If We Don't Need D&D, What Do We Need?

You may be aware of the chaos that has erupted around Hasbro, Wizards of the Coast, and Dungeons & Dragons. The story was first broken by Linda Codega on Gizmodo.com, and further developed as WotC finally responded to community outrage. Additional information was also brought to light by YouTuber DnD Shorts. Any creator who earns a portion of their

income through writing materials compatible with the current fifth edition of the game is understandably put out by the shenanigans perpetrated by Hasbro and WotC. Much of the TTRPG content we all love and consume is placed in jeopardy by WotC’s plans, either directly or indirectly. Needless to say, the community has been deeply upset.

Here’s the thing: we don’t need Wizards of the Coast, or even D&D.

While D&D is often credited as being the first roleplaying game (better historians than I have discussed such subjects), it didn’t stand alone for very long. In only a short time, it was joined by a plethora of other games, allowing for adventures in a myriad of places and genres, many of which were arguably more instrumental in the development of the hobby. After the initial explosion in games in the 80’s, there was a renaissance in the 90’s, with 3e/3.5e and OSR producing what I like to see as our own little “age of enlightenment” in the 2000’s. I would proffer that we are currently in the hobby’s golden age, kicked off not only by the mainstay of Fifth Edition, but also by the expanding critical mass behind OSR and game systems like Powered by the Apocalypse.

During the writing of this article, WotC has announced that they are changing their plans with regards to revoking the OGL 1.0a. Furthermore, as a peace offering to fans, they are moving the System Reference Document (SRD) 5.1 over to the Creative Commons license. This doesn’t really change the nature of the problem.

While it is possible to play a game using just the SRD, it gives almost nothing to you in terms of options or content, by design. It serves mostly as a repository for the basic rules and as examples of how to apply those rules to the creation of content. As someone who started playing D&D back in the 1970’s, this is enough, as the overwhelming trend back then (at least with the people I played with) was to treat the game as a framework to play in a world of your own creation. Fortunately, this creative take on how to play D&D (and other role playing games, too) is alive and well within the community.

Today, online and electronic publishing have made it possible not only to find the hundreds of new games that are now being created, but now you can also comb through caches of books (and many of the ‘zines) spanning the entire history of RPGs from the last 50 years. There are literally endless options and alternatives.

A quick search in your search engine of choice will get pages of articles and videos on the best games that aren’t D&D, or table top games to play if you like D&D. That’s a great start. But what do you do with those lists? How do you know which game is right for you and your group? What other kinds of games are there, and how do you choose? If the Information Age has taught us anything, it is that it can be just as hard to learn something when there’s too much information as it can be when there’s not enough. Well, fear not. We will be starting a set of articles that may help with this.

As noted in other articles, we here at AstroFox Productions are hard at work on our own game system for use with a number of campaign settings and genres. Our upcoming series of articles will outline some of the difficulties we have had, both in terms of defining the games and game mechanics, and in terms of figuring out just what kind of games we like to play, and how the mechanics support those forms of play.

So if you’re interested in understanding how to build your own game, or even just want to better understand how to evaluate the myriad of games out there to find what’s best for you, stick around. We’ll be posting articles that just might be what you’re looking for.