Tenkar reports on Kobold Press cucking after going at SOBS.
Kobold Press, as reported, is one of the many also-rans/never-weres who sustain themselves by publishing for Current Edition while maintaining a Totally Not D&D Really product line Just In Case.
Kobold Press is a Death Cult front, part of the cohort that uses Pop Cultism to bring Normies into the Death Cult. It therefore is utterly dependent upon SOBS and its supreme Network Effect (and thus user network/audience) to get any eyeballs on their own products (and thus justify their own existence). Like all the other remora hanging around the Great White Shark that is SOBS, it has to maintain a position of overall positive repute lest the master turn his gaze upon them.
That, far more than anything else, prompted this rolling over and baring of the throat in submission.
That, by the way, is what so many defending Conventional Play refuse to admit is the case. The dependence upon SOBS is so total for all but a few, and has gone on for so long now (almost 25 years), that they are as blind to the sitaution as someone who lives in a pig sty being nose-blind to the stench.
It is this long habituation, to the point of normalization ala the prisoners in Plato's Cave, that will wreck them as SOBS' Big Move makes its impact. Again, no attempt AT ALL to change this utter dependence upon SOBS.
Fuck Kobold Press and everyone like them. You deserve to be exterminated by the colony drop that is SOBS' Big Move. The gates of the Clubhouse are closed to you.
Dunder Moose pointed out this video yesterday on Twitter.
Nevermind if this video is a bit or sincere. Let's act as if he was, because that video represents SOBS' Target Market very well.
You've known this guy, or his female counterpart, if you've been around Conventional Play long enough. The guy who never Reads The Damned Manual. The guy who has to be told how to do basic shit repeatedly. The guy who never has his shit together. The boat anchor.
Notice the change in tone when digital tools and online play enter the picture and suddenly he is able to function as others expect of him without needing to put in the work. You found a significant uptick in female participation around the same time, and for the same reasons; the widgets did all the work, so they just had to show up and move tokens or minis around now and again.
You IT guys know these people because you work with them every day: they are end-users. These are the people who don't know how the machine works or care to know but instead just use it to get what they think it is supposed to do. There is sweet fuck-all difference between an end-user and a cargo cultist. Making things "user friendly" means catering to these people.
You also know why people like this instantly swapped over to smartphones and Walled Garden mobile apps: they Just Work. Hit button, widget does widget things, done. There is no need to learn how the widget works or why it works that way to get the desired result.
"But he doesn't care about the rules."
Which is why when he blithely hauls his Normie ass into SOBS' Walled Garden for Next Edition, he's complain about it for five seconds before shutting up and just playing the game SOBS' sold to him exactly as SOBS' wants it played. He doens't know any better, so he'll just play what everyone else does. He goes along to get along, just like he does in every other aspect of his life.
When he takes a go at running a game, for as long as SOBS lets you, and finds out he can't just hack it up as he likes because (a) most people by then will be trained by the Metagame to shun that shit and (b) the first sign of SOBS yeeting human Referees will be removing the ability to fuck with the rules he'll bitch for five seconds and then go sulk in the cuck chair before FOMO and social pressure hits at his need for Ego Defense and he conforms to what SOBS wants him to do.
Remember that SOBS is going Always Online, All-Digital- one step away from a full videogame product and live service model, compete with Gatcha-style monetization. He won't quit because he doesn't own what he uses, so he'll eat that shit and rationalize that it's good to eat shit for as long as he think it's socially acceptable. The instant it's not, he'll overcome his Sunk Cost Fallacy thinking and dip out.
"But he can just-"
No, he won't go elsewhere. I'll let Pat explain by way of how The Mercer Effect is getting the Old Yeller treatment.
The also-rans and never-weres are already starting to feel the pinch. Take a second look at that Roll20 chart; Current Edition is the majority, and if you add in the Old/Forked D&Ds it becomes total domination. This is a platform that is already friendly to SOBS' Target Audience, and so is under threat by the coming Walled Garden, and it matches the trend historically regarding Current D&D vis-a-vis Everything Else.
This is also why SOBS is doing the Big Move. They see that they can just yeet Everything Else and lose nothing of value.
This is why the Cargo Cult of Conventional Play is cooked. Listen to SOBS; they are telling you what your options are- them or the Clubhouse. The commercial viability of Everything Else is cooked because they still haven't figured out that they need to do what SOBS does for them right now, so once that support goes away their collapse is certain. Nothing else survives such a commercial collapse, and in cultural terms if you are not in the Clubhouse or commercially viable than you don't survive in that form either. Death of your presence, and thus your relevance, is guaranteed; no one will remember you.
If you want a real and proper hobby, you will find it at the Clubhouse. If you want to Consume Product and just buy your identity as a Lifestyle Brand, SOBS has you sorted.
Choose your future. The status quo will not be there for you.
Jeffro's continuing his mission to completely unfuck the hobby in general, and AD&D1e in particular.
It is a property of the DMG that it always seems to contain some offbeat rules element which alters your conception of the game when you finally take a moment to seriously contemplate it. Now, most people don’t want to alter their conception of the game. And I guess that’s fine. But some people want to actually try playing AD&D before they die. This post is for that sort of person.
This is a continuation of his previous post going into Appendices B and C.
What this post gets into is how the very machine of play itself disproves Just So Story assumptions about the game and its setting.
They think it's stuff like this:
When it's really this:
"But really? The Gallic Wars? The Conquest of Gaul?"
Yes, really. Go read Jeffro's post. There's a lot of armed men, leveled men, running around those inhabited--pacified--areas maintaining that pacification and the order that such power project brings. Far more than one minor baron has at hand, which is why a strictly Medieval (and thus Feudal) conception is not accurate; it's going to blend with Ancient and Early Modern (i.e. Classical revivalist) forms, as befits the situation.
You may also take a look at the conquest and colonization of Mexico, Central America, and South America for more parallels that are closer fits than the American and Canadian experiences and for that "back and forth" element look no further than Russia's struggle with Mongolia during the latter's days as The Golden Horde. From the other end, the Chinese have also had serious issues with the same (when not going at each other).
This is not a party game played as a boardgame with an infinite board. This is a wargame with global, even cosmic, scope and scale for all the marbles. Mans come and go, but the regimes and institutions they build and wield live beyond them. If not for the Boomers and those like them lobotomizing the hobby to make it a commercially viable product, we'd now be talking about generation-long ambitions coming to fruition as massive campaigns reach major turning points.
What Jeffro is doing is the same as making a video showing a cutaway view of how a machine works and explaining it to the viewer. You may like or dislike what you see, but that doesn't change how the machine works. Either you conform to the machine or you change what machine you use; you do not fuck with something you don't like and (often) don't understand because it doesn't do what you want out of the box- you switch to a thing that does.
Some retard will cry about Muh Colonialism. Fuck that faggot. Fantasy Seattle is Over There in the corner crying about the election with the rest of the Theater Kids that Just Can't Even. The real gamers are hard at work learning, mastering, and conquering over at the Clubhouse.
I get emails from Roll20 from time to time promoting new additions to the platform. Yesterday I got this one, which included the following:
Roll20 is supporting Bastions by adding a new sheet type to their 2024 Character Sheet that will allow players to create and manage their Bastions. The sheet will let you track key details about your Bastion, including the characters it belongs to, any Hirelings or defenders, the Bastion level, and a description.
You'll also be able to select and add facilities from the Dungeon Master's Guide Compendium to your Bastion.
This email, like with SOBS' own press releases, sets up a double-think. It is claimed to be optional; it is framed to be required, to be mandatory, to be presumed to be part of the game. Moreso than in any other edition, Next Edition is going to be a Meta-driven Get Along Gang party game of competitive PVE.
"But I don't have to-"
You will be dropped like a wet sack of cement in favor of those that do. That's how this style of business model works. Why? Because it grants a material benefit to the player and his mans, and--contra what many believe--there is no player that refuses an advantage in anything like a competitive environment.
The Conventional Play environment competes on terms of performance, which is why "slave to the meta" is a common insult (taken from CCGs, MMOs, and MOBAs), and because Conventional Play is a Get Along Gang that acts as a unit--as a team--you had better believe The Meta matters.
"But my-"
That's nice. SOBS' game is set in Forgotten Fantasy Seattle, not Your Special Snowflake Neverland. Taking more and more cues from videogames generally, and MMOs in particular, no one should be surprised that SOBS adopted all of the FOMO/Meta-driven business practices that are now typical of playing those videogames. World First Race To Tiamat's Lair when?
"But I don't want to-"
You want to play Next Edition? You're using Bastions and you're going to like it, or you're going to get yeeted in favor of those that do because they provide significant advantages so not doing so is just handicapping yourself and being the team boat anchor. You can, and you will, get cut loose.
"But my friends-"
They want to win, they want to dominate, and every little +1 and reroll and special power they can get their hands on makes that happens faster and easier. Take it from a vet of such scenes: the Meta IS THE BASELINE, and if you don't conform you will not be looked at. This isn't something you can make up by putting in time at the range working the manual of arms and burning through ammo. This isn't something you can work around with extensive simulator time. This is not a skill issue. This is a math-driven, data-driven, spreadsheet-driven game; you get on the Meta juice or you get left behind.
For the sort of Get Along Gang party game you say you want, Uncle Kevin's got you with Palladium Fantasy and you can use ACKS for that. If you want the real game, square up and seek admittance to the Clubhouse.
The astute will notice that I avoid using "Role-Playing Game" now.
The reason is simple: this is not what play is about, but rather just one part of it, and how that matters depends upon what subset we're talking about.
Conventional Play: Filter through which players contend with Fog of War
Real Hobby: As above, but also the silo within which actional intelligence gets filed away and firewalled off; you as Brick McHardslab don't get to act on what Conan or Skynet knows or has.
Theater Kid Bullshut Brigade: Attention focus centered upon the perspective of an actor or a writer in a production.
The Tabletop Adventure Campaign hobby is a wargame hobby. The use of personae other than oneself is a form of handicap. You not only have a Fog of War due to only being able to act with information and resources at that persona's command, you also have to act with a perspective other than your own. This is not a hobby for low-IQ people unable to form a Theory of Mind to do exactly that.
The Get Along Gang hobby is a party game hobby, so close to boardgames that they might as well be boardgames (and everyone--and I mean everyone--would be happier and better off if they were). Personae are just excuses to permit or forbid playing pieces in their actions and useable items, including which teams to play on (and when to quit or switch).
Theater Kids do Theater Sports or Mad Lib games. Personae are just tools for acting/writing exercises, and those games only useful when aimed at training the skills needed to be competent professionals in addition to the usual networking/cronyism/nepotism/stupid good luck stories.
None of these things are the same, therefore they should not share the same term.
"RPGs" DO NOT EXIST!
We have three separate and distinct hobbies. It's time to start acting like it.
This is the future that Sorcerers By The Sea want for the hobby.
This is also what Normies, Casuals, and Tourists claps like barking seals for. Their behaviors consistly show that they prefer this over the real hobby, which is why the Cargo Cult of Conventional Play keeps losing against it.
It is also why it loses against the single-player games Asmongold mentioned, and not just for reasons I mentioned previously.
There has to be a better way, something that proves that Tabletop as a medium has a means to compete and win against videogame alternatives. The Bros succeeded in finding it, recovering it, and redeveloping it back into its full and proper form.
What the Cargo Cult of Conventional Play sells to you is this:
There is a group of Players and a Referee.
The Players play individual mans, but they operate their mans as if they were a unit that did everything together like a combat unit or investigative team.
The Referee plays everyone and everything else.
Nothing other than the Unit doing their thing is The Game. Everyone and everything else only matters if it interacts with The Unit. This includes Time and Wealth.
The problem is that there is nothing this paradigm of play offers that videogames does better across the board.
The #BROSR has, over the last several years, discovered that the Tabletop Adventure Game is much bigger--and better--than this Get Along Gang subset. The full and complete game is, as Jeffro summarized, about multiple indpendent actors operating under a fog of war. Specifically, they are operating towards a convergence upon a specific strategic objective that does not allow for win-win outcome resolution.
What we have identified reveals a paradigm of play far larger than that subset dubbed The Get Along Gang.
This is a paradigm of play that is too big for one Referee to handle on his own for long. It is too anti-fragile to need external support from publishers, killing its commercial viability in the Cargo Cult norms of product pushing and PDF shilling. It's too decentralized to use the Cult of Officialdom as a means to wield Network Effects to enforce central control.
The Referee solicits Orders from the Faction Tier players. They are adjudicated.
The results of the Orders influence what Adventure Scenarios are available and how they are set up. These are played out.
The results of both Orders and Scenarios are tabulated and processed into a Campaign Report and posted in public. Hidden results get reported by non-public means.
When the many diffuse actions come into a point of convergence, a Braunstein session goes down ASAP to determine results and is itself reported as above.
Reset to the top and go again.
I dubbed this re-emerging social infrastructure "The Clubhouse" because it was where it formerly existed before the Boomers just yeeted it like they did so much of the patrimony bequeathed to them generally down the Memory Hole, and it is in that organization that this paradigm of play--Tabletop Adventure Campaigning--can work and deliver upon the promises put forth in so many rules manuals long ago.
Promises, by the way, that Conventional Play cannot and will not ever deliver.
We now see the full view of what this hobby is and how it works. No videogame can replicate it and thus beat it at its own game. Some have tried. Some are trying. None will succeed because the need to be commercially viable is what dooms all videogame attempts in the end, proving that the Tabletop Adventure Game is not commercially viable nor should it be.
Last night I went on with Dunder Moose to talk about my Race For The Tower campaign event.
This is a two hour (and change) show going over the Tower Campaign.
Take the time to listen to it. You don't have to be a long-term veteran. You don't have to memorize the rules. You don't have to get complex with your arrangements. You just need a Meme and a Dream.
And come back next Wednesday--same time and channel--to listen to us (and a few more) talk about Dorrinal's Cyberpunk Braunstein where I can talk about 2 Cute Tomino and the others can go on about their mans and how we blew up stuff in Night City.
