What’s it gonna take?

Huh?

What’s it gonna take for you to stop paying WotC?

To stop writing shit for D&D?

To stop streaming D&D?

I get it, if this is your job, get your money, whatever.

But again:

What’s it gonna take?

Because if #FireMikeMearls didn’t do it

If Zaiem Beg’s testimony didn’t do it

If all the racism and unexamined colonialism and ableism and weak allyship didn’t do it

If ORION BLACK’S TESTIMONY DIDN’T DO IT

WHAT.
WILL?

Like, just read Orion’s testimony, and go back to Zaiem’s testimony too.

WotC doesn’t care about marginalized voices.

They steal ideas, they pay writers like SHIT, they promote mediocre whiteness while leaving sharp writers to languish...

...And if you call it out? You’re fired.

If you RT or Like someone else’s critique? You’re fired.

Fuck.

If you’re working for WotC and you follow ME, you should expect that pink slip coming any moment.

And what about DM’s Guild? The FUCK did they ever do for you?

They send you to a half-assed re-skin of the Drive Thru RPG website, which is ALSO apparently run by shitheels, and THEN take half your cash!

And? You don’t get to own that shit, either.

YOUR WORK? Is THEIRS.

And maybe you want to write something queer. Or explicitly anti-capitalist.

Well kiss your work goodbye. Maybe if you’re popular, they’ll DEIGN to let you post your hard work ELSEWHERE.

What KIND treatment, to LET you post your work outside their rent-seeking domain!

And maybe you’re a podcaster? Or a streamer?

Idk if this was ever brought up, but The Musafirs, the podcast I’m on, was invited to D&D Live. Way before COVID happened.

But when D&D Live went online? The all-queer-BIMPoC podcast wasn’t informed.

We just got white faces.

WotC Doesn’t Give a Fuck About Marginalized Creators.

You know this.

You abso-fuckin-lutely know this.

So what’s it gonna take to say:

FUCK IT.

I’m not writing modules that I have to half-heartedly claim are for “the greatest role-playing game in the world” or whatever bullshit they have.

OR:

I’m not gonna stream D&D, because it’s been managed by shit people for DECADES.

D&D is a shit game. It’s broken, it’s janky, you need to mod it to shit to even have a decent time.

You can disagree, whatever.

But you CANNOT deny that D&D half-heartedly panders to marginalized voices, but NEVER does the ACTUAL RIGHT THING.

Because the dirty secret that’s IN FACT NOT SECRET AT ALL, is that Dungeons and Dragons is DEPENDENT on the money coming from casual racists and misogynistic grognards, the ones who pollute YOUR mentions as a vile ooze of noise and derision.

So STOP.

GIVING

WIZARDS.

YOUR.

MONEY!

Stop giving them your time, your labor, your—did I say money already?

You shouldn’t fix D&D. I would say “don’t do it without pay,” but even if you DO work for WotC, apparently they’ll pay you dogshit and steal your work anyway.

I get grieving over giving up a game that means so much to you.

I was attached to 5e, too.

The first RPG I played, ever, was D&D. I was inspired by The Adventure Zone. I even DM’ed it! It started with a little Solar Sailer combat segment!

But you should let it go.

Let’s be honest, grief is a sad fact of being into RPGs.

The whole quarantine has been defined by learning that an ever-growing slate of prominent creators are creepy and abusive pieces of shit.

Some of those people, my friends and I looked up to.

But they are not sacred.

I’ve lost the refrain, let’s bring it back.

WHAT’S IT GONNA TAKE!?

What’s it gonna take for you to stop streaming D&D, to port your actual-play out of 5e, to write your adventure modules for a DIFFERENT GAME?

What’s it gonna take?

I was almost about to list potential things that it would take, but that list would be absolutely heinous to commit to pixels.

The list of things WotC has done, has enabled, is already heinous.

Is it not?

I’ll be honest, ZS was the thing that made me give up on D&D. I wasn’t even playing RPGs when all that went down, but upon hearing THAT was part of the creation of 5e, I got a sour taste in my mouth every time I opened up the PHB.

Maybe you’re getting that sour taste in your mouth, too.

Hastily flipping past the section on races, conveniently reflavoring the enchantment spells, casually replacing all the goblin and kobold stat blocks for less gross shit.

That taste of bile when you read or play or watch or listen to D&D content? It’s a warning sign.

It’s a cue to stop.

I feel like a broken record here, I’ve been saying this shit for months, and I feel like one thing after another happens, and I have to KEEP saying it OVER and OVER and LOUDER and LOUDER and ANGRIER and ANGRIER

And you know what happens? Every time I take a knife to D&D?

I get so many likes and RTs and my follower count SPIKES and yet PEOPLE STILL PLAY D&D and ASPIRE TO WORK FOR WOTC.

Before Orion’s piece, I was content to say, “I respect your silence. You deserve to get paid, and WotC has the money.”

That’s changed.

WotC has the money, alright.

But if WotC made ORION BLACK consider LEAVING THE INDUSTRY

Is a WotC gig even aspirational?

So what?

What next?

The glib answer is “play other games.”

“Yeah, real funny, Ajey, that’s not actionable if you’re trying to make money here.”

And you’re right.

I don’t know what’s next, actually.

I don’t know what you should play next.

I don’t know what you should play on stream, or on your podcast.

I don’t know what you should write your adventure modules and setting supplements for.

I don’t know who else can pay you like WotC can, no matter how meager the pay they give you.

Like it or not—and if it’s not clear, I DON’T LIKE IT—D&D is the default.

Actually, let’s be real, 3.5e is the default.

And that default is rotten. It’s corrupted, and it’s festering, and we CANNOT accept it.

But there ARE alternatives. There are better games out there.

Games with better art.
Games with better layout.
Games with clearer, more fun rules.
Games that better know what they want.
Games made by better people.

I won’t tag those games here. It would be rude to associate them with the brimstone and bile that this thread, that my timeline, that my personal reputation, are becoming associated with.

Like I said, every time I draw a knife, I gain followers.

But they’re out there. I URGE you to try.

I get it. D&D is where the money is. It’s where the people are. I have to explain MY GAMES to regular people as “D&D, but...”

But you should consider something else.

Again, what’s it gonna take?

But let’s talk about money.

Because for some people, the “what’s it gonna take” is “when I can make money doing something besides 5e modules.”

And that’s SO MUCH HARDER a question.

I’ll be absolutely honest, I don’t have the answer to it.

I’ve talked about this before: https://twitter.com/ajeypandey/status/1276657645353656320?s=21

WotC has a chokehold on the market, and I think it’s the reason you could count the number of full-time indie TTRPG people on one hand. https://twitter.com/ajeypandey/status/1276657645353656320

And let’s be real, I’m not asking for a boycott of WotC.

That’s gonna do jack, because the reply guy ooze is what’s paying WotC—not you or me.

But you know what WILL happen? If you stream indie games?

Money that would have gone to WotC, goes to indie creators.

Stream eyeballs start googling these indie titles you’re playing.

Your module or setting hack for a really cool game turns into fifteen or twenty bucks sent towards that creator.

WotC won’t notice the loss in money.

But indie developers will notice the uptick.

The uptick will let them cut down hours at their day job.

It’ll let them upgrade their aging laptop.

It’ll buy them a new scanner for their art.

It’ll let them make a career out of this.

So fuck WotC. They’re not worth your time or money.

If ALL THE SHIT THAT HAS THUS-FAR HAPPENED couldn’t convince you otherwise, I’m hard-pressed to think of shit that will, to be honest.

Except maybe, WotC’s grasp on your livelihood...

And if your livelihood IS dependent on WotC content...

Well, you don’t need ME to tell you that livelihood is dependent on a capricious corporation that doesn’t give two shits about you.

But as Orion demonstrated, you can’t fix WotC from the inside.

That’s a fantasy.