Dungeons and Dragons…Is it under threat?

Anyone who knows me knows I have been a lover of RPGs and games in general since I was young. In fact, I regret that I missed the whole Dungeons and Dragons thing as a kid, and even though I had one or two of the books (The Monster Manual rings a bell), I never really got involved with playing an actual tabletop game.

Why? When I was a kid, I was so fixated on being ‘cool’, such as getting bad grades, looking tough and generally trying to keep people away from me, that I missed the whole thing out of an image thing. You see, it wasn’t really ‘cool’ or ‘tough’ to do such things when I was younger, and I can’t even imagine the treatment I’d have gotten in school if I had admitted I wanted to go and play Dungeons and Dragons. The bullying would have been top-tier, to say the least.

That said, I think that I might have been good at it, and having recently played several games through Discord, Roll20 and DnD Beyond, I’d go as far as to say that I genuinely love playing it. So much so, in fact, that I now aspire to become a dungeon master (one who runs games for players, sort of like the referee and more). Additionally, it’s full-on pushed me to finally create my own world for my own writings and books, which I am currently working on.

This brings me to the point of the article I am writing today. Some of you might have seen the news regarding Wizards Of The Coast and its recent changes. Honestly, I am not going to sit here writing something so many people have already covered, so I will refer you to a good video which explains what’s going on. — https://youtu.be/NG5Lqnl8lrE

https://www.youtube.com/@ClownfishTV/featured pretty much hits nails right on their heads. We are looking at a corporate movement to capitalise on DnD. As you can see, there is already plenty of backlash on this, and it will only worsen.

As a person that only dabbed their toes into the waters of role-playing on virtual tabletops, it's a shame it is going down this route. If movies are here, and we have corporate movements on the game's systems, my only guess is that players will suffer huge costs for memberships and content purchasing next.

In a nutshell, this hobby can already be pretty expensive, but now we’re looking at something that can potentially blow out of proportion. What do you think?