The reason many still associate D&D and anything else remotely related to it with fat, basement dwelling, socially inept virgin incels is because those people actually made up a significant percentage of the original following of the hobby. Because it’s founders were only a half step away from most of those descriptions in many cases. And anybody that insists otherwise is either willfully ignorant or, more likely, angry at being called out by association because they’re the same.

So either get over it or go join the people that still insist that the confederate flag is anything but the war banner of a rebellion raised as an attempt at preserving slavery as a legal institution. You have the same mindset and validity as they do on this matter.

Yeah, and my personal opinion of the Drow is that you can still have matriarchal spider themed villains and not be “problematic” if you just st officially decannonize all of the weird-ass kinky fetish stuff that Ed Greenwood wrote into their original description. And the same can be said of most “problematic” things in Forgotten Realms, which is the source of a lot of the stuff that many consider to be “generic D&D.”

Seriously, go through the deep lore of FR and you will find a bunch of stuff that reads like it was written by a horny thirteen year old that wants to be edgy and kinky but clearly doesn’t know how fetishes or anything occult actually work beyond involving leather, whips, and bloody sacrifice rituals at orgy parties like a midwestern church granny will tell you happen every time anybody plays Dungeons and Dragons. I wonder where they got that impression from…

Short answer, no. There is a lot of nitpicky fine print and “nuance” involved but while you cannot copyright rolling a twenty sided die you can copyright a bunch of distinct and organized thoughts and specific groups thereof, such as the collection of rules that make up a class or subclass. If that class, subclass, spell, made up monster with a specific name and abilities, etc is published in some work that is sold for profit then legal action can occur.

Anything under creative commons effectively becomes public domain. If it appears in a WotC book, digital content, etc and is not specifically under CC, like say spells and subclasses from any supplement not included in that (such as Xanathar or Tasha), it is copyrighted and WotC can and will sue you if you republish it.

Maybe if those games had more appealing rule systems, other publishers would make products using them.

If it’s under a CC license you can literally publish it yourself with a few things tacked on. That’s what creative commons does. It’s basically public domain at that point.

Among other things, yes. Some things I have seen do strike me as logical tweaks and fixes much like 3.5 was to 3e, but some are clearly attempts at “fixing” PR problems by people who don’t understand why they’re having those problems in the first place. And at least in some cases I expect are personally responsible for said PR problems. It’s kind and like a Three Stooges skit about corporate mismanagement, but they honestly think they’re doing a good job.

I just play D&D mostly because it’s popular, I know it, and I like the way the mechanics work. That being said I’m not strictly opposed to other systems (though I’m not really interested in PF2E as I’ve looked at it and think it’s mostly just a clunkier and jankier modification to the core mechanics of 5e that many people no doubt think is better just because it’s needlessly complex for the sake of “more options”). A while ago I bought a hardcopy of the core VtM v5 book and want to, at some point, try joining a game for that to explore the significantly different playing style it’s designed for.

OBLIGATORY PLUG: This community has it’s own LFG section. Nobody’s posted any game ads there yet, but it’s very new. If you’re looking to start up or join a game yourself, I might recommend starting there. And while you’re there please consider clicking “subscribe” because new folks checking it out are more likely to post games there if they see a bigger number in the sidebar.

I haven’t played an in person game of D&D in over fifteen years. The last time I played any sort of TTRPG in person with people gathered around a table was a Werewolf: Dark Ages one shot at a Fourth of July party in (I think) 2010. I had signed up on an interest sheet left at my LGS where I played MTG weekly for a game someone was looking to start up, but this was in March of 2020 and our scheduled first meeting and Session 0 was set for two days after the COVID lockdowns went into effect, closing the LGS and pre-emptively ending that game.

I do play D&D online via VTTs (mostly Roll20 but I’ve also used Foundry) and have done so regularly for several years now. I found my longest running game, which has been going for about two years now, on a D&D centered Discord server with a LFG channel. Lots of such servers exist and I recommend checking some out (just do a search for “Discord dungeons and dragons” (or a different game if that’s what you’re looking for). The other long running game I’m in actually spun off of that first one and includes mostly the same people just playing a different campaign on a different day. I also joined a third game that I found on r/lfg but I’m avoiding that right now because of the API bullshit. Did I mention this community has it’s own LFG section that works pretty much just like r/lfg but with 100% less u/spez related bullshit? I have also in the past found games, mostly for one shots, on the D&D Beyond and Roll20 forums, both of which have LFG sections that are fairly high traffic.