The D&D Youtube Scandal Gets Worse 

There's no such thing as a "hidden scandal." If people don't care, it's not a scandal.

Seems to me like you're desperately trying to manufacture a scandal where one really doesn't exist.

Dimension 20, has had other playing systems like Star Wars 5e for Starstruck Odyssey, Shriek Week used the Mythic System and the Kids on Bikes/Brooms system for Mentopolis & Misfits and Magic. Fey and Flowers used both D&D 5e and Good Society. Most people watching content aren't necessarily caring what system is used, they are there for the storytelling aspect of these channels and D&D is the most prolific game out. Critical Roll also plays various system, including my beloved Deadlands and WoD.

Wait, so you’re telling me the intern they told to cut a tabletop video included the most popular content creators? And the most popular content creators all play the most popular tabletop game? It really is a scandal.

The term "D&D" is becoming like Kleenex or Q-Tips...it's becoming the generic name for RPGs. For example, my gaming group has never played D&D, but novices that want to join up say "Hey, I hear you have a D&D group..." I think more people outside the hobby are familiar with the term "D&D" than the term "RPG."

Is this entire channel just bad clickbait?

Funny how Hasbro essentially has a monopoly, yet can't manage to profit off of it.

I'm half way through this video and still don't know what they are talking about about or what scandle. Everytime this creator pops up it's ranting a complaining about something about DnD. I suppose this is a left over part of my algorithm from the OGL crap, but jeeze stop fishing for bad and scraping that barrel just to be that content creator that "is never going to forgive DnD.

Hasbro hired the Pinkertons to visit the RU-vid offices.

I literally don't see the issue with this 😐

So obviously, yes, there's more than just D&D. I know. I used to work as a freelancer for White Wolf. And as such, I know that when White Wolf began doing D&D content under the original OGL, the D&D stuff almost instantly outsold anything in the WoD. The last OSR report we have from Roll20 put D&D as 55% of all games. Nothing else cracked 10%. (Well, except for 'uncategorised' at 15%. Which could very well be more D&D games.) I love other games. My favourite RPG ever is Castle Falkenstein. The best game I've played in years was Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast. But of COURSE RU-vid focused entirely on D&D. For all intents and purposes, our hobby IS Dungeons & Dragons. It's almost impossible to overestimate the share of the market they represent.

So what was the "scandal?"

I didn't even know the RU-vid channel existed. I think their own algorithm might be screwing them over or I've just been very lucky.

Complains about Dungeons and Dragons, Channel name is a riff on Dungeons and Dragons. Complains about RU-vid using well known channels that feature D&D content in their video, puts the same well known creators in her thumbnail for the video. Complains that there's more to the hobby than D&D, the only video I can see on the channel that could be said to not be about D&D is about Jocat....who rose to prominence because of their D&D content. This all comes off as very disingenuous.

Note to Editor: Blink twice if she is holding you against your will and/or you are chained up and forced to edit. We will send you help.

I find it funny that two of the people pictured on the thumb nail of that vid are also on RU-vid in a few vampire the masquerade games.

Dangit, you only showed the "yellow wizard" for a tenth of a second, but that's all it takes.

There's no way that D&D Starter Set product placement wasn't paid for. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole thing was just a big ad paid for by Hasbro.

that YT video just goes to show that D&D is still the elephant in the room, TTG=DnD for many people

Brennan Lee Mulligan is not Lawful Neutral....

I see your concerns. Personally, I came to youtube to learn more about D&D, and through the work of the community to expose lots of games now mostly run DCC and Shadowdark, neither of which I would have ever heard of if I hadn't been on "D&D" youtube.

So the scandal is about how capitalism works... Got it.

Made the switch to Pathfinder/Starfinder and I feel good about it.

Is it me or does it sound like critter everytime it should be creator?

Thought labeling Ginny Di an exclusive D&D RU-vidr was a bit much, since I've watched and found value in a lot of her content, and I've played other TTRPGs exclusively for 3 years (twice weekly). However, she DOES indeed stick "D&D" in the title of damn near everything. Even miniatures painting! I think you're right that it's about bowing to the algorithm.

Ran a Traveller demo for my gaming group at the FLGS recently. Mongoose 2e, Seth Skorkowski’s reworked Death Station the adventure. We only had 2.5 hours. They’re d&d players so they grokked a dungeon crawl in space. Didn’t quite do everything or find everyone on the Death Station but the players all had a good time and the girl who’s been interested in Traveller is now psyched to run it! A victory for the Third Imperium.

There is only 5e wdym? Oh hai Seth! Gods I love Seth

This is why I'm for Paizo and Pathfinder. Mythkeeper, Black Dragon Gaming back in the Day, Inn of Planar Crossroads, and Narrative Declaration are all interesting people big and small, who are all so thorough and expressive in their own ways that they show a love of the setting and the game.

A Puffin Forrest segment would had been cool .

OK, maybe a bit of a tangent, but the video got me wondering if the companies who push hard to have their brands become synonymous with a term might actually lose their valuable brand name and have it effectively taken away from them through language evolution. I'm not sure how it works in other countries, but in the US, no one thinks of the copier company when they want their documents "xeroxed" or need to blow their nose into a "kleenex". Is it possible we could see RPG replaced with D&D? I can hear it now. "What D&D do you play?" "Oh, I like lots of D&Ds. I play Call of Cthuluhu, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Vampire, you name it."

Meanwhile, we Shadowrun fans are quietly plodding along behind the scenes. For everyone living in Chicago, I'd think about moving in the next 2 decades or so - we're ahead of schedule in some areas.

Make sure to block click baiting channels like this (click on the three dots -> do NOT recommend this channel). They are worthless.

I look forward to your principled 10 minute discussion on GURPS Martial Arts.

Dimension 20 regularly uses/combines different TTRPG rulesets in their campaigns. They've obviously used D&D 5e more than others, but like you said in the video, it's by far the most popular ruleset. I don't follow the other creators shown in RU-vid's video, so I wouldn't know if they also use other rulesets.

So what I'm hearing is, I should start a Shadowrun RU-vid channel? Is that where we're at?

The TTRPG genre is massive and I hope more get the spotlight to grow. Unfortunately in the US D&D is top as per your pie chart. Ironically in Japan its all about Call of Cthulu. I would love to see big youtube groups like Ginni Di and Critical Roll play other TTRPGs. Daggerheart will likely help expand players interests but hopefully they look beyond just Daggerheart and see the vast pool of TTRPGs.

It sounds like RU-vid is doing what our parents did when referring to every video game as a “Nintendo”. While I sympathize with a lack of representation, I choose to write it off as yer average boomer shit

Welcome to the internet, a collective experience of circling the Algorithm bowl. 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

Becca Scott deserves more than a blink and you'll miss it inclusion

Mutants and Mastermind, Shadowrun, Vaesan, Dark Heresy, uhh… Let me check my nextcloud storage for more to rattle off.

Not to be shitty but 4 of your last 5 vids are titled basically the same "This D&D scandal got worse"

What amazes me most -- Dimension 20 does a whole lot of not D&D campaigns, but not just that, they have their own streaming service that i have s feeling RU-vid would rather you not know about. Which is why I feel like this video was just a "chuck it at an intern to get it made" video with little oversight.

I hate when D&D is used as a synonym for ttrpgs as a whole. It's just one freakin' game.

Yeah it took me a while to leave d&d after all the bad things that happened. Since then my main grp is playing Pathfinder 2e, I gm'ed both a CoC and a Tales from the Loop mini campaign. And next I'll try Cyberpunk. It's the best way to enjoy ttrpgs since it mixes thinks up and opens people to different ways of play and roleplay. Man now I want to buy vampire the masquerade.

Turns out the real bad guy was ol' man Capitalism all along

I started TTRPG's when my friends during high school wanted me to get into D&D. I didn't care for the rules,and it was midevil Fantasy. I was more into fantasy like Dark Crystal,but my main interest was Space Opera,started with Star Wars. So when West End Games (yeah I was a teenager during the 80's) came out with the Star Wars TTRPG in 1987, they got me the main rules and first source book. I GMed Star Wars(along with TTRPG like Heavy Gear and Jovin Chronicles. As well as Mekton 2 and Mekon Z) By the 2000s my friends went to other places. When I tried to find others that wanted to play the TTRPGs I had, no one wanted to play them. D&D and anything useing the D20 rule set was the only TTRPGS they wanted to run. So I lost interest hobby really fast. Nothing has changed.

D&D was cool before the theater kids raided.

“This is the Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone. Mayday, Mayday.” Traveller: Science Fiction Adventure in the Far Future By Marc Miller

This channel is pure toxic.

2:40 Did I miss something? What did you censor and why?

Sorry but this is not really an issue as yeah D&D is the giant in the room. It is not RU-vid that has to make others more popular and guess what I have gotten to find lets plays for CoC, Vampire and Mechwarrior without searching for them directly. Dimension 20 is not a totally D&D group (they have used a couple of systems and when doing 5e tend to alter it a fair bit) and have a network of their own. Look I get it Hasbro is more then a bit 💩 why the CEOs of WotC, Hasbro and D&D all being complete immoral scumbags unable to make a near monopoly make money without insulting fans, but YT is not nearly the issue this time. And as Critical Role does different things and D&D creators get their systems out I expect things to change on YT.

When the OGL scandal broke last year, a bunch of D&D creators expanded their horizons and started publishing videos on other games. And then promptly stopped publishing those videos when they got a quarter of the views, or less. There's no getting out of the well unless you can afford to dig yourself out yourself, and RU-vid's business model is specifically designed around not letting you.

yeah, but, the Daggerheart and the MCDM were both brought about by creators that got 'famous' on youtube for delivering what? D&D

Not gonna lie, I was not expecting you to stuff the whole character sheet in your mouth. Kept thinking she's going to stop right? Right? Any time now? That's commitment, good job.

This channel should just change its name to SCANDAL GETS WORSE 😂

I had no idea the problem was this bad. I'm constantly frustrated by the hyperfocus on D&D when there are so many other fantastic (I would argue superior) RPGs out there. I knew D&D thrived largely on momentum, being the granddaddy of RPGs, but now the current state of things makes a lot more sense.

The only scandal was able to pin point in this pointless rant was mentioning Dimension 20 while showing the table from Critical Roll

they could have at least pretended to not be dnd laser focused. There is such a thing as a Cyberpunk community on this platform, a Cthullu community and many other TTRPG systems that i don't even think about mentioning

Well, I don't think it matters. Everyone that starts with DnD will soon find new RPGs to play as well. In the end, people will always find something to bitch and moan about.

As a Scandinavian growing up in a very diverse RPG landscape of local titles (from the early 1980s) and a market not entirely dominated by dungeons & dragons even in the 80s it's been painful to watch the USA hobby landscape be completely obliterated by the D&D so far as no one even seems to mention the RPG hobby, it's all D&D no matter what when mentioning the hobby of roleplaying games.

i passionately hate gms who are overly extraverted obnoxious screamers overacting like hell.

Isn’t the real question, how much did Alphabet get from Hasbro for the product placement?

Look, I agree about Ginny D and DingoDoodles being D&D focused, but Dimension20? To say that they're only or purely D&D focused ignores the countless games they've played in other systems. Granted, those "other systems" are most often "Kids on Bikes", but that's still another system aside from D&D.

I will say this: I have made D&D and Critical Role adjacent videos, and none of them got anywhere near the traction my World of Darkness content ultimately ended up getting. I think the D&D market is very oversaturated, and WoD has kind of become my niche. It is limited in growth, but more enjoyable to me.

The WHOLE POINT of roleplaying is to put yourself in someone else's shoes. This requires some things, like empathy, and critical thinking and most importantly imagination. What this company is trying to promote is the opposite. I used to love dozens of different systems back in the day and funnily enough I never owned any D&D. I had MERP, WHFRP, Traveller, Twilight 2000, Paranoia, Call of Cthulu, Judge Dredd, Stormbringer, and a dozen others. But not D&D for some reason.

It's because D&D is the known IP and holds like 80% of the rpg market

I cant stand listening this for a whole 2 min. Its crappy, difficult to follow and uninformative.

I get that people are annoyed by one megalithic corporation gargling the balls of another megalithic corporation. What I don't get is why anyone is in any way surprised.

This is a dumb thing to be mad about. Dungeons and Dragons is the Kleenex of TTRPGs. Its practically a household name. When you describe a TTRPG a randos immediate thought is going to be "Oh so its like a Dungeons and Dragons thing?". This has been the case for some time. Dont get me wrong. Other TTRPGs deserve their limelight, but the fact of the matter is that D&D is the most popular TTRPG on average. So its always going to be the biggest focus you find. More people are playing it than other games. Naturally, AS A CORPORATION TRYING TO MAKE MONEY youtube is going to focus on the majority thats driving traffic for them. Is it fair? Absolutely not. But our capitalistic hellscape is far from fair. But yeah, other TTRPGs just arent as popular or as big as D&D has gotten. Hasbro has a monopoly of sorts, at least in terms of attention, so its kinda delusional to think theyd have a big or even equal focus on Warhammer or Cthulhu or Blades in the Dark. This is a dumb thing to be mad about. Its like if Star Wars trading card fans got pissed that youtube did a video on TCGs and only showed MTG YuGiOh and Pokemon. There are REAL problems and issues to be mad about, and this aint it.

Yes, RU-vid sucks for so many reasons. We get it. Now someone, create a competing platform that isn't a complete hellscape for the reasons listed in this video.

I don't appreciate the clickbait. Thankfully, RU-vid has a "don't recommend channel" option. Click the 3 dots below a video that was recommended to you and you'll find it. Good day yall!😊

The Exalted feature earned a subscribe from me. Genuinely, thank you.

DnD is the gateway drug to table top roleplaying. I guess people like drama, but I just play what I want and have fun.

Forget Smallville, if you want an obscure RPG based on a tv show do Dallas The RPG.

We focus on non D&D, and its always frustrating how much D&D gets the spotlight, its become playing "The Nintendo." Nothing against it, but like, there are SO many other games that absolutely deserve a spotlight. Like streaming on TikTok, Twitch, and RU-vid is a PAIN, because when we do our Cypher System actual play, or a charity stream, WE HAVE TO LABEL IT AS D&D! Its infuriating. This was a great video!

The only real scandal is why would anyone come to RU-vid for TTPRG discussion. Or the vast majority of social media for that matter. But this, this is not even remotely a scandal. As for what gets viewed, if you are relying on RU-vid to recommend what you want to watch, stop it. I save links to the people I follow in order of priority based on how much time I have to see if there is anything I want to watch. Beyond that I do specific searches for the content I want.

They’re gonna focus on what makes money.

Unfortunately half of RU-vid RPG'ler are nowadays just glorified advertisement vehicles for kickstarters .... of course without disclaiming the payments to find the Kickstarter of the day cool .....

Codega goes by They/Them

Jeeze. We get offended about anything these days.

Seems like a giant sour grapes video. RU-vid didn't mention me, so the video sucks.

GURPs MENTION!!! GURPs MENTIONED!!! OMG They did THE THING!!!!

Using Brennan and Ginny as clickbait for a non-scandal smh

I watched way too much of this before I realized the scandal is this video being worked up about a fake scandal.

To paraphrase Fat Bastard, "If it's not D&D, it's crap!"

Meh. There's no scandal here, just a reflection of the reality that "D&D" is the name of a specific game system, and also is the general term for TTRPGs that most of the world uses.

Calling this a scandal is just obnoxious clickbait

I don't even use the RU-vid homepage. Over the entire lifespan of the website I've probably visited the homepage roughly a grand total of 5ish times, nearly all of them via a misclick. I have my subscriptions, recommended under each video, the search bar, and manually seeking out channels from bookmarks/browser history.

sounds like a nothing burger

Most fun I've had in a TTRPG was playing a Traveler/Battletech hybrid, where we handle the RPG side via Traveler (where we're a freelancer mercenary/shipping/smuggling company) and our big combat setpieces via wargame on a hexgrid using Battletech. DnD 5e is...fine. I value it for its accessibility and ubiquity for getting people into the hobby at all...less so everything else about it.

Maybe we're thinking about this the wrong way. We can push this further, All TTRPGs are now DnD. Trademark generalisation, DnD trademark is lost. Freedom.

Please create captions. The AI is making a hash of it.

One thing that I hate about all of this is how seemingly the only way to push back against dnd having utter dominance in media spheres is to go into ultra consumer mode. Like, realistically how many RPGs can the average person even get into, if I want to see some of the more obscure RPGs that I like get more coverage then I need to either buy all the products, again, to increase their shelf mobility, and get an org together agitating to get more people to buy more stuff, OR buy more stuff from other more obscure games, and hope it works it's way back around to the games I wanted to hear about in the first place. The comodification of free time and hobbies is the real culprit here, and I can't feel motivated to be a "brand activist" when I'm also an activist activist, fighting for humans to have rights and shit. Hasbros has a monopoly which they can't even make profit from, which is hilarious for it's own reasons, but they are quickly becoming even worse than TSR was, and for many of the same reasons. It's frankly disgusting that they sell $40 dice towers made from laminated cardboard, and that's just the tip of the iceberg, most of the bunk they sell is not even related to playing DnD, it's all lifestyle products. And they still can't make line go up, lol. And what about dead RPGs? Hard to find a Dark Heresy video that isn't actual play or somebody just reading pages from the books to you, no chance, unless dark Heresy should happen to go viral, that YT is ever going to not punish creators for talking about that game, and it's even connected to the wider 40k bubble, which does get them many millions of clicks. I love that I can walk into most any room of people nowadays, and if I bring up DnD they know what I'm talking about, being able to remember the satanic panic, this never fails to bring me joy but... It's never been more comodified as an activity than it is now. And I hate that. There's gotta be a way to overcome this beyond just spawning a million different game companies and becoming super consumers of those alternative companies. I love OSR style games but, again, how many do we even have the capacity to play?

This is not a scandal. This is how big corporations and how the algorithm works.

I miss the day when I searched for RPG content and it was filled with people over the age of 35 that actually have been playing D&D for a couple of decades. Now it’s a bunch of young people. One person who felt bold enough to tell me the best way to do anything in RPGs admitted she had only been playing RPGs for 5 years and she only talks about D&D content. She was featured positively in this video so I won’t call her out as she may be friendly with this channel owner.

Full disclosure, I work Green Ronin Publishing- and the problem extends well past RU-vid. Facebook doesn't count TTRPGs as games, so if you don't stream a video game, you get zero streaming supoort- oh, unless we are counting "make people buy you stars" as support. Twitch? They will lump all the other TTRPGs together because they only count video games as real games that get categoriees. Do you know who has created a video game? D&D. So TTRPG streamers streaming D&D are easy to find, and other titles are just munged into one category. In trying to address the issue, I wrote Twitch's 3rd party group that manages the verification of "games" and thus, the categories on Twitch- they were downtight hostile. Twitch custimer support wasn't hostile at least, though I am not sure that dismissive ranks any better. At least you know they see you when they are being hostile. I have had an open CS ticket with Facebook about the fact that since they don't count anything else as a game unless it's a video game, means that we can't complete the requisite streaming hours to be included in their sparkly streamer program. Listen, some of my best friends have worked at Wizards. D&D as an entity is remarkable- and is responsible for training some of the best storytellers the world has ever known- but RU-vid, Twitch, and Meta are at best in a three way tie for companies that have a strangle hold on the TTRPG space because they dont see anyone but D&D. I say, youtube focusing on big streamers and D&D is no shock to me, plus I am a fan of a couple of those shows (Aabria Iyengar & Brennan Lee Milligan are perfect in every way)- but the crimes against TTRPGs didn't start with a PR shortcut in a RU-vid video. That's hardly surprising. It's all the other stuff that's really scandalous.

Imagine making videos over and over again about something you hate.

The video titling scandal gets worse…

Typical clickbait crap. I wish i could just block her videos.

What a stupid thing to be upset about