Admin: The Annual Return Approaches

My birthday is a month from today.

I know the ritual. Folks in the family want to know what I want for my birthday, and since it's two months before Xmas I might as well put my Wish List in order.

So that's done: Amazon (Appendix N Lit, Concept Art Books, General Anime, Genre Fiction Media, Gundam Media, History Media, Middle-Earth Media, Miscellaneous, Old West Literary Canon), Steam, GOG- all sorted. In addition, the big lists I don't keep online (firearms, transit, services, Things Only (U)HNWIs Can Do For Me) are all also updated and I remind you that gift cards are always appreciated.

Additions this year include: a year of Twitter Premium, upgrading my PC's graphics card (not by much; I'm aiming for the 6GB version of my current card), a Palladium Grab Bag (if live by that point; if not they will before XMas) and this print of the original cover art for A Princess of Mars, a hardcopy of D&D: An American Institution, and someone somehow finding a print copy of the Robotech: Expeditionary Force Marines Sourcebook.

The Business: Games Workshop Is Fucked

One-two of videos showing why GW is fucked and deserves it.

Yes, this will happen and sweet fuck-all will work to prevent it.

The next step will be to be able to print models with the desired color scheme imparted in the printing process, killing that tedious bitchwork that is painting the damned widgets.

This will force GW to stop being focused on pushing minis and instead focus on what their real business value is: providing secure locations to play the fucking game.

It would be nice if they also bothered to put money into producing proper fucking rules and manuals, but they won't because tri-annual edition churn has been their business model since the 1980s and they ain't stopping now even though they are in dire need of doing exactly that.

So go ahead, pirate that shit and print away. Fuck GW, and flat-out lie to them if they ask if your minis are Official Product.

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.