General The Sets of 2021

[Onderzeeboot]

I knew that D&D was a crusty old boys' club

To be fair, this is a very small subsection of the community, just like there is a small but toxic subgroup in Magic. In every long-running hobby that's played by a lot of people there are always going to be entitled, insecure assholes ruining the fun for others, but the fact is there are plenty of amazing people out there also playing the game. For me the important thing is that scumbags like this are outed and, indeed, ousted.

I actually tried to dig up some more information, because I was completely unaware of this story before you brought it up, and eesh. I have some mixed feelings here. I'm not going to boycott D&D over the ill-informed actions of one man, but forwarding those mails (if that is indeed what he did) is pretty heinous. It looks like Mearls quit Twitter not long after his "apology" but is still active at WotC. I don't know how to feel about people trying to get him fired. On the one hand, he genuinely seems like a nice guy, and people make mistakes, on the other hand it would have been so, so easy to write a heartfelt apology instead of posting a canned lawyer's response. I know, unfortunately, from experience how charming abusers can be. My niece was in an abusive relationship with what seems like the nicest bloke. I can accept that Mearls misjudged Zac's character, and he didn't defend him after the allegations over sexual misconduct surfaced, but Mearls could definitely denounced him way more explicitly after the fact...

Blegh, horrible stuff. As usual, I'm left wondering why it is so hard for some people to just be decent human beings.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

On a more positive note, if you want to watch some high quality content by an experienced DM, I can really recommend Brennan Lee Mulligan's stuff. It's wholesome, just understand that the combats won't be as awesome at your own table due to the lack of incredible terrain and minis

 

[Zoss]

To be fair, this is a very small subsection of the community, just like there is a small but toxic subgroup in Magic. In every long-running hobby that's played by a lot of people there are always going to be entitled, insecure assholes ruining the fun for others...

Oh, absolutely--everyone I've met in person playing D&D is wonderful, and I've been playing for closing in on two decades now. (Yikes.) I was mostly talking about the people who write the sourcebooks, who seem like a fairly small group of people predominantly made up of middle-aged guys who have known each other for a long time (an "old boys' club"). They're probably mostly good people, but they're a bit insular as a community--hence, crusty.

What this means is that sometimes they have very particular ideas about how D&D should work that keep it from being a better game, because let's face it, D&D is not a great game. It's poorly designed (who though "Wish" was a good idea?), devotes most of its page count to combat, which is usually the least interesting part of the game, and features a crazy amount of imbalances between classes. If the devs took a step back and reevaluated some of their basic assumptions about what D&D wants to be, it would be a lot better. However, I don't see that happening.


edit: basically, it's obvious that the rules of D&D would be better if it the group making it was more open to reevaluation, but I never thought that they would harbor bad people. Seems like they might have, for a while, and they should have been more vocal about removing them, but overall good moves on their part. I give them a B-.

 

[LadyMapi]

On a related topic to our tangent, one of my friends recently posted a bit of a rant about how inexpensive it is to branch out into games that aren't D&D over on Twitter.

Because D&D is actually on the expensive end of the hobby. Seriously, you have to be going out and buying out-of-print games or dumb box sets (like THE CUBE... which is nowhere near worth the asking price) to match the kinds of money you need to spend to buy the core books. In fact, I'd argue that D&D is a terrible gateway into the hobby, because it fills new players with the expectation that tabletop games are expensive to buy into and require learning a bunch of loosely-connected rules.

As for "old boys' club"... RPGs are a tiny hobby that only supports a handful of professional writers (since the profit margins are so narrow). The norm for most companies not named "WotC" or "Paizo" is to employ 1-2 full time people (who might actually just be the company's owners) and then hire freelancers (if needed — usually authors). On top of that, the official D&D books are produced by one company, so it's not surprising that the sourcebooks are written by a handful of people.

...

Sorry, as someone who's big on the more indie side of things, it pains me a little when people think that D&D is representative of the hobby as a whole. It'd be like if someone used selling their weird gimmick cube to people as a way of getting people into Magic.

EDIT: Sorry, seeing the "everyone I've met in person playing D&D is wonderful" just reminded me of the time one of my players pulled out a grenade in the middle of a session.

No, not his character. He just reached into his pocket and pulled out a dummy grenade he had bought at the army surplus store that day. Like you do.

 

[sigh]

Yall pay for DnD?

 

[LadyMapi]

I don't — my general policy is not to give WotC money for anything.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Yall pay for DnD?

Yes, I bought the three base books plus Xanathar's and Tasha's (for 5e, I might or might not have more books for earlier editions ).

 

[ravnic]

I don't — my general policy is not to give WotC money for anything.

You don't buy magic cards then?

 

[sigh]

I haven't bought packs of cards in a looong time. It's cost inefficient in the extreme, for one thing. Similarly don't feel the need to pay for DnD books, when there are people that already have them that will lend, and there are online resources that are free.

 

[LadyMapi]

You don't buy magic cards then?

Nope.

 

[ravnic]

So, how did you get your pile of 180 cards? Or the cards necessary for Afternoon Delight?

 

[Zoss]

A lot of us who've started cubing within the last year have our cubes solely digital due to *recent events*. Plus, there's also the argument that buying singles isn't buying from WotC (though if you look at the economics you totally are, just indirectly).

 

[Zoss]

On a related topic to our tangent, one of my friends recently posted a bit of a rant about how inexpensive it is to branch out into games that aren't D&D over on Twitter.

Because D&D is actually on the expensive end of the hobby. Seriously, you have to be going out and buying out-of-print games or dumb box sets (like THE CUBE... which is nowhere near worth the asking price) to match the kinds of money you need to spend to buy the core books. In fact, I'd argue that D&D is a terrible gateway into the hobby, because it fills new players with the expectation that tabletop games are expensive to buy into and require learning a bunch of loosely-connected rules.

As for "old boys' club"... RPGs are a tiny hobby that only supports a handful of professional writers (since the profit margins are so narrow). The norm for most companies not named "WotC" or "Paizo" is to employ 1-2 full time people (who might actually just be the company's owners) and then hire freelancers (if needed — usually authors). On top of that, the official D&D books are produced by one company, so it's not surprising that the sourcebooks are written by a handful of people.

...

Sorry, as someone who's big on the more indie side of things, it pains me a little when people think that D&D is representative of the hobby as a whole. It'd be like if someone used selling their weird gimmick cube to people as a way of getting people into Magic.

EDIT: Sorry, seeing the "everyone I've met in person playing D&D is wonderful" just reminded me of the time one of my players pulled out a grenade in the middle of a session.

No, not his character. He just reached into his pocket and pulled out a dummy grenade he had bought at the army surplus store that day. Like you do.

Sorry for the double-post, but I think we're not quite seeing eye-to-eye here. I've played a lot of RPGs, not just D&D--Champions, several branches of Fate, Shadowrun, Lancer, Everyone Is John (yeah, definitely not another game I'll play again now that I look back at it. But an interesting concept. Could be saved by re-fluffing it as John being an animatronic suit piloted by a group of gnomes, perhaps.), Time Wizards, Lasers & Feelings, Don't Rest Your Head, hell, even the bastard that is GURPS. When I'm saying D&D is insular and hasn't aged well, I am specifically talking about D&D, not about all RPGs. I wish D&D took more inspiration from other RPGs, even from variants of D&D like the West Marches campaign setting, instead of listening to and iterating on the ideas of a relatively small, relatively strongly-bordered group of people. (From an outsider's perspective that's what it looks like, anyways.) Indie publishers don't have the luxury of having that small, stable group of people to work on ideas with so their products are a lot more experimental as a result of bouncing ideas off of anyone who will listen and are a lot more interesting to me as a result.



There are a bunch of weirdos in D&D, absolutely, and a bunch of outright dangerous people too (unsure which your player falls into. Maybe neither, maybe both.). My point in bringing that up was to agree with your point that the toxic jerks are mostly a small subset of these people.



Those are some great games, thanks for the recommendation! I've not played in a while, so these are helping to get the creative juices flowing. Now I'm really digging Pride and Extreme Prejudice.... (https://twitter.com/gshowitt/status/1035120880748318721)

 

[Velrun]

A lot of us who've started cubing within the last year have our cubes solely digital due to *recent events*. Plus, there's also the argument that buying singles isn't buying from WotC (though if you look at the economics you totally are, just indirectly).

Paying someone else to pay Wizards of the Coast is the same thing as paying Wizards of the Coast.

Also Wizards of the Coast need money to keep the game going. It will die without a revenue.

 

[LadyMapi]

So, how did you get your pile of 180 cards? Or the cards necessary for Afternoon Delight?

I've had those cards for ages, and Afternoon Delight is purely digital.

And @Zoss, that wasn't targeted at you — I was just using you as a jumping-off point. And yeah, you're right — D&D is definitely eating its own tail at this point.