Running on Empty: The Book
Now Available in Kindle and Softcover
Today I am delighted to announce the release of Running on Empty as a book available on Amazon in softcover and Kindle format. The book edition features all-new tables and charts, updates reflecting recent events, and a foreword by my friend Gary Brode, from Deep Knowledge Investing. If you’ve enjoyed my writing on the blog, I hope you’ll grab a copy of Running on Empty for yourself or friends interested in geopolitics and economics.
In other news… This week has found me embroiled in perhaps the most dramatic legal situation that I have encountered in my career. For the last 12 years, my company Autarch has published my game Adventurer Conqueror King System under the terms of Wizards of the Coast’s Open Game License (OGL) 1.0. For the last 5 years, ACKS has been my full-time job. Substack doesn’t pay my bills, not yet anyway — writing elf games does!
The OGL has permitted me and many, many others, to participate in the ecosystem of Dungeons & Dragons. Now, Wizards of the Coast, in what I can only describe as an act of perfidious treachery, has decided to retroactively deauthorize the OGL 1.0 and offer up a new Open Game License 1.1 to replace it. I have written in detail about this perfidious treachery on my other substack, Arbiter of Worlds, detailing the impact on my business and the steps I now have to take. It’s been a long week re-writing and editing and purging material. Accordingly, I have postponed part II of The Seven Walls of Fortress America for now.
The de-authorization of the OGL 1.0 has endangered most of the income I rely on day-to-day, so allow me to say thank you to the premium subscribers whose woeful contributions have helped to soften that blow. I am very grateful for your readership.
Former MTG player here (Legacy, Modern and Draft mostly). I dabbled in D&D back in the day, but definitely am nowhere near being a pioneer of the Space such as yourself!
I forget the gentleman who said it; but he made the prescient point that Culturally, there are 3 main "past-times" that the American has contributed to the wider world:
1) Baseball.
2) Professional Wrestling.
3) The Comic Book.
... Of course, notice that this list does not have "RPGs" in it; but I would personally add it in, if it were up to me. Broadly then, these 4 "nodes" keep the American ethos (and we are not talking "ideology" here, but rather the underlying non-linguistic cultural, social, etc mores) intact.
As such, if we "work backwards" (i.e. from the 'intact' to the "BROKEN") and ask the question: "What will GUARANTEE the Destruction and total Conquest of America-proper?" The Answer is very straightforward: It would be the undermining of one or more of these "nodes".
We can spend hours on each individual "node" and go over WHY they are now a basket case (and I think for a pioneer in the RPG-space yourself, you would know best your own node and how utterly Fallen it has become); however a bird's eye view will suffice for now:
None of these "Nodes" make profit at the institutional level anymore. Rather, what they have is "Forward Momentum" generated from massive debt/leverage which in turn generates more cash inflow which in turn requires greater amount of debt/leverage... you see the pattern.
If anything, this is the "worst way to go". At least the Romans (for all their indolence, gluttony, etc) died off "as Roman" with their cultural "nodes" still to some imperfect degree intact. America/Yankeeland meanwhile will be Slaughtered when all of its nodes have been flayed off.
I read that piece the other day, but didn't realize it was by you. What Wizards of the Woke did was unconscionable. It's also self-marginalizing. They've essentially told everyone in their ecosystem that there's no point being in their ecosystem anymore. In the medium to long term, they'll be irrelevant.
I for one look forward to when you buy the rights to D&D during Wizards of the Woke's bankruptcy fire sale.