I own an embarrassing number of Degenesis books. I’ve written gushing reviews about the game and the world it takes place in, have run the entire Jehammed Trilogy, and I’ve been publishing this site for over five years. If there’s a Degenesis bug, I’ve definitely been bit by it.

The game has also exposed me to so many interesting, insightful, and creative fans. Talking to someone else who has succumbed to the charms of Degenesis is like finding another member of a secret tribe.

Unfortunately, that tribe is small and secret because Degenesis isn’t for everyone. It’s not for most tabletop roleplayers. Reviewers and online randos give plenty of reasons why the game isn’t for them, but ultimately the reasons don’t matter. This is a game that is the best thing since sliced bread for a small number of fans, hasn’t been appealing for the vast majority of tabletop gamers.

I say this knowing there are other paths that could have been taken by SMV. They could have priced the PDFs and print books differently. They could have changed the books themselves to make them more broadly palatable, they could have used traditional crowdfunding to keep Degenesis alive, rather than doing it on their own with the Roadmap approach.

Maybe one or all of these approaches would have saved Degenesis and turned it from a money pit into a profit generating machine. Or not. Selling anything is difficult. Cultural trends and market expectations can screw you. Pricing seems obvious until you see how nonlinear and weird pricing effects can get. In the long tail market of tabletop roleplaying, it’s an enormous challenge to produce high-quality work while making a profit. It’s an even more difficult challenge to do so without compromising your artistic vision.

I can’t read Marko’s mind, but I’ve had enough discussions with him to know that he didn’t create Degenesis in order to satisfy the demands of the market. He wanted to create a specific artistic vision, and he did what he could to generate revenue from it. But in the end that path to revenue never materialized.

The Degenesis: Clan Wars skirmish combat game was an attempt to go after a different audience, to bring them into the world of Degenesis and lock revenue in along the way. Wargamers are, after all, used to shelling out for the games they play. The whole project was undertaken with the usual intensity we’ve all come to expect from SMV. If you watched the teaser and gameplay videos, you know what I mean. This thing was no small undertaking.

So it’s not hard to imagine the feeling at SMV when CMON failed to produce, and the project had to be terminated. After going flat out on the Degenesis RPG for years and hitting a brick wall, they went flat out on Clan Wars and hit another brick wall.

As far as I know, SMV still makes its money providing concept art services for entertainment companies. But that’s a dangerous business to be in right now. From a business perspective, I can understand why Marko is going all in on Orken. Building a transmedia property that is owned and controlled by SMV is risky, but the potential advantages if it does well are significant. I really want them to succeed at Orken, and can understand why they want to avoid anything that distracts from it even slightly.

There’s talk now on the SMV Discord about what should happen to the official Degenesis website. We’ll see what happens, but I wouldn’t doubt it if the site became something far smaller and less comprehensive.

My opinion is just one of many, but I think the path forward for Degenesis fans is to keep doing what we’ve been doing. We produce maps, Clans, adventures, GM tips, clan-specific videos, meticulously detailed printable props, and more. We share ideas, stories, adventure ideas, and suggestions in the Discord.

Between Primal Punk, Katharsys, In Thy Blood, The Killing Game, Black Atlantic, Artifacts, The Righteous Fist, Moloch, Clans of the Frontier, Clans of the Moloch, Clans of the Rhône, Embargo, Exalters, Harm’s Way, Last Watch, Lex Talionis, Pneumancers, Rising Ravens, and Troika we have a lot of source material to riff off and build upon.

One of the things I appreciate most about the world building of Degenesis is how it goes broad, then drills down narrowly in specific areas. Justitian, for example, is a model for how to approach building out other Degenesis cities. The Rotten Few from Lex Talionis, demonstrate what happens when we powerful Cult members go rogue, a situation that can’t be limited to the Anabaptists.

Of course, there’s also the metaplot, the gift that keeps giving. We’ll probably never see it all wrapped up in a bow, which is unsatisfying. But the metaplot also leaves countless hooks throughout the Degenesis books, hooks that can be turned into much more by enterprising GMs.

The danger of a rich, engrossing metaplot is that it can be confining if you let it. But I’ve always felt that the vastness of the Degenesis world and indeed of the metaplot, provides plenty of room for us all to play in the gaps and liminal spaces, to create and explore our own interpretations.

So with my Stoic cap firmly affixed to my head, I invite you to assume we won’t ever get anything else from SMV, and remember that leaves us with a lot. Look into those nooks and crannies of the metaplot. Share your GMing tips and house rules. Tell us how you adjust the published adventures. Make your own.

If you want to publish something on T2B or have me link to something you created for Degenesis, please reach out on the SMV or Degenesis Discord.

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