It's Already Written.
The rules are already written.

WotC's Revolving Door Keeps Spinning as Vampire Goes Home

issues ttrpg  2026-10-02

Issue #014 · Week of October 02, 2026

This Week’s Verdict

The big story this week is personnel, not product: Wizards of the Coast keeps rearranging its staff while Renegade quietly loses Vampire back to White Wolf. Everything else is Halloween content arriving on schedule, which is to say early. Nobody errata’d anything, so we read tea leaves instead.

Releases & Announcements

The licensing desk earned its keep. Renegade Game Studios renewed its Hasbro deal for Transformers, GI Joe, and others, but surrendered the Vampire license back to White Wolf, with an Anne Rice TTRPG reportedly on the way. Make of that what you will.

Over on the official side, D&D Beyond shipped the Sorrow Knight, a Shadowfell-themed Fighter subclass, as part of its latest Drop. It is subscriber-exclusive, so the “first subclass” framing comes with a turnstile. Sterling Vermin Adventuring Co. also landed the Magus, a 5.5e-compatible class, on D&D Beyond. Wizards continues teasing Project Lamordia, a modern reinterpretation of Ravenloft’s Lamordia, due as an October adventure.

Third-party output was steady. Kobold Press posted about Scouting Party & the Monsters of the Underworld and has Night Hunters and Night Terrors running for 5e and Tales of the Valiant. Philip Reed released Spooky Shadows, 55 pages of Grimm folklore for solo Shadowdark on an iterative October funding model. Goodman Games and American Mythology Productions announced a partnership to bring Dungeon Crawl Classics to comics. For the collectors, Iron Studios has a 9.5-inch Tarrasque statue up for preorder at $399.99, which is roughly the per-inch going rate for regret.

Looking further out, Wizards confirmed Dungeons! Illustrated Maps Of Classic Dungeons & Dragons Adventures, a walkthrough map book landing April 27, 2027.

Rules & Errata

No official errata crossed the desk this week. The Sorrow Knight and the Magus are new options rather than corrections, and nothing from Shadowdark or DCC amounts to a rules change. The closest thing to mechanics discourse was Xenograg arguing for an armor class penalty when characters skip the helmet, which is house-rule territory, not official text.

The Community

The changing of the guard at Wizards drew the most ink, courtesy of EN World (via Morrus) tallying the recent hirings and firings. On the firing side, LaTia Jacquise, the D&D community manager, was let go. On the hiring side, Celeste Conowitch joined as Senior Game Developer. Two data points, one trend line, and a lot of speculation filling the gap.

Elsewhere, the Bundle of Holding revival of The Merry Mushmen’s KNOCK! zine got loud, with TMushmen themselves noting the first three issues run $17.95 against a $40 print price per issue. Worth the shelf space if you tolerate old-school miscellanea.

The GM-advice crowd was in form. Sly Flourish preached mixed combat difficulty and, in a separate post, the gospel of “Just Use Bears,” reskinning one reliable stat block into whatever you need. Gnome Stew covered taking useful player notes and the quiet art of recognizing when a Blades in the Dark campaign has actually ended. Counterprogramming came from the Nat1Advice account, which advised doing the exact same thing every combat turn, which is either satire or the most honest optimization take of the week.

MÖRKTOBER kicked off, with the usual Mörk Borg prompt threads filling the OSR timeline, including nisjasper confessing a title-first project called THE CANTANKEROUS CRUSADE and a healthy skepticism of the art-punk house style.

On the Horizon

Underground Oracle Publishing fully funded Creature Companions Expanded on Kickstarter, a Tales of the Valiant sourcebook of companion rules for 5e-compatible games. The Curse of the Crimson Wake brings nautical horror to Old-School Essentials. On the convention front, strangequark is running The Ten Bells Public House, a DCC scenario, at Dragonmeet on November 28 at London Excel, with RPG event tickets going on sale the day after Halloween.

Bargain hunters have two weeks on EN Publishing’s 50% off all PDFs sale, and three weeks on the KNOCK! bundle. EN World’s RPG Print News flagged supplements for Swordfish Islands’ Hot Spring Island, Age of Vikings, Dolmenwood maps, and a Fifth Season RPG based on the novel.

Resources

More: Latest · Issues · RTFM

New Issue every week. Follow @ItsAlrdyWritten or subscribe via RSS so you do not miss the next ruling.