The Culture: Cutting Out The Corporate Gatekeepers, Part Two (#D&D)

If BattleTech was easy to do, then The Only Game That Matters is even easier.

• Play Older Editions: Yes, those editions are still available. Hit up all the used bookstores, realspace and online alike, if you need physical copies- including the big ones like Amazon. Retroclones, while they had their use, are still outshone by the originals that they copied- and the best editions are the earliest ones. Now that you can get originals, do that and use them.
• Abandon Conventional Play: This is a losing proposition and has been since it arose over 40 years ago because the fucking Boomers failed to teach the kids how to play, leaving a festering wound that would get infected with the poz in the last decade or so thanks to shit like Dragonlance (and more). This is where learning from the #BROSR will serve you well and save your hobby.
• Return To The Clubhouse: The old form of hobbyist social organization has to return, as There Is No Alternative if you want the hobby to stay alive.

This also means that a lot of people are going to have to admit that they do a lot of Retail Therapy and thus waste massive amounts of money on things that they don't need to play and never did.

This now extends to electronic widgets of all sorts. You don't need a Virtual Tabletop. You don't need a dicerolling application. Discord server, chat channel, voice channel, dicebot- sorted (and free).

Wizards, Paizo, etc. are all Cargo Cult corporations that rely on getting you to think in Consumerist terms as they all see their properties as Lifestyle Brands first and products second- including those who would protest this assertion. Their behavior betrays their Revealed Preferences.

Shun this.

You need a complete game (e.g. AD&D1e, ACKS). You need some grid paper. You need some hex paper. You need dice. You need some notebook paper, loose or bound at your discretion. You don't need miniatures, tokens, counters, terrain pieces, vinyl mats, etc. as they are surplus to requirements (however handy they may be). Buy your game once, buy your tools once, resupply consumables periodically (i.e. your notepads).

You don't need Wizards. You don't need Current Edition. You don't need Conventional Play. Wizards does. Paizo does. Several others on this business model, in varying forms, do- and all of them are either about to go down or are about to jump ship.

You don't need them to play the game for the rest of time.

You just need to be able to replace worn out products, and that's getting easier by the day on a capability level- it's other things getting in the way that's at issue, and they can be worked around.

Of all the games out there, D&D is the easiest to cut out the gatekeepers. That too many of you don't even try is, well-

Git Gud, scrubs.