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

Chaosium Pulls 40 Titles and Bans AI From Its Catalog

issues ttrpg  2026-10-23

Issue #017 · Week of October 23, 2026

This Week’s Verdict

A quiet news week, which in this hobby means only one publisher purged its storefront and one megacorp dared its workers to hold a vote. The content mill kept grinding, the Mörktober prompts kept arriving, and somewhere a man sold D&D-themed toilet paper with a straight face.

Releases & Announcements

Chaosium removed roughly 40 community titles from its storefront as part of a crackdown on AI-generated content, with a policy best summarized as “just don’t use AI.” The same move reportedly includes retroactively editing older products, which is either housekeeping or revisionism depending on which thread you read.

Elsewhere on the shelf: Paizo has 13 OMENS, its horror RPG, live on Kickstarter, and Pathfinder action figures are apparently a thing now. Lynnvander Studios is running a Munchkin RPG (5e-compatible) on BackerKit. WotC put out Misplaced Monsters: Volume Two on D&D Beyond, an eight-stat-block bestiary with proceeds going to Seattle Children’s Hospital. EN World is also pushing a pair of OneQuests solo survival gamebooks and Secrets of the Tome, a spellcaster options book with a new class. And yes, D&D-themed toilet paper exists.

Rules & Errata

Nothing official to report from the big three this week. For actual play procedure, Sly Flourish published “Scenes and Situations,” reaffirming the eight-step prep from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, and separately offered the unglamorous but correct advice to run low-level campaigns to keep games fast and curb game-breaking combos. Gnome Stew ran “Act With Intent,” a piece on getting players to describe actions the GM can actually adjudicate, born from a Blades in the Dark session. Useful, none of it binding.

The Community

The United Wizards of the Coast (CWA) organizing effort is the week’s real story. Per EN World’s news digest, Wizards refused to voluntarily recognize the D&D and Magic worker union, forcing a vote; petitions and solidarity posts circulated across the fediverse, including German-language signal-boosting. Against this, Jeff’s Game Box published a “let them fail” take arguing that struggling TTRPG companies, unions included, should be left to collapse. It is a position, held with confidence.

The Chaosium purge generated its own low-grade heat over whether sanitizing old products is a publisher’s prerogative or something worse. And Rascal News ran “What Is The OSR, or How Discourse Would Be Better If You Tried Googling It,” a title that does all the arguing for you. The OSR itself kept playing rather than defining: ongoing Halls of Arden Vul sessions, a first night of Mythic Bastionland, Dolmenwood at the table, and a full run of Mörktober prompts for Mörk Borg.

The usual GM-advice sediment settled as well, from making villains hateful via petty inconvenience to the perennial observation, via Reddit, that “5e gives a skeleton to flesh out, while PF2e gives a block of marble to sculpt.” A fine line, repeated often enough to count as folklore.

On the Horizon

EN World’s crowdfunding roundup lists 13 Omens (Paizo), Munchkin (Steve Jackson Games), Dragon Kings, plus work from Monte Cook Games and Goodman Games. On the zine front, Secret Passages #4, a retro and Warhammer zine, is on Kickstarter, and Hexed Press released the second issue of its rules-agnostic fantasy zine. Pelgrane Press dropped a new “Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff” episode titled “Our Fun Number is Gone,” which is the most relatable product name of the week.

Resources

More: Latest · Issues · RTFM

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