My apologies to Elder Goblin Games. I can do better.

Please support Elder Gobin Games on YouTube. I think GMuary is a great idea. I’ll totally jam on it again next year. This year we had some incidences of industry drama that I felt I had to cover here and on YouTube. I think sometimes I need to break from the more fun, positive gaming content to talk about some of the absolute insanity that creeps into the hobby and threatens to spoil our fun.

GMuary is supposed to be a positive experience where we welcome new Game Masters into their role and into the hobby in general. I really thought with the new 2024 Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide being recently released we would see a larger cluster of new Dungeon Masters. Not to mention all of the other fantasy TTRPGs being released that likewise need GMs. I’ve seen more on solo play than I have GMing lately.

Disclaimer: Statements expressed in this article are strictly my opinion. If you disagree or have a different opinion, that’s okay. I’m not an expert on everything. I’m not always right. I’m just writing from my experience as I know it. Your mileage may vary.

I probably fell down the most on YouTube GMuary.

I’m still a tiny, growing channel freshly planted in the algorithm’s dirt. I tried running a little more negative clickbait stuff than normal but rapidly found that it is not a good way to build an audience. I really should have been addressing new GMs instead.

The D&D 2024 Monster Manual is going to be the hot topic on YouTube and elsewhere. I’m guessing the NDAs everyone signed expired today which is why we’re getting tons of preview videos. That’s how the last two major releases went. Let the YouTube shills hype the new book up while bragging about their free copies.

If the art for the book is anything like some of their ad art, count me out on that one. Yeesh! Not my style. Sorry. I don’t have a video coming about D&D monsters, but I hear Dragonbane is pretty cool. I know, I’m not playing the algorithm anywhere with my favorite game, but I’m getting to a point where I just don’t care.

I have concern what messages we’re sending new GMs on social media.

Maybe it’s just me. This month has proven that it’s easy to get sucked up in the drama around the hobby and/or the industry. If I walked into a room in the real world with people fighting over a game of make believe. Another example is if I just got into real Mahjong and walked in on a knockdown, drag out fight over what the winning hand is supposed to be. (Some of those little old ladies take that stuff seriously!)

Please do what works best for you as a Game Master and your group. What works for me at my table may not work for yours and vice versa. The main focus is to have fun. There is no right or wrong way to roleplay.

Here, come play Dungeons & Dragons. We’re a fun group. Just don’t go looking at the game on Reddit, X(Twitter) or YouTube or you might find a bizarre mix of ugliness and toxicity. That’s almost worse than gatekeeping. You don’t even need D&D horror stories to figure out that some of our TTRPG community can be a real mess at times.

Randomly do not mention the following on TTRPG social media or at the game table:

  • Combat wheelchairs
  • Rules As Written.
  • “The DM is always right.”
  • Dice conventions for rolling up a character.
  • Anti-colonialism.
  • Orcs representing real world people.
  • Half Elves, Half Orcs, etc. Except Tieflings and Halflings. They’re still okay for now.
  • “Romancing” monsters.
  • Which edition of D&D is best and why it’s 4th.
  • Expecting every Dungeon Master to be Matt Mercer.
  • “Critical Role did it better.”
  • Attempting to romance your fellow players at the table. (Take that stuff outside, please?)
  • Insist players take part in every aspect of worldbuilding.
  • Your character’s 10 page backstory.
  • Dice fudging.
  • How you voted and why. (Take it outside the game, please.)
  • Why you hate “_____” people in the hobby and how they don’t belong.
  • (Internet Only) Session Zero and/or Safety Tools. Please do so with your group, however.
  • “You’re playing it wrong because someone on the Internet said…”
  • How the OSR is better, worse, or whatever compared to 5E/New D&D players.
  • How the OSR ruined your life, got you fired from your job, ate your guinea pig in front of you, ran off with your girlfriend, repossessed your truck, and got you thrown out of your double wide trailer. Do not feed the trolls or the vultures. 
  • How Gygax sent D&D to Earth as a sort of Uber Religion for all to follow. (There’s this guy on YouTube…) Some of his theories are farther than that.
  • How “old white cishet guys from the Midwest flyover states” don’t belong in the hobby.
  • The 2024-25 D&D Core book art.
  • Artificial Intelligence as it pertains to use in writing or art.
  • “Looking for creators with a preference toward female, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, Neurodiverse, or disabled people.” Don’t pretend it’s open to anyone else. Just be honest.
  • The “woke mind virus” in the hobby, social media, mainstream movies, video games, etc.
  • Worn out tropes such as the horny bard, angsty loner thief, creepy warlock, even creepier necromancer, goody-good paladin, etc.
  • Your meta-uber multiclass min/max character that someone suggested on the Internet.
  • The most broken spell in D&D to date is: ______.
  • Wizards of the Coast did ______ this week.
  • Hasbro did ______ this week.
  • Paizo did ______ on social media.
  • “Old D&D designers are the devil because…”
  • Scrolling through your phone during a game session.
  • D&D Beyond’s latest feature.
  • (YouTube) “I got “______” D&D rulebook early for free as a preview (and y’all have to buy yours.)
  • “This new D&D rulebook is the greatest thing since sliced bread” until it’s on the shelves for half off at Ollie’s three months from now.
  • The new D&D pinball, beard oil, cookbook, Hot Pockets, online gambling, etc. Please leave it for Hasbro’s marketing people. (Mostly applies to YouTube “shills.”)
  • The new $700 “PDF value bundle” of ______ RPG on some website. Nobody has that kind of money laying around in this hobby, do they? (Just me?)
  • How ______ old game is better than ______ new game.

I’m sure there are hundreds more I’m forgetting off the top of my head. Like I said, online social media tabletop roleplaying gamers will fight over darned near anything. Same goes for TTRPG YouTubers/DungeonTubers. YouTube has a whole separate list of no-no’s I could go into sometime. I know I’ve gotten triggered before. I try not to go off, but darn it…

I would love to shield new GMs from all the toxicity and craziness out there online. So far Threads and BlueSky have been mostly drama free from what I can tell. I hope it stays that way enough to prove we learned our lesson with X and Reddit. I’m on most social media platforms out there and lately a few of them have become flooded with new or returning D&D players as well as refugees from X.

If you’re a new Game/Dungeon Master, welcome.

You are welcome here. I hope this is a safe space for anyone who wants to learn about TTRPGs. I can’t always promise we won’t get into some of the edgier topics above, but I’ll do my best to remember GM/DMs when I’m creating content. I’m one of you, after all.

Please stick around here after GMuary for more GM/DM advice. I will be doing more in the Behind the Screen series in the weeks and months to come. Monster creation is one of my favorite subjects and I do engage in quite a bit of it (at least once per week.) We’re also continuing on our worldbuilding journey with Hex-A-Day 2025.

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.