d20 destroys roleplaying.

Here's a summary of the state of the gaming industry. I apologize for not having a copy of the magazine in hand and using another blogger's post as my source. On to the screed part of our program...

When d20 happened, I thought it was a horrible idea. Clever, original games like Whispering Vault and Lost Souls had recently shown me new ways to look at roleplaying. Then the whole d20 thing hit like a hurricane, and writers everywhere started shoehorning their adventure ideas into that horrible game system.

At the time, I thought this was an evil, viral way to spread D&D as a way of life to thousands of gamers playing other game systems. Retailers loved it, of course, because it was simple enough for their brains to grasp. Players loved it because they no longer had to think.

The next level of world domination included in d20 was that eventually anybody with a shred of creativity would be shut out or driven away by the d20 glut. This leaves few publishers standing, and Wizards/TSR/D&D at the top of what was left, with an even higher market share.

Roleplaying has taken the worst hit of all of gaming for the last few declining years. This is due to many different factors, but d20 is certainly to blame.