People keep saying that DungeonTube is collapsing under its own weight. That the audience is disappearing, the views are drying up, and the algorithm has somehow decided to smite the tabletop crowd. I don’t buy any of it. DungeonTube isn’t dying. The space is shifting. The spotlight is moving. The old guard is being nudged offstage by creators who actually remember what this hobby is supposed to feel like. What we’re really watching is a stage change at intermission. The lights come up, the crowd shuffles, and the folks who got too comfortable in their established seats suddenly realize the play is moving on without them.

It’s funny how fast things can turn. Five years ago, some of these channels were the beating heart of TTRPG YouTube. Fresh ideas. Real curiosity. Actual conversations about worldbuilding and character arcs and how to handle a problem player without turning the whole table into a therapy session.

They weren’t just content creators. They were peers. We were nerds among nerds. Now the same people want to tell us that DungeonTube is dying because their views aren’t what they used to be. The only thing dying is their grip on the narrative.

If they want to call the slow fading of their influence the end of an era, that’s their business. I’m calling it something else. I’m calling it a natural shift in a living, breathing community. We’re not losing anything. We’re making room.

What’s Actually Happening Out There.

If you step back and look without the panic goggles on, the situation becomes obvious. The audience hasn’t vanished. People didn’t suddenly stop caring about tabletop roleplaying games. What happened is that the newer creators showed up hungry. They showed up excited. They showed up wanting to talk about the craft instead of their next convention appearance. They’re the ones digging into character choices, or how to breathe life into a dying campaign, or the little tricks that make a one shot pop off. They’re talking about the game. Not the merch table.

Every week I stumble onto two or three channels with barely a month or two of uploads under their belts, already climbing past one thousand subscribers. Sometimes even three thousand. It’s not magic. It’s not luck. It’s not the algorithm picking favorites. These creators are giving people what they actually came to YouTube for. Energy. Insight. Community. When you see someone go from zero to three thousand in thirty days, it tells you exactly where the real movement is.

Meanwhile the old names are staring at their dashboards wondering where their views went. They keep asking why their audience drifted away when the answer sits right in front of them. Viewers moved toward the voices that haven’t forgotten them yet. The ones who still sound like they’re talking to fellow fans instead of a captive mailing list. Audiences always move toward the vibration that feels authentic. They always have.

That’s how YouTube works. All of the How-to-YouTube channels tell us to replace the word “algorithm” with the word “audience.” In fact, a lot of these DungeonTubers would benefit a great deal by going back and watching advice given to new creators who aren’t even monetized. I’m fairly certain a lot of the big DungeonTube names don’t remember what life was like before 1,000 Subscribers and 4,000 Watch Hours or big sponsors or being part of the Wily Knight club.

The Spoilage at the Top.

There’s a strange kind of amnesia that settles in once a channel hits a certain size. Back in 2017 and 2018, the big DungeonTubers were the pulse of the scene. They were tossing out clever homebrew ideas, deep dives into worldbuilding, strange little experiments you could steal for your next session. They felt alive. They felt present. They felt like people who actually loved the game. Somewhere along the line that spark dulled. They started repeating themselves. Then they started repeating each other. After that, the sponsorships or the talent management took over and the whole thing moved from community to commerce.

I don’t begrudge anyone making money. Bills exist. Medical expenses exist. Life gets hard. But the tone shifted. The priorities shifted. The early commitment to the audience gave way to the same opening routine.

A punchy hook. A quick pivot to a Patreon pitch. A Kickstarter mention. Another pitch. A convention plug. Then maybe five minutes of lukewarm advice. <Yawn> The content became secondary to the marketing. That’s when things started slipping. That’s why people click off in the first two and a half minutes with a Thumbs Down on you video.

The part that frustrates me is how these channels keep insisting it’s the algorithm’s fault. As if the algorithm woke up one day and decided to punish them for no reason. As if viewers left because of some unseen force in the machine. No. People left because they stopped recognizing the channels they loved. They left because the content felt hollow. They left because the creators stopped showing up for the hobby and started showing up for their bottom line (if they were ever here for the hobby to begin with.) That’s not DungeonTube dying. That’s the consequences of disconnect.

The New Kids Have Their Own Problems.

I wish I could say the newer creators were immune to all of this, but they’re not. Some of them show up with that wide-eyed passion, grab their first thousand subscribers, get monetized, make their first Gen Con appearance, and instantly start acting like they invented Game Mastering. A few of them have already formed their own little clique, complete with the subtle elbowing and mutual back-patting that always seems to sprout once numbers go up. I used to hype some of these folks without hesitation (as little as last year.) I wanted to see them win. Somewhere along the way, a few of them decided the climb was more important than the community that helped them get their footing. Funny how fast gratitude evaporates.

I know you don’t read this. You know who you are. Last year at this time I was singing your praises. I was hyping you up like a paid advertising agent. People practically begged me to shut up about you. Now I can’t even get a hello or the time of day. Too busy with your voice acting career, big DungeonTuber friends, building your studio, etc. I haven’t been this disappointed in a long time and I have four kids! Yes, I hold a grudge like it’s the last torch in my inventory.

It isn’t only the newcomers getting caught in this drift. Some of the old guard slipped even further. Ted from _____ Immersion has turned shilling into a full time vocation. Every month it’s the same cycle. Twenty minutes of manufactured excitement about whatever corner of the Forgotten Realms content is being dusted off this week, followed by radio silence when Wizards of the Coast pivots again and suddenly the same script gets applied to Eberron. It feels less like commentary and more like a corporate newsletter with dramatic lighting.

Then there’s the story of DnD Shorts. I remember when he was one of the loudest and most effective voices during the OGL disaster in 2023. People listened because he spoke with urgency and clarity, and he didn’t seem afraid to challenge anyone. The moment his massive Kickstarter took off, the tenor shifted. The edge that once cut through corporate nonsense is now aimed at independent creators, especially anyone who uses AI. The anti AI rhetoric became so heavy handed I couldn’t recognize the channel anymore. It’s hard to enjoy when he’s literally punching down on those of us who use AI in a responsible, accountable manner.

Bob and Ginny aren’t exempt from this either. They used to feel like genuine fans sitting across the table. Somewhere along the way the charm thinned. Bob barely touches worldbuilding anymore despite the name, and Ginny’s brand polished itself into something so shiny that it no longer resembles the creator who used to connect with people. 800,000+ Subscribers and a WotC spokesperson deal. I hate to say it, Ginny, but the relatability is gone. I guess a million dollars changes you. The content might still be professional, but the soul has completely checked out as of about 2023. .

Even the good Professor has started drifting toward a gated mentality. In that recent video he talked about moving certain kinds of content to Patreon, including his crafting work and some additional series. I don’t blame him for trying to support himself. Everyone needs income. But when the public channel becomes a long runway leading to a paywalled hangar, it stops feeling like community and starts feeling like filtration. That’s not what drew people to these creators in the first place.

I think the Professor’s a pretty okay guy. I’d totally share a table with him at the pub, back of a game shop, or at a convention. We agree on a good number of things. I still appreciate some of his advice. But the Old School gatekeeping crowd picked up that torch he dropped and ran 93 yards with it over on X(Twitter.)

Sponsored, Sanitized and Half Asleep.

There was a time when these channels felt like late night conversations at a game shop. Real talk. Real ideas. Real excitement. Somewhere along the way everything got polished into oblivion. You can practically hear the sponsorship requirements breathing down the neck of every sentence. The videos feel rehearsed, sanitized, and oddly detached from anything that resembles an actual tabletop experience. There’s no grit. No spark. No sense that the person talking has rolled physical dice in the last six months outside of Gen Con, Pax U, or D&D in a Castle when they’re not busy signing autographs.

It’s the same formula over and over. A hook that promises something revelatory or controversial. A sudden pivot into a sponsor. A quick flash of a Kickstarter link. Another sponsor. A whisper of actual content. Then the outro, padded with more self promotion. When I watch these videos now, I feel like an audience member being herded from one advertisement to another with the promise of insight used as bait. That’s assuming I don’t yawn, give the video a Thumbs Down, maybe Unsubscribe, and move onto a channel with 134 subscribers who talks about Dragonbane or Outgunned RPG.

What’s wild is how many of these creators seem baffled by the drop in engagement. They talk about audience loss like it’s a weather pattern instead of a direct result of the choices they keep making. You can only stretch your viewers’ patience so far before they wander off in search of someone who actually wants to talk about games instead of the latest branded notebook. The problem isn’t competition, and it isn’t some mysterious downturn in TTRPG interest. (The hobby itself is fine.) The problem is that they stopped showing up as creators and started showing up as spokespeople.

I miss the old energy. The rough edges. The unscripted moments. The times when a DungeonTuber sounded like someone excited to show you a weird idea they had in the shower. Now everything feels like it went through Wizards of the Coast’s PR. It’s like watching someone cosplay their past self while handing out business cards. No wonder people aren’t sticking around. Viewers want to be part of a living community, not customers in a digital mall.

The Gated Community Problem.

One of the loudest alarm bells in this whole conversation is the slow march toward gated content. It starts innocently. A little bonus video here. A downloadable PDF there. Eventually the channel begins to feel like an antechamber to a far more important room that only opens if you’re holding the right digital key. And sure, platforms encourage this. Patreon is built for it. But there is a difference between offering optional perks and moving the heart of your channel behind a toll booth.

The good Professor’s recent announcement about shifting his crafting videos and other series to Patreon hit that nerve for me. Not because he doesn’t deserve to be paid. Not because he’s wrong to want stability. I get it. We all get it. Life is expensive and the medical system in the USA punishes people for trying to stay alive. What bothered me was the way the shift fit into a larger trend. One by one, the bigger creators are inching their core content behind paywalls, turning what used to be communal conversation into a members-only lounge.

The Future Isn’t Dying, It’s Growing.

This is where things start to break. Viewers feel it. Creators pretend they don’t. And the whole ecosystem starts tilting.

So no, DungeonTube isn’t dying. The sky isn’t falling. The hobby isn’t shrinking. What’s really happening is renewal. We’re standing at the start of a wave, not the end of one. New voices are rising daily. New perspectives are forming. New energy is taking over. And this time, hopefully, the heart of the community won’t get bartered away for another sponsorship deal.

The future of TTRPG YouTube belongs to the people who remember why we showed up in the first place: to talk about the games we love, to share ideas, to get excited, and to build something that feels alive. The only creators who should be worried are the ones who forgot that.

DungeonTube isn’t dying. It’s being reborn, one passionate creator at a time.

Thank you for being here with me today. I appreciate you. Keep it real, but please strive for positivity, too. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy in your life.