The Culture: The First Crack In The Conventional Play Wall Has Appeared

Remember those deleterious effects I mentioned? They're starting to show up.

Not to gainsay Venger's account of his operations, but very small operators on the fringes like him are going to be the first affected in the Conventional Play collapse.

The reason? Because the collapse scenario is an Outside In scenario, the bigger operators won't notice at first and will be quick to dismiss people like Venger either shutting down or going to Hobby Mode like Basic Fantasy as outliers.

The key phrase is "Gradually, Then Suddenly", and we'll see more and more (and larger and larger) operators and operations shutting down or down-shifting over the next several years as both SOBS' Big Move and greater socio-economic and geopolitical forces (operating in that classic Lovecraftian mode where Conventional Play isn't even conceivable to them) do their damage and force Conventional Play in Tabletop to change or die.

Venger chose death.

We'll see how others, including the Pundit, choose as each one of them in turn is brought to the point of decision. If the Boomer-tastic stupidity persists, most will also choose death. A minority will downshift to the Hobby Mode of self-funding non-professional publishing, and maybe the bigger ones like Baizuo will follow SOBS to Vidya (and, maybe, actually make that jump).

None of which will affect the Clubhouse.

That said, time is running out to choose your fate- both as hobbyists and as operators. Whatever else you can say about Venger, he made a free choice. Others will not be so fortunate and have that choice forced upon them- don't be one of them.

If you want to be in the Clubhouse, now's the time to Git Gud and prove yourself worthy. If you want to follow SOBS, now's the time to make a plan and put it into action. If you want to quit, do it now and be done with it while you can do so in a painless manner and no risk of rancor. It will only get harder as things get worse.