The Business: WOTC Drones Justify Their Own Extinction

Last Wednesday, Pat cut the following video.

First: This is really about 100 Arena devs vs. Hasbro, not D&D.

Second: LOL.

These wankers have no leverage. Hasbro C-Suite will take this action as justification for liquidating these people, outsourcing/H-1Bing/AI replacing their positions, and then a review will see if the corporate structure needs to be shifted around to secure assets against any future liability threats.

What these people do not comprehend is that they are Hired Guns in positions where they are disposable, expendable, and fungible cogs in a machine. This will result in Hasbro accelerating their plans.

When--not if--this is done, there will be the usual wave of performative outrage before Network Effects do their thing and shut them up because they cannot endure the friction of not being in the scene where it is easiest to play. They will bloviate, and they go right back to giving Hasbro money to continue being viable in competitive play.

Don't think the D&D side of WOTC isn't aware of this. They are.

Hasbro is well aware of the liabilities in WOTC's offices and want to remove them. Some already got punted; the rest will go once the business model revision to rely on bot-generated content and art (and cheap labor otherwise) is complete and--as has been the case for 50 years--those self-possessed poseurs who think they matter will find out fast that all they can do is grift on Kickstarter until that goodwill runs dry.

And, quite frankly, fuck all of them.

The Real Game and thus the Real Hobby, being non-commercial, continues on without any of them unimpeded.

The Culture: The Calvinball Cargo Cult Can't Consider Cascading Consequences

By now you should have noticed the pattern.

These Oldfag Grognards would not be cutting these videos if the #BROSR didn't have any impact on the hobby. They have to do their worst to appropriate the language, do Word Fuckery to it to redefine it back into their Cargo Cult cant, and thus steer the bus back into the Cargo Cult Compound where their Calvinball Cavalcade can do its damage.

Our summary: "This video argues against the modern TTRPG approach of pre-scripting NPC moods and faction motivations, advocating instead for the use of the 2d6 Reaction Roll as a procedural engine for a living, unpredictable sandbox campaign."

This is ripped from B/X, which is the preferred edition of the Oldfags because it enables their Calvinball preferences (and explains why so many OSR toliet rolls are forks of it) and--as is so often the case here--attempts to do their Word Fuckery tricks by isolating something from the Real Game, treat it as a separate issue that miraculously doesn't effect anything else, and then argue that you can just LOLSORANDOM your way out of the problem because Calvinball.

First: Fucking with ONE part of the machine affects ALL OTHER PARTS. This brings on cascading system failure, which--like Commie governance--justifies yet further Calvinball until you get something that doesn't work without Calvin there to do Calvinball things- including exuding the huckster charisma needed to sucker rubes into going along with it. (This is what leads to Six Session Suckouts, by the way.)

Second: IT IS NOT YOUR JOB TO FIX A BROKEN PRODUCT! If the product you buy does not work when used as instructed, that's on the publisher to fix- not the end user. If the end user does not use the product as directed, that's on the user and not the publisher- the user needs to fix himself (by conforming to the rules as-written), not the product, and the publisher does not need to change the product to conform to the user.

Third: None of these Oldfags have any reading comprehension, and they do not comprehend Second Order (nevermind Third Order) Effects. There is no consideration for what this one change wreaks upon the rest of the machine; they are no different than the sheboons complaining about grocery stores and pharmacies closing in their area after months or years of shoplifting, looting, assaults upon staff, fraud, property damage, and public disturbances. No difference at all in mindset between "I changed this rule, so why does this other thing not work" and "Dey closed da Walmart after the last time da popo shot Deshawyn ova nuffin."

Good thing that Bros blog their receipts, showing how wrong all of this is, and publish collections thereof like Winning Secrets and remedial teaching aides like BROZER, UMBROS, and (soon) BRODUM to shatter that hold on the Narrative and teach people how to play the Real Game.

The Culture: Fuck Game Balance

The Pundit makes an attempt.

What is left out is the thing that ensures that Muh Game Balance gets shot and tossed into a ditch: BRAUNSTEIN.

As I and others among the Bros have found out first-hand, the Real Game--multiple independent actors, operating in conflict, under a Fog of War--guarantees that balances gets tossed into the ditch because competing actors want to win and that requires achieving a power differential in their favor- i.e. to deliberate upend the balance in their favor.

This is, as every last martial artist and military sage ever keeps saying, Fair Fights Are For Suckers.

In a proper campaign, beligerants will only be in a balanced fight when both sides fuck up and fail to cock the table in their favor. This means that sometimes you get curbstomped, and sometimes you do the stomping; in the Real Game, most hostile encounters start and end on the Surprise Round. Those who get it can seize control of the fight, making it theirs to determine how it goes; those who are able to routinely seize control via Surprise will dominate most encounters due to having the capacity to choose when they fight and when they do they go first- and they tend to bring the most.

Then let things happen. So what if shit goes south? That's not the Referee's problem.

The Business: Yes, Blizzard Broke MMOs

In the name of making it easier for the dads on the dev team, Blizzard permanently broke the game and thus the entire product category.

The correct response was to do the following:

1. Make dungeons harder, but make the loot better- both in potency and in acquisition. "Fuck You, Pay Me" always applies. Loot must drop for everyone involved, and be immediately useful; you should always get either an upgrade or (if none are to be had) the gold equivalent. If you put in work, you get paid GUARANTEED.
2. Make certain that all mans of a given role can perform necessary functions. Tanks and healers should not be doing interrupts or crowd control; that's the DPS' job, and fulfilling such utility cannot be a DPS loss or they won't do it. Healers should be situationally aware, not locked on the healthbars; either healing happens while doing utility or DPS work, or they have off-OCDs that light up to be instant nukes after doing enough GCD heals whose net effect is DPS neutral.
3. Mobs should always have something that requires CC on pain of either instant death or loss of control- not just bosses.
4. Bosses should require Tank mitigation to endure being hit at all; against Healers and DPS, squish.
5. Instant spec-change/gear-change upon entrance to the required group role, assuming that you are foolish enough to not hard-lock classes into them in the first place. This is one place where FF14 is correct in its design.
6. Design dungeons to be completable in 10 minutes or less on average. That means cutting bosses to one, and reducing trash to a handful of packs at most. Winged dungeon complexes should be the norm. This is the core problem, not the grouping issue. The reason for pre-DF being a pain was due to the time required; cut it down to something you'd see in a Scenario out of MOP and you'd see participation skyrocket. Going with a winged complex approach means that you can turn one area into three or more distinct dungeons to run, and each run would actually feel like a proper delve and not a reckless roller coaster ride.

In short, increase the friction in the content, reduce the time commitment, and spread around the tools to handle the friction..

The Culture: This Is How You Get Calvinball

Again with the ankle-biting bullshit.

This only persists because of piss-poor reading comprehension coupled with out of control ego issues.

READ THE FUCKING MANUAL! DO WHAT IT SAYS!

This also means knowing what is not said, and through proper reasoning figuring out what Is and Is Not allowed. That's how I broke open the Fighter's unspecified Command Presence ability.

That's not Le Ruling; that's reading the fucking manual and comprehending what is there- something Grogs like this have failed to do for their Muh 40 Years.

Turns out that no, you don't need to "cover the gaps" because the Real Game didn't have any; you just read shit wrong because you're incompetent at reading.

We are done playing Calvinball, OldFags, and that's exactly what you push with this bullshit. Stop thinking that you're smarter than the designers; you're not, and you never were.

The Business: Grifting Beast Is Shilling Beast

Speaking of grifters.

This is naked shilling. It might as well be a paid ad.

The Real Game organically generates all the playable content you will ever need.

This is why you don't need modules; the Real Game has everything you need to generate everything required to play the game indefinitely. Stop wasting money on shit you don't need and does not help.

Yes, this means that this hobby is not commercially viable if you're of the mind to think that this is a Consume Product sort of thing; that's Striver Bullshit, and we ain't got time for that here.

It is viable if you think Buy Once, Cry Once, Use Forever is how things work. Alas, that's not how too many in this hobby think. Good thing they're a dying breed.

The Culture: Some Snakes Are Smarter Than Others

I told you the grifters had to get out in front of the Bros, and here we are.

First lie hits not a minute into it: "D&D is not one game."

Yes it is you lying motherfucker. You read the manual, you do what the manual says, you get what the rules prescribe. Lather, rinse, repeat. Everyone playing it properly plays the same game. This is up there with "Free Parking" in Monopoly being done wrong in its pervasive presence despite being obviously incorrect as in "READ THE FUCKING MANUAL YOU MORON!".

He gets it wrong be he's played the game wrong for Muh 40 Years. They are the same thing: Fantastic Adventure Wargaming. "Epic" doesn't exist anymore than "Grimdark" does; both are fake genres. The structure of play is always the same; same inputs means same outputs.

I'm going to have to explain how this actually works. Fine, here's the Quick & Easy Launch Process.

1. Get your AD&D1e core rulebooks.
2. Get one sheet of graph paper.
3. Get one sheet of hex paper.
4. Get one notepad or notebook.
5. Open the DMG. Go to Appendix A. Roll 1d10/2. See those five starting room allotments? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Roll, then write the winner down on the sheet of graph paper in the middle of the page. Stop. That's your starter dungeon.
6. Go to Appendix C. Roll 1d8 and look at the chart where you determine what terrain type an outdoor hex is; look across the top, as normal. Then roll 1d4 to determine which corner that generated hex is in.
7. Using the Settlement subchart for that chart, determine the starting settlement size and who is in charge. The dungeon will be nearby.
8. Tell folks you're running a starter dungeon delve, and which Method to use to roll up a man. Set a date and a time; use Appendix A exactly as it's written and you'll do fine as I've shown for over a year. Done. Never do any work unless and until play forces it.

No negotiations. No Session Zero bullshit. Your mans are about broke and dungeons are where they can get paid. No one--including the Referee--has a fucking clue about what's going on beyond that initial 24-30 mile hex and until someone goes beyond it that wider world doesn't exist The rules work as intended when you use them as directed to create the promised play experience. Stop fucking with it.

This is where he bullshits hardest; you don't need to do anything more than this to start with, and you should never do anything more until it is required. He lies about in the same breath as confessing to the Six Session Suckout of Cargo Cult Non-Game Play and praising The Keep On The Borderlands, which uses the above paradigm.

The Professor is one of the better grifters due to his seeming reasonableness making it hard to detect when he's playing Word Sorcery games to trick you. "I plan one session ahead" is that sorcery; you shouldn't plan at all because that's the players' job (Fantasy of Agency, remember?) and all you do is administer things. Planning means that you are assuming the role of the Adversary, when that is not your job. That's what players do, not you.

It's that one subtle shift that introduces the poison of Narrative Logic into a pure Ludological hobby. Reject all Narrative logic by sticking to Braunstein structure; this is how you beat that bullshit.

This is a far simpler thing to comprehend than many have been told to expect, so PDF Merchant grifters have to complicate it to create a space where they profit.