No it’s not a joke, it’s, that in spite of me saying repeatedly, that telling people to buy an adventure for scant setting materials is wrong. Telling them to eat 40 bucks for what amounted to a $10-14 book 6 years ago is wrong. Telling people that If they want to run their own Underdark campaign to go buy Out of the Abyss is wrong. I’m advocating for the reintroduction of tool kits like an Underdark sourcebook rather than telling people to buy an adventure and eat a crap sandwich and smile even if they don’t want to necessarily run Out of the Abyss or Storm Kings Thunder etc.
Like I’ve said repeatedly in this thread, half a decade ago we wouldn’t be telling people things like that. We would have been looking at page counts and how useable the material in the book was for a home brew in a page count to cost ration and there would have been pitch forks and torches.
I don’t blame WOTC. They clearly are doing something right but they aren’t telling fans “if you want to run your own Underdark campaign then buy Out of the Abyss and suck it if you don’t use 75% of the material” because they aren’t selling them as sourcebooks but as adventures and stories. It’s only a small contingent of fans that are telling people to suck it up, RPGs are a premium hobby, and to use these things as sourcebooks and that is NOT WOTC intent either!