The Elephant in the Room

I've been trying to tell people for decades that D&D hasn't been good for the wider community of independent RPGs, and RPG designers. However it's really felt like a lot of people couldn't understand this... so it's interesting to see when other people have the same ideas, especially when those ideas seem to come from different perspectives.

I'd generally considered the problems of D&D to come from it's ludo-narrative dissonance (the way the game claims to be about one thing, while its systems of play don't support, and actually hinder, the kinds of experience it claims to offer). I hadn't considered these ideas...  

 

... I hadn't considered the "trickle-down economics" factor (or lack thereof), but it makes a lot of sense based on what I've been seeing over the years. The whole thing has been really stifling as a designer. I don't know if I want to write any more at the moment, but I wanted to get this thread saved for posterity on the blog before it disappeared from social media. I'm sure I'll come back to the ideas here.

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