The Business: Willfully Ignoring Reality Because Admitting It Is Ego Death

Copium from the Pundit.

He--and everyone else echoing this bullshit--are doing the meme.

Pundit knows that Beyond is all that matters.

Beyond is thriving.

As much as I would rather see Bob The World Sharter exiled to the Sun, his "D&D Killer" video showed conclusively that Wizards of the Coast IS UNTOUCHABLE. Credit where it's due; he brought the receipts proving that there is no competition within Tabletop for WOTC at all- not even close.

This is why I can dismiss Pundit's ponderings. The Network Effect in Tabletop is so dominant, and so solidly in WOTC's hands, that not only are they insurmountable now they are now PERMANENTLY untouchable. In order to threaten WOTC, someone bigger from another business niche has to step in and do to it what it has done to Tabletop. That isn't going to happen, not with Blizzard and Disney in their corner- and, via Magic, other major Brands making strategic alliances with WOTC for mutual benefit.

This is what Oldfags and Cargo Cultists confront daily: utter irrelevance, and with it the death of their egos due to over-investment in the idea that their plucky outsider band can make things happen in the Big Time. They think they're the Rebel Alliance, when--at best--they're this sad sack.

Most are not even that; they're the Faceless Wretches that (deservedly) got yeeted by the Empire.

That's not how Network Effects work. You can't fight and win from without on your own; you can only do so from within. From without, it's purely a matter of size; the biggest Network always wins because the bigger consumes the smaller and digests it into itself. WOTC doesn't fear the Oldfags or the Cargo Cult; it fears Fornite and Roblox- hence Universes Beyond, which is WOTC's attempt to work WITHIN THAT NETWORK EFFECT.

The sooner people comprehend this, the better they will be.

The Business: Come Get Your New Glitter Boy Book

In case you missed it, Uncle Kevin's got a new thing up on BackerKit.

Campaign link is here.

Yes, it's already funded, three times over as of this post, so it's a safe bet.

Best value is the $20 softover with the addon for the Mechanoid book to come later.

Yes, this does mean that even Palladium has to resort to begging these days. Deal with it. Christmas Grab Bag season is around the corner, by the way. Expect those to open up again in a few weeks.

The Culture: Bros Be Making The Hobby Safe For Non-Freaks

I hate RPGTube so much. Most of these channels are worthless blathering bullshitters like this wanker.

If they aren't grifting shills or self-important blowhards high on their own farts, they're morons who are Wimp Los trainings others to be Wimp Lo.

No wonder so many bounce off the hobby if this is what they first see. Can't blame them.

Thank God for the Bros. It'll take some time yet, but the radical of act of treating this like you are playing ANY OTHER SPORT OR GAME will unfuck everything in due course. Not just in the "play the game, follow the rules, like you do with any other sport or game" sense, but in the "stop being a werido freak Death Cultist" and "stop making this your consumer cult idol" sense- three things which, it turns out, makes a lot of them recoil as if confronted by a Cross.

Good.

We should be unrelentingly inhospitable to these estrogentic, resentful, spiteful mutants such that they will beg for hemp neckties and directions to the nearest scenic bridge. We should do this, and we should enjoy doing it. Normalcy is as sunlight to the undead, and as such we should enjoy dragging them out into it early, often, and repeatedly until they are not a problem anymore.

The Culture: You Have The Means To Win The Culture War- SEIZE THEM!

You're going to see these one-man ops get better and better as the tools and the acumen refine themselves.

Furthermore, as the Malfoid video shows, you can expect the savvy and ambitious to turn on a dime to exploit anything viral in social media.

Stop your Luddite bullshit; this is the biggest opportunity to seize the culture in a generation, but only for those willing and able to embrace the technology. Do what it takes to win. Books, comics, animation, live-action- all of this is now open for us. SEIZE IT!

The Culture: It's Easy To Make Personae Now

You can gin up VTuber personae with a prompt.

You can gin up a PNG from that concept sketch, which is enough to get started.

You can then come up with a Live2D model if you like this persona enough to stick with it, and later on get a 3D model when your finances allow for it- and that's a lot easier than it seems now.

Leafit is Good People. Coming up with a way to cut out Death Cultist cockblocker artists and riggers is a good thing for the scene and the hobby- and not just for VTubers.

Super Intelligence is a good thing, folks. Stop with your Luddite bullshit.

The Culture: Lying Oldfag Boosts Lying Newfag On Hit Against The Bros

Joe, and the man he's quoting, is a liar.

You know this was a hit-piece against the Bros. This is the tell:

The Realization: After editing, Jacob concluded that 1e AD&D was never truly intended to be played strictly by the book; instead, it relied on the Dungeon Master to wing it and adapt the rules to keep the game fun (6:54-9:37)

This is a bald-faced lie. Joe knows it's a lie because Joe knows that the #BROSR exists and has been successful doing exactly this. Joe is a lying faggot and should be treated accordingly. So should Jacob.

And this? This is B/X Brain.

Methodical Play: The video highlights that early D&D was meant to be a slow, methodical experience centered on dungeon delving for the "love of the game" rather than driven by character backstories or grand narrative arcs (11:03-12:30)

Motherfucker, this is not B/X!

Of course you wouldn't know that because you never played the game that exists; you made a non-game based on your half-assed comprehension of B/X and called it that. This is no different than me, a cripple in a wheelchair, calling the act of getting on a E-Trike and rolling my way across a course of 26 miles "running a marathon" or what the BBC rightly got roasted for doing.

Words mean things, you two-faced snake!

So no, you lied. You lied about AD&D1e. You lied about RPGs. You lied about your own acumen. You are a two-faced lying faggot, knowingly lying about people you don't like for effect, and you deserve to be punished for your perfidity. Jacob, being your Newfag counterpart, deserves the same.

The Culture: Chainmail Done Right Is Easy

Jon Mollison's recent Chainmail videos show how it's done.

The game is not as hard as it seems, and it scales well.

What is barely addressed here is that what Chainmail allows is already embedded into AD&D1e, including the scaling.

This means that you could play the exact same scenario with AD&D1e and get the same experience, albeit with some extra steps.

The game works when you let it do what it is designed to do, so Just Play D&D.