NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="theuglyamerican" data-source="post: 5894519" data-attributes="member: 6693267">Except it's not.  At all.  The RPG hobby as a whole needs D&D to succeed.  We -- as roleplayers -- need new people to come into the hobby from outside, because otherwise the hobby dies.  I don't know about you, but when I tell someone outside the hobby that I'm a roleplayer, I get a dead-fish, glassy-eyed stare -- until I say, "You know, D&D?" and then there's recognition.  To people outside the hobby, D&D IS roleplaying.  It's the gateway to the hobby for almost everyone who comes in, even if they quickly move on to other things.  It's the face of the hobby and its flagship, its origin and its lingua franca.  Almost by definition, it isn't just alone at the apex of the hobby, it is the apex of the hobby.  The simple fact is that if D&D dies, nothing will be able to take its place.  There's no other 800-lb gorilla waiting in the wings.I'm a Pathfinder player, and the odds of D&D (and more specifically WotC, which I don't exactly respect or admire) recovering me as a customer were always long.  But I also recognize the fact that, for the health of Pathfinder and Call of Cthulhu and Hero and all the other games I love, D&D must not just survive, it must thrive.  Cook leaving deals what looks like a critical blow.  Maybe it's lethal, maybe it's not.  Hell, maybe 5E never had a chance to begin with.  All I know is that I'm a sad gamer these days.</blockquote>

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