The Culture: Only Giants & Rodents Survive

I am once more putting Josh's video on how MMO dynamics works out there because Tabletop works the same way.

"But Official D&D-"

Is going nowhere.

As much as YouTube, TikTok, etc. blathers about PDF Slop and Also-Rans it does not move the needle. The vast majority of players play Official D&D or nothing at all; the folks who do go to an alternative only stay with that alternative until something Good Enough comes around and then All Sins Forgiven and back home they go.

That's not supposition at this point: that's 50 years of Revealed Preference being shown time and again.

"But the conventions-"

Don't measure the full reach of a game. WOTC has the data; despite the present management being just above the retards the Devil Mouse and Marvel has running things, there is no competition for Official D&D- not in commercial terms, and therefore not in hobby terms. The majority have never heard of Pathfinder, nevermind Shadowdark, and are only dimly aware that they can buy previous editions of Official D&D.

All of the "investment and sentiment" talk Josh says of MMOs applies, in a different form but to the same effect, with Tabletop games. The pattern, held consistent across decades, is that it is so much easier to get an Official D&D game going than anything else. Even popular Also-Rans get friction, but Official D&D does not; everyone may not prefer it over everything else, but everyone will play that as a second-choice if Their Favorite Game is not an option.

So no, don't expect anything to change just because WOTC fucked up. There will be a season of performative faggotry as people talk big about playing something else, but don't, and then openly play what they're playing all along once WOTC stops doing the dumb for five minutes. That's how it's been for 50 years; it ain't changing now, and it's not going to change because there is no one, ABSOLUTELY NO. ONE. with the will, the skill, or the resources to replace WOTC and its presence in the Normiesphere.

This is why the industry has to die. You want to dethrone WOTC? You want to dethrone Official D&D? That is what must be done. For reasons that have nothing to do with anyone in the hobby--business side or hobby side--that's happening now; this is the moment when the Martians all die to bacteria and the invasion of Earth ends- that's what the global trade war (that was one-sided until Trump actually did something about it) is for us here in Fantastic Adventure Land.

Wizards will be fine. Some Also-Rans will be fine, like Palladium. Some PDF one-man shops will be fine. Everyone else gets to experience a space colony to the face, and thank God for it because this hobby's long overdue for an extinction-level event to purge it of so many bad actors and Soup Aisle Suckers on all sides that just sell Endless Product Slop that no one plays- it's all performative consumption for Clout Goblin faggotry, selling the hobby equivalent of useless wall-hanger swords.

What will emerge after this reset will not be what it is now, and that means that the hobby has the opportunity to justify its existence once more by proving its utility in society- something only the Real Hobby (with its wargame roots) can do.