#anyway since this argument is pointless i won't respond any further

[wizard-hubris]

Yes, we are talking past each other. Because you refuse to engage with the post's argument in favour of using it to talk about your opinion of 5e.

If you you don't have an opinion about AP audiences, stop talking on a post explicitly about AP audiences. That's what this post ist about. If you're not interested in that, don't engage with it.

You must be arguing in bad faith because if your takeaway of my explanation of sponorship really boils down to "I hope the audience watches them because they like them instead of for the money the show gets to make it" I really don't know what to say to you. No, actually, there is one thing to say:

Obviously the financial situation of an AP production is not the responsibility of the audience. Instead, it's the production's responsibility to recognise what their audiences wants. And if their audience does not engage with non-D&D content, the audience suggests through that lack of engagement that they do not want to watch non-D&D content. Which lowers the incentive to produce more non-D&D content. That's it. That's all there is to it. I can't make it more basic than that. If you refuse to understand how that works, that's on you.

If people want more non-D&D in AP, they need to watch it. But they don't. Despite being vocal about how there should be more non-D&D AP. Which the original post is about but you refuse to engage with that. Which is why this would be talking in circles if kept going.

not putting this on the dropout confessions post about it but the whole "big actual play shows should USE THEIR PLATFORM to move away from D&D" remains the most absolute dogshit opinion of all time:

"use their platform" is just like. on the one hand this is about the reach of their platform, as opposed to people making this about actual irl politics, but also like. it's just one more dumbass case of fandom as activism. You want the things you already do anyway to validate your politics instead of spending an iota of effort to support something else.

Critical Role, TAZ, and D20, three extremely prominent actual play shows, all pretty regularly step away from D&D and do at minimum miniseries and in some cases entire seasons in non-D&D systems. Viewership/listenership craters every time, and as a nosy-ass bitch and a completionist, the people who drop first are ALWAYS this kind of "ugh they shouldn't just do D&D" people. Like, I check on the people who say this publicly and INVARIABLY they are not watching Candela/Daggerheart/Moonward and complained nonstop about Crystal Palace and Cinderbrush; they're not listening to Amnesty and Steeplechase and the various miniseries interludes; and they skipped MisMag, Never Stop Blowing Up, and Mentopolis. And it's always either because they don't want "not D&D", they want their favorite game; or because they want the kind of story that really is best told in a D&D-like system and D&D happens to be a great example of said D&D-like system that these players already know (and heaven forbid you gently suggest they seek out one of the many like, pathfinder podcasts, and I say this as a pathfinder hater who still listens/listened to two pf1e SRD-based podcasts)