How WotC Sabotaged The Making of Original D&D 1970-77, out of Hate for the Original Creators 

I "love" how he says it's the fan creations that have driven D&D forward but he's from the company that wanted to take exclusive rights of ANY 3rd party material created. With the "happy" coincidence that WotC could get new material without having to pay for it... #things_that_make_you_go_Hmmm

WotC is a terrible company, and has been for a long time now.

At 9min, the game was always inclusive and many of us were always just wanting to find more players, did not care from where.

Great video, thanks for calling out those other books. I was the exact target audience for this book but they went out of their way to ensure that they'll never see another dime from me.

a simpler time, when creatives were creatives and not vapid ideologues

this $100.00 book will be $4.99 at Ollies in six months.

Sigh. This hobby is the most diverse activity I have ever witnessed, bar none! More diverse and inclusive than school. More diverse and inclusive than my military service. More diverse and inclusive than any job I've ever held. More diverse and inclusive than any sport I participated in or watched on TV. More diverse and inclusive than chess club or church. This is NO exaggeration. It was never a bad thing, never bigoted, never excluding, except now I'm being told it was and I'm supposed to believe it because somebody claimed themselves an expert and this person says so. And they say the old grognards are the gatekeepers of this hobby!

WOTC are so much worse then the original creators ever were, I cannot wait till future RPGers drag them through the mud.

Why dose Kyle Brink still have a job? About 5 years ago, I got back into the Hobby after 20 years or so. I spent $100's of dollars on the new 5E books. Since last year when that idiot, said "Middle aged white guys can't leave the hobby fast enough"... well I left. and I'll NEVER buy another 5E book. I'll never buy another thing from WotC. I've spent $100's of dollars on the AD&D books I had lost or given away over the years. The truth is that you can play this game w/ just 3 books, the Players Handbook, the Monster Manual, and the Dungeons Masters Guide. WotC needs us more than we need them, let them suffer, just like Hasblow, with millions of dollars of merchandise rotting on the retail shelves. And thanks for your review BTW.

Why would I pay $100+ for rules I already have, without being preached at by a bunch of self-righteous, smug, virtue-signaling fill-in-the-blanks for how included I should feel? I have been playing since the Holmes set, and I have never felt excluded for being a not-typical RPG player from that era. No politics, no agendas, just players interested in playing a fun game.

Really good stuff. I go all the way back to Red Book C&S and can speak from 40+ yrs experience in RPGS: Nobody was ever "frozen out" due to color, creed, gender whatever unless they came into the hobby *looking for a fight.* (And there were some of those, even back then.) WOTC is finished, alas. It's occupied territory and there's no D-Day in sight. The only way through is out - abandon it and don't look back.

Imagine that, ," Fighting Man" is so terrible, ! 😂

Watched it before and these are, to quote Buzz Lightyear "sad little men".

This video was a great service to traditional players. I have a new list of books to read/listen to. WotC can’t help but show their disdain for its own history. WotC is more about agitprop with its political commissars than gaming. The 5e WotC employees are also jealous of the creators. All they can do is destroy what the creators gave us & use the skin to deliver their garbage politics.

Secrets of Blackmore and Empire of Imagination are very good.

Don't give a penny to Weirdos of the Coast

I really do miss the wonder, excitement, awe, of older D&D. Going out to hobby and toy shops for the next module ( remember those?) in a series. I miss that yearning to continue a module adventure. To see the great REAL, NOT AI, artwork. I have most of the books you mentioned. You are correct. They are very good, informative books. Thanks for the video.

Secrets of Blackmoor educated me on history of D&D more than anything. Great documentary. D&D is dead, I'm a Dungeon crawl classics guy myself.

What would we ever do without a slapdash, one-page, storygame version of DEI "5e" by an autonomous, patriarchy-free individual of the cake-gender persuasion? If you want this nonsense to end, support Advanced Crimson Dragon Slayer and Cha'alt!

I was promised strong language sir. But I’m in complete agreement that the RU-vidr you mentioned is as usual way off base and completely wrong about any Grognard running out to buy this book, or that the OSR will collapse overnight from this release. Great video as always!

Hearing that they did several inclusivity reviews on the book really turned me off of it, no matter how respected the author is. I worry about the handling of the subject matter when i see that. On the only white men point, Gail Gaylord was there from the start and played in Blackmoor. If this guy had watched The Secrets of Blackmoor maybe he'd know that. Also saying that people need to see themselves in the game sounds like a lack of imagination on the new player base's part. Edit: I bought the OD&D PDFs a while back, removed the passwords and fixed the pdfs. I added the missing stronghold table and Tolkien naming back in. Finding matching fonts was the worst part.

Ya that's WotC I won't buy their crappy books anymore

What the actual fuck is an "inclusivity review"?

In another channel where this product was mentioned, I commented that I found this fatuous piece of virtue signaling extremely tedious and unnecessary, as history doesn't need "inclusivity reviews" unless you assume the consumer is a child. My comment received the now all too familiar refrain of, "I'm sorry you feel that way but inclusivity is important." This reply speaks to the shibboleths that are uncritically parroted and result in more dumb, bland products. Worse, they chill _civil_ criticisms and zone off a hobby that is fundamentally about expression more than it is anything else. Insanity.

As an older fan of dnd ( I started with first edition advanced) and the setting was already plenty diverse. I've since switched over to 40k and I'll never look back. WotC disgusts me.

Great video!! I think it's interesting that we all remember who the greats are: Gygax and Arneson!! I for one will never forget how much we all owe to these two. They created the game we love. Have no idea who these fools are that were doing this interview and nor do I care. No one will remember their names, but we will always remember Gygax and Arneson. Playing at the World is another awesome book by Jon Peterson. Read it cover to cover once, it's a giant book - serious page count.. Yes, its out of print but the PDF version is still available and I think they are going to do a 2nd Edition of it this year. Will pick up the 2nd Ed if it comes out. Another fantastic series is Shannon Applecline's Designer and Dragons series. I've read the entire series. and read the section in the first book on TSR about 5 times -- it's another great read if you want to know the history of these different RPG companies. The PDFs of OD&D are worth a pickup if you're curious about what the rules look like. I for one don't mind giving WotC some of my money. I'm actually really glad that WotC makes PDFs of most of the old stuff readily available for low prices -- let's people enjoy copies of the old stuff without paying crazy eBay prices.

I utterly hate Jay Scott Garibay

You can also get a good second hand copy of Outdoor Survival for about 15 bucks - so WotC including that is little incentive

Wow, they are some petty POS!!!!! It was a fantasy game. It should not represent the real world in any way shape or form!!!

There is no D&D past 2E. New D&D died when TSR died. 3E, 4E and 5E are all new seperate games with the D&D name slapped on. They are not descended from what Arenson and Gygax created. OD&D, 1E and 2E are it.

Giving the ALTERVATIVES to those woke products has been fantastic!! I'd give you 20 likes if I could. Thank you!

I hope they keep screwing up. The more people they alienate, the better.

They sabotage every D&D project: They didn’t promote the movie, they scrapped the Dragonlance TV series, they messed up the Deck of Many Things … It seems deliberate

I am Jacks complete lack of surprise.

4th & 5th Editions are NOT Dungeons & Dragons.

It’s that bad? So 4e was a cakewalk compared to what they’re doing now?!

Good he pointed out about the fighting-man! Hey wotc, hasbro how are the sales? Not good aren’t they! Bin the agenda and focus on good writing instead!

Everyone gets a participation ribbon for playing now. Hooray! Indeed, It was a different time. If Peterson is getting royalties for his work, he just got shafted by these donuts' inane ramblings.

I'm glad i stopped giving wizards of the woke my money.

Unfortunately, sir, I think they actually very much do understand exactly what they're saying & doing. Incredibly sad 😔 for them all, and all of us who have to live to see and hear this in these days! Thanks for bringing this tragedy, but also much-needed, news. 👊 And Secrets of Blackmoor is actually gold and should be one thing we celebrate in regards to the 50th Anniversary!

I absolutely loved the original D and D, and we made our own campaigns based on it, aside from the modules. I can't believe there was so much animosity towards the original creators of the game. There was never any racial exclusivity anout who could play the game. Or even gender excluvity. WotC couldn't stop remaking the game. Now its completely broken at 5e etc. I have 5e but don't like it much at all and generally play other systems now that are more old school in approach.

So yeah, it's not dungeons and dragons anymore but dillusions and diversities.

Secrets of Blackmoor is well worth a watch. It's amazing to see the original guys sort of stumbling their way towards something they didn't actually realize they were creating. Literally emergent game play.

[Our Inclusivity Board Reviewed this] 🤮🤮

Even if WOTC put this together and marketed it perfectly, I still couldn't justify the purchase due to the price point. Will I have any FOMO? Maybe a little, but not enough to motivate me to spend the money. Our wants will never be satisfied, and my KS backings prove this, but there is a fine line between collecting and hording. If we support these expensive items, the price will continue to rise as "whatever the market will bear". We have to take into account with our wallets the price we are willing to pay. I'm thinking more like $50.00 for this kind of product and even then, it's not exactly an instant buy. Additionally, if you take into account all the things WOTC has done and the attitude of "don't give money to people who hate you", then the choice is clear. I've watched 'Secrets of Blackmoor'. It's really good. I streamed it which is even cheaper than buying.

Way overpriced and late to the party. The history of OD&D and it's descendants has been documented virtually to death already. I've got a dozen books on the topic sitting on my shelf. At this point, I wouldn't spend $1 on another book that it going to tell me something I've read 20 times already.

The Dreams In Gary's Basement is a documentary coming out (soon?) Its on KS and continues to move towards fulfillment.

TSR included a harlot's random encounter table for crissakes! I am a Black woman who played DnD from 4th grade on, a neighbor kid at my dining room table called the Drow n*****r elves! My parents were life wtf! I still have nearly all my books and even bought some more in the early 2000s out of sentimental attachment. DnD affected my life in only positive ways but I as a Black woman had to FIGHT for the respect I deserved in that world of entitled white males. I personally feel that anything after TSR is not true D&D, and it isn't, I however support 100% wotc cleansing DnD of its racist and misogynist past and making it a healthy place for EVERYONE.

Entirely agree, only truly dedicated "grognards" would be willing to pay $100 for a version of this that respects Gygax and Arneson. Your recommended alternatives are superior in every way. "Slaying the dragon", "Playing at the world" and "the elusive shift" could also perhaps be relevant.

I think we all make one hero-type character who embodies ourselves It is normally a king, wizard, etc, somewhere in his own land who may get pulled out for a one-off night play with a friendly DM for some destroying monsters every year or so the rest of the time we talk big about the character and we play characters who are not us in any way. we are part of a team trying to survive and make memories with loved ones and newcomers alike. memories that truly last a lifetime. old school D&D players have always been the most inclusive. we never left anyone out and begged people to play. Nerd geeks special ed stoners jocks could all sit together around D&D which made it harder to bully at school the next day the kid you liked to play D&D with the night before and end up becoming lifelong friends. bye, the way I was the bullied special ed kid .D&D not only gave a lonely 8-year-old a social life but I was able to learn math, reasoning skills, teamwork, social skills, maps, charts, graphs, reading, high-level comprehension college-level thinking, and older friends. I was put in regular classes at school and went on to get a degree all because my older cousins and their friends let a little kid play one Christmas night at a family gathering and they continued to not only teach me D&D but became like a big family raising me teaching me baseball, and basketball. helping with homework, taught me about girls and then later women and marriage taught me about different cultures movies comics the list is endless. I was also privy to all the big people talk in the family and sat at the big kid table. that comes in handy lol D&D welcomed me in from being the dumb bunny my hated nickname to an accepted part of a huge gaming family many of us still talk today. I owe D&D a lot including keeping me sane and giving me a healthy outlet as a teen and geeks always got the good stuff from the stoners. lol. I'm sure my life would not have had the quality and sense of adventure if not for D&D who said D&D never had happy endings!

Wizbro are making trash and talking trash. It’s disgusting that they can’t just let Gygax and the old crew have their day and take a bow on the anniversary of a product they have been making millions off the back of. Shame.

I'm lucky enough to own vol. 1 of Strategos original copy...1880...in good condition...

They should feel inferior, they are.

How far they’ve fallen he means! They’re clearly not fans!

I was torn over this but W.o.t.C deserve FECK ALL. Going to get round to buying Tonnisborg. But this books amazing I would love this. Regardless of W.o.t.C.. But can't warant spending a $100 on corps.

The reality is they are alienating themselves from their base of support thinking it will garner them a new base of support, but in reality they will have no base of support and the game will go bankrupt.

Thanks for making this video. It is a more balance, level-headed approach, to addressing how "Wizards of The Coast," have injected modern identity politics, in an escapist fantasy Role-Playing Game series, with very negative results. Without the initial work of Gary Gygax & Dave Aneson, WotC may not even exist today; and all of the critics of the original "Dungeons & Dragons", would not be even working there. Some of the current WotC staff, may very well have a certain level of professional envy/jealously, against the original creators of D&D, for whatever reason.

Watching this I now remember why I don't watch WOTC lead videos, the smugness was off the charts. It did make me laugh about D&D "becoming" inclusive, hell when I started playing at school we were desperate for players, if you were interested you could jump in regardless of race, gender, creed, etc. But yeah, I'm definitely not spending $100 on a book like that, and-as you say-there are plenty of retroclones to get that old school D&D feel 👍

7:27 I must have missed this part on the original video. How are they legally making their own versions of DND? They should be making other games. Is Jason saying WotC is claiming all the OSR as DND, and may intend legal action aganst the OSR publishers? 🤔 Nobody ever called the Vampire game as DND. I think Jason thinks DND means TRPG. 🤔 Hasbro, WotC, nor Jason get to call all TRPGs as DND. Sounds like more OGL shlnanigans are on the horizon. 🤔

The only reason I can see getting this $100 book, and it is indeed a weak reason, is that the version of original D&D in this book is of the very first draft of the game... Not the one available at Drivethru/DMsguild and not even the version in the original woodgrain boxes of 1974. So, no, not worth the price tag, but it is a point worth mentioning IMHO. YMMV.

the purpose of D&D was to allow people to play out the kind of characters and settings they found in fantasy literature that they read and loved....In the 1980s, when i played AD&D, it was mostly boys but girls played too! ... there were boys playing female characters and girls playing male characters...the WoTC versions of the game, with all the rules crunch and none of the processes (aka mechanics for hex crawl, dungeon crawl, and town), and too many player options and too few DM tools, and that tired Forgotten Realms setting, my god make it stop!!!. The best thing WoTC did was streamline the core mechanics like getting rid of THAC0 and those awful combat tables from the older games...... I saw the interview before i saw your vid, and my first impression of Mr. Tondro was, "oh he's full of himself, isn't he?" (the John Peterson is a great historian, and "he came to us..." bullshit he throws around, leaching off Peterson's accomplishments to establish credibility)... .Today, I think the best game is Dolmenwood, and there is no diversity problem in it even if it has a modernized Moldvay BX as the core.

Just downloaded the PDF from the National Archives...wow thank you

Explains a lot about how Hasbro messed up the movie with their actions blaming the movie rather than themselves!

"Muh inclusivity reviews".....

People like him are just full of hate.

Why cant we just enjoy the damn game? Lol the moment i saw they changed race to “species” i was out. Im sticking with becmi and adnd 2e

Shame honestly thought that book could be good!

I learned Dungeon & Dragons from E. Gary Gygax himself (and run my RPG his home version way). The implications Jon Peterson is stating is that "fighting men" is politically incorrect? D&D was a historically based wargame, turned into a role-playing game. No one has the right to change history and call it "fighting persons". That is if it based on a historical platform. If using Blackmoor or Greyhawk, than we have a fantasy campaign world, and you follow what those creators (Arneson or Gygax). But again, they had it based on history (future history if you spoke with Gygax as HE told me Greyhawk was the far, far future past Boothill, Gangbuster, Top Sercret, Gamma World. Then Greyhawk, with Star Frontiers the future of that world. But there was no discrimination, race or sex, in any of Dungeon & Dragons. Just what was in history. No different than what race or sexism is in H.P. Lovecraft works used by Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu.

Wotc is a crew of Hasbro flunkies. And I don't even need to swear. That was damning enough. If you buy anything Hasbro sourced, you are the problem. Don't like that? Tough. If you want to play 5th, fine, download it. You have internet, you have a brain. Let Google offer you the game. Just don't give money to Hasbro.

Yes, the book IS overpriced, thank you for pointing out alternatives. One can (legally) get the original 1972 draft of the game, at the web archive btw, it was published there because it is in the procedural documents All right, and now some rant. As an old gamer who went through much of it, but has played with people who who experienced it all, I think I know what I am talking about... Let us go through this... 1974 - Alternative combat system... "OH NO! Never ever! We use Chainmail! (or Braunstein...)" 1975 - Greyhawk: "The Thief destroyed the game!11elven!"-outrage and "nobody needs those ability tables - I will never buy anything TSR anymore!" - Buys Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry and Holmes... 1977 - 1979 - AD&D... "Gary is becoming autoritarian like hell, nobody needs unified rules, I use the MM for my D&D game, but I will not by anything TSR ever again" ... buys PHB and DMG anyway and keeps the Dragon (and Dungeon) Magazine subscription anyway forever... Still waiting for T1 anyway - ah, there it is... 1986 - "Oh no, the Dragon Lady bullied Gary out of TSR, I will never ever buy anything TSR again... and the Survival Guides and Unearthed Arcana are crap anyway." yes, Lorraine did do that. No question. But I know SO many oldschool people of the Classic and Traditional style who say so... they continued buying I-series and started appreciating Forgotten Realms anyway (and the Rules Cyclopedia and Challenger Series too...) 1989 - 15th Anniversary, introducing 2e: "ThIS iS nO lOnGeR d&D aNyMoRe" - "wait, wasn't your last game about Times and Troubles and didn't you have speciality priests and spheres in it?" - "ehem, yes, err, this ehem is from Dragonlance Adventures - and this is 1e strictly speaking" - "I see..." 1994 - 20th Anniversary - Revised 2e "They revised it - AGAIN! The game is broken now... - take a guess, right... buys Player- and DM Options anyway, and the revised Dark Sun setting too. And the Post-FtA Greyhawk stuff too "At last, Greyhawk is playable again" 1997 - 25th Anniversary, check. "Oh no, WotC bought TSR, I'll never buy anything D&D again, their M:TG destroyed the hobby" - and where have all the Silver Anniversary boxedsets gone (so much on overpriced products, whatever...) 2000 - Third Edition: *Sees ascending AC and THaC0 gone: TIILT* - "no more, no more" - but still has the first day edition with a mint Character Creator CD and Monsters in the back... ALL PRAISE the OGL! 2003 - Threeandahalf: "ehem, yeah right, they - err - fixed combat and - ehem - the skills ... Sanctification of the OGL continues, Apotheosis prepared... 2006/2007: Osric and Lablord: "What is that for??? I only play according to originals!!" - Blue Box landing next to the Grognard: "Hey guy, listen, this is a recording of you, from 17 years ago..." - "Ehm, Errrr...." 2008 - FOUR: "What a crappy design" - well yes, but it is actually the only balanced D&D ever... nowadays praising its superiority to 5e because... revoking OGL, Pathfinder, Paizo, Dragon Magazin ... remember the outrages? "Never again"... Now... we could continue this forever... 2014 and 5e, its additions and revisions, extras and Neo-Trad/OC-Style vs OSR Style (which is a modernist invention and NOT the Classic and Trad Style of Gygax/Arneson/Holmes/Hickman. Not even Finch, Marshall and and Proctor intended the development...) Many people from todays OSR-movement are heavily attacking WotC (and Hasbro foremost...) for whatever they have been doing, now the tantrum is about what is "inclusivity". The Culture War has become worse and escalated massively. WTF has become of the player base? Nobody was excluded back in the days, RIGHT! If I kept my mouth shut about being trans and liking all Genders (oh no - I used the word, slay me on sight...). Being called a pervert and groomer was the least offensive, one of the more "uninclusive" things was being threatened by a father - whom I know since the 1990- like "don't you touch my children", grapping my shirt. Whatever, WTF! I never did, why should I - but one has to be careful whom one comes out to. Those books REALLY would not pass a test about inclusion... One could be happy if people did not beat you up, if you kept your mouth shut about being trans, gay, bi, whatever. But this is not "inclusion" or "tolerance", it was forcing people into invisibility. Seen someone kissing a boy/girl (or both boy and girl), or crossdressing? NO way, out you were, and you were out of the game. BHAM. Being out in public was a NoGo, it was NOT just keep it out of the Game. At least this is what happened to ME and friends of mine. I hope you experienced otherwise or realy were as inclusive as you say you are. But this was not what I experienced. Instead of assumptions and insinuations ("HATE", "SABOTAGE" etc), we should question our own bigotry and stop complaning about "virtue signaling", SJWs etc. but we were oh-so-tolerant back in the days. Many were not. Many are not today.

As a younger man (mid 20s) I got so bored with the modern 5th edition. I recently picked up dungeon crawl classics and have been having a much better time DMing as well as just reading the content out there. OSR is how the game was meant to be played. I can feel my players thinking the same thing.

I agree with pretty much all of your commentary on that Hasbro/WotC video that was promoting the soon-to-arrive $99 "Making of Dungeons & Dragons 1970-1977 book. Your suggestions for alternative sources of text & art are clear & brilliant. I like the idea that there are reasonable alternatives for researching players to build their own history collection. Yet I also like the idea that there can be a $99 printed version that will be safe in public & private libraries. 50 (or a 100) years from now, those copies will be also good to have around. Perhaps there might even be thrilling serialized streaming "movies" about the courageous corporate employees that risked their jobs (and publication credits) to make sure the book (and its promotional video) were actually published back in ancient 2024. A person can look at the snarky parts of the video's closing, and maybe see that those words (and facial expressions) may have been also addressed to the corporate officers assigned to OK the book publication and the promo video. Getting a library-quality collection of papers (a key sample of the RPG-History treasure) may have been worth the risk to some courageous corporate dungeon explorers.

I have no desire to buy anything WotC makes since 2018. If I want to play D&D, I just pull out the AD&D books. There are way better modern games out there these days. You don't need WotC.

People interested in Jon Peterson's books might grab it. His books are interesting and well done. Interesting just for the original documents inside either. Commentary from WoTC? I can produce my own critical thinking, so it's useless to me. If it can trick WoTC audience so 5E fans grab it, cool. If the 5E fan wanting to have the confirmation his Hogwarts Cantina or such is better then realize that the proto-D&D campaign was WAY MORE deep and rich, made and run by people WAY MORE intelligent, smart, and literate, kudos. Smart move.

It is a form of what C.S. Lewis called chronological snobbery. Let them have whatever this nightmare company they’ve built. We’ll take the hobby instead.

"Why has it not been a problem for 45 years" I mean, it really HAS been a problem for 45 years and the 90s seeing TSR getting beaten bloody by little upstart indies was part of the scene drift away from the implicit and backgrounded biases of D&D that WotC tried to reverse course on. I am not personally a WotC fan, and think the WotC editions of D&D are the worst editions of the game by far compared to the TSR editions (and prefer OD&D/0e myself over and above any subsequent edition, tho I like B/X and BECMI and 1e quite a lot as well, 2e more lukewarm on but even 2e is miles better than 3 to 5 and "OneD&D" lol) so I'm not saying this from the perspective of some WotC fangirl or anything, I was there for the 90s ttrpg scene as a kid and got to see how people gravitated towards games they "saw themselves in" (which doesn't mean the "self-inserts only" thing you seem to think it means, though I don't begrudge you thinking that since a lot of WotC edition players do genuinely seem to think that way despite that not being what critiques of TSR D&D by women, people of colour and LGBT folks in the 90s was about). As someone who played with exactly the folks who sought less white guy power fantasy ttrpg experiences in the 90s and early 00s before WotC fully established their dominance, seeing oneself in the game was about narrative perspectives, framing, tone, themes, etc, etc and not just "artwork shows a pink haired character with darker skin" or whatever. These were substantive critiques in the 90s, and they remain substantive today even if WotC executes on those critiques extremely poorly lol Not saying I disagree with some of your critiques of WotC and this product here, but it is a bit blinders-on and narrow-minded to either ignore the substantive critiques or misread them so badly.

Every step that WotC takes shows either how little they understand what drives the real TTFRPG community , or they simply don't care about anything that gets between them and their profit margin. What they fail to realize , is that those of us who played DandD before they existed are what gave them the opportunity to rise , and after it (DandD) no longer shows up on the black side of the ledger and they drop it , those that WE taught to play and love the game will continue to do so without anyneed of them or their products. What the original designers embedded in their offerings was to search for a better game in life - books , comics , films , art , music - what our very characters were doing within the game - to seek out things beyond our current knowledge , and sift the results for what interested us , and to invest our own games with those treasures. They will never get it , and I don't really care if they do - I hope to keep exploring and encouraging others to do so as long as I am capable - free of charge.

Great video as always. I'm late to this party. Lots of good points in the video and comments. Great alternatives that were recommended. Shocking that WotC would overcharge and insult their target demographic for a product. Shocking. Not to worry. I'm sure that the 2% of the population they're targeting, you know, the D&D "community" that doesn't actually play D&D, will make up for the immense financial losses they're experiencing.

After the OGL debacle in early 2023, I decided to never buy another WotC product. That said, this product made me second guess that and maybe buy one more book from them to get this piece of history. Now, of course, there's no chance of me buying it. Nice job Hasbro.

About the price point. Absolutely right. I might have picked it up at half that price and if my shelves weren't already overflowing with books but 100$ for a book in this economy? Forget about it.

I hate the idea that if a writer team doesn't include someone with your skin colour teh game sin't for player opf this skin color. As if Mike Pondsmith didn't exist. He published Mekton in 1986. He didn't wait for Hasbro to hire sensibility readers.

When I wanted to read a history of TSR or D&D, I picked up Game Wizards by Jon Peterson and Slaying the Dragon by Ben Riggs.

Welcome to the religion of Wokeness. DnD is godawful now. WotC has ruined and spit upon what made DnD great all in the name of DEI. The video game industry is also going through this nonsense. Hell, even Joe Manganiello recently talked about the terrible direction WotC was taking the IP now.

Yah! I think I'm done with them. First time I ever realistically considered this. I have enough books. Enough material. And if I didn't I can play something else. I never felt or saw inclusion issues. I always found in the "bad old days" that they were very inclusive. The guy sounds like he is about to burst out crying based on some childhood trauma that probably has nothing to do with this game. I'm tired of this stupid culture war intrusion in a fine hobby that has always been inclusive. I want no more of it.

Its weird that a game that always let you play virtually anything you could imagine needed to be "more inclusive". The inclusivity seems to consist of completely unnecessary virtue signalling. WOTC are pygmies standing on the shoulders of giants.

I'll pick it up at Olie's.

Don’t give your money to DEI companies.😅

I watched an interesting interview with Sandy Peterson yesterday and he was saying that in Japan Call of Cthulhu is most popular with Japanese women. The game sells more copies in Japan to Japanese women then all sales in North America. Now does Chaosium gas all the Japanese women in order to support diversity? or do they cater to their audience?

Dude, stop hating. D&I is a big topic today, so they had to think about how to address it. And even though I haven’t looked at the book yet, the way they say they address it sounds totally reasonable. I watched the video before I watched this one and found nothing hateful or disingenuous about it. It’s like you’re trying to get offended.

Literally their efforts to exclude the very audience responsible for the success those 50 years they’re trying to claim credit for highlights their ignorance!

If the book is not preachy, is smyth sewen, and acid free paper, it would be worth the $100. Otherwise, I will pass.

Can't wait to see the book on Ollie's shelves for $10. Maybe I'll buy it then and try to slog past all the hate and garbage to see if there's something interesting somewhere in it.

Not at all surprising. Wouldnt put a penny towards this crap.

I do not play nor buy anything but basic D&D I have been playing for over 42 yrs I don't need to spend another penny in my lifetime and still not run out of material our imagination is our only limitation!

These Bozos would be nothing if it weren’t for Gygax and Arneson.

Too tired right now to watch, so in case I dont wake up, here is what I posted on the original video on the DND channel... In the first 20 seconds they mention Gygax, not to thank him, as the ommittedi the THANK YOU video, but to insult him. "Gygax was so cheap, he put a post card stamp on an index card." There is no such thing as a post card stamp. Stamps could be used for anything. Postmarks used to cancel stamps would say post card rate so postal sorters in the 70s knew it was just a single piece and they had not damaged the mail losing the envelope or other parts of the post. 🤬 Then near the end, they make sure to insult Dave and Gary again. Remember, Jason Tondro was one of the leaders of unionizing Paizo, then quit Paizo to go work at WotC. He wad a medieval literature professor before working at Paizo. So he has spent his life saying historical things are racist, as most history teachers have done for 50+ years. Acting like an archeaologist digging up the past looking at it through a modern lense to say how wrong the past was. Not even trying to hear from living people today about things. 800k people are still alive that are veterans of WWII. Do historians seek them out to ask first hand knowledge? No. 3 million+ veterans are still alive from Korean war. Again, never asking living people about it, just repeating what they saw in M.A.S.H. 🙄 History teachers are the worse people to write about history, because they blindly believe what is written in text books they teach from, never able to do research or ask questions. Nor do they allow anyone to question what is presented in a text book or "docunentary". Jason Tondro proves why the education system was ruined half a century ago, and all "historians" can do is rewrite history for their own agenda. ...Of course, I am blocked on the official DND channel, so you wont see that post there because I have the OGL icon on my RU-vid logo thing. 🙄

The virtue signalling is strong here, these folks are just pedalling an agenda "inclusivity" is a lie. They have made the game stale. dull and lifeless.By reprinting early products this is the best thing W.o.tC have done. The older editions and 'OSR.

I was so annoyed about this unimportant dude and the vileness he spit out with every word and expression. WotC can not die fast enough.

Well said.

There is also The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg and the Secrets of Blackmoor documentary.