I'm sorry, D&D, but I have moved on. Like any abusive relationship, I decided to end things on my terms, find other games, and enjoy my time gaming. I know you are cozying up to the old-school crowd, putting a coat of polish on Grayhawk, but I am just not all that interested in you anymore.
You are happy with your modern influencers, the endless D&D news sites (that will turn on you, give it time), and D&D YouTube, who seem to see this new outreach to the OSR crowd as a second coming of 2020. The endless hype and courting of us old-school players feels hollow.
The warnings are still on those books on the DriveThru site. The art in your books makes my eyes bleed. Your Fortnite-level of pandering with "nobody dies," "weapons do nothing here," and "identity gaming" makes my stomach turn. That "history of the game" book that accuses the original founders of being terrible people still is for sale. Orcs and humanoid monsters have still been removed from the Monster Manual.
You haven't changed.
Nor can you have it both ways.
I have found better games from people who want to be in a "gaming relationship" with me. They have given me endless enjoyment, have been "stable partners" for years now, and I am happy with them. Unlike you, which will change again and again based on the whims of your parent company, venture capital firms, and the gaming media, these companies need to focus on making me happy to survive.
The games I found "work hard at making this relationship work" for both of us. And I do my work too, support them, and make them a part of my "gaming life" so we can be "happy together."
The gaming media will turn on you, the bile and hate will come your way from the other side that hates the old-schoolers, and they will accuse you of being a terrible person, too. You don't want to "associate with us" because the people you hang out with these days have hated us, and they will always hate us because hate is the only thing they have in their empty lives.
Us? We have games and happiness in their lives, and maybe that is what they hate. You chose to hang out with that crowd, not us, and all your "new friends" are going to turn on you hard very soon. Expect headlines of "how D&D is embracing its problematic past" to land very soon from the people who used to be your friends.
Some of these companies are as progressive as you, but they know how to balance what they say with what appeals to everybody. You just went off the deep end, hoping your new friends would support you. They didn't, most moved on to other games, and you discovered that they were not really your friends, you thought they were. All they wanted was for you to say the things they wanted to hear, and they never really enjoyed being with you, only that you were popular.
And they found new friends to play with in Daggerheart and many other games.
That new audience has walked away, and here you are coming back to me?
It isn't 1980, 1990, 2000, or 2020 anymore!
Things "can't be like they were."
Even that time in 2010 when you tried to hang out with World of Warcraft players didn't work out so well, either, huh?
But 2030 will be different this time!
Sorry.
That ship has sailed. I only have a few more decades to play games, and I have better ones that make me happy and cater to what I like. Seeing you change like a chameleon again is not what I am interested in. I know you have money and can pay for nostalgia bait, but that is not writing a game that I like to play, nor does it make up for the hurt you caused with things like the OGL.
I'm not stupid like most of the D&D YouTube channels that will "forget about it all" just for a few views. "D&D is back!" they will scream, and I will casually scroll by, choosing the next video since I am just not interested in any of that anymore, just like I have given up on 5E Kickstarters and other wastes of time.
Even if I wanted to play 5E, I'd rather play something better. ToV, Level Up, and Shadowdark have orcs in the monster lists. You don't. You can't "write a Greyhawk book" and ignore that. Ald ToV and Level Up are far better balanced than modern 5E, written by people who played the game and know the pain of D&D 2014, and worked hard at making things fun again at the table.
Nimble exists, too. It gives me everything 5E does, but in far fewer pages and with far less complexity.
And we are not interested in DLC sold to us as power creep; that sales tactic just leads to the next edition dropping sooner rather than later. I hate splatbooks that are better than the original game, invalidate my original books, and introduce a new high-damage meta and baseline of play.
I've been through that time and time again with you, D&D, and I am not falling for it again.
We can't help you anymore, since most of us have already moved on to better things. We are over here enjoying our games and playing them, having fun with all the new relationships we worked hard to make. We have better games now. I am not giving them up to come running back to you.
And there are games written far better than the bloated mess D&D has become. Even if I wanted you back, there are far better presented and written games that "do the same thing" but are far easier to play, travel with, and carry around than the library you force me to maintain. I can throw Shadowdark in a laptop bag and have a complete game on the go. D&D? Sorry, I am not carrying a shelf full of books or maintaining a subscription to read my PDFs. It is thousands of pages to do the same thing Shadowdark does in tens.
And Shadowdark does a better "Greyhawk experience" than D&D, and I don't need to buy another book to "make 5E play like an old school game." I don't need to "mod the 2024 rules" with another digital purchase to "play like it is 1980 again." It is another book, hundreds of pages of rules, on top of a game already over 1,000 pages long. Only to see someone drop in with a DLC build meant to break the game with power creep, and all of a sudden, my "authentic Greyhawk game" is broken by your digital sales department.
I have games that understand the original experience and are written to provide just that.
And they are easier to manage and play.
And I am over you.
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