The Culture: Told You It's Was a Ruse Cruise

The Pundit reminded folks over this past weekend that the new Wizards of the Coast boss is a Death Cultist.

This is why I pegged the Greyhawk thing as a bait-and-switch sucker play. C-Suite in Seattle is still Enemy Territory, and Greyhawk is a property that WOTC owns but disdains due to it being defacto associated with Real Gaming- which they hate.

So long as the Enemy controls the levers, they will never permit contra-Narrative properties to thrive; instead, what we're going to see is a Limited Hangout where they placate the money (that would be us, folks) with 'Memberberry bullshit while they quietly reconfigure their business operations (which, I remind you, are plugged into the Money Printer and thus are disconnected from economic reality) to eliminate the print-primary, in-person primary business and social model that those rooked by the Ruse Cruise still assume to be the norm.

Where the Pundit goes wrong is in thinking that this is about Gen X and Gen Y money.

It's not. This is about Narrative Control. Wealth is downstream from Power. While the cohorts with cash are distracted, WOTC's pivot to digital-primary business with its new Seasonal cadence of product release (and its mimicking of the videogames that WOTC actually competes with) continues apace and with it a reconfiguration of how they acquire new prospective customers, train them into their specific form of play, and retain them over time. They are using the Live Service business model, mixing elements from MMOs, Battle Royales, and Extraction Shooters to turn Current Edition into something you play solo in drop-in/drop-out format on the go from your phone.

They are doing this because the Mammon Mob wants it that way. The Death Cult complies because a much more exclusive (for Tabletop) Network Effect makes it easier to exert control over the Narrative and psyop populations into taking the poz and embracing the Death Cult.

They will (again) beat the Soup Aisle because "conventional play" is just piss-weak against digital counterparts (which is why it loses every single time) and thus has no value proposition for the Normies, Casuals, and Tourists that make up the prospects. Only the BROSR offers a strong counteroffer due to being rooted in something Digital is still not able to do as wel as Analog.

This is how the Cargo Cult gets crushed.