Insane Allegations Against Matt Mercer & Matt Colville
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People try to blame Matt Mercer for literally anything just cuz they don't like how popular he is. Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro are the only ones that should be to blame because they let their greed get the better of them.
I would blame him for having fabulous hair, which I severely lack. He stole it from me!
@@CathrineMacNiel fair.
Yes, some people are just trying to be hipsters, hating everything and anything that is "popular".
@@TF2CrunchyFrogI hated being cool before it was cool, which made hating cool the coolest. I might need therapy.
@@laidbackgames4440 I'd look into it if I were you lol
It;s a bold argument to suggest that the hemorrhaging from Wizards shooting their own foot is the fault of others. What choice did the third parties have in the face of the OGL changes?
I mean, they could have quietly gone on creating under OGL 2, abandoned their creativity and let Hasbro leech all their profit away.
It's damn near victim-blaming.
It's a Bald Faced Lie! Wotc Shill gonna Shill!
It's also interesting that they are only going after big names that used to push their brand and are now branching out to make their own TTRPG product.
I’m glad you said this as this is what’s really going on wizards and Hasbro are at falt for the loss in trust from their fans. No one else is to blame.
Let's be very very clear.,. Hasbro is the one that is killing D&D with their greed.
This right here.
To put it in perspective even Bank of America called out hasbro for ruining "customer good will". How unbelievably shitty do you have to be as a company for the people from all those stories about repossessing orphans and widows' homes to say you're too much of an asshole?
This is true. My worry, though, is that tabletop gaming is going to go the route that streaming services are going. As much as I detest Hasbro for what they're doing, I think that it will be somewhat frustrating if/when D&D takes a popularity nose dive, and there is a good chance that you won't have the source material for whatever system your next game will be using. Trying to share one or two copies of a PHB-type book at a table of 6 is not nearly as smooth as when most of the players have their own copy. I'll admit, I really liked being able to support third party content creators whose content I enjoy, have confidence that there is a good chance that it will be relevant at most tables, if not in every game, and save money by only really needing a single set of source books.
Blaming the situation on Matt, Matt, or anyone other than Hasbro, though? That's completely asinine.
@@alexanderflack566 WOTC/Hasbro are the ones trying to push it in the streaming service direction.
Also, back in HS & college we played with a single copy of every book with a group of up to 12, and that was 3.5, so a lot of books. It's really only an issue during character creation.
@@michaelmaguire4147 I think you're missing the point of my streaming service comparison. I was referring to just going to one place, Netflix/5e, and everything being there. At one point, just about every show that was on any streaming service was on Netflix, and a ton of third party content creators were doing content for 5e. Now, shows are scattered across half a dozen or more services, and content creators are going that same direction with TTRPGs, with everyone developing their own system. It's going to be more variety in the long run, but fewer people are going to have the books at a given table.
I've had to share a single set of books for an entire table as well, and it's a pain in the ass, unless every spellcaster happens to write down word for word what every single one of their spells does (and there isn't remotely enough room for that on a character sheet). There have been a number of times a wizard or cleric has intended to cast a particular spell only to find that it won't do exactly what they had assumed when they got their hands on the relevant book during their turn, at least in groups I've been a part of. That pretty much went away when we had several copies to go around, since they could double check during someone else's turn more easily.
Matt Mercer was blamed for ruining D&D when he was first getting started with Critical Role and just playing the game, and he's being blamed for ruining D&D by creating an alternative. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they were people out there blaming him for ruining the game while he wasn't even playing it at all.
I'd bet many of those blaming him for ruining the game don't even play themselves.
Matt Mercer ruined D&D! When they took a break from Critical Role, my friends lost motivation to play!!! I BLAME YOUUUU MATTTTTTT!!!!!
@@AraiiarA lol! When the pandemic was really bad, re-watching old CR episodes was one of the things that kept me enjoying TTRPGs, especially since my group couldn't play at all for a couple of years.
I mean, he didn't blame Matt Mercer, he pointed out that splitting the base has never, ever worked out well for the industry.
I guess I shouldn't be surpriosed Discourse's fans don't understand nuance.
@@Stonehorn The fact that, at its heart, a system that allows people to make-believe is an "industry" is part of the problem.
"Matt and Matt are breaking the WOTC monopoly and thats BAAADD, I promise........" -- A WOTC exec probably.
It's so goofy to say that TTRPGs can't thrive as a genre without D&D. That's like saying animation wouldn't survive without Disney.
Yep. Played TTRPGs for 40 years, never played a session of DnD. There's always been a marketplace with immense variety. CoC, Pendragon, GURPS, the White Wolf empire of games, Runequest, Rolemaster, Battletech, The Empire of the Petal Throne, Amber, Rifts, Feng Sui, Fading Suns, I could go on forever.
@@rangda_prime I'm still new to the hobby myself. Thankfully, WotC was already turning shitheel by the time I got interested, so I never made the mistake of spending money with them.
I do feel bad for long-time fans who are now feeling betrayed, but are hesitant to branch out because D&D/MTG is all they're familiar with.
The OGL isn't the first controversy or disaster. Everyone though D&D was screwed when Wizards bought it from the dying TSR. Everyone abandoned D&D when 4th was released. D&D will be fine and so will RPGs.
I agree. You could say that D&D was more of a gateway. Easily accessible with lots of people who play so it is relatively easy to find or start a group, and at the same time opens that door for you to see different systems that you could be interested in.
D&D is the Denny's of RPGs. It's not very good. Everyone knows it's not very good, but there is one in every town, and everyone knows the menu.
When I want a gourmet experience I don't go to Denny's. When I want a dynamic RPG experience I don't play D&D.
With a title like that I was terrified it was going to be something about sexual misconduct, and now I know it's not I'm far too relieved to care about some random doomsayer who doesn't like people diversifying.
I had similar thoughts when I read the title.
I get it’s how people get views but I hate clickbait-y titles
Same here... I'm super glad that isn't the case and I'm going to keep enjoying Critical Role and other D&D streams!
Likewise 😭
I can respect clickbait but geeeeez, that one was something else
"D&D is struggling because Wizards tried to establish a shameless monopoly and failed due to pushback, therefore the entire TTRPG hobby and scene is dying despite the ongoing boom of players branching out into one or more other systems such as Coyote & Crow, Lancer, Pathfinder, Cthulhu Mythos, World of Darkness, Blades in the Dark, Apocalypse, and god only knows how many more" is definitely one of the more asinine things I've heard someone say about this situation.
Eh Coyote and Crow sold well but I wouldn't exactly put its popularity up there with all the other examples listed. Thirsty Sword Lesbians, however, DOES see play a lot
since when the problems of D&D should impact other TTRPG
The theory is that D&D defines the hobby and everything else is just one-offs taking a piece of them. I think it is a poor theory, but it is very popular. Kinda like "Pepsi only has to convince people to try them instead of Coke. Coke has to get people to drink soda." @@alexandre069
@@luketferIt aint about popularity, its about people joining the hobby and finding a system that works for them :P
People supporting more TTRPGs outside of the Hasbro monopoly is a positive for the hobby, especially after what Hasbro's done.
First off, Ben's logic doesn't hold up... His argument is just like saying that a person has to be introduced to and enjoy Taylor Swift before they'll ever wanna hear the old Danzig catalogue. The more closely tailored (or Taylored) a subgenre can be to your specific interests, the more likely you'll get into the broader hobby. AND, the more that these other, smaller settings hit it big, the more comfortable people overall will be in approaching these smaller settings and systems in the first place.
Second, I think he's got his chain of causation backward. This is exactly what happens to just about EVERY community once it grows to sufficient size... You realize that you can't see from one end to the other, you realize that your tastes aren't perfectly represented by the community, and you gravitate toward a sufficient number of other people who have your more specialized preferences in mind. The splintering of the D&D fanbase is just part of a natural growth cycle.
Third. Let's play Mörk Borg.
Ben's looking like a shill for Wotc.
"Without the Marvel cinematic universe, movies would go extinct"
Yes, yes and yup-yup-yup!
YEEEEEEEESSS!!!
Agree! Except change 3 to Pendragon/Forbidden Lands/Swords of the Serpentine
It's both sad and hilarious how big a screw up the OGL scandal was, and it's shocking that the Wizards CEO didn't lose her job over it.
"her"
Would it really matter? The CEO is only a head to be rolled when the company decisions goes sour, it's not like they are the evil mastermind that most people make them out to be. Not saying thats not the case here, but I sincerely doubt that it's all due to one individual.
This is not the first time the owner of Dungeons and Dragons has had a screw up of this level.... Hell it isn't even the second time.
Heaven forbid that third party content creators seek to distance themselves from a company notorious for draconian IP crackdowns in order to make their own gaming systems. No, they should be blindly loyal to that draconian company forever and always, never mind they only came into this for the love of something that company just happened to buy not the company themselves! It's clearly the content creators ruining this community and not the draconian company!
I'm not too familiar with the history of IP crackdowns by Wizards of the Coast (or Hasbro?), but... isn't all the DnD material more or less publicly available? I've been wondering, because when I started playing DnD my DM sent me some links and none of it seemed to be official sources. I don't know if that's considered pirating, looking up the rules and spells etc. on a publicly available website? But anyhow it always gave me the impression that whoever owns the rights to these materials had very, uh, libertarian views on how they could be shared, or else they'd have C&D'd those websites long ago, right?
@@plasticflower It's Hasbro who's the owner of WotC and the company that's notorious for cracking down on everyone who "violates" their IP. You'll hardly see any fan content around Hasbro products, not because there aren't fans of IP owned by Hasbro (MLP, Transformers, G.I. Joe, ect) but because whenever a fan makes a large enough fan project to gain Hasbro's attention, Hasbro goes "You didn't pay the license for that so we're going to C&D your ass." The MLP purge on UA-cam about ten years ago was a notorious example of that. Fan dubs, fan animations, fan games, community projects that had been built up for years, all wiped out in the span of just a couple year.
As for why those third party websites you mentioned didn't get C&D, to give an over simplified answer: WotC before Hasbro didn't have too much of a problem with them. Hasbro does. And has indeed already begun the process of trying to get third party websites and artists either shitcanned or sign a new agreement that would allow Hasbro to take a significant chunk of the revenue those third party sites are currently making. And even if you don't charge anything for your services, Hasbro still wants people to pay a licensing fee for ANYTHING they believe they can claim as strictly their IP. Because that's just how Hasbro rolls.
Sadly we wish that DnD was actually, truly publically available. The great thing about the Open Games License was that it did indeed give a lot of freedom to third parties to use the WotC's intellectual property and gaming systems. But again that doesn't grok with Hasbro's business model, which is why they're trying so hard to change the OGL so they can exert stronger control over who does and doesn't get to use WotC's IP. Namely in a way that would allow Hasbro to get more money out of said IP.
In truth, DnD material has only been as publicly available as it has by the good graces of WotC. But now that "good grace" is being dictated by a multi-billion dollar corporation with a decades long track record of draconian scorched earth policies towards anything they perceive as even a remote "threat" their intellectual property rights. Hence why people are now exploring their options
@@plasticflower UA-cam's being weird. Let's try posting this again:
It's Hasbro who's the owner of WotC and the company that's notorious for cracking down on everyone who "violates" their IP. You'll hardly see any fan content around Hasbro products, not because there aren't fans of IP owned by Hasbro (MLP, Transformers, G.I. Joe, ect) but because whenever a fan makes a large enough fan project to gain Hasbro's attention, Hasbro goes "You didn't pay the license for that so we're going to C&D your ass." The MLP purge on UA-cam about ten years ago was a notorious example of that. Fan dubs, fan animations, fan games, community projects that had been built up for years, all wiped out in the span of just a couple year.
As for why those third party websites you mentioned didn't get C&D, to give an over simplified answer: WotC before Hasbro didn't have too much of a problem with them. Hasbro does. And has indeed already begun the process of trying to get third party websites and artists either shitcanned or sign a new agreement that would allow Hasbro to take a significant chunk of the revenue those third party sites are currently making. And even if you don't charge anything for your services, Hasbro still wants people to pay a licensing fee for ANYTHING they believe they can claim as strictly their IP. Because that's just how Hasbro rolls.
Sadly we wish that DnD was actually, truly publically available. The great thing about the Open Games License was that it did indeed give a lot of freedom to third parties to use the WotC's intellectual property and gaming systems. But again that doesn't grok with Hasbro's business model, which is why they're trying so hard to change the OGL so they can exert stronger control over who does and doesn't get to use WotC's IP. Namely in a way that would allow Hasbro to get more money out of said IP.
In truth, DnD material has only been as publicly available as it has by the good graces of WotC. But now that "good grace" is being dictated by a multi-billion dollar corporation with a decades long track record of draconian scorched earth policies towards anything they perceive as even a remote "threat" their intellectual property rights. Hence why people are now exploring their options
@@hfar_in_the_sky Interesting, thanks for the detailed explanation. It seems that Hasbro acquired WotC in 1999, which means many of the websites with DnD content were probably created way after that. But I guess from Hasbro's perspective, they only turned their eyes more towards WotC and the related products when DnD became more popular and profitable.
I can never wrap my head around why companies try to supress fan activity around their products. It's usually not like fans are making money off the products, rather than free commercials and publicity.
I suppose as a toy maker, Hasbro has had experience with unlicensed fakes of many of their toys, and maybe when filtered through layers and layers of corporate hierarchy, what comes out at the top sounds like the same thing.
Pretty big allegation to say that this is all the fault of matt mercer and matt colville when wotc have been shooting themselves in the foot.
Like four times in three years yeah
Like four times in three years yeah
Like four times in three years yeah
Like four times in three years yeah
@@nomnomgoblin8901One comment for every time, ey?
Ah, yes, that classic flawless corporate argument... "A monopoly is great, as long as I'm the only one who has one."
that wasn't his argument at all. His argument that the health of the industry has ALWAYS been a direct indicator of how healthy the hobby is. The exact same is true of GW and Warhammer.
@@StonehornI may be misunderstanding. It sounds like: if there isn’t large amounts of money being made, then things are bad.
Is that what’s being said?
I love seeing so many people bring their ideas to the table top. So many are going "what is it I want that d&d isn't giving me?" And then going out to find/make it.
Exactly and it allows the genre as a whole to grow in new and interesting ways.
The 90's was a golden age precisely because there were so many options to choose from. Shadowrun, GURPs, Cyberpunk, Castle Falkenstein, Call of Chthulu, and dozens more. I remember going to gaming conventions and seeing more vendors and game types than I would ever have time to paly in a lifetime and hoards of gamers wandering the aisles, like salivating hunting hounds, sniffing out the best offerings. Was D&D a heavy hitter? Sure. But so were many others. Variety is the spice of life.
Indeed
As a gamer since before, but also through the 90's, Ben's argument doesn't hold a lot of water as there was a whole resurgence of new gamers entering the fold - they just weren't playing D&D, they were playing WhiteWolf games and exploring gaming options from there. TSR was fracturing its own sales through multiple settings releases but the ttrpg sphere kept growing. So, yeah, WotC might be shooting itself in the foot but, as the song goes, the kids are alright.
Exactly! We played a whole lot of Vampire and Shadowrun back then, it was just that DND wasn't interesting compared to the competition
I came into D&D in the 90s and I think that the reason why this panic/meltdown is happening now is that TTRPGs are mainstream now in a way they never were before. TSR was just as guilty of shenanigans back in the day as Wizards is now; hence why D&D changed hands; it's just that people don't *have* to stick with D&D for their pseudo-mediaeval campaign setting. I think that the availability of online content is also making it much easier to abandon ship. But Wizards has no one but themselves to blame for the desire to hurl ourselves into the TTRPG ocean.
'80s and '90s had a lot of different RPGs people played. West End Games was where the Star Wars players went. Battletech was big for wargaming. Gurps was the "be what you want" rpg. Thanks to Dragon Magazine and other gaming magazines, we saw the different RPGs and wanted to try them out. Heck, that's why I got (and still have) Shatterzone (West End Games space opera). Another big wargaming system was Starfleet. Lots of experimental systems too. Who can forget about the World of Synnabar (spelling might be wrong)...the game you needed a calculator.
@robertreed537 Definitely true that there were a lot of different war games back in the day. D&D occupied a big corner of the medieval fantasy storytelling corner, though.
It doesn't hold any water, to be completely honest.
If he was actually a "D&D Historian", there's nothing he would want LESS than to put all our eggs in that basket. Other games occasionally get choked out by D&D and come back. D&D hasn't ever gone more than a few years without some degree of strangling or killing itself. Which is good, because it's generally agreed upon that the first "Golden Age of TTRPGS" already happened. and it ended when D&D choked out all its competition, funnily enough. I can't wait to enter another TTRPG golden age! Maybe we'll convince people to try Changeling instead of just Vampire/Werewolf/Mage this time.
Having recently FINALLY gotten a chance to play in my wife's Changeling: the Lost game she'd originally planned back in 2008(!!), Changeling is officially my favorite of the nWoD line. It has the politics of Vampire, the "all against the world" of Werewolf, and the mystical wonder of Mage, all in one tight bundle. I love it so much.
Back in the day we tried a multiple GM crossover plot with Vampire, Werewolf, Wraith, Mage, and Changeling (this was all back in the oWoD). The Changeling parts went better than the Wraith parts, but that's damning with the faintest possible praise. I'm running a 5e Vampire game now, and I'm curious as to what the 5e Changeling book will look like when they finally get to it. I'm sure it's my failing rather than the game itself that resulted in lacklustre gaming in the past.
Changeling doesn't do it for me, while it is the darkest/saddest of all the WoD lines, I prefer vampire for the personal horror aspect and ease of translating certain bits of story telling that I cant seem to translate to changeling.
I have a deep fondness for changeling, even wrote out a whole campaign idea. But much as I love the ideas of changeling the dreaming I loathe the arts and realms system.
I Grew up in the 3.5 era and loved it. I really enjoy that you mentioned your first TTRPG was Pathfinder, because I recall this exact same tantrum from hardcore DnD fans and people who were in WotC's pocket. "Oh, Pathfinder is actually really bad, because it's going to destroy the TTRPG market by confusing and splitting the fan base!" This was right around the time the "immensely popular" 4.0 ruleset came out. WotC were so confidant in their new product they said they wouldn't need to publish any of their old material anymore! About half a year later, I saw some shiny new 3.5 books in the local bookstore/game shop.
Both Matts brought in the Golden Age, Hasbro pushed them away and we all hope they succeed in the future.
Honestly, I'm shocked that more people aren't calling Ben out on his complete inaccuracies. He is hailed as the D&D Historian but cant even correctly research what game the largest D&D stream is currently using (CR is still using 5e) or what WotC calls the current game the working on (it is 5e 2024), which is a re-release of the current 5e that will be backwards compatible, not 6e. Basic research like that should be easy for him and the fact that he is that out of touch really colors all of his other points, no matter how valid, to me.
Thanks for this. It helps point out things bugging me. Ben's take feels like click bait.
@@ScottBaker_ He's a shill.
I suspect (but am not hopeful) that it's satire, supposed to be so obviously untrue as to be humorous. If it's not, then it has shattered the credibility of the book, at least for me.
If he were taken seriously, it would amount to "nobody better ever create a fantasy RPG or else you will be killing the hobby". If RuneQuest and Ars Magic didn't kill the hobby, then with the greatest of all possible respect to the Matts (I am a patreon of Matt Colville, so I certainly don't mean this maliciously) there's no real chance that a couple of new games is going to either.
It's a peculiarly D&Dish thing this; I've never heard of Shadowrun fans hating on Cyberpunk, or Champions fans hating on Mutants and Masterminds. Sure we have our preferences, but (as a Shadowrun and Champions fan) I am happy that people that want to play Cyberpunk can do so, and likewise that people that like Mutans and Masterminds are supported. If only for selfish reasons - I can pick up a Cyberpunk adventure and tweak it into Shadowrun easily, and it's even more trivial to convert M&M to Champions. Assuming you're not just playing murder hobo (and if you are, no judgement - whatever floats your boat) then the rules don't matter as much as the publishers of those rules say they do.
I agree overall, but not sucking wotc because of their bulshit naming system, that wasn't likely clear when this was written isn't necessarily a sign of incompetence.
I called it 6e for simplicity until just recently when they walked back everything that made it notably different. Because while wotc marketing was saying it was the same system, previously the one d&d playtests had changed quite a bit, and there was a lot that was inherently not compatible till the walk backs started mid last year (after the Pinkerton drama, so I wager Hasbro higher ups likely put their foot down and said "no risks")
The dude didn't say DnD was over, he said TTRPGs were over, that's a pretty bold claim for someone like him who hasn't even seen anything beyond his limited and biased world view. He also seems to think that if people play different games, they can't play other games, like once they play Pathfinder they no longer can play Call of Cthulhu. It's an insane way to think. A bunch of us ripped his 'logic' apart on a podcast about a week ago. He's a fool.
Yep, this is the long and short of it. It's "D&D is RPGs" syndrome. The 90s were the golden age of RPGs specifically because D&D was ignored enough for people to play other stuff.
The funniest part is these new games by the D&D Matts were already being worked on as side projects before Hasbro/WotC shot themselves in the foot. The MCDM RPG was inevitable and still would eventually exist even if D&D had all the good will in the world. Ben is just starting from conclusion shoving any half-baked "evidence" he can into his thesis for the sake of "strengthening" it artificially. Guess I can't blame him alone for it too much, though, since that's basically the state of all discourse in the internet age (not that it wasn't already prevalent before).
I only know of Mercer's side of things, but it makes 100% sense Critical Role will want to branch out to their own games. They are creatives and passionate TTRPG players so it's natural to want to create your own form. They don't have 100% creative control with D&D despite being able to home-brew it. It still is not completely theirs. Daggerheart is. I'm hoping they just transfer the gameworld they have made in D&D to Daggerheart then just adopt Daggerheart's mechanics.
Having variety is better than just having it all under one umbrella. I honestly love it.
I started role playing in 1978 with the original AD&D game. By the 1980s even TSR knew that gamers wanted actual diversity and started putting out other role playing games like "Top Secret", "Boot Hill", "Gamma World", and "Star Frontiers". In the 80s we had lots of choices that included "Traveller", "GURPS", "Tunnels & Trolls" "Call of Cthulhu" and others. Diversity was good.
Annnd... TSR threatening to sue everyone under the sun was one of those reasons those games (GURPS, CoC, T&T, etc,) existed. So the more things change... the more they stay the same. ;)
Truth! @@Kaotiqua
Oh man. I didn't know there were other people who played Boot Hill! My first rpg, I believe, was Shadowrun before AD&D. Wild.
@@Jagtress Boot Hill was fun for sure. My friends and I were AD&D first and then branched out. We really had fun with "Top Secret" and "Gamma World" as far as the TSR alternate games went.
I still have my GURPs books and I still use them. The most flexible, useful system ever and I love it. :)
Creating their own system is just a natural path for people who occupy themselves intensively with TTRPGs. The OGL scandal just accelerated that and the success of games like Shadowdark encourages other creators.
Who doesn't know a passionate gamer who has scribbled down notes for their own ruleset or at least dreamed of making one someday?
Just by becoming aware of TTRPGs I've discovered multiple fanmade games adapted from multiple systems - and all for FREE because fans are just awesome like that, even if they aren't always organised or their projects long lived. The current game I'm running is a d6 system built around Digimon, allowing full customisation of your single monster partner and also allowing your human character to roll up their sleeves and properly throw hands if you need to. I modified the mechanics a little further for fun and flavor, and before I knew it I'd created an entire homebrew based off a ruleset that (as far as I could find) only exists as a google doc downloaded from a website that is 1/3 broken links. People will create, no matter what, and these are already games that require imagination to play in the first place!
the title nearly gave me a heart attack. holy hell.
Very click baity title.
Ben Riggs may know everything about DnD ( who tf knows right?), but apparently he's been stuck in a sensory deprivation chamber regarding every other TTRPG.
The Golden Age of D&D has ended, the Age of RPGs has begun.
Long Live the RPG!
I'm so glad that the "insane allegations" were not what I was worried you were gonna say, I dunno what I would have done if it were....
My thoughts, too. I was imagining something with jello and underage pandas.
Absolutely shitty to title this video like this
@@BloodInkFilms Very clickbaity.
I'm not a Dungeons & Dragons player.
I'm an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons player.
My biggest takeaway is Ben Riggs is a guy who came into DnD around 5e and hasn't actually lived through any of this - it's like having a Gen Z historian tell their grandpa what WWII was like.
And grandpa was fighting in it
As a Genzie historian, there is a right way in the wrong way to make this argument. One of them involves doing research on primary sources. The other is making up all the bull crap you want without doing any of the work.
A historian is still an expert in their field. Let’s explore this hypothetical. Did the grandpa actually fight in the war? Or was he just a child? How much does he remember? Even if he did fight in the war, it’s highly likely he has a very biased perspective, fuelled by nationalistic propaganda. So no, the grandpa doesn’t know better just because he is older. The Gen Z historian approaches the topic from a place of detached impartiality. - Gen Z historian
@@burnt-croissants yep
@@burnt-croissants Well you see my grandfather fought in the war but he was conscripted under the threat of death to him and his family so he didnt love his side. Also he didnt like the opposing side because when at the end of the war he was captured and instead of going to jail he was sent to mass execution (Bleiburg) but managed to escape. After the war he couldnt say anything political under the threat of death to him or his family. When anyone asked him about the war he dint have anything nice to say about both sides. He wasnt really an exception. Lots of people fought because the side they fought was the first one that came and conscripted them. I cant say exact numbers because we know history is written by the side that won and numbers are hardly ever accurate. No1 can be true impartial unless they hate both sides of the conflict and they wrote right after the conflict because after it is based on the hearsay of the not impartial ones
I prefer the term "polygamerous" to explain my experimentation with multiple RPG systems.
Also you pointed out that pop culture has locked onto D&D as part of its nostalgia trip right now. When that inevitably disappears, the RPG market as a whole will shrink. Why is no one who disagrees with Ben Riggs talking about this? The assumption that the pie will get bigger is optimistic, but not borne out when it comes to pop culture fads. Now excuse me while I go see if I can buy a hula hoop.
@@GromMolotok Eh you didn't live through what I like to call 'the dark ages' of TTRPGs aka the late 90s and early 2000s. Even during that time, even when TTRPGs were probably at their smallest audience...you still had *multiple* games systems out there thriving. Call of Cthulhu, Legend of the 5 Rings, World of Darkness, GURPS...in fact you arguably had just as much variety as you have now because a lot of the smaller indie TTRPGs would worm their way into game stores.
Little Fears (1st edition...the controversial one), HOL: Human Occupied Landfill, After the Bomb and tons of smaller zine style TTRPGs would fill the shelf space, just as you have now (only then it was harder because you had to require a publisher to even get the book out there and not just the internet).
And this is coming from someone who played TTRPGs from the early 90s, so I didn't even get to experience the boom period that was the mid-to-late 80s as I was simply too young during that period...
@@luketfer I like how you think I'm that young 🙃 Some days I wish you were right.
I did live and play through the 80s boom. A friend published one of the uncounted fantasy heartbreakers. I bought it, of course. It's long gone now for whatever reason. I never got around to playing it with all the games we had. And I don't even remember the name. I have played Little Fears, though.
Anyway, the dark ages was a time of market shrinkage. All in saying in my long-winded way is that it will happen again. Probably not for the reasons Ben Riggs gave, but just because that's the nature of pop culture.
@GromMolotok Minus the fact that the internet and crowd funding and online play exists in a easier form now which makes comparing that past dark age and whatever this will be like comparing apples to oranges.
@@Minecraftlover73 true. Changing technology always changes marketplaces. I mean, how many of us have horse and buggy setups handy for trips to town?
But that doesn't mean the RPG market as a whole will continue to grow. Or that it will shrink, really. Maybe I'm just a pessimist. Boom and bust happens in a lot of markets. I don't think anything's protecting this hobby from that in general.
Having grown up playing D&D since 1980 I can say Riggs is wrong about the 1990s collapse of D& D. TSR made a lot of bad business decisions and flooded a market with products that were non-essential and catered to smaller and smaller groups within the community. As grunge, punk and Millennium-apocalyptic anxiety grew ( remember Y2K panic?) and formed larger subsets of the population, so too did some amazing games that reflected THAT world and THOSE people -- Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Vampire: The Masquerade etc. By the time I was in my early 20s, Vampire was all over the place. The first ever LARPing I encountered in the streets of Vancouver was Vampire. I think there is something similar in the mind-set of a lot of people now and D&D doesn't reflect those human experiences as well as other activities or games. So it appears like a cyclical reckoning to me having gone through it before. WotC can only blame themselves.
you also had the backlash from a lot of the satanic panic surrounding DND. Cyberpunk doesn't suffer from that its just about future and hackers. People who were into the world of darkness are the type of weirdos who thought the satan part was cool and embraced it. My kind of weirdos.
I was an 80s player and I had tons of rpgs. I think one thing overlooked in the 90s was the rise of computer gaming. The hex and counter games took a hit and as it got harder to find opponents it was easier to play those games on early graphics pcs. For me the 90s was a high point of playing rpgs. If anything the rpgs I see are better and more diverse, combine that with out of print games becoming available again in pdf forms (Bushido and Flashing Blades for example) and it's good times. Yeah the lukewarm gamers may not have the 800lb gorilla ready to jump on them once they enter, but those actually interested in gaming will still have choices. Stores may take a hit due to the volume of stock one company can push at them, most small rpg producers have limited distribution ability. This is similar if GW went down, miniature gaming would do just fine but stores and those who stumble on it won't fare so well.
@@johnb558 Video games were still a huge and growing market in the 80s as well and D&D had to compete with them then. I still feel that TSR promoted a sort of cannibalism as players switched to specific settings like Forgotten Realms and thus ignored all the Dark Sun or Greyhawk .
That Dexter's Laboratory episode was my first exposure to D&D as well. But growing up in a private, all-girl's school meant there wasn't any other hint of D&D. It took years after graduating college before I was able to find anyone I could play with.
That last bit about D&D in the 90s couldn't be more spot on. I was born in the mid-80s so when I learned about D&D as a child, it was at the tail end of the "Satanic Panic" so I saw it go from being "metal and scary as hell" to "cringy nerd shit" then into the mainstream with everything else "Nerdy™"
A factor i think Ben Riggs perhaps overlooks is the fact that most TTRPG players are introduced through a friend or acquaintance. Most of us do not spontaneously begin playing RPGs solo, we are introduced (often skeptically) by someone close to us who is a genuine fan of tabletop games, which does not necessarily mean we play DnD first! DnD is ubiquitous as you have described, but the first "filter" for new RPG players is usually our immediate circle of acquaintances, not the shelf at the hobbyshop.
Shit I actually started in Deathwatch and New World of Darkness.
Exactly! People who aren't already RPGers aren't going to stride into a hobby store until they get into RPGs.
I think that blaming creators for abandoning D&D and making their own systems is a form of victim blaming. They're protecting their interests by establishing their own fiefdoms in the RPG space.
also its not really their job to make DND what it is. They can go do whatever they want.
@@Zectifin Is even worse if you considered that they have been doing Hasbro/WotC's job of onboarding and introducing people to the game for many years Colville for like 8, and Critical Role for 9.
@@j0nasbs Heck longer than that for both of them Colville, when he was working at Turtlerock studios, was running a D&D 4e Campaign. In fact you look at a lot of the 'online DMs', namely the two Matts and Brennan Lee Mulligan from Dimension 20 and both have a very long history of running D&D since their early teens and running it throughout their lives (Brennan, for example, would run D&D and LARP at the summer camp he worked at).
@@luketfer I'm not even counting running their home/work games, which DM's regularly do, but making a product that upscales onboarding by reaching lots of people, like the Running the Game series and the Critical Role show.
Great video - as always love your takes on things. Stay awesome!
Wizards of the Coast: shoots themselves
Ben Riggs: Why would Matt Mercer do this?
I was a 90s roleplayer. The hobby can do just fine without D&D.
My first games where the big yellow Marvel Superheroes boxed set, a TMNT & Heroes Unlimited mixed game, then Shadowrun. D&D was the fifth game that I technically played.
These days, there's a big push for rules light games that push strong narratives. 5e is considered "crunchy" by those standards. In this context, that's a great thing. People have already embraced other games.
I remember the tmnt game. It was prettysweet
And here I am wishing for stuff more crunchy than Pathfinder but can't even find people in my area that play 5e...
My mind is blown that people consider 5e 'crunchy'. It has so many moments of "DM make something up, it's your game not ours." that I'm surprised we even have rules to hit.
It's not a system for me, but I'm glad that people find fun in it. I'd love to be a fly on the wall for those people who find 5e crunchy during their first experiences of GURPs or Rifts.
@@scottgozdzialski6478 Never played the baseline TMNT game but DID play the 'After the Bomb' expansion (which later got spun off into its own game once they lost the TMNT license).
Except the hobby has never done just fine without D&D being successful.
TSR failed because of mismanagement. Also, people weren't buying as many of their products because we were all trying other games. History really does repeat itself.
I think there's a lot of GMs - myself included - that don't really care about running in published settings. While strictly speaking you can separate the 'running the game' and 'world building' roles of a GM - you could play in a published setting and only use Adventure Paths, and if that's what you're doing, never let anyone say that's "wrong" or "lazy" - but there's a significant percentage of GMs that only want to run the game _because_ they're the ones that built the world. For GMs like me, setting books are (at best) just something to extract new feats, spells, or whatever from - and even if you _do_ like a particular published setting, it's pretty unlikely you like _all_ published settings (when would you even find the time?)
Hell, there's a lot of GMs that buy the core rulebooks and then they're done. I think there are just structural limits on how much profit you can reasonably expect to get out of the TTRPG industry, and if you get too greedy (as non-gamer execs do) you will sew the seeds of your own demise. As you say, it happened to TSR. It's happening (to at least some extent) to Hasbro/WotC now. D&D survived before, it will survive again, and at the end of the day if it's published by someone else, I can't see myself caring very much.
There were all kinds of scale and scope issues. They had something like twelve concurrent D&D settings - most mutually exclusive - going at one point, saturating their own market. Al-Qadim was destined to be niche, and an adventure book for it niche of niche. However, they didn't really have access to JIT / on-demand publishing, so they drastically overprinted. Retailers discounting low sellers may push non-targeted buyers toward those cheaper options and away from the full price best sellers, driving a price spiral (that then reduces bookstore demand). I could go on and on about how badly they screwed up.
"Is that [MCDM RPG] really the name?"
It's a working title, from what I hear they plan to come up with a more fitting name during development.
"However if you asked him to play Armalite and ballot box..."
_COME OUT YE BLACK AND TANS intensifies_
Lol. While I'm getting tired of this question/situation, but i really appreciate your hilarious and insightful take on it. Thank you.
Honestly an explosion of interest in a hobby happening at the same time as the implosion of the company that dominates that hobby, is the best outcome for everyone except maybe Hasbro shareholders.
And literally none of us should give a damn about those shareholders.
Maybe not even the shareholders, because WotC makes good money for Hasbro, to the point of some shareholders requesting a spin off, but is mostly MTG. DnD revenue is estimated at 100-150M, while the LotR Magic set for MTG might have broken 200M last year on it's own, becoming one of the most successful sets of all time. TTRPG books just don't sell that much, and the margins are thinner then selling pixels on MTG Arena, or licensing properties for games like Baldurs Gate(Made 133M combined with Monopoly Go).
@@j0nasbs Alta Fox Investments actually DID try to spin off WotC into its own company but, at the time, they didn't have the backing of any of the other investment companies and so Hasbro managed to fight tooth and claw to keep a hold of WotC because it is, currently, the only thing generating growth and profit. Looking at the investor calls we can see that WotC is generating around 15% of the revenue and around 85% of the profit for Hasbro.
That's 15% left with ALL their other IPs and boardgames, including Transformers, My Little Pony, GI Joe etc. They toy sector has absolutely cratered in these last few years, with Hasbro now focuing a lot of adult collectors because that's where the money is for their IPs as this generation of kids isn't interested in GI Joe and Transformers as much anymore.
the hobby isn't exploding though, thats the thing. The hobby exploded from 2014 to 2022. The hobby is currently contracting quickly, and sales across the board are stagnating.
@@Stonehorn DnD sales are down, sure. But Paizo got record numbers when WotC did the OGL thing, ToV was Kobold Press's most successful KS, MCDM just had their most successful crowdfunder too. And even for 5e supplements, Loot Tavern and Hit Point Press had their record breaking KS's and Legend of Aavantris became the most successful 5e supplement ever. The hobby is more then WotC and DnD.
Wow what a call out, the Dallas rpg.
I enjoy this content. Gain knowledge, a personal view on that knowledge, and crap jokes that trick you into laughing, along with genuine joke that invoke laughter. Full Package.
One of the things that lost TSR money was the amount of cash they sunk into Buck Rogers and Rocky & Bulwinkle properties. These properties were owned by the family of the then CEO of TSR at the time and the licensing was a way of enriching her family... of course none of their customer base was particularly at all interested in either IPO
I actually was upset that the Buck Rogers game didn't catch on. I loved the boxed set.
Not to mention needlework businesses. ;)
But that's a very good point. Lorraine Williams' attempt to double-dip and enrich herself by trying to force-feed a Buck Rogers RPG into the gaming community only hurt TSR, and was one of the (many) things she did that lead to the company's bankruptcy in the mid-late '90s. It was all part of her general contempt for gamers, like her refusal to allow any playtesting of game material because it was "playing games on company time." She was just pretty horrible all around.
(I still remember when _Dragon_ resumed publication after WotC bought TSR, and the back of the magazine had an advertisement that said _"What the Hell is a Baatezu?"_ It was a very clear message to everyone that the dark times of Williams' shenanigans such as bowing to the Fundies was over, and Demons and Devils could be called by name again instead of having to use made-up nonsense words.)
As a programmer, I especially appreciate the "C" visual gag. This is the content I watch for lol
Discourse does visual gags really well.
Glad to see I am not the only one who loved that!, it was so out of nowhere I almost choke while drinking water
Thank you all for the comments warning me not to waste my time on shitty fear mongers
Your delivery of info is engagng and so very entertaining! It is amazing! I especially love the references this video and the Empelio Destroyer of Worlds bit
Seth Skorkowsky has a lot of good reviews/rundowns of old (A)D&D modules I'd recommend for any GM looking for a classic scenario to run. As AD&D 1e was his primary game for a long time (which while technically D&D, isn't what most people mean when they say "D&D") but his primaries have been Call of Cthulhu and Traveller for years since he found them.
Ben's got a bad take and a wrong take, but depending on how things play out it might be a cleverly timed take. We're still in a crazy boom period for the hobby, but all hobbies expand and contract. Sooner or later we'll hit that contraction point, and if it happens in a relatively timely fashion, ol' Ben gets to point and say, "Called it!"
Pretty sure Ben's a shill.
@@Kaotiqua of course he's a shill. It's in his self-styled title - he's not a TTRPG Historian. He's a D&D historian. He is literally dependent on D&D to stay relevant and therefore whatever he has to say is 100% pro-D&D and whoever holds the IP.
I got back into D&D after over 10 years of my 3.5 books collecting dust in my closet when Roosterteeth started putting out their campaigns, which led me to Critical Role, which reignited my passion. This eventually led me to discover Warhammer, Vampires: The Masquerade, and other new sources of awesome storytelling.
NONE of this would have been possible if a single company had a crushing monopoly on the IP as it would lead creators away from risking making content based around such a thing. It is also the creators themselves which has kept D&D relevant for years not the IP itself, it is only by utilizing it as a creative outlet and growing the brand that D&D's business can grow. Companies need to recognize that tyranny suppresses creativity and allowing people to freely use the IP of a business model BUILT ON CREATIVITY will only help them.
A perfect example of this beyond D&D is the modding community in gaming, Skyrim is a Prime example of what is possible by allowing creativity to flourish.
You are absolutely killing me. Some of these edits actually made me choke on my coffee wth
I love it, and agree 100%, (As a 55 year old woman, no less!) I think the term you're looking for instead of "generic" is "system-agnostic". The term D&D, whether the Haz Bros like it or not, is a generic term for roleplaying games. And it was already so, long before the Haz-Bros had anything to do with it. We played it before them, we will play it long after Whot-Sees and the Haz-Bros have been forgotten. Back in the 80s, there was a sort of a game-glut. A radical diversification of the RP gaming landscape similar to what's happening now, and I suspect, for similar reasons. (TSR was threatening to sue everybody for everything under the sun.) Some of those games are still thriving today. Call of Cthulu was one of those games, actually. Along with Chill! and G.U.R.P.S. One could amp one's nerd-cred by listing an alphabet soup of abbreviated game titles after one's name, like they were scholarly degrees.
What does being a woman have to do with anything?
Very well put. Corpo stooges have no sense of history. Or common sense in general.
I kind of miss Palladium. RoboTech was a fun setting.
I was not prepared for Fleshlight Squad to be a real, actual thing. I thought it was surely just a gag bit. Nope.
I would never joke about something like that.
@@dungeonsanddiscourse But then you didn't have to introduce it to your video...
The part that made me cock my head to the side and go huh was the date it came out on. Four days ago according to steam. I'm not even sure it's in the zeitgeist yet.
@@maladictbilbiomort2778 i'm ahead of the curve
This is the golden age of D&D?! WTF was I doing 40 years ago?
Completely agree with what you said regarding Pathfinder. People have mistaken the magic of 'Dungeons and Dragons' for the product of that name. When most people say D&D, they could be referring to any brand of fantasy TTRPG. Dungeons and Dragons has long undergone genericide, the process by which a specific brand replaces a general products name, e.g. 'Hoover' being a common word for vacuum cleaner, 'Stetson' being a common name for both fedoras and cowboy hats, and 'Sharpie' being a common name for large pens. I mean, just look at how ubiquitous the term 'Dungeon Master' is in day-to-day use in spite of it being trademarked by Hasbro. D&D is and will likely continue to be shorthand for TTRPG's for a long time, regardless of how fast Hasbro drives the actual system into the ground.
In the 90's, a Great White Wolf slayed the Dragon. We just haven't found a new, worthy totem to kill the lizard this time. It's grown fat and sickened, swollen and hideous from it's excesses. There came a candle but, it was too obscure.
It’s easy to misinterpret new flavours of ice cream as a threat to ice cream as a dessert if you only eat vanilla ice cream and now all these other flavours keep competing for freezer space. I mean just last week I went to the store and they were out of vanilla, and there was all this chocolate ice cream clogging the shelves. I may never find vanilla ice cream again. Everyone knows that vanilla is the gateway flavour if people can’t find vanilla they may never move on to the other flavours.
Also, if fewer people are buying vanilla ice cream, the milk maids of the coast might not produce as many toppings to experiment with.
Whats funny is my supermarket has (and I'm not exaggerating) 7 different types of vanilla. Can't get more d20 than that.
I am super envious at the variety of games you've been able to play in the last year. My RP group is reluctant to try new things.
My favorite RPG is actually incredibly silly: Teenagers From Outer Space. It's a indelibly 80s sort of game, melding 80s pop culture with 80s era anime and 80s Saturday morning cartoons into a wacky mix of high school hijinks and extracurricular shenanigans that doesn't take itself too seriously. It's a fun time if you can find the right group of people to play it with.
Your take is on point. I don’t think we’ll see a big dramatic change for most people. Sure we’ll see more options but so many will just stick to D&D.
My friends introduced me to D&D, content like Critical Role enriched it. We’ve tried and enjoyed other RPGs, but D&D works for us.
This is exactly true to my experience. Been playing ttrpgs for 8 years now, tried more than I can list here, but 5e is the one we go back to. Something about the combat, I think, is only competing with pathfinder, but the rp is richer than pathfinder (imo), so, we seem to be 5e loyalists at this point
And the D&D system you know and love will _continue_ to work for you, even if you develop your own definitions, and Hasbro never publishes another book, I imagine.
@@Bokmoh "but the rp is richer than pathfinder" This is one thing I don't understand. I see people talk about D&D's RP being so rich when compared to most games (even ones that specifically have more rules for social interactions than combat), but most of the times they're not even playing their character's race and/or backstory "correctly," and by that I mean they're lampshading the trope-y ideas that come from those things. Think Blade or Drizzt, the "come from a bad crowd but is actually a good person" kind of thing. D&D's rules are pretty bare-bones for the social interaction portion, the part that really makes up, for me anyways, a majority of RP potential. Which makes me wonder if it comes down to knowing the generic fantasy tropes of D&D's setting to be able to deconstruct those tropes, or if it's because they've played that game longer so have more fond memories from games in that system so they're essentially pre nostalgia blinded.
Not trying to single you out or anything, but I am hoping you can tell me why you find D&D's RP so rich. I do mean that genuinely, I like to hear different viewpoints.
@@Matthias129 mileage will vary based on who’s at the table. My group has had all RP sessions that last five hours in 5E. We make our own fun.
Hell yeah! A call out to Seth Skorkkooorski(sp??) He is such an underrated creator. My wife came to TTRPG through WoD. I started with D&D, but found other games and it blew my mind that there were so many things out there.
Seth Skorkowsky (had to get Google spelling corrected myself)
I’m pretty sure you got the spelling right.
@@canamrock Yeah it's not his fault I would say he lives about where I do, plenty of Scandinavian heritage rolling around here makes it hard for me to spell folks names.
if the golden age of dnd is ending then platinum age of rpgs is starting
Mithril :)
love the totally not misleading title, so glad that you haven't surrendered to the Algorithmic Ragebait Complex yet
Hasbro is the one that's killing DnD. They pushed more and more for money and profit and stepped over the line when they came for other companies' products. DnD won't die, because it'll just get sold off to another company once Hasbro is finished.
Hasbro shoots D&D.
Ben runs over "OMG MATT MERCER! WHY DID YOU SHOOT D&D"
God, your videos are so damn funny its unreal. Glad youtube recommended this
You don't even need to know anything about D&D to know that it is never good for the customer when there is a monopoly.
From how I understand it, _The MCDM RPG_ is the working title for their game and will get a proper name prior to release.
My parents growing up played AD&D every weekend and as a kid I use to listen to them through the door when I was suppose to be sleeping. When I got old enough i was allowed to play in their games (The main one being about 30 years or more and still ongoing). It was kind of a weird rite of passage for the kids in the household so I grew up with it at an early age. Fast forward to now and I'm 46 and still playing/dming newer versions of the game and other games. I've shown countless people how to play this game and most of my life long friends came from this. The best thing about D&D as a whole is it really is its a stepping stone to a wide range of other games that most people would not have ever considered playing. Bureau 13 and Paranoia were just some of the games I branched off into playing as I grew up. Currently I'm eyeballing running a Fallout game or a Firefly game. There is just something special about a fresh start game. I'll be forever grateful for my time playing and running D&D but thats just one of hundreds of TTRPG's.
Jesus Christ, you nearly killed my laptop at 15:45. I was drinking coffee and quite literally did a spit take at the Armalite and Ballet Box line. Coffee went everywhere.
Every one of your episodes brings a smile to my face, and I actually lol at many of your witty comments. Also, as a 4-decade D&D player/DM, I heard for the first time "ROG Sluts" and "Bad ass factor" ~ thank you!
So I'm really sitting here thinking "Wow, she's going all out with this one.. even changed her channel name from Discourse Minis to Dungeons & Discourse" just to find out that YT has been feeding me both channels at the same time and I thought it was just the one I was subbed to.. lol.
I went all in for sure :D
For anybody who's struggling to get their players to play another system... Simply tell them that you refuse to run 5th Ed anymore.
Step down from dming... And wait. Stay in contact through memes and conversations. Shoot the s*** and just take your time... There is no rush.
Once your players begin to miss getting together, tell them that you've been looking at something that's very light and easy to jump into. Just try it for a one shot, but tell them maybe it'll go on to a second (make sure the first adventure is a cliffhanger ending)
And just dot around with the idea that you might be willing to continue the game for a bit longer after the second adventure. Who knows how it will go.
I'll try to remember to let you know what my players think about Fallout or Ad&d 2e
You'll probably never see this, but I originally saw this title and thumbnail and ignored it because I didn't wanna read another gossip video about someone in the community.
It took me watching Ronald (Rules Lawyer)'s video where he mentioned you and your video - and what it was REALLY about, - for me to come back and watch the video, because I then realized it was a clickbaity title.
Sometimes clickbait works against you, which was the case for me.
Thanks. Thanks for calling me out there with the "there's probably a Tim in there."
I might get back into TTRPG now, thanks to the fact I don't have to use WoTC
Whenever Hasbro/WotC does something crazy I think back to that line from one of the Matrix movies. " I survived your predecessors and I will survive you"
The Merovingian was my favorite side character!
Love your content, please keep it up!
So where can one find a copy of the Player's handbook version for Armalite and Ballot Box? I like collecting RPGs and wanna try THAT bad boy out :D
Also back in the 90's, we were all homebrewing our own settings and just weaving in the stuff we liked from Official ones. I knew very few people who just ran published moduals as written in the official settings - whatever they were.
More game systems is always a good thing. I firmly believe that even if you only Run D&D, knowing other systems gives you more tools for storytelling *and* custom mechanics.as a GM. Especially when your players go and do something that the core rules never even hint at covering... which in my case is about 60% of the time.
The homebrew mix & match goes back to the beginning of TTRPGs and even earlier. It was the source of D&D and every game that preceded it. Most of D&D came from other peoples' games, by this exact route. The thing that made it unique was trying to lock it down.
Those tweets were some of the most insane things I've read in awhile. WoTC main character syndrome and they simply can not comprehend people not needing them. 🤣
TSR also sued everyone who tried to compete and it had a cooling affect
I had the same experience as you! My first TTRPG was Pathfinder too! Totally thought it was dnd or the same as it. Moved on to playing Deadlands, Marvel's Super Heroes, Savage Worlds, eventually our playgroup gravitated towards DND 5e because of it's popularity at the time, but none of us are happy to stick with the system & my foreverDM is looking forward to running Blades In The Dark & other, more modern, systems.
It killed the golden age of Hasbro, and wizards bank accounts XD but they did that themselves, not Matt, Matt, Tim, etc etc. I love love RPing, but out of all of the RPs out there I always found DnD as one of the worst, because the balance is all over the place, things are overcomplicated, and often the overcomplications makes the games balance even worse. I could go on and on, I will be glad to see the end of the monopoly, because I want to play good RPs, and for that to happen more often the monopoly needs to go down, also screw hasbro.
I currently DM a Dark Heresy game, I started during the indoor times doing it online with friends and this was my intro TTRPGs. I never fancied D&D, it didn't tickle me in the same way as the 40k setting did, but Matt Colville's advice was still such a massive help, the man is amazing!
what kills D&D is that there seems to be nobody except Chris at Wizards who has any knowledge about the Law and history of the game. There is no progression, just bad, streamlined remakes of old stuff.
When have we seen a region of the Forgotten Realms other than the Swordcoast?
the critical role crew started out playing pathfinder, then adapted their game to 5e, drew in a ton of attention to dnd, but kept their own campaign setting as a separate entity. matt colville started as a dnd player, but branched out into other settings and then into other games, but his advice for ttrpgs has been to sample things from other settings/editions/games and incorporate those quirks or mechanics into whatever game you're running. matt mercer and matt colville both encourage people to try different things out and try to make cool aspects from various properties work together for better player enjoyment. at this point, I feel like dnd and the d20 system has a firm hold on the ttrpg gamespace, regardless of who the money goes to. I also thinnk that the popularity of all of the various organizations feed off of the blended synergy of people wanting to enhance gameplay by borrowing from other companies within the ttrpg genera. There are aspects of warhammer that I would like to see blended with pathfinder or dnd. Trying to push Wizards as the beacon and savior of the gamespace seems shortsighted. The diversity is the strength of this kind of gaming.
The RPG club that I was part of in the early 2000s had a policy of encouraging more games but still was mostly DND, but when 4th ed released a lot of players moved from DND only to a wider group of games (not just Pathfinder even though this became the main game). It helped expand the games that the club was playing greatly and I think this is happening again. WOTC's ability to screw up is actually good for RPGs as a whole.
It's clear that Riggs is egg - agerating. Yolks aside, I started with AD+D way back, then discovered MERP, Rolemaster, Rune Quest, Pathfinder etc. Yes when playing these other systems I've often called myself a D&D gamer (even calling myself a Dungeon Master when game mastering) but the hobby has a long tradition of being broader and deeper than 'D&D'.
As someone who was inspired to re-discover the joys of TTRPG's after enjoying the wonderful play-thrus of Critical Role, Dimension20, and more recently Knights of Last Call, and all the other wonderful content creators online, I can say with confidence that the OGL fuckery of Hasbro and WOTC is THE reason I opted to start playing Pathfinder and give all my money to Paizo rather than starting with D&D like all the creators I enjoyed were playing. I'm now regularly GM'ing a Pathfinder 2e game with other TTRPG noobs who were similarly inspired by 5e playthroughs. Its mindblowing that a company could take all that goodwill that was generated for them for free online and burn it by trying to screw over the people who gave them so much. It will go down in business and marketing history as a case study in how to completely burn your business to the ground.
The problem I have is that my old grognards each have their favorite non-D&D RPG and as they move into middle-age they are only interested in playing their preferred RPG (which are almost always different -- CoC, Rifts, etc.) and the only way to get them all to agree is to do something that is a derivation of D&D.
As long as I own a copy of the 5e player handbook, D&D will live happily in my group. No company, random person or internet celebrity could possibly affect that.
Happy new year everyone! and as I know there's a lot of bad out there and hope to help counter it with good, I just want to start the new year off with sincere thanks and love for all you do and remind you that you are awesome, and we appreciate you!!!
Great vid! Super informative
My biggst problem is I want to buy ALLL THE BOOKS and will end up broke