I shall return fire. hehehe
The question is whether D20 is ruining roleplaying or not. I don't think the causal lines are direct, but let me paint a picture for you that shows that D20 was a big giant mistake. And I guess that lies this whole fiasco at the feet of Ryan Dancey, a figure of much teeth-gnashing in the community. I don't want to make it personal, but I know many people do. So instead I will blame WotC for this. A good corporate scapegoat always works, right?
Before I continue, the below is my OPINION on a very complex and difficult to understand phenomenon that occured in a social context. As such, it should be taken with a grain of salt, but it should also not be held up to an impossible-to-attain standard of evidence either. Nobody knows the "Truth" of the situation, so let's not get stuck on the canard of "you can't PROVE it". Who can? Nobody. Okay, moving on.
I think that D20 has been disasterous for roleplaying in general, but especially specifically for Dungeons and Dragons. This is a judgment of long-term effect. There are going to be clear short-term gains made. However, I think that the short-term gains made by WotC (and other companies, like Paizo) from D20 will ultimately be destroyed by the long-term death-spiral that D20 has created.
Yes, I used the word death-spiral. And I meant it. I think that the RPG industry is doomed. Note that I said industry, not the hobby. The hobby will perserve. The hobby will survive. Of this, I am fairly sure.
To borrow from Braveheart, "the good lord tells me he can get me out of this mess, but he's pretty sure you're fucked"
Why?
First, D20 fractured the community of Dungeons and Dragons players. It scattered everyone to the four winds. Everyone is playing different games. Some are playing Pathfinder, others 3.5, others 4e, and others have rolled back the clock to earleir version. And the result is that it is much much harder to put together a game now, compared to a decade ago, and the harder it is to put together a game, the less people will play. The less people play, the less they buy. The less they need books. The less they need the industry.
Second, D20 marks the beginning of a shift into what I like to call "sucker capitalism" where you design your product to trick people into needing it. You put "squares" into your game rules so that people have to use miniatures to play it. You make a crap-ton of splat books with way overpowered abilities to trick players into buying it to give themselves an advantage, then you release multiple monster manuals with monsters to counter all these abilities they thought would give them an upper hand. You pitted the GM against the players, and the game is worse off for it.
Both of these things are a result of the growth-obsession that exists in modern business. This growth-obsession has destroyed a great many forms of art and culture, RPGs are just one more brick in the wall. They couldn't be content with a small steady return on investment. They couldn't be content with designing really high quality stuff, releasing a few books a year, and making a small reliable amount of coin. They had to borrow funds, they had to hire more staff, they had to release a flurry of books, they needed to rake in a lot of cash to do it. And in the end, they killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. The culprit here is greed, friends. Pure and simple. They could not be content with what they had. They wanted more, bigger, faster, stronger, better. It wasn't enough to succeed, you had to do better than last year, every year, forever.
They ate the seed corn.
Of course, there are complicating factors. 4th Edition sucks donkey balls. That hurts. New World of Darkness doesn't get people inspired as much as the original version. The rise of MMOs hurts. And so on. But those things are like blaming your divorce on someone's decision to buy a sports car without consulting the better half. Definitely not a good thing, but definitely not the true "cause" either.
I predict that the truly epic mismanagement of the D&D brand by it's holders will destroy D&D. Hasbro will make a decision that this isn't profitable enough for them, and they will pull the plug. And that will hurt. Have no doubt, it will hurt. But I think in the long-term, it will be a good thing. Right now, the industry has risen and fallen with the fortunes of D&D. As the superpower among RPG companies, it's success has been instrumental. Too many eggs. One basket.
I predict that D&D, as a business, will crash. There will be some legacy stuff, but the brand will crash. The money will dry up. There will be other companies that follow D&D into the grave, I'm sure. Maybe even White Wolf will close up shop. Who knows what fallout could occur. But once the dust settles, the real game will begin.
We will have an opportunity to rebuild the hobby, not as a corporate enterprise, but as a legitimate hobby controlled by the people within it. We will not be dependent upon them anymore. We will be free to control our own destiny. A pheonix will rise.
Welcome to 1973. Part Deux.
Who wants to roll the dice again?
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