Rant: The WORST way to encourage people to try other games than D&D

[Not a Decepticon]

I have seen on Internet few bad ways people try to encourage D&D fans to try other games. Goin on a "please try another game" rant without naming a single one, so your post is just complaining about D&D or its players is one. Acting as if anyone trying to homebrew anything for D&D is just too dumb to try another game is more reductive the smaller the homebrew is, stiffles creativity and makes assumptions about people. I had myself encountered this behavior so many times that whenever I even try to discuss any problem with the game or potential homebrew, I have to caveat it with list of other games I am playing - Warhammer Fantasy, Fabula Ultima, Blades i nthe Dark, soon Mage: the Ascension. Hell, I am doing this right now out of fear someone will dismiss my rant simply by declaring I am too stupid to play other games.

But for the love of all gods, I have never seen anything more RUDE than applying this behavior to any big name creator or internet celebrity that is associated with D&D. Just flat out inventing a strawman version of a person in writers' head, to write fanfiction about why they are using D&D. "Matt Mercer doesn't ACTUALLY like D&D, he is only using it because it's popular and makes him most money", "Brennan Lee Mulligan is lying when he speaks what value he finds in D&D, he just never played other games" (despite the fact we had seen him play other games in both of his shows), "Making his videos about Draw Steel easily digestible to D&D fans proves Matt Colville is too stupid to play better games and Draw Steel will be a D&D-Heartbreaker". Out of all behavior this one irks me so much. You don't know these people, this is some weird parasocial behavior where you need to invent reasons why cool and popular people don't ACTUALLY have different opinions from you, instead of just moving on from it. It rubs me wrong way because it really feels like people are forgetting the faces on the screen are real people, and replacing them with strawmen easy to knock down.

Sorry for the rant, but this really got on my nerves. Maybe I just hate people making bad-faith assumptions to explain something that challenges their worldview. I hope this is right forum.

 

[payn]

That just sounds like algorithm driven influencer behavior to me. Yes, its pretty aggravating.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That just sounds like algorithm driven influencer behavior to me. Yes, its pretty aggravating.

I've never seen any videos like this, and because my YouTube seems to be exceptionally well-tuned at avoiding giving me stuff I'll hate (just don't hate-watch stuff, people, don't do it, don't even thumbs down - click "I didn't like this" or the w/e on the thumbnail), so it seems algorithm-chasing to me, because most people absolutely do hate-watch stuff and engage (with dislikes and comments and so on) with people they disagree with. And you engage with videos with certain profiles, YouTube (or TikTok or the like) will surface more videos like those. So you're building a hellscape for yourself.

Stop doing that. Like, honestly. How are you even finding these people?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

That just sounds like algorithm driven influencer behavior to me. Yes, its pretty aggravating.

Definitely. I've never been a fan of those sorts of videos, but my dislike was particularly exacerbated by hearing that Professor Dungeonmaster (and presumably others) come up with the clickbait title first, and only later on come up with the content.

In my experience the easiest way to induce someone to try a game other than D&D is to leverage the culture of the new game. What I mean by that is that D&D currently has all these ways for you to engage in the hobby outside of actually playing the game. You can watch movies, wear all sorts of apparel, read fiction and comics, listen to D&D-inspired music, play videogames, watch a million different YouTube videos, etc. The games I've had the most success in getting people to play instead of D&D so far have been Cyberpunk Red and DCC RPG. Both of those tick most of the same boxes (while there's not a DCC RPG movie or videogame, there are plenty that are pretty close - Bakshi's Wizards springs to mind).

 

[Belen]

There is some Irish TTRGP influencer that pops on YouTube with D&D doom all the time. I watched 1-2 of her vids and they just seem designed to make you angry.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There is some Irish TTRGP influencer that pops on YouTube with D&D doom all the time. I watched 1-2 of her vids and they just seem designed to make you angry.

Do you mean Discourse Minis?

(Dyed dark red/purple-ish hair, shocking pink lipstick, black frame glasses is her trademark look)

She's primarily a mini wargame YouTuber (particularly focused on criticising Games Workshop) rather than TTRPG, and she's Northern Irish, not Irish, but her whole schtick is being loud, sarcastic and kinda annoying, with very intentionally extreme doom clickbait headlines on her videos (it's always the end of something or "X gets worse!"), to the point where she's pretty much a parody of YouTubers who try to do this whilst pretending to be "reasonable" (something she doesn't really do lol). I don't think she's even covered D&D for a couple of years and only did a few videos related to it (primarily to the OneD&D stuff) though so maybe not?

Of course if you don't mean her that's pretty funny because then there's more than one person doing that lol!

 

[Deset Gled]

Sorry for the rant, but this really got on my nerves. Maybe I just hate people making bad-faith assumptions to explain something that challenges their worldview. I hope this is right forum.

I'm right there with you in this. Bad faith evangelicalism is a huge turn off for me, too. It occasionally happens on ENWorld as well. I have to watch myself because I sometimes have a gut reaction to whiplash against it and support things I normally wouldn't.

But I'll also say that, in general, I have found YouTube to be an increasingly poor medium for RPG stuff. It's okay for news, but the focus on clickbait has made the signal-to-noise ratio pretty bad for general gaming discussions. There's only a small handful of RPG channels I still subscribe to, and it's mainly just for news commentary stuff.

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

Do you mean Discourse Minis?

(Dyed dark red/purple-ish hair, shocking pink lipstick, black frame glasses is her trademark look)

She's primarily a mini wargame YouTuber (particularly focused on criticising Games Workshop) rather than TTRPG, and she's Northern Irish, not Irish, but her whole schtick is being loud, sarcastic and kinda annoying, with very intentionally extreme doom clickbait headlines on her videos (it's always the end of something or "X gets worse!"), to the point where she's pretty much a parody of YouTubers who try to do this whilst pretending to be "reasonable" (something she doesn't really do lol). I don't think she's even covered D&D for a couple of years and only did a few videos related to it (primarily to the OneD&D stuff) though so maybe not?

Of course if you don't mean her that's pretty funny because then there's more than one person doing that lol!

She has a separate channel called Dungeons & Discourse focused on RPGs with a similar tone and approach.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

She has a separate channel called Dungeons & Discourse focused on RPGs with a similar tone and approach.

Ahhh, I didn't know. Because she doesn't fit my profile YouTube won't even show me her stuff unless I go look for it, even though I'm subscribed because I hate Games Workshop (despite/because I play some limited 40K). She's pretty funny most of the time - she was mocking her own style extensively in a video about Warcry I saw.

 

[Belen]

Do you mean Discourse Minis?

(Dyed dark red/purple-ish hair, shocking pink lipstick, black frame glasses is her trademark look)

She's primarily a mini wargame YouTuber (particularly focused on criticising Games Workshop) rather than TTRPG, and she's Northern Irish, not Irish, but her whole schtick is being loud, sarcastic and kinda annoying, with very intentionally extreme doom clickbait headlines on her videos (it's always the end of something or "X gets worse!"), to the point where she's pretty much a parody of YouTubers who try to do this whilst pretending to be "reasonable" (something she doesn't really do lol). I don't think she's even covered D&D for a couple of years and only did a few videos related to it (primarily to the OneD&D stuff) though so maybe not?

Of course if you don't mean her that's pretty funny because then there's more than one person doing that lol!

Dungeons and Discourse, I think. She never gets to the point until 3/4 into the video and it always tends to be depressing rather than funny.