BOT a Publisher

 Sitting around, watching soccer and chatting a friend up today, we clarified, among ourselves, what is going on in the RPG community. When I say "RPG community" I mean the table-top roleplaying cottage industry. I do not mean some sort of collection of people that look after one another. I don't care how good of friends that you are with other RPG content producers, it's a race. If you're not trying, you don't get to whine.

Where's WotC going?
No where. Not for at least a year. Their betters at HASBRO have had to step in and lecture them, maybe just remind them a little, about copyright law and more importantly HOW TO SELL A PRODUCT. My shares in Hasbro have decreased by 9% since the kerfuffle began. Before any redheaded webhead declares victory, I'm still up by like 80%, maybe 120%,  since I bought them in 2009. That's like over 240$ (US), at least, a share. Cool your jets, doom and gloom dice rollers.

So during my own cool down period, I will only look abstractly at my stocks (good advice for anyone that has a real job). What I will be looking at is the roleplaying, err RPG hobby. I'm done using terms like "TTRPG" because if it's not at the tabletop, it's a flop in about sixteen months. Sure the folks involved in owning this or that electronic game for your cell phone believe, but will you and the folks that played the game with you be spending Thanksgiving evening together playing it on your cellphones thirteen years later? If your answer is "Yes" shine on you crazy diamonds. Still I believe that when it comes to the cultural phenomena of "playing D&D" everyone wants to be at a table, even if hundreds, maybe thousands, of miles from each other.

 

Copyright 2023
Peryton Publishing and Teresa Guido

The sooner that white men leave the market, the better
As a dude that gets called a "troll" because I post thoughts when I disagree with others and they are unwilling to research what they are on about, perhaps I am immune to very slight provocations. Heading towards my sixth decade alive in a couple years and having had women and "people of color" in my gaming sessions since like my first time playing D&D, my feelings aren't hurt. I'm pretty sure that the players that show up at my tables like having me around even more so than the people that I work with in THE HOBBY after they displayed unprofessional conduct while doing so. Just ask the accused, they still work with me. I can get your their current email addys. Most of them are not old, white men.

Not sure if all you alt-right froggies in the OSR mire noticed, but WotC started finding their contributors' bad manners and anti-social tendencies after 5E started making for real moneys. That's like back before Moses was crucified on Gamergate. It was a way to insinuate problems with reputations without legally removing folks on a contract. THIS IS REALLY UGLY and as a company's practice. It needs to be redressed, BUT not by guys with silvering sideburns and silly glasses (so studious!) While not taking the fall for the OGL 2023 mishaps made by whomever, whom they alternately don't know about or won't speak about, Kyle B is lying hard. Do all the web interviews he wants, he's saying much of nothing and mentioning the word "community" about four times while doing so. This does not make anything right.
Noop the racial divide in roleplaying is a distraction. Find talent already, not agendas. Need a list of people of color that make great RPG products WotC? I have six on my phone and there are more. Stop demonizing the socially awkward guys that you once once liked when publishing 5E.

To the tadpoles of Mussolini
OSR just do something. Folks at WotC and their post-2003 alumni have backed you in a corner, but that was like in 2014 until like 2141. Stop leaning into the drooling racist mode while thinking that an acronym made by other folks, folks that have moved on, will save you from the likes of me making fun of you. Really, you guys have like 195% talent that gets wasted on putting out this or that fire because somebody is pranking you. Who cares that it's because you just can't get over a dude in a dress, that one that you met that one time in Memphis... . Mind you, the gatekeepers in your group are mostly to blame. They're as jealous of you as anybody on your left.

Bot A Publisher
I keep saying this. WotC is all about firing authors and firing up plagiarism. They have this thing called "artificial intelligence" that has moved from machine intelligence to text and image gathering and rehashing others' materials as fresh product all without paying royalties. Somehow for all of the product producers' high-minded intentions as proclaimed by its users, it just keeps saving big companies money on stuff like advertising and, soon to be admitted, content.
It really is time to start fighting this trend. That does not mean approving of children watching drag-queens in public libraries in Florida or showing up at my game at GenCon with .45 Colt with intentions to kill about a dozen people. It means, stop letting corporates tell you what is right.
Write it down, make it yours. Draw it, let others see what you did. Let editors and publishers be replaced by bots, not the human element in creativity.

No One Needs Permission to Be Creative
Even if your material is reliant upon somebody else's concepts, as long as you do not use use their copied and pasted material, you are more than likely within the guidelines of a legal concept known as "Fair Use." Oh yeah, don't use other authors' unique character and creature names and whatnot. While WotC has been the villain in displaying this precedent recently, the need to hide behind another logo is just a blanket.
Publish what you want, maybe with being a little paranoid about previews. If you cannot write something, don't create a facsimile. If you can't be an artist, don't fake it.