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Friday 31 July 2015

Who Saved D&D?

Some people have apparently gotten upset that Zak S has made a Gencon shirt saying "Zak S saved D&D"; itself an imitation of a shirt someone wore at last Gencon saying "Zak S and the RPGPundit Made D&D Better".

Someone's suggesting I should sell similar shirts; but to be honest, first, I have no problem with Zak choosing some cheap self-promotion. Fuck, I invented cheap self-promotion! Who am I to judge? And shit, anything that pisses of the Swine (the ones who despise Zak as much as they hate me) is fine in my book.  And seeing people going around Gencon with those T-shirts will drive them into conniption fits of pretend-triggering, so more power to Zak for doing it.

Even so, if I were to say who "saved" D&D I wouldn't be putting myself (at least, not myself alone) on the T-shirt.

Someone else has suggested that Ryan Dancey is the true 'savior' of D&D. Ok, cool, I think praising Ryan Dancey makes good sense, especially since so many gamers have shit on him and the very important thing he did 15 years ago. But to be fair, he was the one who saved D&D the last time around, after TSR had ruined it. Not the one who saved it this time around.  Yes, without Dancey, the OGL wouldn't have happened and thus the OSR wouldn't have happened, but that was never Dancey's actual goal, or the point of why he supported what we used to call "open source gaming" at that time.

And there's someone else, more recently important, who I think has more credit than other people for having "saved D&D" (with 5e): Mike Mearls.

He had the sense to want to return to old-school roots, and to hire people like me to do it. And to a very slightly lesser extent, Zak.

RPGPundit

EDITED TO ADD:  Zak has just won the Best Writing ENnie for Red & Pleasant Land.  I'll have something to say about that in my next post, but for the moment, my heartiest congratulations to him.  I am eagerly looking forward to all the bitter bitter tears and wailing from the Swine and the Pseudo-activists.

Currently Smoking:  Lorenzetti Solitario Volcano + H&H's Beverwyck

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