The Culture: They're STILL Trying To Get In Front Of Us

The Professor didn't intend to do this, but he revealed why Critical Role's doing West Marches.

This is not a big hobby. The distance between me and the offices in Seattle is not as long as people think; current and former WOTC people know who I am.

The idea that the Bros and the revival of Braunstein is not known where it matters is not a reasonable position to have; they know, even if they dismiss(ed) it, and they do keep hearing about what goes on deep underground because they pay attention to the retroclone scene (where the Bros get plenty of attention).

There are savvy people at Wizards of the Coast. They may not be on the board, or the shot-caller, but they are there and where they can they do act. Someone there, sensing what's bubbling deep underground, decided to look back and dug up West Marches. That this older half-assed version of the Real Game just happened to fit the needs of a perfect marketing tool and its utility as a backstop for Hollywood talent made it a no-brainer to use for the show.

Watch for it. This will be covertly and discreetly pushed as "The new and exciting way to play D&D that solves so many of your problems!" That's getting out in front of the Bros and the regeneration of the hobby, a thing that necessarily takes them out of their central position due to de-commodifying the hobby as a necessary element of regenerating and restoring it back to what it should have always been.

The tell? They're already pushing the drop-in/drop-out element as a feature for the CR audience, something that will be sold as an improvement implicitly so that the Normies (who, again, do not like Scheduling Your Fun and Official D&D does require that) infer that this is better for them than what they've been doing. Watch for it to get pushed in new marketing, new products, revised products, etc.--such as that new Dark Sun release--going forward.

You know you're seeing confirmation when there is a push from Seattle to kill the long-held Conventional Play norm of only getting to play one man at a time, instead of playing a roster of mans that rotate on and off the bench like Normies do in World of Warcraft and similar online counterparts, because that is as far as they dare to push to keep the Bros in containment because they know that Normies already playing don't like rapid change.

Is this good news? We'll see. There's successful containment, and there's failed containment; which this is remains to be seen.