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The Book of Many Things - D&D Review

After a number of weather-related delivery delays, I'm thrilled to say I received two promotional copies of the Book of Many Things (BoMT), courtesy of Wizards of the Coast. Over the last week or two, I've had a chance to read and digest the content, and I'm elated by it!

On the off chance you're reading this and don't know what it's all about, the BoMT is the latest release in 5e Dungeons & Dragons and centered on one of Dungeons & Dragons' most infamous artifacts: the Deck of Many Things. Players who draw from the Deck have historically received game-altering rewards and/or punishments.

I've loved the Deck of Many Things since I began playing D&D decades ago. As a forever-DM, I love the chaos in injects into our campaigns, and I love the camaraderie it tends to build in my players. There are few artifacts in D&D with the Deck of Many Things' history, and there are few artifacts so instantly recognizable as to make my veteran players go wide-eyed with excitement and dread while taking newer players under their wing to explain what could happen if anyone touches the deck! Over the nearly 50 years since its debut, the Deck of Many Things became a cultural touchstone at both my tables and many others!

Contents and Cost

Like some of Wizards of the Coast's recent releases (e.g., Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse), the BoMT is a multi-part box set instead of a single sourcebook. The set contains:

An eponymous, 192-page, hardcover sourcebook,

A full-color, physical set of the 22 cards in classic incarnation of the Deck of Many Things, as well as 44 new cards, all in a beautifully designed tray.

The card box set also includes its own 80-page, hardcover Deck of Many Things: Card Reference Guide.

The art is stunning on both the regular and alt-cover sets! That said, the art nouveau alt-cover by CoupleofKooks may be my favorite of any of the 5e alt-cover art. Definitely a top 5.

The most obvious downside to this is cost. At approximately $100 USD, this is twice the typical cost of a physical D&D sourcebook. That presents a barrier to many folks. At the same time, reading through the sourcebook, I understand why they chose to package it like this.

Because everything about the BoMT directly applies to the use of the physical Deck, I suspect the studio team was in a bit of a no-win situation regarding potential fan ire. Since Wizards of the Coast announced the set, I've seen no shortage of, "Wizards is so greedy!" plastered all over the internet, especially regarding the cost. At the same time, if the sourcebook and cards were packaged separately, some more casual fans might have purchased the sourcebook as they would any other D&D book, suspecting that's all they needed. Given everything about the BoMT refers to an essential prop which wasn't included with the book, would cost just as much as the book, and the person might not have realized it until after they left their local game store, I suspect, "Wizards is so greedy!" would still be screamed for a perceived bait and switch.

The Cards and Books

As I mentioned above, the Deck itself is stunning! My players love physical props in our games, and I don't think they're going to be disappointed with these cards! The cardstock is quality, the individual illustrations are beautiful, and there's foil and gilding all over the place! I can't wait for my players to see these, hold them, and draw from them! The illustrations in the book are equally amazing, and the art-nouveau, alt-cover by CoupleOfKooks is gorgeous!

The BoMT sourcebook and card guide both focus on the myriad ways one might apply the Deck of Many Things to one's game. The sourcebook is divided into 22 chapters, each named after one of the cards in the original deck. The chapters cover a variety of topics:

Publication history of the Deck of Many Things

In-game lore

Self-contained adventures

New magic items and NPCs

How one might use the Deck for various randomization mechanics (e.g., narrative, events while travelling, in-game divination, and puzzles)

How to customize the Deck for either narrative flavor, player levels, or both.

From both a narrative and fandom perspective, I love the first chapter of the sourcebook. It presented a complete publication history of the Deck of Many Things throughout its varied, nearly 50-year existence. Official and unofficial sourcebooks used the Deck differently throughout different editions of D&D.

By starting with highlights of the varied publication history segues nicely into to the updated, 5e narrative of the Deck as a multi-incarnate tool of fate lacking any one definitive version. The designers and writers must have had a blast with all this, and the versatility of this incarnation of the Deck cannot be understated! It goes far beyond the game-breaking mechanics most of us identify with the classic Deck of Many Things.

Asteria: D&D's First Canonically Autistic Character

On the topic of narrative and lore, I want to give credit where credit is due, while also sharing part of my personal excitement over this book. I'm quite public about my autism. It informs much of my professional life and how I frame the work I do.

Last year, Wizards of the Coast announced that Asteria - the newly created Paladin who we discover was instrumental in the invention of the original Deck of Many Things - acts as narrator in the BoMT sourcebook and would be canonically autistic. They also announced that her creation was helmed by autistic game designer Makenzie De Armas to help ensure the representation would remain authentic and avoid making Asteria's autistic traits the target of derisive humor. While Dungeons & Dragons is not the first TTRPG to have an autistic character written from an autistic perspective, there is something truly meaningful to have the biggest name in roleplaying do something like this.

Most media representations of autism are awful. They often either relegate the autistic character to an ancillary role (often one of comedic relief) or depict them as a savant who's exceptional enough in a valued skill that others overlook the perceived deficits and weird behavior, all the while the autistic character aspires to be more like the non-autistic people. While Asteria is exceptional, as protagonists in any fantasy genre tend to be, she is also presented authentically, quirks and all, while refusing to be anything but herself. She sets out to change the world instead of changing for the world! That's a huge difference in the portrayal of autism in media.

Reading the flavor comments from Asteria quickly became my favorite part of the book. The notes are subtly autistic in a way that you might not notice if you're not; I saw my own experiences reflected in hers. This will make sense if you read Asteria's comments, but I couldn't help but laugh that a new set of my favorite earplugs coincidentally arrived on the same day as the BoMT.

There aren't a lot of examples in popular culture of a well-written, authentically portrayed autistic characters. Thank you for handling this character with such care and forethought, Makenzie and D&D!

Conclusion

If you're a big fan of the Deck of Many Things, and you can swing the $100 price tag, I think you're going to enjoy this D&D release enormously! The design is gorgeous, the writing is creative, and it gives you so many options as a DM! The BoMT might be my favorite 5e supplement, and it's definitely in my top 5!

[theedoctorb]

Dungeons & Dragons Content Creators Summit and Being a Corporate "Shill"

I was invited to attend the Dungeon & Dragons (D&D) Creator Summit in early April, and I happily accepted. I initially wasn’t going to publicly say anything about attending because I didn’t see any need. However, in the last week, numerous conversations on various internet platforms have both tacitly and overtly accused anyone in attendance of being a Wizards of the Coast (WotC) “shill” or “clout chaser” who will agree with anything WotC says because they:

Paid for attendees’ travel.

Included a per diem to cover meals and incidentals while traveling.

Have given past promotional materials to many of the people in attendance.

May offer us further financial opportunities in exchange for refusing to challenge currently proposed ideas and materials.  

This is not only reductive, but further divides a community still reeling in the wake of the recent uproar over the leaked, proposed Open Gaming License (OGL) revisions which resulted in targeted harassment of individual studio employees and content creators, especially those of marginalized identities, despite the fact that most of those who were harassed had no authority over the business decisions which caused the initial uproar.

What is a Summit?

Summits are opportunities to have open dialogues and share opinions towards a common goal. They’re common in academia and politics. Good summits are about synthesizing new ideas and challenging old ones. They’re often heavily structured and moderated with specific strategic goals, and the good ones deliberately invite people with vastly different perspectives on a topic.

To put it mildly, summits aren’t something to organize if you want people to pat you on the head and tell you that you’re doing just great! They’re often extremely heated because people passionately and vehemently advocate for their perspectives and priorities which may be in direct opposition to others’.  

What’s different about this summit is that it ostensibly possesses a level of transparency which I haven’t experienced before. Summits are often closed-door conversations, so that the people in attendance can speak candidly about topics or strategies currently in the planning stages. 

My invitation email specifically stated that the goals of the D&D Content Creator Summit are:

To gather feedback on how the D&D team can improve the experience of making D&D content.

To gather feedback on upcoming products such as the D&D Rules Update and D&D VTT.

For content creators to have more opportunities to interact with D&D staff in-person.

The email invitation specifically stated that this summit is based on consistent feedback WotC has gathered since PAX Unplugged 2022, and that this is a “first step.” Additionally, no one in attendance will be expected to create any content regarding the summit, WotC will not be taking any footage, photos, or recordings of the summit for any purpose, and any information shared with attendees may be shared with the community. That last part is notable, because it means that people in attendance – all of whom have platforms of varying sizes – can frankly offer feedback now and in the future on what is discussed, as well as how D&D incorporates the feedback.

Who is Going? Why Were They Invited?

I don’t fully know who is going.  I also don’t know why certain people were invited and others weren’t. No one I know of – outside the organizers and those who helped them – does, and anyone else is likely acting on various degrees of speculation. I strongly suspect questions about inclusion and exclusion criteria will be some of the first things asked at the summit. I’m especially curious about this criteria, given that content creation isn’t my primary job – consultation and education on mental health are, though that role sometimes extends to matters of content creation.  

Some creators announced their attendance publicly out of excitement at being included or with the intent of gathering questions from their communities. Some creators kept their attendance privately known only among industry members and friends. Of those I know who have kept their attendance private, the fear of being the target of harassment is a commonly cited reason, but an even more common reason was a desire to attend and push for change. 

Many of the people I know who plan on attending are staunch advocates for various topics such as inclusion, accessibility, and representation of marginalized individuals in D&D and other tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs). Some of them have directly consulted with WotC before and offered frank feedback as part of their consultant role. Other attendees built their platforms on advocacy and haven’t been shy about calling out perceived missteps. In short, they’re not people who are afraid to voice their opinions.

It’s worth noting that – of the attendees I know – nearly every single one is marginalized in one or multiple ways, whether it’s ethnicity, gender identity, orientation, neurotype, medical/disability status, or a variety of other identities. Nevertheless, who is and who isn’t in attendance is absolutely worth noting, once we have all the facts. Who has a seat at the table is always poignant and important feedback.  

Isn’t Your Objectivity Compromised by Receiving Compensation for Attendance? Coercive Rewards and Role Clarity

Some of the online discourse supposes that those of us in attendance will kowtow to WotC’s efforts because they paid for travel, offered a per diem, and many of us have received promotional materials in the past on which we’ve built content. Is that true? Is our objectivity compromised? Probably not, and here’s why. In the psychology field, there are two concepts we talk about frequently: coercive rewards and role clarity. Coercive rewards are often discussed in terms of psychology research. Participants in research are generally compensated in some way for their participation, but the compensation cannot be so great as to compel or coerce them into saying yes when they might otherwise refuse. To give some perspective on the level of compensation, I live in the same geographical region as WotC headquarters, so travel costs aren’t covered for me. I am still receiving a per diem for food and incidentals during the summit. However, I’m taking two days away from both my day job and my private practice. While I can reschedule some of my clients, I won’t be able to reschedule all of them, so I’m going to end up losing money by attending, and I’ll have to make up other work at my day job. To put it bluntly, per diem and travel costs (if I were traveling), and occasional promotional material are not enough to coerce an endorsement from me, especially if I think something is actively harmful and the goal of the summit is to offer critical feedback. 

Instead, my attendance is driven by my love of the D&D community, what it’s meant to me, and my desire to help improve that community and help it thrive by bringing as many people to the table as possible. Most of the people I know planning to attend are in similar situations and of similar mindsets – taking time off from work and essentially losing money because the goals of this summit are important to them. The travel compensation and per diem simply help to minimize losses for some people.

One summit attendee I spoke with noted that there is also an equity issue at play. Without offering compensation for travel and a per diem, it limits attendance to those of a certain socioeconomic level. That negates the possibility of wider community feedback. Also, how many memes and Twitter threads exist about creators being “paid” in exposure? Offering compensation hints to me that WotC takes this feedback seriously and is willing to treat everyone in attendance like a professional.  

Beyond pure dollars and cents, many of the summit attendees are either immunocompromised or have family members who are. They are literally taking health risks to attend because they believe in the purpose of this summit and improving the D&D community as a whole. If that’s not a sign of how dedicated some of the attendees are to improving the community, then I don’t know what is. Now let’s talk about role clarity. There are a lot of different jobs in psychology, just like there are in games and content creation. In psychology, a person might be a therapist, evaluator, expert witness, consultant, teacher, researcher, or any number of other roles. To perform any of these roles effectively, they must be crystal clear on what that role entails and what is outside its scope. It’s the same thing here with the summit. Based on the invitation email, it seems that the role is similar to one of a consultant – to critically evaluate what is presented and offer feedback based on one’s experience and expertise. Thankfully, this is a role in which many of the attendees I know have a wealth of experience.

Some readers might retort with, “But you might get other jobs by being there!” Yes. Yes, we might. This is a professional invitation with an expected, professional role, and if we perform that role well, we might get future professional opportunities. That’s what should happen when one performs their job well, and it should be true regardless of the industry and context. However, the reality is that those jobs are both hypothetical and not likely to happen overnight. It's more likely that these jobs would be one-off consultations, collaborations, or the like. 

While jobs like that are appreciated and welcome, they are not steady employment. Summits are not generally real-life versions of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory whereby the one attendee who is most skilled and virtuous will be given control of WotC. Anyone who plans on attending with the fantasy that they will be instantly rewarded with their dream job is probably going to be disappointed.    

Is This Summit Solely to Do Public Relations Damage Control?

Ignoring the fact that a lot of the people attending this summit are generous with their opinions, for good or ill, some in the community have asserted that the D&D Content Creator Summit is simply WotC’s attempt to repair damage to the D&D brand in the wake of the bad business decisions during the recent OGL controversy. Events like this summit take a long time to organize, so I actually believe the email I received when they said that this is based on feedback they’ve received from as far back as late November/early December 2022.

At the same time, WotC would be foolish to avoid using this as a step towards what they pledged they would do at the tail-end of the OGL controversy: obtain and incorporate direct, community feedback. After all, the ability to follow through on proposed behavior changes is what we want when we have problems with people and companies, right? If the goal is to simply do damage control after a public relations nightmare, inviting a bunch of opinionated people with platforms to give feedback isn’t great if one doesn’t intend to actually listen. 

No one attending has forgotten the OGL situation, regardless of where they stood on it. If WotC is doing things well, they’ll learn that from the feedback. If WotC is going in a direction that irks folks at the summit, they’re going to learn that too, and if it’s the latter, that’s not going to help WotC, because the folks in attendance have platforms and haven’t signed any non-disclosure agreements.

Final Thoughts

All in all, what is the D&D Content Creator Summit going to be, and what is going to come out of it? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does. 

Much like in D&D, we can’t know the outcome of things before the action. That said, there are going to be a lot of talented, caring, observant, insightful content creators present asking hard questions and offering critical feedback. Content creators, especially advocates like those I know are going, work damn hard to produce what they do, and it cheapens their hard work, especially the advocacy work, to call them corporate shills and assume that they’re going to agree with anything presented. Agreement isn’t the assignment. Neither is the assignment for us to listen to WotC. The assignment is for WotC to listen to us.

If we want to see change from people and companies, we have to be willing to note when they take steps to change, even if it’s just the first step. That’s not to say we can’t be critical at the same time. We should be critical, in fact, but critical isn’t the same as unyielding vitriol, universal condemnation, and us-versus-them. Critical means noting both mistakes and successes and pushing for constant improvement. No person or company is going to go from badly messing up to doing everything perfectly. 

As far as I know, WotC is trying something new with this summit, and it represents a shift in how they produce their products. I don’t know if it’s going to lead to sustained changes, but I’m willing to see if it does. I hope it does. More than that, I hope it’s exactly what they said it is: the “first step” in a new strategy of involving the community. My biggest fear is that if they see overwhelming, unflinching condemnation of anything they attempt, especially when it’s violence and threats from the community they’re trying to get input from, then they may stop trying to engage at all, and then we’re left with only anger and unfulfilled hopes. 

[theedoctorb]

Lessons Learned from Both Sides of Games

CW: Discussion of harassment, threats, and mental health challenges. I’m a clinical psychologist who has been working at the intersection of mental health and the game industry for just over seven years. My whole job is to help educate companies, communities, and individuals on mental wellness and to bolster that wellness across the entire game space. I was a gaming superfan for my entire life before that. I still have the first sixty issues of Nintendo Power on a shelf. Having spent considerable time in the game industry and even more time outside of it, I thought I might share some insights I’ve learned in the process, especially given how often I see people forget some of these things.  

The People Who Design and Make Games Are People Who Love Games 

The game industry is brutal. It’s hard to find a steady job in it. Many jobs are underpaid and undervalued. There’s chronic gender-based violence, and marginalized voices are often excluded from conversations and representation. Overwork and burnout are so common that they become topics of gallows humor at industry gatherings. While people are trying to change all of this (it’s a major aspect of my job), these are all still sadly true.  

Why is this important? Because it shows that the people who are making your games make games because they passionately want to. In the better part of a decade that I’ve had frank, private conversations with industry employees at all levels, I’ve never met a studio employee who didn’t care about games. They love them. They’re players themselves. It doesn’t matter whether it’s video games or tabletop games, they love games. The vast majority of studio employees I’ve met also care about the community. They just want to make games people enjoy. Does that mean they don’t make mistakes? They do. Most also genuinely care about fixing them and making your game experience the best it can be. They wouldn’t put up with the harshness of the industry if they didn’t! 

Additionally, corporations make moves to maximize their profits over consumer demands. Most corporations are – after all – in the business of making money. That still doesn’t negate the fact that they’re generally made up of individuals who care deeply. 

What Goes on Behind-The-Scenes is so Different Than I Thought 

Before I started working in games, I did what so many fans do: think of the companies as faceless entities with malevolent intent and speculated wildly with my friends, reveling in the schadenfreude of corporate trip-ups. What I learned after getting into the industry is that the companies are made of individuals. Some with more power than others. A lot more, in some cases, but it’s still individuals who make our games and make up the companies. 

Some companies are bigger, and that generally brings a slow-churning bureaucracy with a lot of conflicting needs and perspectives. Why don’t you hear about the inner workings of those companies as fans? Because company employees are often under non-disclosure agreements (NDA) and non-disparagement agreements, and companies have designated representatives who speak for them. I’ve lost count of how many times friends of mine have seen fan speculation trending or some “confirmed” leak about their company or project, and they desperately wanted to say, “That’s not how it works! I was in that meeting! It didn’t go like that at all!” but they can’t. Not without risking their jobs and even massive financial penalties for contract breach.  

What’s more, there are often intricate webs of sponsorships and contractual obligations that confound any speed of decision making. That’s at both the creator and corporate level. Even your favorite creators might be under some of the same contracts as employees and have similar restrictions on what they can and cannot say about a brand or company without risking their livelihoods.  

It was both eye-opening and humbling to realize that I genuinely had no idea how the inside of the game-making process worked when I was a fan, despite my Dunning-Kruger-esque self-assuredness. I had no idea the specifics of any one project, which I still generally don’t unless I’ve also signed an NDA for a specific project. There are often too many layers of insider nuance, and much beyond that is pure speculation. 

Rage-bait Fandom is a Thing, and It Actually Hurts People 

Let me be clear about something, I’m not talking about all fans here. I’m not even talking about the majority of fans. I’m talking about a small subsection of fans who – in some cases – literally profit by building content platforms on stoking the rage of the fanbase. They might ostensibly clutch their pearls and protest that they are doing it all for the community they supposedly represent, but then they use their platform to fan the flames of rumor and innuendo. They spread misinformation, and the misinformation does spread. It spreads because it preys on our various biases about corporations as faceless monsters who want to hurt fandoms. It preys on an us-versus-them dynamic. It intuitively makes sense to us. Then our rage escalates because others around us bolster it with their rage. 

Some of these content creators claim to have insider knowledge of a studio when no one at the studio knows who they are, or worse, the people at the studio do know them, dislike them, and can’t publicly say anything to correct the misinformation they spread.  It should be noted that I’m not referring to reputable journalists who engage in due diligence regarding the veracity of anonymous sources. I’m talking about content creators who build their platforms on manufactured rage and misinformation, sometimes even naming names of studio employees – employees who often have no influence or power over the decisions which were made.  

This is where the harassment often begins. Harassment of studio employees is so common in games that it is also periodically the subject of gallows humor at industry gatherings. The problem is that it’s not funny when people receive repeated, unwanted contact from other people. It’s not funny to receive emails and DMs of graphically violent imagery, death threats, or threats of sexual assault. It’s not funny when fans declare that it’s “open-season” on moderators in forums and streams because they’re paid (not always) by the corporation. It’s not funny when friends of mine develop full-blown posttraumatic stress disorder because their private information has been publicly released by angry fans, their families also receive death threats, or the SWAT team bursts through the doors of their house because someone called 911 with a fake anonymous tip.  

Before I worked in the industry, I couldn’t imagine the kind of toll this took on people, because they weren’t people to me; they were a faceless, malevolent corporation. Now I know differently and check in on my friends often, especially anyone whose job is public-facing. Corporate actions can and should be scrutinized (again, part of my job), but scrutiny is not harassment, and harassment and threats are not okay. If you believe harassment is okay, then you’re actively hurting the people who are trying to make the games you claim to love. You’re hurting the games you claim to love. 

Final Thoughts 

What are the take-home lessons I learned in all this time? It boils down to a few things: 

Most game employees love games and just want to make good ones you enjoy. That’s why they are in this difficult industry. 

There are often things going on behind-the-scenes that we don’t know about, and that often confounds processes. 

There’s a whole sub-industry regarding manufactured fan rage, and it hurts people by tacitly (or overtly) encouraging harassment.  

Corporate decisions can and should be scrutinized, but harassment and threats towards individuals are not okay.   

It’s still sometimes hard to let go of my previous biases, especially when companies make decisions that hurt the community, but I’m fortunate to be surrounded by people who are willing to say, “Hey, maybe we take a breath and think this through?” or even, “I think you’re wrong here, and here’s why…” That way, I can channel my anger in more productive ways that don’t hurt others, especially given most of us who are fans share the same goal: wanting the games and community to be as amazing as possible.