It is difficult for me to picture a world where Dungeons & Dragons never happened. Whatever else one could say, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson brought something distinctive into the world when they put out that first version of the game. Without it, the landscapes of popular culture, literature, and video games would be radically different than they are now. Without D&D and its distinctive settings, the early “Gold Box” computer RPGs (not to mention beloved knock-offs like Interplay’s The Bard’s Tale and Sir-Tech’s Wizardry) would never have been made. And without those, no Baldur’s Gate, no Neverwinter Nights, no Fallout, and hundreds more never would have been made. An entire genre of games would probably never have come about, or at least not at the same time and in the same way. And that doesn’t begin to get into the tabletop side of things. No GURPS, no Savage Worlds, or any other generic system, to say nothing of more specific systems and settings like Vampire: The Masquerade and Cyberpunk RED. Look back fifty years in the past and one shudders at the radical changes that have occurred.
Of course, nobody knew that going in.
Panic At The Tabletop
To understand the impact of D&D, and perhaps understand some of the outrage regarding its future, you have to keep in mind that while the First Edition came out in the early 70s, the Second Edition came out in the early 80s, with the “Advanced” rules coming out at the tail end of that decade. As somebody who lived through them as a kid, the 80s were, in retrospect, very weird.
Towards the end of the 70s, and well into the mid-80s, sensationalist press over “Satanic” elements was pretty much everywhere. You heard a lot of nonsense about what happened when you played certain vinyl albums backwards, and Christian groups were constantly up in arms over one perceived example of Satanism or witchcraft, usually related to rock bands like Kiss and Led Zeppelin. The most lurid of these episodes centered on James Dallas Egbert III. He was a university student in Michigan who was a fan of D&D, along with having serious emotional and mental health issues. In 1979, he attempted suicide by trying to overdose on quaaludes in the steam tunnels underneath Michigan State University. His disappearance sparked an understandable amount of parental concern and an equally inexplicable frenzy over his connection to D&D even after he was found alive some months later. The notion of D&D being something which led to psychotic episodes and delusional behavior persisted for years. The 1982 TV movie Mazes and Monsters was based off a novel which fictionalized the incident, which marked Tom Hanks’ first movie role, and which also perversely helped boost sales of D&D for TSR. As moral panics went, TSR survived a lot better than it could have under the circumstances. The book The Dungeon Master (written by William Dear, a private investigator who was hired to find Egbert after his disappearance) wasn’t in the same league as Seduction of The Innocent which ultimately led to EC Comics being closed down, despite having an actual case to tangentially point towards. Still, it wasn’t exactly wine and roses for TSR at the time.
For myself, I never played the First or Second editions, Basic or Advanced. My mother didn’t exactly buy into the whole “Satanic Panic” business, but she wasn’t going to let me get the game. However, she didn’t seem to have a problem with me watching the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon that aired on CBS during Saturday mornings. It wasn’t promoting the tabletop game compared to some cartoons like Rubik The Amazing Cube (like I said, the 80s were very weird for a kid). It was a classic adventure show, with larger-than-life villains (notably played by Peter Cullen) and a surprisingly recognizable voice cast of protagonists even for a kid. More to the point, it didn’t have the stupid moral lesson postscript so many other cartoons of the era were obliged to include. It did have moral lessons embedded in them, but it wasn’t heavy handed about the whole thing. More interestingly, there were shockingly grim moments in a Saturday morning cartoon, dealing with perceived betrayals and even a stated willingness to straight-up kill the BBEG, Venger. The fact it didn’t get a proper series finale despite having the script written and ready to go is perhaps one of the greater injustices of TV history.
Beyond that, Dungeons & Dragons was something I knew about but never had any direct contact with in those first two editions. I think the fact I was able to pick up the second edition of GURPS represents something of a minor triumph on my part, and was probably my first real lesson on the power of branding and advertising. The D&D brand had been hurt by the whole “Satanic Panic” nonsense, but GURPS avoided that problem, even though it was capable of doing the same basic thing.
Into The Dragon’s Lair
After I came back to Arizona in 2000, I was kinda trying to get my bearings. All my friends at that point were back in Colorado and I was just starting out on my own. One of my new colleagues invited me over to play in his Dungeons & Dragons game. I knew that D&D had just released its then new Third Edition, and I had some passing familiarity with D&D courtesy of the Baldur’s Gate series. He assured me it would be Third Edition and that I just needed the Player’s Handbook. Of course, me being a bibliophile and a gaming nerd, I bought all three core books just in case. The next five years or so were a whirlwind where a lot of disposable income went into D&D books, as well as other TTRPGs based off recommendations from colleagues turned friends. Discussions about Forgotten Realms setting lore, theorycrafting characters, sneaking a game of Iron Kingdoms through an early version of Roll20 during the wee hours of second shift on a help desk, this was my early gaming life.
Unlike a lot of people at the time, I had come into D&D “backwards,” playing the computer games like Baldur’s Gate, then coming around to the tabletop version. And in truth, I liked what the tabletop versions could give me. More to the point, they were helping me (or so I still believe) become a better writer and storyteller. Granted, some of the games I ran ended disastrously, but even these proved valuable lessons.
While a number of the books on my shelf are different systems, a sizable percentage of those books are based on 3rd Edition D&D, also referred to as the d20 System. Compared to GURPS, character creation was pretty fast. Compared to White Wolf’s Storyteller system, the characters were very narrowly focused. And within that system, you had a lot of vibrancy. You had the low magic swords-and-sorcery of Monte Cook’s Iron Heroes (which took Third Edition’s feat system to a whole new level). You had the modern day action-adventure spy thriller sensibilities of Crafty Games’ Spycraft, as well as its urban fantasy/horror counterpart from Mythic Dreams Studios in Dark Inheritance. You had soaring space opera from Holistic with Fading Suns d20. You had the mecha-steampunk fantasy of Privateer Press’ Iron Kingdoms. And yes, there were shortcomings, there were flaws, there were trap options which sometimes put dampers on play. But for all its failings, it was a vibrant ecosystem, not simply a ruleset.
Then 4th Edition D&D came and shot the good times clean through the head. As a tabletop RPG, it was a great wargame. The intended (some might say “forced”) synergies with miniatures and the “streamlining” of character advancement to the point of irrelevance was not my cup of tea. If I wanted to play an MMORPG, I’d load up World of WarCraft. I played D&D for all the things WoW couldn’t give me. Hell, with the right books, I could play WoW the way a D&D game should go. Point is, 4th Edition was a terrible misstep for Wizards of The Coast for much the same reason that people are put out right now. They tried to abandon the OGL (in 4th Ed’s case with the Game System License, or GSL, which was about as far from the OGL as you could get) and effectively turbocharged Paizo’s Pathfinder product line, along with a modest boost to Pinnacle’s Savage Worlds and the FATE system by Evil Hat Productions. For myself, having quickly gotten disgusted with 4th Edition, I delved into White Wolf’s offerings. I jumped in with both feet on Exalted and the later “Storyteller” system games, which some long time White Wolf fans didn’t exactly enjoy.
The 5th Edition of D&D went a long way towards correcting the debacle of 4th Edition, yet in some respects, Wizards of The Coast overcorrected. They pulled away from the elaborate storylines and incremental progressions of their settings like Forgotten Realms, instead leaving the future open to players and Dungeon Masters to chart. In some respects, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since experienced DMs were likely going to be going their own way anyhow. But for those new to the setting, or for those who wanted a coherent chronology to serve as a framework for their adventures, the ill defined setting period is a major impediment. There was a sense of laziness, of incomplete effort and half-hearted commitment to the products. Given Corporate America’s near-pathological addiction to the term “synergies,” it’s shocking that only three Magic: The Gathering settings were given full-blown books in 5th Edition. Other settings got “mini-splats” in the form of free Planeshift PDFs (always coinciding with the release of a new Art of Magic: The Gathering book), and a couple have never received any official translations. Consider this: during 3rd Edition, Wizards put out twenty different sourcebooks just for the Forgotten Realms setting, most of them deep dives on specific sections of Faerun, along with six adventure modules and three “super-adventures.” Compare that to 5th Edition, where you have a half dozen super-adventures, one adventure anthology specifically covering Faerun (Candlekeep Adventures; not bad adventures but just as loosey-goosey with the chronology), and one “player’s guide” that doesn’t appear to add much in terms of player options or expansion of the setting. Other settings such as Eberron and Ravenloft feel equally shortchanged, certainly not getting the sort of detailed expansions one saw during the 3rd Edition heyday.
And for all the buzz about older settings like Spelljammer and Planescape getting new and updated renditions, other settings such as Dark Sun (perhaps an unconscious side effect of 4th Edition’s failures) and Grayhawk haven’t seen a 5th Edition re-release. Five decades of lore, backstory, and potential across multiple different settings, all of it wasted by Wizards for reasons which I won’t pretend to understand. Wizards of The Coast seems to be all kinds of crazy for metaplotting in Magic: The Gathering, but Heavens forfend they do so in D&D.
Drowning My Books
I haven’t looked at a D&D book of any kind since this whole debacle started. For certain elements relating to a side-line in being a professional Game Master, I’m obliged to be looking at the 5.1 System Resource Document to make sure posts for 5E-compatible third party settings like Warchief Gaming’s Auroboros: Coils of The Serpent look right. But outside of that, I haven’t looked at anything else published by Wizards of The Coast. I’m not running any D&D games either personally or professionally. Haven’t been moved to look through the Planeshift min-splats. Hell, I haven’t even been looking back through the old 3rd Edition stuff. It all feels… tainted somehow.
The aftermath of the OGL Crisis has been difficult to parse. Wizards of The Coast is breezily proclaiming that the massive cancellations of D&D Beyond subscriptions isn’t going to impact their bottom line, which might not be entirely inaccurate given its annual nature. There’s been a lot of damage control efforts by executive producer Kyle Brink with (marginal) success. There are repeated exhortations to see Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves in theatres. Joe Manganiello, a well-known actor and equally well known D&D fan, is reportedly developing a TV series alongside a documentary. The attitude of “business as usual” has been almost overwhelming from the people with six-figure stakes or larger in the continued health of the game.
But get down to individual tabletops and it’s a wildly different atmosphere. The anger and outrage at Wizards’ fiasco is still very much present, maybe banked a little bit (nobody could stay that pissed off forever without going a little nuts), but enough that it’s gotten people looking at other systems. From what I can tell, Paizo is probably picking up the lion’s share of players, given their Pathfinder system is the closest one can get to D&D without actually paying Wizards. Monte Cook has been trying to push the Cypher System hard in the wake of the OGL Crisis. There hasn’t been much out of Steve Jackson (of Steve Jackson Games), so definitely “business as usual” seems to be working. Mike Pondsmith of R. Talsorian Games advocated for restraint in interactions with Wizards and Hasbro staff, but even Cyberpunk RED is starting to pick up players. For my own part, I’ve got Pathfinder books. I picked up a copy of the Cypher System shortly after Monte Cook announced his own open license (which was before the OGL Crisis). Been running Cyberpunk RED games fairly regularly. I’m not hurting for different choices in systems. Where I’m hurting is the settings that feel like they’re somehow off-limits now. I won’t pretend I’m a bigger Forgotten Realms lore nerd than Ed Greenwood, but damn me, that setting is probably my absolute favorite, out of all the settings and all the systems I’ve picked up. I have a soft spot for Ravenloft, since it was part of that first D&D campaign I played in so many years ago. Even Eberron grew on me, despite never getting a chance to play a game in that setting. And now, it feels like those worlds are lost to me. Cut off by some catastrophic event which has destroyed the connections between me and those destinations.
There’s basically two extremes when it comes to the curation and maintenance of a body of fictional lore. The first is “hyper-curation,” where everything is meticulously monitored, all of it vetted by a single authority, and the determination of what is canon and what is not owes as much to caprice as it does a rationalized development plan. Star Wars, under George Lucas, would be a good example of this. And while you get a lot of consistency, you also run into the problem of what happens when the arbiter of what is canon or not basically loses their mind. There are no shortage of stories about spin-offs and third-party projects which George Lucas basically trashed because of his own overzealous protection of Star Wars canon. The other extreme is apathy, a complete lack of concern about where lore goes or how it affects the world. It’s what happens to us when we’re younger and we’re trying to build worlds in our heads, but we kinda lose control because we’ve stuffed so much in there. We don’t care if it sounds cohesive or not; it sounded cool and now we can’t get rid of it. It also happens when a corporate giant takes over an existing property and they don’t give a shit because they just want whatever money they can squeeze out of it. Disney’s starting to go that way with Star Wars, but Wizards of The Coast (under Hasbro) has been going that way since 4th Edition D&D, taking the corners of the map that say “here be dragons” as license to do whatever they like in a metanarrative sense without thinking about the consequences.
And yes, there are consequences for such things. It pisses off the long-time fans, which is a good way to cut revenue streams because they’re less likely to buy new products based off the “corrupted” lore. It alienates potential new fans because they can see the abrupt shifts in tone and focus with a clarity that matches the long-time fans, and it doesn’t move them to touch the hot mess steaming in front of them. That leaves the casual fans and one-time players, and they’re just as likely to leave as they are to stay, because there’s nothing compelling about the old lore keeping them around and nothing about the new lore that explicitly fascinates them.
You’ll hear a lot of people say, “There is no 4th Edition of D&D” in much the same way people use the meme, “There is no war in Ba Sing Se.” In D&D‘s case, it’s a repudiation of what many see as an evolutionary dead end for the ruleset, to say nothing of the radically unwelcome changes in the lore. And I fear there’s going to be a similar sentiment coming forth in the months to come. It’s entirely likely that the calls for boycotting the D&D movie will have an impact on its box office, which will potentially inhibit efforts like Manganiello’s TV show. Or, frankly, any other effort outside of novels to try and bring those worlds to different media, and even that’s iffy. It’s just another sign of the apathy infecting Wizards of The Coast.
Forsaken Realms
It’s only been a month or so since the OGL Crisis blew up and came its “conclusion.” Wizards tried to bull ahead with their plans, got caught, lied about their plans, tried their plans a different way, got shouted down, and ultimately tried to sidestep the issue in a way that doesn’t necessarily make anybody happy. Which, I suppose, is the definition of a successful compromise. It’s only February now and it feels like things have gone on for years.
There are too many memories tied up with D&D for me. Most of them good, a few of them very weird, but all of them important to me. Not being able to spark those memories, to be able to read a passage in a sourcebook or look at a character sheet and enjoy the recollection, is deeply disturbing to me. I suspect that, in time, it may reach a point where I can feel like those worlds are once again accessible to me. That I can look back in my library and feel it’s perfectly OK to see those worlds again. But not anytime soon.
In the macro scale, Cynthia Williams and Chris Cocks and everybody else in the C-suite of both Wizards of The Coast and Hasbro aren’t going to give a damn about my disquiet. Kyle Brink will neither notice nor comment upon one gamer approaching middle-age who is inexplicably unhappy with the discharge of the stewardship he has been granted. Thing is, I cannot believe I’m the only person feeling this way. There have to be others, to a greater or lesser degree, and that should be terrifying to anybody who ostensibly wants to convince people to buy their product. The money I spent twenty years ago has already been spent by others in turn. Yesterday’s coin is long gone by this point. And Wizards of The Coast has not made a compelling case for me, or for many others, to spend tomorrow’s coin to their benefit.
Still, I should perhaps thank them in as backhanded a fashion as I can muster. It’s given me an impetus to find new worlds to explore. I can’t forget the settings I enjoyed and the people I enjoyed them with. I can, however, find new enjoyments. I can make new memories. As Stephen King so eloquently stated in The Gunslinger, “There are other worlds than these.” And it’s up to me to find them.
I hesitate to comment as I’m new to this site, so I may never see any responses. I appreciate your history and comments on the history of D&D and rpgs.
But the OGL crisis wasn’t a problem for me. Admittedly I only play 5e. So Paizo having to pay for settings doesn’t affect me. Corporations being greedy and wanting more money isn’t new to me.
So my question is: had the OGL crisis not had intervention, what would you have stood to lose?
Would Paizo and the other companies have declared bankruptcy? Would D&D be unplayable? Would you have been unable to create your own worlds and use established books and rules to play?
It’s more likely that Paizo would have filed suit against WoTC for failing to abide by the OGL 1.0. Realistically, they’re the company with the next biggest war chest. As a pro GM, the policies WoTC was outlining, particularly with the proposed Virtual Tabletop (VTT) policy, would have made it more difficult to run games in that medium. Paizo, Kobold Press, and Green Ronin are probably the three biggest 3rd party publishers operating under the OGL 1.0 at this time. Games like Pathfinder and Mutants & Masterminds would be effectively unavailable until new versions with new rulesets were developed, a process which probably would take at least as long as a lawsuit might potentially last.
From a personal perspective, no, I would not have been unable to create my own worlds in terms of settings. It would have been more difficult (or at least logistically unfeasible) for me to publish anything using d20 rules, either 3/3.5 (which WoTC would have frozen with their “termination” of OGL 1.0) or 5E compatible. The whole point of an open source license is not about “profit uber alles.” WoTC and Hasbro have conveniently forgotten that. As far as playing established settings, like 3/3.5 Forgotten Realms or Eberron, I have the books and potentially could play using them. Doesn’t mean that I’d feel good about it. Look at the current furor over Hogwarts Legacy, then turn it down to a low simmer, and that’s the mood I’d be experiencing had WoTC prevailed with the OGL 1.2 proposal.
Individual GMs could continue to run their home games, using existing books. But that’s not the issue. Attempting to run any D&D, or d20-adjacent game over a VTT would be difficult to impossible, or costly, if available at all.
If VTT hosts agreed or surrendered to WotC’s legal fiction, that they can own game mechanics, those hosts would have to pay WotC a huge hunk of their turnover (not profit, turnover), a cost that would have to be passed onto the end user; or
they would be forced to rename every mechanical aspect of the game system, *and* the end users be able to remember the changes;
or the VTT be reduced to an online map host and dice roller, with the players and GM running the game inefficiently, as a physically distanced face to face game.
And that’s before we address the chilling effect on anyone attempting to publish material for any edition of D&D/AD&D, d20 system, or even systems completely unrelated to d20 or D&D.
Because there are publishers who used the OGL1.0 as a template for allowing third party collaborators or fan content, whose games bear no similarities at all to anything currently or historically published by TSR or WotC.
And they did so, based on assurances from WotC executives, that the OGL1.0 was perpetual and irrevocable.
That’s a lot of disruption, to a lot of publishers and stores, who’d have to go through every product, and (best case scenario) paste a bespoke OGL over the existing boilerplate text.
Hi. Fellow late 80’s gamer here (since 2nd Edition).
I couldn’t have summed it up better. I’ve been a very vocal cheerleader for the franchise for two and a half decades, even to the point of befriending Gary’s oldest son on social media (and for the record, he’s always been… really nice, but bad opinions). I also had a similar upbringing, except I got the books and THEN the computer & video games (specifically Dark Sun: Shattered Lands and Warriors Of The Eternal Sun).
This whole debacle feels like a massive punch in the gut. From a single war game played in a basement in Lake Geneva came a cultural revolution and they shot themselves in the leg over profits and greed. And all of this after multiple whoopsie-dos regarding problematic lore, which they handled infinitely better than this.
All this mess has driven me to Fate System, various 0E/1E/White Box D&D clones and obscure systems (Oz: Dark And Terrible for the win).
I don’t see WoTC recovering from this, to be honest. This might be the beginning of a long term slump. PAIZO can’t keep their physical books in stock and their digital Humble Bundles are selling out in record numbers.
“Recovery” is a very…value-laden term. Are they going to be at the heights they have been at previously? Unlikely, least not any time soon. Will they eventually bounce back? Yeah. Unless a company gets involved in Enron-levels of shenanigans and chicanery, they’re going to remain a presence in the industry. If 4th Edition didn’t destroy WoTC, I doubt “One D&D” will. But they’re definitely going to be hurting for a while. My personal guess is that they’ll be relegated to the second-tier of game companies in the TTRPG space for probably the next five years. Merch and “transmedia synergies” will keep them in the public eye, but the long-time fans like you and I are on the far side of a thoroughly demolished bridge.
Paizo for sure is going to make bank as long as they can, but this particular surge can’t go on forever. Everybody’s eyes, including WoTC’s, are going to be looking at their ORC initiative and how it compares to the original OGL. Also curious to see what Kobold Press comes up with as far as their “Project Black Flag.” Ultimately, I think the hobby will be healthier. Just sucks having to burn out all the scrub brush.
Without leaving a mile-long rant on your excellent article, I cannot begin to explain how I feel about “nerd hobbies”. But I’ll give it a go. Consumerism has turned my hobbies into shotgun-sludge. Neatly packed for your convenience, ready to be blasted down your throat before you even get to the car. Custom tailored to look just like you – oh don’t you just feel like you belong – and oh why don’t you take this chance to buy a limited edition, mass produced plushie that looks just like your favorite hero – buy 10! Add them to your collection of cheap, throwaway crap sitting in a pile in the corner of your living room. In the meantime we’re going to continue upending everything about these hobbies that made them fun and endearing to begin with, kill off or ruin every major character that you came here for, to make them generic enough for everyone to spend money on. All the better to sell more to you all. Here, have a mega-bucket of premium superhero-junkfood while you wait for the next installment of the current hobby we’ve turned into a global franchise, ready to be consumed easily and without any effort.
At the risk of sounding like a gatekeeper, I can’t wait until society leaves my favorite pastimes for someone else’s. God help you, whoever is next.
I’ll hold the gate with you.
Just a correction; your dates for early editions are off.
OD&D (original D&D) – 1974
Holmes basic aka blue book – 1977
1E AD&D aka first edition – 1977 to 1979
B/X aka moldvay basic – 1981
BECMI aka Mentzner basic aka red box – 1983
2e AD&D aka second edition – 1989
You’ll note that I did not give specific dates for releases of the early editions of D&D, but approximations. It could be argued that 1974 counts more as the mid-70s rather than the early 70s. That said, it was perhaps unclear about the distinction between the first and second AD&D editions. They were separate products and there were changes in the rules between the two.
Yes, it was unclear.what you were talking about. The”advanced” didn’t come along in the later part of the 80s decade, which is what you stated.
Well said sir, I have one peeve that I can’t let go ( and I could have read it wrong). But “The Bards Tale” and “wizardry” came out LONG before the gold box games.
Details matter towards credibility my friend.
It would seem I’m a bit guilty of ambiguity on this point. The Bard’s Tale and Wizardry do predate the Gold Box games, but their mechanics were certainly inspired by 1st Edition D&D. I should perhaps clarify that sentence. That said, Wizardry for sure came out well before the Gold Box games, but the first installment of The Bard’s Tale came out only about three years before Pool of Radiance. Not all that long, relatively speaking, but it sure seems that way after all this time.
Haha, as someone who led the charge on getting The Bard’s Tale series remastered, I can confirm both my initial confusion over what you wrote *and* once I parsed it agree with you. The original Bard’s Tale definitely has its roots partly in D&D and the games that Michael Cranford and Brian Fargo used to play in high school together.
Good article, and I agree with a lot of it. Its immensely frustrating and has been for a long time.
I’m 40 and have played through 4 of 5 editions, and just have an inexplicable bad taste in my mouth left from this whole thing … I don’t even much feel like buying MTG from WotC despite a good 30 years playing that game.
I think it’s a feeling of disillusionment, that the feeling I, at least, get from smaller publishers is, “we love this nerdy hobby and hopefully can make enough money to survive and keep doing it …” whereas WotC has just been too blatant that it sees gamers as marks to fleece of every possible penny.
Maybe TSR felt that way at times. Maybe WotC was really always like that … I don’t think so, but maybe. The difference now is that due to Hasbro’s other problems, they have been so desperate lately they couldn’t even pretend that they don’t only cared about $ and, even more importantly short-term $.
I know that doesn’t inherently make the products worse, but it somehow takes the fun out of it.
It does kinda feel like WoTC has gotten more greedy in the last decade or so. Whether that’s because of 4th Edition backfiring, the fallout from the recession caused by the subprime mortgage collapse, or just the usual progression of a corporation turning into a metastasizing appetite, it’s hard to say. The small publishers, yeah, they’re hungry and they’re trying to keep the lights on. But they’re also doing interesting stuff because nothing else will catch people’s attention. WoTC, on the other hand, has gotten lazy and it shows. And yeah, it does leave a bad taste in one’s mouth. The way Williams and Cocks have managed to tarnish the D&D brand in particular as well as the WoTC and Hasbro brands in general with this debacle is just unspeakable. Worse, it’s killing the fun for the folks who put their energy into the community.
Sheer size means Hasbro will likely survive, but it’s probably going on short rations for the next little while, and at a time when they can ill afford it.
Someone I know said recently “Why do Wizards keep being the best thing that ever happened to Paizo?” about the recent twenty-sided car crash.
It does seem like that. Or put another way, “If I had a nickel for every time WoTC boosted Paizo’s profile, I’d have two nickels. Which is weird that it happened twice.”
Good article, bad title. There are many of us who grew up on this game and lived through these eras you mention. This wasn’t just a game for us, it raised us. To see what it has become is a tragedy.
A lot of the people I played with when I first started with D&D had played those earlier editions, and they’re probably just as disgusted by what’s happened as anybody.
As far as the title, I’m the oldest person on staff by a considerable margin. So that part of it was quite honest. I’m sometimes surprised when one of these young whippersnappers talks about DOSBox. And yes, there are gamers who are older than me and who have been playing longer than I have, some of them probably right at the beginning. I even play with a couple of them. When it came time to work on the title, Prospero’s line from The Tempest about “drown my books” struck a chord with me. From my perspective, there’s a kind of magic in a good TTRPG. A well written sourcebook to me is a sort of portal to another world: geography and peoples and cultures and history described, but the stories yet to be written are up to me and those around me. A foolishly romantic conceit, perhaps, but one I’m unwilling to give up in the face of the recent unpleasantness.
The only “D&D” I’ll play is Pathfinder 1. It’s the most robust system I can play that also “feels like” playing AD&D. It’s like everyone wants to rush back to the old Basic Boxes which were basically Table Top wargaming.
AD&D introduced real Role Playing:
As a role player, YOU BECOME Falstaff the fighter… You act out ihe game as this character staying within your “god-given abilities”… You interact with your fellow role players, not as Jim and Bob and Mary who work at the office together, but as Falstaff the fighter, Angore the cleric, and Filmar, the Mistress of Magic! -PHB p7
That’s the Dungeons and Dragons I know. 4e, 5e and PF2 have thrown that away in favour of a boardgame or videogame approach. As you said, if I want to play WoW, I’ll just play WoW.
You’ll get no argument from me about the shortcomings of 4th Edition D&D. While I did pick up 2nd Edition Pathfinder recently (courtesy of Humble Bundle) and have yet to really dive into it, 5E didn’t strike me as having the sort of impediments 4E had in terms of roleplaying. It’s up to the players to choose how deeply they immerse themselves in the role. And it’s up to the DM/GM to encourage that style of play, usually by rewarding players who really get into character. There are DMs who don’t necessarily enjoy that kind of game. And there are players who have problems adopting an entirely different persona. I’d rather have players who are trying because they’re interested in the setting and the story, even if they’re falling short. Sometimes, it just takes a little more “roll playing” before somebody can really get into the “role playing.”