My Punk-Ass Gen-X Take on the Whole WotC Debacle

 I am in the middle of moving house at the moment, which has forced me to neglect my blog, much to my frustration. Especially as so much has been going on in the hobby as of late. Especially with Wizards of the Coast doing their level best to alienate the Dungeons & Dragons fan base at every turn. I really only have one thought on WotC left with sharing. I might even sing it:

There's no vestige of beginning, no prospect of an end

When we all disintegrate, it will all happen again, yeah

If you came to conquer, you'll be king for a day

But you too will deteriorate and quickly fade away

And believe these words you hear when you think your path is clear

We have no control

We have no control

We have no control

We do not understand, you have no control

You are not in command

-Bad Religion, No Control 

(©️1989 Polypteric Records)

Or perhaps, "See you WotC, enjoy your decline!"

I am, by all accounts the quintessential Gen-X slacker, I have had almost no employment with big corporations and didn't enjoy the environment. I have spent most of my life working for myself. I am suspicious of Sentiment, but enjoy Beauty. I am cynical towards ads, news, and mass media, yet I tend to communicate and think in pop culture quotations. I prefer to DIY where I can. And nothing is cool until I can personalize the Hell put of it. I have no interest in plastic,  cookie cutter corporate bullshit or brand names. D&D as a stopped being interesting to me when it was clear that it had gone from a vibrant small community hobby to another Brand Name™️ a few books into 3rd Edition. 

I walked away long ago. I don't care about the logo on the book. I briefly got sucked in with 5th when it looked like they were trying to connect with the lost fan base. I saw the error of my ways after buying one sourcebook.

I don't buy books for the sake of collecting.  I don't care to have mounds of sourcebooks. I brew my own worlds.  And until I had to balance kids and a small business, I didn't use adventure modules. What books I do buy, I buy to hack or to review. And I buy very few. Most of my 5e collection were gifts.

You can't sell D&D to me.

My Dream WotC 5e Book

The following is a thought experiment. I imagined what I would create if Wizards of the Coast let me design a book for them for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition that could showcase the best independent talents I have run across in the OSR, in the story game movement, and getting third party publishers from DMs Guild.

The book would focus on continuing the arc of the new setting that Wizards of the Coast is currently building towards with The Radiant Citadel A setting I predicted in December of 2020: that is to say, a cleaner, less bleak dimension hopping environment. Planescape, only bright and hopeful.

I'm not choosing all of my favorite designers. In some cases, I eliminated people because they have an open dislike for WotC, or, they are prone to controversy and would make the book a non-starter for the Wizards board of directors. And I eliminated people whose work is so dark or mature that it wouldn't quite fit the 5e frame without seriously distorting that person's creative vision.

My goal would be to bring to mainstream 5th edition the incredible energy variety of design styles, and amazing talent that is out there in indie TTRPG circles.

Part of the point of the work would be to help advertise not just WotC's products, but also draw attention to the incredible industry that has grown up around Dungeons & Dragons and its legacy. To help 5e players both have a 5e game with playing, and see the opportunities to expand their horizons at the same time. Which I doubt would really hurt the WotC bottom line.

So...

New School Adventures, Old School Game

Coming to you from the glamorous 
Mother-in-Law's Basement Studio
(Vacation gaming is awesome!) 

Tuesday night was my first full-length session playing a Candlekeep Mysteries adventure using Lamentations of The Flame Princess for my podcast. I found it quite revealing about the assumptions made between different editions of D&D 

(Spoilers ahead for "The Joy of Extradimensional Spaces" ) 

Now, keep in mind Lamentations of The Flame Princess is not a perfect analog to Basic and Expert Dungeons & Dragons. The classes have been tweaked somewhat. Elves cannot see in the dark, for example. And only fighters get better at hitting things.

At its core, however, it is still B/X with a Cannibal Corpse album sleeve painted on the cover. I feel safe in stating that playing it is close enough to B /X D&D to count for the purposes of this discussion.

One of the first things you know is that combat is assumed to be way more often in Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition . Rather than relying on things like reaction rolls, most monsters in the adventure entitled "The Joy of Extradimensional Spaces" attack automatically. Some to defend their owners property, some as a prank (nonsensically), some out of hunger. Even creatures with no reason to hang around and murder player characters attempt to do so.

And there are a lot of monsters. For a first level dungeon, this adventure included an imp, a quasif, two flying swords, one mimic, two fairy dragons, four crawling hands, one powerful animated library, and one swarm of animated books. I was rightly concerned that this could lead to a TPK with the average soft first level BD&D characters.

Candlekeep Mysteries cover Art
By Clint Cearly;
©2021 Wizards of the Coast

This adventure includes monsters that can only be hurt by magic, and assumes 1st level PCs have access to an infinite supply of attack Cantrips. It is assumes that there's going to be some healing available for the player characters. Neither are guarantees in older editions of D&D. My party had no healing available. While my players were lucky and rolled relatively tough characters that was no guarantee either. D&D5e is in essence a game that allows for players to charge in and overcome fairly tough foes without too much difficulty.

This is also reflected in the way the adventure rewards the PCs. If PCs are awarded experience for killing monsters primarily and level 1 requires only 300xp, then this monster a-go-go dungeon will have you half-way to level 3. On the other hand, if you are being rewarded for finding treasure, and fighting monsters is designed to have a low reward:risk ratio, and level 1 is meant to be a challenge, not a formality, this dungeon offers a pittance that doesn't even take a Thief close to the 1,700 they need for level 2.

This is well discussed osr OSR and not really news. But there is a flipside to this I had to see played out to understand.

Modules written for modern Dungeons & Dragons don't assume cautious, strategic play at all.