On both social media I still use, I followed bunch of indie ttrpg devs. I had to unfollow the ones on tumblr because they don’t talk about anything but how much they hate D&D, up to including writing weird headcanons about people who help popularize it (I actually seen someone on tumblr claim Brenann Lee Mulligan must HATE D&D because only dumb people could like it and is only pretending to like it for clout) or bich about how D&D fans only want to play D&D and get mad when you tell them they’re complaining about a small minority.
meanwhile indie ttrpg devs on Bluesky constantly promote their work and inform of sales of their products. I found many cool games through bluesky, meanwhile nove through tumblr.
Wait Tumblr still has users after they banned the porn? That’s messed up. I can’t imagine what kind of mental pretzel that place has warped itself into now. I think I’ll continue not finding out. Thanks for the heads up
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It is a little weird that D&D is synonymous with tabletop RPGs, considering how many other great games are out there; especially these days. But D&D is by no means a bad game and people should still play it.
It was the first, and then Christian weirdos put its name recognition on a rocket to the moon, so now it’s the kleenex of the category.
Explain like I’m a newbie?
There was a campaign in the 70’s & 80’s during the “satanic panic” by Christian groups to associate D&D with devil worship.
I imagine that Brennan Lee Mulligan walks a fine line as a public figure.
He still plays D&D often enough to (seemingly) not alienate people at Wizards whose work helped launch his career.
But he also plays significant amounts of other games, including some that I think are Indie developers, like Kids on Bikes.
I’m sure he’s aware of the issues and concerns in the community around D&D under Wizards - and probably shares many of those same concerns, as a fellow player and DM.
But, yes, the idea that Brennan secretly hates anything sounds pretty silly. Brennan has been pretty direct with his epic rants about things he really hates.
I’m pretty sure Critical Role has also done some Monsterhearts stuff, which is also indie. I don’t personally like that game for a myriad of reasons, but I do believe Mercer ran it one or two times.
I’ve literally never heard anyone blindly hate D&D on Tumblr. There are a lot of complaints, for sure, but the biggest blogs there post about how D&D is fundamentally a game about dungeons and not meant for other things, and most of them celebrate the system when used right.
Some people just love to bitch, especially if that’s all they do. James Wallis said (IIRC) “Game designs aren’t tools, but some game designers are”.
I’d like to find those folks, but tumblr is such a mess. Fortunately bsky is not that bad. Point being, it’s hard to find platforms where the elephant in the room isn’t felt so much. Even lemmy is dragon town all over again.
