Thread by @rdonoghue

Here is a weird, old man thing that haunts my thinking.

Prior to D&D, to my mind, there was a high, hard wall between D&D and all other RPGs. Or, I suppose more technically, between TSR and all other RPGs.

It is weird to think about in retrospect. I mean, there were absolutely plenty of not-D&D games, some of which got pretty big. And there were some real oddballs that popped up from time to time on the D&D side of the TSR wall.

But it was totally look but don't touch. Go nuts in your home game maybe - no one resents your three inch binder of house rules, because that's pretty normal - but you're not going to enter this space.

The impact of the OGL was, at least to my eyes, so incredibly transformational that it's genuinely difficult to even *think* about the time before. It would be a dozen tweets to even TRY to explain all the things it meant.

But also...3e was nuts, man. It had these designers running it who were from THIS side of the wall. It was almost like....it was the same hobby.

That sounds melodramatic and laughable, and it totally is, but honest to god it was what it felt like.

Now, obviously, this was not a universal experience. I was at such and such an age and such and such a level of exposure. I'm sure there are folks who probably felt the communities already overlapped, and while 3e was a big deal, it was not for those reasons.

But, for me, there's definitely an era where TSR was on this high hill. RPGs, other RPGs, were accessible things made by interesting people, but TSR made PRODUCTS which came down from on high.

(Note: I did not live in the midwest)

(Ugh, first post did not call out D&D 3e so this whole thing probably makes even LESS sense than I suspect it does)

All right, this sounds like nonsense, so here's the short version.

It felt shitty when I was in a hobby which was "D&D and also those other games" and I really like it when I am in a hobby of "RPGs, like D&D and also.." and I am fearful of swinging back to the old ways.