Unsolicited hot take sure to cost me followers:
Roleplaying game books meant for table use should not have glossy pages with graphic backgrounds and big splashy art. They should be like utilitarian reference books, not coffee table books. I should be able to read them easily, and mark in them for my own and my players’ convenience.
Someday I will write my rant about how TSR and Wizards created the illusion of a monopoly they don’t really have over the expression “Dungeon Master.” This has left a huge footprint on RPG history, but it’s basiclaly fake. But today is not that day.
Also, I think it’s important to say that Hasbro doesn’t own Dungeons & Dragons. Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast owns the copyright to texts in which the rules are expressed, and the trademark. Third party publishers never needed the OGL to publish supplementary material for D&D; what the OGL allows is for third party publishers to use parts of copyrighted text verbatim without needing prior permission from Wizards and without having to pay them a fee. The game itself belongs to the players, has always belonged to the players; and the rules are just components that any table might incorporate into its practice of play.
Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising or playing a game. … Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.
US Copyright Office, Copyright Registration of Games fact sheet, quoted in DaVinci Editrice SRL v Ziko Games LLC, 183 F Supp 3d 820 (SD Tex 2016).
Also, I think it’s important to say that Hasbro doesn’t own Dungeons & Dragons. Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast owns the copyright to texts in which the rules are expressed, and the trademark. Third party publishers never needed the OGL to publish supplementary material for D&D; what the OGL allows is for third party publishers to use parts of copyrighted text verbatim without needing prior permission from Wizards and without having to pay them a fee. The game itself belongs to the players, has always belonged to the players; and the rules are just components that any table might incorporate into its practice of play.
Gamemasters (GMs) and players alike decry the tendency of Dungeons & Dragons parties to devolve into “murder hobos.” The term is shorthand for characters who primarily travel rootlessly through the game and solve all their problems with violence or killing, often without engaging with the narrative consequences of that violence. The problem of this problem is that there is nothing in the game that provides players a real alternative to this playstyle. The bulk of opportunities for advancement are framed around combat, and the majority of interesting things for your character to do are combat-based. This makes sense, given the game’s roots in wargaming, but it means tools for roleplaying are largely stapled in by the GM.
I'd never thought of the murder hobo thing in the context of what the actual D&D mechanics incentivize, huh.
This article is interesting and I’m entirely sympathetic, but I think the quoted part goes too far. In my opinion, the “murder hobo” phenomenon is worse now than it was in earlier editions, when the game was closer to its wargaming roots.
RPGs combine the pleasures of playing make believe with the pleasures of doing math and filling out forms. And no forms were ever as satisfying to fill out as World of Darkness character sheets. All those little circles to fill in……………
Aww, the seminal dungeon designer Jennell Jaquays passed away. I heard she was sick so it’s not a surprise. Still, she had a huge influence on the art and design of early D&D.
John Wick is not an “action series” it’s an urban fantasy leaning heavily on fae rules such as a hidden world overlaid over the mundane world, miraculously out of sight despite its vastness, operating by strict and bloody codes of fairness. AND it’s an action series
John Wick is about crossing a threshold into a magical but brutal society, escaping, and then being dragged back in, forced to adhere to the laws of this terrible land and paying for services using magical gold pieces representing favors, it’s a fairy tale if everyone had a gun
Everyone in BG3 should by rights have a Canadian accent
An article from 2019, in which Ed Greenwood discusses the childhood inspirations for the Forgotten Realms, predating D&D by a decade
Vlaakith is the 157th of her name, so there have been at least 157 githyanki monarchs. In fact, I think there was a 3e adventure (“The Lich-Queen’s Beloved”) that stated that all githyanki rulers were women who have had that name. Yet when Voss meets Lae’zel, he remarks that her name is “regal, even.” There are a few ways to interpret that but the one that seems most satisfactory to me is that “Vlaakith” is a regnal name adopted by queens who held other names before ascending, and at least one was remembered for having formerly been named Lae’zel—perhaps even the current one.
Given the play culture of early D&D, it’s a little strange there aren’t more references to Star Trek in there. Maybe it was a sense of snobbery—anything on TV is too normie, true wargamers read pulp sf novels, hence the references to Poul Anderson, EC Tubb, and George RR Martin. The Astral Plane is a big place, though—but is it big enough for spelljamming Klingons, Romulans, or Cardassians—?
Back cover illustration for TSR’s “Deities and Demigods” by Erol Otus, 1980
i think tom hiddleston is ugly but it seems like no one in real life agrees with me and its making me feel crazy. Please god what is your take on this is he ugly or not i dont know whats real anymore
im baldr
oh fuck huge fan, I love your gate
what
my what
Here’s my ideal ttrpg experience.
Other than the magic system, this is Original 1974 D&D, or maybe BX, with a few extensions. I wouldn’t mind if some players didn’t want to engage with magic research, or with the government/wargame, as long as at least some of them did.
If they make another D&D movie I hope Drizzt Do’Urden shows up and I damn well EXPECT him to have RA Salvatore’s thick central Mass accent
Okay, I did enjoy the D&D movie, I appreciate that they took the Realms lore really seriously but still made a movie reasonably accessible to newcomers, Selûne’s Tears (the moon’s trailing asteroids) were a little overdone but the attempt was a nice touch, I recognized almost all the monsters and spells, etc.
I have complaints but they’re not really just about this movie, but fantasy in general. They don’t think very much about what things are made of—like, what the hell were the wall panels in Edgin’s house? Wood? They looked like fibreglass. The arena’s columns seemed to be made of the same substance.
And how far apart are all these places, and how long is it taking for them to zip all around the region? They leave somewhere and we cut to them arriving, but some of those time cuts must be days or weeks long—and I realize I’m showing my age here, but overland travel and wilderness encounters are a big part of the D&D experience for me. Even the old trick of a shot showing their travel on a map would have helped, and I think it would have been especially effective here because Faerûn is so thoroughly mapped and nearly every location they visited in the movie was chosen from established Realms geography.
I gotta say, it’s telling they attribute it to “Hasbro’s Dungeons & Dragons.” That's that IP jealousy that earned them blowback in December. I didn’t notice, though, whether they actually credited Gygax, Arneson, or Ed Greenwood (the guy who created the Forgotten Realms setting in the first place).
