The oldest continuously published science-fiction roleplaying game is crossing over to the world’s most popular ruleset, and tabletop gamers are showing up in force.

Mongoose Publishing announced Traveller 5E in November 2025, and the BackerKit campaign launched in late March 2026 under World’s Largest RPGs. As of March 31, the numbers tell the story: $76,949 raised from 237 backers against a $1,977 goal, roughly 3,890% funded with 45 days still on the clock.

Subscribe now

Traveller first launched in 1977 when Marc Miller and Game Designers’ Workshop released the original little black books. It stood apart from fantasy RPGs immediately: no levels, no traditional classes, and a hard science-fiction universe where characters could die during character creation through its lifepath system. The game ran through Classic Traveller, MegaTraveller, Traveller: The New Era, Marc Miller’s Traveller, and the 2013 Traveller 5th Edition. Mongoose Publishing has held the license since 2008, and their 1st and 2nd Edition runs remain fan favorites. Now, nearly fifty years after launch, the game is being rebuilt for 5E.

GDW and TSR veteran Timothy Brown is heading the project alongside a team of Traveller and 5E designers, working in full coordination with Mongoose. The campaign is not a straight rules conversion. The team is reimagining the core Mongoose line as a new 5E-compatible product line packaged as a four to five book slipcase set running potentially over 2,000 pages.

The core box delivers lifepath character creation, a new Psion class, nine subclasses, 14 career backgrounds, gear, over 100 robots including playable androids and cyborgs, 65-plus starships, full ship creation and combat rules, world generation, 45-plus alien animals, and over 85 vehicles. Stretch goals add a deck-plan book, metal dice, a magnetic referee screen, miniatures, and special-edition metal slipcase versions. Digital versions are headed to DriveThruRPG, with physical shipping slated for October 2027.

For longtime fans of the game, this is exactly what it looks like: a portal to bring 5E players into the Traveller universe without asking them to learn an entirely new system first. Whether it converts them into Mongoose Traveller players down the road is the real question, and a good one. Traveller rewards the players willing to go deep with it.

The campaign is live now at backerkit.com. Forty-five days remain and it’s already made nearly a quarter of a million dollars, showing fans’ enthusiasm for the game is still very well alive.

Are you backing Traveller 5E? Let us know in the comments.

Subscribe now

Survival of the fittest just became a lot more dangerous. Space Fleet Academy Year Two delivers the hard sci-fi action Paramount refused to give you with Starfleet Academy. That’s why we’re still here while the show is gone. Read it today!

NEXT: Andy Weir Apologizes To Alex Kurtzman, But He Didn’t Backtrack On The Low Quality Of New Star Trek

Gary Con 2026 produced one of the more surprising moments in recent Dungeons & Dragons history. Luke Gygax, son of D&D co-creator Gary Gygax, held a press event at the convention where he revealed that Dan Ayoub, the new head of D&D at Wizards of the Coast, personally apologized to him twice for how his family was treated by the company. Luke got emotional on camera delivering the news, saying he never believed he would live to see the day when the names “Gygax,” “Greyhawk,” and “Dungeons & Dragons” would be combined again in an official capacity.

Subscribe now

The news was reported by D&D enthusiast Kevin Lamb on X, who covered the press event in detail.

Ayoub himself appeared at GaryCon and addressed longtime fans directly. “I’m standing on the shoulders of giants,” he said. “I love our past and where we came from, and I want to make sure we’re honoring and bringing as much of that back as we can.”

That is exactly what the fanbase has wanted to hear for years. The question is whether it means anything.

Luke’s Vision for Greyhawk

Luke had plenty to say about what he actually wants to bring to the new official Greyhawk supplements. He loves 5th Edition for expanding the player base but was direct about its limitations: “I love 5E for expanding the customer base, but this new fangled Dungeons & Dragons is too easy!” He wants to write alternate rules that make Greyhawk more “Gygaxian,” adventures that are genuinely dangerous rather than cakewalks, and a game that rewards problem solving rather than making characters feel like superheroes walking around in tights and a cape.

He also wants to feature his childhood character Melf “the right way.” Luke was never happy with how Melf has been portrayed in either the character art or the fiction. He even had issues with the original LJN toy, which was never actually based on Melf to begin with. That toy was Peralay from Quest for the Heartstone, a completely different character, and it looks nothing like Melf. For the record, Melf does not have blond hair.

On the subject of a potential D&D film, Luke said he’d want David Harbour to play his father. When the crowd asked who should play Luke, he laughed: “The guy who played Reacher, or uh, John Cena, yeah, those guys are probably the closest.”

Lamb’s assessment of Luke himself was generous and worth reading in full: “I do think that Luke is a genuinely kind and good guy, and believes that this is the very best thing he can do to honor his dad’s legacy, keep the family name in the ongoing pop culture consciousness, and do justice to the setting he grew up with. And for that I’m happy for him and hope that he is pleased with the results.”

The Fanbase Is Not as Easy to Win Back

The goodwill toward Luke does not automatically transfer to Wizards of the Coast, and Lamb made that clear.

“It doesn’t seem like anyone will be coming back to WotC as long as content disclaimers are attached to beloved older products and until a direct, specific, humble and sincere apology is made for Jason Tondro publicly posting that ‘grognards aren’t worth listening to.’ No wishy-washy ‘we realized we alienated some fans in the past’ or ‘we learned something, fans learned something, we’re all winners’ or any nonsense like that.”

The grievances are specific and documented. Former WotC executive Kyle Brink publicly bragged that white people could not leave the hobby fast enough. Tondro, the lead designer on The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons, then made his contempt for longtime fans equally public, calling them “not worth listening to” after Elon Musk and much of the gaming internet responded angrily to the book’s foreword attacking Gary Gygax and the original creators.

As we reported, Tondro’s foreword warned readers that the original D&D materials contained “a virtual catalog of insensitive and derogatory language” and framed specific creative choices by Gygax as deliberate misogyny. When the backlash came, rather than engage with the criticism, Tondro dismissed the entire upset fanbase. “Early in the book’s development the marketing team asked me what sort of critiques we should expect and prepare for,” he wrote in a Facebook post that later circulated widely. “And I and the editors agreed the problem was going to be from progressives and people from underrepresented groups who justly took offense at the language of original D&D.” He followed that by saying he considered the grognards “not worth listening to” and had not anticipated their outrage.

Brink has since left the company. Tondro has not.

Lamb addressed Ayoub directly on this point: “I love that you’ve got Luke’s endorsement, Dan Ayoub, but a private apology only to him is only part of what needs to happen to truly mend the rift.”

What Fans Are Actually Asking For

Lamb laid out a concrete list of what repair looks like, and it is worth reading in full rather than summarizing.

He wants a direct apology that specifically condemns Tondro’s sentiments and assures fans that Tondro will never be allowed near legacy content or future commemorative releases again.

On The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons itself: “I was absolutely disgusted by the vile and patently untrue accusations made by Jon Peterson and Jason Tondro against those who wrote and played the earlier editions in the opening Forewords of the ‘Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons’ book. The fact that they literally trashed the very creators and contents that the book was supposed to be celebrating was one of the worst decisions that WotC ever allowed. Please consider recalling all unsold copies and completely scrubbing the names of Peterson and Tondro from the book, replace their libelous text with a proper and respectful introduction, and re-release it.”

He also called out the omission of Gods, Demigods, and Heroes from that volume as “a glaring and totally uncalled for omission.”

Beyond that, Lamb asked WotC to commission Jeff Easley to paint all-new covers for each of the orange spine AD&D hardcovers, plus the Fiend Folio, which never received that treatment, and rerelease them with premium binding and corrected text, minus the typos carried over from the earlier print-on-demand scans.

“That would be awesome,” he wrote, “and combined with a corrected ‘Making of’ book would be huge steps in the right direction.”

Where Things Stand

Dan Ayoub’s words at GaryCon are the right words. Luke Gygax’s emotional response to a private apology and a chance to work on official Greyhawk content again is genuine and earned. Nobody should take that away from either of them.

But the damage to WotC’s relationship with its longtime fanbase was not done privately. It was done publicly, on social media, in published forewords, and in interviews. Kyle Brink celebrated the exit of longtime fans. Jason Tondro dismissed them as unworthy of a response. Those statements are still out there. Tondro still works there.

A private apology to one member of the Gygax family is a start, but it is not a finish.

What do you think of WotC’s overtures at GaryCon? Is Luke Gygax’s endorsement of Dan Ayoub enough to bring you back to the table, or does WotC still have more work to do? Let us know.

Subscribe now

Six books. One unforgettable world. The Adventures of Baron Von Monocle is steampunk adventure with the kind of worldbuilding and heart that made you fall in love with fantasy in the first place. Start the series on Amazon.

NEXT: 7th Sea Third Edition: A Beloved RPG Gets Another Shot at Redemption

A swashbuckling roleplaying game that raised over a million dollars, collapsed under its own ambition, sparked cultural controversies, and was sold off to pay debts is getting another chance. Studio Agate’s Kickstarter for 7th Sea Third Edition has already raised $282,913 against a $34,526 goal with 1,781 backers and 27 days remaining. For fans who watched the second edition implode in slow motion, the numbers are both encouraging and cautiously familiar.

The game has been here before.

Subscribe now

The Original Game

7th Sea launched in 1999 from Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG), designed by John Wick and Jennifer Wick. The setting was Théah—a fictional analog of Renaissance-era Europe where swashbuckling heroes fought corrupt nobles, secret societies manipulated world events, and sorcery ran through noble bloodlines. The nations mapped loosely to real-world counterparts: Avalon for England, Castille for Spain, Montaigne for France, Eisen for Germany.

The game used AEG’s Roll and Keep system—players rolled a pool of dice and kept a number equal to their relevant trait, adding kept dice together to beat a target number. It was elegant, fast, and created the kind of cinematic action the setting demanded. A swordsman with high Finesse and a mastery of the Aldana school could carve through a room full of mooks while barely breaking a sweat. The system rewarded competence and made players feel like heroes.

The companion card game, also called 7th Sea, launched simultaneously and became a significant success in the collectible card game market. The two products fed each other—card game players discovered the RPG, RPG players collected the cards. AEG built a substantial community around the Théah setting.

John Wick was working within AEG’s structure at the time, one designer among many at a company that produced multiple game lines. The game was his creative vision, but AEG owned the property. When the card game eventually wound down and AEG moved on to other projects, 7th Sea went dormant. Wick spent years working on other games—Houses of the Blooded, Legend of the Five Rings supplements, and various indie projects—while the rights to his most famous creation sat with his former employer.

The Million Dollar Kickstarter

In 2016, Wick acquired the rights back from AEG and launched a Kickstarter for 7th Sea Second Edition. The campaign was a phenomenon. It raised $1,315,994—a record for tabletop RPGs at the time—from 11,483 backers. The enthusiasm was genuine and overwhelming. Fans who’d loved the original game wanted more Théah. New players were drawn in by the setting’s swashbuckling appeal.

Then the stretch goals started.

As the money poured in, Wick and his company John Wick Presents kept adding books, supplements, and expansions to the campaign. Nation books for every region of Théah. Books covering Khitai—the game’s analog for Asia and the Pacific Rim. Additional sourcebooks, adventures, and setting material. By the time the campaign ended, the scope of promised deliverables was enormous.

Too enormous.

The production challenges were compounded by a decision that alienated a significant portion of the existing fanbase: Wick scrapped the Roll and Keep system entirely. The new system was a narrative-focused, success-counting mechanic where players rolled pools of d10s and assembled sets of ten from the results. Failure was essentially removed from the game—heroes always succeeded, the question was only what it cost them.

Forum discussions from the period capture the reaction. As one RPGnet poster noted, Wick “was in love with a few particular design ideas from his other systems and aped those rather than 7th Sea 1e.” Another described the system as rolling “to see how many decisions you get to make during the current scene. Success or failure is never in question.”

The system had defenders. Some players appreciated the narrative focus and the cinematic feel. But longtime fans who’d loved Roll and Keep felt the game had been replaced with something unrecognizable. The setting was still Théah. The characters were still swashbuckling heroes. But the mechanical DNA was gone.

The Cultural Controversies

The Khitai expansion, covering Théah’s analog for Asia, India, and the Pacific Rim, drew criticism from progressive quarters who accused the game of misrepresenting Asian and South Asian cultures. The accusations ranged from cultural appropriation to outright racism, with critics arguing that Wick’s fictional analogs flattened complex cultures into stereotypes.

Wick and his team pushed back, arguing that all of Théah’s nations were fictional analogs rather than direct representations, and that the same logic applied to the European nations as to the Asian ones. The controversy didn’t go away. It added to the general atmosphere of chaos surrounding the second edition’s troubled production.

The combination of delayed books, a divisive new system, cultural controversies, and mounting financial pressure proved fatal. John Wick Presents laid off most of its staff. The Khitai core book was eventually delivered, but four promised supplements—covering Agnivarsa, Fuso, Han, and Shenzhou—were never produced. The company went bankrupt.

Chaosium’s Acquisition and Handoff

Chaosium, publishers of Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest, acquired 7th Sea from Wick in 2019. The acquisition was framed as a rescue operation—Chaosium would fulfill the outstanding Kickstarter obligations and give the game a stable home.

Chaosium is a company that has moved firmly in a progressive direction in recent years, adding LGBTQ content and diversity initiatives to their game lines including Call of Cthulhu. Their stewardship of 7th Sea reflected that orientation.

Wick joined Chaosium as creative director for 7th Sea initially, but parted ways around 2023. The Khitai core book was delivered, but the four remaining supplements were ultimately cancelled. Chaosium announced they would not be fulfilling the rest of the Kickstarter, offering refunds instead.

In July 2025, Chaosium handed 7th Sea to Studio Agate, a French independent studio based in Paris. Agate had been producing French translations of 7th Sea and had run a successful English Kickstarter for The Price of Arrogance, an official campaign for the second edition. They knew the property, they had a track record with the community, and they had the creative team to take it forward.

Studio Agate’s Third Edition

The current Kickstarter, titled 7th Sea 3rd Edition: A New Journey, is described as “a new era for the iconic TTRPG: modernized Roll & Keep, Théah ten years later, shaped by the community.”

The key phrase is “modernized Roll & Keep.” Studio Agate is bringing back the dice mechanic that defined the original game. The community’s frustration with the second edition’s system has been heard. Whether the modernized version captures what made the original Roll and Keep satisfying remains to be seen, but the decision to return to it is the right one.

The setting advances Théah’s timeline by ten years, allowing the third edition to build on the second edition’s lore while establishing its own identity. The Kickstarter page emphasizes community involvement in shaping the game’s direction—a deliberate contrast to the second edition’s top-down creative decisions that alienated the fanbase.

The campaign has funded at 819% of its goal with nearly a month remaining. That’s strong momentum, though the numbers are modest compared to the second edition’s million-dollar haul. The community is interested but cautious. The enthusiasm is real, but so is the memory of what happened last time.

The Delivery Question

Studio Agate has a better track record than John Wick Presents. They’re a small, focused studio that has delivered on previous projects. They’re not promising the moon. The Kickstarter’s scope appears measured compared to the second edition’s stretch goal explosion.

But the tabletop RPG Kickstarter landscape is littered with cautionary tales. Promising campaigns have collapsed before. Stretch goals have a way of multiplying. Production challenges are real. And the 7th Sea community has been burned badly enough that skepticism is warranted.

The RPGnet discussion thread captures the community’s ambivalence. Some backers note that Agate “still hasn’t delivered their last campaign” before launching this one. Others point to the 819% funding as evidence of genuine enthusiasm. The consensus seems to be cautious optimism—people want this to work, but they’re not betting everything on it.

What This Could Be

7th Sea at its best is one of the great RPG settings. Théah is rich, detailed, and distinctive. The swashbuckling tone, the secret societies, the sorcery systems tied to noble bloodlines, the naval combat—all of it creates a game that feels unlike anything else on the market. The original Roll and Keep system was elegant and satisfying. When everything worked, 7th Sea delivered exactly what it promised: cinematic heroism in a world of intrigue and adventure.

The second edition proved that the setting could survive a bad system—people kept playing it, kept writing for it, kept caring about Théah even when the mechanics frustrated them. That’s a testament to how good the original creative vision was.

Studio Agate has the setting, the system direction, and apparently the community support to make a third edition work. Whether they can deliver on the promise is the only question that matters now.

The game has died twice. Once quietly, when AEG moved on. Once loudly, when the second edition collapsed under its own weight. A third death would probably be permanent. But if Studio Agate can deliver a focused, well-produced third edition that brings back Roll and Keep and respects what made the original special, 7th Sea could finally get the second chance it deserved.

Théah is worth saving. The question is whether this is the team to save it.

What do you think? Can Studio Agate deliver where John Wick Presents failed, or has the 7th Sea community been burned too many times to fully commit again?

Subscribe now

Six books. One unforgettable world. The Adventures of Baron Von Monocle is steampunk adventure with the kind of worldbuilding and heart that made you fall in love with fantasy in the first place. Start the series on Amazon.

NEXT: Game Night Picks YouTuber Fires Back at Rodney Smith Allegations, Implies Possible Legal Action Over “Misinformation”

The owner of Game Night Picks, Chaz Marler, released a detailed rebuttal to allegations made by Rodney Smith of Watch It Played, denying claims of fraudulent advertising practices and accusing Smith of publishing private analytics data without consent. The response comes weeks after Smith’s explosive document accused Game Night Picks of using YouTube’s paid promotion tools to artificially inflate view counts while charging publishers per-view fees.

Read more

Yesterday, we reported on a BlueSky-driven cancel mob attacking Alderac Entertainment Group’s COO, Ryan Dancey, over some innocuous and accurate comments about the future of AI in game design. Now, despite being a legend in the industry with incredible experience, it seems the anti-AI activists have taken a real human scalp and gotten him fired in the newest example of board game cancel culture.

Subscribe now

The board game cancel mob is one of the worst out of any industry, and gets very little coverage from the outside because the industry is so small, while blowing on their bad behavior risks being blacklisted and tarred and feathered by this group. Yesterday, they set their sights on Ryan Dancey, of whom you can read about his tame comments acknowledging the future of AI in board game development, as it’s already being adopted by most sane companies.

This situation involves Alderac Entertainment Group, which is owned and lead by John Zinser, one of the most cowardly and pro-cancel culture activists out there, who’s taken what was once a great and innovative company, and turned it into something that produces basic-tier level “variant” games with generic themes in recent years, hiring some of the worst of the worst of these elements and catering toward the radical activist group within the board gaming industry. Zinser threw the author of this blog under the bus when the Game Manufacturers’ Association attacked over my wanting to make a board game without their permission, prompting race grifters like Eric Lang and woke influencers like Rodney Smith of Watch It Played to lead a cancel mob.

The situation escalated yesterday with Dancey posting an update to his prior post to LinkedIn after his original statements went viral with the cancel pigs:

Though phrased very politely, the crux of it is John Zinser fired and canceled him over simply positing what AI might do, and will do, in a few years. Zinser posted his own corporate-speak update on BlueSky for the mob:

Even so, the mob in his comments wasn’t satisfied with the scalp, ever moving the goalposts:

Apparently, this has to do with Wingspan designer Elizabeth Hargrove, who herself is a radical activist. What happened between them involving a personal matter isn’t clear, but SJWs only want to cancel.

The real tragedy of this and AEG and John Zinser’s shortsightedness in this matter is made clear because of who Dancey is. While people might not know the name as a household one, he’s a person largely responsible for why D&D and Magic: The Gathering built their businesses into juggernauts and became a success.

Ryan Dancey played a pivotal role in reshaping the business side of Dungeons & Dragons at Wizards of the Coast, helping transform it from a struggling legacy property into a modern, ecosystem‑driven franchise. After Wizards acquired the near‑bankrupt TSR in 1997, Dancey took charge of D&D’s business and marketing, overseeing the development and launch of 3rd‑edition D&D and restructuring the RPG division to improve profitability and operational discipline. His key insight was that D&D’s real value lay not just in its core rulebooks but in the broader community of players and publishers around it, so he championed a strategy of openness rather than tight control, a great thing for human developers and players.

To unlock that potential, Dancey largely conceived the Open Game License (OGL) and the d20 System Trademark License, which allowed third‑party companies to create compatible products using the System Reference Document while still tying them back to the D&D brand. This move reversed TSR’s earlier stance of aggressively policing fan content and instead encouraged a boom of compatible supplements, adventures, and even standalone RPGs, which expanded the overall market and drove more players toward official D&D products. By turning D&D into a platform rather than a closed system, Dancey helped rebuild goodwill with fans and created a self‑reinforcing cycle where third‑party success fed demand for core books, organized play, and licensed settings.

On the Magic: The Gathering side, Dancey’s contribution was more indirect but no less important: he helped position Magic as the financial engine that could subsidize and stabilize D&D’s long‑term growth. As Magic exploded into a global hit, Dancey and other Wizards executives used its strong margins to fund ambitious RPG projects, including the costly overhaul of D&D into 3rd edition and the expansion of organized play programs. He also pushed for clear separation between the two brands, keeping Magic as a collectible card game juggernaut and D&D as a roleplaying ecosystem, so each could pursue its own licensing and tournament strategies without cannibalizing the other. In this way, Dancey helped ensure that both Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons could grow into larger, more sustainable businesses under the same corporate roof.

With pioneering like this, and clear care for the human designers and developers to create innovative games, it’s someone AEG would want in their arsenal, especially as a Chief Operating Officer. This is a person with a clear business vision, something many lack in board gaming.

However, a small mob of cancel culture activists is more important to Alderac Entertainment Group. One can’t feel bad for them when their entire company eventually gets replaced by AI anyway.

What do you think about this? Leave a comment and let us know.

Subscribe now

For great swashbuckling fantasy adventure, read The Adventures of Baron von Monocle six-book series and support Fandom Pulse!

NEXT: RUMOR: D&D 6th Edition Reboot Incoming As Hasbro Scrambles To Save Dying Franchise

AEG or Alderac Entertainment Group was once known for their top-of-the-line collectible card games and RPGs like Legend of the Five Rings, 7th Sea, and Deadlands: Doomtown. In recent years, the company has shifted to what they consider accessible board games, trying to appeal to the more casual gamer and to the DEI-infested industry with their antics, but now the entire industry has turned on the company after its CEO made a statement positing what AI might be able to do in the future.

Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) is an American tabletop‑game publisher founded in 1993, originally to publish the gaming magazine Shadis. It was started by Jolly Blackburn, who left a few years later; the company was then led and largely owned by John Zinser, who helped steer it into the broader gaming market.

Eventually, they became known for their Legend of the Five Rings card game and RPG, along with a lot of other very creative CCG games, but they pivoted to the more generic board game market several years back. Today AEG is a privately held, California‑based company that markets itself as a “small but focused” board‑game publisher, producing hits like Tiny Towns, Mystic Vale, Thunderstone, Istanbul, and Space Base. The company emphasizes design‑driven, broadly appealing games and often uses crowdfunding and partnerships to bring new titles to market.

Part of their transition has, of course, involved Zinser and company moving hard to the left, virtue signaling to the woke activists in gaming and calling out and attacking anyone who’s family-oriented on the right to make sure the industry at large kept applauding them over the years. This move was unfortunate, as Zinser was always known as a long-time Republican in the industry, and seemed like a naked attempt to try to save his skin when the industry took out their pitchforks for anyone to the right of Mao.

Now, AEG’s current CEO has violated the narrative of the creative arts industry activists by making a statement positivng a use of AI:

This prompted complete outrage from the board game industry, as the establishment in the creative arts publishing is supposed to all 100% oppose AI in some Don Quixote-level running at windmills exercise in futility, just so they can feel better about themselves.

Suzanne, a former Dice Tower Contributor who’s been a massive proponent of cancel culture to the point of getting one of the largest retailers banned from Gencon out of personal animus, amplified the virtue signaling against AEG:

One of AEG’s own designers gave his take on how “sad” he/him is:

Another board game designer who lists he/him in his profile said:

A man who pretends to be a woman in order to sell his games on Kickstarter chimed in:

Shannon Applecline, who wrote a recent RPG history that lambasted original D&D creator Gary Gygax called for a boycott over the comment:

John Zinser, AEG’s owner who attempted to cancel the purveyor of Fandom Pulse for board game reporting in order to appease these people, tried to cover himself once again:

Like usual, his statements did little to appease those who were in the cancel mood, including another man who pretends to be a woman who organizes boycotts against Harry Potter-themed games because of his hatred of JK Rowling.

AEG is in a position where they could just lean into it and tell these people to buzz off, which is what any company should do. But it appears as if they might be so far down the rabbit hole that they’ll be forced to disavow AI forever, which means other companies will simply leap ahead of them in terms of logic and consistency for games, which will put them at a competitive disadvantage as the years go by.

Surely, AI won’t be able to come up with a creative masterpiece like “Point Salad,” could it? Why should they be afraid?

What do you think of this cancel mob brewing in board gaming?

Subscribe now

For great swashbuckling fantasy adventure, read The Adventures of Baron von Monocle six-book series and support Fandom Pulse!

NEXT: RUMOR: D&D 6th Edition Reboot Incoming As Hasbro Scrambles To Save Dying Franchise

The RPG Pundit has broken news of a potential bombshell development in the Dungeons & Dragons world: Wizards of the Coast is allegedly preparing to launch a sixth edition of D&D, abandoning the disastrous 2024 edition that has driven fans away in droves. Even more intriguing, the rumor suggests that legendary creators Ed Greenwood and Tracy Hickman are being brought back to help salvage the franchise.

Subscribe now

“I had said that was going to be one of the possibilities of how Wizards of the Coast was going to handle Dungeons and Dragons in the future,” RPG Pundit explained in his video breaking the news. The source of this information came through a leaker who RPG Pundit considers credible: “It’s somebody that I consider to be trustworthy in this and that I believe would not make something like this up.”

The timing of this rumored reboot is particularly telling given the spectacular failure of the 2024 edition. The 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide infamously incorporated BDSM fetish community practices in the game for safe spaces, having players make an X with their arms if they feel triggered by a situation, and requiring a DM to stop the game and address the player in question.

The 2024 Player’s Handbook is filled with imagery of BIPOC and female characters at a margin of more than five to one for white male characters, about the direct opposite of the demographics who play the game. Dungeons & Dragons came under further scrutiny after it was revealed that senior designer Jason Tondro penned a forward to a history book on Dungeons & Dragons, calling Gary Gygax misogynistic and accusing him of cultural appropriation.

This prompted Elon Musk to raise the question as to how much Hasbro costs for him to buy the parent company of Wizards of the Coast and save Dungeons & Dragons from all of these woke controversies.

The new 2024 Monster Manual has made a lot of woke changes, including removing orcs but also adding gender ideology elements to creatures like hags, succubus, and sphinxes. Fans have been vocal in complaining about the mistreatment in the game.

Former World of Warcraft lead designer Mark Kern aka Grummz posted about all of the troubles this edition of D&D is having so far, saying, “Half Elves GONE from new DnD Player’s Handbook! DnD 2024 has done so much damage to Dungeons & Dragons thanks to Wizards of the Coast woke designers: - Removes Half-Elves from the game (due to it being somehow racist...what, are they about racial purity now??? How is that not even more racist?). - Removes Half-Orcs (same reason). - Removes Orcs as monsters from the Monster Manual. (Because they think Orcs are black people, but it’s okay, they made them Mexican in their new art instead!). None of this was offensive to anyone. Their virus infected brains are out of control and spinning racism where there is none.”

The Legendary Creators Return

According to RPG Pundit’s source, Wizards of the Coast has approached Ed Greenwood and Tracy Hickman to work on the sixth edition. Greenwood, creator of the Forgotten Realms setting that has been D&D’s default campaign world since the late 1980s, brings unparalleled world-building expertise. His creation of Faerûn and its intricate pantheon, geography, and history has shaped how millions of players experience D&D.

Tracy Hickman, along with his wife Margaret Weis, created the Dragonlance setting and authored the legendary Chronicles trilogy that introduced Raistlin, Tanis, and other iconic characters to fantasy literature. Hickman’s work on classic D&D modules like Ravenloft demonstrated his mastery of adventure design and atmospheric storytelling.

RPG Pundit noted the curious nature of this recruitment: “Ed Greenwood and Tracy Hickman were both asked to come and work on the sixth edition product.” However, he expressed skepticism about what role these creators would actually play: “I’m not sure what he would actually have to really contribute on that respect, you know. So, um, unless he’s only asked to like do a little blurb in like the setting section of the DMG because they’re going to use the realms, you know, that might make some sense.”

RPG Pundit suspects the real motivation is purely marketing: “There is also a real possibility, what I’m getting to here is that there’s also a very real possibility that all three of these guys, if you include Luke Gygax, are there exclusively to sell their name, right? The only thing that Wizards wants from them is those names, right?”

A Desperate Attempt at Legitimacy

The rumored involvement of these legendary creators represents a transparent attempt by Hasbro to recapture the trust of longtime D&D fans who have abandoned the game under current leadership. By associating the new edition with names that evoke D&D’s golden age, Wizards hopes to signal a return to the game’s roots after years of ideological corruption.

RPG Pundit was blunt about the likely reality: “They want to be able to put on the credit section of the book or maybe even in the cover, who knows, right? They want to put Ed Greenwood, Tracy Hickman, and Luke Gygax, right? Or maybe even just Gygax or something just to show the guy, damn it. Right? That’s what they want. They want to do that because then they know nerds are going to see those names.”

This cynical calculation assumes that fans will overlook the current design team’s incompetence if they see familiar names attached to the project. The strategy treats Greenwood and Hickman as nostalgia bait rather than as creative forces who could actually improve the game.

RPG Pundit pointed out the fundamental problem with this approach: “Neither of them has enormous, um, enormous skills in the game design part of things, right? Both of them are mainly known for the worlds they made. They’re mainly known for the settings they made, right? And for the stories they told.”

He continued: “Ed Greenwood has practically no real experience as a game designer, as a rules designer, or things like that, right? So he would serve no useful purpose in that sense.”

Even Hickman, who has more game design experience, “is not known as like some mass, at least not, you know, like Gygax or Monty Cook or the RPG pundit, right? a guy who, like, knows people who know how to make a game, right?”

The Current Team’s Incompetence

RPG Pundit’s assessment of Wizards’ current design team was devastating: “You’ve got like they just hired another chick. Gez, I wish I remembered to have checked her name before starting this video. This woman, who is basically connected to young adult science fiction stuff, like basically the entire industry of publishing has been taken over by feminist women, millennial women who worked on young adult novels.”

He described how this takeover occurred: “They took over the mainstream publishing and then, in turn, went on to only put their people everywhere, right? And now it’s being expanded to other areas. That’s what’s basically happened with fifth edition is that it became it it was taken over by YA publishing people right that were that are that are the same you know the the feminist intersectional trans bloggers right and uh vegans and all that they’re they’re a cabal they’re a sect and now they’ve expanded into here right and those people know nothing about anything right and they ruin everything they touch.”

The comparison between the current team and the legendary creators is stark: “Hickman would immediately be probably the most experienced and probably um, yeah, the most experienced and the most suitable game designer uh, in the entire team if he was part of that team because I know what the rest of the team is, right?”

Why This Matters Now

The timing of this rumored sixth edition reveals Hasbro’s panic over declining D&D sales and the franchise’s damaged reputation. The 2024 edition was supposed to capitalize on D&D’s resurgence following the success of shows like Stranger Things and Critical Role. Instead, it alienated the core fanbase while failing to attract the “modern audience” that Wizards claimed to be targeting.

RPG Pundit explained the strategic calculation: “They’re hoping that that’s going to work and and I think most likely all three of them will be purely there for that for the name just to have the name on there so then they can say look and it was you know we had additional material uh additional advice pres presented by uh you know Tracy Hickman and you know Dragon Lance remember Dragon Lance how cool Dragon Lance was right we’re going to we we made Dragon Lance in fifth edition and completely ruined it. Remember that. No, don’t remember that. Don’t remember that. Look, Tracy Hickman. It’s Tracy Hickman over there. Right. That’s what they want to do with these guys, I think.”

The rumor of Luke Gygax’s involvement adds another layer to this nostalgia play. As Gary Gygax’s son, Luke carries the weight of D&D’s creator, even though RPG Pundit noted that “Luke is friendly with because he does the OSR thing because it works for him, too. But he fundamentally is not on that side, right? He is on the side of, you know, allowing these ideological terrorists to come in and do whatever they want with the game.”

The OSR Alternative

RPG Pundit’s analysis highlighted how the Old School Renaissance (OSR) movement has already provided what D&D fans actually want: “We already know what D and D is, and we know that all of the best D and D games ever made were not made by Wizards of the Coast, right? And all the best games made in the last few years weren’t made by Wizards of the Coast.”

He pointed to his own work as an example: “The number of OSR games I could give you that would be better than 5.5 edition, right? That would be miles away from these guys. There are tons of them. And of course, there are better games than 5e itself that I helped make, right? remember that I was one of the guys that worked on 5e, and I made it, and I made it to be super popular, right?”

RPG Pundit’s involvement in the fifth edition’s development gives his criticism particular weight. He helped create the edition that became D&D’s most commercially successful version, yet he acknowledges that “it’s not my favorite game and it’s not the it is the it was the bestselling D&D edition of all time for exactly the thing I made it to be, right? But um that doesn’t mean that it’s the best version.”

What Sixth Edition Needs (But Won’t Get)

RPG Pundit outlined what a successful D&D reboot would require: “The thing to do here if you want to like save Dungeons and Dragons is to go back to making something that is going to have as much of a classic feel and a classic look, and that is going to have the peak appealing aspects of the previous edition, a fifth edition. I mean, not 5.5. Forget that one completely, right? Um, and give it a kind of a new edge, right?”

Instead, he predicted disaster: “What you don’t want is to recreate. Oh, no. Now we’re going to use like dice pools, and we’re going to have this, and that, and like to invent all this stuff that is not tied in any way to the D&D traditions of how the game is designed. um that would be disastrous, right?”

The current design team’s track record suggests they’ll pursue exactly the wrong approach: “These guys, these guys are are it’s impossible that they’re going to be able to make anything worthwhile. And it’s highly probable that they’re going to make stuff that is that most gamers are going to see as a travesty, an absolute travesty. Worse still than 5.5 cuz now they’re going to be like, ‘Oh, well, but this is the thing, guys. Now we can do whatever we want, right? That we don’t have to follow any of the rules, you know, which is exactly the wrong thing to do right now.”

The Verdict

This rumor, if true, represents Hasbro’s recognition that the 2024 edition has failed and that drastic action is needed to save the D&D brand. The involvement of legendary creators like Greenwood and Hickman signals an attempt to recapture the magic of D&D’s golden age, even if those creators are being used primarily for marketing rather than actual game design.

RPG Pundit’s assessment was measured: “I would rather. Yeah, I would rather that official D and D was really good, made by good people who knew what they were doing, who respected traditions, not a bunch of alphabet soup psychopaths, right? Um, but people who are actually proper gamers, right? And who made a proper game of D and D. If they did that, that would be great.”

But he acknowledged the reality: “We don’t have that, and it’s unlikely we’re going to have that anytime soon. So, we’ll have to just deal with things as they are, not as we wish they would be.”

For OSR players and fans of classic D&D, the sixth edition rumor changes little. The games that capture the spirit of Gygax’s original vision already exist outside of Wizards of the Coast’s control. Whether Hasbro can salvage D&D’s reputation by associating it with legendary creators remains to be seen, but RPG Pundit’s analysis suggests that without fundamental changes to the design team and philosophy, even Greenwood and Hickman’s names won’t be enough to save a franchise that has been systematically destroyed by ideological corruption.

The question isn’t whether faithful D&D exists - the OSR has already answered that. The question is whether Wizards of the Coast will finally admit that their approach has failed and allow the people who actually understand D&D to fix what they’ve broken.

Subscribe now

For great swashbuckling fantasy adventure, read The Adventures of Baron von Monocle six-book series and support Fandom Pulse!

NEXT: Hasbro Announced A Partnership With Harry Potter And The SJWs Are Losing Their Minds

Yesterday, Hasbro announced a relationship with Harry Potter that they’d be making new toys and games based on JK Rowling’s fantasy property, and like usual, a cancel mob of SJWs came out of the woodwork forcing Wizards of the Coast, the subsidiary who makes Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons to say they don’t have any planned crossovers for their products in the works.

Read more

Rodney Smith of Watch It Played has released a detailed exposé revealing how a former collaborator systematically defrauded board game publishers through an advertising scheme that artificially inflated viewer numbers while ensuring most viewers never saw the ads they paid for. The scandal exposes the corrupt underbelly of the board game reviewing cottage industry, where clout-chasing and financial manipulation have replaced honest content creation.

Subscribe now

Smith published a comprehensive document detailing how the owner of Game Night Picks, a channel where Smith’s former collaborators appeared for six years, used YouTube’s paid advertising features to artificially boost video views and subscriber counts while charging publishers per-view fees for advertisements. The scheme worked because only the channel owner had access to analytics showing that approximately 90-95% of viewers left videos before the paid advertisements aired.

The fraud operated through a simple but effective mechanism: Game Night Picks adopted a “per view” fee structure where publishers paid based on total video views over a fixed period. Videos that normally received 1,000-3,000 organic views suddenly jumped to averaging 36,700 views after the channel owner began paying YouTube to promote content through the platform’s integrated advertising system.

The financial impact was enormous. A publisher paying 4 cents per view on a video with 3,000 organic views would pay $120 for their advertisement. The same video with 36,000 artificially boosted views would cost $1,440 - an increase of $1,320 for an ad that 90-95% of viewers never saw because they left before it played.

Smith’s document includes audience retention graphs showing the massive viewer drop-off that characterized videos using YouTube’s paid promotion. The blue line representing viewer retention plummets within the first minute, with only 5-10% of viewers remaining by the time publisher advertisements appeared later in the videos.

This data was only visible to the channel owner, creating an information asymmetry that enabled the fraud. Publishers had no way of knowing that the impressive view counts they were paying for represented viewers who never saw their advertisements. The channel owner could point to high view numbers while concealing that those views were worthless for advertising purposes.

The scheme extended beyond view manipulation to subscriber fraud. Game Night Picks grew its subscriber base by over 140,000 in just two months using YouTube’s paid promotion features - growth that typically takes board game channels several years to achieve organically. Monthly subscriber growth jumped from around 200 to over 70,000 during the period when paid promotion was active.

Despite this massive subscriber influx, behind-the-scenes analytics showed that traffic “from subscribers” didn’t increase at all. If even 1% of the new subscribers had returned to watch future videos regularly, traffic from subscribers would have increased by roughly 1,453 viewers. The lack of any noticeable change proved that the paid subscribers weren’t actually engaging with content.

Smith’s document contrasts this artificial growth with Watch It Played’s organic metrics over its 15-year history. Watch It Played has never used YouTube’s paid advertising features, with all views and subscribers coming from genuine audience engagement. The comparison makes clear that Game Night Picks’ explosive growth was purchased rather than earned.

The ethical problems extend beyond simple fraud. When Smith confronted the Game Night Picks owner in December 2025 about the data he had observed, the owner’s response was to offer discounts to affected publishers rather than acknowledge the fundamental deception. Smith pointed out that even a 70% discount would still constitute fraud if only 5% of total viewers actually saw the advertisements.

The discounts also created a misleading impression that Game Night Picks was doing publishers a favor by reducing fees, when in reality the publishers were still overpaying for advertisements that reached a tiny fraction of the claimed audience. A 70% discount on worthless advertising is still worthless advertising.

Smith’s decision to go public came after the Game Night Picks owner showed no willingness to fully disclose the situation to affected publishers or cease the deceptive practices. Smith realized that his six-year association with Game Night Picks through Watch It Played could lead publishers to assume he was complicit in or aware of the fraud, potentially destroying the reputation he had built over 15 years.

The timing of Smith’s disclosure is particularly notable. He released the information through an unlisted YouTube video and accompanying document, making it accessible only to those with direct links rather than promoting it widely. This approach suggests Smith wanted to inform affected parties without turning the situation into a public spectacle, though the unlisted format also limits the reach of his warning to the broader board game community.

The scandal reveals the insular nature of the board game reviewing industry, where a small group of content creators operate within overlapping networks of collaboration and cross-promotion. Game Night Picks featured multiple hosts who also appeared on other channels, creating a web of relationships that made it difficult for outsiders to understand who was responsible for what content.

This cottage industry operates largely on clout and perceived influence rather than transparent business practices or verified metrics. Publishers make advertising decisions based on subscriber counts and view numbers without access to the engagement data that would reveal whether those numbers translate to actual advertising value.

The lack of industry standards or oversight enables schemes like the one Smith documented. There’s no board game reviewer equivalent of the FTC’s influencer marketing guidelines or the advertising industry’s verification standards. Publishers are left to trust that content creators are honestly representing their audience reach and engagement.

Smith’s document also reveals the legal implications of the advertising scheme. He consulted with lawyers who confirmed that failing to disclose the use of paid promotion while charging per-view fees carries both civil and criminal legal implications.

The Game Night Picks owner’s claim that discounts had been issued to “some publishers” raises additional questions about selective treatment and whether certain publishers received preferential disclosure while others remained in the dark about the true nature of the view counts they were paying for.

Smith’s warning that the owner’s activities “would be discovered due to the overt and unnatural viewer and subscriber growth” proved prescient. The channel’s metrics were so obviously artificial that anyone with industry knowledge could recognize something was wrong, even without access to the behind-the-scenes analytics that proved the fraud.

The document notes that as of January 29th, 2026, Game Night Picks was still gaining approximately 1,000 subscribers daily - growth that no board game YouTube channel achieves naturally. This suggests the paid promotion scheme may have continued even after Smith’s confrontation with the owner.

Smith explicitly states that he doesn’t believe other people appearing in Game Night Picks videos had knowledge of the underlying data showing how the inflated numbers were achieved. Only the channel owner would have access to the analytics proving that paid promotion was driving the growth and that most viewers were leaving before advertisements played.

Smith’s decision to end his working relationship with the Game Night Picks owner came after concluding that the association threatened to undermine the trust he had built with publishers and viewers over 15 years. Even though Smith never engaged in the deceptive practices himself, his professional connection to someone who did created reputational risk he couldn’t accept.

The board game reviewing industry now faces a reckoning about transparency and ethical advertising practices. Publishers need to demand more detailed performance data before paying for advertisements, and content creators need to disclose when they’re using paid promotion to boost their metrics.

The question now is whether the board game industry will implement reforms to prevent future fraud or whether this scandal will be quietly forgotten as the cottage industry returns to business as usual.

Subscribe now

The last year has been a strange one for Dungeons & Dragons, after massive controversies swept the tabletop RPG giant because of its DEI pandering initiatives. Now, it looks like Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast are doubling down on their identity politics by hiring Taylor Navarro as a new designer after a year of layoffs.

Subscribe now

D&D has been turned into a woke nightmare by the current crop of ownership. The 2024 edition leading into their online service One DnD has been riddled with identity politics, from removing of half-races, changing race backgrounds, having BIPOC overrepresented in the art, presenting Mexican Orcs, to including safe spaces in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, players are more than frustrated with WotC’s treatment of the beloved fantasy RPG.

Still, the most egregious situation in the current iteration is the industry’s lack of respect for its creator, Gary Gygax. Woke activists have taken over Dungeons & Dragons, which led to The Making Of The Original Dungeons & Dragons bizarrely attacking Gygax with misinformation maligning the D&D creator.

In the preface written by Jason Tondro, a Senior Designer on Dungeons & Dragons, and shared to X by user dLsd_25, Tondro attacks the original creators writing, “Some language in the first iteration of D&D presents a moral quandary. The documents reproduced in this book include many pages of charts and tables alongside lists of monsters, spells, and magic items. But that game content also includes a virtual catalog of insensitive and derogatory language, words that are casually hurtful to anyone with a physical or mental disability, or who happens to be old, fat, not conventionally attractive, indigenous, Black, or a woman.”

Tondro continued, “Some people have charitably ascribed this language to authors working from bad assumptions. In the 1970s, historical wargamers in America were predominantly white, middle-class men; it isn’t surprising that they would dub a class of soldiers the ‘fighting-man.’ But when, in the pages of Greyhawk, the description of the Queen of Chaotic Dragons includes a dig at ‘Women’s Lib,’ the misogyny is revealed as a conscious choice. It’s an unfortunate fact that women seldom appear in original D&D, and when they do, they’re usually portrayed disrespectfully.

Tondro went on, “Slavery appears in original D&D not as a human tragedy that devastated generations over centuries, but as a simple commercial transaction.”

“The cultural appropriation of original D&D ranges from the bewildering (like naming every 6th-level cleric a ‘lama’) to the staggering; Gods, Demi-gods and Heroes (not reprinted in this book) includes game statistics for sacred figures revered by more than a billion people around the world,” he wrote. “Were players expected to fight Vishnu, one of the principal deities of Hinduism, kill him, and loot his ‘plus 3 sword of demon slaying’?”

Tondro concluded the preface writing, “Despite these shortcomings, D&D has always been a game about people choosing to be someone unlike themselves and collaborating with strangers who become friends. It has slowly become more inclusive, and as the player base has become more diverse, the pool of creators who make the game has expanded to include people with a broader range of identities and backgrounds. As these new creators make the game more welcoming, the game has attracted new fans who, in turn, continue to make the game more inclusive. The future of Dungeons & Dragons, here at its fiftieth anniversary, is bright.”

Along with this, we’ve seen profound changes to D&D, turning the game into a sanitized “safe space.”

The Monster’s Manual removed orcs as monsters, and also played with gender ideology by introducing male hags, male dryads, and turned the icubus and succubus into a transgender allegory.

In 2025, they marketed a “glam bard” as an online supplement meant to attract Taylor Swift fans to the game, who are generally people who don’t play D&D. The entire intention seems to be abandoning their core audience for women, minorities, and homosexuals.

The company has made woke pushes in recent weeks as well, with Hasbro using its other brand of Magic: The Gathering to push a Trans Lifeline charity through a livestream last week. It was universally savaged by fans and yet the very next week, they’ve decided to move Dungeons & Dragons into this woke territory as well.

In a post to X, the official D&D account posted a piece of art loaded with homosexual couples with the caption, “In this realm, your story is yours to tell.”

Amid these virtue signaling efforts that turned off fans, D&D announced they were dropping their “Project Sigil” and laying off a whole department worth of employees as they backed away from creating online virtual tabletop spaces.

On top of this, the designers involved in the 2024 edition of D&D, Christopher Perkins and Jeremy Crawford, jumped ship and went to Critical Role to work on their Daggerheart game.

The future did not look so bright for the RPG brand, as Hasbro announced they were transitioning more to making D&D a licensed brand where they could coast off profits from video games, movies, and more created by other companies.

Now, it appears as if Wizards of the Coast is doubling down on their new hire, whose work only includes LGBTQ activism and race-baiting campaigns.

Not much is known about Navarro other than she posts mainly to BlueSky about her mundane life and D&D adventures, a red flag in and of itself, but once one looks to the two works promoted in her bio, it doesn’t appear to be a good direction for D&D.

First up is Journeys beyond the Radiant Citadel, a work posted on the Dungeon Master’s Guild. While it may seem innocuous at first, one sees that there is an anti-white exclusionary preference in choosing the creators of this book.

“This book was created by a team of twenty-two people of color from around the world, and we hope you take a moment to see the new lands and artwork created to inspire you and those around your gaming table,” the description reads. When it’s tauted for its “diversity” by the DM Guild staff, and also stating, “there are sixteen pieces of original art created by thirteen artists of color,” it’s hard to see this as anything but a race grift. Not much more information beyond the race of the creators is given on the product page.

But it only gets worse from there. Her other work credited to her name is a 2-player, GMless romance RPG featuring homosexual men on the cover.

It’s described as:

**Romance. Pining. Tension. This duet has it all. **

Not Yet is a GM-less, two-player tabletop roleplaying game perfect for date night, romancing your friends, or creating a dramatic character backstory. Play as two characters fated to meet but just missing one another—or not if the dice say otherwise. Inspired by the “just missed them” and “right person, wrong time” tropes from How I Met Your Mother (TV) and August Rush (film), and the tense romantic plot generation of Love is on the Cards (TTRPG) and Star Crossed (TTRPG), as well as a real life love story: tell a tale of two people battling destiny to meet and fall in love over the span of months, years, or even an entire lifetime.

Gone are the days of battling dragons and orcs and questing for treasure. It appears that D&D is doubling down on their “modern audience” with this new hire.

What do you think of this? Will you be playing new D&D?

Subscribe now

For a great novel with a classic sword & sorcery feel, read The Demon’s Eye, an incredible new classic fantasy novel. Support Fandom Pulse!

NEXT: Magic: The Gathering YouTube Influencer Pushes Trans Charity To Nearly $600K In Donations After Political Rallying Cry

Magic: The Gathering has cut off its community just like many in another community have cut off their… Well, this is a family publication, so let’s get into the news of a recent lottery scam that ended up raising half a million for a transgender organization.

Over recent years, Magic: The Gathering has followed much of the tabletop gaming industry into relentless promotion of social justice activism, turning off a lot of regular players of the game in the process. As of now, the company’s being kept afloat by doing special sets like “Final Fantasy” themed MTG, or Marvel themed sets to try to bring in other collectors of other fandoms, which works for their sales, thoug,h like most of board and card gaming, the business model is not working well across the line.

The transformation began in 2020 when Wizards removed cards like “Invoke Prejudice,” “Cleanse,” “Stone-Throwing Devils,” “Pradesh Gypsies,” “Jihad,” “Imprison,” and “Crusade” from tournament play, claiming they were “racist.” The company then introduced characters like Alesha, Who Smiles At Death, specifically marketed as transgender representation, complete with story fiction emphasizing pronouns to ensure players understood the political messaging.

Read more

It was only a matter of time after publishers flooded the shelves of bookstores with women’s degenerate monster fantasy romances known as “romantasy” for the concepts to seep into other media. Now, tabletop RPGs have their own romantic slop being pushed by popular RPG sites.

Read more

Eric Lang, the creator of Mass Effect: The Board Game - Priority: Hagalaz, told his followers to remember the hanging of Nazi war criminals following ICE enforcement in Minnesota.

Subscribe now

If you recall, back in 2024 it was discovered that Lang inserted gender ideology in the form of pronouns into his Mass Effect board game.

In response to the negative reaction, Lang attacked gamers. He wrote in a now deleted post on X, “I hate even talking about this on social media but if you played Mass Effect TBG, would mind giving it a rating on BGG?”

“To offset the [expletive] manbabies trying to tank the rating with 1s because they can’t handle looking at pronouns on a character sheet.”

While he deleted the post, he doubled down on it in another one. He wrote, “Deleted the stupid post because…well, you know. I hate deleting posts that I stand behind, but [expletive] it. Twitter suck so [expletive] much.”

Now, Lang is commenting on ICE enforcement in Minnesota. First, he posted on Facebook, “My heart breaks, over and over again, for my many dear friends in occupied Minneapolis. Stay strong, stay vigilant and [Expletive] ICE.”

Read more

The Dice Tower finds itself in another political controversy after one of their original contributors Sam Healey pointed out on Facebook that pulling a gun on federal agents is not the act of an innocent victim. Now, SJWs are flooding The Dice Tower’s GameFound to try to put pressure on the organization to disavow Healey.

Read more

Games Workshop unveiled new female Adeptus Custodes miniatures as parts of its New Year Preview and the overwhelming majority people are not happy about it.

Subscribe now

A video highlighting the new Legio Custodes miniatures has just 2,400 likes compared to an estimated 11,000 dislikes.

In the comments, individuals pilloried the miniatures. One wrote, “Massive ratio.
Supreme L for GW. Fire whoever came up with this and anyone involved with giving it the go-ahead.”

Another simply stated, “You are not cannon.”

“The golden boys got Netflix'd lmao,” wrote one.

Another said it was “Games Workshops Bud Light moment.”

“Clearly they didn’t forget the triggers guys, they just didn’t want the fake custodes actually hurting someone, jeez,” wrote one.

Another mocked, “‘I don’t care what they tell you in actual lore, but custodes were karens.’”

“‘There have always been no triggers on the guardian spears. And there have always been no aquilla on their leg pieces,’” posted another.

“Creating models based on an ideological agenda for people who are not your main customers and who hate your main customers is a wild business strategy,” said one.

Another opined, “Old lady shield captain is really really weird.”

“Like adding spinach to your chocolate cookies to attract spinach loving customers,” posted another.

“Bud Light and Jaguar moment! Absolute shamefur dispray,” posted one.

“This video has the taint of Chaos,” wrote another.

One questioned, “What next? Rainbow themed Warships?”

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that Games Workshop will take any of this seriously. The company has only doubled and tripled down since it announced back in 2020 it intended to inject wokeness into its franchise, “We will continue to diversify the cast of characters we portray through miniatures, art and storytelling so everyone can find representation and heroes they can relate to.”

Not only have they doubled and tripled down by introducing female Adeptus Custodes and changing their own lore, but the company reported a record half-year performance just earlier this month.

CEO Kevin Rountree stated, “I’m delighted to report a record half-year performance. A huge thank you to our staff, customers, trade accounts and broader stakeholders for their ongoing support.”

The company added that its “core revenue grew by 17.3% to £316.1 million for the period. On a constant currency basis, sales were up by 18.4% to £319.0 million.”

While the company is unlikely to change due to this negative feedback, there is an alternative and it is one that C.S. Lewis provided to J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien recounted it in Letter 159 to Dora Marshall in March 1955, “As C. S. Lewis said to me long ago, more or less – (I do not suppose my memory of his dicta is any more precisely accurate than his of mine: I often find strange things attributed to me in his works) – 'if they won't write the kind of books we want to read, we shall have to write them ourselves; but it is very laborious'.”

Subscribe now

NEXT: EXCLUSIVE Interview: Legendary Game Designer Sandy Petersen Talks Doom, Call of Cthulhu And Recent Trends In Gaming

Sandy Peterson has one of the most storied careers of any game designer, becoming a legend in both video and tabletop gaming through his excellent design work that stands the test of time. He sat down with Fandom Pulse for an interview to talk about some of his successes and what makes his games tick.

You can follow Sandy Petersen on X and check out his games here.

You’ve had success in three distinct areas of game design in tabletop RPGs with Call of Cthulhu, video games with Doom and Quake, and board games with Cthulhu Wars. What are the fundamental differences in designing for these three mediums, and which do you find most creatively fulfilling?

Man, that’s an open-ended question that could go on for a whole semester of teaching. In short, tabletop RPGs are more of a one-man job – your task is mostly teaching the players how it works and watching them play. Video games are an entire team, and much of your time as designer is spent politicking and reacting to your team and their desires. Board games (to me) are focused on the playtesters and interacting with them. They are all intellectually and emotionally rewarding to me.

Your level design work on Doom and Quake helped define what first-person shooters could be. When you were creating those iconic levels in the early ‘90s, did you have any sense you were establishing design principles that would influence the genre for decades, or were you just solving problems and making cool spaces?

We could tell that we were making what would be one of the great games of all time. What we did NOT realize is that it would essentially create interactive play – in which people would go head-to-head. That’s the most important aspect of Doom, and it caught us by surprise. We only left the PvP in the game because we, personally liked it. We didn’t expect it to catch on and to have that aspect of play dominate the computer game world.

Call of Cthulhu has been in continuous print since 1981, which is extraordinary longevity for a tabletop RPG. What do you think has allowed it to endure when so many other games from that era have faded away? What makes Lovecraftian horror work so well in the RPG format?

Every other role-playing game has exactly the same sequence – kill a baddy, get rewards & level up, then kill a bigger baddy. It’s a compelling cycl,e which is why it’s used. Call of Cthulhu, uniquely, is NOT that cycle. You investigate instead of fight. Your characters tend to get worse over time as they lose Sanity, accumulate phobias and curses, and learn things man was not meant to know. And the treasure is a moldy old book that drives you mad just by looking at the pictures. It’s a complete inversion of the typical RPG. That’s why it’s long-lived. If you want the normal experience of fighting monsters & leveling up, then you can literally play any other RPG. But if you want something different, there’s only Call of Cthulhu.

You’re a devout Mormon who’s spent decades creating horror content based on H.P. Lovecraft’s atheistic cosmic horror. How does your faith inform your creative work, and how do you reconcile creating entertainment about godless, uncaring cosmic entities with your religious beliefs?

I don’t believe in pagan gods either, but when I play D&D or RuneQuest my characters take them seriously. Also, my faith, as Christian, informs me that evil wins much of the time here on Earth. Goodness and virtue does not always triumph and dying for a hopeless cause is heroic. This fits perfectly in with the Lovecraftian vibe.

As someone who reads extensively, what are your favorite fantasy and science fiction books? Are there authors or specific works that have influenced your game design philosophy or the way you approach storytelling in games?

I don’t Lovecraft, I really like Jack Vance and Arthur Machen. I read others in Lovecraft’s circle, like Frank Belknap Long, Clark Ashton Smith, and so forth. And I read some newer authors. I have a stream of books I’m currently in the process of going through, and they’re from a variety of authors.

Probably everything I read has an influence on my games in some way. I draw on a wide range of ideas and concepts and pull things out of my brain for games. I’m a syncretic, rather than creative designer, so instead of just inventing stuff I’m likelier to combine ideas from two or more sources to create something new.

The tabletop RPG industry has seen significant DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) influence in recent years, with some publishers prioritizing representation over gameplay or narrative quality. What’s your perspective on this trend, and do you think there’s a way to get back to focusing on what makes games fun and compelling rather than ideologically driven?

Read more

Numerous Wokehammer advocates celebrated Games Workshop introducing new female Adeptus Custodes during the company’s New Year preview livestream.

Subscribe now

On January 16th, Games Workshop revealed new female Adeptus Custodes miniatures.

And reactions from Wokehammer advocates were extraordinarily predictable as they not only celebrated victory, but demanded more specifically female Space Marines.

DonQueerxote wrote, “Female Custodes officially got a model, hell yeah. you know, even if there WAS like substantial lore saying they couldn't be women, and there isn't it was like one sentence in one army book, it's a stupid and entirely arbitrary restriction. now we just need female space marines.”

Another wrote, “SO many people are going to be pleased about this. I still hate that Custodes are a playable faction but I love that we have official women as Custodes models. Now they just have to put out women as Marines models and all my Christmas presents will have come at once.”

Another wrote, “BASED female Custodes release, thank you GW! Will definitely buy these. Basement dwellers cope and seethe, can't wait to watch you all have a complete meltdown when women Space Marines drop next.”

Another posted, “Are all the tourists finished throwing their toys out of the pram yet?There are female Custodes. GW says so, and to close that loop hole, there are models of them too. Cope. Then cope some more.”

“Hahaha looks like female custodians are cannon now,” wrote another. “[expletive] you incel grifters.”

Still another wrote, “Oh [expletive], cant wait to be called a tourist again for mine! Chuds on cope watch.”

What these celebratory posts reveal is that the consumers of Warhammer 40,000 have no real power over the franchise. That power is still in the hands of the employees at Games Workshop, and clearly the company has been infiltrated to push various woke ideologies. This infiltration is a strategy that German socialist activist Rudi Dutschke coined as the “long march through the institutions.”

Marxist Herbert Marcuse explained the idea in his book Counterrevolution and Revolt:

Rudi Dutschke has proposed the strategy of the long march through the institutions: working against the established institutions while working within them, but not simply by 'boring from within', rather by 'doing the job', learning (how to program and read computers, how to teach at all levels of education, how to use the mass media, how to organize production, how to recognize and eschew planned obsolescence, how to design, et cetera), and at the same time preserving one's own consciousness in working with others. The long march includes the concerted effort to build up counterinstitutions. They have long been an aim of the movement, but the lack of funds was greatly responsible for their weakness and their inferior quality. They must be made competitive. This is especially important for the development of radical, "free" media. The fact that the radical Left has no equal access to the great chains of information and indoctrination is largely responsible for its isolation.

Christians should respond to the so‑called long march through the institutions not with despair or retreat, but with holiness and deliberate engagement. Grounded in prayer, the sacraments, and sound catechesis, they are called to form their minds according to Scripture and the Church’s teaching so they can discern and reject ideologies that deny God, reduce the human person to economics or power, or confuse good and evil. They should enter cultural, educational, and professional institutions as witnesses, not as covert ideologues, bringing charity, intellectual rigor, and moral integrity into those spaces rather than conforming to their errors. In practice, this means building and supporting authentically Christian schools, media, families, and communities, while also remaining present in existing institutions as a leaven, trusting that Christ’s truth works not through manipulation, but through faithful, visible, and sacrificial discipleship.

Pope Pius XI explained this in Divini Redemptoris, “As in all the stormy periods of the history of the Church, the fundamental remedy today lies in a sincere renewal of private and public life according to the principles of the Gospel by all those who belong to the Fold of Christ, that they may be in truth the salt of the earth to preserve human society from total corruption.”

Subscribe now

NEXT: Sargon Of Akkad Explains Why He Believes Warhammer 40,000 Is More Politically Salient Than Ever

Games Workshop made it clear the company is fully converged and controlled by the woke mind virus in its most recent New Year Preview livestream.

Subscribe now

Obviously, the biggest piece of news that came out of the livestream is that the company is now producing female Adeptus Custodes miniatures. They also continued to lie to consumers regarding the fact that they retconned the lore to introduce these female characters back in 2024.

However, as X user Chainsword40k noted, the company also referred to the Eldar Seer and Fatemaster with “they” pronouns instead of “he” or “she.”

To Chainsword40k’s point during the livestream while introducing the Aeldari Void Dreamer Kharseth one of the hosts states, “You can imagine them sort of speaking into the minds of the warriors and making sure that everybody’s all on the same page.”

The other host added, “The reason that they really pop is the special rules that comes with them. One of them is the ever useful ability to stop enemy units deploying within 12. So they can see the future. You can never catch them off guard sort of thing. … The other ability that they have is if you manage to hit an enemy unit with their psychic attack all the rest of the Corsairs that fire into that unit hit with an extra point of strength. So it’s a really good synergistic unit to help the rest of your Corsairs hit even harder.”

In contrast to Kharseth while discussing Prince Yriel they said, “Prince Yriel is the outcast prince of Iyanden and he’s returned now with his Corsair fleet to deliver his Craftworld from annihilation, once again, by leading an army into the maelstrom. He’s equipped with the Spear of Twilight, a very famous weapon; it’s extremely dangerous.”

Unfortunately, none of this should be surprising. Games Workshop made it clear back in 2020 that it would “continue to diversify the cast of characters we portray through miniatures, art and storytelling so everyone can find representation and heroes they can relate to.”

In fact, they concluded by telling anyone who is opposed to the promotion of these various tentacles of woke ideology that they should no longer be part of the Warhammer community and “you will not be missed.”

The company pushed transgenderism in its Iron & Bone collection with a short story by James Swallow. Swallow confirmed he included the propaganda in a post to X back in December 2023.

Back in 2021, Reddit user GregoriDayz shared a graphic that included 15 Warhammer 40,000 novels with LGBTQ+ representation.

Subscribe now

NEXT: Sargon Of Akkad Reacts To Female Adeptus Custodes Miniatures: "The Imperium Has Fallen"

Sargon of Akkad aka Carl Benjamin reacted to the introduction of new female Adepts Custodes miniatures by declaring the “Imperium has fallen.”

Subscribe now

Interestingly enough this declaration comes just a few days after Benjamin had shared a video explaining why Warhammer keeps winning. In it he declared, “In this era of hyperliberalism in which the dissolution of all barriers, the liberation of all peoples, and the reduction of all things to the mere material is the telos of all political action, the Imperium of Man and its valiant Space Marines stand as a metaphorical fortress against this kind of thinking. The Imperium as a faction stands for order, duty, self-sacrifice, and purity. And because it enforces these values with extreme intolerance it becomes a heretical example to the current liberal order because they have the opposite in mind for our countries. This is why they have sided with the chaos gods.”

However, following the publication of his video, Games Workshop announced new female Adeptus Custodes miniatures while also lying about how they retconned the Custodes.

Benjamin initially reacted to this news by mocking it with a South Park meme and writing, “Crazy how this is Games Workshop's actual strategy. I'm sure it's going to go great.”

He then shared a closeup of the Shield Captain miniature and declared, “They longhoused the Emperor.”

Finally, he declared, “The Chaos cultusts are thrilled that the Imperium has fallen.”

“Notice how none of them make an argument for why this makes the game better. They are just thrilled that the reign of man is ending,” he added. “All that drives them is hatred of you, and Games Workshop is pandering to it.”

“The memes are good though,” he added.

In a video, he also shared his belief that the reason Games Workshop is making female Custodes is because the people working there and the company is woke and they see an all male space as immoral.

He said, “What they see … when you have something that is a single sex space and is exclusionary to the other sex qua the other sex as in men as men and women as women have separate spaces that are exclusionary that in the woke mind is wrong. They view that as being morally wrong.”

Sargon later added, “I think it’s because you basically sat there tearing at your own flesh going, ‘No, we’re evil. We’re evil. God, we’re evil. Why? ‘Cause we’ve got a male only space. And no, it’s fine to have women only spaces, but we’ve got a male only space. It’s fine to Sisters of Silence or Sisters of Battle or whatever Howling Banshees whatever it is. But we can’t have a male only space that keeps women out and women are oppressed and therefore we can have to try and slowly but surely whittle them in.’”

In the video, he would also go on to highlight a number of woke reactions including one article noting that there are still male Space Marines and they need to add females into them as well.

While commenting on this he still claimed that the IP is still a bulwark against woke ideology, “You can keep attacking your own IP for as long as you want, but when the Imperium finally falls, as in when Space Marines are no longer actually a reactionary bulwark against progressivism, your setting becomes boring. Your setting becomes uninteresting to those people who have enjoyed it for so long.”

“There is still something in it, a core in it, an embattled core, the besieged Imperium that is the Space Marine that have no girls in them, right? That’s the thing that makes Warhammer more salient because in an era of ever increasing inclusivity it is the Space Marine’s sole job to exclusive,” he said. “And that makes it conceptually a bulwark against all of this.”

Despite stating this in his next thought he noted how Games Workshop wants to add female Space Marines, “You know that Games Workshop would love to. They want female Space Marines. They’re just not brave enough to do it yet.”

Subscribe now

NEXT: Game Designer Attempts to Cancel Upper Deck For Publishing Harry Potter Trading Cards

Games Workshop doubled down on injecting woke feminism into the game’s lore by announcing new female Adeptus Custodes tabletop figures.

Subscribe now

In a blog post on its Warhammer Community website, Games Workshop shared new information about its new Legio Custodes miniatures.

Specifically, the company revealed a female Shield Captain miniature noting she’s the bestest evar, “All Custodians are incredible warriors, but the greatest among them are raised to the rank of the Shield Captain. These warriors stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the greatest fighters in the Imperium, and the new Shield Captain miniature is worthy of such an accolade – just check out the level of detail!”

The detail shows a miniature that looks like a grandma.

On top of this, the company also published a Q&A to answer questions about the Custodes and confirmed that “some of those awesome new Custodes miniatures are female.”

When asked if it’s a “new thing,” the company answers, “Well, yes and no. Up until this point, those few Legio and Adeptus Custodes miniatures we’ve seen without helmets have been obviously male, and the rest have been so armoured that it’s hard to tell. The new range has a mix of both male and female Custodes.”

Then it posits if the company has changed its lore. Specifically, it asks, “Have you changed the lore? I thought all Space Marines and Custodes were male?”

The company answers, “Space Marines, yes. Lore wise, Space Marines are made from human males, willing aspirants or unwilling conscripts on the cusp of adolescence. They are subjected to a series of horrific trials, and the strongest emerge as remorseless killers, their humanity stripped away so they can serve as living weapons in the Emperor’s armies. There are no female Adeptus Astartes.”

“Custodes are not Space Marines,” it adds. “Other than the obvious point that they are both towering, gene-enhanced warriors, the similarities pretty much stop there.”

“Custodes are taken as infants and recrafted by ancient science.The process is arcane and bespoke to each individual. The Emperor himself retained oversight of the process (at least until that whole “Horus Heresy” thing went down),” it concluded.

This is an outright lie as the company retconned its lore surrounding Custodes back in April 2024 when it introduced its first female custodian in Adeptus Custodes. The company then posted to its X account, “Since the first of the Ten Thousand were created, there have always been female Custodians.”

An excerpt from the 1987 Rogue Trader rules makes it abundantly clear that Custodes are male and have always been male.

It states, “The Adeptus Custodes is the Emperor’s inner guard, the members of which are privileged in being permitted to serve upon the Emperor, attending to his needs, receiving and recording his directions. These men never leave Earth and only rarely leave the Imperial Palace – an endless, black hive of forbidden technology and subterranean passages delving deep within the bowels of the planet.”

This was retconned in a blog post where it removed the fact that the Custodes are recruited from the sons of nobles.

“Potential Custodians are taken in at a very young age to better survive the rigours of their transformation – no older than late infancy – for the fundamental changes that will be wrought upon their flesh, minds and souls are tantamount to apotheosis. It is considered a great honour for those of Terran noble houses to submit a child.”

In September 2024, in a blog post, Games Workshop continued to push this woke ideology introducing an animated short focusing on a female Custodian. The company declared, “Tyrith Shiva Kyrus (the first three of a long list of honorific names earned fighting for the Emperor) has the privilege of being our first portrayal of a female Custodian Guard since the recent revelation that Custodians can be any gender.”

The company added, “This fact came as a real surprise to many, since it wasn’t something previously explored. That, in and of itself, isn’t a particularly unusual thing for Warhammer 40,000 and its lore; there are simply loads of things the Warhammer Studios have never expressly stated, whether that’s ruling them in or out.”

It then attempted to justify this change by claiming adding females allows them to be more distinct from the Space Marines, “A significant advantage to this portrayal is that it helps us to address a common misconception – that the Custodes are just bigger, better Space Marines. They aren’t. Space Marines were made through industrialised ritual to be mass-produced, brute-force weapons of conquest. And even 10,000 years after their creation, draped in self-assigned glory, that’s still true of them at their core. Each Custodian, on the other hand, is unique. Painstakingly made through peerless craft and arcane artifice, their physique, their psyche, their very soul, is a bespoke instrument of the Emperor they unquestioningly serve.”

Subscribe now

NEXT: Sargon Of Akkad Explains Why He Believes Warhammer 40,000 Is More Politically Salient Than Ever