Ao save us all…

She and Cocks spent the next nine minutes explaining how Wizards of the Coast might solve this corporate conundrum, and much of the initial work apparently rests at the feet of D&D Beyond. Wizards acquired the company, along with the staff that maintains it, earlier this year. The digital toolkit that players use to reference material on digital devices and maintain campaign information is also a powerful source of “data-driven insights” for Wizards.

• ↩️ Dicebreaker

Within the greater gaming-sphere there has been a 20 year movement towards keeping people engaged — nay — hostage within an IP, only to then to start milking the people dry with micro-transactions, subscriptions, and paraphernalia. Which in turn makes the IP lose its lustre.

Dungeons & Dragons is defined by its undefined-ness. It seems Hasbro and Wizards are themselves drawn to the toxic allure of too many redditors clamoring for official rules and tools resulting in a "perfect system", which does not exist. Nor will it ever exist. The Dungeon Master balances the game, D&D itself is merely a framework.

As soon as Hasbro starts nickel-and-diming every aspect of D&D for the sake of "recurrent spending", I can see a lot of people either sticking with Fifth Edition or finally jumping ship to Pathfinder et al. This is meant to be a game for collective story-telling for a bunch of friends to create awesome memories. Not a freakish videogame-like RPG with a battle pass bolted on and official rankings to turn every session into an opportunity to grind rep for your profile.

In short, can we just effing stop turning games into work we also get to pay for?