Weekly Geekly Rundown for June 2, 2023

Owlbear Beard Oil, the Substackverse, and Films

Adventures in D&D’s Undermonetization — Beard Sorcery Mighty Owlbear Beard Oil

In one of several PR missteps earlier this year, Hasbro CEO Cynthia Williams told investors like me (Hey, I’ve got 2 shares) that D&D was undermonetized in comparison with video game properties. While I have been critical of how the statement was made, and ways that D&D has been monetized will be a regular feature of the Weekly Geekly Rundown, I wrote in February that from a certain perspective it is a true statement. D&D as a game has a pretty big monetization problem that is touched upon in Ben Riggs’ book about the decline of TSR in the 1990s.

D&D’s primary purchasers are Dungeon Masters, not players. That means that approximately 1/4 of those consuming entertainment are paying for that consumption. It’s baked in to most table top games. Only one person needs to own a Chess set for two to play. Monopoly allows six to play with only one paying. And D&D? That ratio is much larger. One DM can provide the materials for, reasonably, 10 to 20 other people. Not at the same session, but easily over the course of several sessions over a week. One of the things I love about D&D Beyond is that I can share all the book that I have licensed with my players. In my case, this is about 6 people, but it could be more.

This basic revenue stream provides certain challenges that are far different from Magic or video games. Each player needs their own deck in Magic (especially online) and players usually have to own their own copies of video games to get the best experience. Playing Diablo III, and soon IV, on a shared screen is not as good a game as playing on individual screens and many games don’t offer shared/split screen options.

The best way, in my opinion, for D&D to make up the gap of lost “game” revenue is to be what is called a “lifestyle brand.” This is where people by tons of branded merch just because it is associated with the thing they love. This could include things like lunch boxes and t-shirts to toys and items that can be used in play. It can also include things for all aspects of life like “video game lockers” or Beard Oil.

As much as I might joke about the vast reach of D&D as a lifestyle brand, and how it demonstrates that Williams was overstating undermonetization, I still have enough good will towards the brand that I purchased Beard Sorcery’s Mighty Owlbear Beard Oil.

One might expect that a beard oil that is resorting to licensing might not be a very good product, but in the case of Mighty Sorcery this is not the case. The Mighty Owlbear Beard Oil has is a pleasant spicy combination of bergamot, citrus, and pepper that isn’t as overwhelmingly fragrant as many beard oils. It is at that sweet spot where you smell good, but don’t smell like you’ve sprayed a can of AXE all over your body.

What’s particularly nice about Mighty Owlbear is the pepper element of the fragrance. It’s the first thing that hits you when you put it on and it is a nice shock to the senses that helps wake you up during your morning routine. That shock fades fast, but remains enough to provide you with a subtle, clean, and refreshing scent all day long.

Mighty Owlbear doesn’t merely smell good though. Since it is handcrafted with real oils, it helps to keep your beard soft and moisturized while also providing it with a slight shine and a touch of control. Many beard oils use glycerin as a major ingredient because it adds a good shine to the beard, but glycerin can dry your beard out over time and make it scratchy in the long term. While glycerin adds more control than oils in the short term, oils add some control to beard wildness but not a lot, the drying out of the beard makes it more unruly over time. Beard Sorcery’s use of only natural oils means that it provides less short term control, though if control is better left to beard balms than oils, it is better long term for a well trained and soft beard. It’s also better for the skin underneath.

I might snarkily say that Beard Sorcery’s Mighty Owlbear Beard Oil is another “adventure in undermonetization,” but it’s a worthy one and one I’ll keep buying in the future. If D&D ends the license with Beard Sorcery, I’ll be sticking with the company so I hope they keep reaching out with more licensing and less griping to make up the revenue gap between the value of the brand and the cost to play.

Across The Substackverse

A lot of my favorite tabletop gaming designers and commentators have moved over to Substack. Since I’m here too, you can tell I like the platform and I hope we can leverage the publication tools that Substack provides to create something like the old “Blog Circles” from when I started blogging and writing about games. While a lot of My Weekly Geekly Rundowns will focus on individual things that interest me, and sometimes with more detail than I intended for a rundown, I’ll be adding an Across the Substackverse section from now on.

Here are a few articles that caught my eye:

Monte Cook

over at

RPG Design Theories

had an interesting article discussing the difference between player success and character success. Given that “activity balance” was a topic that was mentioned during the recording of my upcoming chat with Steven Schend about Superhero RPGS, this was a particularly timely article for me. Activity or “role” balance is different than play balance in that it assures that every player, via their character, has something to do in a session. It’s a concept that isn’t much discussed, but that I think is vital in games that can be as unbalanced power wise as Superhero games.

Player Success Versus Character Success

Dave Thaumavore

over at

Thaumavoria

has a twenty question interview with

The Glatisant: A Questing Beast Newsletter

‘s Ben Milton. Milton is the designer of Knave (which recently had a successful Kickstarter for its 2nd Edition) and Maze Rats and is a high profile figure in the OSR community. I’ll be doing a post on Knave in the future that expands upon the analysis I did on the game in my earlier Weekly Geekly Rundown since that earlier analysis used AD&D as the basis and Ben primarily uses B/X D&D. The larger point of the analysis remains the same, there is no strict +5% per level in older D&D but that doesn’t matter because the game was loose enough back in the day and Ben’s +5% is within the range of advancement depending on how the DM “set the dials” for the campaign.

Ben Milton sets the record straight

Weekly Luke Y Thompson and Courtney Howard Review Cavalcade

My two favorite critics both reviewed the latest Spiderverse film:

Luke reviewed it over at SuperHeroHype.

Courtney reviewed it for Fresh Fiction.

Luke reviews the new McFarlane Toys for the upcoming Flash film…except for The Flash over at SuperHeroHype.

Courtney Howard interviewed Javier Bardem for Fresh Fiction about the new Little Mermaid film and learned that he performed a song that was cut from the film.

Courtney Howard’s review of the new horror film The Boogeyman is more positive than Luke Y Thompson’s. Courtney shares my love of Knight and Day, and Luke has a deep knowledge of horror films that makes it so it takes a little more to impress him in that genre, so I think I might agree more with Courtney when the day is done. Have to watch it to find out though.

James Islington Has a New Book Out

There are moments when I get mad at the world and one of those is right now. James Islington, author of the excellent Licanius Trilogy, has a new book out that sounds as interesting as that series was. Islington has a way of taking traditional fantasy tropes and twisting them around in surprising ways. His Licanius Trilogy is one of my favorite fantasy series, though I hope he takes the time to write a book about how certain events unfolded that allowed the final book to end the way it did. He knows of which I write.

Why am I mad then? Because I’ve got things I’ve got to finish and I’m going to have to fight pretty hard to hold off on buying Islington’s latest.

Interested in Tabletop Wargaming? Check out Hobgoblin.

There are a lot of wargaming rules out there, but fans of the genre like me like to find new games to play with our fantasy miniatures. Hobgoblin is a new rules set by Mike Hutchinson, the designer of Gaslands, that looks like a lot of fun. Check it out.

Classic Film Recommendation

Since Taika Waititi mentioned that no one knew the director of Casablanca, a statement that caused a bit of a stir, I thought I’d recommend a Michael Curtiz film this week. Curtiz is one of the great directors and his films are very worth watching. My thoughts on Waititi? I’ve always liked him as a filmmaker, in part because he’s such a passionate fan/geek. That’s why I was surprised he said what he said.

Sure, most people don’t know Michael Curtiz directed Casablanca, that’s what critics and fans are for. We’re there to be passionate advocates for the things and people we love. Then again, as the quote by John Ford from my recent review of Winchester ‘73 pointed out, many critics are more about tearing down than building up and that’s become more and more true of fans lately too.

Casablanca might be the greatest film ever made, I mean it’s damn good, but I adore Captain Blood. The fact that Curtiz could direct both is a testimony to his skill as a director.