Neither dungeons nor dragons

I’ve been a TTRPG enthusiast for more than 10 years now. I’ve tried many different systems and have even tried my hand in designing my own.

D&D was one of those games I played with different groups under different circumstances. Starting with 3rd edition (well, 3.5), then 4th, Pathfinder, and then 5th.

A trend I failed to notice at first was that the burden of buying the thick books and learning them was always assumed to be on the Dungeon Master. Players learned by doing whatever the DM told them, and sometimes borrowing (or pirating) the books.

This led to very authoritarian tables where everything the DM said was law. And any questioning of this authority would be punished in-game and at the table. The DM held the secrets of the game, and often they would place a physical barrier at the table to ensure this was clear. They had a story they wanted to tell, and they didn’t want the players to get any delusions of grandeur, so the first unwritten rule is that the rules only apply when the DM likes them. Of course, this adversarial relationship cultivated some resentment. I’ve watched games devolve into a competition of who gets to cheat the most in order to have a sense of agency.

I don’t want to talk about the toxic players, but I don’t want to seem like I’m ignoring the problem. Sure, I’ve met kind DMs, whom I still regard as friends, but I’ve cut ties with much more people. The truth remains that the game attracts some shitty people.

I saw how the community does a great job at highlighting the positive aspects of the hobby. And as I tried to learn more about the game the internet influencers made me feel I was playing the game wrong. There was only one way to find out.

So, about a year ago I decided to give D&D a chance. I wanted to read the books and learn the rules. I wanted to help new players learn the ropes without the influence of the jaded gatekeepers. Without the maze of third-party content, half-baked house rules, and habits held from previous editions. And I most certainly tried.

That’s when I learned the game, by itself, is unplayable. The Dungeon Master’s guide provides very specific and detailed rules for some things and leaves other things to the imagination. The game mechanics are fine tuned for a certain type of experience (mostly boardgame-like dungeon looting), but the game invites you to engage in open-world adventures with lots of character interactions. The game encourages DMs to make the game their own, but also burdens them with decades of lore. It’s a jumbled mess of archaic wargaming and modern roleplay. The reader is presented with pages upon pages of detailed game mechanics, followed by “or just do whatever, it’s just a game, tee hee!” quips.

Here’s the thing: They don’t have any incentive to polish or complete the game. D&D is to tabletop role-playing games what Google is to web search, so consumers don’t know about the thousands of well-thought-out games. On the other hand, they have an many incentives for keeping things vague. For starters, they don’t want to enrage the toxic fandom they’ve cultivated. As the saying goes, “nerds hate change.”

The result is that modern D&D is not a game, it’s a vibe, a tradition, a mood.

For players, it’s something they, or someone they know (or saw on TV) has been doing for 30 years.

For DMs, it’s something handed down to them by their dad, or a friend their dad’s age, along with a binder full of house-rules, a thumb drive full of dubious PDFs, a handful of miniatures, and the assurance that they’ll get to do whatever they want, and they’ll get free pizza in return.

Every revision of the game comes with neat ideas for players, and less resources for DMs. It’s a catalog with neat pictures of cool characters doing awesome things. It’s not marketed towards DMs, even though they do most of the spending.

That’s because DMs don’t need convincing; the toxic DMs get a captive audience and a weekly power trip, and the kind ones get a chance to please their friends, and a vast majority are just pressured into DMing.

It’s all a scam. They rely mostly on word-of-mouth, influencers, and product placement to make people want to join this lifestyle. New books published every so often entice old players to return by promising cool new features and more powerful characters. These players need DMs. These DMs need to cough up the money to buy the content the players want. 

The publisher doesn’t care if it’s an abusive DM, a reluctant DM, or a cheerful DM They don’t care what those DMs struggle with, if they play by the rules, or what third-party tools they must explore to make their shit game playable. It doesn’t matter as long as they consume, and that makes for a bad community, and a bad gaming experience.

D&D is to tabletop RPGs what Monopoly is to bard games: It’s the one everyone things of first, it’s the one people who don’t know better prefer to play, they keep coming up with stupid gimmicks, one player must do extra work, it’s not fun, people often end up arguing, and adding house rules usually makes things worse.

If you’ve made it this far, you probably expect some advice from me. How about don’t play D&D? If you must, don’t ask anyone to DM it, do it yourself and see what it’s like. If you’re an experienced DM… Why? There’re better games out there! Show some self-respect!