Is Cyberdyne a subsidiary of Hasbro?
People are once again expressing concern over Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast using AI to replace DMs in their Virtual Tabletop while it is still in development. One of WotC’s pet shills got a chance to play around with the new Dungeons & Dragons VTT Alpha. News Flash: He said it’s going to be the absolute best. They already can’t wait to bury that sucker behind a pay wall and microtransaction the players silly.
The rampant success of Baldur’s Gate 3 continues to cause concern over whether or not DMs will even be necessary in the D&D world of tomorrow. Cynthia Williams (formerly of Microsoft) seems determined to turn D&D into a video game. I think as far as she and her goons at WotC are concerned, the DMs are just 20% of the D&D community that can just as easily be players.
I don’t think the big brains at WotC realize yet that the regular player base doesn’t buy as much as DMs and pushing DMs out isn’t going to get them more sales. Live human DMs are that 20% of the D&D community that spend the most money on books. The mere mention of those paper things probably caused someone at WotC to poop themselves. See, books are just those pesky nostalgia collector’s items. They don’t want DMs. They want players spending money on subscriptions and virtual wardrobes for characters.
Disclaimer: Statements expressed in this article are strictly my opinion. If you disagree or have a different opinion, that’s okay. I’m not an expert on everything. I’m not always right. I’m just writing from my experience as I know it. Your mileage may vary.
WotC’s not stupid, just greedy.
WotC is just trying to appease their Reptilian overlords at Hasbro and double profits over the next couple of years. I guess it’s an admirable McCorporate goal for them. Otherwise, what are the execs getting paid for, right? It’s those pesky working folk that provide all the labor to make physical products and make disposable income to buy stuff. Heck, those pesky discerning consumers are standing between Hasbro and all that easy money.
That’s the whole damned problem. WotC/Hasbro don’t care about the game. They know D&D as well as Magic: the Gathering are a money farm. If AI can run the game just as well as a human, then eliminate the DM component with AI and convert those people to players for more ching-ching. Those pesky discerning consumers are trying to prevent the nice lizard Habro execs from getting more ching-ching.
Let’s take a step back for a minute.
TTRPGs started out as a completely analog game. They had books, paper, tape measures, dice, and lead miniatures back then. (*mmm tasty lead…) Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson didn’t have cell phone apps to help generate characters. They used their imaginations and described what their characters were doing back then. There was no virtual in the tabletop.
Someone at WotC would be having a nervous breakdown reading this by now. “You- you mean people d-d-d-don’t n-need all these fancy apps and a brand new Alienware laptop to sit around a table and play D&D together? They can play for free?”
Yeah. Turns out sitting around playing real games with real people is basically free. Or at the very least it’s got a minimal cost past pencil, paper, dice, and maybe a place to play. D&D was born out of miniatures wargaming. While minis wargaming does have a cost, players didn’t need a big pile of money to play a game where a few characters could wander into a vast underground complex and describe how they defeat the monsters there.
There were no Actual Play Podcasts to show off the awesomeness that was fantasy dungeon crawling. There weren’t even comic book ads originally. There were no YouTube channels to teach people how to DM or complain about the OSR. Thanks to the Satanic Panic, D&D wasn’t allowed anywhere near mainstream media.
Let’s dispel a couple of myths really quick.
Anyone who tries to tell you, on YouTube or anywhere else, that there’s some kind of “DM/GM shortage,” is strictly serving their own ends. That includes WotC. There is no DM/GM shortage, and if there is- we can solve that really fast. Learning to run a game is actually pretty easy and many of us find it to be enjoyable. THERE IS NO GM/DM SHORTAGE!
AI DMs might very well replace live human beings on WotC’s VTT/D&D Beyond. There will still be hundreds of thousands of TTRPG community members still running all manner of games the old fashioned way. You won’t need fancy weapon skins, custom character models, or a college degree in computer programming to enjoy my game and several others just like it.
Wizards of the Coast has made it clear that their VTT is only for their game.
They made it clear during the OGL debacle in January that they wanted to squeeze out other VTTs from running D&D. There’s no way a non-WotC, non-D&D product is going to make it onto D&D Beyond or the VTT probably ever. If WotC can’t monetize it, they don’t want it.
Any kind of open marketplace, if at all, is going to give the lion’s share of the profits to WotC. We’ve already seen that they have a very dim view of Content Creators and will only really support the ones who blow smoke up WotC’s proverbial tailpipes. (Y’all know who you are.)
Just remember, WotC does not care about you! They’re working toward doing away with human DMs. They don’t see players or passionate fans; they only see dollar signs. In their warped, narrow, little corporate minds, we are just an obstacle between WotC and what they perceive as their money. This subject is going to keep coming up again and again between now and 2025.
Are AI Dungeon Masters coming? Inevitably.
To be honest, we don’t even know with 100% certainty that WotC will be offering physical D&D rulebooks going forward in 2024. They don’t seem to want to put any effort into onboarding new DMs. Every Unearthed Arcana playtest seems to be taking a giant step backwards almost like they already had the Player’s Handbook ready to roll out before they ever started “playtesting.”
AI DMs on a VTT are currently the least of our problems in the TTRPG community. There’s going to come a breaking point where new players aren’t coming into the analog side of the hobby. Baldur’s Gate 3 and Critical Role are bringing people in, sure. But those players are going to want to have everything done for them from character creation all the way to the DM. Unfortunately, WotC seems to be welcoming it.
2025 might be a rough year at the rate we’re going. Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate you. More tomorrow.
Jeff's Game Box 