Dear Wizards of the Coast,
After forty years, I have come to realise I am no longer a Dungeons & Dragons fan.
I am done supporting D&D with my money, and I am done promoting your property with my work. I will stop publishing games under the OGL. My DnDbeyond account is slated for deletion. I will not see the movie or the TV show, or buy that Warduke action figure if it ever comes out (and that one really, really stings). Oh, and I will stop saying “Dungeons & Dragons” to get new people to play a fantasy game with me.
Why did I come to such a heartbreaking decision? Well, let me tell you a story. At the top of the wizards’ tower, there were once people who cared for the game. The good wizards had saved Dungeons & Dragons from the abyss, and for over twenty years they rebuilt its reputation. They cared so much that they wanted to protect D&D from the future. Did they know the reign of the wizards would end? Did they foresee that some day, a band of greedy mind flayers would take over? It doesn’t matter. The Illithids of Monetisation are here now and with their tentacles they will squeeze every copper from everyone who still thinks playing D&D is cool.
And this is what saddens me the most. Wizards of the Coast had achieved the impossible: they had made Dungeons & Dragons cool. Let that sink in for a round or two.
D&D certainly wasn’t cool when I started playing. In 1983, I got the Moldvay & Cook basic box and was hooked within hours of cracking it open. I played AD&D 1st and 2nd editions for so, so many hundreds of hours in college, making lifelong friends in the process. I learned more around game tables than I did in class, and got a job at a games publishing company. When 3rd Edition came out, we had no idea how successful OGL products would end up being, but we jumped at the chance of making our own campaign world for Dungeons & Dragons. 20 odd years later, I keep getting asked if there will be an updated edition.
Until very recently, my answer was always: “Why not, if we can get some of the original writers?” 5E is a great incarnation of D&D and I’ve played a lot of it. I met my girlfriend at a 5E table. Our characters were married before we got together. To be honest, I was more of a D&D fan a month ago than I was when I was eleven. But the other day, when someone asked me about a new version of our 3rd Edition campaign world, I said: “Over my dead body!”
I am done with Hasbro D&D. And it’s not just me: countless hardcore players are leaving the squidship they thought was the good wizards’ tower. They’re on their way to explore the infinite realms of roleplaying games, never to return.
So, go ahead inventing the Online Tabletop Roleplaying Game — I guess that’s what we’ll end up calling your ‘recurrent microspending’, fully monetised D&D. We’ll be outside your walled garden, actually talking to each other. Because you may own the ampersand, but you don’t own the dragons or the dungeons. These are ours. The creativity, the wonder, the laughter, the junk food and the nat 20s.
Our D&D isn’t the Ampersand Brand. It’s all the amazing games nerds like me have been making since 1971. No amount of PR mind blasting will ever change that.