2026.05.19 Looks Like Kenny is not Just Making the Kool-Aid, but Drinking it Too!

We've already seen Kenny doubling tripling down with his AI generated slop...and we're calling it like we see it here, it is basically low-hanging fruit that Kenny has done minimal effort to sell/plaster in multiple places online. There has been a fair amount of negative reaction to the Facebook Group & YouTube Channel, and it's only a matter of time before that spills over to the various non-social-media websites getting feed these posts & videos.

It seems like Kenny hasn't quite understood the reasoning behind these negative reactions and he's decided to simplify everything to something along the lines of "people just don't like AI". While there may be some small amount of truth to this, the majority of the problem as I've seen it, runs more along the lines of, "People don't like the way you (Ken "Whit" Whitman) have used AI". Anyone who has followed NAD, or Ken directly, for a while knows....for example, his ability to spell or use grammar worth a damn, is.....lacking. I think if Kenny just used AI to help organize, and properly spell, his own thoughts, there would be no complaints.

Case in point, this Facebook post from yesterday. We've added some placeholders for notes in red:

"The AI Fight in Tabletop Is Already Moving Underground

A loud part of the tabletop game community has drawn a hard line around AI.(1) Not a soft preference. Not “please disclose your tools.” A hard moral line. Use AI in a product and you risk being labeled, shamed, boycotted, review-bombed, or quietly excluded from rooms you used to be welcome in.

I understand why people are angry.(2) Artists and writers spent years building skill, style, and reputation. Then a new machine showed up, trained on the creative exhaust of the internet, and suddenly people were being told to compete with tools that may have learned from work they never agreed to provide. That is not a small thing. It is not silly. It is not just fear of change. But here is the part nobody wants to say out loud: AI is not going away.

This is not a fad. It is not NFTs. It is not a weird little corner of tech that can be mocked until it disappears. AI is a trillion-dollar industrial shift. Governments, defense contractors, banks, studios, universities, publishers, retailers, and every major platform on earth are already building around it. There may be lawsuits. There may be settlements. Some artists may win checks. Maybe the courts force new licensing structures. Maybe new rules come. They probably should. But history suggests the machine will not be put back in the box.

That does not mean the ethics are simple.(3) They are not. It does not mean creators were treated fairly. Many were not. The ugly pattern of every major industrial shift is familiar: the rich get richer, the platforms rewrite the rules, the lawyers get paid, and the people who made the culture are told to adapt after the money has already moved. But AI has one strange difference from most industrial shifts: the small creator can use it too.

A solo designer can now do work that used to require a team. A tiny publisher can prototype faster, edit faster, format faster, and test ideas faster. A filmmaker with no studio can build pitch materials. A game designer with no art budget can mock up a world. That matters more than the current conversation allows.(4)

The real damage right now is not only the tool. It is the silence forming around the tool. Fear is teaching people to hide their AI use instead of teaching them to use it well. The industry does not get cleaner because of that silence. It gets less honest. People still use the tools, but they stop talking about them. They remove the fingerprints.(5) They learn which words not to say. They get better at passing as pure while quietly building faster than the people trying to shame them. That is not an ethical victory. That is a transparency failure.

The better fight is not AI or no AI. That battle is already too blunt. The better fight is where AI belongs. Using AI to clean a spreadsheet is not the same moral event as using it to counterfeit an artist’s style. Using it to organize production notes is not the same thing as replacing credited creative labor without consent. Using it to test rules, summarize feedback, or manage workflow is not the same fight as flooding a marketplace with low-effort sludge.

Allow it for production support. Ban it where it exploits living creators. Require disclosure where it matters.(6) Protect artists from style theft. Protect writers from being erased. A union could fight for that. A fan community could fight for that. A company could build policy around that. But “no AI anywhere” is not a long-term strategy. It is a protest slogan, and protest slogans do not survive contact with economics forever.

The builders who embrace, learn, and adapt will outpace the people who only resist. Not overnight, and not in every category. But over the next 24 months, the gap will become visible. The AI-assisted creator will produce more drafts, test more products, make more mistakes, learn faster, and ship more often.(7) By the time the anti-AI crowd pivots from rejection to reluctant adoption, many of them will be starting from behind. That is not a moral judgment. It is a calendar problem.

The tabletop industry needs to get honest.(8) Not softer. Honest. AI is here. It will be misused. It will be overused. It will create slop and threaten real livelihoods. It will also open doors for small creators who never had access to the old production machine. Both things are true.

The question is not whether AI should exist in tabletop. It already does. The question is whether the industry can grow up fast enough to separate the fights worth having from the fights already lost."

This writer was able to actually read this post and I didn't see any spelling errors, which is a pretty strong tell that AI was used to produce this. How much is actually Kenny's words...who knows, but I have yet to hear a single person comment on any of these posts as far as readability goes, and I know enough people that have far worse opinions of the man than I do!

(1) "Community"......the tabletop gaming community extends much further than the creatives producing TTRPG content! Community also extends to the people consuming said content. If the people making and the people consuming don't want something......

(2) No....no I don't think you do, which is literally the point of this post. People are angry at how YOU have been using AI & how you've largely (until recently) been hiding behind it. 

(3) There's like 11 years of posts here at Not Another Dime (for Ken Whitman) that would indicate that you're one of the last people that should be talking about ethics in any way, shape, or form.

(4) Every....single....example you used in this paragraph was about AI being used to assist creatives to generate content, not to use AI to create content for them!

(5) This is arguably the biggest reason people are pissed at you! At you, not AI! You using AI to create content and hiding the fact that you're behind the effort to begin with! Someone even invented a term for this: Whitwashing! You've only recently even acknowledged this content belongs to you, and I'd argue you've only done so because you got sloppy with your code and announcing content of your personal Facebook page well before it was actually posted publicly.

(6) Yet again, why people didn't like your work....because you Whitwashed it for so long. 

(7) Hands-off content creation at rather quick speed seems to be your priority, which has led to so many problems...

(8) Maybe, but the issue at hand is that you've not been honest and now you're putting yourself "out there" and it feels more like damage control because you got caught.

"here’s the deal, if you have millions like WOTC pay people. But don’t scold up-and-coming people who are trying to figure out how to make a living. Or just don’t have time because other things are more important.

AI shaming should not be tolerated"

Ken, you're not being scolded for "trying to figure out how to make a living", and the sooner you figure this out, the sooner you can try to not make a quick & easy buck off of the gaming community. I think the argument for people "scolding you" is because of how you've been using AI to generate a bunch of sloppy content that is getting posted all over the place, with the clear effort being on quantity over quality.

We've already pointed out the sloppy "Loe Zachhii" video posted not even a week after the man's death, and while you have since taken the video down (well after we pointed it out!) and we've gotten word that you have made some article corrections, we cannot believe you've actually taken time to do much, if any, quality control....much less actual fact checking.

Case in point: A Most Influential Tabletop Game Icons's post(s) today:

Today, on more than one occasion, you've multi-posted the same exact post. This one on Alessio Cavatore you did three times (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), but the one on Alfred Mosher Butts was double-posted (1st & 2nd), as was Frank Mentzer (1st & 2nd).

If you cannot manage to only make a single Facebook post, how can we expect you to fact-check all seven posts you made today (or should we say 11?) over at Most Influential Tabletop Game Icons?

2026.05.14 I Don't Think That Word Means What Kenny Thinks it Means....

Checking in today with Kenny's AI-fest that is the Most Influential Tabletop Game Icons Facebook Page, and I'm once again amazed at the breadth of Ken "Whit" Whitman's mastery of the English language.

He's claiming that his AI articles are fact-checked, and now advertising them as such. At the time of this post he has three articles not only marked as "fact-checked" but also as being viewable on YouTube. Sounds like a good idea, but it's straight-up misleading and, well frankly, pure unadulterated bullshit.

See, Kenny isn't actually fact-checking these articles...no. What he is doing is allegedly allowing people to let him know when there is an inaccuracy in his AI slop. Sure, he does technically state, "someone looked at it before it reached you" .....but did someone really?

1. So what we have here is Kenny saying "someone" is looking at the AI article, slapping a "Fact Checked Badge" on it, and if anyone notices some incorrect information, please "tell us". There are so many questions:
2. Who is this someone, presumably.....Kenny?
3. Is there actually a "someone", or are you just saying this to get people off your case? Is this another "The physical books should ship this week", or maybe "Pencil Dice are in full swing production". Oh....there the classic, "DVDs will ship in August" Honestly this list could go on and on....
4. So if we find something incorrect, exactly how do we "tell you"? What's the method for correction here?

WE'RE ADDING A FACT-CHECKED BADGE TO OUR COVERAGE — HERE'S WHAT THAT ACTUALLY MEANS

You may have noticed something new on our articles. That Fact Checked badge in the corner is not decoration. It is a commitment, and we want to be straight with you about what it means — including the part that is a little uncomfortable to say out loud.

HOW OUR CONTENT GETS MADE

We use AI-assisted writing tools to help produce our coverage, and we are not going to bury that in a footnote. AI lets us cover more designers, more games, and more of the history and craft behind this hobby than we could produce any other way. That part is genuinely useful.

The problem is that AI also gets things wrong in ways that are easy to miss if nobody is checking — and for a while, we were moving fast enough that not everyone was checking as carefully as they should have been. It conflates credits. It misremembers release dates. It can generate a title that sounds completely plausible and does not exist.

For coverage of real designers and real games — people who have spent years or decades building something — that is not a mistake we are willing to shrug off. So before anything publishes under our name, it goes through a structured editorial review. Sources get checked. Credits get verified. Anything that cannot be confirmed gets cut, softened, or flagged.

That is what the badge means. Not that a machine wrote it perfectly. That someone looked at it before it reached you.

SLOWING DOWN ON PURPOSE

We are also pulling back on pace. For a while, speed felt like the point. It was not. Going forward, we are limiting ourselves to four articles a day so each piece has real time for source checking, credit verification, and editorial review before it earns the Fact Checked badge. That means fewer posts. It should also mean better ones.

WHY WE'RE TELLING YOU THIS

Honestly? Because not telling you felt worse.

The tabletop RPG community is small enough that reputations travel fast and corrections travel slow. A wrong credit on a designer profile does not just make us look sloppy — it misrepresents someone's career to the people who care most about it. We have seen that happen at other outlets. We watched it happen and thought we were different. We do not want to find out we were wrong about that.

AI-assisted content with real editorial review is how we cover this hobby at the scale we want without cutting corners on accuracy. The Fact Checked badge is how we hold ourselves to it. If we are not willing to put it on a piece, we probably know something still needs checking.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

If you spot something off, tell us. A credit we got wrong, a date that does not match, a title that needs correction — send us the source or correction if you have it. The review process catches most things. It does not catch everything, and we are not pretending otherwise. Reader corrections are part of how this actually works.

We want this coverage to earn your trust — not ask for it upfront and hope you do not look too closely.

The badge is us trying to mean what we say.

In the end, what we have here is some nebulous promises from Kenny that don't actually address the issues that these "icons" have been expressing about these articles. Slapping a label on a cover graphic feels like a band-aid designed to mislead third-parties to think that grievances are being addressed while giving people a means to make corrections....not that anyone will even know when/if corrections have been made or if the content is correct to begin with.

It seems to me this post and these labels are intentionally misleading. Might as well slap a label on the graphics that says, "Now with facts!" .....and by the way "someone looked at it before it reached you" is a much lower bar that "fact-checked". I really don't think Ken understands the difference.

2026.05.13 Kenny "Whitwashing" How He Could Fix His Own Mistakes for $$$

As one would expect, there is some more back & forth between industry folks and Ken "Whit" Whitman. So far my favorite thing has been that someone coined a new word to describe Ken's omission of his own name off of the contributions for 4 Pillar Games: "Whitwashing"

On James Lowder's Facebook page we've seen Kenny returning to an old trope: offering to take (anybody's) to fix/solve a problem he created. OK, "trope" might be a bit too strong of a word, but the first thing that came to mind is when Kenny wanted a couple hundred bucks for a hard drive to cough up his KoDT:LAS footage....IIRC he was legally obligated (as in part of his contract, as referenced by the D-Team) to turn over that footage to begin with.

On a related note, he has offered to work on getting those files if he gets a new contract (i.e.....consideration) for doing so.

Then there is the time he said he'd do an interview for $500.

So.....maybe trope is an appropriate word!.....

...anyway on to this particular example of said trope:

"My idea was to put two button buttons one if somebody would volunteer to write about somebody

The second one was to ask for a donation of $100 and $95 of that would go to pay somebody to write them

The only reason it’s not $100 is there’s a 3% surcharge using a credit card

I’d be willing to make the damn thing nonprofit where everyone has to see where the money went. I’m OK with.

It’s something that would have to be done for love which is the thing I did with the AI.

I am 60 years old. I’m trying to help. I have no agenda.

Now the reason that it’s $100, which is probably gonna be far below word count for most of you, is that if we don’t keep it inexpensive than only the popular people are gonna be written about. And how is that fair?"

There it is! "Pay me some money to fix the problem I created" I like the touch where he's form yet another organization to "see where money went". Sounds just like having a "money guy: to monitor spending for his various Kickstarters......see how well that went?

The Whitwashing is that he "wrote" the original articles using AI (again without using his name!) and has claimed that if he was to do the articles manually they would cost a metric shit-ton of money. This is laughable for a couple of reasons. 1st is thinking he's a desirable source of knowledge about the gaming industry. We literally have historians, people trained to do appropriate research, working on these things already. A quick search of Amazon (or your favorite bookseller) can net you professional recollections. 

I don't know about you, but I don't want to watch an AI video or read a banal overview of "Loe Zacchii", for example. Even with Kenny's panache for bad grammar, absent punctuation, and atrocious spelling, if he put in a honest effort, the end results might have been not only respectful, but entertaining and of some value. In the commentary on his Most Influential Tabletop Game Icons page, he has an outline how he could possibly use AI to assist an honest effort. Instead he's trading effort for quantity and accuracy, but for the low, low price of $100 he can be persuaded to fix the entries....

Interesting how fixing the problem will cost $100 but according to him, doing it correctly the 1st time would cost $70 (6 to 8 hours of labor for $10/hr). I'm using his numbers.....but of course Kenny likes the odd math....if the AI does the research it'd take him 6-8 hours to write, but if he has to do everything "from scratch" writing would only take 4 hours?

"If I was to give you an honest answer. I've done 600 of these and a matter of two months.. let's assume that I wanted to do each of these by hand and let's assume that my time spent doing it is $10 an hour. What are we talking here 24,000 $28,000. I ain't nobody gonna pay for that. That's why I'm just making nice little AI things that don't say anything bad about nobody 🙂....Research, my three AI’s scan over 300 websites and a matter of 45 minutes to 60 minutes

If I had to do that, I would say that would would say that that would take me 40 hours

And then they actually write it from scratch another good four hours

So 44 hours per person

—-

If you have the AI research it and then you just wrote the paper yourself

6 to 8 hours

—-

The way that I do it is, I haven’t research it and write it and then I go through every bit of it for fact, checking and like all the people that are on this website, I personally know or have met 80% of them

So it’s not like I’m some fanboy doing it"

2026.05.11 Kenny is Triple Dipping on AI Content and Upsetting a Few Folks

By the looks of it we have Kenny Triple-Dipping on AI generated content. We've just went over the Most Influential Tabletop Game Icons Facebook page and the Most Influential Game Designers Of All Time YouTube channel and I think we've logically proved that Kenny is the idiot mastermind behind both of them:

• Kenny promoted the YouTube on his Facebook page with broken posts that were for videos that hadn't been published yet!
• The Facebook page (listed above) had graphics for the YouTube channel a month before said channel became active!

Spelling it out: The pre-publicity for the YouTube channel puts that as his, and then the Facebook page pre-publishing the YouTube graphics a month early pushes that ownership forward.

Now evidently there is another outlet for this AI content: www.4pillargames.com

There could be someone else, in addition to Kenny, behind this site, but the heavy (I mean HEAVY) overlap of content/graphics pretty much nails it down as Kenny's work. Taking a look at the domain.....looks just like his other websites (WhoIs info):

Seriously...what are the odds of every website we have looked at recently in regards to Ken "Whit" Whitman are hosted by the exact same Registrar and Registrar Contact?!

It might take some time to figure out who actually owns the site, but right now fingers point to Kenny, and some people are not happy about it.

For those of you who have been following, or been caught up in/affected by, the Four Pillars uproar regarding the game designer biographies and company histories that have been generated by AI with not entirely accurate results, plus the responses that some designers have received back from the site that have been less than polite.

Many of the posts have also appeared, although often with slightly different wording on the Facebook group “Most Influential Tabletop Game Icons”, which is run by Ken “Whit” Whitman - who has a rather controversial background in his own right.

Metadata from the Four Pillars site show Ken Whitman also authored the content there.

The only names publicly linked with running the site were of industry veterans Don Perrin, Tony Lee and Reece Wardrip. 

Tony and Don have both resigned from Four Pillars as it was not what they had planned for the site, expected, or had the chance to approve. It seems they have both been taken by surprise at the affair and it is probably safe to say that Reece is in the same situation.

It’s safe to say they sound pretty appalled about the situation and have no idea how anyone could think of getting away with doing it. 

I’m sorry to have seen them get tied up in this, but glad they’ve taken immediate steps to remove themselves from the situation.

Mr. Abranson isn't the only one...

Haven't looked this young in 20 years.

• Gave no legal permission to use my likeness in this image.

• Gave no legal permission to use trademarked logos placed on incorrect product images & layouts shown here.

• Them Fate Dice are jank, yo.

• Contemplating legal action.

• Enjoy, motherfucker.

2026.05.12 Edit:

I thought this would be more appropriate as an edit/attachment vs. a separate post. The interwebs are blowing up today with reactions and you can read some of the "iconographized" personalities' commentary at other sites, so no need to document that since I doubt those sites will be scrubbed, like Kenny likes to do with sites under his control.

That's not even opinion, but experience & fact. You can see examples on some of our previous posts where we linked to Ken Whitman-controlled content that is now.....just gone.

We're even more confident that Ken "Whit" Whitman is behind the 4 Pillar Games website because of this recent Facebook post from Most Influential Tabletop Game Icons (emphasis is ours):  

Over the past several Weeks, Four Pillar Games has been working to build a living historical archive celebrating the people, games, companies, artists, and creators who helped shape tabletop gaming over the last fifty-plus years.

Our goal has always been simple: to share the history, passion, creativity, and fandom of this industry with the fans and readers who love these games as much as we do.

Recently, a small number of creators and companies have expressed concerns about being included on the site because they disagree with the use of AI-assisted tools within our editorial workflow. We understand that not everyone will agree with the use of emerging technologies, and we respect that people have strong opinions on the subject.

At the same time, it is difficult for us to understand the idea that tabletop history should simply go undocumented because disagreement exists over the tools used to help organize and present that history.

From the beginning, we have explained that this project is intended to function as a living historical archive focused on publicly documented tabletop gaming history and public-facing creators within the hobby. Our intent has never been to attack, ridicule, exploit, or diminish anyone. In fact, every profile on the site was created as a celebration of the people who helped build this industry.

Many creators have responded positively to the project. Designers and industry veterans such as Lisa Stevens and Sam Lewis have publicly engaged with the site, interacted with readers, and expressed appreciation for the effort being made to preserve and celebrate tabletop gaming history.

That spirit of shared enthusiasm is what this website is ultimately about.

We love tabletop gaming. We love the people who built it. And we believe the stories, games, creators, and history of this hobby deserve to be remembered, preserved, and shared with future generations of fans.

For that reason, while we remain fully open to factual corrections, clarifications, historical additions, and respectful collaboration, we do not intend to remove publicly documented historical profiles solely because someone disagrees with the tools or methods used to help create them.

Our hope is that, over time, this project becomes something the community can help shape together — a living archive built from shared passion for the hobby we all care about.

Here we have a post on a Facebook page we've logically proven as belonging to Kenny talking about the 4 Pillar Games site and content there......stating ownership with his choice of first-person plural personal pronoun.

As an aside, he misspelled the name of his own website: classic Kenny! Also, we literally have historians writing about our hobby and they have standards, use 1st person sources, and generally know what they are doing. Your AI-driven drivel is none of that and actually detracts from "documented tabletop gaming history"

My favorite part isn't in the comments, which are overwhelmingly in favor of Kenny (no surprise there), presumably because they don't know his history and because he blocks opposition where able, but in the "share" portion for the post:

The current Chaosium management has asked in no uncertain terms that the profiles of Greg Stafford, Lynn Willis, and Steve Perrin -- all three of whom have passed away -- be removed, noting among other objections that the photos used of the three are AI-modified versions of photos of the late founders in which Chaosium asserts copyright.

Fyi.

I did reach out to an old friend (who has an entry), all formal-like, asking for his take on this recent event:

Mr. Blackburn,

I am writing regarding the AI-driven article about you recently published at https://www.4pillargames.com/aricles/most-influential-tabletop-game-designers/Icon-jolly-blackburn/.

There are similar articles featuring both you and Kenzer & Company. Based on the timing of cross-promotions between his YouTube channel and Facebook pages, as well as the wholesale reuse of graphics and text, I am certain Mr. Whitman is behind this content. Furthermore, these sites share the same registrar, which seems beyond coincidence.

I am reaching out to see if you have any commentary regarding your entry that you would like to share with Not Another Dime.

Best regards,

Christopher Stogdill

Not Another Dime (for Ken Whitman)

His response:

It most definitely IS Ken Whitman. Ken being Ken. Back in the 90’s when he was attempting to do his Games Industry trade magazine (blanking on the name) he was doing the same sort of “most influential people in the gaming industry” pieces. (Which ironically he saw fit to include me for some reason). My guess, in light of Ken’s recent attempt to gain a seat on the board of GAMA and realizing everyone remembers who he is and the damage he did, that this is Ken’s attempt to flatter or reconnect with personalities in the gamer industry he knew before his failed kickstarter projects. If you notice, most of those being profiled would be considered old guard (i.e. contemporaries of Ken back in the day). It’s only my guess/opinion but this just seems like more of the same behavior Ken has always demonstrated. That and the fact it’s lazy - he’s embraced A.I. tech whole hog and seems to be basing his new business venture entirely upon it.

*btw “Mr.” Blackburn…?  heh.

Jolly Blackburn

Kenzer and Company

Editor-in-Chief 

Knights of the Dinner Table Magazine

---------------------------------------------------------

Twitter: http://twitter.com/Jollybgood

Website: www.kenzerco.com

2026.05.10 Whit Whitman's Need for Self Promotion Shouldn't be Surprising, but There it is!

Kenny's insatiable need for self promotion knows no bounds. One of his Facebook pages (Most Influential Tabletop Game Icons) is heavy AI-laden prose about some of the people behind the RPG industry and of course he had to make a post for himself.

I'm thinking Mr. Whitman may try to deny his involvement with that page but his recent posts are commenting on multiple entries (sometimes more than one a day) and that page follows his page....literally one of only a few (14 as of this post) they do follow:

There's also the striking similarity between this Facebook page and the YouTube channel we mentioned recently Sure that might not be enough, but wait...there's more!

See The Facebook page posted these two pictures on March 14th:

Hmm.....you know what didn't exist on March 14th, 2026? The YouTube channel the pictures are for!

Last we checked, April 13, 2026 comes after March 14th, 2026. It seems that Kenny not only has problems with spelling (Loe Zocchii....really?), but with dates/calendars as well!

Wow.....just....wow!

Shout out to Isaac who commented on the Facebook page, which is why I took a quick look at it.

THE ENTREPRENEUR WHO ROLLED THE DICE FIRST

Ken "Whit" Whitman did not build his tabletop career like a man protecting one perfect system.

He built it like a man looking for the next door.

Role-playing games. Licensed card games. Magazines. Art books. Print services. Film projects. Companies that appeared, moved fast, changed shape, and gave way to the next thing. Whitman spent a quarter century in and around tabletop publishing, but the throughline was never one rules engine or one famous line.

The throughline was launch energy.

He saw openings early. Sometimes too early. A comic license could become a game table. Fantasy art could become a collector book. Dice could become more than randomizers. Production, printing, and distribution were not just machinery after the design was done. They were part of the creative act.

That instinct took him everywhere.

It also made his career difficult to summarize cleanly.

THE KENTUCKY LAUNCH

Whitman was born in 1967 at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and grew up in Brandenburg. Before the game companies, before the film work, before the long list of ventures, he was a young graphic designer trying to get a post-apocalyptic RPG into the world.

That game was Mutazoids, published through Whit Productions in 1989.

Mutazoids was not a quiet debut. It leaned into mutation, survival, ruined-world danger, and moral chaos. The world felt unstable by design. Rick Swan, reviewing the game in The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games, recognized that energy and praised the game as an impressively chaotic RPG environment.

That is a useful phrase because it catches both sides of the early work.

The game had heat.

Whitman followed it with a City Sourcebook in 1992 and a revised second edition the same year. That matters. A first edition can be raw enthusiasm. A second edition means the designer went back in, looked at the machine, and tried to make it stronger. Mutazoids was not a one-page idea tossed into the market. It was a world he returned to, expanded, and reworked.

For a few years, that could have been the path.

Then the path split.

THE LICENSE INSTINCT

Whitman kept moving into licensed and creator-owned properties.

Whit Publications brought out Ralph Bakshi's Wizards and WWF: The Basic Adventure Game. Imperium Games, co-founded with Marc Miller, helped bring Traveller 4th Edition to print, with Whitman contributing system development and writing the psionics rules. Archangel Entertainment later published Groo: The Game, based on Sergio Aragones's comic character, along with other game material.

That mix says a lot about Whitman's eye.

He was interested in games, but he was also interested in properties. Worlds that already had an audience. Characters that already carried a tone. Artists and writers whose work could be turned into something playable, collectible, or sellable.

That instinct was not rare by the late 1990s, but Whitman got there early enough to make it part of his identity. He kept looking for bridges between fandoms: comics to card games, fantasy art to collector books, role-playing settings to revived product lines.

Sometimes he was the designer.

Sometimes he was the developer.

Often, he was the person trying to make the project exist at all.

THE DICE NOBODY NOTICED

Groo: The Game is the design people should probably talk about more.

On the surface, it was a licensed card game built around a beloved comic idiot with a sword. Sergio Aragones brought the character and the world. Whitman brought a mechanism that reached beyond the license.

Players rolled custom dice each turn, and those dice did not simply decide success or failure. They became resources: labor, grain, gold. Players spent those results to play building cards and move toward victory. Unused resources could pass to opponents, creating pressure around timing, waste, and denial.

That sounds familiar now because modern tabletop games use dice that way all the time.

In 1997, it was not familiar.

Most dice in hobby games still acted like judges. They answered questions. Did you hit? How much damage? How far did you move? Did the thief open the lock?

Groo treated dice as an economy.

The roll did not only resolve the turn. It created the turn.

That was a real design idea. Gary Gygax reportedly praised the game. Steve Jackson Games later brought it back into print. Some designers noticed the shared-dice and resource tension in it. But the larger dice-placement and roll-and-write wave arrived years later without making Groo the standard origin story.

That is the strange part.

Whitman had put a useful idea on the table before the table was ready to call it important.

THE MAGAZINE AND THE MACHINE

If Groo shows Whitman as a designer, Games Unplugged shows him as an industry builder.

The magazine ran for thirty-four issues through Dynasty Presentations. It belonged to a period when tabletop coverage still depended heavily on print: ads, reviews, interviews, product news, retailer attention, and the strange glue that held a hobby together before social media swallowed most of that function.

Running a magazine is not like designing a card game. The work is rhythm. Deadlines. Layout. Distribution. Ad sales. Editorial judgment. The next issue is always arriving too soon. The previous issue is already old.

Whitman lived in that kind of pressure.

He also helped publish lines and products where the design credit belonged to other people. Dark Conspiracy 2nd Edition is the cleanest example. Lester W. Smith designed the system, but Whitman's Dynasty Presentations helped keep the line in motion through player books, referee material, screens, and adventures.

That distinction matters.

Publishing is not the same as rules design, but tabletop games do not reach players on rules alone. They need art, printing, shipping, money, schedules, licenses, and somebody willing to push the whole thing from manuscript to object.

Whitman often worked in that zone.

Not the clean white space of theory.

The messy room where products become real.

THE ART BOOK YEARS

After the game-company stretch, Whitman spent years connected to fantasy art production, especially through Larry Elmore's company.

That chapter fits the larger pattern. Elmore already had the audience. The paintings already mattered. Whitman's role was to help turn that body of work into products fans could own: art books, collector pieces, and campaigns that treated fantasy illustration as the main event rather than decoration around a game.

That was not a small shift.

Tabletop publishing has always depended on artists, but the industry has not always treated art as the thing being sold. Whitman understood that for many fans, the image was the memory. A dragon on a box. A fighter in a cave. A character on a calendar. The art was not secondary to the game experience. It was often the first emotional contact.

That understanding connects Whitman to the larger fantasy-gaming ecosystem even when he was not writing rules.

He knew how to package desire.

That sounds crass until you remember that publishing is partly the art of recognizing what people already love and giving it a physical form.

THE COST OF MOVING FAST

The same pattern that made Whitman's career interesting also made it unstable.

Whit Productions. Whit Publications. Imperium Games. Archangel Entertainment. Dynasty Presentations. Rapid POD. Sidekick Printing. D20 Entertainment. Other ventures around film and production.

Again and again, he launched.

Some designers spend decades refining one game. Some publishers build one company and hold the line. Whitman moved differently. He saw an opening, built toward it, and then moved toward the next opening.

That gave his career unusual range. It also left less depth than the strongest design careers in this series. Mutazoids had a real second pass. Groo had a genuinely clever mechanical idea. Traveller, Dark Conspiracy, SnarfQuest, Games Unplugged, and the Elmore projects all show industry range. But there is no single Whitman system that became a long-lived design school. No one game became the center of the career.

Later, the D20 Entertainment Kickstarter period damaged his public standing. Projects like Deck Dice, Pencil Dice, Knights of the Dinner Table, and Traveller became controversial after fulfillment problems. For many tabletop fans, that is the last chapter they remember.

It has to be said plainly.

It is also not the only chapter.

WHAT HE ACTUALLY BUILT

Ken Whitman did not invent licensed tabletop gaming. He did not create the roll-and-write movement. He did not build a single rules engine that other designers spent decades extending.

That is the honest boundary.

What he built was a career of production and launch.

He built Mutazoids, then went back and revised it. He built Groo around a dice-as-resources idea before that language became common. He helped develop Traveller 4th Edition material. He published licensed games and revived lines. He kept Dark Conspiracy products moving. He ran a nationally distributed tabletop magazine. He helped turn fantasy art into collector products. He built print and production services around the needs of small publishers and creators.

The pattern is not refinement.

The pattern is ignition.

Whitman saw a thing and wanted to get it moving. A game. A license. A magazine. An art book. A film. A company. The excitement was always in the start, in the first push that turns an idea into an object other people can touch.

That instinct can create real work.

It can also outrun the follow-through.

Both are part of the story.

WHERE TO FIND HIM

Whitman is not currently a public tabletop-game publisher in the way he was during the Mutazoids, Groo, Games Unplugged, or D20 Entertainment years.

His public work now appears mostly under the name Whit Whitman, in independent film and film education. Current public profiles connect him to Little Monsters Entertainment and the School of Cinematic Arts in Kentucky. Recent film credits include Unnatural, a horror Western released in 2024, along with other micro-budget film projects listed under his Whit Whitman profile.

That move is less surprising than it looks.

Film is another launch machine. Scripts. Crews. Locations. Cameras. Posters. Distribution. A film set is a temporary company built around a story, held together just long enough to make the thing real.

Whitman has been doing versions of that for most of his life.

Tabletop was the first arena. Mutazoids was the first door. Groo was the dice roll people should have watched more closely. Games Unplugged was the magazine rack. The art books were the collector shelf. The film work is the latest version of the same impulse. You can currently purchase Groo the Game from Steve Jackson Games.

See the opening. Build the project.

Then roll the dice.

2026.04.22 Looks Like Kenny is Trying to Profit Over a Influential Gamer's Death (Again)

Complete opinion here, but putting out an AI-generated video on Lou Zocchi not even a week after his death seems a little opportunistic, and just wrong. When coupled with that email promoting Ken "Whit" Whitman's ability to produce Tim Kask for conventions a couple weeks after his death.....

...and yes, Ken has made the claim that he didn't send that promotional/marketing email. A claim we do not buy for one second. 

With this most recent video, Kenny couldn't even be bothered to spell the man's name correctly! It's "Zocchi" NOT "Zacchii".

Now I'm sure that Kenny will probably try to say he isn't behind the  "Most Influential Game Designers Of All Time" channel, but it's got his fingerprints all over it. Misspelled title, AI galore, and promoted on his page.

If that isn't enough, let's look a little closer to Kenny's personal Facebook page:

Looks like he messed up the post because the graphics don't come up and when you click on it, it should take you to the appropriate YouTube video, but as of the time of this post it does not. Please note that Kenny pushed out notification to the Dave Arneson video on April 13th. While I couldn't link straight to the video I was able to go to the "Most Influential Game Designers Of All Time" YouTube channel page and find that video "Dave Arneson: The Spark Before the System" There's that favorite AI buzzword: "system"!

I took a screen shot of that page and according to this that video went up "1 day ago" and has a whopping 8 views. I just have one question: How can Ken "Whit" Whitman promote a YouTube video on Facebook more than a week before it is posted on YouTube?!

This bit, coupled with the heavy AI.....again if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck......

2026.05.10 Edit: I was so focused on the lead-in graphic for the video I didn't even notice he ALSO misspelled the man's name in the title! "Loe Zocchii"! Both misspellings are still up two weeks later....

2026.04.22 Kenny is Double-Dipping into AI Game "Mastery"

We've already mentioned how Ken "Whit" Whitman is using AI to produce videos professing to help make you "A great game master" but he's also taking that heavy AI content and pushing it in book form over at DriveThruRPG.

So far the content between the two isn't as consistent as one would expect and when I start seeing the words "system" and "protocol" used prominently, my 1st thought is that it's AI generated content. If this wasn't bad enough, there's this gem on the DTRPG page:

Publisher’s Note

This pay-what-you-want release helps Whit complete remaining Kickstarter obligations while putting this book into more GMs’ hands.

Sure Kenny, sure.....like all of the extra money you've gotten in the past went to the appropriate project.

He's also made a couple of updates on the Deck Dice Kickstarter page. We don't have the exact posts, well not both of them fully at least, but here goes:

"Here is a gift while you wait. I have prototype of cards. I plan to ship by June."

"This isn't a business move. No upsell. No funnel. No mailing list. No follow-up ask. This is me giving something back. That's it. Why now? Because I've spent a lot of years building, pushing, and if I'm being honest-not always leaving things better than I found them. This is a small step in the other direction."

Seems like a LOT of understatement!

Now we do not know what this "gift" is, but we have to presume, based off of this new DTRPG offering and some Kickstarter comments, that he's giving away free copies of his "book".

 "Nice, so 11 years past his ETA for the deck of cards which still have not been delivered, but he ships us a propaganda PDF about himself. I didn't see a chapter in there about how to rip off KS backers?"

No, this doesn't look like flagrant self-promotion at all......

2026.03.26 Kenny Complaining Because GAMA Denied Him Membership

Looks like Kenny was definitely not elected to GAMA's Board of Directors because he was denied membership, and he's been bitching about it on Facebook.

"Should the Tabletop Game Industry's Only Trade Association Have Published Membership Criteria? by Whit Whitman

GAMA — The Tabletop Game Association — is the sole trade organization for game manufacturers, publishers, creators, retailers, and media professionals in the tabletop industry. There is no alternative. Membership provides access to the industry's primary trade show (GAMA Expo), retail distribution networks, Origins Game Fair, professional development, and the business relationships that drive this industry forward.

Here's what most people don't know: GAMA's bylaws contain no published eligibility criteria for membership. The Membership Committee has "sole authority" to approve or deny applications, but there are no written standards defining what qualifies or disqualifies an applicant. No checklist. No published policy. No transparency.

The bylaws do include detailed protections for members who are suspended or expelled — written documentation, two-thirds Board vote, formal notice, and an independent Appeals Committee. But those protections only apply after you're a member. At the application stage, the Membership Committee can deny anyone, for any reason, with no explanation and no appeal.

This matters because of federal antitrust law. Under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, a sole trade association that controls access to resources necessary for industry participation has a legal obligation to apply neutral, consistently published membership criteria. The Supreme Court addressed this in Northwest Wholesale Stationers v. Pacific Stationery, 472 U.S. 284 (1985) — trade association membership decisions trigger antitrust scrutiny when the organization controls access to markets, facilities, or resources essential to competition.

GAMA controls that access. And right now, there's no published standard governing who gets in.

This isn't about any one applicant. It's about whether the industry's sole trade body operates with the governance transparency that federal law expects. Every applicant — current and future — deserves to know the rules before they apply.

I've formally requested that GAMA's Board of Directors adopt and publish specific, written membership eligibility criteria. I believe that's a reasonable ask and one that strengthens the organization.

A game on every table, a table for everyone. That's GAMA's own vision statement. The bylaws should reflect it."

Click to enlarge

By the looks of it, this was posted maybe 3 times (crossposted?), and as one would expect, no accountability from Mr. Whitman. Feels like he's crying fowl because a professional (industry) organization doesn't want him as a member due to his past behavior/actions within said industry. Now this is our read on the subject, obviously highly biased, but it makes sense with the rationale posted on SaveGAMA.org.

"Jolly Blackburn I'm 100% ok with the ruling. What I'm not ok with is the lack of transparency. GAMA has no published criteria for who can and cannot be accepted as a member. Without those rules posted, they're exposed to antitrust regulation that could be devastating to the organization. I'm not asking to be let back in. I'm asking for something transparent — rules that apply to everyone equally. That's all."

We cannot see the full interaction due to Facebook settings, but apparently Jolly Blackburn chimed in. For the uninitiated, Jolly Blackburn was arguably one of Kenny's first Kickscammer victims because it was his creation of Knights of the Dinner Table that Ken pitched a Live Action Series Kickstarter for and led directly to the creation of Not Another Dime because Kenny completely failed to deliver upon.

Now saying Ken, or "Whit" Whitman is a Kickscammer is 110% legally protected opinion, but please judge for yourself. Read this blog, the comments over at Kickstarter (you'll naturally get a lot of posts directing you back here), and let's just look at the $450 he got from my family. I did cover some of this over at Tenkar's Tavern before starting this blog:

GEN CON 2015 THEATRICAL PREMERE & AFTER PARTY PACKAGE -- You will receive the MOVIE POSTER PACKAGE and two tickets to the world premiere live screening of the KODT LIVE ACTION SERIES at GEN CON 2015 (transportation, entrance to the Con and lodging not included). Actors and the D-Team will stick around after the screening to answer as many of your questions about the film as they can. Afterwards, you get to hang out at the after party with the actors and the D-Team.

• While we kind of got two "tickets" to the GEN CON 2015 screening, we didn't *actually* get promised front-row tickets. Instead the convention staff allegedly had a list of names, but they had no idea who was supposed to be seated where and we basically sorted ourselves out. It is important to note that this also wasn't the premiere since he already showed what he had finished at an earlier convention! FAIL
• While there were some of the actors present and they did have a bit of a Q&A, their appearance had nothing to do with Ken Whitman and he had made no arrangements. From what I recall, that was a combined effort of Zombie Orpheus Entertainment (ZOE), LLC, KenzerCo, and some added help from Peter Adkison. FAIL
• There was not an after party with the actors.....well at least not one being held by Ken. He never reserved the party space. I personally checked with the hotel's business manager, in person, and was told he applied for the space but did not present a valid credit card and did not answer calls/emails to remedy that. I did ask for written proof, which the hotel (understandably) would not share. Just assume I'm lying about this since I cannot provide proof (you won't hurt my feelings). Ken tried to claim that the after-party was not promised and was an added expense, although this $450 pledge level literally was a promised, and paid for, party. ZOE did step in and throw together a last-minute party and Ken threw together a last-minute (26 hours prior) late-night shindig at Slippery Noodle Inn, but he did not have any of the actors as promised.....and he considered that as the party commitment being "filled as promised". FAIL

MOVIE POSTER PACKAGE -- You will receive the BLU-RAY KODT BLOOPERS & EXTRAS PACKAGE, the WEB SCREENING PACKAGE, and a print of the KODT 24"x36" movie poster painted by Larry Elmore. Backers of this level and higher will also be acknowledged in a special "Thank You" section in the movie credits.

• There was no poster and Kenny shifted to saying it would be an electronic file on the disc. He had not gotten permission for Larry Elmore's involvement, as told to me by Larry Elmore in-person. FAIL
• There was a "Thank You" section in the movie credits FULFILLED

KODT BLOOPERS & EXTRAS PACKAGE -- You will receive the BLU-REY DVD PACKAGE and the WEB SCREENING PACKAGE, as well as an additional DVD of Bloopers and Extras. Backers of this level and higher will also be acknowledged in a special "Thank You" section in the movie credits.

• No bloopers or extras seen or provided. FAIL

BLU-RAY DVD PACKAGE -- You will receive the KODT:LAS DOWNLOAD PACKAGE, and the KODT LIVE ACTION BLU-RAY DVD featuring cover art by Larry Elmore. Backers of this level and higher will also be acknowledged in a special "Thank You" section in the movie credits.

• Ken Whitman never produced a Blu-Ray or DVD. DVD copies of footage salvaged by ZOE was made available, but it was not produced by Ken Whitman, although he did try to take credit for it. FAIL

KODT:LAS DOWNLOAD PACKAGE. You will receive the WEB SCREENING PACKAGE – and the KODT:LAS SD Download (480p .mp4) a few days after the movie’s theatrical debut.

• Ken Whitman never finished the editing/production, much less provided for download of the finished product. FAIL

WEB SCREENING PACKAGE -- You will receive the PRODUCTION DIARY PACKAGE, and be part of a first of its kind live group movie screening across the world. d20E and Kenzer will host at least three live online screenings of the KODT LIVE ACTION SERIES. Watch from your computer or mobile device, and after each screening the D-Team and actors will stick around to answer as many of your questions about the film as they can via online Q&A.

• There was no web screening with actor Q&A. FAIL

PRODUCTION DIARY PACKAGE -- You're now a part of this movie-making club, and you will be shown the process from start to finish. Each week throughout this summer's shoot you will receive the KODT LIVE ACTION Production Diary. This will include a video memo with cameos from the cast and crew detailing the process of making the movie. You'll also get casting and production news first, before anywhere else. You will also recive ten (10) screensavers from the KODT Comic and the Live Action Series.

• None of this was provided. FAIL

The only actual Kickstarter Pledge Promise fulfilled by Ken Whitman was getting a name added to the credits. At $450 I think that qualifies as a scam. Others stepping in to help assist those that gave money to Ken Whitman does not qualify as Kickstarter Fulfillment.

We know that's a lot of exposition for a post about Ken Whitman being denied membership from GAMA, but we're pretty sure KenzerCo is still a GAMA member, and clearly there were other members that feel they were scammed by Ken Whitman (as expressed in that SaveGAMA.org website). It all goes to the underlying reason that is likely the cause for that membership denial. These multiple posts do not seem to be about the process and we doubt that Mr. Whitman is "100% ok with the ruling" denying him membership and seems much more like an attempt to gain sympathy to coerce GAMA into allowing him an attempt to "plead his case" and regain membership.

We could be wrong, but it's hard to see this any other way. The only question I have is that if Mr. Whitman was so prolific as a game designer/publisher, why is he just now trying to join GAMA? He could've joined before his actions that have given GAMA a cause to deny membership.......just saying. 

2026.03.28 EDIT:

 We had this sent to us:

"I was not accepted even though I have created and published over 50 games"

"Whit Whitman well...., let's be honest. There's some trouble history there, Ken."