How Wizards of the Coast Operates Like a Drug Dealer

It's not difficult to understand why so many new school dungeon masters today feel that their role is to manage the emotions of the players at the table. They've been told through endless writeups online and off that it's their responsibility to make sure that every player is having a good time. They've been taught to believe that players deserve a "hero moment"... and if one doesn't chance to happen though standard play, then it's the DM's "job" to make sure it does happen — either by lying about what the dice says, or adjusting the enemy monster's number of hit points... or by any means necessary to make sure that every player feels special. The game be damned.

Who has taught the DMs to do this? Why, obviously, the Wizards of the Coast. Their own published materials express again and again that game consequences are secondary to everyone having a good time. This sentiment has been vastly increased by D&D next... with books flat out saying that the rules don't really matter at all. Feelings do. It's pretty clear that dungeon masters are supposed to embrace this concept for the good of the "game" — and coincidentally, the company's profits also. It even more plain that Wizards of the Coast, with the rhetoric it's been putting out there, doesn't feel that they're responsible for providing a good game, either through rules or design. Oh no, this is the DM's "responsibility." And how are DM's expected to do this? Cheat. Lie. Anything that's necessary. Because happy players buy product. Unhappy, frustrated players don't.

The Wizards of the Coast makes it quite clear that they target a wide audience that includes both adults and teenagers. Legally and developmentally, teens are still minors... who are being actively shaped by marketing and encouragement of the same sort that is being given to adults: manipulate outcomes, manipulate your friends...

...and join a game culture in which dishonesty is seen as acceptable and even necessary for the game's premise.

Wizards of the Coast likes to say that "it knows what it means to be a DM."  But this doesn't directly say, "Don't lie.  Don't play mind games with your friends' expectations.  In fact, it tacitly suggests that company, like the DM, would do whatever's necessary.  This is a chilling approach for a billion dollar company to take in the public face it adopts.

For the typical dungeon master, fudging dice and quietly adjusting a monster's hit points on the sly, this is seen as a selfless act.  Every player, in their opinion, ought to have a chance to deal out the "killing blow."  And since we can't count on the rules or the dice to determine how and when this happens, it falls to the strong, responsible Dungeon Master to make that determination.  After all, having godlike powers over the characters is standard policy.  Why not play a little god on the side with a few actual human beings?

Pressed on this point, these same DM's protest their gracious sainthood, explaining that they're "helping their players" by smoothing out difficulties, nudging the "story" — the predestination of game play the DM has arbitrarily imposed because, again, the company encourages it — in the "right" direction.  They're curating a satisfying arc for each player's character... though of course as the DM defines it, not the player.  It's fairly obvious, though such DMs do not admit it, or may even be incapable of understanding what they sound like, is that these game managers aren't doing any of this for the players at all.  They're doing it for the sense of self-importance the practice gives them.

It hardly has to be said by anyone whose played the game... but for any parents reading this, who may not be well-versed in the game's structure and function:  a dungeon master wields an incredible amount of social power at the game table.  The DM says who is allowed to speak and who isn't; they are empowered to judge every person's action, capriciously, ignoring the rules when they feel the rules don't apply in this specific situation.  Since each player's success in the game depends on the DM's rulings, it's relatively easy for a charismatic DM to mount social pressure against one player's refusal to conform to the group's dynamic.  If we were to compare the Wizards of the Coast's game to a religious cult, the DM is the priest and the players aren't.  It is this exact arrangement that blew up the 1980s with fear of the "Satanic Panic," that feared DMs might be using their influence to mess with the heads of their players.

The "Panic" is long gone.  It was defeated by the simple fact that most dungeon masters were responsible, decent, rule-abiding individuals who considered the importance of game play to be more important than ideology or righteousness.  But once upon a time, this attitude failed to adequately fill the coffers of the actual game manufacturer's... who set about imposing new rules and new attitudes in an effort to dismantle the control of ordinary DMs who just wanted to play an ordinary game. 

Being a fair and capable DM is very difficult.  It takes enormous respect for the game, a willingness to commit hundreds of hours learning the rules and how to apply them, an actually selfless "hands off" approach to game play, letting the dice and the rules — agreed upon by everybody — to dictate right from wrong.  For these reasons, and especially because most DMs find the role to be somewhat thankless, there have never been enough dungeon masters for all the players who want to play.  But that dearth is a double-edged sword, one that certain factions within the D&D community have sought to weaponise.

Because dungeon masters are more likely to buy new rule books, because they have reasons to buy maps and modules, because it is their homes that are dressed up for play... and because they are naturally more involved with the game than anyone, where it comes to buying product from game companies, dungeon masters are early adopters and pioneer customers.  They're the much sought-after charter customers, who help shape the product; they're beta testers, as they're the first to engage; they're inside customers, especially since social media's onset, because they form exclusive groups together.  And they're champion users: they are always the first to promote something they like.  If you're going to succeed as a company that sells product to D&D players, then DMs are your gold standard customers.  They make your money for you.

Wouldn't it be great if there were more of them?

Well, one way would be to reduce the importance of the rules.  If the rules weren't sacrosanct, if they could be gotten around and ignored, then it wouldn't be such an obstacle to new, wannabe DMs.  What if we, as a company, began to build new game systems that steadily undermined the necessity of ability for prospective DMs?  Wouldn't they, as they began to engage the game in their new capacity, still buy all the books and maps and modules?  Especially if we made those less complicated also?  

Without rules, there would surely be greater chaos at the table, so we'll need something to counteract that. Conflict is a huge impediment to wannabe DMs. No worries. D&D needn't be a conflict-driven game; no, it's a "story" game. Better, it's emergent storytelling, that's it. It's a game of imagination, of group storytelling, where people's characters can now have the weight of backstories — nonexistent in the old game — that subverts the player's personal motivations in game play, subverting those with the more practical, simpler, constrained motivations of a fictional being.  Conflict will still occur, but we'll have reduced how much that conflict revolves around the rules and the game's expectations, replacing it with conflict between what my fictional character wants versus your fictional character.

But it's okay, because the dungeon master is going to make sure that every fictional character gets exactly what they want when the story ends.  And all those former premises of D&D?  Risk, challenge, consequence — gone.  The game isn't about skill, strategy or luck any more.  It's about delivering an experience that aligns with what WOTC — er, the new school DM — has rebranded as "good" storytelling.

And what do these new schoolers get out of playing god?

The Drug

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, a chemical, naturally produced in the body, which has evolved to reward specific behaviours in the host.  When we feel confident, when we feel important, or we recognise our heightened status above others, that's serotonin at work in our bodies, rewarding us for having succeeded in becoming those things.  When a tribal member returned to the camp with the largest chunk of meat, receiving the praise of everyone and knowing that he, Ugg, was better than any other, he felt compelled during the next hunt to achieve that reward again.  He didn't understand it any better than most modern humans do; in fact, for most, they don't realise how many of their "feelings" are really just kinds of evolutionary drug highs.  En masse, humans pretend it just isn't so.

But those who make a living by telling companies how to adjust products or change the colouring on a bottle of shampoo know perfectly well how to manipulate us as biological entities.  For those with experience and training in marketing, accessing and manipulating human behaviour is their bread and butter — especially since a great many buyers refuse to believe they can be manipulated.  There is little incentive to educate them.  We want buyers who don't know why they're buying... it's how we get rich, acquiring a little of our own seratonin.

Who better to advantage than a crowd of people already getting their seratonin fix by adopting the role of DM, where they're in charge?  DMs are assertive, dominant, self-assured... all things encouraged and rewarded by surges of seratonin.  The feeling of authority — earned or not — is wonderful.  All we need do is convince someone they are in control... and let the seratonin do the rest.  Would-be dungeon masters fit the profile and are far easier to get onboard that people with actual power.  All that's needed is a product to sell them.

Whatever Wizards of the Coast is doing today, we can be sure of one thing: it isn't about game design, storytelling or even community.  It's about making money off  people who have been primed to want what they're selling.

For let's be honest... we can see evidence of DMs seeking this serotonin high.  They enjoy being the "provider" for their players: the one who determines who gets to be important tonight, who gets to be the person with the biggest emotional payoff.  It feels good to be the one that makes others feel good.  It's the same pleasure that a storyteller feels when an audience gasps at a twist.  It's the same satisfaction that we feel when a guest praises our hospitality.  It's not necessarily malicious... but it's not selfless, either.  We're getting precisely what we sought for: to have a party so we could feel like the big kahuna.

Where the wheels fall off the wagon is where dungeon masters continue to pay lip service to dungeons and dragons as a "game" while deliberately and consciously subverting its game like features in order to get that high. No one says, "Come and participate in my dungeons and dragons make-you-feel-important event, so you can feel great."  No, they deliberately frame the event as though it is still a game.  They sell it as a game... and then they blatantly cheat the game to make themselves feel important.  For through all this, there's one massive contingent of people who have been exploited by all this marketing cleverness and redesign: the players.

Those DMs who have bought into the company's rhetoric are actively, reprehensibly, exploiting players to achieve this high.  And they don't care.  Any investigation into the dialogue going on between dungeon masters on various social media sites makes it clear that DMs not only feel justified in this exploitation, they choose to frame it as good will and kindness, the phrasing a contemptuous landowner would use in the abuse and ill treatment of slaves.  Players are fodder, players are easy to get, there are more than enough players to go around, oh to hell with players if they don't know how the sausage gets made and so on.  It's toxic, it's pervasive and it's silently encouraged by an institution that fails to speak out about it or condemn DMs for this behaviour.  On the contrary, the new books of D&D Next give their full, blind approval to it's continuation.

For a game that is sold to a significant number of children that are aged less than 12.

Let's not hedge.  Just as the clothing industry is about selling sexualised products to young children who aren't old enough to make rational purchase choices, so that the sizes of everything available proliferate between zero and 6, with almost nothing available for sizes larger than 10, the present state of D&D is about conditioning young, impressionable minds to accept deception and exploitation as normal and expected.

The Dealer

Since 2008, WOTC has pushed hard a philosophy of game design that prioritises player empowerment over fair play.  Fourth Edition, which removed resource management as a meaningful challenge, stripped away the mechanical limitations of spellcasting and introduced cooldowns that ensured no player ever had to go without something powerful to do.  The game was no longer about survival, tactics or long-term planning.  It was about making sure that every player always felt powerful.

Fifth Edition has continued this trend, embedding it even more deeply into the culture of the game.  Now, the entire structure of D&D is built around protecting the player's experience at the expense of challenge.  Failures are softened, setbacks are temporary and dungeon masters are encouraged — both in the official books and in online discussions — to do whatever is necessary to keep their players happy.

The result has been a fundamental shift in what players expect from D&D.  A generation has grown up with the belief that D&D is not a game to be won or lost, but a storytelling experience designed to ensure that everyone gets their moment to shine. They do not see a Dungeon Master who cheats on their behalf as a liar—they see it as a kindness. And because of this, they do not expect fair play.  No DM expects that the dice will actually determine the outcome, but the argument is still being made that it does and it will.

If players are confronted by a situation where they genuinely fail, they get angry.  They rush onto social media and denounce the DM.  "Can you believe my player died?  What's D&D coming to?"  The moment that players, raised from childhood in D&D now, experience the "game" for what it actually is — something that involves real consequences — they reject it outright. 

And this is exactly what Wizards of the Coast wants.  We are given ever-larger estimates of how many people are playing the "game"... which isn't one anymore.  It's a bunch of participants engaging in something that, in any other context, would look like a cult.  The more players they can claim, the more successful they appear, the more important they can present themselves as being.  But they don't care any more about the participants than a dealer does... so long as they keep buying.