and the Hypocrisy of the DungeonTuber Elite.
I nearly quit YouTube this week. I pulled down several of my own videos, mostly the Shout Outs, and spent hours deciding whether I wanted to keep making content for a community that seems more interested in tearing people down than lifting people up. That purge was not performative. It was survival. I unfollowed a lot of people across socials because watching folks with promotion budgets and possible PR access preach about artistic morality while the rest of us are trying to cover hosting fees makes my skin crawl.
This week’s spark came from DnD Shorts, who I am no longer subscribed to. He is one of the more prominent DungeonTubers and he released a video that felt less like a reasoned argument and more like a demand that anyone who does not meet his standard of purity should be ostracized. He made over two million dollars on his last Kickstarter and he frequently mentions it. That puts him in a different economic bracket than the rest of us, and it matters when he lectures people who are barely scraping by. The difference between those realities is not a nuance. It is the whole conversation.[1][2]
Most independent creators are not sitting on piles of cash or getting regular free books from Wizards of the Coast. We are busy writing adventures and supplements for Open Game License properties in to make something cool for DriveThruRPG, itch.io, or our blogs. I have released projects that retail for $0.99 or $1.99, and after fees, discounts, and bundles the take-home is often no more than a cup of coffee. Yet now we are somehow expected to hire professional artists who charge hundreds per piece to meet some pretended moral standard set out by some DungeonTubers? Give me a break.
What currently passes for moral clarity in parts of the TTRPG community has become an online witch hunt.. Use AI art and you are suddenly a pariah. Publish a small PDF without a full art budget and you are negligent or worse. That posture is not about defending artists. It is about defining who belongs and who does not. Gatekeeping looks like sanctimony when you are the person it is aimed at. For most of us there is no conspiracy. There is a lack of capital.
The hypocrisy runs deep. Many of the creators loudly policing this space receive free products, early review copies, and convention perks from major publishers. Their livelihoods depend on maintaining relationships with the “big” companies who shape the market. Wizards of the Coast and other publishers have publicly engaged with the generative AI debate and issued guidance and frequently asked questions that evolve as the technology does. That does not absolve small creators from making ethical choices, but it does make performative purity policing from people who benefit from corporate access look like tone policing rather than principled leadership.[3][4]
Let us be honest about costs. For a new Game Master the baseline entry for core books plus a few supplements commonly lands around one hundred to one hundred fifty dollars. Starter kits help, but they are not the same as a full shelf of resources. On Kickstarter, the average pledge for a single PDF lands near twenty dollars, while physical books commonly push closer to sixty dollars plus shipping. Deluxe editions with all the extras routinely exceed one hundred fifty dollars. The hobby is getting more expensive, and that is pricing people out.[5][6]
Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms have amplified the gap. High profile tabletop campaigns now regularly clear hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. Those projects attract professionals, multiple artists, and manufacturing budgets that make an indie PDF look like a hobbyist project in comparison. Meanwhile the average successful game project still makes far less than the big headline campaigns. For many small creators the math simply does not add up: there are fees, shipping costs, and the reality that the audience for a $1.99 PDF is not going to fund full color spreads. Tools that lower production cost are not a moral failing. They are a survival mechanism.[6]
I am not naive. Theft, plagiarism, and outright scams exist, and they are awful. Use of AI to pass off someone else’s work as original should be called out. But do not conflate honest, transparent use of tools with criminal behavior. If you are open about your process and honest about budgets, you are not the same thing as a scammer. Often what the outrage defends is status, not art.
Look at the incentives. Big creators monetize attention through sponsorships, ad revenue, affiliate deals, and paid appearances. They can afford to hire pro artists, pay layout designers, and absorb shipping headaches. They are also visible to PR departments and get special treatment when access matters. Small creators are mostly paying out of pocket and trading time for exposure. The hobby is becoming more expensive to enter, and yet a subset of prominent creators wants affordability to be a test of character. That is perverse.
If the goal is to keep the hobby narrow, expensive, and gated by who can afford art commissions, say that out loud. If the goal is to let creativity flourish, stop telling people who can only afford a PDF and ask an AI to create a few images that they are immoral. Tools do not create values. People do. The moral choice is how we treat one another, not which tool we choose.
I do not want to punish creators who work hard to produce high quality content. I want them to keep doing the work they do. What I do not want is to be told that the only acceptable way to exist in the hobby is to meet a bar that most of us can never reach. Support artists when you can. Pay professionals where budgets exist. But accept that not everyone has that budget and that using a tool to make something is a pragmatic decision, not a moral failing.
Here is where I land. I nearly quit. I took down videos. I unfollowed people. I cleaned up my feeds. That was my choice and it made me feel better almost immediately. I will keep making things because I love the craft, because imagination is still cheap, and because the hobby is worth preserving. I will call out punch downs when I see them. If you want a hobby that becomes an exclusive club inside a walled garden, you can have that. If you want a hobby that welcomes people who create with whatever resources they have, then stop the purity tests and start the hard work of building access.
If you are a creator with a big reach, stop telling smaller creators they have to worship your standard. If you are a consumer who loves great production values, fund the people who make those things. If you care about artists, find ways to support them without making public shaming a substitute for policy or charity. And if you are a small creator wondering whether to use a tool to keep making, remember this. Use the tools honestly. Credit generously. Learn the craft. Keep your integrity. The hobby will be stronger for it.
Because at the end of the day, this fight is about one thing: freedom. The freedom to create, to experiment, and to share ideas without being labeled or shamed. That is what tabletop gaming meant to me when I started, and I am not letting anyone take that away.
We can do better. We should do better. Or we can keep pretending that gatekeeping is “community.” My vote is for making space, not policing it.
Thank you for being here with me today. I appreciate you. Keep it real, but please strive for positivity, too. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy in your life.
Footnotes and links:
1. DnD Shorts YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@DnDShorts
2. Ryoko’s Guide to the Yokai Realms, DnD Shorts Kickstarter. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dndshorts/ryokos-guide
3. Wizards of the Coast Generative AI art FAQ. https://company.wizards.com/en/ai-faq
4. Wizards of the Coast AI controversy and artists leaving over AI use. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/wizards-of-the-coast-ai-art-controversy
5. How much does it cost to play D&D and starter kit pricing context. https://www.michaelghelfi.com/dnd-costs
6. Kickstarter and tabletop funding context, Games category overview and average campaign data. https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/games
Jeff's Game Box 
I hear you, man. The whole thing is ridiculous. It’s funny how when manual labourers were losing their jobs because machines were taking over, then that was just Progress in action and those crude, mindless brutes had only themselves to blame for not learning to code. But now it’s the shiny, sparkly creative people who are seeing their value diminish, and it’s amazing how that just makes all the difference. Feh.
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