While I feel quite bad for future generations of players that will inevitably suckered into buying subscription services, endless reprints of books with tweaked rule sets, merchandise, and microtransactions on WotC's official tabletop RPG, I'm glad the hobby is relatively independent of what any company does, much more so than something like Magic the Gathering. Nothing WotC can do will ruin the game for anyone willing to pirate a PDF of the player's handbook and use a little imagination.
The article's claim that any dungeon master needs to buy the player's handbook, the monster manual, and the dungeon master's guide is completely ridiculous. You can find the stats to monsters online on a whole host of websites, and the DMG is basically just advice and little minigames. You're probably better off taking inspiration from it at best, and house-ruling things like chases. No wonder 5e is having a dungeon master shortage if DMs are expected to shell out so much cash, as well as host a game a lot of the time.
because it comes at a time where economists are saying we're nearing recession because we're making everyone pay too much
Because fuck WOTC and hasbro.
5e specific:
http://dnd5e.wikidot.com/#toc1
https://fastcharacter.com
General sp stuff: https://donjon.bin.sh https://whothefuckismydndcharacter.com
Also, reminder that all the pathfinder stuff is free, and pathfinder is based on a previous edition of DND, so you can just talk to your dm and see if stuff from there is appropriate to port over to your campaign.
Pathfinder stuff here: https://www.d20pfsrd.com
:))