Tag: #bitteroldmenplayinggames

TTRPG Safety Tools: Beyond Convenience.

This person’s group recently ended their D&D 5E game citing a good number of “woke liberal factors” drove them out of the game. One of the specific “rules” they took issue with was the “5E need for Safety Tools.” I was pretty stunned when I heard that

I recently heard an Old School Renaissance YouTuber speaking ill of 5E safety tools and how players can abuse the X Cards for Metagaming advantages.

I’m continuing my policy of not naming and shaming, but this comment blew my mind on multiple levels. First, Safety Tools and Session Zero are NOT unique to D&D 5E. That notion is preposterous. Second, I seriously doubt anyone would metagame an X Card strictly to squash a specific monster encounter. Last, if you as a DM or your group are so dead set against the “wokie liberal gamer politics being inflicted on you?” Uh. Maybe you should stick to Moldvay B/X in your basement with the same old group you’ve had for 40+ years and not broadcast it on YouTube…ever?

Part of me hates being on this rant, and part of me feels the need to tap the sign again for the umpteenth time. Have we learned anything from the Wizards of the Coast Open Game License 1.1 debacle? Is there cause to think that just maybe our TTRPG community and specifically the D&D space might be under particular scrutiny in regards to things like ethics and morals right now? Maybe? Let’s also reiterate that the alleged DM shortage for 5E does not exist (because of issues revolving around Safety Tools.)

Safety Tools are NOT unique to D&D.

This person’s group recently ended their D&D 5E game citing a good number of “woke liberal factors” drove them out of the game. One of the specific “rules” they took issue with was the “5E need for Safety Tools.” I was pretty stunned when I heard that. There’s three things wrong with that statement.

First, Session Zero and Safety Tools are NOT unique to D&D 5E. I’m pretty sure making players comfortable at the table has always been around even before we called it “Safety Tools.” It used to be a common understanding with the group. Most DMs were smart enough to know if a player was claustrophobic not to trap their character in a dark coffin 20′ underground with no way to escape. (*Real example, btw.) It was just a matter of showing compassion and empathy for your fellow human instead of making a complete ass of oneself while hiding behind the DM screen and the rules.

Second, please let me reiterate there are no TTRPG thought police who are going to come to your game table and confiscate your DMG for playing the game all “wrong” in a private space. Actual Play podcasts and games in a public space are also not really subject to scrutiny unless someone is making an absolute ass of themselves. You do whatever you want with your group. Pretty sure that’s been an unofficial D&D rule from Day 1 of Gygax’s first game.

Third, if your private group hasn’t had a Session Zero or Safety Tools prior to playing 5E? Hey, if you and your group are comfortable that way? Great. Personally, if someone told me that walking into their game for the first time, I might turn around and walk right back out, but that’s okay.

The second preposterous notion is hiding behind an X Card to gain a metagame advantage over the DM.

I’m still trying to digest this concept. Session Zero is not perfect. Sometimes things slip through the cracks. We miss something on a questionnaire or a player forgets to bring it up. We’re human. Stuff is going to happen. That’s why we have Safety Tools.

Here’s how it should go:

The DM throws down an encounter with a giant venomous Anaconda. A player with a serious, deadly fear of snakes and trauma from a snake bite as a young child puts up her X Card immediately. We forgot to cover it during Session Zero. “Oh crap. I’m so sorry,” says the DM as he quickly gets the miniature for the snake out of sight..

Play is halted. We might even take a 10 minute break to help the traumatized player calm down and come back to the table. The DM needs a minute to pop out a new encounter without a snake. Maybe some nice Kobolds or something? As the DM quickly looks over the Session Zero notes for anything else he might have forgotten or even missed. An apology after the game might be nice, too. Definitely no more talk about snakes. That’s how it should go.

Then there’s the example from the video:

DM throws down an encounter with a spider. Player claims arachnophobia and throws up an X Card. Encounter is immediately cancelled. Free Experience Points for everyone, and the DM’s plan for the encounter is screwed. Players get a free pass any time they see something they don’t like. It’s like getting experience for free without having to do anything.

Apparently we just treated people like crap back in the Old School Era. Oh, wait. That’s right. I’m so Old School I fart chalk dust. And, no. We don’t treat people like dirt. I’m also old enough to know better.

If someone is found to be abusing their X Card? That’s not okay. It undermines the entire reason we have Safety Tools. They’re in place so people aren’t afraid to speak up if something is really traumatic. In short- DM’s, don’t be a d🦆ck. On the other hand, if you have a player willing to abuse an X Card to gain metagame advantage? You probably either need to have a long chat about Safety Tools, or decide your group doesn’t need them.

No one is going to cry if said YouTuber and his group abandon 5E.

No lie, I’m still irritated with the Kyle Brink comment about how “old white guys can’t leave soon enough.” People keep trying to say the quote is taken out of context. Then some old, white, (presumably cishet) guys come along and run their mouths about how the OSR is so much better than the new “woke” 5E way of doing things with our Safety Tools and X Cards. I won’t even get into all the talk about how 5E is supposedly too easy on the players and how combat encounters are broken. The game is allegedly lopsided in favor of the players with all the power creep, etc. Probably stuff that should have been covered in their Session Zero… oops?

If you ever wonder why there’s a DM shortage for 5E, look no further than the OSR community on YouTube and Twitter. It’s almost as if these crotchety old farts in the OSR want people to abandon 5E and move over to older editions of the game. Ironic, given they also act as gatekeepers to the hobby. Sounds indecisive as well as incredibly divisive to me.

But hey, if an OSR YouTuber wants to abandon 5E and his whole group goes with him back to Castles & Crusades or some other retroclone- Great! Go right ahead. Please be a good example. Don’t buy any more 5E and do the D&D community a solid and STFU about it!

Something a lot of the more vocal proponents of the OSR don’t seem to understand is that we don’t need them in the hobby if they don’t want to be there. If they were never going to spend money on 5E official or 3rd party, then they can just as easily do their own thing and shut up about 5E and everything that comes after.

Hey, old dudes- you have your OGL and CC-BY-4.0 SRD. Buh-bye. Go back in your basement and play Moldvay B/X until the end of time and let the rest of us enjoy the hobby. Thank you.

This is where I stop for now.

The WotC OGL debacle left a bad taste in my mouth. People want to complain about morality clauses in future game licenses. If people are so worried about morality clauses, maybe the problem isn’t with the game license or its holder. Maybe the problem is the ethics of the person complaining about the clause.

For cryin out loud, people. We’re talking about tabletop roleplaying games here. If you’re not here to have fun and get along with everyone at the table, please- Nintendo wants your money. If you want to be toxic, there are plenty of other hobbies out there. Meanwhile, can we please just get back to gaming with Safety Tools, including Session Zero unless the group decides together that they don’t want to go that route? It’s not rocket science.

If you made it this far, thank you. I appreciate it. Please be kind to one another.

Dear Wizards of the Coast (Part 3)…

Does anyone at Wizards of the Court/Lawyers of the Coast remember the last time so much ill will was shown toward the fans. 4th Edition? Fans and writers being taken to court right and left for Intellectual Property disputes? No, no one at WotC nowadays seems to have any clue. That’s how we got here with OGL 1.1.

I grew up playing D&D, reading Marvel comics, and watching professional wrestling.

Would you like to know how I’d really like to end this dispute? Steel cage match between myself and Chris, the Punchline Writes Itself, Cocks! To quote the late, great Macho Man Randy Savage, “We’re doing this right now. Somebody ring the bell!”

Alas, my kung fu skills and pro wrestling moves will not be put to the test this day. I wasn’t kidding about Chris Cocks. His Hasbro bio is linked here if you don’t believe me. We’re all trying so hard to restrain ourselves from the obvious d🦆ck jokes and other juvenile puns around this man’s last name. Glad he’ll never read this.

If 2022 has taught me anything, it’s the power of Grognard.

Back to the wrestling analogy- “Cocks! I’m gonna be doin this until I’m a hundred and two years old. I ain’t goin anywhere. They’ll have to pry my dice from my cold, wrinkled, old hands. Roll for Initiative!”

Oh, oh crap. Is “initiative” a trademarked term? Is it cool under the System Resource Document? Is WotC’s hit ninja lawyer squad going to charge the ring? <gasp> Oh noes. I might have violated OGL 1.1 in all of its assanine glory and gotten myself thoroughly cancelled. Only I ain’t signed nothin, brother.

See, I’ve been a roleplaying gamer since about 1982. You can take away OGL 1.0. Sure. Great. Whatever. You can enstate some sort of long-winded legal bullsh🦆t. That’s fine. I’ll still find an RPG out there to play and enjoy. It just won’t be D&D. WotC can kiss my butt.

And, sorry to tell you this, Ms Williams and Mr Cocks, but there are thousands of guys just like me out there who will be shouting down your One D&D brand as well. Much of the ttrpg industry WotC is trying to control or squash was propped up on the OGL. Your lifestyle mega brand plans for One D&D are probably going to be pretty weak at the rate you’re going. May as well call it, “D&DOne.”

Someone may have misled you to the delusion that all the D&D fans are somehow the young crowd that the antics of Critical Role brought into the game.

Only problem is, the game of D&D, (the thing the crafters of Open Game License 1.1 seem to have forgotten,) is much older than 5E. I was running D&D when Matt Mercer was still a twinkle in his mommy and daddy’s eyes. Y’all at WotC better figure out real quick that yes, there ARE other editions of the D&D game. Cripes, WotC even sells them over on the OneBookShelf sites. Ya ought to know by now. You should know better by now.

Wizards of the bloody Coast wasn’t even a company when some of of started running D&D games. Yeah, Adkinson got some clout with Magic: the Gathering back when and acquired T$R when it was most vulnerable. I promise you. No matter how much the erroneous fools at WotC think they understand D&D in terms of demographics? They don’t know enough. They don’t know the TTRPG industry.

If D&D goes the way of OGL 1.1? Does WotC have any clue what’s going to happen next? Entire game companies have already stated they have new, non-WotC OGL games in the works. One D&D is going to have so much competition on the market that WotC better pray they sell a lot of D&D t-shirts, because their D&D game is going to be in the dumpster fire faster than 4th Edition.

You want more player money because D&D is “under monetized.”

Yes, we want D&D to make money. 5E was due for an edition change. Okay. We, the fans, understand that WotC employees are people with families to feed, too.

But for God’s sakes, why did WotC have to be so awfully ruthless with OGL 1.1? Did they really foresee wiping out half the industry and putting dozens of independent writers out of business with it? Was that the evil plan all along?

Does anyone at Wizards of the Court/Lawyers of the Coast remember the last time so much ill will was shown toward the fans. 4th Edition? Fans and writers being taken to court right and left for Intellectual Property disputes? No, no one at WotC nowadays seems to have any clue. That’s how we got here with OGL 1.1.

I dare say WotC is going to have to do a LOT of fence mending and spin doctoring to get fan trust or even loyalty back. Even then, a lot of us old guys, the ones who regularly talk about the Old School Renaissance movement, are never going to trust WotC again. (In fairness, they might not have before.) What’cha gonna do, WotC? What’cha gonna do when the OSR runs wild on you?

A regular network of OSR gamers has sprouted up around the OGL 1.0. Yes, many of them have blogs and YouTube channels. One such channel even seems to think they don’t need an OGL and are telling people to keep rolling without it. I wish them well in the future. BUT, the OSR is a strong TTRPG subculture and a force to be reckoned with.

Say what you will about the #OSR movement, they do have some things going in their favor.

WotC should really have done some research before they OGL 1.1 was written. The OSR movement has built some really great D&D style retro clone games. The best part is- many of their games are free downloads or really cheap in print form. OGL 1.0 is the reason the OSR was started in the first place. The OSR will still be distributing a game similar to D&D (without signing any agreement) for FREE for decades to come.

Would WotC like to know the difference between 5E and the OSR? I bet they would know if they ever played the game before 5E. See, a lot of OSR style retroclones are built on the old B/X Moldvay D&D. Oh, WotC doesn’t see editions? Well, wish you’d sure as hell seen that one. Because old school Basic/Expert D&D is far simpler, far easier to grasp, more adaptable, and easier to introduce new players to the game. Y’all kids don’t get it.

I can literally make a Basic style D&D character almost from memory with a few minor exceptions in less than 5 minutes and be ready to play. Try that with 5E. A basic style character takes fraction of the effort to make and can still be just as dramatic.

What’s that, WotC? One D&D characters are going to be all online? Like Fortnite that uses the same Unreal Engine? Hmm. It’s almost like WotC doesn’t understand the TABLETOP part of TTRPG. Wonder if dice are even still going to be part of the character creation process. What about character sheets? Or do we just buy skins like in Fortnite.

Shredding the industry by ruining the OGL and all of the good faith that came with it is just going to cost WotC a bunch of money.

Good luck with the witch hunt to find out who leaked OGL 1.1, btw. They did the industry a favor. They might have done it as a part of a cunning plan at WotC. I’m not sure what cheesing off thousands or even a million fans would do to make more money. Gawrsh, I sure hope Mr Cocks has been briefed on the plan.

Making a smart move look dumb is exactly the kind of thing an evil mastermind might do divert attention from true genius. Or whatever plan WotC had for OGL 1.1 was just plain stupid and evil to begin with. But maybe that’s what an evil genius would have us think? We’ll never know for sure.

WotC is digging a hole so deep with OGL 1.1 that they don’t even realize it yet. All of the tons of OGL 1.0 licensed product is never going away just because we can’t legally produce more. I’m not going to burn all of my dozens of third party 3E and 5E books just because we can’t sell new ones. The older editions of the game aren’t going away just because some new, shiny video game D&D gets released in 2024.

What’s the best that can happen, WotC?

WotC has yet to release an official statement as of yet. There was a Tweet from DnD Beyond that they would be making a statement… super helpful, guys. I’ll have much more to say about the statement by WotC and the OGL 1.1 document itself after I finish reading it and all of its legalese corporatized jargon. RPGs are sometimes like learning a new language. RPG legalese is like learning a dead language in reverse.

Thanks for stopping in. More to come. I can’t believe the last few days have really happened.

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