Hey, Jeremy.

If D&D’s first rule is “make it your own,” then uh...

Care to explain Adventurer’s League?

Because all your attempts at addressing bioessentialism in tieflings and orcs and whatever?

Not AL legal.

I’m gonna keep on your ass about that, you know!

Yeah, WotC can't fool me with this "What's most important is you have fun!!"

No! The rules-as-read gets ZERO passes! Because that's Adventurer's League!

The Orc INT debuff gets no pass!

The "lawful evil" kobolds get no pass!

The creepy fucking Charm Person spell? No pass!

D&D 5e is the only game I'm aware of that isn't judged by what's in it's rules.

That requires three books and a box of splat rules to "fully understand."

That is kept on homebrew life support that WotC skims HALF the cash of on their shoddy rent-seeking excuse of a web store.

So Jeremy, I'm a little miffed that the game you're working on costs more than a AAA video game with a lot of DLC, THEN hounds me for microtransactions.

And yet STILL is a janky mess that requires modding to work right!

You know what @Wizards_DnD are?

They're the Bethesda of TTRPGs.

Broken products, with lazy use of coded iconography, built from exploited labor, and reliant on unpaid modders to function right.

And then you go on stage with a smarmy game and tell us it's a good game.

5e tries to be everything.

It tries to be a dungeon crawler.

It tries to be a wilderness survival game.

It tries to do urban fantasy.

It tries to be OSR as imagined by serial abusers your head designer went to bat for NO WE DIDN’T FORGET.

And it fails across the board.

And then instead of trying to FIX things, you silence your employees.

You make them sign NDAs to never disclose improper work practices.

Or racism and sexism in the company.

Or the fact that COVID somehow made your D&D Live WHITER for 2020!

By the way, you know how Mike Mearls is still writing for 5e?

You remember how you said he wasn’t, just a month prior?

I remember the clip. Greg Tito and Shelly Mazzanoble looked SO uncomfortable when Mike came up!

Almost like people weren’t supposed to know...!

Are we going still? Fuck it, let’s keep going.

Honor is an optional stat in 5e. Still. You never made it go away.

Kara-Tur, the “other side of the world,” is still there. Still canon.

The alignment system, brought to you by “genocide is Lawful Good” Gygax, is still there.

You said you’ll fix this!

You said that *checks notes* several weeks into an international wave of revolts trying to impress upon powerful people that racism is bad, actually.

And then IMMEDIATELY it comes out that you’ve been treating employees of color terribly.

I know a lot of people I respect work for WotC. Or want to work for WotC.

I respect their silence, and their patience.

But RPG writing will NEVER be my job! So I don’t give a damn!

Your treatment of employees is demonstrably vile!

You know, that person, who took your promise to “do better on race,” and throw it in the trash?

A lot of folks saw them as a benchmark.

If they, a respected Black writer, could be accepted at WotC, maybe the company, and its products, could be reformed.

That’s dead now.

D&D is so toxic, even its imitators are born poisoned.

Dungeon World, festering in its racism.

Genesys Foundry, skimming rents off its imitation of already-ramshackle DM’s Guild.

Pathfinder, looking progressive ONLY against WotC’s slimy silhouette.

In fact, let’s talk business.

WotC’s predatory practices are the reason 90% of TTRPG writers I know have second, or third jobs.

Its business model sucks ideas out of writers, especially marginalized writers, leaving them underpaid, overworked while the white men up top get paid

That business model dependent on splat books atop splat books.

The underhanded pricing model that nickel-and-dimes customers for digital accessibility tools.

That reliance on freelancers for writing, on art.

The rent-seeking of independent creators.

The defense of serial abusers, at the expense of people of color, of people with marginalized genders, of queer people.

The swallowing of every RPG market it can imagine, until I can’t describe ANY OF MY WORK without saying, “It’s D&D, but...”

Oh, where are my manners?

@JeremyECrawford @ChrisPerkinsDnD , welcome to my feed! I apologize for subtweeting you.

Earlier, I said, writing TTRPGs will never be my job.

Well, that’s a partial lie. I would gladly turn this hobby into a part-time job.

But I can’t.

As it stands, I can’t make a living—or even half a living— writing and selling games.

Almost no one can.

Maybe you didn’t start the fire. It was always burning, since before I was born, or something.

But you haven’t stopped it. You haven’t made real change.

You know, I got into RPGs through D&D. I GM’d the first game I ever played, for friends I no longer speak to, inspired by a podcast I no longer listen to.

I still have the hardback for 5e, with a name or two blacked out.

But I’m not sure I’ll buy 6e.

And I’m not alone.

WotC’s despicable treatment of its workers, its defense of sexual harassers, its courting of the vilest dregs of nerddom, its demand that all blessed by Hasbro’s money swear to utter secrecy...

It’s pushed a lot of people away.

“We’re swearing to do better,” you say, again.

But how? Are you gonna fire Mike? Again? It’s not enough.

Hire your writers and artists as full-timers with health insurance.
Weed out abusers, and prevent that rot from returning.
Burn down Forgotten Realms. Start over.

“Make it your own,” my ass.

The funny thing is, I AM making it my own. I’m writing my own games now. My own adventures.

But—and I’m sorry you’ll have to break this to corporate—but whatever money I make on it? It’s not going to Wizards.

Alright, I’m going to bed.

Final note: there are a lot of good folks who can’t talk shit about WotC without losing jobs and career opportunities.

Cut them some slack. They’re trying.

They deserve to get paid, too.