I am happy my 5E books are Wizards-free. All of them are small-press and indie books. My primary go-to system is Tales of the Valiant, though Level Up Advanced 5E is still a solid choice; why ToV? For precisely the same reason people dumped on this system when they announced it, it is a near-perfect 5E core system clone. Since they could not clone the D&D classes note-for-note, they reimagined and rewrote them to be fun to play. All my expansion books with subclasses and 3rd party stuff work with this system seamlessly (which is only sometimes true of Level Up).
The core collections are Kobold Press books, such as the Deep Magic guides and all the Tome of Beasts books. There is enough here to play for 20+ years of gaming. The books are high quality, the art is fantastic, and the rules are solid. I really don't have much more to ask for. All I want now are subclasses and character options, and, of course, more in the Hero Lab online character builder for ToV, which I feel is being neglected since we have had nothing new to buy or that many updates in months.
Many people buy D & D to complain about it. My YouTube channels are about 70% complaints and clickbait on 5E, and it feels like the conversations are mostly complainers these days, with any "love of the game" gone out the window.
The indie 5E game coverage is mostly positive and happy, and that is what I choose to watch instead of people moaning that someone's favorite 2024 class was nerfed and now sucks. Who cares? Play another game if you are that unhappy. But, no, clicks are money, and money is clicks, so the D&D outrage train keeps rolling and spewing the black, coal-fired smoke of discontent and negativity.
At least the indie 5E games, like ToV and A5E, were created with significant community input, so there is less to complain about in these spaces. This is probably why the games get less coverage: There is less to be angry about, and there are no changes coming down from "up high" from the gilded West Coast game designer royalty. I am not being pushed into subscription services to play a game, and all that does is creates more anger and negativity.
Like many popular franchises, D&D is turning out to be a complete loss for me. I have no interest in it, and the community is overwhelmingly negative. Even after I un-subbed to many of the clickbait channels, the D&D angst and bitching still pop up in my YouTube feed constantly.
In the few free hours I have in a day, I would rather be imagining and adventuring than watching some idiot on YouTube complaining the rogue sucks worse now, and the ranger always sucked and will suck forever. My gods, people. Play another game. Or is it just the clicks you are farming? Forget AI killing D&D, YouTube will do it years before that ever comes around.
Tales of the Valiant is my current "happy place" with 5E, and I have zero plans to give any money to the VTT scheme of Wall Street. If I want a VTT, I have Roll20, and that supports the games I play well enough. If I want a 3d VTT, I will just play World of Warcraft and have so much more to collect and work towards, plus the "solo and small group questing without a DM" that is a golden idol for these companies. AI content is coming far sooner to World of Warcraft (or other MMOs) than many people know, if that is your thing, and it will be far better than a VTT chat-bot DM.
This is really a Pathfinder 1e moment for me. D&D 4E failed, and the standard bearer of the hobby isn't D&D anymore, it is a cloned system supported by a better company that listens to the fans.
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