The Business: Magic-Users By The Water Take The Next Step To A Walled Garden

This came out Wednesday night.

They don't want you playing D&D at the table.

Really, they don't want you playing D&D with books at all.

In the grim darkness of the near future, all D&D will be One D&D. https://t.co/4D2FuDurgG pic.twitter.com/glWpDuMswf

— Daddy Warpig (@DaddyWarpig) October 5, 2023

Cutting out Penguin from distribution means that, in due time (and not long at that), Current Edition will be confined only to Approved Outlets. I would not be surprised to see that said Outlets only do Organized Play (to further centralized control in Seattle's hands).

A step or two removed from this will be to remove physical media entirely, putting into the all-digital Walled Garden business model that Magic-Users By The Water have already said is their intention henceforth for the property. Then, while winding down physical complementary product (e.g. miniatures and maps) to be rolled into the Virtual Tabletop, a new Companion (Mobile) App will be rolled out to lubricate the transition.

The Fear Of Missing Out and other artificially-induced social pressures to conform to C-Suite's desires will ramp up from there, and the Tourists in particular will take this up with ease (and then complain about their OneD&D expenses like they do Doordash and Netflix and so on). Cultists will take some more effort, but they will go along soon thereafter because That's Where The Action Is.

You might think me a doomsayer, and that's partially true.

You see, I think this change also means yanking legacy products is on the table- including Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition. They may say nothing, or deny it, but past performance indicates that the odds of this being the desired result are high enough to be considered certain and planned for accordingly.

In short, if you have a way to do guerilla Print On Demand, set that up now.

And if you don't have a set already, hunt down copies now before they get yanked from stores or used prices go to the Moon- and pray that I am wrong about this. I would like to be, but I know from past experience to not bet that way.