The Business: The Death Cult's Preferences Revealed

You'll want to play this at double speed because it's an hour long, but you only have 30 minutes of useful info in it.

So, let's tease out the big thinks here:

• The changes to Game of Gankcraft were exactly what was details during the beta period of public testing, as per the players' feedback.
• The changes were exactly what the dev team said could not be done previously.
• The changes were exactly what is deliberately back until the final patch of the expansion, when it doesn't matter anymore and they're focused on the next expansion's launch so they don't care anymore.
• The changes being made now is a tacit admission of the above, and furthermore that they respond otherwise only when the money is threatened.
• The changes are still cocked-up and filled with spiteful fuck-you caveats because (a) the devs don't play the game and (b) resent the audience for not being mute paypigs that just fork over the cash and take it.
• The dev team continues to bald-faced lie about the game with apparent sincerety because they don't play it, but that too is a lie because they track all of the metrics in real time so they have the numbers on hand that show them how things actually work; they just lack hands-on experience in operating the machine they produce.

This is not just incompetence. This is not merely Mammon-motivated malevolence. This is Death Cult psychology in action, whose mechanical workings and premises thereof are thoroughly interrogated by the living grandmaster of Science Fiction--John C. Wright--here: "The Universal Field Theory of Leftism (Reprise)"

The people running the company--both those being sued and those standing to benefit from usurping from those being sued--are Death Cultists. They hate the company's audience and customers. They don't want to give them what they want; they want to reap them like crops with the least possible effort--preferably less than zero--as punishment for existing at all.

The Revealed Preference of the company is that the company believes it is a landed aristocrat of inherent quality and the rank that goes with it. It behaves as an entitled, effeminate, and incompetent aristocrat that is insulted to the point of murderous violence that it is not automatically shown deference, obesiance, and loyalty that it is due as a birthright because they are inherently better than the plebs that give them money.

In short, they are deluded that they are better because they are not exactly like the audiences they serve. Because they believe that they were robbed of what is rightfully theirs they are entitled to seize the machine by any means necessary and then rig its operations to reward them and punish--ultimately destroy--their enemies, but not before those enemies are ground to dust with endless degradation and humiliation.

You'll see this same psychology in other institutions--public and private--that Death Cultists usurp and converge, and it is the reason for why they use convergence to do so- and why their infighting gets to be so viscious and visceral, for they have no brakes on their use of force.

Once the lawsuit concludes, and the power play peters out, the only thing that's going to happen is that all of this gets even worse no matter which faction wins. Therefore, the only possible point of leverage we have is to threaten their money--to threaten the flow of the Spice--to get what we want, and even that will only get us spitfully-delivered half-measures that will be revoked as soon as they can get away with it. This company is no longer fit for purpose; walk away entirely, as I have, and play something else. Let them rule their domain of desolation; and let this serve as a warning to others to clear out the cultists in your ranks before they do the same to your concern.

My Life As A Gamer: "Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood" Reviewed

I completed the Stormblood expansion in its entirety this past weekend. Time for my thoughts, but first here's the trailer.

Summary

Stormblood moves the story of the game to focus upon the previously mentioned threat of the Garlean Empire and its conquests of Doma in the Far East and Ala Mhigo on the border of Gridania.

My Life As A Gamer: So You Wanted A Game About Moria

I was looking for something else when this came over my feed today.

And there is someone that did a playthrough.

Yes, this is "The Moria Expedition: The Game." I recommend playing the video at 2x Speed if you're pressed for time.

This doesn't look like a major breakthrough innovation of a game. It does look like a game that will execute properly what it aims at, so if you like first-person real-time RPGs like the Elder Scrolls series and others akin to them then this should be a title to keep an eye on.

There is no release date yet, but we have PC specs so this shouldn't be long before that date is settled upon and with it a price point. I hope this game delivers, because there is a dearth of games that focus upon the Glorious Sons of the Forge Under The Mountain and far too many focused upon those damned knife-eared sons of bitches.

My Life In Fandom: The Leading Jewish Voice In Science Fiction Returns To Geek Gab!

It's been a while since Yakov Merkin was on the show, but he's back to talk about his isekai series: Light Unto Another World.

It goes live on Amazon starting on the 31st of this month, so go here and get your pre-orders in.

Narrative Warfare: Seven Years Rent-Free, #Gamergate!

What a long, strange trip it's been.

(By Kukuruyo)

Seven years since this all jumped off with #gamergate, eh?

And the gaming industry--video and tabletop--continues to be a trashfire overall, but man has the word gotten around by now. Sure, the news media across the board still does what it did, but so has the awareness that it is a pile of shitheels and shill pretending to be proper investigators and reporters for the people- a tanking in credibility now comparable to that of governments.

Since then, the word's gotten around. Even the religious aspect to the enemy--that they are the Death Cult, a Chirstian heresy--has started to get around to major nodes like Reddit. So has the word that the best thing to do is to starve them, fork off our own parallels, and route around them.

Some areas are easier to do this in than others, and because it is neither flashy nor speedy it is often overlooked until the momentum picks up and becomes an avalanche- a Preference Cascade in action. We're seeing this happen in comics and genre fiction novels, where independents have successfully forked off and built up parallels to converged insitutions, with videogames not that far behind.

Other areas remain difficult to address due to the importance of the power behind their position, with the most immediate example being payment processors. As it is now, while there are projects in the works it is difficult to fork and replace them due to the power that control over finance provides to the enemy; even then, they can fall back to the credit card companies themselves. For now, the practical alternatives are themselves limited in application for political reasons (because they are Chinese or Russian), but they are available; so long as you can deal with those limits, you'll be fine.

Nonetheless, the overall trend doesn't look good for the enemy. Their positions are eroding and collapsing, but some of what they control has further to go than others and this is the source of the disparty between reality and apperance; there is simply more to erode in film, television, and videogames than there is in comics, tabletop games, and genre fiction novels.

And make no mistake: the smaller segments are already in a state of collapse, and it is ultimately to our benefit to hasten that collapse as best we can.

The other day I said that tabletop RPGs will be best served by making the environment inhospitable to the enemy. This is applicable across the board, and a lot of the general direction I said in that post regarding how hobbyists should serve that scene are applicable generally: more self-sufficiency, tenacity, and cultivation of individual character and skill; less reliance on Muh Product, Muh Brand, and on centralized solutions.

We never needed them. They depend on us. We are the real thing. They are the illusion. We continue to Git Gud. They remain scrubs. Paul didn't break the Harkonnen on Arrakis in a day; it took years. We're already outlasting them, and we continue to live rent-free in their heads.

We have already won. It just takes time for a corpse that massive to finally run out of momentum and fall.

My Life As A Gamer: "Forgotten Ruin" Returns

The gang running the Old School D&D channel on Twitch and YouTube went on hiatus for a while and their streaming schedule got revised. Forgotten Ruin's tabletop RPG tie-in campaign is now streaming live on Wednesday afternoons, so this is the first new episode after the hiatus. Alas, no Nick Cole antics this time around, but he and Frank Mentzer should return some time down the road.

Now imagine if this campaign were wholly compliant with the Standard, because this campaign premise--put, in gaming terms, as the blending of D&D and Twilight 2000 or The Morrow Project--is one that would really come to life if it were done so. Palladium's RIFTS accepts this as viable right out of the gate, and those games can get this weird with ease. It wouldn't be hard to find other proper RPGs to do this with, and you can just role your own if you like (because that's how Palladium came to be).

Skim the campaign's previous sessions, and you'll see that a lot of Standard-compliant elements are present- including drop-in/drop-out play by others that are not regulars.

Yes, something things are missing, or rather are not put on screen or otherwise mentioned such as Patron-level actions and actors, but one could easily see that they can easily be addressed off-screen and only brought up if relevant to what's going on at the (virtual) table then and there. There isn't much in the way of Henchmen, but hirelings--NPCs under their command--are present from time to time as are NPC allies, and as this is the aforementioned blend of sources some shit is made up in terms of rules.

This is, at its heart, a wargame campaign. It's just run by guys that actually got shot at, so it's going to reflect their experience. What we see here is a subset of the overall participants in the campaign pursuing subgoals, and the emergent nature of it all is fantastic to behold.

The books are pretty good reads too.

The Business: Gamescom 2021 Shows The Industry Malaise

Gamescom 2021 is going on now. The Dorito Pope, Geoff Keighley, did his Opening Night Live showcase (complete with fake and gay awards) and while there were a few titles I'd like to check in on nothing leaped out at me. Well, no game did. Rather, what stood out was that Sabaton announced a new song and music video in a short segment; they got away with it due to World of Tanks being a partner in the video's production.

Hey, new Sabaton. I'm okay with this. Since we have another World War I album coming sooner than later, this will tide me over until it arrives.

However, I have to point out that it is not a good sign that the highlight of a videogame showcase is not a videogame at all. There were a lot of expansions, sequels, and other forms of brand-focused business decisions with a decided lack of creativity on display. This is not a showcase of an entertainment industry that is healthy and vibrant, but one that shows how badly an entire business segment has lost the plot.

Yesterday's XBox showcase was no better. Nothing that had the wholly-emergent explosion of organic interest that we saw 10, 20, or 30 years ago was present this year, continuing a trend of decline--if not collapse--that has been going on for at least a decade or so now. Less and less breakouts are coming, more and more also-rans and never-should-bees get on the showcase- be it PC, console, or mobile trash.

This is clearly a case of MBAs that can't stop shitting themselves in fear of a bad quarterly earnings report calling the shots, and as such they suck up venture capital and other financial resources in order to shore up their weak position in the industry; if they can control what gets made and distributed, they don't have to worry about bad financial reports.

The proof is in the indie scene--what we get of it, anyway--which produces far more good games than any other actor in videogaming, even accounting for the mountains of crap that gets published. Much like indie genre fiction, the stuff that people want is far more reliably found in indie games than in Big Gaming these days, and even the bigger corporations are catching on. For example, you'd never see Streets of Rage 4 or River City Girls if indie brawlers weren't a thing- and they are, just look at Steam's listings.

While AAA gaming remains obsessed with Frustrated Oscar productions, often influenced by Frustrated Novelists, indies remember that gaming is about gameplay first and foremost and all else is subordinate to that. It's why indies so often produce breakout hits like Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight, or Death Road to Canada while AAA has to rely on consistent PR pushes and influencer marketing. Even then they are consistently playing catch-up; you would never get new DOOM games if indie Boomer Shooters weren't breaking out.

And in recent weeks, Splitgate has been tearing it up while still it Beta; mixing Halo and Portal as a multiplayer arena shooter is very entertaining.

If you wanted to get into videogames, indie is your best bet and a small-but-focused project is your best option; Enter The Gungeon is a case study to examine in this respect (including the failed follow-ups), as that small-but-focused project broke out HUGE and helped put Devolver Digital on the map. Give good game? Get good business. Done.

If only the MBAs in AAA could remember that.

Narrative Warfare: To Become As Fremen

The way out from under the pozzing of our hobbies and culture is to remove what attracted the pozzed to it: the clout.

The clout derives in large part from its commercial appeal. Take that away, and the clout goes with it. Take away the cash and the clout and the major reason for why the pozzed moved in dissipates swiftly, taking the attention garnered with it. A lack of cash flow and its attendant lack of attention means there is no audience for the grand-standing virtue signallers to play before.

The result? Like the vapid whores they are, all but the most fanatical and pathetic will leave, following their easy clout farms and paypigs to greener pastures.

Consider, therefore, what I propose as the deliberate dessertification of a subculture.

• Cut out pozzed commercial entities from the scene whenever possible, starting with the money and attention.
• Cut out pozzed influencers and networks; link up and build clean parallels, w/ pozzed people purposefully pushed out.
• Cut out Pop Cult bullshit; focus time, money, and attention on teaching and honing hobbyist skill and acumen over product and consumerism.
• Establish and maintain a Standard, and push out what does not measure up with cold indifference to pleas otherwise- it is good to exclude what does not belong.

A hobby that has no commercial appeal and cannot be farmed for clout is poor ground for spreading the poz. It also tends to dissaude the disinterested, which is not a bad thing and in the long run creates a stronger body of better-skilled hobbyists.

Thus what remains is inhospitable to such people. Their psychologies cannot withstand it, so they inevitably seek to change it to suit them; upon such behavior manifesting, the move must be to push them out and keep them out permanently- as God cast Adam and Even forever from the Garden.

And thus, the hobby must forever remain an economic and social wasteland in their eyes. It must be like this for them.

And not this.

Or its more modern counterparts.

To again do for ourselves, without need for commercial interests paving the way for literal heretics preaching nihilism using every little thing--like our hobbies--as media to push them, is the goal. The tools and the skills are now in the hands of the common man to make, distribute, and maintain themselves indefinitely. Act on this.

My Life In Fandom: This Is How You Get Alternatives Before Normie Eyeballs

When folks say "I want solutions", this is the sort of thing they're talking about. Start with the complaint, transition to the alternative, and walk the Normie through the details. Commissar Garza isn't monomoniacal about the Stupid British Toy Company--just look at his channel--but he's being smart in using it to divert attention to a useful, practical, and immediately actionable alternative course of action that directly attacks both the problem and the trouble-maker.

This? This is the best of his videos doing this tactic. From here you can dig around for more information, including doing searches for that website he mentioned (which does exist), including asking around to see if anyone you can trust already has this set up if you don't want to bother doing so yourself. As for results?

Yeah, the up-front cost is worth it if you're a committed tabletop player. However--and this is where Normies should pay attention--this is more than a toy maker. With the right settings, files, and materials you can produce useful tools and parts for more everyday things. Need to replace that knob on your car's shifter? Done. Put a handle on your screwdriver? Done. Make a complete lower receiver for an AR-15 or a Glock 19 build? More tricky, but still done. (How do you think the manufacturers of Polymer80 kits do it?)

Pair this up with a home CNC milling machine like a Ghost Gunner and you're able to cull a lot of trips to Walmart, Home Depot, and the game store. Again, pricy up-front cost to set up but pays for itself quickly by reducing your productions costs to nearly nil.

The means are there to begin cutting out converged corporations. We need only to avail ourselves of them. We'll be better off for it.

The Business: A Major Preference Cascade Tell Is Here

How do you know when you see a Preference Cascade in action? When its biggest boosters jump ship.

CarBot is, like Asmongold, one of the long-running boosters of that Irvine-based subsidiary of Activision-Blizzard. Their parodies have had a long-standing audience, including within the company, such that there is an official mod of Starcraft based on the parodies done.

This is a big tell that the zeitgeist shifted. One can dismiss Asmongold easily as he is a Wrongthinker, but CarBot is A-OK and so to see him go is damning- especially when he not-so-affectionately mocks the company for allowing degenerate practices such as botting to wreck both the player's enjoyment and the game--and company's--internal economics.

Not that CarBot won't be just as much the Jester to FF14, but the affection formerly shown will now be applied here, and we'll see more of it down the road.

And yes, the smarter heads in both corporations pay attention to such things because they are reliable tells, tells now confirmed by available data, and we can safely conclude that--Cult convergence or no--that Irvine-based company isn't going to be what it is for much longer. Something's giving way, and what comes after the collapse cannot be guessed at this time (regardless of speculation).

All we know is that the collapse of the company's character has hollowed out the company's competency, and now everything else is cascading down- resulting in players fleeing the offerings for alternatives, with the MMO being the final pillar to plummet into the abyss and will take what remains of the company with it.

Collapse is a process. It starts within. It spirals outward unless arrested and reversed. It has not, so it consumes like a black hole until nothing remains.

And the real tragedy? I could not care less about its fate. Trash deserves to be removed with all the dispassion one has for scraping mud from one's shoes.

My Life As A Gamer: Geek Gab Talks The Joy of Wargaming

Count on this building upon Jeffro and Rick's appearances over the past two weeks, in addition to whatever else Jon Mollison has to say.

The big takeaway here is that Normies (a) play games to socialize and (b) playing according to the Standard is easier than anything else.

A Normie playing a game run Rules As Written has no worry that shit will not work exactly the same way this time as last time. He rolls his attacks the same way, makes Saves the same way (and under the same conditions), etc.- he doesn't have to worry about sudden jumps in difficulty because his expectations, now established, are not upended out of nowhere.

A Normie doesn't have to worry about the game suddenly changing because the Referee got new product that he just has to use. A Normie can just email his downtime moves to the Referee and then go out to dinner with his wife. A Normie can pop into a Discord call with an allied player for a few minutes while his son cuts up the venison they got from last weekend's deer hunt. A Normie can throw a confirmation text to the group while he waits for his wife to come out of the dressing rooms at the shop, and then go play online from his home office on a Wednesday evening after dinner- playing one of his characters while he finishes up a quarterly report the city's Rotary Club.

And at an actual table? He gets to socialize with some folks casually while delving into some mountain stronghold for a few hours, and during the break he DMs the Referee what one of his other characters intends to do with the treasure found last time.

Compare that to Fake D&D and its ilk.

Commit--like a job--to a more-or-less fixed group with a likewise fixed schedule? NOPE. Normies don't work for entertainment, and job-like rigidity of time is work. Normie fun is drop-in/drop-out pick-up play with short engagements with regard to in-person gatherings, realspace and virtual alike. (It's also why raiding in MMOs is considered "elitist".)

Rules that can change from session to session because of some stupid brainfart, crying Karen, or Pop Cult Idol command (via Muh Product)? NOPE. Normies required rock-solid consistency, and rules that change on a chaotic (or worse) basis--such as favortism--is none of that for Normies, so that drives them away. This means that violating expectations is so frequently taken poorly, often in the form of "Fuck This Shit, I'm Out", and it's not just in games that this is a thing. (Just ask the Devil Mouse and its subsidiaries.)

Proper gaming--that which meets the Standard--is nothing more than Poker Night with more fidly bits and a better Poker Face subgame that greatly influences the table game.

Once more Normies see it that way, watch the Preference Cascade kick off- and watch the "industry" panic and scramble to catch up.

My Life As A Gamer: When You Can Tell They Fear The Standard

Cirsova posted this elsewhere, and it was too good to not share.

Yeah, it's standard Motte and Bailey bullshit.

Be it Pundit's recent bad take, or those of the Death Cultists he opposses--and, for the record, sincerely and in good faith does so--this is exactly how their takes fall down when put against the Standard. The counters proffered are themselves Straw Man attacks, doubling the error, and revealing the underlying rot at the root.

The lack of rigor and discipline creates the environment for the cancerous growth of Death Cult sophistry and its socially-based centralization of control. It is a micro example of how the degradation of such character inevitably leads to this state of affairs every single time, and as it is in this hobby environment so it is everywhere else--fractal things are fractal--because the same inputs into the same process produces the same results every single time.

And if you think the Standard doesn't terrify them, look at the reaction it's already had: freakout reactions by terrified Cultists (Pop and Death).

By the tells you can know you're on the right path, and their balking at having a standard applied--and applied rigorously with consistent discipline--is telling indeed. I was not overstating it when I compared their psychology to that of rabbits or locusts, accustomed to no resistence and no scarcity, as they just move on when one verdent field is eaten to the root and they do not care about others preying on others so long as they can continue on their Dionysian existence.

Which is why the most predatory among them are the socially-adept manipulators, the clout-controllers, that Wormtongue their way into centralized control of things and gaslight whomever they can into going along with them.

If this is how the initial reaction to the Standard is, imagine how it will be when awareness gets to critical mass.

And it will.

Why?

You want a hot take? I have one for you: The Standard is the most Normie-friendly way to play tabletop RPGs that there ever was.

Rules as-written? That's exactly what Normies expect. That, right there, does the heavy lifting; the rest is the cognitive load distribution between Player and Referee, which is light on the Player especially as he learns how to play.

Status Quo is the enemy? Gives the Normie his dream of being a player in the world, something that otherwise is the realm of history or fiction.

Multiple characters per player? Lets the Normie play all parts of the game, as he's not locked into any one piece for the long haul.

Patron play? Again, plays to Normie dreams to be someone that matters, and lets him stay in the game when he can't be at the table by playing via email, text, Discord, etc.

You get the idea.

Now compare that to how the Cultists--Pop and Death--want Normies to play: make long-term standing commitments, have no frame of reference for taking actions, their actions have no impact and have no consequences, and--as Rawle Nyanzi has repeatedly said (as have I)--produces gameplay experiences identical to, but strictly inferior to, videogames across the board.

Why would any Normie that knows the difference choose to play Suck RPGs when proper play not only gives them the gameplay experience that they expect, but does so better than every alternative in every other medium as well as within the tabletop RPG niche?

Hammer this. The Standard is wholly superior, and as it reaches critical mass the preference cascade will prove it.

My Life As A Gamer: Yes, Even Horror Games Meet The Standard

"But Horror games don't meet your Standard!"

You're fucking retarded if you believe that.

For all the talk of mood, dread, and other narrative language the fact remains that there are proper RPGs that are acclaimed horror classics (and some others that are still solid games) such as Chill, Call of Cthulhu, Beyond The Supernatural, and All Flesh Must Be Eaten.

All of these games run into the same elements that Dungeons & Dragons does: mandatory downtime for travel, recovery, and research/development. The further back into the past you go, or the more ruined the environment becomes, the greater that downtime will be due to lack of resources and infrastructure that would otherwise relieve such a burden.

The reason is simple. When you strip away trappings of genre tropes (and their expectations), what you have is readily apparent: you are actually running either survival scenarios or para-military/intelligence operations, with the difference being that the opposing force is superhuman if not supernatural. Yes, even the more investigative play scenarios are really intelligence operations, just without the Bondisms.

And what are these? Wargame scenarios.

From there, you can see how readily horror gaming conforms to the Standard when applied and an actual campaign quickly arises- especially in ruined environment scenarios that are typical of zombie games that last more than one or two (often tournament-style) sessions at the table. (Those turn into Gamma World with extra steps in practice.) One set of investigators/survivors/operatives is en route to deal with this monster, while another set are recovering from their last ecounter, and a third set are split up doing legwork before going after a third threat.

That's a wargame paradigm, folks. Don't let the tweed jackets, out of shape characters, and lack of useful intelligence fool you. You are playing a game where all of the elements of the Standard not only apply, but tease out the full power of the medium when doing so. Some--many, depending on the game--get eaten or worse. Some escape. Some prevail. Some end up in Uncle Bob's Home For Future Nicolas Cage roles. It's still a wargame.

This is because "horror" is not a genre to itself; it's a trope package you add on to something else, a lens that tells the audience to adjust their expectations, and it does not require either the supernatural or the superhuman to achieve- merely a gross disparity of power between the contesting parties and both the desire of the more powerful to prey upon the weaker as well as the inability of the weaker party to easily escape.

"But actually-"

No, no "but"s. It is a wargame. It runs like one, it plays like one, it is one- it conforms to the Standard when used properly, so it is. Simple as.

My Life As A Gamer: Of Course Traveller Meets The Standard

I've mentioned in a recent post how other tabletop RPGs also conform to this standard. Let's talk about one of them: Traveller.

• The rules are ridiculously easy to grasp, especially in its Classic iteration, even if some subsystems use advanced math beyond most Normie expertise so there is neither a need nor an excuse for not using them as-written.
• Mandatory travel time and downtime for production and recovery forces the use of multiple characters per player when used with strict 1:1 timekeeping.
• It is impossible to not have (and experience) consequences for one's actions, or those of others.
• Having multiple players playing multiple characters at both personal and Patron levels of play instantly make a campaign come alive.

It is long said that Traveller has only two models: Merchant and Mercenary. This becomes false as soon as you conform to the standard and play appropriately. All of the things said of playing Dungeons & Dragons applies here in their entirety.

As there is no One True Party, there is no need to guarantee access to any item that permits interplanetary or interstellar travel. Players are encouraged to establish and maintain retinues of Henchmen and Hirelings, even if they are not called such, because those friendly NPCs are useful to have around. Players are encouraged from the start to have multiple characters per player due to mandatory downtime taking characters out of the action for days, weeks, even months at a time. This also means that players are free to get directly into Patron level play to make good use of that downtime.

Traveller really is a fantastic not-D&D example of a proper RPG that shows its wargame roots with no shame whatsover, and thanks to the passing of time it's even easier to get Normies to grok its spaceship combat rules due to excellent TV properties that showed it: Babylon 5 (more with the Earth Alliance than the aliens), the Battlestar Galactica remake series, and The Expanse. Add on the supplements that dig deeper into specific subsets of the rules and setting, and you get a true Space Opera game with none of the D&D baggage.

A lot of the more playable later games, like BattleTech, build on the ludological foundation of Traveller as what makes those games playable is not different from what makes Traveller playable. The specific rulesets are different, but the methodology of play remains the same, albeit with often a narrowing of likely player interest in terms of what types of characters to play.

N.B.: Rick Stump has his version of the language defining the Standard here. You may want to keep up with his blog too.

My Life As A Gamer: The Standard Is The Gate

Okay, bad to RPG talk.

We now have a standard. Summarized.

• Rules AS WRITTEN.
• Multiple characters per player.
• One-to-One time w/ Strict Timekeeping.
• Status Quo is the Enemy.
• Actions have consquences.
• The game doesn't stay at the table.

The rules provide the structure for play. They are the manual for participants to refer to for ordinary operation of the game. The mechanics, therefore, define the conceptual spaces wherein play occurs as well as the liminal spaces between them; you can't have thresholds unless you have spaces to keep separate. This is true in physical space as it is in conceptual space.

If you do not understand how the machine works and why the machine works as it does--how and why the game as-written plays--then you have no business making criticisms about it because you don't know what you are talking about. You don't know what you're talking about because you did not conform to the standard, so you have no basis for comparison. You are no different than some cunt whining about guns, cars, or games despite not knowing the first thing about them- and just as we dismiss them out of hand, so do we dimiss you as incompetent to participate in the discussion.

And there is no greater undermining of one's own claims of relevance or competence than to brag about how you flout that standard.

Holding to a position contrary to the standard is to embrace a form of the Post-Modernity heresy and error that is "Death of the Author" and its weaponization: "Reality Is As We Decree". Indeed it is how the Death Cultists got their way into the hobby scene, how they performed their entryism, and wielding Muh Diversity as a moral argument they leveraged "No rules are actually rules" into "Make it Diverse, Bigot, or we cancel and unperson you" because the lack of adherance to the standard allowed no viable counterattack to their moral position.

The standard exists for more than just to give order to a campaign. It exists to give order--itself based on a moral order, one superior to the Cult--to a hobbyist subculture, one that ordinarily is inhospitable to Death Cults because they can't readily browbeat compliance to their moral vision.

Let those that cannot accept this standard meet their fate, for this standard is tried, tested, and proven against all would-be successors. It needs no massive consumerist industry. It needs no big presence in popular media. It needs no influx of capital. It is decentralized. It is decapitalized. It is, at its heart, a discipline in its practical form and it is in the cultivation of that discipline that its fruits are grown. Those unwilling to conform have no right to its benefits, and we are right to exclude them.

Measure up, or move out.

My Life As A Historian: Sabaton History Talks Judas Priest in "Gods of Heavy Metal"

We take this break from me talking about RPGs to talk about the history of heavy metal from that collaboration of historian collective Time Ghost and Swedish heavy metal band Sabaton, and today they're talking about Judas Priest.

First, let me link you Razorfist's excellent Metal Mythos on the band from 2017.

Second, are we at all surprised that this band's story follows the very common Rock and Roll narrative? More-or-less working class roots, grind away at the local scene and get a following but due to pop culture trends aren't there yet, are in the perfect position when the zeitgeist changes to get noticed by a major label, explode with the vigor of youth backed by said label's finances, take up booze and drugs to cope with the relentless stress to produce commercial product and satisfy the label on top of their audience, get caught up when the labels decide to fire the current trend/genre for cheaper new talent (the metal-grunge shift), and almost collapse entirely coping with it.

Only, in Priest's case, they came back as strong as ever. Not quite the survival story of Iron Maiden, but a fantastic one nonetheless. They will be missed when the time comes, whatever else their collective and personal faults, as they were a band that was all about tenacity in adversity and that is admirable whatever else may be said about them.

And no one can sing like Halford can, not even Geoff Tate of Queenryche at his peak (and he came very close). Much like Heart's Ann Wilson, Halford is a singular singer and will be remembered long after he is gone- and with him Judas Priest.

Influnces being the oft-indirect things that they are, don't be surprise if you're a young man now to see Judas Priest show up in unexpected places down the road--like, say, in a popular manga series or two--before you follow Halford beyond this life.

My Life As A Gamer: Now To Sift Wheat From Chaff, & Toss The Chaff

Now that we have the definition of what a proper RPG is, we can start sorting games that call themselves "RPGs" using this as a rubric.

We can, in other words, start excluding those that do not belong.

A list of RPGs will include the following:

• All TSR editions of Dungeons & Dragons, with the pinnacle being Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1st Edition.
• All Palladium Books games, with varying degrees of difficulty in execution. Yes, even their Robotech editions.
• Call of Cthulhu (especially in its classic editions)
• Traveller (especially Classic)
• Mechwarrior (a.k.a. A Time of War, the RPG for BattleTech)
• Shadowrun in all its editions.
• Cyberpunk in all its editions.
• Mekton in all its editions (despite appearances to the contrary).
• Champions, and by extension all HERO System editions.
• The World of Synnibarr, in all its editions, proving that even terrible RPGs can be real ones.
• Amber and all its derivatives, proving that I was not the only one to catch on to the Diplomacy angle (and Wujick did it decades ago) as well as how even the most fantastic of settings can nontheless conform to the standards of a wargame. (Throne War is just Diplomacy with extra steps.)

Storygaming, on the other hand, is right out- exactly as the RPG Pundit said years ago. And it is out for the reason Pundit gave: they are not real RPGs. They do not conform to the standard, so they are not to be counted as such even--especially--if it is insisted upon because saying so does not make it so. That is nothing more than Point Deer Make Horse in action.

Insist on this defintion. Insist on sorting games in and out by this rubric. Insist on calling things what they are. Insist on labeling things as they are. Carry on accordingly. Show naught but cold indifference to reactions, turning deaf ears to gainsayers, and as the bad actors take off their masks sort them out with the trash they push and silently carry on without them. Stop giving them money, time, and attention; all of that is better spent enjoying your hobby of playing RPGs with other people that also like to play RPGs.

They can live with outrage and complaints. They cannot survive without attention, formalized as money, which is why cold indifference and silence works better than anything else. They are not us; be inhospitable to them, keep your gate shut, and they will inevitably leave- one way or another.

My Life In Fandom: Geek Gab Talks With OG Rick Stump

This week, Daddy Warpig and Dorrinal talk with one of the Original Gamers, Rick Stump of Don't Split The Party.

My Life As A Gamer: The Restoration of The Wargame Roots of RPGs Also Restores The Gates

The Death Cultists afflicing our cultural pursuits are not geniuses. Their dogma does not promote anything but a locust or rabbit psychology, since they are a status-obsessed (and thus status-anxious) lot where the top status people centrally control resources via dispensation of favors for those below them in status. They move into something they can consume for clout and signal for status, strip it bare like prey to a pirahna, and move on as the clout wanes in favor of fresh meat.

Tabletop RPGs have clout far outsized their actual presence in the wilder culture because of the number of influential videogame designers, musicians, novelists, comic book authors, actors, directors, and producers who played them in their youths. It took about 25-30 years, but today that influence cannot be denied and is not by any serious obseveror of popular culture.

However, the convergence of the medium into the hands of the Death Cult presupposes a paradigm of play that runs contrary to how the medium actually works. So long as this error persists, the convergence will also; the end goal of the Cultist presence is to centrally control the medium, to dictate what is and not as well as who can or cannot, much as their fellow travelers in banking and employment seek to do likewise in those realms.

The true gameplay paradigm completely countermands this.

The wargame roots of the tabletop RPG medium compels a decentralized paradigm of organization and play, where each campaign stands alone separate and distinct from all others, and neither needs nor wants the intrusion of external actors in its affairs- not what is allowed to be played, or who may (or may not) participate.

Allow me to specify:

• Death Cultists presume success in all that they do. They truly believe that so long as they go through the motions--as if it were a ritual, because they see it as such--they are not only guaranteed effortless success, but that they are entitled to it. It is a Cargo Cult mentality at work.
• The wargame paradigm completely upends this. Success is the result of careful preparation, diligent and consistent practice, and well-timed action. It is, in effect, work. Stupid characters and stupid players--and Cultists are often the latter--routinely end up rooked, mooked, and cooked by smarter competitors. To a Death Cultist, this is unacceptable; they Did The Thing, so any result other than Total Victory is not only an error but a criminal act of theft in their eyes and they throw tantrums accordingly.
• The ability of Death Cultists to use social pressure to browbeat compliance works only in environments where they can exercise power via control over necessary functions or resouces. The wargame paradigm upends this by removing that centralized control; they can't control what you can play, who can play, how you can play, where you can play, or when you can play.
• Asychronus play and Patron play further removes Cultist centralization by removing One True Party presumptions (and with it social browbeating access) as well as making it possible to play anonymously; it was then, and moreso now, possible to play with (or against) people you never even meet or even know to exist. Cultists cannot unperson those they can neither see nor hear.
• Having players drive gameplay and interacting to create emergent scenarions, ala Diplomacy, removes Cultist presuming of We Against Them by permitting player-versus-player interactions. Couple this with never knowing whom you play against, and the means for Cultists to impose dogma wither.
• The lack of need a Consumerist paradigm of play, and the lack of Muh Officialdum, means there is no status to signal by playing the game conspiciously or by displaying product in a video or a livestream- especially if you can play by sending the DM a text while you wait at Five Guys for your order or for your girlfriend to finish getting ready for your date night on the town.
• If there is no means to effectively enforce Cultist dogma on wrongthinkers, then gameplay will not reflect Cultist dogma and when the tantrums don't have their desired effect (and you can't unperson others to indirectly attack the DM), the Culists will leave the campaign and may even advertise it for the DM by endlessly bitching about it on social media.

The gates to the hobby are built upon a foundation whose environment is inhospitable to those possessed of the psychology of rabbits and locusts. If there is no status to signal, no clout to cultivate, and no mechanism by which to impose central control over the hobbyist scene, then Death Cultists will flee in favor of more favorable climates with ample fodder to satisfy their aberrant psychologies.

Return to the wargame roots, be as uncaring and inhospitable as the deep deserts of Arrakis, and watch the Death Cultists flee as they have no Sadukar to save them. Become the Graveyard of Empires for cultural despoilers, and enjoy grinding them down to dust.

My Life As A Gamer: How Asychronus Time Restores RPGs To Their Wargame Roots

Last time this week I'll build out on what Jeffro rediscovered.

This time it's about how what Jeffro rediscovered results in a major (for most) paradigm shift: time in the campaign. Specifically, there is an asyhcronus aspect to it.

The common player thinks that (a) time only passes at the table and (b) time only passes specific to what the players' characters do. There is synchronicity between what players do at the table and what time passses in the campaign. Because there is One True Party, there is only one actor in the campaign, so only one agenda matters for all intents and purposes- such that having Non-Player Character antagonists act independently of them is too often perceived as cheating on the part of the Dungeon Master.

Proper wargame play does away with this. Therefore proper RPG play also does away with this. The reason is obvious: there are multiple actors purusing separate and distinct agendas, each of which may compliment or conflict with one or more others, and not all of them are present at the table.

By breaking that long-held expectation of how time works and restoring the wargame norm, which is what strict timekeeping permits and encourages, the magic of the medium opens up. You can now do things like this:

• Your Fighter is training; he's out of action for six weeks. Mark that off on the campaign calendar.
• Your Magic-User is researching Stoneskin, taking him out of action for five months and needing several thousands of GP value in perfect diamonds before it's over.
• Your Assassin is trailing an Orc warlord, feeding information via a patron to another player's Ranger, because the warlord is in thrall to an Illusionist that is the actual target for your assassin.
• Your Dwarf is an armorsmith trying to piece together the materials to make Mithril Plate Mail, so you're waiting on a Sage NPC to report on an inquiry about legendary mithril mines.
• You son's Ranger wants to go after that Orc Warlord, so he has to track the warlord using intelligence provided and will be on the trail for a week or more.
• Uncle Bob's running an Open Table to delve into the crypts that your Cleric unearthed a month ago on Saturday, so you get the wife and kids together to roll up a fresh group to show up as a unit playing under your Cleric's patronage.

Various characters will be in and out of availability at the table, and time away from the table passing at real-time rates means that a month on the water is a month in real life, so campaign actions advance independently of one another. They may or may not have effects on one another right away, but they will sooner or later. As a result yet another norm of Fake D&D gets broken: there is no need to presume that players can't work at cross purposes.

The DM has the burden of tracking all of this, due to the need for timekeeping, but that's really just a matter of plotting things on a calender and putting trackers down to remind relevant parties when the timer expires. If there is a need to track for possible complications--random encounters, for example--then those can be checked as required by the DM and he sends notifications as necessary.

The end result is that the campaign creates the illusion of being an ongoing series of events, far more like the pulp adventures Gary and Dave drew from--or their real-life historical counterparts--than anything like (badly misunderstood and copied) Tolkien.

Which leads to one other major change, the one most damaging to the commercial viability of the hobby business: the irrelevance of official settings and modules.

Because this can be done entirely as needed, the campaign need only start with one location to base operations from and a surrounding area to explore and adventure within; this is the empty sheet of hex paper with one hex marked "Town" and only the six surrounding hexes shown (or at all fleshed out). There is no need to make more than what is required when it is required, and information gained by one (or more) characters need not be shared with others- it can be concealed, deliberately or otherwise.

Thus did asynchronicity of time also become asymmetry of knowledge, both of which become more complex over time as actors make their moves and countermoves, rising and falling as the interactions are adjudicated.

None of this is in the Fake D&D that Stupid Seattle Clout Farmers want you to believe is what RPGs are. They want a paradigm of play that consoles and PCs do better, faster, and easier that they can centrally control. The actual RPG medium is inherently decentralized and focused on the users--the hobbyists themselves--and as such neither wants nor needs the commercial end further than necessary, and thanks to advances in production and distribution that is now reduced to zero.

We can--and should--save the hobby by tanking the "industry".

Restoring RPGs to their hobbyist wargame roots will do exactly that, and the side effect of driving out clout-chasing Death Cultists by depriving them of the source of that clout is hardly one to ignore.

My Life As A Gamer: How Patron-Level Play Restores RPGs To Their Wargame Roots

Continuing this talk of Jeffro's rediscoveries, today I'll focus on Patron-level Play.

The game presumes that a character will become sufficiently influential so as to become a patron to others. Most people conflate this with Name Level and Domain Play, but this actually begins much earlier with characters taking on Henchmen, and it becomes obvious that this is intended to be available from the beginning as soon as timekeeping is properly executed.

A character cannot be everywhere at once. As noted yesterday, ensuring that time actually matters means that someone will want or need something done that they are either unable or unwilling to do themselves. That creates an opportunity for gameplay right there, depending on what the character in question wants or needs to delegate.

In terms more familiar to too many players, a character can both give and receive quests. Those delegating tasks to another is the Patron. Those agreeing to execute those quests on the Patron's behalf are the Clients, and they will want compensation for their time and effort. If you recognize this as the basis of mercenary or itinerant work, which is the backbone of mediocre Pink Slime fantasy, good for you.

There is more to this. As regular fantasy gamers will expect, there is an obvious place for Non-Player Characters to be patrons great and small. However, these are not mere bots that dispense makework and pay out like you're working a job. They are full-fledged actors in the campaign, with ambitions and objectives of their own, and therefore that NPC Ogre chieftain can be delegated by the Dungeon Master to a player to run.

Now we see another way that the wargame roots reveal themselves. Players playing at the Patron level do not need to be at the table. They can send direct messages to the DM, engaging in defacto Play-By-Mail double-blind wargame play, which allows for players that have to be absent to maintain participate in the campaign. It also allows for players to directly interact--at DM discretion--either to collaborate or to conflict. If you recognize this as Diplomacy, then you're on the right track.

The DM no longer needs to directly inject gameplay scenarios into the game once players, by one route or another, engage Patron-level play. All he needs to do is to work out the effects, the consequences, of an action and report those back. Players take the wheel and begin driving play, soon working both with and against one another, expanding the scope and scale of play as they go in manners that the DM alone would not or could not do.

Let's put this into a typical example:

• Mary recently had a baby. She cannot be at the table for a while. Mary's most successful character is a Magic-User. Her MU is 9th level, and she wants to start driving major expansion of the campaign by creating a teleportation network. This will require, first and foremost, a secure headquarters from which to run this operation. Mary takes the time while the baby's down for a nap to get on her phone, open up Discord, and drop a line to the DM about this course of action.
• The DM gets Mary's message. He reports to her the steps her MU will need to take to make this happen, starting with establishing that headquarters, which will require a tower and some land around it so her MU can conduct research and development without external intervention.
• After some back-and-forth, Mary delegates what she can to her Henchmen; this results in the revelation of an Ogre tribe contesting the area Mary's MU wants.
• The Ogre tribe is assigned to George, who's aboard an aircraft carrier out in the Pacific. George writes his moves to the DM, who adjudicates the two players' orders and reports results. Mary decides to put forth a bounty on the Ogres, while George decides the Ogres will call upon their god for aid.
• Dick hears from a campaign email about the bounty, but his Figher is laid up so he takes his Thief and calls up Larry and Dave. They drop the DM a line about pursuing this bounty, so they make a table appointment and the scenario is played out with their characters and the collected Henchmen and hirelings to tackle it. The DM reports the results to Mary and George, who then email the DM to request parley with the other party (i.e. directly intereact).
• Dick's Thief levels up from the bounty's proceeds, so he takes his remaining funds to commission some new gear while his Thief trains and his Fighter comes off the bench. In the meantime, Dick takes over running an Elf warband that appeared on the fringes recently, prompting Larry and Dave to get their Cleric and Druid duo together to go open relations.

You can see how things snowball quickly, once the players stop waiting for things to happen and start making things happen, and people that aren't even able to be at the table can get and stay involved in the campaign by resorting to Patron-level play. It requires that the DM remain available to contact, which is why I say that something like an email address or a Discord server should be made available, but once this wargaming style of play begins the DM ceases to need any external input for gameplay- no modules, no homebrews, nothing at all.

Let me say that again: There is no need to buy modules or anything else once this gets going. The players emergently generate gameplay scenarios without trying.

Is this not something complete different than what you are used to? This is proper RPG gameplay, and if you think this is confined to Dungeons & Dragons, then you are mistaken. You can readily apply this to Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, RIFTS, Champions, and a whole lot more. Tabletop RPGs are a wargame medium at its heart, and once you see this you won't unsee it.

And the more players you have in the campaign, the sooner this dynamic takes off and quickly reveals how fractal it is. The manuevers of high-level characters will open up opportunities for lower-level ones, and the opportunities exist for lower-level characters to aid or hinder higher-level ones depending on what tasks are delegated. (Cleric needs stone for a castle? Your evil Fighter, despite being 1st level, can mess that up by raiding the quarry.)

Each campaign quickly acquires its unique quality due to this dynamic playing out, and as such this is where the magic begins to happen. You can't replicate this with MMOs--not even EVE Online, though it gets close--and Pink Slime fantasy doesn't even try. This is unique to tabletop RPGs, but it is not commercially viable, which is why it is suppressed.

My Life As A Gamer: How Timekeeping Restores RPGs To Their Wargame Roots

Again, we're talking Jeffro's rediscoveries.

This time, we're focusing on the timekeeping. A lot of the older D&D editions have mandated downtime for specific activites, starting with actually leveling up. Let's look over some of the usual ones. A competent Dungeon Master can and will get a lot out of ensuring that this is respected in terms of time and other logistics.

• Leveling: AD&D 1st Edition in particular has a hard-coded requirement of both time and treasure in addition to the Experience Point total to level up. This is time measured in weeks, not days or hours, during which that character cannot do anything else. Until that time is taken, and the gold price rendered, that character does not level up and his XP is frozen in place. As gaining XP is solely driven by recovering of treasure, this is the primary driver of play right here.
• Magic Research: A spellcaster seeking to create a new spell, or to recreate a known spell that cannot be gained otherwise, requires weeks or months of time during which he cannot do anything else. This also involves signficant monetary costs in coin in addition to any specific material component costs.
• Item Creation: A crafter will be out of action for anything else while spending the weeks or months creating (or repairing) the item in question. Be it making a new set of Elfin Chain Mail or creating a Staff of the Magi, the need for rendering coin, materials, and time remains consistent.
• Injury/Disease: Clerics and Druids are not 100% reliable remedies. They can be unavailable, unable, or unwilling to remedy a character's injuries or afflictions. Therefore such characters much resort to mundane treatment to recover from wounds, injuries, and diseases. This recovery also puts a character out of action for days, weeks, even months as he can do nothing else in terms of gameplay. He ususally renders coin and other compensation to ensure swift recovery.
• Building a Stronghold: While most think of this as being what you do at Name Level, this can be done as soon as a character has the means to do so. This too will take weeks, months, even years depending on the scale and scope of the project. (A proper castle will take years.)
• Travel: This is not a MMORPG. Travel time is not instant. A proper DM can and will check for random encounters while en route, even for a well-patrolled and maintained route, but even going from place to place can take days or more. Remember that teleportation magic requires Name Level spellcasters, and those characters are not going to be that common.

Now put downtime to realtime at a 1:1 ratio. One real day is one campaign day. Now this becomes easily playable.

The one objection to enforcing this is the incorrect presumption that a player cannot play while the character is out of action. No such rule exists.

The player in question not only should play another character, he should be prepared to do so. This is one of the reasons for having Henchmen, as one can be played during the interim. There is also the option of just having alternative characters to take up whenever necessary or desired, assuming they are available.

The result? You have multiple characters per player, each doing different things, and working at cross-purposes is not forbidden. This is a feature, not a bug.

Campaigns soon come to have players playing multiple characters, each pursuing different goals and agendas, whose actions easily generate plenty of scenarios to play out due to the necessary consquences that those pursuits have on others.

While Gary and Dave (and their peers) would have campaigns with a dozen or more players, each doing things with multiple characters, this effect can be had with just a handful of players. Each player will be asking questions of the DM, and the DM will be informing players of how much time this action takes, or that one will take, or what needs to be done before the action in question could be done, etc. and thus this contributes to the game continuing while away from the table.

There is no need to spend time at the table on logistics and certain strategic actions when they can be addressed while away from the table, monitored accordingly, and adjudicated thusly before play resumes at the table for that character. Drop the DM a line, say "I want my Fighter to level up" and get back "It will take your Fighter 12 weeks to complete training, and cost him 15K GP." Play someone else at the table for three months in the meantime, even if it means making a new 1st level character.

Do you see the wargame roots now? Timekeeping makes logistics matter, forces players away from One True Party insanity, and generates emergent gameplay.

This also means no player should get that attached to any character. They come, they strive, they live, they die and hopefully they leave their mark before they are gone. A high-level character, and successful strivers, can swiftly become patrons to other characters due to being unable to handle matters themselves; they need things done while they focus on a more important task at hand. This quickly turns fractal, and we'll talk more on that tomorrow.

My Life As A Gamer: Putting Jeffro's Rediscoveries Together

Over the weekend, Jeffro Johnson appeared on Geek Gab to talk about his discovery of how D&D is meant to be played. This came about because he sat down with the rules, read them for comprehension, and implemented them as-written to see how the machine of the game's design actually worked in operation. No House Rules, no tinkering. Contrary to many, AD&D 1st Edition actually works as intended and as stated when you do so.

In short, what he found is that AD&D--and, by extention, all RPGs--are really wargames and have to be approached as such to achieve the promised results.

The key is what he's been talking about recently, which is the use of strict timekeeping--especially time away from the table--coupled with multiple PCs per player and the involvement of players in manners other than being at the table.

This works, summarized, as follows:

• One Real Life Day = One Campaign Day. No exceptions. Yes, even if "We're deep in the dungeon!" is where play at the table ends; this is the first hurdle most people to overcome, and they will balk if you don't make it crystal clear that this is how it is done.
• Play Continues Away From The Table. Back in the day this would be phone calls, casual talk away from the table over the week, snail mail correspondance (Play-By-Mail), and so on. Today you have email, Discord, Skype, text messages on multiple platforms, voicemail, and much more; a Discord server alone would be sufficient for most players now.
• Domain-Level Play Is Instantly Accessible. Jeffro calls this "Patron-level", and he's not wrong in his choice of terms as that is what Domain-level characters become, but this also includes NPCs that can perform the same functions. This is how those that want to participate in a campaign can do so without needing to be at the table. This is where a lot of AD&D classes actually shine, and where the wargame roots really shine through.
• Asychronus Gameplay Arises, Promoting Emergent Play. Bob the Fighter gets wrecked and retreats to town. He's out of action for a month to recover. Dick swaps to Harry the Thief if he wants to keep playing while Bob is out of action.

  Meanwhile, Jane can't be at the table because she's got a new baby, but her Magic-User is 9th level and wants to clear out some space to set up her MU's tower so she logs into Discord and drops a private message to the Dungeon Master.

  This turns into her playing the domain game, which gives Dick a shot to level up Harry due to Jane's MU needing to hire scouts and Tom--whose's deployed in Iraq--gets to run the Ogre chieftain who's put under threat by Jane's MU in various PBM wargame scenarios.

  This also means that logistics, aging, and other long-term matters actually come to the fore and matter in play.

• Players Entertain The DM. The DM need only breathe life into the campaign at the beginning. He doesn't need a published setting; he can start with a blank sheet of hex paper, fill in just one hex as "Town" and the surrounding hexes of wilderness, and GO.

  Tell the players explicitly that they need to get out there and look for stuff if they want it, and they will begin to drive events. The map doesn't expand until the players push the boundaries. The scope doesn't expand until the players widen it.

  However, because players are on different levels of play, what goes on at the Patron level shapes the field of individual PCs. e.g. Jane's MU completing the tower and establishing control of that territory means that newer PCs now have a steady source of work from Jane's MU because she will constantly need components and can't do it all herself.

  Power relations will shift, and Tom's Ogre tribe will change to conform to the new conditions one way or another- and all of this, being done by players, allows the DM to remain aloof, indifferent, and thus impartial in his adjudications.

I'll do what I can to explain this in more Normie-friendly terms going forward, because I think Jeffro hit upon how to (a) save the hobby from SJWs, (b) purge the pozzed actors (both social and commercial), (c) restore the genre and the hobby to its roots- roots that are far more Normie-friendly than you might think. This is why I say that we need to stop thinking in terms of "D&D", but instead in terms of "Greyhawk", "Waterdeep", "Tekumel", and "Trollopolus" because it is the campaign--and I mean that as one speaks of military and political campaigns--that matters and not the brand of the ruleset.

My Life In Fandom: Discotek Media Announced "Gunbuster" & More

Discotek Media announced a slate of new releases and project updates the other day. This Tweet is the start of that thread, which I shall summarize below.

Gunbuster!

On Blu-ray!

Japanese with English subtitles.

Plus we are doing a brand new English dub with our friends at @SoundCadence.

We're announcing this a bit early, look forward to more in the future! pic.twitter.com/gLYUvqyySH

— 💿Discotek Media is at Otakon! (@discotekmedia) August 7, 2021

Summary:

• Machine Robo: Revenge of Chronus: "An English subbed release for the first time! This also includes the Leina Stol in Wolf Sword Legend & Lightning Trap: Leina & Laika OVAs. This is another one with a good set of extras." All 47 episodes on Blu-Ray, in SD-BD, early 2022.
• July releases (i.e. out already): Mahoraba, City Hunter 2 Set 1, Daimos, Black Rock Shooter, & Lupin the Third: Return of Pycal
• August releases (i.e. NOW): Kenichi Season 1, Mitchiro Neko, Daltanious, Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics Season 2, & Lupin the Third Part 3.
• September releases: Super-Dimension Century Orguss, Braiger, Case Closed: The Darkest Nightmare, City Hunter 2 Set 2, Fatal Fury OVAs.
• October releases: Shaman King (English dubbed), Sgt. Frog Season 1, Lupin the Third Part 5, Hajime no Ippo Collection 3, City Hunter: The Complete 1st Series
• Robot Carnival coming out on 4K HD
• Steady work is being done on the Project A-ko Blu-Ray.
• Yoroiden Samurai Troopers (a.k.a. Ronin Warriors) is coming out on Blu-Ray. "The TV series & all 3 OVA series! The entire Ronin Warriors dub has been newly synced to the gorgeous remaster! And it is coming this year!" Yes, both the dub and the sub are on these discs, so you can watch like you did when RW was on daytime TV or you can watch the original material to see how much better (or worse) it was.
• They're expanding their Tokukatsu stuff also.
• They're releasing Honey Flash: The Live. BIG deal, first Blu-Ray release ever.

Discotek continues to show that they respect their customers, know what they want, and are willing to give it to them. I have yet to be disappointed by Discotek's releases, so I put them with Sentai Filmworks in the group of Western middlemen that aren't utter pieces of shit (unlike Funimation, Crunchyroll, and Netflix) and thus I have no problems buying from them when I can afford it- and goddamn is that an issue because Blu-Rays of anime are not cheap.

Yes, I've gone and added a bunch of these to my anime Wish List at Amazon; my birthday is just about two months away, so I'm getting them in order for that and Christmas.

And with Super Robot Wars 30 including classic Super Robot teams like Combattler V and Voltes V, now is the time to snag those Blu-Rays from Discotek before they go out of print again.

My Life In Fandom: Jeffro Johnson Talks How To Get Your RPG Groove Back on "Geek Gab"!

This week on Geek Gab, Jeffro Johnson returns to the show to discuss how he single-handedly rediscovered the original gameplay paradigm for tabletop RPGs. I expect that even Daddy Warpig will cut his rant short so Jeffro can get maximum airtime, so anticipated is this week's episode of the show. I'll be there, and you should be too. See you in the chat.

Narrative Warfare: The End of Hollywood Capes & Institutional Incompetence

Razorfist cut his rant about the inevitable fall of Hollywood cape films.

First, he's not wrong. Hollywood consumes genres over roughly 10-20 year cycles. That goes longer depending on source material, quality of adaptations, quality of execution, and cultural conditions creating demand therefore. There isn't that much good source material--especially now--when compared to Film Noir, Westerns, War, or Spy/Caper films. The execution has only been good consistently in the MCU (until now), and the conditions for capes is already shifting away from promoting the demand. That Endgame did prove to be prophetic was obvious to anyone familiar with how the Hellmouth works.

Second, while this is a typical Hollywood genre cycle, this factors into the larger decline of the West brought about by Death Cult convergence and its irrational incompetence. There should be another major genre waiting in the wings to break out and keep the business rolling, but there isn't because the institional convergence into the hands of said cult results in the promotion of incompetent cult loyalists that cannot even put out propaganda that people want to watch or read.

The proof of this is the overwhelming success of non-converged mainstream media that otherwise would be dismissed as terminally stupid--e.g. Pratt's Tommorrow War--merely by being sincere entertainment works with non-Death Cult narratives as well as media from non-converged rivals to Hollywood such as Japan, Russia, India, and even (some may say especially) China. Then there is the independent scene in the West, which is where dissidents can and do thrive if they can find an audience.

Film, television, comics, novels- all of them are seeing this happen, starting first with more online-savvy cohorts and spreading out to Normies over time. Demon Slayer fits this model very well, as both its film/TV and its comic versions utterly dominate Death Cult alternatives wherever it can be had.

This cannot be going unnoticed by the Death Cultists in senior management across the industry. What can be going on is stupefication over how and why--it runs contrary to their narrative--and thus heretofore ineffectual or nonexistent attempts to thwart this threat to their domination. Once something not just non-Death Cult, but explicitly anti-Death Cult comes to their attention we can expect an apopletic response out of these converged institutions.

As I said previously, the Death Cult must have a monopoly on the narrative. Right now, they don't. If they cannot converge these rivals into loyal Cult outlets, then they will attempt to destroy them. If they cannot destroy them, then they will move to cut off access to them by the population they seek to subjugate- to erect their own Great Firewall and do as China has successfully done for its own subject population.

Yes, I said "successfully". Try to convince some visiting ChiCom kid that Tiannemen Square happened and see what they do. Narrative monopolies work very well.

With audiences tuning out of Hollywood capes, and audiences tuning out of Mouse Wars, Fake Trek, Not My Who, etc. in droves they are finding alternatives that satisfy their wants and the Death Cult can't have that. They just aren't willing to admit that they are under threat yet and act accordingly; you'll know they are when they move to choke and censor all non-converged media, usually under some form of "hate speech" or "protecting people" excuse since no one gives a shit about the lie that is Muh Piracy anymore.

Be glad that the enemy is not competent, just cunning and ruthless.

My Life As A Gamer: Twitch's Biggest MMO Player Reviews "A Realm Reborn"

Let the Bald One speak for himself.

Who Is This Guy?

What you're getting here is an intelligent and knowledgable gamer giving his take on the game.

Asmongold is one of the biggest streamers on Twitch. He's one of the most influential streamers in the gaming world, earning direct lines to developers that want him to check out their games. He's known for being a (former?) World of Warcraft.

"Asmongold" is also a persona, a mask worn to entertain an audience, which is not present here. This is Zach, the man behind the mask, speaking as himself and not as Asmongold; think of the difference between a major radio DJ on and off the air. Alex Jones, Wolfman Jack, Casey Kasem- all of them exaggerated for effect when doing their jobs. Turn off the camera, go off the air, and they are someone else for all intents and purposes. This is the same thing.

So when you see this, see the man as he is and not the persona that gets clipped a lot in highlight channels and meme videos.

Observations

His take isn't that different than mine, even if his frame of reference differs; I refer you to my own review if you want details.

The thing that I see is that he comprehends that this MMO is very different from what he is used to, that he gets what Jesse Cox said in refering to 14 as a JRPG first and a MMO second, and adjusted his expectations accordingly.

Because he adjusted his expectations, he made himself able and available to engage the game on its own terms in good faith. He did not rush through. He did not pay to skip to the end. He did not fail to learn how to manipulate the controls and read the telegraphs. He did exactly what a new player is expected to do, and he appreciates the result of that effort.

Zach is also a serious gamer, not a Normie, but his MBA background does mean that he understands Normie psychology; on videos like this, and in his second channel livestreams where he also isn't in his persona, you'll see him explain in Normie-friendly terms how the business of gaming actually works because he gets what's going on in those development offices and business suites.

He knows that Normies don't work for their entertainment; he can see that the stuff put in a Normie's path in the game is as easy as it is because it is meant to keep a Normie entertained and excited, not to make him frustrated (and thereby likely to quit) or to bore him by making him wait much.

The side content, on the other hand, gets away with being more difficult (more or less) because Normies aren't likely to bother seeking it out and the top-tier difficulties are entirely opt-in with no unspoken incentive to push Normies into it because it. Furthermore, older side content is often soloed by higher-level characters that have quests going into such places; this is a common Normie approach to dealing with difficulty, so it's not uncommon to see Normies not bother with top-level stuff until two or four years later when they can outlevel and outgear it massively.

I can't wait to see what his take on Heavensward will be now that he got there. He already unlocked the Dark Knight Job--hence his Berserk talk, since that Job is Guts as a class--and leveled it into the level range for HW, so I expect he'll proceed apace shortly to the Level 60 raids and Trials. (He's going to love the Knights of the Round fight.)

Zach gets Normies. Zach gets gaming. Zach gets business. This is why people like Amazon listen to him when they have him play their games--he demoed New World and Ashes of Creation recently--and justifies the attention he garners. He's also a funny entertainer that knows his audience and how to make them want to spend time watching him screw up names that are not contemporary Anglo-speaking while hacking up raid bosses like they owned him money.

If Zach gives your game a good review, it's a game worth playing. FF14 got a good review. It is worth playing.

The Business: You Have Ten Minutes To Sell That Game, Not 100 Hours.

Josh Strife Hayes independently confirms what I'd been saying, especially with regard to MMORPGs.

What did I say? Normies will not work for their entertainment.

What do Normies do when something becomes difficult or tedious? They brute-force it, they skip it, or they quit.

What do predatory game companies do to exploit this? Make it deliberately tedious, put in sudden difficulty jumps, and sell brute-force solutions and skips in the cash shop. You see this most with Free To Play mobile trash, which is why F2P has the counter-intuitive most lucrative business model in gaming, but MMOs readily adopted it when it became clear that quality wasn't good enough to keep people playing otherwise.

The real solution is to put in the work required to make that early game thrilling and exciting--not tedious--without being difficult, something that every single MMORPG fails at one way or another.

People love to bag on Battlefield and Call of Duty, but those two franchises nail this point like the fist of an angry god. You start up COD, you are in it right away and you aren't spending more than 10 minutes before you're up to speed and playing the real game. Contrary to Josh's claim, Normies aren't going to give a game two hours to convince them; they give it that 10 minutes at most, often less--a minute or so--in practice, before they go "This game sucks" and move on.

You don't have the luxury of being able to make a player wait to have fun and play the real game, not anymore. The data is readily available for professionals to see when it comes to abandonment rates; the rise of deliberate predation over actually making games that address Normie wants out of entertainment shows what most corporate types--being Mammon Mobsters--actually think of both Normies and gaming.

And if you think this isn't applicable to other gaming media, then you're not paying attention to why boardgames leave tabletop RPGs in the dust. Know the Normie and win.

My Life In Fandom: Epic Gothic Space Opera Publisher Confirms Convergence

Arch talks about Stupid British Toy Company and how it wants to follow the Big Two into irrelevance.

The long and short of it is that there is no confindence that the Stupid British Toy Company will change course now that being hostile to its own audience is company policy, so there is no reason to entertain any notion of good will towards a bad actor. That means that this company officially Hates You, so stop giving them your money and #BrandZero shall henceforth be the policy here.

And that also means no buying the merch. Make your own if you want it that badly; set up a Print On Demand online shop, set up private listings (that only you see by default), and buy your own versions at cost. Sooner than later you'll be making better stuff than what they license out for. Yes, including actual toys and kits.

Stop beying this guy, because this is how Stupid British Toy Company sees you when you complain but buy their shit anyway.

Return to Hobbyist. Do for yourselves. Adhere to #BrandZero

Captain Harlock has been notified that this company is on the Fair Game list because this company is not a friend to free people and Captain Harlock is.

The Business: MMORPGs Are Too Expensive To Not Be Normie-Friendly

Josh Strife Hayes premiered this video on why PVP-focused MMORPGs fail just a few minutes ago, as of this post.

The psychology on display here does not take a Psychology degree to comprehend.

The MMORPG genre requires far too much in the way of expenses to justify a business model that doesn't cater to Normies. Hardcore, Full Loot games are very exclusive games with a demonstrably small demographic that are willing and able to play that way; just look at Rust, Ark, and others like them to see what horrifically dysfunctional bullshit goes down.

The target audience for these games are not Normies. They see games as sport, and sport as ritualized dominance contests, so they are willing to put in the work required to win and thrive.

Normies will not work for their entertainment. Getting ganked out of nowhere is not fun for Normies. Losing all your stuff is not fun for Normies. Permanent death, or penalties for dying, are not fun for Normies; this is why Normies don't do Rogue and its legion of successors, and why "Dark Souls" is a byword for "hardcore".

By extension, games that require regular commitment over a long term are not friendly to Normies, and the entire MMORPG genre has that as a core tenant. This is why Normies don't play them.

By extension, the way most people think RPGs have to be played requires this, which is why Normies don't play them. (One of the consequences of Jeffro's rediscovery of how RPGs are meant to be played is that the game becomes Normie-friendly due to removing this commitment.)

The recognition of Normie psychology as a requirement for commercial success in game design is as underrated as an understanding of probability and statistics. The reason that companies like Tencent succeed is not merely due to factors outside of ordinary consideration--e.g. political connections--but rather due to comprehension of how successful casino operations work and adapting them to videogame product design.

Yes, that means that Mobile Trash is nothing more than a more interactive slot machine with some excuse of a narrative bolted on to avoid the censors long enough to bribe them.

It also means that your game's business plan had better have some form of psychological profile of your target audience, or you will end up on the trash heap like all of the other failed attempts before you, and that profile will be greatly informed by the commercial realities of your target genre. The MMORPG is too expensive to not cater to Normies, so you have to build your business plan around Normie psychology, and that means prioritizing making the experience thrilling without being difficult for at least 80% of playable content and leaving only at most 20% for those looking for a legit challenge- and that has to be relegated to side content or you're going to have a bad time.

And that, folks, is why the MMORPG genre--as a business--is trending as it is. It needs Normiebux to survive.

My Life In Fandom: "Char's Counterattack" Back Up On GundamInfo

It's back up on GundamInfo, and it came up a few days ago. The reason is due to Hathaway's Flash being the direct sequel to this film.

This is the offician Gundam YouTube channel. No one can nail you for watching it free here; turn on CC for subtitles.

As Gundam media goes, this is still the best movie to date--the new movie is the first of a trilogy, so we'll hold off on a judgement for at time--and across all Gundam media it's always in a Top Five list (along with Zeta Gundam and other persistent favorites).

If you like it enough, cough up for a physical copy; I did and thus I am certain of having access to it should a future where Bandai tells the Death Cult to get bent like the weirdos they are results in offical Western access being choked off and unofficial access being difficult or impossible.

So much of the Universal Century pivots around this movie's events that you simply won't get Gundam without being familiar with it, and Char Aznable's iconic status is cemented by this film. Every film and series set after this film in the UC is directly influenced by its events, and everything leading up to it feels like and even alt-universes show its influence (mostly through Char clones).

If you need a core Gundam watchlist, it's this: Mobile Suit Gundam (compliation trilogy films, specifically), Zeta Gundam, Char's Counterattack. You should add 0083 as it gives context to Zeta and thus to Counterattack, and I would suggest Unicorn to see its effects as early as three years after the fact before going on to Hathaway's Flash. If it's not on GundamInfo, it's online somewhere; ask around.