What is going on in the tabletop roleplaying game scene?
I get it that “Dungeons & Dragons” is the biggest TTRPG in the world, and has been for a very long time. And I also get that it will garner a lot of TTRPG media coverage, as that’s just the nature of the beast.
But… Here’s my problem with this. I have been scouring various “news” websites that cover TTRPGs, and while I do see occasional coverage of other games, the vast majority of coverage is on “D&D”. To be more accurate, though, this coverage of “D&D” isn’t journalism most of the time… It’s pretty blatant advertising.
I guess it’s easier to just take a press release from Wizards of the Coast and turn it into a ‘news article’ than actually writing something worthwhile. I guess integrity doesn’t pay the bills, right?
Look, I’m not trying to tear down fellow bloggers here. My problem is with the big “news” websites, who cover “D&D” like it is pretty much the only TTRPG on the market, and fluff WotC like they are God’s gift to roleplayers. In my opinion, it shows a lack of integrity, an utter disregard for the TTRPG industry they claim to cover, and shows that most of these authors have no real exposure or experience playing TTRPGs in general. Oh, they may play “D&D” here or there, and consider themselves qualified to comment on the industry, but that’s just not good enough.
If you want to cover the TTRPG space, you need to look beyond the press releases coming out of WotC, and actually crack open some books that aren’t from them or even the other big publishers. Chaosium, Darrington Press, Paizo, they get some coverage here or there, but nothing compared to WotC’s baby. So what about Kevin Crawford (Sine Nomine)? Meguey and Vincent Baker (Lumpley Press)? Shawn Tomkin (Tomkin Press)? These smaller creators are extremely influential in the TTRPG market, and yet outside of the very rare article, get almost no coverage at all.
God help the even smaller TTRPG creators, who get overlooked entirely! Why should these “news” sites give them any scrap of coverage, when there is another rehashed, glue-bound “Forgotten Realms” book coming eventually for “D&D”, right?
TTRPG does not stand for “Dungeons and Dragons Roleplaying game”, period. It may be one of the first TTRPGs, and certainly one of the most successful, but if it weren’t for the “D&D” brand, 5.5e would have been tossed in the trash by now, in favor of better games that few currently know about, because the major “news” outlets won’t actually cover the whole TTRPG industry.
Okay, rant over. Carry on, I’ll be over here actually enjoying good TTRPGs (which means not “D&D)!