One day, Old School will just mean being in the same room as the other players. 
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That sounds ominously prophetic. It may come to pass that ārole playing gamesā will refer to an online computer game where each player has their own unique character, and not have anything to do with paper books, character sheets, dice, or friends gathered around a table.
Ultimately, from the profit-centric perspective of WOTC, killing tabletop rpgs in the process of creating a much higher revenue generating, subscription based, online game is a net win for them. What remains to be seen is if players follow their script.
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The sad part of this mistake is that a slow rollout of these things wouldnāt have caused any massive protests - absent the OGL changes.
AI DM? More things for people to buy? etc.? One by one itād have worked.
Their mistake was biting off more than they could chew instead of slow boating it on people. Iām glad they did, but stillā¦
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I find myself drawing parallels between WotC with what has been happening in Hollyweird in certain movie studios and/or with particular Hollywood Intellectual Properties (IPās) for several years now.
The phenomenon occurs when the people at the top end up hiring people to steward a studio or IP who lack an appropriate understanding of, and the proper passion for, the the very IP they have been hired to handle and care for.
It also seems to be the case such that a majority of these people being hired tend to care more about ideological messaging than proper character development or good storytelling.
The best, most recent occurrence that comes to mind is Hissrich as showrunner of the Witcher. She openly despises the source material and established fanbase, and was more concerned with warping the source material to fit her twisted desires, than doing the source material justice. Her decisions led to Henry Cavill, who has that passion and understanding for the IP, to depart the production.
However, in the case of WotC, it appears that the lack of understanding of the source material and active disdain for the fanbase manifested more in the form of greed, and the desire to increase bottom line at the communityās expense, than forwarding any ideology.
This seems to be an increasing phenomenon in the corporate world, where corporate politics are allowed to dictate policy over enterprises where creative visionaries should just be allowed to do what they do best: create!
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I sincerely hope that will never actually come to pass, where people donāt actually come together in person to game.
But when I think back to what occurred around '20-'22 with the plandemic *(thatās not a typo) and how that affected gaming communities, and exponentially increased virtual gaming platforms, I can see how it could be possible, especially as VR and AR platforms become more advanced and realistic.
I feel confident in saying that our social nature as human beings would require that the alternatives (AR/VR/etc.) would have to be at about the same level as an actual in-person experience before we reach a point where humans would actually choose them over the real thing.
Maybe, when we reach something akin to what is depicted in Ready Player One, or even possibly something like in the matrix, where our minds end up getting directly plugged into an artificial world where everything feels just as realā¦
Either way, I doubt that is something that will occur within my lifetime.
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I find myself repulsed by the imminent predatory nature of VTTs, and I want to redouble my work on physical table top terrain instead. Roll 20 was great to limp gaming along through the pandemic, but I want my friends at the table more than ever.
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It is the face to face aspect of social gaming that attracts me. I have alll the gear for VTT, but I donāt,
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I just went back and rewrote a 3 page adventure to be system-agnostic, removed all references to Wot5e. Took me well over an hour. My condolences to developers who have to rewrite 300 page books 
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Iād love to play face to face with my friends, but we all live in different states (sometimes countries) now so online gaming is the only practical solution for us. Fortunately, strong support for specific systems in a VTT is not important to us, so none of the potential fallout from the recent WotC shenanigans would have impacted my ability to play online. The ability to quickly draw maps and roll dice is really all I need (and I can live without the online dice roller if push comes to shove).
Why am I picturing the spirit of Gygax hovering over the Lizard offices moaning āThere is but one way to plaaaaay!ā Lawyers rising like zombies to do the will of the chubby one.
Sorry, Iāve been doing this too long.
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