.5E sucks. Run it anyway as long as that’s what your group prefers. I just think people should be willing to give other TTRPG systems and settings a try. Having some DungeonTuber influencer shill pushing the mainstream corporate narrative that D&D5E is the only game you should run doesn’t matter as long as your group is having fun at the table.

I’m leaving my usual closing statements off of this particular article. Try to be kind to one another, regardless of what you might think of D&D5E, the Fifth Edition of the “World’s Most Popular” (because Hasbro says so) Roleplaying Game.

We NEED Indie TableTop RolePlaying Games!

Dear Luke from DM’s Lair…

This was not the article I had planned for Wednesday or Friday. I had Worldbuilding Wednesday on lock. Fantasy Friday was right around the corner. Then I found this video from The DM’s Lair. Some of us don’t enjoy crapping all over Dungeons & Dragons 5E. Although that having been said? I’m going to take this opportunity to vent my opinion of D&D 5/5.5E again because holy crap I’m annoyed now.

Luke was apparently upset because us old guys on X (Twitter) said we preferred (smaller-game-than-D&D-name-here) over his beloved D&D5E. Oh, and did he mention his latest 5E project on Kickstarter? Yeah, homes, we heard you. After his comments about us “old guys” and our “obscure systems,” I wouldn’t give old Luke a dime for that thing on Kickstarter or anything he ever does again after this. Oh, and he’s got some “new” game that he’s working on that will totally not look like 5E at all, I’m sure.

Look if the only reason you’re going to make a DungeonTube video is to shill Wizards of the Coast and pimp out your own projects? Save yourself the time and effort, okay. I seem to recall a time when DM’s Lair was doing the cute comedy skits and giving out at minimum/mediocre Dungeon Master advice. What happened to that stuff? Don’t just go on the air just to dog people like me and games that aren’t your precious D&D5E.

But wait, there’s more.

I swear someone at Wizards of the Coast or one of the marketing/talent agencies must have been going around with some kind of bribe and a script that day. I saw Luke’s thing, one from good old Bob Worldbuilder, and one from DM With a Day Job that were all basically the same video.

The narrative of, “Drop whatever you’re playing and just run D&D5E,” ain’t gonna fly with some of us. And I don’t care what the fans sent into Wizards of the Coast because we all know they only cherry pick the responses they want to hear. I completely disagree with the idea that D&D 5E is the greatest game on Earth. Maybe it’s the loudest mainstream gaming brand (barf) in the TTRPG industry.

I think a misbegotten fallacious narrative has sprouted up that D&D5/5.5E can be bolted onto any genre, campaign setting, or story and everything will work out fine. Well, there might have been a GURPS sourcebook for everything, but it doesn’t mean everything worked in GURPS. D&D is a fantasy first game, which means the mechanics start to break down around the time you introduce firearms, tanks, jets, 40-foot-tall robots, starships, etc. Fantasy game designers tend to struggle with firearms because guns are icky, scary, and dangerous in the real world, so they never bother to look into them.

Just because we can do something with a game system, it doesn’t mean we should do the thing. Some games try to do everything but inevitably fall off somewhere. Other games pick up that slack but manage to fall off somewhere else. D&D5/5.5E can’t do it all any more than FATE/FUDGE, W.O.I.N, GURPS, D6, Cypher, Cortex, Savage Worlds, or anything else.

So, “Just play 5E,” just ain’t gonna cut it with me.

Remember back during the Great Wizards of the Coast Dungeons & Dragons Open Game License Debacle of 2023 when everyone was commenting on YouTube, “Just play Pathfinder 2E?” Look how well that sh*t turned out. Sure, Paizo sold out entire warehouses full of product and then promptly turned around and made Pathfinder 2E Remastered. Then upped the price on everything, and more recently they upped it again by about $10 per book. As a side note, do they really expect me to buy into that line about Diamond Distributors causing all of their financial woes? Seriously? What happened to all your big OGL alternative money, Paizo?

If D&D5.5E or Pathfinder 2E Remastered were so good, affordable, easy-to-teach, easy-to-understand, etc.; then why in the flippity flop would I ever want to buy another fantasy game, like Dragonbane? Could it be that D&D5.5E is bloated, over produced, full of fluff, and the people who are normally associated with said game come off as a lot flakey these days? Could it be that the lead Pathfinder designer literally told us not to buy his game a few years ago? (I haven’t forgotten, and I’m not even a conservative.) Seriously—WotC, Paizo, if your act was so together and everything is so perfect, how come your sales are in the toilet?

Yes this is exactly what Luke was crying about in his video.

I’ve seen it. I think Timothy Imholt commented on it a few years ago. Basically someone goes on X (Twitter) and says how WotC is too woke and we should drop D&D5E in favor of (insert-name-of-game.) We get the same thing on YouTube quite a bit. I’m guilty of it as much as anyone.

Does it mean that D&D truly is superior and we should all abandon our “obscure games” in favor of it? I wouldn’t be here if I agreed with that. If I were just another DungeonTuber shill, I probably wouldn’t be in the state of affairs I find myself in these days. (My next therapist is going to need therapy.) But seriously,

I’m not going back to D&D of any flavor any time soon. I might use Mists of Akuma and Iron Kingdoms as references. I might still beg, borrow, and steal from various 5E or Pathfinder 2E monster books. I’m not abandoning the hobby or anything. But I’ll be damned if I hand WotC, Hasbro, Paizo, Kobold Press, Renegade Game Studios, Luke from DM’s Lair, Ginny, Bob, or any other DungeonTuber shill a single dime for their stuff again, possibly ever.

I’m done spending money on people who evidently hate me.

This was not the article I had planned for today. It’s not the article I had planned for Wednesday, either. I’m less than thrilled this piece seems to have a negative angle to it.

But let’s put this in perspective from my point of view. D&D5/5.5E has a lot of inherent flaws. That’s before you get to Critical Role and all these knuckleheads who try to brag it up. That’s before we get to the company who makes D&D and all of their fake social media shenanigans just to gain them notoriety. That’s before you start to realize that D&D Beyond has become the walled garden that was predicted in 2023.

Dragonbane, as much as I love it, has a few issues of its own, too. As a GM who has been immersed in many different game systems and even more settings, I’ll be the first one to tell you no game is perfect. Twilight Sword already has a few gaps that are popping up. My educated guess is that Ruttigers Almanac will, too. It’s just the nature of the beast. My favorite game (Dragonbane) might be better than D&D.

You won’t know until you try it.

It just happens that D&D5E has more flaws, obvious defects, and mismanaged mishaps than probably any other TTRPG on the market today. Loud, popular, and well-known amongst the “mundanes” (non-gamers) does not make a better game. It just makes for a more obvious one. Being mainstream often seems to make a product worse than when it started. I would cringe if something I really enjoyed, like TTRPGs, became a mainstream thing worse than D&D already is.

Let me ask this: Is it more important to be popular or have a quality TTRPG? Logically, a good game should become popular, and a bad one should sink. Yet here we are with D&D5.5E. I dislike 5.5E because I’ve looked through the books. Compared to older editions, it stinks.

This hobby has been one of acceptance, understanding, and forgiveness.

I’ve had plenty of people from all different walks of life and backgrounds at my gaming table over the years. I’d like to think this massive divide we’re seeing in the TTRPG fan base right now has more to do with social media and DungeonTube influencers than it does with anyone’s actual opinions. The common game shop or online customer doesn’t see all the bickering and politicking that goes on in social media unless they too are plugged in. .

The TTRPG niche is a fractured and divided mess. It has been this way since social media became popular. We don’t just pick one another’s games apart. We don’t just have people saying things like, “You’re playing it wrong.”

No. No. We have to have a go at one another on social media and YouTube, too. We have to go after someone’s game, obscure or otherwise. You like chocolate. What’s wrong with vanilla? You have something against strawberry pancakes, too? And on and on it goes. The TTRPG niche seems to have more of it for some reason.

I miss when games felt like coming home after a long day. Games felt like every day was Christmas vacation on the weekends. I miss running marathon Star Wars RPG game sessions. I miss running convention games. I so dearly wish we could get back to that feeling anywhere.

So what if someone thinks D&D5.5E sucks. Run it anyway as long as that’s what your group prefers. I just think people should be willing to give other TTRPG systems and settings a try. Having some DungeonTuber influencer shill pushing the mainstream corporate narrative that D&D5E is the only game you should run doesn’t matter as long as your group is having fun at the table.

I’m leaving my usual closing statements off of this particular article. Try to be kind to one another, regardless of what you might think of D&D5E, the Fifth Edition of the “World’s Most Popular” (because Hasbro says so) Roleplaying Game.