Some scattershot updates

I've got three things to talk about briefly, and all of them are relatively small, so I'll combine them in a single post, even though the topics have very little to do with each other.

First

I had said earlier, on the date it was released, that Depeche Mode's new song "Ghosts Again" was a contender for being a top tier DM song. I played it for my wife last weekend, and she said it was "Ok." Am I overvaluing it? Not sure. I'm kind of in a weird situation with Depeche Mode. After many years of being disappointed in their output—since Violator honestly, which I know is very popular, but which I thought was overall a step down from Music For the Masses and Black Celebration which I still consider the best DM albums. This trajectory of disappointment has fallen off precipitously. While Violator was a weird style with lots of hoaky steel guitar, and relatively fewer good songs (admittedly, the good songs are quite good, and "Enjoy the Silence" is the most iconic Depeche Mode song of all time) most later albums are considerably worse. Exciter, Spirit, and Delta Machine are the bottom tier albums. After this more extreme disappointment, I was probably in a position where even a halfway decent song was going to make me happy. But over time, how well it stands next to other top tier songs will be more apparent. It is possible that I've overvalued it because relative to what it could have been, it didn't disappoint me. But it's not going to fall from being a top tier contender to being part of the mediocre pack. It'll just not push over the top into the top tier, and will remain in the "second tier" if it is less than I found it initially. I'm still optimistic that with more time and more to compare it to, it'll remain a favorite. 

One of these days, I'll have to decide what I think the complete list of "top tier" songs is, and how many can actually qualify. By my count and utilizing the b-sides and other rarities, there's about 263 Depeche Mode songs currently, including "Ghosts Again." We don't have a tracklist for Memento Mori yet, so I don't know what that will expand to but somewhere between 270-275 most likely. If I consider that Depeche Mode's top tier output can't be more than about 5% of that, or about 13-14 songs. But that's when Memento Mori comes out; today, I have to keep it at 12-13. 

For my first pass, let's include: "Just Can't Get Enough", "Everything Counts", "If You Want" (yes, that's a very personal and esoteric choice), "Blasphemous Rumours", "Stripped", "But Not Tonight", "Never Let Me Down Again", "Behind the Wheel", "Enjoy the Silence", "Precious", "Shake the Disease", and "Wrong."

I could have maybe fit one or two more, but let's save them for the Second Tier; songs like "Oh Well", "Strangelove", "Somebody", "People Are People", "World Full of Nothing", "Personal Jesus", "Blue Dress", "The Sun & the Rainfall", "Leave in Silence", "New Life", "Photographic", "Sacred", and maybe "I Sometimes Wish I Was Dead."

Second

I think my latest post is probably as close as I need to get to preparing to run the lead-in to the CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER game. There's some minor "director's commentary" or GM's notes I should add, just to explain how this works. I have three low-level human entries in the monsters and foes section. All of them are low level threats; a human commoner, a human warrior, and an elite warrior. Still only about a 2nd level character, or the equivalent of one, more or less. Throwing a few spells on him is sufficient. 

I probably don't need much more in terms of NPC stats that this for much of the entire run of CIW. I'm really starting to believe that the entirety of the campaign would have the PCs at only 1st and 2nd level. If I use the same characters for a second campaign, it would be 2nd and 3rd (CULT OF UNDEATH?) and if I use the same characters for MIND-WIZARDS OF THE DAEMON WASTE, which would be remarkable, that campaign would be 4th and 5th, and maybe just for the heckuvit, I'd let them do the last few sessions as 6th level. 

For those higher levels in the next campaigns, I probably want to have some more difficult threats, but I'm largely not too worried about them for quite a long time. I'm also not very concerned with replicating anything at all like CR matching; if monsters are difficult, then players should be prepared for that. In fact, they'll very specifically be ready for the servitor daemons, because they will have killed the pseudo-PCs already. If that doesn't inspire the players to find some kind of strategy to be successful more involved than "I attack it with my sword", then it's on them if they TPK early on.

Third

I don't believe much of what I hear in the Hasbro earnings report. I don't believe that the D&D Beyond cancellations haven't had a notable effect on earnings, or if they haven't, it's a timing issue and it'll hit in the next quarter. Maybe its true, but if so, that just suggests that D&D in general isn't a huge earner for WotC, nor does it have the potential to be. I also believe that Baldur's Gate 3 is going to underperform relative to their projections. It's been in early release for three years already; how many people really want to play it that haven't yet? Plus, the black woman main character having a lesbian kiss with a surprisingly kind of not  all that attractive elfin the trailer is a major turnoff. I don't think that the D&D audience, or the video game audience is all that woke, really. We'll see. Last of Us 2 doesn't seem to have been all that successful ,and got a lot of bad press. Not all of that was from the wokeness of the game, but a lot of it is.

I also don't think that the movie is going to be a big success. It has the look of a made-for-tv movie with an aging star, who only is cast to be made fun of anyway.

Screw you, D&D, and screw you WotC, and screw you Hasbro.