Mythic Mountain gets it.
Not your man. Not you. Not the Referee. Not Muh Narrative. The campaign ITSELF is what matters.
The integrity of the campaign matters, which is why the rules need to be obeyed and not LOLSORANDOMed into fucking Calvinball by incompetent retards who think they're smarter than the game.
Thumbing Games Workshop in the eye is a display of confidence.
Check them out while you can. I expect some form of legal fuckery to come at them sooner than later.
All of the development on the non-commercial side of the hobby goes on at Substack now.
I'm not a Dolemwood guy. Don't see the point of it.
But it's worth it get a passing familiarity because then you can easily follow along such articles to find and appreciate things like this:
The Duke’s player’s intention for this Braunstein was supposed to be a ducal summit to redraw borders. Instead, the capital was invaded, the Duchess was kidnapped, Baron Hogwarsh was murdered by a (star) man wearing his face, a senior Church official died in the streets, and half the great powers of Brackenwold watched it happen. Whatever this setting was before this, it is not that anymore.
Hie over to Substack if you're not already there, find the Bros and their friends (including myself), and read along.
On Friday last week, the Pundit dropped the following.
The Pundit gets what the issue is.
This is not a question of "You got Skiffy in my Fantasy!" because that's been part of the game since before its official publication in 1974, made brick-to-face obvious with the crossover rules for Gamma World and Boot Hill in AD&D1e.
No, the issue is Brand Collaborations. This means that Wizards of the Coast are pursuing the Fortnite model, which is where there are license deals made to allow for officially-licensed adaptations for The Only Game That Matters in Current Edition, and as we now see that's going to be fed directly into D&D Beyond where it will remains there as an exclusive offering to draw in new users and retain existing one- further reinforcing platform lock-in, weaponizing the Network Effect to cut off the acquisition of customers to all of the Temu Tabletop tinkerers bottom-feeding off of The Only Game (And Publisher) That Matters.
This will work because it already has for Magic: The Gathering.
This also will cut off license opportunities for everyone else, because WOTC will have the money and the time to suck up any and all such Brand License opportunities going forward and thus deny one of the lifelines that many Temu Tabletop publishers used to keep their operations going heretofore. WOTC is not a high risk proposition for a Brand; even Palladium and Paizo are now, and they're the perenial also-rans. As it is for other Big Corpos, so it will be for everyone else- such as the Burroughs, Howard, and Vance Estates.
You won't be able to court a dormant, but attractive, brand to go with your Temu Tabletop product going forward- not when WOTC is able to pay more, reliably, to a far larger target audience and thus open the door to yet further brand collaboration deals.
If WOTC (and Hasbros) has the sense that God gave a diseased donkey suffering from syphillis and dying of AIDS, they will make it clear that they are the only Tabletop party in town so they should just ghost everyone else. That's it for the PDF Merchants; you can only reskin B/X so many ways, the customer pickup pool from WOTC's castoffs is drying up, and they have neither the skill nor the will to do what it takes to compete and win. The Dying Time is here for them.
If you think this is not an issue on the commercial side, you STILL do not comprehend Network Effects. Pundit is wrong about the lock-in being a bad move because that has already proven itself to be a success. C-Suite is very happy with this; most players now use Beyond exclusively, disdaining print media entirely, precisely because being in the cloud allows for users to log in and play anywhere that supports the client. The shift to being Vidya is already halfway there, and the profits prove it.
Commercial Tabletop is over for everyone but WOTC. What remains is the lagtime between Cause and Effect. It may take a few years, but it's coming all the same. Only the Clubhouse survives.
The LOLcow has a point that the Cargo Cult refuses to face.
He cut that video on the 29th.
He is entirely correct. There are now far more, perhaps an order of magnitude or so more, Brand Fans than hobbyists.
Wizards of the Coast is not stupid. Cargo Cultists needs to stop retreating to this attitude; the business pivot over the last decade or more, while successful now, is not new. TSR tried this multiple times, including when Gary was at the reigns and before the Blumes couped him out with the help of the Buck Rogers heiress.
WOTC has successfully decoupled the hobby from the only brand name within it that matters, a policy now also being followed by Games Workshop to similiar (one may argue superior) success. There are entire audience segments for Warhammer that will not touch the plastic crack with a 10 foot pole, but read/listen to the books, play the Vidya, buy the merch, and watch/listen to lore videos until the cows come home.
WOTC has begun doing the same thing. Over 2/3rds of Baldur's Gate 3 players will never touch Tabletop, have no interest, etc.; there are people who read/listen to books but won't play anything, and now we have the Actual Play/Movie/TV segment that watch Critical Role or the movies and yet will only ever buy branded merch of some sort as they find gaming of any kind to be low status pursuits for losers.
C-Suite wants all that money, and they are getting it.
This is also playing into the pivot of Official Edition into an all-digital, always-online, subscription-based live service model- ultimately to be done remotely by phone in small chunks, facilitated by bots. It also plays into the planned Brand Crossover campaigns recently announced, following the Fortnite model because it works.
The bifircation is not only inevitable, it is not only here, it has been ongoing for years and only accelerating- and no, there is nothing the Cargo Cult can say or do to stop it because it is working. The shareholders are happy; everyone else gets to pound sand.
JD Sauvage made this plain over a week ago.
This is a game with defined procedures, we can and should get better the more reps we put in.
— JDSauvage: Fabulous PRIZES Contributor (@jd_sauvage) May 23, 2026
Simple as, folks. This is a skill; you can get better at playing the game, so Git Gud. Scoring systems and other feedback make this happen, some with the carror and some with the stick.
Pat reported confirmation of what Wizards of the Coast are doing to Official Edition.
The Temu Tabletop Twats that make up the PDF Merchant front of the Cargo Cult of Conventional Play are FUCKED.
This is WOTC weaponizing their Network Effect domination to kneecap the Cargo Cult, as I have previously explained. WOTC is Normiemaxxing. Normies LOVE this stuff; it is far more convenient and easy for them as proven by their Revealed Preferences for them than any other option in the commercial side of Tabletop; the Cargo Cult cannot defend against it because WOTC is where the action is and thus Normies see Cargo Cult offerings as the shit proposition that they are.
Fortnite works because you can just show up and play. Official Edition works because you can just show up and play. Anywhere, anytime, there it is. No Cargo Cult alternative can offer this. They can only parasite off of Official Edition, as it always has, and now WOTC's cutting them off.
Watch for the next step, which is to kneecap the Cargo Cult further by annoucing solutions to Schedule Your Fun that will be what I have described: the ability to play anywhere, at anytime, for as long as they want, from your phone because of bots running the game and filling out the party.
Solving that, and implementing that solution bit by bit, is what is next and thereby close off the Cargo Cult's acquisition funnel. Prospects will refuse to defect because Temu Tabletop cannot do what it was
