#getmakenzieout — Public Fediverse posts

New Take On Controversial TTRPG Companies.

I don’t think I’ve heard anyone say it yet.

This week has been another quiet news week around the TTRPG world and thank goodness for that. Wizards of the Coast employees continue to whine and beg for a union. Hasbro’s Q3 numbers came out. Yawn.

Chaosium, makers of Call of Cthulhu decided to start retroactively sanitizing some of the scary bigoted stuff out of their old products. Should I care? I mean, it’s their product to do with what they will, right?

So here’s my controversial take. Ready? If a TTRPG company is going to fail, LET THEM!

Let. Them. Fail.

I mean, honestly, if WotC employees fail to unionize, that’s on them. If Hasbro starts firing people left, center, and right, cool. Isn’t that what a lot of us have been wanting for years now? Aren’t they the ones everyone has been complaining about for the last three years minimum? I hope Tondro and Makenzie will be the first ones out the door. (I’m not worried about them finding employment elsewhere with their “impeccable” credentials.)

If WotC employees unionize successfully and get their way with Hasbro, okay. Great. When their next several products bomb, which they probably will anyway, it just looks bad on the people it always looks bad on. Hasbro’s Q3 numbers were far from a conversation starter. Dungeons & Dragons never came up as far as I know.

If WotC/Hasbro self-destruct, the fans win. If they suddenly figure out how to not make D&D suck out loud, the fans win. One way or another it’s going to be okay.

If Chaosium loses its older fanbase and fails to recover, yes we’ll be sad. I happen to like Call of Cthulhu and Basic RolePlaying Game (BRP.) It’s not like my copies of those games are going to spontaneously evaporate. Players will still connect. The reprints will still be around for a while. No big, really.

Alternatively, if Chaosium doubles down on proving they’re still a good company, that makes their games that much more appealing. If Chaosium caves to the angry old men complaining about censorship and goes back to the older printings of things they sanitized, that’s okay too.

Back in my day we had this saying that y’all kids don’t understand: If you find it offensive, don’t buy it.

I’m not worried about it one way or another. You’re going to do whatever you see fit no matter what some crotchety old fartz on the Internet try to say. Your mind will be made up one way or another. Do what you think is best. I literally say it all the time.

I haven’t picked up a single official D&D release in three years now. However, I’ve discovered my new forever game, Dragonbane in that time. I also found a rising star in Two Little Mice as a company with both the Outgunned line and Twilight Sword. I have a game for almost every occasion, mood, or scenario.

And get this—any game I don’t have on hand, I will simply create for myself. It’s not that hard. Anyone can do it. Will it ever be printed? Maybe not. It might never leave my notebooks. It might end up on my blog. It could eventually land on DriveThruRPG.com.

I still have my entire ICONS setting in handwritten notes. There are still plenty of untapped resources in terms of game systems, settings, and supplements on my shelves or pdf. I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that no matter what happens, I’m never going to get tired of TTRPGs. I’ll be doing this until I’m 103 years old.

That’s also why I’m turning a little more toward solo gaming now. Twilight Sword is my dream variant on Final Fantasy. It’s also everything I love about TTJRPGs and anime/manga games. The monster book coming to BackerKit in November makes me even more hungry for official Twilight Sword content. What I do in my solo content may just stay with me, for fun, for my own enjoyment. Alternatively it could end up being on the blog here or DriveThruRPG.

What I’m getting at with all this is we always have a choice. I’m just choosing to focus my energy back on things I care about and let the big companies do whatever they’re going to do. Until official D&D in particular gets back into my crosshairs somehow, I don’t care what WotC does or doesn’t do. I’m just going to break out the popcorn and laugh at them.

I say it every year, but I think 2026 bears repeating it. This year I intend to write more, read more, and discuss cool TTRPGs as well as supplements. Most of all, let’s just have more fun. Let’s explore. Let’s save the kingdom from the evil warlord. Let’s discuss all the fun stuff in gaming that we love.

With the world in the state it finds itself in today, please be kind. Please be considerate to one another even if we don’t agree. Lastly, please pursue the thing that brings you the most joy without harm to others. Thank you!