Sorry D&D 5E shills of all ages, I’m at it again.

When last we left our heroes, I was talking about the new Dungeons & Dragons Virtual TableTop (VTT) and Wizards of the Coast/D&D Studios big push for digital. It is my firm belief that the higher ups all the way to Hasbro have zero respect for anything but our money as D&D fans. No one in that office gives a rip what players or Dungeon Masters think.

Tinfoil hats on. I think 2024 will be the death knell of DMs running D&D. (*Yes, I took my crazy pills this morning.) I’ve figured out that WotC has it in for DMs in general. Why? Because the human element of a DM running the game is too unpredictable and harder to monetize.

Almost a year ago Cynthia Williams stood up and declared the player base “undermonetized.”

She wasn’t entirely wrong about that. WotC did some consumer research that indicated most of their sales were to Dungeon Masters. We’re (DMs are) the ones who buy pretty much anything and everything that comes out. (Hi, I’m guilty of that through Candlekeep Mysteries and then I stopped.) I believe WotC put on their Cobra Commander/Megatron thinking caps and hatched a cartoonishly evil plan.

They (WotC) figured out the best way of monetizing the player base is in a walled garden (Subscription based VTT with additional microtransactions.) Cancel your subscription and lose ALL of the D&D books you’ve accumulated. (Their obvious revenge for #StoptheSub and a way to keep the money flowing.) This way the DM can’t just buy physical books to share with the group around a physical table by WotC’s logic.

Side Note: I’m sorta glad no one from WotC actually reads my blog or answers my emails at times like this. Although it’s sad I’ll never get my falls count anywhere, no holds barred match with Kyle Brink. (LOL!) But if I’m completely wrong about WotC, I could be feeding them ideas. All these years of roleplaying game mastery have taught me how to plot and scheme like a supervillain.

I think WotC wants to get rid of those pesky DMs entirely for so many reasons. They want to fold us DMs into the regular player base and then monetize the heck out of everyone. DMs are little more than superfans buying D&D Intellectual Property (IP) based t-shirts, mugs, dice, lamps, or those pesky collectible hardcover gold embossed stamped Player’s Handbooks for $150 retail or 145.99 on D&D Beyond. (*NOT a real product yet.)

We know from the Great Open Game License Debacle of 2023 WotC execs don’t like us.

A lot of people came forward to spill the beans on Wizards of the Coast in January 2023. We know D&D Exec Chris Cao thinks books are only good for collectors. We know Williams and Cao both regularly decline invitations to play the game they’re in charge of. Seriously, WTF?!?

What’s the deal with DMs? Why the hate? Why try to get rid of us?

DMs create their game worlds, settings, adventures, and add to the base D&D game. WotC can’t have people thinking for themselves. They can’t make money on that. Remember, in corporation land, creativity is bad. Thinking inside the very narrow box is good. (*GROAN!)

I think WotC is pushing hard to make their VTT into a video game where people log in, buy the new shiny spell effects and skins for their characters, and run prebuilt video game style modules. Of course, run by AI because my guess is the VTT programmers are going to want to limit player options to best monetize the microtransaction economy in the game. WotC can’t just have DMs making up rules that the VTT can’t cover or monetize. Programmers can’t compensate for what they don’t know anything about.

DMs throw a major wrench in the plans of WotC exec stupor villains. What do they do to chase DMs off? Start by floating a rumor that being a DM is really hard work. If we know anything about people in general and younger generations specifically, it’s that they want everything handed to them. Then tell people creating a world is so much easier if we just let D&D Team do all the “hard work” for the DM.

This may have been on Gary Gygax’s unspoken TSR agenda once upon a time. It’s okay for DMs to run a module. It’s hard to charge when DMs are creating their own worlds and modules. 1974-75 didn’t have video games or cell phones that could house more information than a roomful of computers back in the day. It’s gotten easier to create railroad style modules to run video game players through in 2023. (Baldur’s Gate 3 cough cough.)

Further scheming to chase off those pesky kids (Dungeon Masters.)

Did you know there are people out there who get paid for being Dungeon Masters? Did you know that WotC/D&D receive no monetization from professional DMs beyond the rulebooks they buy? What if WotC did away with all that on their own VTT. No sense paying a live human being $4.99/hour for four hours if WotC/Hasbro can make that money, right? Right?

It’s like adding a self-checkout line at the grocery store. That self-checkout doesn’t have a family to feed. It can run off electricity for pennies per day compared to a living wage. It reeks of corporate greed and it makes me sick to my stomach.

What if WotC occasionally puts one of their shills in play to start an argument about Safety Tools online? How many people get scared to DM because (some YouTuber) got on social media (X/Twitter) and made it sound hard to deal with Session Zero or X cards. If being a DM is controversial, why would anyone want to start? Again appealing to the lowest common denominator of everyone wanting things on easy mode.

Is it possible one of their shills might have started that ugly rumor about there being some sort of “DM shortage?” The 2014 DMG already makes it sound hard enough. Now there’s a shortage. How do we best solve it? “Oh, save us Wizards of the Coast. Give us modules and AI DMs to run them,” the players cried.

Then there’s this business with the language changes.

Yup, it all figures right into their plan on multiple levels. First, if print products are so messed up (#Hadozee, Bigby’s AI art disaster, Phandelver’s trigger warning, and #DeckofManyDelays) then why print anything at all? Why not just change it on D&D Beyond and be done with it? Editing a product made simple.

The language “updates” for sake of inclusion also play right into the DM elimination scheme. One, being told we more or less have to change up all of the wording around some topics in D&D is a huge turn off for some. (That has the bonus effect of chasing off old Caucasian guys like me which is a topic for yet another article.) For those who the language changes don’t annoy, the digital changes just prove to WotC/Hasbro that print products are frivolous collector’s items.

The latest example as of 11/27/2024 is the changing Rule 0. This rule used to state the DM had final say wherever the rules are concerned. The DM could make up or change a rule to fit the situation as needed. Much like an X Card, the “new” Rule 0 effectively states that anyone can override a rule as long as it makes the game for fun for everyone. It is NOT the same thing. Again, who would want to be a DM in this new environment?

This whole narrative that seems to be driven home by the D&D Team of, “the DM is ‘just’ another player at the table” is contributing to the death of the DM narrative. It goes back to the WotC notion of monetize the entire player base, not just the DMs. I suspect the 2024 new-not-new DMG is going to be a bit unhelpful to new DMs when it comes out.

I’m betting most of the 2024 DM advice is going to sound like “Subscribe to our VTT/Online walled garden for more” or “Just let us write your game world and all your adventures for you. Join Online today.” If it’s in a book, it’s free advice. If it’s online, they can charge for it. It’ll be easy, because my guess is the 2024 DMG will be available online long before the overpriced physical version lands in our hands.

What hurts the most is the lack of empathy and responsiveness.

I get that Hasbro/WotC/D&D Studios is one big, uncaring, unfeeling corporation driven strictly by profits. I expect a lot of slimy behavior from large corporations having worked for a Fortune 500 company myself. I get the weaselly, greasy, terrible things that come to bear in the name of making more money for the magical 1% at the top.

What really hurts is that Dungeons & Dragons used to be a lot different. It’s one of the formative cornerstones in nerd culture around the world wherever it is known. Entire player groups formed around a common interest- D&D. If we wanted to get in touch with the people making the game we could write them a letter (snail mail- what a concept!) and expect a reply within a reasonable amount of time. Usually there could be a conversation there.

Nowadays if I try to contact the “D&D Team” by email, they don’t even have the decency to send a response telling me to F🦆🦆🦆 off. It probably just gets deleted with all the other crap they don’t want to read. But that dialogue we used to have with TSR, one we still have today with many other game companies, that rapport is gone. It’s disappointing.

I would dearly love to snag an invite to one of these so called “Content Creator Summits.” I would likewise enjoy a nice chat with Kyle Brink or Cynthia Williams. I promise. I’ll be nice. I might even go with the easy battery of questions. It’d be fun to hear them try to set the record straight. Alas, it’s not happening any time soon. If they want better press, all they have to do is start talking to fans and not just their shills.

So many of us are passionate about this hobby and even about the D&D game specifically. It’s hard to imagine the custodians of this 50 year old tabletop tradition are fumbling with it so badly. It’s NOT A VIDEO GAME!!! But they don’t hear me, though.

We need to face the reality that D&D will still be on top in 2024

One of the things that really brings my blood pressure to a boil is that D&D still holds 60-70% of the TTRPG Industry in terms of market share and revenue. (Rough guess. Don’t quote me on that.) From there it’s very small slices of pie in terms of annual revenue. If D&D somehow disappeared tomorrow, the rest of the TTRPG sphere might expand beyond being a cottage/small industry.

If the new-not-new D&D 2024 somehow flops, I would really love to see it reduced to a simple board game style red box with cards, miniatures, dice and a simple 64 page softcover rulebook. Let the rest of the industry rock whatever OGL/ORC License they want to use and just go nuts with good games. Imagine tabletop conventions making a comeback and people just playing fantasy TTRPGs at a table again.

Thanks for stopping by today. I have lots more on WotC, Paizo, and others I want to discuss. I appreciate you being here.