# The D&D Whining Must Stop tags: #thoughts #game/rpg/dungeons-and-dragons What? Two posts driven by someone saying something stupid on the Internet in a single day? Say it ain't so! It's so. Embrace the truth. --- ![[The Problem With DnD and Tabletop.png]] > [!quote] [Grummz @ Twitter](https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/1767213287631094142) > > There is a big problem with DnD and Tabletop. > > While were are many *major* DnD alternatives coming up that can dethrone DnD 5e, they are going to be just as woke. > > Distribution sites like DriveThruRPG also act like NexusMods, taking down any content that doesn't fit the narrative. > > Conventions are even worse. This is "engagement whining." Saying things that are obviously silly in a very straightforward way with the expectation that anyone who actually knows about the field will agree and anyone who doesn't will respond. So now I have to go and respond, even though I don't want to, because we need to point out something very, very obvious. We have had good, strong, solid, **[[Dungeons and Dragons|D&D]]** alternatives for 50 years. Excellent games which have innovated on mechanics, structure, gameplay, and experience in 10,000 different directions. **D&D** doesn't need to be dethroned. It's been pretty good at that over the decades, all on its lonesome. Various aspects driving away players who want to do different things better. Many – even most – of which aren't and haven't been woke at all. It has been extremely easy to distribute your own RPG on a myriad of sites, including your own, for over a decade now. That's no excuse. It hasn't been an excuse for a while. (See: [@moordereht](https://twitter.com/moordereht) for an obvious example of *Doing It For Yourself*.) The problem isn't that there aren't good **D&D** alternatives or that they don't have traction in the marketplace or that they can't be sold unless they adhere to the truly politically correct religion of the State… The problem is that *you want to play **D&D***. And that's *all* you want to play. You can't be bothered – but you also can't be bothered to buy it off the current IP holder. Or to have picked up Wizards when they were bleeding money like a stuck pig and not producing much of any particular quality, when it was cheap. Or to have built your own distribution platform which, I'm sure, would have its own bullshit morality clause of some sort, given what you're normally on about. What you want, amusingly enough, is identical to the woke hordes. It's the same vector, just offset. You want the game to be published exactly like *you* want it and you don't care about the market. You explicitly do not trust the other people with their own money to make their own decisions about what to buy. Fuck that, man. That's bullshit, and you know it. There is "no big problem with **D&D** and tabletop", except that you don't run it. That's your big problem with it. Your problem is that you can't command somebody else to do what you want with their own money whether it be a corporation or an individual. That's your problem. To paraphrase the great movie **Airplane**, "I say let 'em crash!"  Let them fail. Let **D&D** burn. Let the standard outlets go down with the ship. Does it really fucking matter? The RPG industry is a vanity press with delusions of grandeur outside of a couple of properties – and *that's okay*. It's better that way. Lots of independent differently functioning sections? No monoculture to attack. Except **D&D**, whose most vapid and vicious adherents are obsessed with manifesting and commanding a singular monoculture of experience. I used to just "not like" **D&D**. It never worked for me. I don't like the assumptions, I don't like the mechanics, I don't particularly care for the culture that grew around it. There are better games and there *have* been better games even since the beginning. But that's fine. I can not like it and be happy that other people really enjoy it. It's great that can be the case. Except something happened in the last five to ten years, and I'm not sure what it is. **D&D** fans have always been a particular bunch. There has always been a *"I only need one game for my whole life"* sort of air about them. Which is dumb but you can understand it. In the last while, however, there has been an increasing irritating arrogance, a belief that having a bunch of corporate money poured on your head actually makes you a better person because of your choice in games. If anything has made me start hating **D&D**, it's **D&D** fans. The culture around **D&D**? It's abyssal. I want nothing to do with it. The problem is they won't just shut up and keep to themselves. They literally represent the people who want to push into every other space, take it over, and gatekeep out the original inhabitants. Prefer *story games*? Too bad, you're a pussy chud. Get with the program and play **D&D** the right way. Prefer *hard-core wargame interaction*? Too bad, 4th edition was for teenage MMO cock-munchers. Get with the program and play **D&D** the right way. Prefer *solo gaming*? Too bad, the only reason to play RPGs is to put up with irritating people at your table and everything else is just weak-ass not-even-gaming. Get with the program and play **D&D** the right way. *Fuck all that.* I am tired of the whining. I am tired of the *"we only have one way to play and only one game."* I am tired of the implicit moral crusade. I think it's safe to say no one is going to accuse me of being "woke" given my history of public commentary over the last many decades. Except for my affection for freedom of speech which is no longer even considered a liberal trait so – I'm safe. This **D&D** bullshit? Fuck all that. Every bit of it. Hey, random person who is probably not reading this at all, do *you* have an idea for tabletop RPG that you're afraid is going to get called out as insufficiently PC? ***Write it.*** Make it look nice. If you need help with that, ask – there are a lot of us out here who are willing to give you a hand. If you need a place to sell it? ***Say something.*** We'll figure something out. I'm sure that between rebel RPG publishers and the new wave of Iron Age content, someone will have a storefront.  *You just write it.* But for the love of all that's unholy, do *not* make it a **D&D** [fantasy heartbreaker](https://rpgmuseum.fandom.com/wiki/Fantasy_heartbreaker). You can do better. I *expect* better. Whatever you do, don't whine about it. Just do something.