Energy Where It's Due

"Let me tell you something... getting old is a gift. I forget that sometimes... but it is. What more could a guy possibly want?"

— Jumanji: the Next Level

The strange sources in which we find things. I'm quite sure this one line was written by DeVito.

As expected, the Christmas Lantern landed with something of a thud. A few (quite literally that number) expressed interest, but the larger mass of readers shrugged, did not visit the page and did not send their regards. I've struggled with this through 2025, but not because the Lantern is a "failure." True enough, the interest hasn't been widespread, but the truth of it is that I've been much more conscious of my age of late.

This blog, Tao of D&D, is at a dead end. Not that I'm going to stop writing it, but that any real usefulness it has is played out. I'm not going to write a new post that convinces anyone at this stage to change the way they play D&D. All those posts have already been written. I'm not going to change the course of D&D. It's going down, where it's going to stay for any foreseeable future. We're just watching it circle the drain. I could write about the books until I'm blue in the face, no one's who hasn't already is going to wake up and realise they've wasted their lives shoving this junk on a pedestal. Even the next most sensible guy to me on the internet writing about D&D cannot pull the sunshine out of his ass when writing about these books.

Thus, effort given here is, from this point, merely playing for the choir. And let's face it, a lot of you good people will, soon, begin to wonder if this fantasy is sustainable for you also.

A writer needs an audience. This is something that any writer wants. If not a big audience, then certainly an eclectic one. A growing one. One that reaches beyond the same collection of folks for year after year. A congregation, if you will, that consist of more than the choir.

The Lantern, for ill or good, is sustainable. It doesn't rely on this hobby; it doesn't count on a specific kind of D&D being popular. It doesn't in fact, need D&D at all. Because the stories take place in a fictional year four centuries ago, it's timeless. When I'm gone, every issue I write gives my daughter something to sell. And, if he wants to one day, my grandson. If I can get enough issues together to make a book or two, those will still have value when I, you and all the rest of the choir are long dead. This matters to me more than the number of page views I get for an announcement this month in 2025. It has to. Because the day is going to come when I'm not here... and every day between now and that time is, yes, a gift. I can't waste that just carping about the White Box. I'll go back to carping, but realistically, that's not the priority now, and never will be the priority going forward.

I could afford to look at all this differently in 2008. D&D still looked like something that could be saved. Sure, it was looking bleak at the time, but not as bleak as it looks now. D&D, and D&D products, have no future. I'm sure of that. And the only way to make money from them in the present is to produce the most egregious, crowd grabbing shit imaginable. Thank you, no, I'm out. I won't get into that business.

I've written 20 stories and articles for the Lantern now, over five issues. I hope I can find a stride that lets me have the presence of mine to print an issue every month, not because it'll rescue me from my poverty today, but because it'll one day rescue one of my descendants from theirs. Those who have read the Lantern, who can see it for what it is, who aren't measuring it against what it isn't and that which it isn't trying to be — a D&D support product — already know how unusual and unlikely is this project.

I'm sorry that understanding hasn't taken hold. Sadly, I have no control over that. But I do control where I put my energy, and it's not going to be wholly in producing take-down posts of the White Box just because those happen to be popular just now. A year from now, no one will read them or give a shit.

I can't be sure that'll be likewise true with the Lantern. In fact, I'm pretty sure it won't be.