The Business: You Can't Run From Your Fuckups Anymore

On Thursday of last week, Black Lodge Games cut this video on RuneQuest.

Ars Magica got this right.

The trick is to design the rules of the game to be the reality of the world and then present those rules in the manner that your man would comprehend them in situ. Runequest somehow fucked up what Pendragon/Paladin/Prince Valiant and Stormbringer/Elric! as well as Call of Cthulhu got right.

Doing this is how you ensure that, no matter who picks up the manual, they operate the machine the same way (so long as they actually follow directions). What has gone on instead is what too many Official Setting projects do: become Setting Bibles for Intellectual Property development.

Furthermore we see that these guys became lorenerds for their own creation. No one fucking cares about your fucking lore. Players need to know the stuff that matters to play here and now; if it does not directly and immediately matter to play, it is irrelevant and should be discarded. If rolling a man looks like it involves doing homework, you fucked up and you deserve to fail.

This is what Ars did, across its editions, which is why it still gets played by its cult-like and cult-sized following. You don't need to know shit about Europe in the Middle-Ages; you need only to know what your man's specific situation is, and how he relates to everyone around him. Everything else can be done as you go. Hell, even the "Hermetic Magic" is made-up bullshit (vs. IRL Hermetic Magic).

AM is what Steve here wants RQ to be.

This why RQ is on borrowed time; its fuckups are catching up to it, and to Chaosium, which threatens both game and publisher in ways unique to them unless and until they correct course and put out the proper products that people have consistently revealed--there's that Revealed Preference thing again--that they want.

Dry academic bullshit ain't it, chief.

The Culture: Yes, Twitter Now Is Far Better Than It Was And The Enemy Hates It

In the larger discourse, there is good news; this came out on Monday this past week.

This is not necessarily across the board, and Elon's people don't necessarily adhere to his Free Speech dogma; he too has Stay Behinds to flush out.

Take the W, folks. Twitter is still better than it was before Elon bought it and began his purges and reconfigurations, and it continues to improve. Everyone wants to be there as it is the place to be; it has the Network Effect. With still more improvements to come, it will only get better.

The Culture: The Soup Aisle Sucked Vs. Boardgames Too

Boardgame alternatives to the Cargo Cult have also been around for decades and were also a better option.

Same thing: play when I want, how I want, for as long as I want with no ongoing commitments. No bullshit rules fuckery.

This isn't as good a value proposition as the Vidya comparison, but it is still far superior for fulfilling the Cargo Cult Game paradigm of play than what they insist Tabletop has to be about.

Oh, and it's cheaper overall because edition changes are few (if ever) and definitely far between. I can also include Talisman, Advanced Heroquest, Runequest and a lot more than that- and if Sword World does well enough in translation there may be PDFs made available of those Japanese boardgame counterparts also.

Tabletop is not boardgaming or cardgaming. It is not Vidya. It is something separate, distinct, and apart from all of them- which means it is not as the Cargo Cult insists it is either.

It's Braunstein, and that demands something very different- and very human.

The Culture: The Soup Aisle Sucked Vs. Vidya Since 1980

When I said that the Soup Aisle's cult game got rooked by Vidya decades ago, I was not kidding.

I'm stopping just shy of the SSI Gold Box Games, where TSR proved that its own IP does better in Vidya in the Cult Game format.

Play when you want, how you want, for as long as you want, with a Referee that won't LOLSORANDOM the rules Because (Bullshit) Reasons. That's across-the-board superior to what the Soup Aisle in their Just So Cult Game claims is how the hobby works.

Almost all of them are now available on Steam and GOG for dirt-cheap prices, even less when on sale. Why put up with Knights of the Dinner Table bullshit when this is cheaper, easier, more convenient, and has superior gameplay experiences?

This is why the Cargo Cult is cooked; they can't beat this, they never have, and they never will.

The Culture: Towards A Corpo And Merchant-Free Hobby

I regularly post Razorfist's video about how BattleTech is really held and controlled by the fans- not the corpos.

I posit that this is also viable for Uncle George's Space Opera. Use the old West End Game if you want something instantly familiar and usable, but that's not the only option; the reason is that what you really want is a game where the capacity to translate from either IRL or Approved Lore measurements to game terms and back is trivially easy to do by the hobbyist.

Why? Because a fan-controlled Star Wars is one where fan channels who actually get the IP and can contrbute to it competenly and effectively are going to be where you go to find things to include that the Enemy never would- for example:

The Devil Mouse would never go for that.

This is the flip-side of the mass proliferation of digital content generation tools and distribution channels. Can you produce Endless Product Slop? Sure. You can also know where the human touch matters more, and use those same tools to clear away the bitchwork so that you can focus time and attention on what you specifically add to the overal result.

We don't need corpos or merchants selling us what our stories are anymore. We need to know how to seize, hold, and use these tools instead. Fuck Muh Commercial Viability; if this means it's only done by hobbyists for hobbyists because you can't make a living at it, that's a net improvement as it culls the disinterested grifters from the space.

The Culture: The Poz In Localization Is Under Threat

A one-two-three of good news.

Notice that this happens on the heels of Elon having his man implement auto-translation between Japanese and English.

When that happened, suddenly Japanese users could see how Crunchyroll and other Death Cultist front organizations have been fucking with Japan's soft power powerhouse export first-hand. That did not get ignored for long; it filtered up the Chain of Command of Japan's massive corporate behemoths, and C-Suite decided that these Death Cultists are the reason for why Line Ain't Going Up Fast Enough.

Yep, Mammon Mob vs. Death Cult yet again. Again, neither side are our friends, but the Japanese C-Suites tend to have a more long-term view of things than their Western counterparts and thus they (a) are willing to have the line go up slower in return for guaranteed stability and (b) thus are heavily incentivized to punish instability with the fist of an angry God.

This doesn't mean that things will turn on a dime and suddenly get better. What means is that Western fans need to chimp the fuck out, good and hard, where our Japanese friends can see and hear and let the autotranslate do the work of getting the point across for us. Then they can push it up the chain to C-Suite, where the suits can then bring the pain on our behalf. We have the ear of power; don't waste it.

In the meantime, I suggest we keep the love-fest going by sharing our favorite works with them- especially anying that doesn't route through Wizardry.

The Business: They Are Lying About Their Bot Usage

I told you that the answer to AI freakouts would be people flat-out lying about using it.

Wizards of the Coast already does this, nakedly and openly. Revealed Preferences show that NORMIES DO NOT CARE.

You can take all the polls where they say all the Approved Opinions, but when it comes time to buy shit they (a) reveal that they can't tell and (b) reveal that they don't care. Why? For the same reasons that most people don't buy hand-made knives or clothes: the price is way too high for what you get.

The reality is this: when the moneybags see that it's 10x cheaper, but just as good or better, to do it with bots than men the bots get deployed EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Hell, they get deployed when it's only half as good when it's 10x cheaper.

Yes, this does mean publishing is going to change too; the moneybags will gladly sack human authors for House Names attached to bot-generated genre content template output, and now that the tech exists you can even interview them.

At 21:00 you see the interview segment; neither of them are in the depicted space- both of them are remoting into it via hologram tech over the Internet.

You had better believe that they can just make an overlay for a House Name and use it for interviews, and it's going to be cheap and easy to do very soon.

You want to interview Amelia, the meme girl representing UK Remigration? You will be able to before the end of the year; for now, this means someone else (using voice-changing software and livestream overlay technology, both quite mature now) will be able to perform the role. Not long from now, a model trained up to be her on command will be able to do that in real time on the fly.

You want to smear your enemies? Going to be very easy to do now.

You want to churn out plenty of novels in short order? Nevermind Claude; what matters is that you can automate the entire process, including several rounds of "remove AI-isms", including making the cover and formatting for ebook and print for upload to Amazon/B&N/Lulu/etc. while you're off doing other things. People are already making bank doing this; you know who you are.

So no, don't think you can do jack shit about widespread AI adoption and implementation. The ones with the power want this to happen, so it happens and it happens because they benefit from having it. No matter what you say, all they care about is what you do; if they can lie to you to get you to do what they want, they will and they've already justified doing so to themselves so no amount of moral scolding means shit to them. The ability to make them always exceeds the capacity to detect them.

Which means that, contra the hopes of some, the days of bot-generated books and games is far from over.