The Noise and Drama Feels Like Too Much

With Wizards changing so much of the classic settings and systems, I'm starting to feel like enough is enough. Now they are changing classic fantasy art, too? Dark Sun? And these video game and pop-culture IPs moving into D&D have me feeling like all of 5E feels unsustainable.

It is a huge multiversal mess, a year after multiverses fell out of style and became corporate boondoggles for both Disney and WB. Even the word multiverse is being phased out of pop culture because nobody wants it anymore since it destroys customer investment. Who cares if Captain America from Earth 23824 dies? We have a billion other ones that can appear, the same old theme song plays, and nothing of value is lost. Who cares if we start on a carefully crafted D&D campaign homeworld when the planes, Star Wars, and World of Warcraft are a magical gate away?

Yes, don't allow that stuff into your campaigns, but as a game master, I don't want any of that stuff remotely near my precious campaign world that I spent months creating. Even the planes, and I saw how they minimize a campaign world quickly once a game floats into plane-hopping adventures.

I get it - don't punish Tales of the Valiant or Level Up A5E for the actions of Wizards, I know - but I just feel the need to wash my brain of 5E entirely to get as far away from the mess as possible. Even Shadowdark may get pulled into this mess.

I've had enough.

I would rather play Palladium Fantasy or an OSR game and forget that 5E exists.

Otherwise, I look at a shelf of 5E books, and my mind floats back into the "current bad news of the day" again, and I shake my head and sigh. There are moments when I only want games with "good memories only," and those are few and far between.

I have good memories of BX and AD&D.

I love playing Cypher System with my sister.

Aftermath and Space Opera are old favorites.

Dungeon Crawl Classics is my dream version of 3E.

I am still a huge Palladium fan.

The Star Wars RPG and FATE were favorites of me and my brother. We also played D&D 4E together, and to be honest, that memory keeps A5E on the shelf when all the others have been put away.

These games only stay on my shelves because of memories. Not system loyalty or investment. I am boxing up new games I never played and selling them off. I have had enough of collecting and hoarding. These new games mean nothing to me.

At some point, all the bad news of today reaches a tipping point, and I flee to games that give me better memories. And the bad news feels like it is attacking those same memories and trying to redefine them, and that feels personal to me. It is repainting the portrait of Jesus in a cathedral and making a mockery out of what was once loved and cherished.

Everyone has a point where they tip over the edge, and the little support they gave to these games out of curiosity and kindness ends. The feeling of "can I have fun with this?" stops completely, and we walk away, turn our backs on the modern mess, and head toward what we love.