02-16-2016, 05:30 PM
Not surprised to hear about this, at all, as sad as it is. - I commented extensively on a similar affair, when news on the Gygax family lawsuit broke at the K&K's Alehouse.
Short version is:
RuneQuest, 30++ years old, doing great. Traveler, great. GURPS, great. Even HARP, doing well enough. Just old D&D, and old TSR-related D&D, in particular, like matrimony in the plays of Jean-Paul Sartre, which is to say, morally and intellectually empty, and profoundly desperate. Like, it's not even the kind of bad news that one would in any way get emotional about, any more.
Those guys, altogether, whether it's the Tekumel Foundation, or the Gygax Trust, or the "men of ill intent" that Tim Kask represents, are the single biggest threat to our hobby at this moment - because they do their darndest to unnerve the small guys, not realizing that RPGs, in general, withstand the test of time precisely because of the creation of such "wild", testbed infrastructures. The RPG business doesn't work within a classic horizontal or vertical market structure, but all about externalizing, or outsourcing. "Gaming culture" is simply an economic structure based on tapered integration, or, in other words, the more you share, the more you gain. Successful people in the business long know that; that's why Wizbro is not going after smaller conventions, unsanctioned events, and so on. And that's why Games Workshop lost about 50% of their company value when they did.
And that's why all those scion funds are textbook examples of general unsuccessfulness.
Short version is:
RuneQuest, 30++ years old, doing great. Traveler, great. GURPS, great. Even HARP, doing well enough. Just old D&D, and old TSR-related D&D, in particular, like matrimony in the plays of Jean-Paul Sartre, which is to say, morally and intellectually empty, and profoundly desperate. Like, it's not even the kind of bad news that one would in any way get emotional about, any more.
Those guys, altogether, whether it's the Tekumel Foundation, or the Gygax Trust, or the "men of ill intent" that Tim Kask represents, are the single biggest threat to our hobby at this moment - because they do their darndest to unnerve the small guys, not realizing that RPGs, in general, withstand the test of time precisely because of the creation of such "wild", testbed infrastructures. The RPG business doesn't work within a classic horizontal or vertical market structure, but all about externalizing, or outsourcing. "Gaming culture" is simply an economic structure based on tapered integration, or, in other words, the more you share, the more you gain. Successful people in the business long know that; that's why Wizbro is not going after smaller conventions, unsanctioned events, and so on. And that's why Games Workshop lost about 50% of their company value when they did.
And that's why all those scion funds are textbook examples of general unsuccessfulness.