Imperial Overreach: Not Just For Governments

Raging Golden Eagle shows us yet another erosion of Freedom of Association. It's not just Blizzard doing this, or other big groups; the smaller ones do it too, and for the same stupid reasons.

As with the Mike Mearls messup, Roll20 fails to consider that they can't actually achieve their stated objective. Tabletop gaming, even done online, doesn't need their platform. All you need is some way to communicate and a random number generator. The rest, while desirable to differing degrees, is not required. You can do without Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, Discord/Twitch, and run a tabletop game online just fine; play-by-email has been a thing for years, and play-by-mail before that.

More important is that convergence by one party always opens opportunity for a competitor to steal the converged's audience and put the converged out of business entirely. Go on, Roll20, slurp the poz and serve the Narrative. You just ensure your own demise, and it cannot come fast enough. Unlike Blizzard's overreach with Overwatch, you don't have billions of dollars and decades of goodwill to burn through before collapsing, so it comes sooner than later for you.