WOTC are not inclusive enough they need to "DO BETTER"
(boundingintocomics.com)
Comments (20)
sorted by:
Why are most news coming from gaming products about inclusivity and gender orientation. It looks like the entire industry is obsessed with it. I never cared about race, gender or sexual orientation in games until they started making a huge deal. Lets kill some orcs and save a town, discover an ancient race or explore an old tower or ruin with puzzles and a boss monster. What the fuck happened to all of that, should it not be the actual focus of the game rather then a wizard that used be a male and now is a female?
It's become your responsibility to fix their insecurities. That's why they always demand more, because the root of the problem still exists. It's like thinking you can end anorexia by complimenting them on how good they look.
I have solutions for that, but everyone calls you a monster when you suggest forming death squads.
right?
Also for a lot of them, being (insert "oppressed" group here) is the only thing they have, so they have nothing to offer but that.
Because "MUH INCLUSIVITY" and "DAT'S RAYCISS" as they're offended on behalf of others is the name of their game. They invade hobby spaces that haven't really had any problems in the past, look for potential issues that match their talking points (no matter how tenuous the link), and demand that the hobby change to match their views.
They play the old mafia game of "That's a nice store front you got there, it'd be a shame if something would happen to it" with both businesses and peoples' lives. Since the businesses don't want the bad optics of claims that they're racist/sexist/whatever-ist, they bend the knee and promise to match demographics in their fantasy worlds that are equal to (or better than) those in the real world. So, instead of fantasy escapism into worlds where there are inherently evil races for our good PCs to battle, we end up with claims that Orcs are an allegory for black people and screams for there to be female Space Marines. Shit like this is exactly why we should have gone harder on gatekeeping our hobbies, but our geek nature of wanting other people to enjoy the things we did was our own downfall.
So what does that mean, over-all? Screw WotC and any other gaming company that has been the knee. There are tons of other non-woke rule sets you can play with, and the only way these woke companies will understand is if you hit them in their bottom line.
What rules set do you recommend? Thing is I am found of older rule sets but I would not mind something new that works well in a fantasy setting, not that I am set in to fantasy settings per say but I have a ton of figurines that are unfortunately fantasy.
For fantasy-based stuff I'd usually point people at OSRIC or other OSR variants of D&D retro-clones. Most are unabashedly based on 1st edition D&D and AD&D and intended for people that want to play as such.
EDIT: It's also worth noting that I regularly check up on the Bundle of Holding deal page as they frequently sell packs of older rule sets in bundles for prices that are a steal. Granted, it's all PDFs, but you can also tie that to your DriveThruRPG account and get official copies stashed there as well as on your BoH account. You have to be willing to pull the trigger, though, because once they run a bundle on a game you likely won't see it again for several years.
Corporate Creep is part of it. It's not enough to be content with your market share(I'm willing to bet that the TTRPG market has been rather stable in numbers for decades) you have to include more and more people and conform to their wishes in order to get them in, whether it is dumbing down the rules to make it more accessible or listening to people that don't play(and probably never will) what they want to see in the game to get them to play. Meanwhile they do this with the belief that the old fans will stick around no matter what.
So now since the SJW crowd is that market they think they can tap that market and because a few developers are SJWS themselves. But they fail to realize that the people making all the noise were never fans to begin with and never will pick up the game after the changes are made. Because if there really was a market for it those SJW developers would have went and developed a new game for them and got the profits instead of trying to convince WoTC to do it.
Increasing their market share is the excuse SJW developers are using to make what they like and they blame toxic masculinity and racism if it is not popular. This keeps them immune to criticism even internally. Since anyone who does not like it is a racist.
And the dumbing down of rules is just as bad as SJW stuff. Things are suppose to be hard so you have a feeling of achievement when you succeed in playing correctly but heaven forbid some idiot would feel left out. I'm also noticing a resentment against players that like to min/max characters. It was subtle at first but is growing.
D&D lost me at 4th edition because of that. It became way too simple.
And the anger at min maxing always was strange to me. Everyone plays differently.
There's always been bit of jibing at minmaxers as long as I've been around. I started like 20 years ago.
Minmaxing in moderation is okay, nobody wants shitty characters that take a dirt nap after being lightly jostled by a kobold, the problem is when munchkins purposefully break the game by exploiting loopholes and poorly playtested rulesets.
I like light rulesets precisely because they discourage such behaviour. Less is more.
Well, there's a race to the bottom if I ever saw one.
WOTC are progressive as fuck but still want to be even more woke and retarded.
SJWs always double down. Doesn't matter how bad they're going to come out in the end, they'll always pull back and increase their lies or attempts at wokeness to try and make themselves or the people they're trying to be offended on behalf of out to be the victims.
Their profits are going to take a hit. Partially because of the SJW bullshit, but also because they can't balance metas anymore without regular banning of their most valuable cards. They're selling too many products too quickly and quality control is suffering. They got greedy, sloppy, and woke. It's the best IP run by the dumbest fucking people on the planet.