Mearls Eats His Foot & Reveals Publisher Fragility in Tabletop RPGs

The other day, WOTC's D&D Boss--Mike Mearls--stuck his foot in his mouth about women in gaming in a stupid attempt at virtue-signalling to the SJWs in and around tabletop RPGs. By claiming that women cannot handle complex rulesets or setting lore, he shows his own opinion on the matter through projecting that on to a strawman and then "firing" it.

This is all about some "gatekeeping" thing he alleged to be a problem. This too is projection, as it is he and his fellow travelers that want to do the gatekeeping. Wizards of the Coast, Paizo Publishing, and the rest of the Socjus Death Cultists in tabletop gaming wish they had the power to exclude people they don't like from the scene as their counterparts in videogames do.

The problem is that they cannot possibly do this. The very nature of the medium disallows the possibility. Tabletop RPGs are played at home and in clubs. They are not under central control and cannot be centrally controlled, try as the SJWs might to the contrary. As a concrete application of this fact, consider the following:

• The Game Master, not the publisher, controls what rules and published content gets used- not the publisher.
• The Game Master can, and will, change anything about what is published to suit his wishes and there is nothing the publisher can do about it.
• The Game Master does not need to purchase any published ruleset to use a published ruleset. The d20 System is free online, and that is not the only one available, legally. Add other options, and the publisher never has to see a penny if they seek to impose Socjus bullshit upon the users.
• The Game Master does not need to use any published ruleset at all. Nor does he need to use a published setting. He can create his own, and use that exclusively. He can share his rules or setting as he chooses online, and there is nothing any publisher can do about it.
• No player is constrained by any such concerns either. Many don't even buy their own dice, or spend so much as a penny. They just show up, play, and go home.

This is why, ultimately, I am unconcerned by the convergence of any tabletop RPG publisher. I already have my own ruleset, for which I can just go to a convenience store and spend no more than $5 to have everything I need to run it for years to come- and most of that is the buying of enough standard six-sided dice (five) so that two players can roll off at once. I also have my preferred D&D editions, neither of which are the ones published by WOTC originally, and I have a few others by other publishers for other interests.

Wizards, Paizo, et. al. can die in a fire for all I care. They are not Dungeons & Dragons. They are not gaming. Me and my kind are, and we shall always be this way. We don't need you; you need us, and we know it. Give value or get fucked.