My Life As A Gamer: #BrandZero For Tabletop RPGs

#BrandZero shall be extended to tabletop RPGs. After this post, I will not talk about Wizards of the Coast, Games Workshop, or Paizo Publishing because none of them need the free marketing that even negative coverage of their actions and products provides to their brands.

There are so many alternatives to the Cult of Current Year D&D that are far more worthy of any and all attention I can provide. Furthermore there are other non-D&D tabletop RPGs, and some of them are not only fun but they also aren't made by SJW Death Cult cargo cultists and I'll mention them here from time to time. Yes, this includes long-time publishers such as Palladium Books (despite my own love-hate affair), R. Talsorian Games, and Steve Jackson Games.

Finally, DriveThruRPG is a SJW Converged company and therefore depreciated at the Retreat in favor of Amazon or other alternatives for online storefronts and will not be linked to here unless there is no other option.

The following is a short list of smaller players making D&D alternatives. This is not exhaustive.

• Lion & Dragon by the RPG Pundit.
• Labrynth Lord by Goblinoid Games.
• Basic Fantasy by Chris Gonderman.
• Dungeon Crawl Classics by Goodman Games.
• Swords & Wizardry by Frog God Games.
• White Box: Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game by Charlie Mason.
• Lamentations of The Flame Princess by James Raggi.
• Dungeon Fantasy by Steve Jackson Games. (Note: This is "Powered By GURPS", so if you want you can just whatever GURPS material you've got; this is just custom-tailored for out-of-the-box D&D-alike play.)
• The Fantasy Trip by Steve Jackson Games.
• Adventurer, Conqueror, King by Alexander Macris.
• Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game by Palladium Books. (Note: Palladium is doing their annual Christmas Grab Bag sale; for $50+S&H you get about $100 in product from a wish list you provide. This is a fantastic value and a great way to buy into any Palladium line cheap by tailoring your list.)
• Fantasy HERO for the HERO System by Steven S. Long. You will need the HERO System Rulebook(s) to play; this link goes to 6th Edition, but you may find 5th or 4th to your liking instead.

There are other worthy fantasy tabletop RPGs out there that are not meant to directly compete with D&D, and I'll bring them up in another post, but there is one other thing I want you to take away from this: Tabletop RPGs are a simple enough medium that you can just roll your own from scratch and never pay a penny to anyone for anything.. Jim Fear posted on Twitter about an old-timer who put out a fantastic parody product that emphasized this: XDM X-Treme Dungeon Mastery.

And yes, I do have a house system of my own that--it turns out--ain't that different in substance from what XDM did.

Tabletop RPGs began as a tinker's hobby, tinkering with wargame mechanics to flesh out a skirmish-scale wargame side-scenario (Braunstein) into a game type of its own. Only by regressing harder than a colony drop to our roots can this vital medium be purged of the poz afflicting it, and going this route means going #BrandZero by necessity. So, to those who are slaves to the Officaldom Cult, heed this: