This quote from the latest D&D adventure book, Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk. (Again, with the long titles, WotC? Really?!?) It’s causing a considerable stir in the D&D as well as the TTRPG communities in general because of a required warning to all players.
I think this is just another stupid PR/marketing stunt to draw attention to the product in question while distracting fans from the fact that 5E is rapidly coming to a close. It’s another cheap, tawdry tactic by Wizards of the Coast to cash in on FOMO because of the big controversy they created. This is just another stunt in a long string of cheap stunts to distract us all from the fact that a “new” edition of D&D is coming next year and soon all of the old adventures will be obsolete.
Okay, the Tinfoil Hat Society will briefly come to order.
Wizards of the Coast had a minimal presence at Gen Con 2023. They had a few panels and presentations, but by and large avoided interactions with the fans. There was certainly no Content Creator summit as previously hinted. It’s like WotC is back to their old shenanigans of only taking very selective input about D&D and talking way more than listening.
It seems to me that WotC stirs up some sort of drama just to get the brand in people’s mouths any time a new book is due to come out. It’s a cheap PR tactic and reminiscent of middle school kids getting in trouble just to get noticed. One of these days it’s going to backfire, and the negative attention will be exactly that- negative. Until then, here’s a short list of game releases and corresponding social media flaps:
Spelljammer: #Hadozee
Dragonlance: OGL Crisis.
Key to the Golden Vault: Content Creator’s Summit/D&D movie.
Glory of the Giants: AI art.
Phandelver and Below: TTRPG Safety Tools.
Deck of Many Things: (Probably) Neurodivergence Awareness or Old School vs New School? Maybe?
Planescape: ??? I’m sure they’ll think of something.
They even managed to make a fuss around a couple of Magic: the Gathering releases with the Pinkertons disaster and the artwork debate. It’s like someone at WotC has a really old PR textbook and they’re using the FAFO method of getting publicity. Apparently regular advertising and marketing on social media just isn’t good enough.
Please take it to heart when I say there are no such things as coincidences! Every last one of these things has been planned from the beginning. There’s some real cartoony supervillain stuff going down at WotC.
I haven’t mentioned the Unearthed Arcana “playtests” in a while because it’s becoming so dead obvious I’ve been right all along. It’s another smoke-and-mirrors maneuver to distract all the D&D fans from what a dead year for product releases should be and keep everyone hyped for 2024.
“Look over here! Look over here!” they shout.
Meanwhile the Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master’s Guide have all been in layout and mostly ready to roll out for over a year. The playtest is just a distraction for the most part. Any feedback they receive is probably going straight into the VTT development for exclusive patches only available to subscribers. I still wonder if we’ll even get actual hardcover D&D books in 2024.
Tinfoil Hats off. Safety Tools it is, then.
I talk a lot about TTPRG Safety Tools here on my blog. I believe it’s an important discussion for every gaming group to have at the beginning of any long term game. It’s a brief conversation to be had with players before the start of any convention or game in a public location. But not every GM is the same, nor is every group. As always, do what works best for you.
The word “Required” appears with the Content Warning in Phandelver and Below. My first question is why doesn’t this warning appear on the back of the book? Second, why “required?” (I think I can hear Gary Gygax spinning in his grave like a propeller at this point.) Last, how is this any different than the insanely successful Baldur’s Gate 3?
My guess is that WotC wanted to draw our attention to the new portion of the content and not scare people away from buying the book. Phandelver and Below is already outselling Dragonlance and Keys from the Golden Vault combined. WotC has taken what might have been a very mediocre release and turned it into a public spectacle with one small block of text.
Making this one block of text buried over halfway through the book “required” instantly set off all of the Old Grognards who hate Safety Tools instantly. If WotC was looking to create a massive rip in the D&D community, they succeeded with this one. Some of us older, white, presumably cishet guys (who “can’t leave the hobby fast enough”) really don’t like it when anything related to Safety Tools appears mandatory. How dare WotC tell them how to run their games?
One DM on X (Twitter) said the offending line could be easily remedied with a black Sharpie marker. It wouldn’t be the first time in gaming history that DMs flat-out ignored something in a rulebook. Take what you will and leave the rest has been around in TTRPGs for nigh onto 50 years. It’s nothing new.
Baldur’s Gate 3, which is rated Mature, starts out with an Illithid tadpole implanted in the protagonist’s eye. Isn’t this basically the same thing that’s happening with Phandelver and Below?!? So, Larian gets a pass because it’s okay for the TTRPG to get a warning, but the video game doesn’t need one? C’mon. Really?
I’m all in favor of the Content Warning.
I’m all in favor of Safety Tools. Yeah, there might be some players who get pretty freaked out by their character being slowly corrupted into an Eldritch abomination just because they drank tainted well water or whatever. I’m pretty sure our characters from other modules had issues being turned inside out and upside down by a lot of things and we somehow turned out okay for the most part.
Sometimes it’s okay to let the DMs and players make decisions about the game as well as in-game. There are easily a half dozen ways to deal with this whole Body Transformation thing without making a huge deal out of it. Yes, put a note in for the DM so they can brace for the worst. Or better yet, put the note in and let the DM decide whether or not to even include the corruption in the first place. Failing that, maybe the PCs just have standard issue plot armor if it’s going to trigger someone. An unkind DM or one who knows his players are okay with it could just ignore the warning and go on about the module as usual.
Some players are going to be cool with their characters getting turned into corrupted abominations as a result of their own actions. Heck there might be Warlock players who are enticed by such a notion for their character. I keep going back to the eyeball thing in BG3. It’s very Call of Cthulhu for D&D.
Yes, it’s okay to put the warning on the book. But they should do it up front, so players know what they’re getting into before the first session. Putting a “required” tag on it, while helpful to new DMs, only serves to compound arguments against Safety Tools. It could be WotC showing that they “listen to the concerns of the fans” or it could be virtue signaling that was written into the book as an attention getter for 2023.
I throw this whole Phandelver distraction back at the feet of the editing staff.
Required? Did we decide that in a staff meeting or was it handed down from higher up? Was this really the best approach to take? Could they not think of a better way to go about it?
Some of these editors have been working in the TTRPG industry and D&D specifically for decades. If they’re consistently and frequently dropping the ball as much as they appear to be as of late, maybe it’s time for them to step down. (I’ll talk about this more elsewhere.) “Guys like me can’t leave soon enough for this hobby” was said by D&D team’s fearless leader Kyle Brink and he’s describing the likes of Jeremy Crawford with this statement.
Maybe it’s time for WotC to invest in a new writing/editing staff for D&D. Some of these guys have been on the team for over 10 years. Maybe a fresh set of eyes would help. It looks like WotC has a lot of potential to grow with a newer staff.
I’m going to let it go for now, but I’m keeping a vigilant eye on the Safety Tools discussion.
It’s important that we discuss topics such as Safety Tools on and off of the echo chamber known as social media. Maybe we don’t all completely agree on what tools to use at all. It’s still worthy of having the discussion. I will always default to do what works best for your group at your table.
WotC should have known what they were doing before slapping a “Required” label on any piece of text. Maybe it was designed as a FOMO cash grab or another tawdry PR stunt. Or maybe it was a good idea executed very sloppily. Either way, they could have done a much better job with it.
Thanks for being here. Be safe. Be kind. Have fun. I appreciate you. See you tomorrow.
Jeff's Game Box 