Happy holidays! 2023 is ending, and what a year it’s been. In a lot of ways, 2023 has been a bit quieter here than previous years; while COVID refuses to go away we’ve all lurched back towards normalization, and most of the upheaval in games came from picking up the pieces of events that happened in 2022. Twitter is dead, essentially; anyone who’s attempted to use the site knows that any attempt to see through the haze of algorithmic mud only results in, at best, the absence of continued conversation. Of course, RPG discussion continues, you just need to look a little harder to find it.

Casting a longer shadow over RPG news of the year was Wizards of the Coast. Starting with the OGL debacle and ending with a swathe of layoffs, things were rough this year for everyone’s favorite RPG monopolist. It does mean, though, that my prediction made last year about major players and rent-seeking were correct; MCDM, Kobold Press, Darrington Press and others are all fielding fantasy RPGs intended to be an alternative to D&D. This does mean that whatever happens with the revised D&D rulebooks coming out in 2024 is anyone’s guess; even the home run of Baldur’s Gate 3 has effectively been squandered on the tabletop side.