A Canticle for D&D

Working in the dark as the D&D boom goes bust

I’ve recently started reading a book that many of you may be familiar with, Walter M. Miller’s 1959 post-apocalyptic novel A Canticle for Leibowitz. For those unfamiliar, this novel tells the story of centuries following a 20th century nuclear apocalypse with a particular focus on the Catholic Church preserving knowledge in the midst of hostility towards learned men and scientists who many survivors blame for the disaster. The novel portrays the secretive, cloistered work of devoted monks in an abbey as their knowledge allows the world to rebuild itself…only for it to once again destroy itself as it did centuries before. This cycle of humanity progressing from apocalypse to dark age to enlightenment to golden age to apocalypse ad nauseum rings true not just as we observe the world around us, but specifically as we observe the world of gaming. We’re in the midst of a decline period in RPGs. Over the past decade there was boom in the popularity of roleplaying games which coalesced around the close releases of a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons, the first season of Stranger Things, and a new kind of media with the actual play stream. All of these things emerged in a pop culture landscape dominated by geek culture and Gen X nostalgia. However, ten years later, fatigue for these things has fully set in. The party is over, everyone’s passed out or sluggish from indulgence, and every time someone tries to start the music again, insisting that the night is still young, the group of remaining revelers grows smaller and smaller. We’re seeing the crash happen in real time. The coyote has looked down and noticed that there’s nothing there. Now let’d talk about what to do when he hits the canyon floor and hoists the ouch sign.

To understand the crash, we need to understand the rise and, in particular, the year in which it all came together; 2014. The year 2014 was a culmination of an entire era of pop culture. Beginning in 2007, the pop culture landscape was increasingly dominated by what was previously known as geek culture. Six of the top-grossing movies of 2007 were sci-fi or fantasy films with the top grossing moving being Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. 2007 was also the year that The Big Bang Theory debuted on CBS and the year Marvel Studios was formed to produce Iron Man. Over the next seven years, The Big Bang Theory became one of the hottest TV sitcoms, Marvel blockbusters consistently topped yearly box office, and nerd culture had been thoroughly mainstreamed. Coinciding with this cultural moment was the celebration of D&D’s 40th anniversary and the release of 5th Edition. The game was widely praised, but still only popular among those in and adjacent to the gaming hobby. Two years later though, 5th Edition skyrocketed into mainstream success off the back of Stranger Things. The streaming phenomenon was a full-throttle Gen X nostalgia fest and a big part of that nostalgia was the gang’s infatuation with Dungeons & Dragons. Suddenly, everyone remembered the fun they had in 1984 playing D&D during a Friday-night Tab and pizza-fueled sleepover. Those who had never played were fascinated by the little glimpses of gameplay they saw. Both groups of people flocked to the game but found themselves at a loss for how to play. With demand at an all-time high, the dawn of the DungeonTuber was upon us.

Whether it was short advice videos like those made popular by Matt Colville, or massive actual play streams popularized by Critical Role, there was a massive audience for D&D-related content on YouTube. These were entertaining products put out by interesting personalities of all varieties. In particular, Critical Role really brought the star power with a cast filled with familiar voice actors and frequent guest appearances by celebrities from geek culture. Critical Role was the nexus of celebrity culture and geek culture colliding with each other. The star power that Critical Role delivered drew eyes at first, but it also became something that ultimately hurt gaming. The fact of that matter is that a lot of DungeonTubers and actual play streamers presented an idea of roleplaying that was unsustainable for a majority of tables. These videos called on Game Masters to be fantasy author, therapist, director, school teacher and accountant all in one. They had to create engaging storylines for their parties to interact with but also be open to players wanting to go off in a different direction. They had to great pulse-pounding, intense, adrenaline-filled moments but not upset the delicate sensibilities of their table with anything too intense or disturbing. They had to make war epics that could be shown to a kindergarten class. They had to create heavy metal concerts for people with sensory processing issues. What’s more, they had to do it while being as entertaining as a professional actor and his table full of actor friends. It was all too much and the frustrated GMs began dropping like flies, leading many in the DungeonTube sphere to cry out about a “GM shortage” in the hobby as if they themselves hadn’t contributed to the problem significantly.

Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, the stewards of the property, did their customer base no favors with the products they were producing. While the three core books were solid rulebooks that created an interesting game, each subsequent release seemed to erode that foundation more and more. Genuinely helpful resources like the Wilderness Kit were released with zero fanfare and ignored in favor of tie-ins with pop culture properties like Stranger Things and Rick and Morty. To add insult to injury, WotC seemed to care more about releasing Critical Role and Acquisitions Incorporated tie-in material than revisiting their own back catalog of settings and IP. When they did venture into beloved settings like Ravenloft and Dragonlance, their efforts were slapdash with poor artwork, loads of filler material, and a heaping helping of current-day political finger-wagging. They made a show of parading around all of the celebrities and VIPs they could get through the door and did their level best to turn Dungeons & Dragons into a major media IP and lifestyle brand. It worked for a little while, but Hasbro couldn’t help but steer their big, beautiful boat directly into the nearest iceberg.

We all know what happened next. WotC and Hasbro pissed away all the good faith they once had by trying to destroy the Open Gaming License. All of the DungeonTubers and 3rd party publishers who were evangelists of D&D turned against them overnight when Hasbro tried to cut them out. The more details that came out about the new edition of D&D coming to replace the ten year-old 5e. It would be digital-first. They were moving away from physical books. There was a VTT that was sure to be heavily-monetized. All of it culminated in a lackluster 50th anniversary year for the brand with little fanfare, a lot of controversy, and a release late in the year that hit with a dull thud. D&D crashed out hard in 2024 and it wasn’t alone. 2024 was full of high-profile flops from the once-bulletproof geek culture properties. This past year was the death knell for mainstream geek culture which revealed a hard truth to those of us in RPGs. D&D is not immune to the shifting of pop culture winds. It will not last forever and now the race is on to find out what replaces it.

Unfortunately, there is no longer any widespread interest in this hobby. The circus is already packing up and moving on from gaming. You can already see this hitting the biggest DungeonTubers. Critical Role is falling off faster than ever. Many YouTube channels, including mine, are packing it in. There’s no longer much in the way of fortune and glory to be won in the realm of roleplaying games. Where does that leave us though? Well, there are a number of dedicated people working on the next big thing. While I ended my YouTube channel, I’m still actively creating RPG products, including one that should release in February. My friends Viktor Gorchev, Black Lodge Games, and The Basic Expert are killing it with regular releases and collaborations with other creators. There are people like the oft-maligned but rarely-understood BroSR who are focused on understanding the rules and methods of play that have been lost to time. These are the monks of the Abbey of St Leibowitz working to maintain and restore knowledge of the past in the face of a cataclysm. Our work is not that important, nor are the stakes that high, but it certainly feels as if we’re preserving something after a mass-extinction event. It’s not as if this hasn’t happened before though. We’ve been through this at least twice if not three times. My sincere hope is that we can change the face of gaming into something more traditional, social and intelligent. Intellectualism isn’t a bad word and hobbies should be productive and promote prosocial behavior. Will we succeed? That remains to be seen, but we’re certainly going to try.