The Culture: Sole Play Tabletop Rises For A Reason

Jon Del Arroz made this observation.

Roleplaying Star Trek and not having to deal with any humans sounds fantastic. pic.twitter.com/iF4ZijRyrI

— Jon Del Arroz | Sci-Fi And Fantasy (@jondelarroz) August 9, 2026

He's been to, and thus has seen, what the common Cargo Cultist is like.

For those unable or unwilling to get admitted to the Clubhouse, this is their go-to option to get away from those losers while staying in Tabletop.

You can't get derailed (unless you're utterly dysfunctional) by some low-rent loser, get held up by the least invested player, get tyrannized by a power-tripping Dexter, or have any other Known Issue in Cargo Cult Tabletop gaming if you just play on your own.

Those who do this, and then want the social aspect, post to social media their receipts. Some do videos on YouTube. Some post to Twitter, Instragram, etc. They use the parasocial aspect to show people how they play the solo game, and in so doing advertise for it; the smart ones get affilate links and then link to the game's online storefront page to get some cut of the sales.

The move is to solve the Known Issues by changing the product to remove the risk factors; you can play when, where, how, and as long as you like if you're the only player- the same value proposition that you have for single-player Vidya, only without the need for electronics.

This is also a losing proposition long-term, unless you want to change how this hobby is defined into a solo pursuit. The only route that preserves the hobby is the Clubhouse.

The Culture: Hawaiian Man Schools You On Things Cargo Cultists Want You To Ignore

Jon Mollison dropped a couple of videos recently. You should see and share them.

He's doing the Good Cop part of the Good Cop/Bad Cop routine.

You can guess who the Bad Cop is.

The Business: The Private WOW Server Scene Keeps Showing Tabletop Cultists Up

This got announced on July 31st.

I keep telling you that WOW and D&D are analogous due to occupying the apex of their respective media and market niches.

We see these private servers keeping coming despite Blizzard going after them because ONLY WORLD OF WARCRAFT MATTERS (as much as FF14 wishes otherwise; they had their chance to usurp WOW and MISSED- that's never happening again).

Look at what they consistently offer: giving the target audience what they want, with superior convience- same as what WOTC did and does, but no Tabletop competitor even thinks to offer. Only that Project Aurora guy has even broached the question- that's how deep in the sauce Cargo Cultists are. If this Russian-based private server can deliver half of what it promises, it will CLOWN on Blizzard hard.

This is how competition within a Network Effect works. You only win if you can deliver what the target audience wants better than the big dog. This can be done in Vidya; Tabletop should be easier, but it's not because Oldfags are retards who can't think past their nose or they'd be doing this sort of thing to WOTC on a regular basis.

This is how Blizzard deals with it: shut them down, then steal their best ideas (and code) to incorporate (in a watered down manner) on Retail and/or Classic servers.

WOTC could have done the same thing; they will not need to going forward because there will be sweet fuck-all to steal.

The Culture: JD Cowan Sees A Pattern Repeating

Last Sunday, the 2nd, JD Cowan dropped a post about the Enshittification of Culture.

He saw in that, thanks to the very pretentious faggot at Write Conscious, that the same pattern whereby Commies turned Adventure Fiction into "Sci-Fi" and ghettoized it into a forum for their fetish faggotry got played out across all of the Culture Industry.

The blueprint for the sort of literary takeover that destroyed OldPub is epitomized by the siffy cultists way back in the 1930s, who then seized the industry in the 1940s and turned a market for normal people into their own fetish playground. The pulp revolution over the last decade specialized in the rejection of their frame of "Don't Read Anything Before 1940" to discover just how much fantastic writing was buried for petty political reasons and deliberately left out of print. You can read more about this specific problem in The Last Fanatics where I discovered it for myself as I was writing about it. If one cares about art at all, OldPub is a failure at preserving any of it.

For a more general picture of what is going on now, I suggest the above video showing how the Literary Cartel used the Fanatic blueprint to do the same thing to the wider industry. Books about nothing written to no one and heavily leaning upon gimmicks and the promise of becoming a micro niche celebrity is what the Literary Cartel decided to do to their industry. It's like its own Oprah's Book Club, complete with the advertisement of religious cult figures for whatever ideology OldPub wants to foist on you.

The video in question, by the way:

There is no saving this without exercising State power to seize the industry, cull the enemies therein, replace them with sane people while in receivership, and forcibly reform the industry back into something functional and sustainable that can justify its existence.

The Culture: Because Some Of You Don't Dream Big Enough

We've had two Braunstein scenarios published so far that serve as perfect campaign launch vehicles.

"But they only work for Muh Fantasy!" got defeated by UMBROS, which is based in Burroughs' Pellucidar (i.e. a Lost World, complete with guns).

Now the goalposts will shift to "You can't go big time with this."

That too is wrong.

I talked about this earlier this year at the Clubhouse.

Got delayed due to Government fuckery, but this past week I cleared that out and the outline I've got ready will start being used.

You can go big. Very big. Now being written.

Same deal when it's ready: Free in PDF, at-cost in POD. Aiming for something like BROZER in length: enough to get you going, but not enough to be a substitute for playing.

The Business: Ryan Dancey Told You This Was Coming Nearly 30 Years Ago

Network Effects, motherfucker. You WILL grok this.

What did Dancey say?

TLDR: "Most people only ever played D&D. It's D&D or Nothing."

Then he explained why by introducing, for most of us back then for the first time, what a Network Effect is and how it works.

That's how the Open Gaming License, the d20 System, and the best time for Cargo Cultists to be around and making money came to pass before he got replaced at Wizards of the Coast and Yet Another Retarded MBA Faggot ruined the good thing.

Ryan, as he explained at the time, was being magnanimous. He wanted everyone to enjoy the prosperity that The Only Game That Ever Mattered brought, so he made it piss-easy to play nice; save for a few outliers, most Cargo Cultists did.

What Ryan downplayed, but did not omit, is that most of Tabletop, well past the 80/20 threshold, is UTTERLY IRRELEVANT.

Cargo Cultists did not believe him them. As most of them are Oldfags, they still don't; they think that somehow not being bankrupt and out of business means they are relevant.

Lex Luthor Wrong GIFfrom Lex Luthor GIFs

Relevant means "Can be found in Walmart or Target, and is readily played by everyone in a manner that doesn't invite mockery by mainstream media."

No one on Stranger Things played Theater Kid Fag Non-Game or Temu Oldfag Houserule Non-D&D. They played The Only Game That Mattered.

That understated fact, backed up by data at the time, was never contradicted after the fact. The one thing that has not been talked about, but plays a huge factor into the strength of a Network Effect, is control over friction.

The holder of an Effect controls competition within the network by controlling the friction generated by non-compliance.

Friction, in this context, is measured by inconvience. Tabletop is notoriously inconvient; if you're a commercial operation, solving that issue is your top priority, and nothing is more inconvient than getting people to play at all followed by deciding on what to play.

WOTC's new pivot solves BOTH. Going mobile-first solves the Schedule Your Fun part; you can play whenever, however. Going All You Can Eat Brand Crossover Buffet solves the what you play part by standardizing the form of play while increasing the options within it.

Going against this increases the friction, exponentially so now that WOTC will be mobile-first, which is detrimental to convincing people to go with your Temu Tabletop offering over Official D&D in commercial terms. Only non-commercial alternatives, which don't compete on the same level, are viable now- and no, that doesn't mean serial busking on Kickstarter. That means going with a different organizational model entirely, such as the Clubhouse, which solves the same problems differently.

Don't take my word for it.

This is, of course, terribly frustrating to those of us who release products intended to be played. But the reality of the network effects and switching costs of RPGs is inescapable. If people didn't buy for art and lore, there'd be almost no indie industry at all.

— Archon | Autarch Games (@archon) August 4, 2026

These people would be better off making this shit as glorified Coffee Table Art Books like Dinotopia, with playable notes as a separate PDF for download.

This is why I say that Tabletop is no longer commercially viable. There is only non-commercial alternatives and delusional Cargo Cultists.

The Business: Too Many Don't Grok How Normies Work And Thus Miss Why WOTC's Move Matters

At GenCon, Wizards of the Coast confirmed what I said was the play: the Fortnite strategy.

People do not grasp what this means.

All of the Brand collaboration releases for Magic are allowed in all formats. You want Aragorn and Optimus Prime and Y'stolha Rhul in your deck? You can.

This is exactly what WOTC's target audience--Normies, Casuals, Tourists--want: all together, all in one place, all under one ruleset, all Officially Sanctioned, in a mandatory crossover environment.

That is the Fortnite strategy. That target demo is a Low Agency Demographic. They do not trust Unapproved People. They only trust Brand because Brand is Approved. Brand is Authority.

The Big Deal here is granting permission to these Low Agency people to do what their Revealed Preferences say that they want: to have an All You Can Eat buffet of Approved Stuff that they like, priced cheaply, to play with in the Approved Sandbox.

They will not--have not, never have--just done it themselves. They do not accept the validity of homebrewing. They do not accept the premise of users just doing things. They show, again Revealed Preferences at work, that they need permission from someone they view as the authority on the matter- which in this case is the Brand. WOTC knows this. Hasbro knows this. Their Brand counterparts either know it or quickly catch on.

This goes well beyond HERO allowing Marvel vs. DC fights to be resolved.

As it is in books, so it is in games: NORMIES WANT "THE SAME, BUT DIFFERENT" ALWAYS!

That means NETWORK EFFECTS! Who is the Big Dog in Tabletop? WOTC and D&D. What do Normies only play? Official D&D. What does this move do? Load up the only game that matters with all the stuff that Normies want in the only place they will ever look. This is a very full, and growing, Walled Garden. Couple that with the announcement of Official D&D going mobile-first and you can see the plan--the pivot--in action.

All the Cargo Cultists are still deep in denial.

So are a lot of others that ought to know better, but due to those influences still refuse to see reality for what it is.

This is not a Death Of Physical. This is a Death Of Schedule Your Fun. This is a move towards what Normies proved--and have proved for over a century, by Revealed Preference--that they reward: CONVENIENCE AND FRICTIONLESS ENGAGEMENT!

Being mobile-first means that they can and will play Official D&D at work on their breaks, between doomscrolling binges, on their commutes, etc. and they will happily drop a fiver on a new race, class, etc. if it means they get a leg up on everyone else at the table. All that remains are the AI-controlled bot players and Referees.

Yes, you will live to see Snake Eyes, Optimus Prime, Estiniam Wyrmblood, Cloud Strife, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Tirian Fordring team up against Abaloth the Devourer in an official D&D module and the Normies will eat that shit up, making WOTC and their partners BILLIONS.

And because of this, "RPGs" will be defined as "Officially Licensed Brand Crossover Let's Plays".

No one will ever look at your Temu D&D again.

Commercial viability outside of this is OVER. Yes, even for Palladium; they'll just be among the last to die.

There is this, and there is the Clubhouse.

The Collapse is not only here, it is Past Tense.