Mail Room: Rules Cyclopedia

I remember I saw this in Waldenbooks in a mall in 1991.

I skipped buying it, then.

Something felt strange about not buying it like I shouldn't take the plunge.

D&D was dead to us, and we moved on to better games. I had no use for it, and there were many other better games to play: Shadowrun, Battletech, Vampire, Rifts, GURPS, Twilight: 2000, and many other incredible experiences. Even the D&D alternatives, such as Runequest, Rolemaster, and Warhammer FRP, were far better than D&D.

Besides, D&D was being heavily censored back then, and anything offensive was removed from the game with this massive "mass market sanitization purge." The edgy games with the warnings on the covers, like Vampire? That is where we ended up.

D&D wasn't cool anymore.

A few years later, Magic the Gathering would drop and kill off tabletop roleplaying for that generation.

Thirty years later?

D&D is being sanitized again to not upset anyone, and I feel demons and the concept of Hell will be purged from the game soon as "troubling Christian beliefs." We have returned to the era of AD&D 2nd Edition, and instead of the Satanic Panic, political correctness drives the sanitization.

And the nefarious "put yourself in the game" identity marketing they do today, that games in the 1990s warned us NOT to do because it was mentally unsafe and potentially dangerous for some.

Who cares? We need to increase attachment and make this a lifestyle game.

D&D is dead. These forces are driven by Wall Street monetization, and the game will never recover. In fact, any edition they put out between now and when they turn this into a heavily monetized card game with scarcity and paid character customization is a waste of time. You know it is coming. Just do it and get it over with. The VTT that still needs dungeon masters is a waste of time.

Yes, the VTT may be cool, but the fatal flaw is that my imagination is far more than a few maps released monthly. The same town, the same halls, the same inn, the same boat - incredible for the first few months, then it drops off dramatically. Buy more!

Some other platforms will come along with AI-generated 3d environments and character models and blow their static asset store away. That technology is just one or two years off. And the platform that does that will destroy a static Unreal Engine VTT and be the "hot cool thing."

The game needs a revolution in play, digital asset collection, and resale, not an evolution with a few rules tweaks and new higher-priced books. This feels like a half-step to what is coming anyways, the failed point-five version of the game that didn't sell as well and was forgotten when the online experience came out.

We are waiting.

It may be excellent, as Diablo IV is a terrific way to waste money. Let people have fun, and they can decide how to spend their money. I don't buy into it (often) because I am not a fan of predatory business practices.

But having the Rules Cyclopedia now as a PoD book brings back memories. It is a lovely book, a solid resource for other, better OSR games I like better than the originals. Why not play the originals? We have people out here pouring their hearts into their dreams. Why should I support older versions of the games when there are people making new things for the new games and communities enjoying them?

It is still a cool book, and in the back, it even admits it is an inferior game to AD&D 2nd Edition. TSR was out there trying to bankrupt itself by releasing games that had you read and get excited for a few hundred pages before telling you that the game was a waste of time.

And it brings back those same feelings today's version of D&D is dead, attempts to revise are a waste of time, and we are waiting for a true revolution.