Let the Mainstream Die

D&D and the Death Knell of the Theatre Kids

Yesterday morning, before I’d had a chance to let my breakfast digest, I was greeted with this pastel-infused atrocity that has by now been plastered all over gaming social media:

Everyday, God’s light, etc. etc.

This . . . thing is the latest and lamest for DnD’s “Fall Pride” event, as it’s apparently an all-year thing now, created by Ricardo Bessa, an illustrator whose entire body of work is equally as hideous. My timeline was full of posts retweeting it, as it was attached to a post by Dungeons & Dragons’ official X account along with the message: “In this realm, your story is yours to tell”. It was positively inescapable, and even as I write this, some seven hours after my coffee had gone cold in my dining room, it’s still at the top of my feed. I scrolled through an unending parade of repost upon repost of mutuals bemoaning the sad current state of the once-great cultural institution. To whit:

When we’re done complaining and poking fun, the next part of that process needs to be supporting something worthwhile.

Of course none of this is all that surprising, considering the theatre kids at WotC have shaved any and all sharp edges from the property in recent years, with an especially concerted effort taking place for fifth edition. While I could point to asinine things like players using X-cards to signify something has triggered them during a session to campaign settings like Strixhaven that let players experience “what a hot mess college life can be,” nothing more effectively sums up how utterly neutered the game has become quite as much as the art that’s surfaced for fifth edition’s various abominations over the years. From smiling multiracial dwarves with man-buns baking to Mexican-coded orc families, to the disability-friendly dungeons of Candlekeep, and Magic: The Gathering cross-promotions with Spongebob and Cloud Strife, the Legends and Latte-ification of the mainstream tabletop scene is total and complete. The brand custodians revel in shoving throbbing, pent-up intersectionality into any game’s orifices they can and dragging it across the past lore, leaving a musky, greasy, rainbow-sheened trail in its wake.

None of this surprised me. What did surprise me was how long many of the people behind the games we loved were unabashed perverts.

“Wizards was . . . about getting rich, cool and laid”

While I was digesting Mister Bessa’s latest reason to become Amish, a mutual sent me a link to a Salon.com article (of all things) from 2001 titled Death to the Minotaur. Amazingly still up and active, I’ve linked to an archived version here. John Tynes, who worked for Wizard of the Coast just as tabletop gaming had begun exploding in the 90s, detailed the raucous culture within, with trips during con season being times when employee hierarchy fell away and hookups carried on openly; people talked about what other employees they wanted to and had slept with as a trust-building exercise, with sexual exploits receiving the blessing of none other than Peter Adkinson for people to go ahead and rail his wife:

Best of all, though, we would fuck like rabbits. On “Who Knew? Day” employees wore badges proclaiming their sexual orientation. Intimate relationships sprouted like mold on bread, cutting across departments and seniorities with the hierarchy-smashing fervor of our consensus-driven team meetings. Heedless of status, even peasants and princes coupled, and fell apart.

The example was set right at the top: Peter and his wife, also an employee, had an open marriage. Wizards was a big horny summer camp, and we were starring in the teen sex comedy of our fevered dreams.

The radicals have always been there; eager to overthrow convention like good little revolutionaries, overeducated, hyperliberal and oversexed—it’s simply been a matter of how public they could be about it. Of course, the rank and file cardflopper was never privvy to such things. As someone who played M:TG religiously through high school during exactly this era and only having print magazines to get their news and rumors from, the average gamer never knew the sexual orientation/proclivities of the people putting out their favorite games. It was great to simply be able to enjoy the cool card art on your Righteousness or Juzam Djinn while being blissfully unaware that the person who designed the card or painted the art liked their trombones rusty and would personally put you in a camp for your opposing political beliefs if they could.

However the past is a different country, and we no longer have the privilege of simply enjoying things. The multibillion dollar companies that now own our once-favorite games are unlimitedly funded to spite loyal customer bases. Last year, a social media furor was ignited when the official Warhammer 40K X account published a post saying that female Custodes have always existed. Despite a firestorm of fan backlash, the company issued a statement all but explicitly telling fans to eff off, and recently released a female Custodes hero in their mobile game Tacticus. A recent leak of a new set of Ultramarine head sculpts that seemed to have distinctly fair features had some fans concerned that GW is testing the waters for female space marines. It seems now that is likely all but inevitable.

Source: spikeybits.com

For the Love of God, Play, Read and Try Something Else.

Upstream Reviews was birthed from a disgust shared by a group of authors and fans of what mainstream publishing had to offer. We’ve since expanded to give our thoughts on movies, doing interviews, and opinion and news commentary of all sorts. We perform this labor of love because we believe in the vast untapped creative potential of independent creators who aren’t shackled by corporate agenda. I’m sure many of us like to dunk on this garbage. There’s no denying the fun of it. But when we’re done complaining and poking fun, the next part of that process needs to be supporting something worthwhile. Do you hate D&D and its wokery, its simmering hatred for heteronormativity, or even just the fact that it requires THREE overpriced sourcebooks to even get started? Give Troll Lord Games a shot. Castles & Crusades is an OSR system that requires one book you can get for as little as $25. They’ve got a John Carter RPG setting in Barsoom approved by the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs itself on the way. Want to play D&D with rules based on notes from Gary Gygax’s original playtest sessions? Check out the indie-published Dragons Beyond supplement at DriveThruRPG for just ten bucks.

Books and comics? Don’t get us started . . .

The above trans-hued eyesore depicting two interspecies lovers in homoromantic canoodling in the middle of a town square while a crowd cheers them on ignited a fire all over social media. People hate to see a cherished part of their past die. But die it has. However, that doesn’t mean our love for what it was has to. Places, settings and games that capture the imagination are abundant—they simply lack exposure. I listed a few, but we’d love to hear about other games, settings and books to replace D&D with from our readers—we’ll even do a follow-up showcase if we get enough suggestions.

So let us know in the comments—we shall not mourn D&D, but bury it. Tell Upstream what comes next!