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WotC's Dan Ayoub Concedes the OGL 'Rug Pull

issues ttrpg  2026-09-18

Issue #012 · Week of September 18, 2026

This Week’s Verdict

The big noise came from Wizards of the Coast, where executive Dan Ayoub admitted the OGL episode was a “rug pull” the brand is still recovering from, which is roughly what everyone told them at the time. Meanwhile the people who actually make things kept making things: Shadowdark hit-point rolls, Old-School Essentials trips to Hell, and a German blogosphere quietly building modular dungeons. The gap between corporate contrition and community output has rarely been this legible.

Releases & Announcements

EN World’s RPG Print News rounds up supplements for Mothership and Dragonbane, plus two full games hitting print: The Mecha Hack and Into the Ish. Also arriving: more dice, because there is always more dice.

Two Old-School Essentials-adjacent projects surfaced via The Gaming Gang. Hellcrawl takes OSE characters straight to Hell, and OldMoon promises OSR fantasy on an alien world later this year. Neither has a firm date worth trusting yet.

Undergroundoracle Publishing is running a Kickstarter for Creature Companions Expanded, a 5e-compatible sourcebook of companion and familiar rules for any class. Arcana Unleashed, the arcane-options sourcebook covering magical companions, factions, subclasses and backgrounds, drew a full review at EN World, though its Ultimate Bundle shipment was delayed in the US and Canada.

On the podcast front, Pelgrane Press put out Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff episode 717, and 3d6 Down The Line re-mixed the audio for its original Dolmenwood campaign, with Arden Vul re-mixes promised to follow.

Rules & Errata

No official errata this week, which is the honest answer rather than filler. What we have instead is Wizards of the Coast on process rather than mechanics: Dan Ayoub telling EN World the company is “recovering from loud public missteps” on the OGL. That is corporate reflection, not a rules change.

On the play side, the Shadowdark crowd continued its ongoing field study of how brutal the math actually is. A third-level priest using a d6 instead of a d4 landed at 10 hit points; a third-level wizard rolled eight. Poster Da_Gut worked through spell-check progression as characters level, noting the roughly 25 percent chance a first-level spell fizzles for the day, and reminded everyone that Shadowdark stats are straight 3d6 with a reroll only if nothing hits 14 or higher. It is the rulebook working as intended, which is to say unforgivingly.

The Community

Ben Milton of Questing Beast launched a survey on D&D play styles, trying to measure how uniform or varied the community actually is. Because his channel skews OSR, he asked that it be shared beyond that bubble, so treat any results with the usual sampling caution.

Over in Germany, Kritischer Fehlschlag kicked off a collaborative “Dungeon Cluster” project, small self-contained dungeon regions with their own factions and conflicts that combine into larger adventures. Entries already include a kobold cult worshipping a long-dead purple worm and a warren of flesh-shapers. The LoFiCon OSR convention in Leipzig also filled the German timeline with pre-con jitters, one referee running Times That Fry Men’s Souls, a colonial North America hexcrawl, and another running Zombie Reign, a Shadowdark zombie-apocalypse variant fresh from Kickstarter.

Prismatic Wasteland wrote up what the 2026 Odyssey film can teach about running games, and Sly Flourish offered the reliable advice to prep around what actually excites you. On the darker note, Azukail Games’ Tabletop Mercenary asked what happens when your publisher dies, which pairs grimly with the WotC penance above.

On the Horizon

Two crowdfunders worth watching. Cairn Press is preparing an expanded version of the OSR one-shot A Sliver of Evidence, flagged as promising by Rollenspielblog. Undergroundoracle’s Creature Companions Expanded is live now for the 5e companion crowd.

Further out, OldMoon and Hellcrawl are both slated for later this year, and RockClanProductions has the first Council of Gothmoor adventure, “The Old Sage,” a Pathfinder 2e module, in proofing and headed to DriveThruRPG pending a proof print. EN World’s Podcast 414 previews Underdark playtest options for 5e, the announced Munchkin RPG, and the returning Castle Ravenloft board game. Nothing there is shipping today, so hold your wallet.

Resources

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