On The Need For Objectivity In RPGs & How The Wargame Roots Satisfies That

State that tabletop RPGs are a medium of wargaming, as they are clearly derivative of them, and you get massive pushback.

Listen to the feedback and you begin to see patterns in the counter-arguments. The insistance on RPGs as a Narrative medium are an insistance on a soft, amorphous subjectivity where there are no standards and no consistence other than the unthinking validation of whatever fantasy the participants demand. The insistance that the rules don't matter means that what matters are social pressures at the table, complimented and informed by what Officialdom publishes and the Terminally Online approves of, and if players experience unwanted outcomes then that is bad.

We're not talking about pronounces and other nonsense. We're talking about "My nakes wizard rushed into the middle of a horde of elite orcs all by myself and got slaughtered because I couldn't get a single spell off. I failed every roll I needed to cast spells in melee combat, and the orcs butchered my guy, and the GM didn't fix anything! BAD GM! MY FANTASY RUINED!"

That's the thinking that lead to the infamous freakout during an earlier Critical Roll episode where one of the PCs actually died and the audience lost their shit. The source of that thinking comes from the failure of players to appreciate that they have to conform to objective standards and measurements to succeed in their actions, but rather they see the game as a medium of validation where they are expected to succeed without much--if any--regard for doing what needs to be done to do so.

This is where disregard for the mindset that wargaming creatives leads to, and it eventually leads to real-life consequences--the "volunteers" in Ukraine found this out the hard way this past week--because "RPGs are a medium of storytelling!" leads directly to "VALIDATE MY FEELINGS, BIGOT!" because "We are here to tell a story!" always turns into "We are here to push our ideological cult narratives!" at the table as well as at the publishing office.

Gainsay this at your peril, for I need only point to Official D&D and Baizo (and the SJW anklebiters orbiting them) to demonstrate how the former leads to the latter.

Oh, and I also note this: the poz only really got bad after Cultural Ground Zero, further validating Brian Niemeier's observation that Wokeness is nothing more than the Death Cult consuming a corpse puppet from within.

The OSR--and especially the BROSR--have been vital in revitalizing this medium by returning to the objectivity of its wargaming roots, and wisely separating its literary influences to where they belong (i.e. the Pulp Revolution), because only by treating RPGs as a wargame--as a series of scenarios with Fog Of War, layered logistics concerns, objective win and loss conditions (that need not be symetrical), played out as a campaign, with equally objective standards for resolution of actions--can the rot in the hobby be cut off and burned out.

Clear, objective rulesets requires clear, objective technical writing skills to achieve. Clear, objective gameplay requires clear, objective thought and emotional detachment--maturity--from participants. Clear, objective campaigning requires active expression of agency from the players if they are going to succeed; they need to identify problems, assess resources and constraints, devise pratical solutions and execute them or they get rolled over without mercy- narrative tropes do not apply.

This, in turn, makes questions of ethics, morality, and other higher concerns actually interesting. Players can't rely on social pressure; neither the rules nor the publisher push it, explicitly or otherwise. They can't rely on narrative tropes, mechanically enforced or otherwise, to supercede the consequences of their practical decsions (or blunders thereof).

Now being Good matters because principles are expensive. Now being Evil matters because vices have their taxes. Now being stupid, weak, foolish, ill-informed, etc. matters because there's no Power Of Friendship or whatever in your back pocket to save you. Now time matters because they have their timetable and it is not yours, so you do not get to say "So we skip ahead three weeks" any more than you do "So we just walk out of the dungeon", and all of this appeals far more to the K-Select people that made this hobby than the r-Select Death Cultists that infest it now.

In short, this is what builds into effective gatekeeping practices, and the increasing commercial success proves its appeal. Real games have challenge, challenge that can't be cheated or speedrun or otherwise avoided or negated as Death Cultists routinely do.

The BROSR has proven this with playing older D&D editions, especially AD&D 1st Edition, as-written. It will prove this in other games, including some you may not expect.