Why I'm Done With Dungeons & Dragons

If Necessity Was The Mother of Invention, Frustration Became The Father

This may be the absolute hardest article I’ve ever written and one I had hoped that I would never write.

I really didn’t even want to write it now that D&D turns 50 this year but, I’m finally letting go of D&D. The game that I’ve endured bullying, belittling, and literally bled for, yep…time to lay it down.

I won’t be actively defending it anymore. I own several editions and out of them all, I love Original D&D and BECMI (Basic, Expert, Companion, Masters & Immortals) the most.

I got my start with AD&D 2nd Edition with a little box called First Quest and I remember how it captured our imaginations. Later, I’d get that box myself as the one that I played and ran was owned by a friend and, oddly, it was just called Introduction to AD&D 2nd Edition though all the content was the same. I always found myself wondering what the original first edition was like.

A couple of years ago, I wanted to get back into tabletop RPGs. I wasn’t even aware of what the OSR was, I just kept seeing the initials until I realized that these fantasy games (which are free in most cases) seemed to closely mimic the game that I loved. My imagination stirred. Games like Basic Fantasy RPG, OSRIC, White Box: Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game, Swords & Wizardry, Iron Falcon, and so many others had free PDFs and the books were super cheap, all of them claimed to be from one era or another but I didn’t care, the rules and presentation immediately drew me back to those tabletops that friends and I would sit around. One would describe a scenario, play the part of NPCs with which we had to interact, we would respond. None of these were perfect but I’ll be damned, they’d do. Medieval fantasy was always my go-to for RPGs.

Okay, let’s be honest, aside from the gothic-horror of Vampire: The Masquerade and other White Wolf games, these were the only games to which I’d ever been exposed and now, here were so many options in front of me, my only question now was, where do I start?

I wanted to start with the claims. I had to do a lot of digging, a lot of searching and a lot of learning. Eventually, I began finding out what all the acronyms were and I realized that I’d seen much of the artwork in the backs of my comics and never knew a thing about the Mentzer Basic set which would give rise to BECMI (TSR’s Flagship Product) or what many of the setting books and splatbooks were.

On top of owning that boxed set I was telling you about, I also owned Glantri, Kingdom of Karameikos, Mark of Amber and the Player’s Handbook and Monstrous Manual. I even did get the chance to play 3.5 many moons and many beers ago. I wanted to see all the rule sets. Over time, I amassed many books, most in PDF but a lot in print as well.

Got the reprints of Editions 1 & 2, got some supplemental stuff, got a couple omnibuses (omnibi?) of Original D&D and Moldvay/Cook Basic & Expert. Got 5th Edition and a ton of stuff to coincide with it.

So why, after going through all the trouble would I just be throwing in the towel on it today?

Because, goddammit, I am sick as shit of this One True Way-ism.

This whole thing got started with the BrOSR, a bunch that claims they have an AD&D First Edition game that they play strictly Rules As Written, they lift weights (Nevermind the fact that I haven’t seen a single one of them posting photos) and they talk to all the pretty women…among many other claims that run unsubstantiated. For some fucking reason, this bunch started adding me. When they found out I didn’t care for one true way-isms…they went on the attack. That’s not bullshit. I spent weeks telling them to essentially fuck all the way off. Finally, I just went down my list of followers and straight up blocked anyone with #BrOSR in their bio. I wanted nothing to do with any of them. Oh don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll be fine with those winning personalities out there winning hearts and minds…

Little did I know, this was only the start.

Now, the One True Way-ism has somehow found it’s way into Original D&D.

Listen, before I go on, I have these books for a reason. Yeah, I want to play as close to the rules as possible. The last two words are the key term here…as possible. Make no mistake, not every rule in the book is going to be a good fit for the tables I run. If I got invited to play at someone’s table and they ran their games rules as written, fine. It’s their table, not mine. If it’s at my table, the people from that group probably won’t like it much. At this point, trying to talk sense and reason…it’s a game I’m slowly losing. People actually want to be complete and total dicks about this game. For what? What purpose does that serve? I get wanting to keep generally irritating people out of the hobby…which is not only ridiculous but impossible but to the point where no one wants to bother? Completely counterintuitive, if you ask me.

Let me be the first to tell you that nothing will ever stop you. Yes, you, the one reading this right now from ever going and buying books, some starter set, dice, pencils, paper, etc and playing it with me or anyone else for that matter. Nothing at all. If any site is asking you for your political affiliation, don’t buy from them at all. Trust me on that one. It will save you money and a lot of headache.

One True Way-isms aside, there are other reasons why I simply refuse to give another dime to Wizards of The Coast. Let’s get into that.

The OSR or Old-School Renaissance or Revival was a movement to make the older rule-sets of D&D accessible without making you pay through the nose on the secondary market in order to play the older games. The games were cloned because of the Open Gaming License or OGL. Remember that thing last year with the OGL? Remember those titles I mentioned with free PDFs? Yep, every one of those titles would probably have been yanked from the market. Old-School Essentials would have joined them. OSE was a Basic/Expert or B/X clone. The thing about OSE was how closely they cloned B/X. The people at Necrotic Gnome really put toes firmly on the line, stared down Wizards of The Coast and almost dared them to come at them. WoTC didn’t. The rest that I mentioned above, those clones weren’t one to one or quite as close. There’s a reason for that. See, game mechanics can’t be trademarked or copyrighted. Artistic expression of the rules, they can and yes, one could even be taken to court and subject to litigation for getting too close.

The one group that WoTC had attorneys involved was with OSRIC. They made the claims that Stuart Marshall and Matt Finch had done things with their book that raised concerns with them. Finch and Marshall already were a bit ahead of the curve. They did have attorneys and the like representing them and had legal consultants almost every step of the way. WoTC eventually just left them alone. What could they do, really? Nothing.

The OSR and it’s players and GMs have been written off as every -ist and -phobe imaginable. If you want to know what this movement looks like, have a peek at this infographic:

As you can see, this should give you an idea of what games were initially released in order to bring you into the game with lower barriers to entry.

So what’s stopping you from just getting your grubby lil mitts on the original games? Well, nothing now. The OSR actually got WoTC to unass the originals and now they’re up on the Site That Shall Not Be Named. Nothing is stopping you from ever picking them up and reading them yourself, however, if you’re on a boycott of WoTC, that’s likely going to be a sticking point as well.

I used to profess that, should you buy anything from WoTC, it should be the older editions to let them know that this is what they should stick to, however, why give them money at all at this point?

At present, WoTC is all-in on this D&D Beyond digital platform. If you think that your 6th Edition game (let’s face it, that’s what it is at this point) will be supported at the tabletop, well, not for long. Honestly, with how badly WoTC has been acting, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they shut down the printing of books in order to provide you with books that they can now edit and revise on the fly without your knowledge…or consent. Let’s not also forget that WoTC effectively gutting the creative teams for D&D and I think this new edition is going to be dead on arrival.

The OSR fixes things. It’s not perfect but it does work. While it’s initial mission may have been accomplished, it has a secondary objective that most are missing: It’s decentralized and open-source. While the OGL may remain in place, the things that have been put into the Creative Commons by WoTC provides even more for the OSR to continue to thrive. Personally, I wouldn’t mind so much if many of these games were revised to get as close as OSE did to it’s source material. At this point, I don’t think Hasbro and Wizards of The Coast have the legal war chest to initiate and win a lawsuit but we’ve also seen one really shit decision lead to another. Suing an independent game creator, that’s not something that would be completely out of the question.

Some of the recent sentiments dismissing the OSR as being “no longer necessary” do everyone the disservice of now stating that, somehow, brand loyalty is all that there should be and that’s something I absolutely will not ever get behind.

Jon Torres and I discussed this and he seems to think that, should they go after an independent creator, they’d be digging their own graves because people would rally around the indie creator and WoTC would wind up losing so much money in the process that they’d effectively be sunk. I would hope that’s true.

The reason that the OSR games can feel incomplete or seem like nostalgia bait is because many of these creators, some of whom were one-person shows, were trying to avoid those very same lawsuits.

To my knowledge, the games that didn’t budge during the OGL debacle were as follows:

Lamentations of The Flame Princess

OSRIC

Old-School Essentials

That’s really it. That’s the end of the list as far as I know at the time of this article. I, personally, would rather give my money to independent creators and, if they revise their clones in order to get closer to the originals, then I’m alright with that. Might even buy some of those over again.

I know WoTC wants to release a book containing the three little brown books from the original D&D along with correspondence from Gygax to Arneson and vice-versa to commemorate D&D’s 50th Anniversary. There will possibly be a bunch of current day WoTC contributors going “How did anyone actually play this game?!” and, to be honest, if I did purchase that book, it would just be as a collector’s item. I don’t know that I’d actually sit down and attempt reading it.

Some have proposed the secondary market, I guess because of my objections to giving WoTC any more money, but they fail to take into account my budget…which is an entirely different matter altogether. You’ll spend a lot of time trying to find a book that’s just right. Decent condition, decent price, will get to you in a reasonable amount of time, stuff like that. Trying to find that unicorn is a lot like trying to pull teeth. The problem is, the older the edition, the harder it is to find what it is you’re looking for and the more expensive it will be. Right now, the most expensive book I own is The Lost Dungeon of Tonisborg and it’s one of my favorite books for many reasons. Reasons that are too many to list here but suffice to say that I paid that and I have it in my library now. That book is pristine and I hope to keep it that way, despite Griff practically goading me to take a Sharpie to the parts I don’t care for. It’s not happening, Griff. I’m not about to mark up my book. That’s what notebooks are for, man.

As much as I’d love to replace the reprint copies of the AD&D 1st and 2nd edition core books with originals, that’s just not in the cards anymore. All I can hear in my dome when looking through them anymore is the two groups arguing. I’ve seen edition wars, I’ve even taken part but now…there’s just no edition that doesn’t evoke some type of exasperation and frustration. On one side is this loud group that screams that the game is racist at it’s core and the other side…RAW or bust, always. The frustration level has gotten to the point where it’s the one game I used to love but now, it’s the “used to” that’s the operating term here.

If I crack open Wasted Lands, Castles & Crusades or any other fantasy system, then I don’t have that issue at all. In short, I get to fuck off all the One True Way-ism and frothing at the mouth. I don’t care to hear what the BrOSR have to say and their sentiments will now fall on deaf ears and cold shoulders. Why should today be any different?

So what will I do with the books I own? Play them.

Sure, if family and friends want to play official D&D, I won’t have a problem running it for them, however, I would prefer to run something else. Possibly an old-school clone. It is what it is. No, I haven’t given thought to just tossing the books out and clearing out an entire shelf space…but it is tempting. Fact is, I still have The Dark Tower for 5th Edition coming as well so that’s kinda out for me. Selling them off…also not really an option I’m willing to explore at the moment. Still, can’t say I haven’t thought about it today.

Dungeons & Dragons, the game that shaped my life is just dead to me at this point. As recent as a few months ago, the mention of it’s name would make my imagination kick into overdrive but now, the mention of it only makes me just sigh, shake my head and wish I’d never heard it’s name uttered.

Fact is, I could play Four Against Darkness and do a sight better and that is a solo game.

My advice to you, dear readers. Play what you love and love what you play.

I think that’s all I have for now. Hope you weren’t too disappointed. I’m off to go burn a joint before bed.