Hard to believe this year is almost over.

I feel like I blinked in August and now we’re here. I’ve had a busy three months or so amongst doing stuff with my family, starting a YouTube channel, and this here blog. I dare say if I were working a regular 9:00 PM to 5:00 AM job, I would have missed out on so much of it.

I’m certain the corporate world is better off without me. Being free of corporate culture and that corporate mentality has allowed me to flex my uh, mighty creative muscles in all kinds of exciting ways. I think corporations, especially large corporations such as Wizards of the Coast, suck the creativity right out of people. I’m still very active and interested in Dungeons & Dragons, just not buying into the current version of it.

Which brings me to: Large Corporation is Creatively Bankrupt.

When I think about corporate culture, I think of obedience, loyalty, conformity, and uniformity. Most corporate big wigs will tell you to be creative and think outside the box at home. There’s no place for creatives in teams. I’ve noticed everything has to be team based again these days. It’s a trend that comes and goes, but when the poop hits the fan, it’s the individual who gets canned. That’s why I hate  it. (*I don’t say that word very often.)

Wizards of the Coast is my example just looking at Dungeons & Dragons. The last new setting that was officially released for D&D was the result of a new setting search in 2002. The resulting game was Eberron, which officially released in 2004. That means WotC has been milking the same old official campaign settings for twenty years!

It wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t busy trash talking the original creators.

Just this last year we’ve had accusations of bigotry thrown at Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson multiple times by different authors. For crying out loud! It’s the 50th Anniversary of D&D. We should be celebrating, not slinging mud.

More recently a Screen Rant article was complaining about the Drow (aka Dark Elves) and saying we should basically hold Drizzt Do’Urden up as a satirical mockery in a TV series. The article basically sounds like it was written by the WotC public relations people. I’m sorry, but I’m not buying into what you’re saying, Christina. I’m not a fan of the Drow anyway and even I take issue with this whole racism in D&D problem.

Wizards of the Coast doesn’t hear me when I say, “Create a new setting.”

The new dream team at WotC is embarrassed by old D&D, huh? Easy solution: CREATE something new. Don’t keep dredging up Planescape, Spelljammer, the D&D Cartoon, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and classic modules to revise for 2024 D&D. They won’t even touch Birthright, Maztica, Al Qadim, Dark Sun, Menzoberranzan, or my beloved Kara Tur. Some of those old properties are just too controversial because they dealt with non-Western cultures and tough issues such as slavery.

Easiest fix in the world, since they have their various staff writers with big fancy titles who don’t seem to do much of anything would be to write an all new official canon campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons. I don’t think they’ve stopped to consider just how many problems a new setting would alleviate for them. It’s easy for AI to dredge up older works and mash them together as Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks (yes, that’s his real last name) suggested this past year.

Why do they keep bringing in Third Party content onto D&D Beyond? I can almost guarantee it’s not because they want other creators to get a slice of those profits. It’s because their own staff writers are creatively bankrupt, and the AI can’t create an acceptable all new setting guide. That leaves WotC to cry about how bad the old stuff is because when their AI goes to pilfer from it they get things that makes their inclusivity readers cringe. (#Hadozee, anyone?)

My goal in 2025 is to create an all new fantasy setting for Free League’s Dragonbane RPG.

The “brain trust” or really anyone at WotC never come near my blog. I should really send them another email to ignore one of these days. LOL! Otherwise, I’d offer to work for them. They’d never go for it, but I’d at least make an offer. See, I’m not much of a team player when it comes to game design.

2025 is going to be my Year of the Dragon(bane), so to speak. I want to build the setting I would run and/or play in. I eventually want to create adventures set in this world and put them up for sale on DriveThruRPG.com. There might even be a world guide, and maybe a monster book.

I have a dream that one day I’ll be able to go back to D&D.

Right now I’m having too much fun with Free League’s Dragonbane to want to quit, but I grew up on D&D. Maybe someday the Reptilian executives at Hasbro/WotC will realize there are games that do D&D better than the company that owns the official Intellectual Property. If Basic D&D were to be created today based on 5E, it would look almost exactly like Shadowdark RPG. It’s another case of WotC can’t creatively rub two sticks together and get an imaginative spark.

I’m sure D&D will go on like this for a couple more years. It sounds as if 2027 is going to be a hard year for WotC, assuming they’re still around that long. IIRC, the calendar we’ve seen from Hasbro in the past seemed to indicate D&D’s next edition, whatever it’s called, will be in 2027. Personally, I think the next edition is going to look like a board game, probably in a red box, that includes everything you need to play the game. I think D&D is eventually going to look like just another Hasbro board game like Monopoly.

The 2025 WotC D&D release calendar would seem to indicate that there is no new official campaign setting or world guide on the horizon. (It’s all over the Internet if you look.) Back to Forgotten Realms, apparently. No sign of a new official campaign setting, just the old one that they’re so ashamed of for having the Drow. I would be shocked if Kara Tur, Al Qadim, or any other of the “controversial” parts of Toril are mentioned.

I’ll happily start buying D&D again when the current regime of writers and editors is gone. It’s not about how “woke” they act. It’s about all of the senseless lack of regard for the fans, the social media stunts, the PR shenanigans, the preface to the 50th Anniversary book, shaming the game’s history and creators who aren’t still with us, and the overall softening of the game.

See, back in my day we didn’t shy away from tough issues. We were heroes who took on tough challenges. We freed slaves and rescued Princesses from dragons. We went after the Orc bandits because they were sacking the local towns. There were no Dwarves wearing sandals and baking cookies in the forge area. We did what checked all the boxes that were morally and ethically sound at that time- back in the 80s and 90s. Someday I hope WotC figures out they can’t apply 2024 political correctness retroactively.

Needless to say, I’ve really gotten behind this whole Hex Crawl idea.

I’m doing Hex-A-Day 2025. (Look for posts under .) Sometime during the month of GMuary I’ll be posting my random encounter tables for the various kin, etc that could be encountered. Instinctively I want to come up with 8-12 new kin types so we’re running into something new every time. I also want to keep the technology low and nature high for the most part. That’s going to mean no industrial or post industrial society stuff unless the group happens upon some ancient ruins with strange magic that happens to resemble technology we have now or some sci-fi stuff.

I’m looking to label the map by date and grid reference. It’s kind of a big map. So far I’m thinking it might look like kind of a Pangea with one very huge land mass. I like to design Jovian scale planets, though. Lots of room for things to get huge like giants or dinosaurs and spread out. I like that for a lot of my sci-fi games, too as a side note. Earth is just too small for its own gaming good. (LOL!)

I think when it’s all said and done, I’m going to have a functional campaign world by 2026. It’s going to run off of the Dragonbane rules and yes, we’ll still have anthropomorphic ducks (Mallards.) I want to build around the stuff that excites me and makes me happy, not what will cause the biggest uproar or get the most dollars.

WotC take note: If pre-2024 D&D offends so badly, build a new world around your game. You have these “teams” full of “brilliant” writers who supposedly have all this creative acumen- Use them! See if your new sanitized, homogenized, Nerfed-up, cozy world sells with the fans. Good luck to you.

Rant mode off.

My apologies, but creative bankruptcy makes me cringe hard. Next month my plans are to support and encourage as many Game Masters/Dungeon Masters as possible any way I can. I want to make a good month for GM Awareness. I’ve stated before how we need to encourage more people in the hobby, or we won’t have one.

I’ll be posting a year-end review and my intentions for the New Year probably next week. Last year I think I had too many ideas and eventually got overwhelmed. This year, it’s one project at a time until completed. I’ll try to batch my YouTube videos and get ahead on my blog by a day or two so I have time to work on things.

Oh yeah. YouTube. That nice British gent is going to continue reading my scripts for a while. I like his delivery as he sounds more eloquent than I do. He also doesn’t have kids yelling in the background like I do. He helps me maximize my efficiency, and overall the videos with his voiceover are easier to edit. It’s probably not going to stay that way forever, but it’s going to have to work at least through the holiday season and early next year.

Thank you if you’ve made it this far. You’re the best audience I could ever ask for. Keep up the goodness. See you tomorrow.