The Business: Further Signs That WOTC's Going The 24/7 Digital Route

We got further confirmation that everything I said Wizards of the Coast is doing to Official D&D is happening.

The former WOTC CEO is now back in control, directly running WOTC from Hasbro's C-Suite.

He can, he has, and he will again bulldoze inside opposition to his agenda and will go ahead to implement exactly what I said previously was the objective for the official game.

The AI DMs and player bots are coming. The frictionless convenience of a phone app-based business and gameplay model are coming. The legacy model of business and organization are on borrowed time. The Cargo Cult is Cooked. There is this, and there is the Clubhouse. The Cargo Cult collapses.

Many--as seen in the comments--still don't see what time it is. They can't comprehend second-order effects. They can't comprehend trends and directions. They think that they can just ignore it, not realizing that they've been coping--and failing--for decades at this point in doing so as their pool of prospects shrinks year on year depending on how frictive they are at their table.

These Dexters deserve the destruction falling upon them.

The Business: Cargo Cultist Continue Culting

Double-dose of dumb and pointless this week.

First, Roll For Combat and Yet Another Fucking Hackmaster Edition.

I am not, and never have been, a fan. It was tolerable as a joke in the comic. It is not when it's a deliberately fuckedup AD&D knockoff on the shelf wasting space and wood pulp. The best thing that could happen is for this begging episode to fail, but it won't because Cargo Cultists Gotta Cult but--like past editions--it will be collected and read, not played. Waste of time and money. Fuck these guys.

Then there's Matt Colville, whose shameless bullshitting got rightly roasted by the Oldfags.

Shameless theft of Traveller, Gamma World, Real D&D, and some of the odder Final Fantasy games is his new grift. He needs his kung-fu sealed. Do not give this faggot your time or money either. Ever.

Just play real games--just play D&D, real D&D--and forget that these lying faggots ever existed.

The Business: Observe The Cog-Dis In Action

A One-Two for Roll For Combat. First, last week's show.

And two weeks ago.

Glickner and Derik repeatedly display that they do comprehend how fake, broken, and dumb the Cargo Cult is and yet they immediately turn about and continue to double-down on the dumb at every turn instead of acknowledging the trend and how this means that their model is on its way out. They cannot acknowledge, if not comprehend, second order effects. Neither can they perceive trends and directions.

They deserve the shit-kicking coming for them.

The Culture: We Can Freeze Them Out

Last Thursday Chubby Funster cut this video on the new Vampire edition.

Aside from dumping the offenders face-down in a ditch or giving them one-way trips to the Titanic, there are ways to gatekeep.

The first, and most obvious, is to (a) stay within the Network by (b) either using a previous edition or (c) putting our your own fork and filtering out those who do not- and making acquiring copies of that edition piss-easy to do. You are competing on pre-existing presence being your means of lowering friction. If your edition is easy to acquire and use than the new crap, you seize control of the Network and now YOU control what Is and what Is Not.

This is how you win: make your edition less frictive than theirs, take the high ground, seize control (and thus the gates), then freeze them out.

The Culture: The Best D&D History Book Yet

Last Wednesday, Dunder had on the man behind D&D: An American Institution.

You want a copy? Buy it here.

The Business: Another Axanar Arrived

We have another Axanar situation.

The man behind Star Wars Theory put out a fan film that clowned on the Devil Mouse.

I am not exaggerating; compare this to what we saw out of D23 for the new season of Ahsoka and you can see that it does make Disney look poor by comparison. SWT isn't the Axanar gang; he doesn't have professional actors, costuming, practical sets, etc. and the expense that goes with it. He's made a CG fan film, but he did it right and thus it puts to mind the trailers for SWTOR that Blur did years ago- trailers that also clowned on the official live-action media.

This is what is coming.

No, Disney can't stop this- try as they might. The savvy will just lie about it, then upload it from jurisdictions that tell Disney's lawyers to pound sand to ensure that once up it stays up (even if you may need a VPN to access it).

"But Muh Copyright!" stops meaning anything when you have a global Internet and several countries that are more than happy to host this stuff Because Reasons. Couple that with the ready availability of hardware to burn things to disc, flash drives being cheaper than batteries, and all other forms of DIY distribution being available (including Torrents and FTP servers) and you have the conditions for the long-awaited Fan Coup.

Network Effects are real. Fighting within them matters. This? This demonstrates Proof Of Concept, and with it comes the test of what defines Uncle George's Space Opera now that Uncle George has abandoned his creation. You can argue that this should be spent on original creations, but then I must respond with the Enemy's words: "No one will watch it."

The people want the Brand. Now the tools are here for the people to make their own Brand media, and they will with increasing skill and frequency henceforth. Revealed Preferences are Revealed.

The Culture: This Is A Marketing Problem

This is a Marketing problem pretending to be a Literary problem.

Our host is not yet aware--nevermind accepting--that Genres Are Fake And Gay.

"Fantasy" is not real--Hilary Lane blew that one open--because it's the flipside of "Science Fiction" not being real (h/t JD Cowan). What he's complaining about is generations of incompetence at Marketing a Product to Prospective Consumers.

You need Ad Men sorting this shit out, because that's what this is- a failure to sell.

Until you accept this, you will continue to flounder.