The Culture: Accept That They Will Never Just

Since I linked to it yesterday, here's Devon Eriksen's epic post about "They Will Not Just".

"I have a plan for GoodThing!"

"Great, let's hear it."

"First of all, everybody has to just —"

"Okay, pump the brakes, there, smart guy. How do you plan to get people to just?"

"Well, they should just —"

"Perhaps, but how are you going to get them to just?"

"They should!"… https://t.co/Blol3PKkRj

— Devon Eriksen (@Devon_Eriksen_) May 5, 2025

That post continues:

"They will not. They will not just. Never in the history of humanity have they just. They did not just in antiquity, they did not just in the Bronze Age or in the Iron Age.

"The Egyptians did not just, the Hittites did not just, Romans did not just, nor did the Chinese. The Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Vandals, and the Huns were united solely in that they did not just.

"Europe did not just in the Dark Ages. The Mongols did not just, nor did the Bulgars or the Cossacks or the Turks.

"The Muslims have never just. The Plantagenets did not just, or the Tudors. Nor did the Royal House of WIndsor. The Spanish did not just in the New World, or the Dutch, or the English, and the natives did not just, either.

"Thomas Paine did not just, and no one just on Punkatasset Hill, nor did they just at Miriam's Corner.

"Napolean did not just at Austerlitz and Wellington did not just at Waterloo. And the Tsars have never just.

"The South did not just, before or after the Civil War, and the North did not just, either.

"South America has never just at any point in its history, nor has Africa in its lack thereof.

"The Memsheviks and the Bolsheviks and the Marxist-Leninists and the Stalinists and the Maoists and the practitioners of People's Glorious Revolutionary Juche Idea said they would just, but they never did. Pol Pot did not just when he was executing people for wearing glasses or not having a husband, and Sendero Luminoso never just because they were too busy boiling children alive.

"Otto von Bismarck and the Second Reich did not just, the Third Reich did not just, either, and after that, the Jews certainly weren't going to just, not that they ever did.

"Some Americans wanted to just, but they didn't, because they couldn't, because only a few of them wanted to, and so even the ones who wanted to had to stop.

"The Chinese will not just, the Russians will not just, the Americans will not just, the Martian colonists and Belters of the 22nd century will not just, either.

"Genetically engineered post-humans will not just, Artificial Intelligences will not just, and the Ascended Hive Consciousness of Conjoined Minds at the center of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud will not just, no matter how much they manipulate time and space the way we shape plastic and steel.

"No one will just, perhaps ever again.

"Why? Because it is suicidal to just unless everyone just, and they will not. Don't you get it?"

"Well, I can see you want, because you are a —"

"No you can't see what I want! We are not discussing what I want! I want Helen of Troy to return from antiquity in all of her radiant and legendary beauty, and give me a foot massage! I want Jesus, Moses, Mohammad, Siddhartha Gautama, and Elvis Presley to visit Los Angeles in a flying pink Cadillac and announce to the world once and for all if god is real, and if so, which one, and what he, she, or it wants from us.

"It does not matter what I want! I am not the God Emperor of Mankind, with teeming billions of soul desperately eager to hear my slightest whim so they can work to make it real!

"It does not matter if I am a, because we are not talking about what I want. I am telling you FACTS. This is what will and will not happen, regardless of whether or not everyone should, or whether or not I am a, or whether or not it would nice if the moon was made of cheese!

"Don't you get it? If you want people to just, you need a plan to incentivize them to just, and it has to be something that has NEVER, NOT ONCE, in the history of the world, ever been tried before, because every single thing anyone has ever tried in order to get people to just has failed!

"So what do you have? What is your brilliant scheme, how are you going to get everyone in the world, everywhere, every single living thing to agree to simultaneously just?"

"I'm going to write a comment. Telling them they should. On Twitter."

"Oh, will you? How nice."

"It's going to be three whole sentences."

Incentives matter.

You are a fucking retard if you design any system where the results you desire are not incentivized. You must use both the Carrot and the Stick, in both obvious and subtle ways, to get what you want out of others.

This is what Game Design is about. This is what Coding is about. This is what Lawmaking is about: What uses of Carrot and Stick will most reliably get the results that I want out of the users?

And you're going to find out that you've got hard limits to what you can do to make that happen.

The Business: Stupid Is As It Does

Jon Del Arroz at Fandom Pulse reports on Tabletop news.

TLDR: Current Edition is for wankers, Daggerheart is for bigger wankers, and Acquisitions decided to side with the biggest loser.

Wizards of the Coast continues their pivot of the company into a Lifestyle Brand company, and all of these retards think they can do the same thing so they do it faker and gayer.

It's all going to fail for the same reason that everyone that isn't The Only Game That Matters fails: there can be only one!

The same that happens to the vast majority of Tabletop product has already happened to Daggerheart: sold more than played. Why? Because the friction increase from defecting from the dominant Network Effect means YOU DON'T GET PLAYED!

"If they just-">

THEY! WILL! NEVER! JUST!

They want to play the game- the one they already know. They will not waste time not playing when they could be playing; that is what Network Effect dominance looks like, and it is why everyone loses to D&D and has lost for 50+ years.

Revealed Preferences are Revealed; whenever they run into that friction, after having learned D&D, they bounce EVERY SINGLE TIME!

This is why Daggerheart is a Fantasy Heartbreaker. This is why the only serious "competition" has been clones of The Only Game That Matters and those few who got lucky with a First Mover advantage (that turned out to be irrelevant).

These people are narcissists, and narcissism leads to stupidity.

No one will play Not-D&D because some retards on screen pretend to do so anymore than they play D&D now.

They may enjoy the fake show, and collect books, but they will never play. They are not us; they are not gamers- and they never will be.

WOTC gets this, which is why the counter is as soft as it is; they only need to be as good as to beat them.

Meanwhile, the Clubhouse carries on doing the real game because Jon is right: this is a hobby where being a commercial pursuit is stupid.

The Culture: Remember To Not Give Money To People Who Hate You.

You don't have to give money to people that hate you. You have options.

PDFs are free. I have 432 PDFs at home. POD, on the other hand, well for that you need to ask around and be prepared to pay- especially if you want a high-quality hardcover.

Remember that Captain Harlock is the friend of all free people.

Because, for the users, Piracy is nothing more than a calculation between convenience and cost.

The Culture: They Keep Doing It Because You Let Them

Commie Propagandist gets roasted.

This libel, slander, and defamation will confinue until pain gets inflicited upon them. Take their assets, their revenue, their credit- everything. Leave them in a ditch for stepping out of line. Do it repeatedly. Ensure that they connect Cause to Effect. They will stop when they are forced to stop. No sooner.

The Culture: When They Confess That They Are Agreement-Incapable, Believe Them

Roll For Combat shows that they are hopeless.

They play Calvinball. They can only say they know why you should not, but they don't believe it because they go on to hem and haw over Not Being Cheating Wankers.

This is the Soup Aisle, and why it deserves to be crushed.

They can't agree to just READ THE FUCKING MANUAL AND DO WHAT IT SAYS!

You do not waste time with agreement-incapable people. You crush them and move on; even Wizards of the Coast, for its own reasons and perspective, gets this and is doing what it can to achieve it.

The Culture: You Ought To Know How It Shook Out Elsewhere Too

File this under "History of the Hobby (Japan)".

There will be more, of course.

This is all in support of the upcoming release of the official English translation, a preview of which is at DriveThru.

This is going to matter in the years ahead as Auto-Translate functionality becomes native and default-enabled across the Internet, allowing cross-cultural communication that we see now on Twitter to go on everywhere without Google screwing things up.

Why?

If there was ever a place where Braunstein need to be seen and heard, it's Japan. So many of the solutions that the Bros found would be embraced as the Real Game does far more for the busy lives they have than the Soup Aisle's Cult Non-Game model that's easily beaten by videogames.

The Culture: Dunder Does Dropship TONIGHT!

The MOOSE GETS LOOSE TONIGHT!

I'll be there in the chat. See you there.

They're talking Dropship.