The Business: WOTC Is Yanking Out The Pillar Holding Up Conventional Play

I told you this was in the works. Now we have someone recently on the inside talking about it.

D&D’s digital future seems increasingly likely.

I thought those panicking about an all-digital future for D&D were alarmist. After all, I said to me, WotC makes a lot of money selling books. Why would they stop? Or even de-emphasize them? pic.twitter.com/l35RnJeR3C

— Ben Riggs (@BenRiggs_) January 22, 2024

(The rest of the thread can be had here.)

Take a note on whom Ben said got fired and whom WOTC is looking to hire. That's the biggest tell that I have this correct and WOTC is looking to abandon tabletop entirely. You do not hire systems experts, coding experts, networking experts, etc. etc. (as well as hire Microsoft and Zynga executives with experience in monetizing gamers/users via FOMO and subscription business models) if you are not switching mediums.

This is what will happen every single time when you turn a hobby that should be run like a Clubhouse social pursuit into a product-driven Consumerist Lifestyle Brand.

And yes, again, this was already the case decades ago when Cargo Cultists imposed Consumerism on the hobby because "BUY MORE PRODUCT TO SOLVE PROBLEMS WITH PRODUCT! WE ARE VERY SMART!" was the order of the day and in a pre-Internet world that could (and did) work- at the expense of burning the Clubhouse to the ground, then using the ashes as part of the ink for Yet More Product.

"But this-"

Once Current Edition is all-digital, entirely online, and confined to a walled garden you will have no one brought into Conventional Play via WOTC's sales funnel ever again falling away to find any competitor's products. The drip-feed you remora subsist on will be sealed up for good.

All of you Cargo Cultists--OSR or not--rely on a steady stream of those disaffected by Current Edition to make your own alternatives worth bothering to publish as a business proposition. Dancey proved that with recepits over 20 years ago; nothing changed since 1999 save that this trend only intensified. That's why so many of you bent the knee and went with the Open Gaming License, and then the follow-on trademark licenses; you needed that Social Proof to get eyeballs on your stuff and WOTC has taken that away.

Right now you think it'll be okay. Only Kevin Siembieda can say that and have any possibility of being correct because he turned his core audience into a cult decades ago; it's why, despite some of the dumbest things I've ever seen coming out of Palladium's offices ("Crisis of Treachery" indeed), Palladium remains a Top Five All Time contender and often is Top Three. No one in the Cargo Cult dominates the not-Current Edition scene like he does.

You're fucked.

But, as usual, it's a Damage Over Time process. You won't notice at first. It's only when your sales start slowing, you start hearing about groups being unable to form due to lack of interest, conventions refusing to have your product exhibited or played there (for non-political reasons, of course) because you can't draw enough attention vs. Yet More Current Edition offerings, and so on that you'll be forced to accept that I am right and your future is over. Not even Palladium can endure for much longer than Kevin sticks around; once he's gone, Palladium itself will follow.

You can get out in front of this.

You have three options:

1. Revert To Hobby: This is the Basic Fantasy approach, where you give away PDFs and sell POD at-cost because you make your money elsewhere. Given the notorious poor commercial potential for tabletop fantastic adventure games, the most practical one for most of you. Back to Corpoland for you.
2. Follow The Leader: Abandon tabletop for vidya like WOTC has. Of course you have to have a property that has a viable videogame paradigm, and most of you don't.
3. Beg For Money: Openly embrace Neopatronage, live off crowdfunding (Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Patreon, Subscribestar, Gumroad, etc.) but this requires you having a large (or wealthy) enough audience and most of you don't.

All of you frustrated novelists perverting the hobby would be better off just writing your novels and selling those instead. The remaining designers can reduce their own publishing costs to zero by embracing Print On Demand technologies across the board: manuals, tokens (minis, maps, etc.), all of that.

But here's the real truth: this hobby never needed you people. Now that the collapse has come, and the Clubhouse is rebuilt, you're going to find the survivors there- and not in your Consume Product treadmill.