The Business: The Institutional Incompetence of Tabletop Gaming

The recent drama regarding Magic-Users By The Water (MuBTW) has concluded. Now that a few weeks have passed, and MuBTW has resumed its ordinary operations, the reactions by the minnows of this hobbyist market demonstrate a diverse, inclusive, and equitible community of complete institutional incompetence that demonstrates why MuBTW is correct to regard them (and the people they represent) with contempt and derision.

Overestimated Importance

If one were Teriminally Online, and thus lacked any grounding to the everyday reality of life in Realspace, it would be easy to acquire a false perception of how the marketplace of tabletop role-playing games works.

The perception, actively promulgated by bloggers and YouTube channels, is that MuBTW is--despite its size and influence--still just one of a variety of publishers in the market and thus the products they use are fungible by the hobbyist. Even people who have first-hand knowledge, knowledge that they used to prove conclusively through market action that this is not true, came forth and issued public statements favoring this false perception.

No one at Bank of America even knows that anyone other than MuBTW exists. Bank of America knows that MuBTW exists. That, right there, is sufficient evidence to show just how outsized the relevance--the power--of MuBTW is compared to everyone else, including everyone else COMBINED.

No one that isn't Terminally Online even knew that this drama happened. They just buy at the store, or--more likely--order from Amazon or directly from MuBTW and thus never heard anything at all. Nor do they care, and no one can make them. Those people are the majority. MuBTW knows this because they have the data to prove it, data that is driving the business decisions in the direction that this drama did not change.

Which makes the reactions by the publishers in particular hilarious. Kobold Press has announced that they're going, as has been revealed this past week, to clone what is still Current Edition (5th) to attempt to replicate what Paizo did with Pathfinder in 2008 forgetting that those conditions NO LONGER EXIST and thus that success is not replicable.

Other publishers are signaling their virtue by removing a license that turned out was never necessary from their products or using it to excuse making that new edition which was already planned anyway. All of them are acting as if they will somehow unseat MuBTW from its dominant position in the marketplace with pluck, grit, and craftsmanship- completely and willfully ignoring the now-proven fact that Network Effects by themselves guarantee that these efforts will fail.

That proof, by the way, is in the Revealed Preference of end-users for Official Current Edition over Off-Brand (Pathfinder collapsed when 5e arrived), of publishers for leeching off Official Current Edition via that very same license that they never needed by most certainly benefited from (Open Game License), and of gamers worldwide for The One Dominant Brand over all others (Dungeons & Dragons) such that it is synonymous with the tabletop role-playing game as a medium and hobby- and still so after nearly 50 years.

That, reader, is not a Marketplace of Equals. That is an Imperial master and a swarm of bottom-feeders courtiers (most of then eunuchs) scrambling for clout and scheming (vainly) to become Emperor themselves. The reality is that MuBTW does possess all of the power in this marketplace, and therefore can--and does--define what a RPG is for the Normies and good luck getting to make a living selling RPGs and RPG accessories to them if you do not conform to whatever it is the Emperor decrees.

Most gamers have never heard of the other publishers. Those that do don't care about them because they don't publish Brand, and MuBTW knows this; that's why Current Edition has edged to the Walled Garden business model over this edition's lifespan and the next one will double-down on it good and hard while pivoting out of physical products and legacy practices altogether.

The drama showed the impotence of this "competition" to the business world. Contrary to what these YouTube channels and bloggers would claim, there were exactly two things that had any impact upon MuBTW. The first was the flood of subscription cancellations to D&D Beyond. The second was AltaFoxCapital critizing MuBTW in public, wheree everyone can see it about their behavior. Nothing else moved the needle. MuBTW, being a Corporation, sees only Money and Power; gamers crying about things they can't control and whining like petulant children are naught but noise--think of the WAH-WAH-WAHWAHAH of the teacher in a Peanuts cartoon.

MuBTW was happy to bullshit without end to these people until Money talked. But that first event didn't have a substantial effect; all it did was change the line of bullshitting going on. It was when the Real Money talked that substantive action happened; Only Real Money and State Power matters. The masses are as impotent to change corporate policy as they are state policy.

The willfull insistence to the contrary betrays a level of delusional thinking that cannot help but to provide explanatory power to the rest of the insitutional incompetence of this market and its actors- as shall be seen below.

Cargo Cult Capture

It is not hard to see why MuBTW feels confident about its position when compared to its would-be competition. They do not provide viable alternatives.

The most vocal publishers crying about this drama were those most dependent upon MuBTW for their relevance and revenue; this the reaction of courtiers feeling the threat of being expelled from the Imperial Court, not of a confident rival power sensing the opportunity to gain power at said rival's expense.

This is because most of the other publishers in this marketplace publish Current Edition knock-offs, knock-offs of Past Editions (including old-timers like Palladium), accessories for Current or Past Editions, art projects used as tax writeoffs, foreign products with no viable market outside its home market, or political propaganda masquerading as playable product.

Why? Again, the answer is Network Effects; the value of a TRPG is wholly derived from how many other people play that game. It is easier to play a game with a lot of players than it is to convince someone to play something else that isn't popular, and--as Normies will not work for their entertainment, and most RPG players are Normies--those that just want to play stick to Current Edition no matter what it is. Revealed Preference shows that people who quit Current Edition quit RPGs entirely over going Off-Brand at a Pareto ratio MINIMUM. (i.e. "Current Edition or Not At All") The behavior (Revealed Preference) of the marketplace proves this to be true.

There is selective pressure, as a result, to conform to the norms of Current Edition- such that even Past Editions can be a hard sell, and those are the only viable competition for Current Edition. This includes product design and cultural practices.

As I wrote over the last few weeks, the long-standing dysfunction in the culture of play stems from Cargo Cult practices that themselves arise from incorrect presumptions of what the tabletop RPG medium and hobby is and how it works- and so much as questioning this is treated as heresy, which reveals the psuedo-religious nature of these beliefs for what they are.

It is this deep degree of incompetence--wrong premises prompt wrong practices creating aberrant cultural norms that promote and enable dysfunctional play, completing the loop by doubling-down on the wrong premises--that keeps the would-be competition unable to make the most of the fact that this is a medium as dependent upon Network Effects for their value as any Internet-related product or service (including Internet access itself) by doing what a competent business does: identify their target demographic, build a network around them, and sell their game to that demographic exclusively.

Y'know, like how the dominant RPGs in other genres got their position, or like how MuBTW has signaled that they're doing with the future Current Edition but the competition refuses to acknowledge this.

Tabletop RPG business practices has remained at 1980 for over 40 years. "Make game, sell (if at all) by saying how it compares to Current Edition and how the contrasts are what makes playing it worth breaking from Current Edition." Aside from MuBTW (and TSR before them) no one bothers with marketing to prospects that are not already gamers, so they leech off of MuBTW's marketing (or, for a select few, carryover from licensed products in other media done by those partner companies) or hope that retail employees bother to acknowledge that they exist when prospects come into the store.

Even the most obnoxious Gamma Males with Masters of Business Administration degrees can see that these are dysfunctional and incompetent business practices, and this is reflected in current and historical performance of these competitors- and the long-standing phenonemon of the few competents that arise herein leaving for where their talents can receive the compensation and reward commensorate with that talent.

In other words, it's not hard to figure out why most tabletop peoples are failures, fuckups, and fanatics- and therefore so are their products, services, and businesses.

Few things are more repugnant to the sensible gamer than to recognize that MuBTW is the most competent and rational party in this entire mess of a marketplace (and Stupid British Toy Company is not that far behind, an equally repugnant realization). Until this Cargo Cult Capture is broken NOTHING WILL WORK TO FIX THE PROBLEM!

Remedy

The first remedy is to get over yourselves, admit that nothing you've done has worked to solve the problems you claim to have, and recognize that what I am saying is true and correct.

The second remedy is to stop, turn about 180 degrees, and go back the way you came step-by-step until the dysfunction stops and things once more Work As Intended.

This is what I have done, and it took going all the way back to Kriegspeil to do it. Once there, you determine the exact point where the error began; you take your sword, you sever that limb by your own hand, and you burn the stump to cauterize the wound because that limb is diseased and will surely kill you if you do not do so. (Yes, I know this first-hand.) From there, having burned your boats at the shoreline, you have no way out but through; you begin a new line of development to create something that Works As Intended.

Then you identify who would like this and you sell it to them--that means learning how to market--and only to them. This is not for everyone; it never was, and that too is a massive error that needs correction (and boy does MuBTW know it). Your business model by necessity means building a network for your customers, your users, in order to grow the value of your game because it is wholly reliant on the Network Effect for its value.

This is not a process to be done lightly. It is not to be done in a year or two. It will take no less than five years; if you start this year, the smart time to market would be 2030 because you're going to be starting from scratch AND you have years of remedial business acumen study to accomplish before getting on with making this happen. Until this is done, there will be no viable competition for MuBTW because there will be no viable alternative networks to Current Edition- and that is, at the last, what you are doing: creating an alternative network.

You will know that you succeed when Real Money acknolwedges that you exist and no sooner. If you are serious about being in business, then you know what must be done. If you would rather just be another disposable, expendable, and fungible eunuch in the Imperial Court, then be honest and admit it. As things are, everyone other tham MuBTW could die tomorrow and no one would notice; that's how irrelevant the competition is, and they have no one but themselves to blame.