The Culture: 2025 Is The Year WOTC Gets Exiled To The Soup Aisle

What did I say about the precondition for usurping the Master? They have to massively fuck up and create an opening for the Apprentice to exploit.

What does the Apprentice that is in it to win do? Look out for opportunities to provoke the Master to fuck up massively. Here it is.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!

This is not just the Big Move. This is an attempt to turn the business entirely from being about The Thing to The Brand. That's related to, but seperate from, exploiting and leveraging a powerful Network Effect.

Wizards of the Coast has the dominant tabletop adventure game Network Effect. It also has a dominant Brand. C-Suite may be conflating the two, not realizing that they are not the same thing. Brands are about Identity. Network Effects are about Utility. A Brand identity built off a specific Utility may waiver from time to time, but without it (and nothing of similar substance to replace it), it can and will be diluted to useless slop like ice at noon in the Empty Quarter in June.

All you WOTC haters wanted your moment to prove you can come at the King. You're going to get your chance to shoot your shot.

Why?

Because WOTC is going to find out that the Brand is so tied to the Utility that it cannot maintain its strength without. Every single previous attempt to sever the connection has ended in failure, and humiliation for those pushing it, and there is no reason to believe that this time will be any different- especially now that the Brand itself has become akin to Xerox and Kleenex in that it is a synonym for Generic Fantasy Slop.

Who among the Also-Rans and Never-Weres are even conginzant that this opportunity to surpass and become the Master exists? Who among them is ready, willing, and able to exploit this opportunity? Who among them, if made aware of it, are so disciplined and well-ordered that they can get into such a position swiftly and stand ready to strike?

So far? Only the #BROSR. No one else is able, few are willing, and fewer are ready. They are attempting to compete on product; that fight got sorted for good generations ago. The only available attack vector is service, which none of these wankers (and the nice folks like Macris) even consider before throwing money at the question.

That Not-Gaming stuff is cringe as fuck. Serious Soup Aisle low-status ladder-climber striver-anxious cringe, and that's before all of the Death Cult crap you know they'll push out the door (and cultivate for their online storefront). But wait; by the end of this year watch them gaslight everyone about how great it was and how they win everything like Mary Sue. Meanwhile, the reality on the ground will reflect that Tabletop's collapse has come and a few more people will be able to admit that it has and say so in public.

And the Clubhouse will stand through it all while everything else crumbles and falls.