The Culture: The Colony Drop Resulted In Multiple Impacts

Conventional Play's demise has taken shape.

The collapse of Diamond screws everyone pushing print products into retail channels. The tariffs--which, I remind you, are still on the table--are screwing everyone printing overseas, especially in China. The bots kill the need for anything done by hand but marketing and editing, and the bots are getting better at the editing on a regular and frequent basis, reducing those costs to ZERO; learn to market and master the workflow now. The overall global economy has been disrupted and is still in realignment, reducing discretionary spending significantly for anyone that isn't a Baby Boomer.

In short, the Colony Drop has hit and there are now multiple impacts rippling across the scene from different directions all impacting in quick succession reducing both capacity for supply and capacity for demand. Commercial viability is now disrupted and destabilized, and collapses are now rising across the board exactly as I have previously specified: the smallest and least-like-D&D are going under first and fastest, either shutting down or reverting to a non-commercial basis for operation.

And yet Wizards of the Coast doesn't even notice or care. The folks who just buy from Wal-Mart don't even know anything happened, or ever will.

No one who just plays D&D--any edition--is going notice or care. They're just plugging along, week on week, rolling mans and looting lairs, without any idea that anything has gone wrong at all.

Those that survive this round will still take damage that they won't recover from in time for the next, and the next is coming sooner than they think.

The retrenchment is real. We're going to revert and rally around The Game That Matters as all others fall away. Maybe a few others almost as Lindy--the D&Ds of their niche--will also survive. Nothing else will.

And certainly not the commercial environment we've had for over 50 years. That's deader than an incinerated corpse. I told you all it was coming. Now I'm cozy behind the gates of the Clubhouse, and the cargo cultists are panicking over emergencies they thought would never happen. The middle's been cored out; either go big or go home, same as it is everywhere else.