The Culture: The #BROSR Finished What The Boomers Cast Off

Rule of Thule, over at Substack, posted this long note on the Bros and Braunstein.

Braunstein is an eternal construct like the Pythagorean theorem. The people who brought it to us deserve to be credited and remembered. 1) Wesely: discovered it 2) Arneson: exploited & mastered the form 3) Gygax: isolated & enshrined its form into game rules 4) Jeffro Johnson: defined it and completed it All four points are important. Points 1 and 2 are made plain in Secrets of Blackmoor. We are only aware of point 3 because of the Trollopulous group’s efforts to run AD&D Rules-As-Written (RAW). They did not set out to demonstrate point 3—they were not even aware of the existence of Braunsteins when they started this process. It was totally unexpected that they find anything at all; they were just playing a game! Thus, this eternal principle—this thing that every roleplaying game wants to converge towards—was identified through the process of obstinately following the rules. It’s worth restating: the Braunstein conceptualization of RPGs would not be understood right now without running AD&D RAW. This fact underscores the importance of both RAW as well as AD&D, on multiple layers. What makes AD&D different? Gygax was an intuitive genius, and he (along with Arneson) understood the sprawling concept of ‘fantasy gaming’ very early on in a way that was far ahead of anyone else. He wrote AD&D as a reaction to seeing people run OD&D wrong (this is clear from reading his tortured lamentations and warnings in the AD&D manuals). In order to get it right, he had to lock down the correct behavior into a rules fence so people wouldn’t screw it up. In doing so, he encoded Braunstein play and assumptions (which can be seen in Boot Hill as well) into the ruleset’s DNA. RAW is important here because look at the path Gygax went on after TSR’s success. If he had not had a RAW mindset—if he had not believed that the rules necessarily communicated structure and precise intent—if he did not believe the rules could enshrine a form of play, then we would all be none the wiser. Imagine all we had was Gary’s interviews and forum comments and remarks from his visits to conventions and a rules-lite You Do You manual: we would think D&D was just a frivolous non-game colored and connotated by the (largely irrelevant) rulebook. When a “game designer” puts out a rulebook which cannot be seriously followed, which does not seem to encode a form of play or any precise intent, comparison with AD&D (or other more seriously designed games) tells us that there’s nothing there to be examined. RAW is important because only by the players adopting a RAW mindset can a game designer convey (via RAW) a substant vision. Designers must demand players play RAW. Players must demand that designers give them something worth playing RAW. AD&D is the example we all—designers and players—aspire to achieve, from both directions.

- RuleOfThule

Read on Substack

TLDR: The #BROSR saved the hobby. The Clubhouse is their castle. What Wizards of the Coast does, ultimately, is irrelevant; we are the future of the hobby now.

The Culture: Yes, The Substack Scene Has The Quantitative Discourse Too

In addition to publishing the receipts, Substack is also where you'll find the useful discussions that inform good campaign play.

Are There Enough Troops? by Arbrethil

Maximizing Societal Mobilization

Read on Substack

That's written for ACKS, but any proper game will be able to employ that information.

The Culture: All The Bros Post Up At Substack

Over at Substack you'll find more people posting their receipts.

Umbros Ep21: "Life Has Many Doors, Thedd Boy!" by Angry Steak

Run: June 16 2026

Read on Substack

As I said before, the action is now at Substack.

The Culture: Yes, He Did Revive A Dying Hobby

It is good to see that the Tribal Chief sees his significance correctly.

More people have hosted Braunstein events as a result of my efforts than they have due to David Wesely’s. If not for me, Braunstein would be nothing but a curiosity of the distant past, a novelty to be reenacted from time to time, an intermediary form in the transition from wargame to rpg. But I showed how the Braunstein concept was applicable to a wide range of problems that tabletop gamers face TODAY. I showed them how to incorporate session Braunsteins into their continuing rpg campaigns. I showed them how to conceive of their continuing campaigns as being a variety of Braunstein in their own right. And I showed them that roleplaying games are in fact broken without the play dynamics that derive from Braunsteins. Nobody among the “Blackmoor Bunch” ever anticipated any of these developments. No scholar digging through the pages of old fanzines ever conceived of anything remotely like any of this. And no one ever did more to help more people to pay off the promise of the early D&D rule sets than yours truly. Indeed, no one had the audacity or the social resources to even attempt to play the sort of game described by those rulesets until after I and my friends publicly demonstrated that it was not only possible to play such games, but also that it was more fun and more engaging than the derivative nongame that people call “D&D” today. Astonishing. If you have an abiding love of vintage rpgs, not for how they have been traditionally understood but because of what they could be and what they ought to be… then you simply cannot thank me enough. And to all of you that are enjoying a fundamentally different rpg hobby culture today than has ever existed before, I can only say, “you’re welcome.” You’re welcome.

- Jeffro Johnson

Read on Substack

His haters justified his claims.

The hobby will endure because of his efforts.

The Culture: "Winning Secrets" Now In Paperback

Last week the paperback for Winning Secrets went live on Amazon.

Click on the image to get to the store page.

The Culture: The Theater Kids Aren't Pretending Anymore

The Pundit can't even.

They don't play. They're Theater Kid pretending to be gamers.

This is not at all surprising, and yet Wizards of the Coast keeps trying to pander to these broke-assed poseurs despite their revenue coming from actual hobbyist gamers because the company is captured by Death Cultists for whom pushing the poz trumps producing playable product.

This isn't working in Vidya, Comics, Novels, or another commercial entertainment media and there isn't an infinite amount of money to prop it all up anymore--yes, it's drying up, but those resevoirs got filled before the cutoff so this is a long draining process; the aim being to outlast the pressure--which (so far) only C-Suite (due to pressure from Hasbro) is at all aware of.

In short, Home Office needs to do some Tard Wrangling in Seattle.

This has to stop, for the cold-as-ICE reason that it's damaging the Brand and with it the Network Effect- and as it goes, the entire hobby goes.

Which means retarded shit like what the LOLcow pulled has to be openly, brutally, and ruthlessly mocked and derided--bullycided--into a ditch.

You can see how badly the Muh Narative brainrot hollowed out his skull.

He doesn't play, by the way. He's a Gamma's Gamma, so no one will play with him; this why all he does is ramble in his car. That's why other OSR guys farm him for content while they bully him for being a retarded megafaggot.

Burn the faggots. Save the hobby.

The Business: "Rules LOL" Is A Cargo Cult Self-Own

Roll For Combat on the narrative attack.

Predictable blather is predictable.

But it does open up a massive line of attack: If, as you say, "Folk D&D" doesn't care about rules then why are you selling yours? LOLCow Garipay gets it. Dancey got it. Cargo Cultists pretend not to get it, but they do as their behavior reveals.

The reason is simple: there is no reason to buy anything but Official Game if the rules don't matter. This is another reason to Just Play D&D.

The reality is that Only D&D Matters. Nothing else does. Not even Cthulhu (most don't know COC exists), Traveller, HERO, or RIFTS.

In reality, what matters is D&D, Warhammer, Star Wars, and BattleTech. Not even Cyberpunk and Shadowrun (despite videogame tieins) matter anymore, while both BT and SW hang on by threads.