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So since #WOTC boils my brain again, let's have a thread about DnD and DiY-Systems and why the former is not the latter:
I wanna preface this by saying that I've been running and playing DnD for roundabout a decade at the point, only fully and finally dropping the system some time last year.
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DnD is filled to the brim with countless of rules, very specifically detailing how certain actions are taken under what circumstances. Grappling is a notorious example of this, but even the very movement rules show this very clearly.
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It is at its core a game with a ruleset that clearly informs how it is intended to be played. Most of it is geared around combat, so combat is a core part of the intended experience. The monster Manual is a thing, nobody can pretend combat is not a part of the game.
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The point is: DnD is not a game that supports DiY-Approaches very well. It is structurally one of the most frustrating systems to homebrew around with, because it creates a massively bloated workload to do this.
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Wanna change grappling? Now you have to change, remove and transmute all the rules connected to that mechanic otherwise it falls apart if you miss something and it comes up in play. Spoiler-Alert: It's a fuck-ton-lot
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Once it gets to removing colonialism and racism altogether from the system it gets even worse. No way around it: The ranger class has it baked into its mechanics. Remove it, or rework it.
Then there's the majority of racial bonusses, monster abilites, etc.
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Then there's the majority of racial bonusses, monster abilites, etc.
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Speaking of the Monster Manual:Of course you can rewrite Drow, Orcs, Goblins and about 95% of the official material yourselves, but unless the game specifically has supportstructures in place for every step of that process, it does not actively support it.
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What WotC is doing what they've always done: Pretending that DnD is suitable for everything. "Just tweak it to your liking". What's left unspoken there is "You won't need any other game, we can do everything".
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Saying "Do it yourself" with DnD means you're supposed to carry a massive workload in terms of gamedesign, writing, worldbuilding - Effectively making your own game, but still branding it as the original shitty WotC-Brand product.
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Actual DiY-Systems have rules in place, from front to back of the book, that allow and support you to do your own thing. FATE is a beautiful example of this. It has a core ruleset, but it offers a lot of options and ideas on how to iterate on it.
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There's countless FATE-based or adjacent games out there that are very much their own thing (imho #iHunt is the golden example of how amazing this can get!)
D&D-related stuff is still very distinctly D&D, no matter how far from the branch the seed is carried.
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D&D-related stuff is still very distinctly D&D, no matter how far from the branch the seed is carried.
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I highly doubt that WotC's approach will truly 'fix' D&D to any noteworthy extent, especially after the Lead Members of the Dev Team have made it very clear how they view and interact with thess topics.
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The Game is suffering with it's identity because they never want to settle on anything, creating bloat. They won't commit to proper fixing the setting and the rules. They claimed this for decades with almost every edition and it's always been a dumpsterfire all the way.
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Whenever Jeremy Crawford or Chris Perkins say you can just change DnD to suit what you want out of it, they deflect responsibility for the shoddy state the "World's greatest Roleplaying Game" is in.
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Whenanyone tells you stuff like this: Play an actually DiY-capable game by marginalized indie-creators instead. There's countless of them out there, and they've been doing this better for the same amount of decades that WotC has sucked at even attempting to get it right.
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