My Life As A Gaming: Even Fantasy Gamers Need To Know Their History

The title is misleading. This is really a recap of the Battle of the Atlantic in World War 2, dominated by German U-boats vs. Allied surface and aerial assets.

Indy talks a lot about technology and doctrine, but I can put it simply: the Allies forced the Germans into killzones and pounced upon them. The bait were the convoys and all the goods needed for the United Kingdom to stay in the fight. The killzones were the spaces created between the bait and the escorts, complimented in time by intelligence provided by aerial reconnaisance and signals intelligence intercepts.

It took a lot for this to come together, but the results speak for themselves and if such a similar situation were to arise now you would expect to have all of these elements reassert themselves swiftly to recreate those killboxes and replicate those results.

Therefore, I ask you this question: put in the position of someone looking to do commerce raiding to drive an enemy power out of the fight, and with this history informing your actions, what do you do to avoid this scenario repeating itself?

It's an interesting scenario question, isn't it? Now apply all of this to your campaign--even fantasy games, since they have stealth and piracy is a thing--and you see where I'm going with this. The historical record often has fantastic events in its pages, events that are going to come up organically in your own fantastic adventure gaming and fiction, and the different trappings don't change the fundamentals.

Imagine, for example, that you're playing in Jeffro's Trollopolous and you want to bring a hostile city-state to heel. Choking off the trade that supplies it with what it cannot produce itself is part of a siege campaign, and that's what the Battle of the Atlantic was. Imagine that you're playing a Macross campaign; you're going to want to find out how the enemy is supplying itself with the food, men, and material that it requires to wage war against your heroic Valkyrie squadrons and the idol singers that love them. You can be the First Lord of the Star League, the Emperor of the Galactic Empire, Warchief of the Horde, or a free captain on the Sea of Stars who's skull banner means freedom, dealing with this scenario in this manner is the same process.

Therefore, regardless of what genre your scenario claims to be in, you are dealing with the same things. If you can answer the above hypothetical in real world terms, you can answer it in any fictional context. This is why the better fiction writers always have a handle on real world history and current events, and make reading about it part of their routine; it makes the fiction better by providing it with the vital substance of reality without the drudgery that often comes with it.

And that is why real RPGs--real gaming--as the #BROSR lays out--is the real hobby; real gaming is wargaming.

The Business: Mainstream Western Entertainment Can't Communicate Scope & Scale

Scale in film and television, and how to communicate it.

Die Neue These, like its predecessor, makes very good use of background to show just how massive the scope and scale of a given navel battle is. This video, taken from the first two episodes, depicts the Battle of Astarte. The Imperial side has about 25000 capital ships, and the Alliance side combined is the same size; however, as they are split three ways the Empire exploits this to gain a decisive advantage and win.

If this was Mouse Wars, or Star Wars, or Trek (Real or Fake), or anything BBC you'd never know without exposition just how huge this battle was. DNT shows this to you; hit Pause and take a quick scan of the ships on screen- and every single blip is a ship, that's how spread out these fleets are.

Now the original for comparison.

This is from a later battle, where the full Alliance invasion fleet faces off against just what Reinhard personally commands. (Yes, that's right, the Empire's space fleet is even larger that what was fielded.)

Again, every single blip is a capital ship. This is not including escorts and strike craft. There is nothing even close in Western film and television, live action or animated, that communicates this; furthermore, the corporate stewards of those Western properties don't even try. They seriously try to sell you on the idea that, for example, the Empire of Mouse Wars had a peak strength of 25000 Star Destroyers.

Preposterous, especially for a setting where star-faring states--with the economics to match--have been a fact of life for millenia. Meanwhile, both classic written Space Opera in the West (e.g. Lensman) and Space Opera in the East across all media have no problems say "Yeah, we have interstellar states with militaries of appropriate size. Deal with it."

The only attempt was the last Mouse Wars mainline film, and that's roundly criticized as being just as much a slapdash job as the rest of the film- and rightly so. Credit for trying, but only in the the way that spamming Copy & Paste without regard for verisimilitude or narrative or anything counts.

It's not that hard. The original Legend of the Galactic Heroes did it on a budget that was a fraction of what Deep Space 9 or Babylon 5 had at that time, and DNT's budget isn't substantially greater, yet both version succeed where Western competitors fail. You have to go to games like Homeworld or Stellaris to get close.

If you want to beat the Death Cult, learn to strike where they are weak- and things like this do count.

My Life As A Gamer: Time To See What RPGs Work As The #BROSR Would Like

On yesterday's Gab episode, Daddy Warpig recounted his recent experiences playing in Jeffro's Trollopolous campaign and thus playing as the #BROSR describes. He took the time to show how playing Rules As Written actually brought out hidden synergies in the rules that manifest at the table to create the magic that makes tabletop RPGs the incredible gameplay experience that they promise.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1st Edition definitely works best this way. There are others that work this way--e.g. Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon, Classic Traveller--and others that do not.

I think it's worthwhile to take a game off my shelf and give it a thourough analysis to see which goes where. Some games I can guarantee will be impossible to play RAW and still have a functional product; most are incompetently designed, incompetently documented (bad technical writing), or incompetent presented but some are deliberately intended to be used like that.

I'll decide on which one to do presently, and then make a regular--if infrequent--series of it.

My Life In Fandom: All About Animation On The Gab Today

Daddy Warpig and Dorrinal spend today's show talking about SONIC 2, Rescue Rangers, and whatever else comes up today. I'll be in the chat.

My Life As A Gamer: The Pundit Talks About Making Setting History Useful In Play

The Pundit talks about incorporating the history of a setting for your games.

To no one's surprise, the TLDR is "Does this matter in actual play? No? TOSS IT!" The more nuanced take is "Make it relevant to the situation here and now."

This is how you make this work: have current events be spoken of in terms of references to analogous historical events. In our everyday lives, this is commonplace and not just in the form of crude propaganda. Depending upon the media environment of the setting, certain historical events can maintain mdinshare in a populace generations after the fact and become a form of popular mythology that explains the world and that people's place in it to themselves.

Don't think so? Who's the go-to boogeyman for any head of state that isn't to the West's liking, and what regime is a guilt-free punching bag? To whom is that figure and his regime applied to here and now in Western media? That's popular mythogizing of historical events in action, and just the most obvious; in China everything relates, ultimately, to Mao and other cultures have their own referents.

That's how you can easily start using that massive lore dump; make things explainable and therefore understandable in comparison to what went before- or, what is belived to have gone before. This can, and should, go both ways; the opposition likewise will have their own historical referents to frame current events by, and savvy players can learn what these are to further their own ends- fair or foul.

Now the players will care about the history of the setting because it directly impacts what they do at the table. Good job.

My Life As A Gamer: Don't Do Sniper Elite 5 On PC

Sniper Elite 5 is a thing. The launch trailer is age-restricted, for reasons fans of the series can assume, so I'll just link to it here.

If you've played the last two then it's more of the same with iterative improvements--including cinematic killcams for kills other than your rifle now--set against the Normany Invasion. I do plan on playing it at some point, but not on Steam because of Denuvo Anti-tamper.

I wouldn't expect Rebellion to yank Denuvo from the game anytime soon; the Sniper Elite 4 page still shows that it has Anti-tamper incorporated, and that's from 2017. Play on console, play it cracked on PC, or wait out the company's stupidity. Denuvo isn't worth tolerating the hit to performance or the risk to your hardware.

My Life As A Gamer: The First Two Elder Scrolls Games Are Free On Steam

Would you like a free PC game? Of course you do.

Right now the first Elder Scrolls game, Arena, is free on Steam. You can find it here, and if you need a video reminder:

Yes, this game is ancient, which means that a toaster can run it with aplomb these days. Just look at the specs:

MINIMUM:

• OS: PC/MS-DOS 5.0
• Processor: Intel 386 25 MHz
• Memory: 4 MB RAM
• Storage: 25 MB available space

And that's not the only one. Daggerfall is also free on Steam. It too is ancient, so it too runs on toasters. You can play these guilt-free because Todd gets nothing for these; they're that old, so making them available is nothing more than good public relations and not worth monetizing further.

Compare these to Skyrim and see which iteration has better design, a better experience, etc.- especially if you're of a mind to make your own. No matter what your take is, taking the time to analyze your own preferences will prove beneficial down the road when Todd finally gets a sixth Elder Scrolls game out there.

My Life As A Gamer: Now You Can Do Mutants vs. Inquisitors In RIFTS

If you didn't read the ad copy, you'd never know what this supplemental product is about. It's a psionics expansion.

Specifically, this supplement is meant to provide a ready-made campaign model. In addition to a pile of new mind powers, it introduces a new anti-psi organization to act as the Opposing Force in the Coalition States Manhunters, and the result a framework for a tightly-focused Coalition-focused game that you can easily pitch using X-Men as a point of reference.

Or play as the Manhunters and purge the mutants and traitors to Mankind in the Emperor's name. Palladium's usually pretty good about giving enough information to play both sides of a conflict, and Uncle Kevin has managed to make it possible to play the Coalition as the heroes since the game's inception despite constantly claiming the Coalition as villains.

As for that ad copy:

The Rifts® CS Manhunters Sourcebook has turned into an essential psionics sourcebook in a similar vein to the Rifts® Bionics Sourcebook, only in this case the focus is on psychics, psionic abilities, and the new villains you will love to hate: The CS Manhunters.

This information-packed sourcebook includes the CS Manhunters, who are a super-secret league of assassins and enforcers that answer only to Emperor Prosek; the secret “thought police” of Psi-Ops; re-visitation and clarifications about select psionic abilities; Dog Boys and Kill Hounds; 50+ new psionic powers that are fun and intuitive; and insight about life in the Coalition States, CS psychics, Psi-Stalkers, the Minion War, CS citizens, and Emperor Prosek as well as some gadgets, implants, and surprises.

This book has it all. An instant classic all Rifts® fans will want to own.

I broke up the original wall of text for clarity. Click on the image to hit the Palladium store page and see what else is featured in the supplement.

I'll check it out as soon as I can, and likely end up adding it to the library sooner or later. I'll review it if (a) you folks want me to and (b) someone gifts me a copy.

My Life In Fandom: Welcome to the AMVs Promoting "Space Battleship Yamato 2205"

Space Battleship Yamato 2205 is now screening in Japan, but it will be a while before it's legally available in the West. Came across this AMV for it today, which uses a lot of footage from 2205. This is the Bolar Wars arc remade, and it's good to see a lot of fan favorite supporting characters returning.

Now's a good time to catch up if you've been slacking. 2199 is legally available to stream at Amazon, as is 2202. Blu-Ray sets are also available, which is probably the better way to go, and for the love of God watch it in Japanese with English subtitles. You will miss a lot of subtle characterization if you stick to the English dub.

Yes, there's more. Here's another for your viewing pleasure. Alas, no English subtitles for the AMVs.

My Life As A Gamer: The Fallout MMO We Should Have Had (Fallen Earth Classic) & Why It Was Doomed To Fail

Recently Josh Strife Hayes revisted Fallen Earth, a post-apocalyptic MMORPG that is now free to play on Steam as "Fallen Earth Classic".

Josh reviews a lot of bad MMOs. Josh also reviews a lot of MMOs that didn't get a fair chance and never will, and not entirely due to their own faults. This game falls into the latter category; it's janky, the aesthetics haven't aged well, and its user interface is not intuitive. However, it has no instanced solo content and they go out of their way to justify typical MMORPG gameplay tropes such that they comprise the plot.

In short, what you have here is a decent single-player title that has optional multiplayer and requires an Internet connection to play. As this is free to play, and there is no cash shop as of this post, it may be something to do on the side when you need a change of pace. Just don't expect much in the way of other players and you should be fine.

This game's history is typical of the MMORPG space, as it is of every single medium that relies on the Network Effect for its value. Normies go where the action is. In any medium that runs off the Network Effect, you quickly run into monopoly or near-monopoly situations, where the dominant entity becomes synomyous with the medium and its norms become the default for the entire medium- competitors are forced to market by specifying what they are not vs. the dominant entity.

This is why very few MMOs got traction after World of Warcraft achieved dominance; its norms became the medium's norms, and even the current #2 game still have some element of defining itself by what it is not- though this is usually done by the users and the press whores than formal marketing. Fallen Earth would never find traction in this environment, even if it was a technical and ludological masterwork, simply because of the Sunk Cost Fallacy preying upon existing players of the dominant game preventing them from doing so.

Look at what had to happen before WOW actually got put into its current vulnerable position, a position--I remind you--that it can still recover from and put down the threat from Final Fantasy XIV if it has a good expansion launch down the road. You had to have two bad expansions in a row, the latter being a complete disaster, AND multiple public scandals, AND multiple public legal disputes, AND several self-inflicted and unforced errors of management at multiple levels all in rapid succession to maintain media focus on the company long enough to actually disgust enough players to quit in large enough numbers to make a difference.

That, folks, is a lot of damage done in a short period of time that could not be ignored or explained away. That is what it takes for a dominant player in a medium dependent upon the Network Effect for value to merely be rendered vulnerable enough for a viable overtake attempt by a rival. What it takes to actually throw down that dominant player is FAR greater.

Don't believe me? How long has Official D&D dominanted tabletop RPGs? Oh, yeah, 48 years AND COUNTING. Even the most incompetent, malevolent, spiteful, petty, and maliciously contemptuous management has rarely done more than put it into a vulnerable position where it tasted the threat of being dethroned before putting down that threat and sitting comfortably on its throne once more.

That, folks, is the power of the Network Effect in action. The only real threat to D&D is D&D, the only threat to WOW is WOW, and so on. The dominant party can only be thrown down by a medium of superior network potential OR by the effects of years--even decades--of downright fucking retarded stupidity and/or malice (because the result is the same) finally being manifest.

The best that Fallen Earth can hope for is that the small team currently running it manages to finally beat out the jank and make it run smooth as butter. It will never be more than a side game to be played when there's nothing more relevant or interesting to do or play; in tabletop terms, this game would fit below Palladium Books' catalog, so down there with every Chaosium game that isn't Call of Cthulhu or Stormbringer.

This means that the viable space for business within a medium is far smaller than people think, as merely being a superior product or service is not sufficient to overtake a dominant player. Couple this fact with the reality of how many markets are really rackets, and now you have a clearer picture of why some players in some spaces just won't die- and why expectations need to be tempered.

Fallen Earth may not be the Fallout MMO we got, but it should have been. Alas, the reality is, well...

My Life In Fandom: Brian Niemeier Returns To Geek Gab TODAY To Promote "Combat Frame Z XSeed"

At 1pm Central time, former co-host Brian Niemeier returns to the Gab to promote his crowdfunding campaign for Combat Frame Z XSeed. Daddy Warpig and Dorrinal will be there to welcome back their old friend and talk XSeed, anime, and whatever else Warpig wishes to rant about.

If you can make it live, get in the chat and have questions ready. As for the campaign, it is already funded so it's all about Stretch Goals now and Brian's got plenty to offer this time around. This includes Perk levels that offer instant catchup for folks that just want to get into it now. I'll be there, and so should you.

My Life In Fandom: Remembering Tukkayid, May 20th 3052

Remember the day that Space AT&T stopped cold the rampage of Space Klingon LARPers.

While glib, this is in fact the two heirs of the Star League squaring up to decide who gets Daddy Kerensky's estate. This was not without context; it's just that the context went down centuries before.

And the Space LARPers, as much as Tex knocks of them, had a rational basis for their paradigm of warfare. Sure, Kerensky's son would use that to erect his own vision of how to organize Mankind, but if that cornerstone could not be comprehended then they couldn't be defeated- something only an intelligence network masquerading as a psuedo-religious cult using their monopoly position over telecommunications to wage information warfare in a manner that no one else could.

That's right, Tukkayid is--ultimately--a tale of a failure of intelligence on the behalf of the defeated and overwhelming success on the part of the victor. ComStar figured out how Clanners thought and believed, and then tailored their psychological warfare to exploit those thoughts and beliefs. That no one among the Clan leadership, outside of Clan Wolf, could conceive of ComStar suddenly adhering to Clan norms by issuing a Batchall as a threat is all one needs to see to know that intelligence work is not valued among the Clans as a whole- and Focht wrecked them for it.

Tukkayid was won before a shot was fired. Sun Tzu would be proud.

My Life In Fandom: Josh Strife Hayes Revisits "Armored Core"

Josh Strife Hayes revisited Armored Core. He has opinions.

This hour-long video (better played at 2x Speed) is a comprehensive video essay and retro-review of a seminal From Software title, the first in a long-running (but currently dormant) franchise that more than a few folks either forgot about or never heard of.

To say that this scratches the itches of those who love Mechwarrior but want a more arcade-style of play and pace is an understatement. Just one view of the video will be sufficient to show you that this is a property long overdue for a revival.

The problem is that FromSoftware now has a franchise that is active, successful, and reliable in Dark Souls and corporations are notoriously risk-adverse. Even accounting for differences between Western and Japanese management, that remains the case. Complicating matters is that Armored Core has been out of public consciousness for long enough to slip away, making it a harder sell to C-Suit executives to spend money on that over another Soulslike- especially after Elden Ring exceeded expectations.

It's not impossible, but even if it's approved today we still won't see a new PS5 game for two years during which time the only thing that could be done to keep up interest is to remaster and re-release the existing games- and that makes an already hard sell harder. "Why take this risk when we can guarantee another with by following up Elden Ring?"

If you want more Armored Core, you're going to have to go well out of your way to convince the shotcallers that it's worth the risk instead of going with a sureshot return on investment in another Soulsborne game, and the useless whores in the press will do you no favors so don't even bother asking them to help. Rather the best way to get the shotcallers to go for it would be to make every similar property out there have gangbuster success such that they can't help but see money being left on the table.

My Life As A Gamer: The Stupid Irvine Company Openly Tokenizes

Stupid Irvine Game Company, being throughoutly converged by SJWs, is now bound by the three laws of SJWs. This below is "SJWs Always Double-Down".

I said previously that the recent legal conflict was a mask for an internal coup attempt against the remnant of the founding cohort and their chosen successors. That coup attempt succeeded, and the Death Cult now openly control and operate the company. This video by Sophia Narwitz shows that control is consolidated now, and the final form of an organization fully and wholly converged by SJWs is open for all to witness.

As Sophia notes, the SJWs literally cannot go past the surface. What I dispute is that this is not just a narcissistic manifestation of Death Cult incompetence. The Cult's sole use for any organization is to propagandize, gaslight, and parasitize the minds and institutions of outsiders- i.e. to spread the disease. The tool shown here is nothing more than a self-tell on what the Cultists in the company believe the images of Friend (high scoring on the tool) and Enemy (mid-to-low) looks like.

The good news is that the response to the tool is not a good one. The bad news is that the Cult will still implement and use it, just on the down-low. However, the company is still on the downstroke and no amount of sucking off the EGS moneyprinter can stop the company from driving itself into the ground.

This company hates you. Don't give them your time, attention, or money. Instead, give some to Narwitz; Sophia earns it.

My Life In Fandom: Remember When Disney Wasn't Trash (The Black Hole)

There was a time when the Devil Mouse actually took risks.

This film, as I have said previously, comes down to Gothic Horror In Space but I am posting this video essay because it's a worthwhile essay on the film. I'm not on board with proposed improvements, as that's where the essay loses the plot--Gothic Horror has to have certain things to make it work, which the proposals mess with--and forgets the target audience (older boys and their fathers).

And yes, this film is still a good time; find it used or ask Captain Harlock for a hookup. If you get a chance to see it in a theater, take it. This film benefits from being on a proper big screen, and you can see where authors like Brian Niemeier draw from in their own Gothic Horror In Space stories.

The #BROSR: There's No Whining In Real D&D

Listening and reading to #BROSR play reports reveals one more thing that I think is a prompt for freakout kneejerking in opposition: #BROSR play laser-focuses on playing the game, on GETTING SHIT DONE.

People who see RPGs as a place to use for industrial-scale narcisistic supply via monopolization of others' time and attention at the table get shut down hard and fast at a #BROSR campaign. The players are adults that value their time, time that they want to spend actually getting shit done by playing the real game, and if some blowhard starts sucking all the air out of the room by grandstanding verbalizations they are (a) Not Playing The Game and (b) wasting everyone else's time.

Therefore, by a laser-focus on the wargaming roots of the medium, you remove such timewasting as a feature and you greatly reduce the avenues for dickery by bad actors. There is no time to whine about Muh Oppresshuns or Muh Boredoms when you have a world to conquer, and there's no authority to appeal to get what you want because it doesn't exist. #BROSR forces players to accept their agency or get ground into dust, with the Referee as Crom the Uncaring; so tie on those sandals and tread upon the thrones of world in search of whatever it is that is your objective. Play the game or make room for those that will.

When Normies Out Themselves & The Cultured Response

The (Very Normie) Anime Man asked his girlfriend, his podcast cohosts, and all of their collected friends and contacts a question: "What's your favorite anime?"

Let this video--and for the love of God, play it at double-speed--show you that the taste of these people, all of whom have sizable audiences of their own (although none apparoach Pewdiepie), is as normie in distribution as one would expect of "AnimeTube & Adjacents".

Take note of the patterns in the testimonies. Either they are referencing something that they enjoyed as a child, or they reference a current or former favorite of Reddit's r/anime, approximately 80% of the time. This is the old "golden age of science fiction" in action: the best was what you enjoyed when you were 12. The titles offered were what was available on local cable television then, on streaming services of the last decade or so, or they live in Japan and so have direct access. In short, we're looking at most of these responses being those that liked what was put before them- not the response of those deliberately seeking out the best possible material.

This lack of curiosity informs their views in their responses. This is exactly the sort of responses you'd hear worldwide from people talking about live-action film or television, responses that also demonstrate a lack of curiosity in their experiences and a lack of competency in qualifying their response's validity.

That last part is key. Put in schoolboy terms, "Show Your Work". Facile responses, at best, about character or narrative demonstrate a lack of comprehension of what makes such things good or bad- not unexpected as none them are competent authors. They cannot reason; they give only excuses for their feelings. Given the short reponses, and how many of these respondants are busy folks, the odds of them having the time to compose a response better than what we see is unlikely.

There's some good choices given--EVA (as much as I dislike it), Bebop, Arjuna, TTGL--but almost none of them were titles that they had to go out of their way to find due to being in normie-tier media distribution at that time. Had I seen The Five Star Stories, Appleseed (the 80s OVA), or my own response (which will surprise no one), I'd be more inclined to take the respondant seriously. Had I seen more competent responses, likewise. Instead, I saw a pile of (borderline) NPCs talking about what was The Current Thing.

By comparison, my response:

Legend of the Galactic Heroes is a 110 episode Space Opera writen for a literate adult audience that discusses what makes for the best possible government for Mankind, the influence of power on the corruptable, and the fact that reality is not a narrative experience- as shown by when typical narrative plots are short-circuited for dramatic effect just to make certain this point gets across.

You will not miss the lack of supernatural powers or alien beings in this series that grounds its narrative in historical examples, and makes deft use of flashbacks and filler episodes to tell the stories of those whose influence shape events in the primary narrative. This beautiful series will leave you reaching for the history books as you seek to fill the gaps in your knowledge so as to be appreciate what you witnessed, and any work that inspires such autodidactic improvement like this is clearly the best anime ever made.

(By the way, I recommend this being used by parents to watch with teenaged children specifically to prompt discussion on these things and get those youths operating in an adult manner sooner.)

My Life In Fandom: Warpig Talks Trollopolous & More Today On The Gab

Today on Geek Gab, Daddy Warpig and Dorrinal went long about recent films and then moved to talking about how bad Shadowrun 6th Edition is before Warpig talked about his fun times doing Trollopolous.

Warpig's weird pirate island is a perfect example of how True Campaigns organically create content, and why they reliably lean into the earnest gonzo weirdness of the Pulps. You're using well-recognized tropes and icons as shorthand to communicate efficiently to the player as to what's what. "The ninja village and the pirate port have been raiding each other for a long time" tells a player what to expect without needing a massive tome of lore or hours of time wasted on divergent infodumps. Let them find out later, if they care, just what short of ninja or pirate they are by encountering them directly.

It's incredible just how freeing it is to play this way. No need to wrangle things or people. Just get on with it and enjoy the ride.

My Life In Fandom: A Preview of Doan's Island

The new Gundam movie's looking really good.

No, there's no subtitles in this clip and I found no others that did, but you'll be able to infer what's said just fine. The animators earned their paychecks and them some, giving everyone plenty of body language to make that viable and supporting the voice cast's efforts to do likewise with pitch and tone and other subtilties of speech that cross language barriers.

As for when we can realistically expect to get our hands on it, probably by Christmas this year (Officially). Captain Harlock may be able to hook you up earlier, if you're impatient.

Narrative Warfare: Turns Out Courts Aren't Safe Spaces For SJWs

My pal Oliver Campbell, several years ago, said that the SJW problem would start being dealt with once people stopped being squishy and took them to court.

Jon del Arroz, Owen Benjamin, Sargon of Akkad, and Vox Day have all demonstrated that this is indeed the case. It is not a perfect remedy, but it is a necessary step towards that remedy; you swat individual instances of the poz in action, and over time that adds up. It's a grindset approach, but it works.

Jon beat WorldCon in court, which also had the effect of demonstrating that SJWs in the fan convention scene are generally bad with money. Jon is now looking at legal action against Indiegogo and GAMA for tortious interference, both born of SJWs on the inside taking the excuse to mess with an enemy of the Death Cult. I fully expect Jon to win both actions, and I fully expect both organizations to exactly fulfill their obligations under the judgement while fellow travelers make an ass of themselves trying to spin a clear loss as a win.

You don't beat them by being concilatory. You bloody their noses, and that is why lawfare against them works. Their delusions mean nothing against a court order, especially ones that compel payment, and no amount of bitch-fitting on Twitter or whining on YouTube changes that.

GAMA and Indiegogo fucked around. Now they're going to find out.

Narrative Warfare: Smedley Buttler Was (Half) Right

A certain Shiba of Color posted this online in the last week, and it explains a lot of what goes on.

One of the reasons why, despite having an academic background in business, I have been loath to ever start my own enterprise is because it became apparent to me fairly quickly, after working in the private sector, how much of business and commerce effectively amounted to state sanctioned racketeering.

I've always been a bit worried at how comfortable I have been about the times when I was working for career criminals simply because frankly I found the differences on the ground between career criminals and "successful businessmen" were much more similar than most normies realise.

The main distinction is that the primary operational concerns of how to maintain profitability are different.

The criminal businessman's primary concern in this regard is operational security. They want to protect themselves by maintaining obscurity of their operations in order to avoid interference from the law (or from rivals).

The racketeer's primary concerns are ingratiating themselves with their patrons and crushing any rivals they discover.

Many people make the mistake of entering a field which they see as being served suboptimally by incumbents, not understanding this is because what they are looking at, is a racket and that by trying to start up their own business, they are challenging the racket and will be met with the full force of hostile response from the racketeers, who are typically given sanction by their patrons to ignore the law to some degree in their response.

If anything, a racketeer actually has less to fear from the law than the literal criminals, since they aren't hiding from the law, they are somewhat exempt from it.

One of the big reasons why I am critical of capitalism is that rather than creating competitive markets, it tends to create a framework for enabling state sponsored racketeering. One of the big reasons why I am critical of socialism/communism is that their "solution" to this issue, is to simply formalise the relationship between the state and the racketeers and actually make it stronger.

To go back around to the initial point, one of the biggest challenges when determining whether to start up one's own business, is to figure out "Do the incumbents just suck, or are they a racketeering operation?"

Of course, the thing is that you can still try to compete against an established racket. It's just important to understand that if you do so, you must act as though you are a criminal, because you effectively are, because you are challenging a state sponsored asset. You must maintain operational security and obscurity, which is going to sound weird to people who are used to conventional marketing where you loudly shout your existence from the rooftops.

Needless to say, if you are working as a criminal type business, if you spend so much as a single dollar on marketing or promotion, you are cutting your own throat. You must only exist, in whispers and rumors.

This is one of the paradoxes of marketing and promotion. It's largely unnecessary. If you are an established racket, you don't really need it, because you are already the only game in town that is allowed to operate openly. Spending money on marketing is mostly just a flex or a way to launder money back to your patrons.

If you are challenging a racket, spending money on promoting yourself is pretty much just announcing "Here I am! Come and destroy me!" to the incumbent racketeers.

And now you have Big Corporate explained to you. It's a racket, and so long as a racket is useful to the sponsors that racket will be sustained. The purpose of a racket is not to provide goods and services. The purpose is to establish and maintain control over a population via economic warfare, both from public and private actors. Call them monopolies, trusts, or whatever- they're rackets.

This racket paradigm explains why "Get Woke, Go Broke" is a cope; it lasts only so long as the racket remains useful, and big rackets remain useful for a very long time. It also explains Big Corporate's tolerance for the Death Cult, as (a) Death Cultists are perfect consumers and (b) Death Cultists are eager enforcers for the racketeers as they have nothing else to live for and hate normies with the fury of a thousand suns.

Shiba gives no solution to the problem, but I think one is readily apparent: REGRESS HARDER. The Capital/Social split is false, and our ancestors had it right by erecting all parts of Civilization around the Family- specifically, around the extended patrilineal line as that turned out to be most successful in most instances around the world and across time.

We may not be able to vote or sue our way out of this, but we can move; self-sufficient multi-generational family homesteads is where this will likely end up, united across family lines by ties of marriage and faith. In other words, how things once were and will be again.

The Business: Coming Soon To Kickstarter: "Overmind" By Jon Del Arroz

The leading Hispanic Voice in Science Fiction, Jon del Arroz, has a new comic project coming soon on Kickstarter.

Right now the page is in Pre-Campaign Mode, so while there is a promotional video it's not yet available publically; if Jon makes it available, I'll edit it in.

This is clearly a throwback to the Pulps when space was fun and adventurous, women were women, men were men, and morality wasn't confused or disordered. Jon's a solid player, and it's clear that he's got quite the package put together- as he did with Deus Vult and A High School Girl In The Crusades.

The campaign is going live on the 24th, so you've got two weeks to wait and it's entirely possible that you will forget; sign up for notifications. Jon plans to stream on that day to help promo the campaign's launch, so keep his YouTube channel handy also.

The Business: Adding Some Reality To Your Space Adventures

I'd mentioned Anton Petrov some time ago. He's a space science guy whose channel is fantastic viewing for all things interstellar. He's not a fiction guy, but I think that space gamers and writers ought to throw him on their regular reading and viewing list because what he does videos about could be very good for making space fiction--gaming or writing--a lot more fun in the same way that knowing real history made Howard's Conan stories a lot more fun. This video, for example, could be a lot of fun for playing with FTL travel.

For the record, the inventor of Space Opera--E.E. Smith--had something like this in his Lensman series, albeit implicitly and derived logically from what was known at the time. (TLDR: FTL gets faster the further out from solar systems you go due to decreased density of stellar matter to provide hinderance thereto; the books get more specific.)

Take a moment during a coffee break to think through this concept of localized bubbles of stars and how that impacts interstellar long-distance travel. First, and foremost, it means that explorers now have something to look for when scanning distance areas of space; this, in turn, gives exploration fleets something to point at and travel towards, as well as a distinct horizon event to mark arrival. Second, it gives a distinct boundary against which an interstellar civilization can organize a network of outposts, garrisons, unmanned commications drones or buoys, etc. that combine to divide "Civilization" and "The Frontier/Wilderness" on that scale. Third, it means that a long-time trope of space fiction--"(X) Space"--can be a real thing; an entire local bubble where a specific national or imperial culture resides.

And it means that areas of the galaxy can be mapped and tracked in real time with greater accuracy than what one might expect otherwise.

For worldbuilders, this can also work to give weight to a decision to exclude rather than include; rather than an entire galaxy, you can only deal with a local bubble. Classic Traveller alone has had entire campaigns going on for years at a time where all the action only occurs in a single subsector with no more than a dozen planets, so a local bubble will still be more than enough. It is arguable that the entire Macross franchise has actually gone further than our local bubble, given what we know of both now, and that still feels fine. (Then there's the Gundam franchise, where most of its stories take place entirely within the Lunar Sphere, and somehow feels epic.)

You don't have to go hard on it; Smith deftly anchors his technological premises in various books with dialog that inattentive readers mistake as throwaway lines, demonstrating an efficency of prose that few others match, and none who defame him now could even comprehend. Worldbuilders can throw that detail into their kitchen table books and Wiki articles; in novels, film, and television that needs to be background and not foreground even when its implications are relevant to the plot.

You also don't need to be a scientist or engineer to do this, though it helps. You need to have a clear conception of what it is and how it works, in the manner that you would explain it to the average five year old child; Uncle George got this right when he made his seminal Space Opera in the 1970s, and it is a common trait in enduring works of that genre across all media.

But remember that you're doing adventure, not engineering exercises. Leave that to the professionals making men into nuclear techs, wonderworkers that keep B-52s flying, the fine folks at Space X, and whomever is tasked with making something useful to replace the Litorral Combat Ship.

The Business: The MMO Business Has To Adapt To Survive, And Some Already Have

Josh Strfe Hayes suffers so you don't have to. This is his video on Lord of the Rings Online.

TLDR: It's better than he expected, and likely the best LOTR videogame out there.

What I am seeing with commentors and developers--the better ones, anyway--accepting that the MMORPG business has to accept that the past is gone, that new genres arose that better satisfy certain segments that fell away, and therefore what must happen is to make a virtue of necessity and incrementally change the games to deal with reality.

Take a look at what Josh liked about LOTRO. Its single-player experience was one he liked, albeit with caveats. He didn't play long enough to do multiplayer content, so that's still unknown, but this is indicative of a larger trend.

On the dev side, we have FF14's new patch turning a huge amount of the base game into something you can do solo- including instanced dungeons. This is the start of a long-term project to make the entire game into something you can play as if it were any other title in the franchise, titles that (barring 11) are stand-alone single-player games. Feedback to date has been positive; those who truly do not want to deal with people are increasingly able to disregard them entirely, play until they're satisfied, and go away until there's more.

Unlike Blizzard, Square-Enix is fine with players coming and going because the latter company isn't so focused on quarterly reports and similar short-term thinking at the cost of long-term, year-on-year retention of existing audiences while attracting and recruiting new ones. Not everyone likes to race chocobos, go fishing, or slam their heads against the wall on one of the most difficult encounters in the game.

The MMO developers and publishers need to accept this. They have to make the cyclical nature of MMO player attention an ally, and the sooner the first big player does this the better everyone will be due to witnessing the impact and wanting to exploit it themselves. You can do it wrong, as all Western MMOs have done so far, but you can also do it right; 14's approach so far has worked, with no timegating and cursory bitchwork to provide narrative cover for the activities.

There needs to be more information gathered, analyzed, and publized before a truly useful solution can be implemented; at this time, actors are iterating around the edges because that is all they can really do to address the matter, hoping that the tinkering does more good than harm. 14 has hit this so far, but there's a lot going into that success which does not transfer to other MMOs. Until solid data applicable across the field is made available, this is as good as it gets.

One Year Ago Today, Miura Passed Away

One year ago, Kentaro Miura passed away. I still feel grief from time to time but the things he gave us will live on forever.
Here's a small drawing to honor him and his work.#Berserk #KentaroMiura pic.twitter.com/jfhO8PyZmi

— Arokhun (@Arokhboy) May 6, 2022

Berserk is a fantastic work, best read and not watched or played. (Yes, there's a videogame adaptation.) Amazon has his work available, and Volume 1 is here, and I would not be surprised if there were used copies available in stores online or in a location near you- look around. There is also the option to read online.

There's a cottage industry of written and video essays on this man and his work, which I leave to you to search for yourself at your discretion, and plenty of games--most recently including Elden Ring--that make no bones about the influence of Berserk upon it. We lost a brilliant man with Miura, and it is on we that remain to honor him by surpassing him.

We will, and sooner than you think.

My Life In Fandom: Looking Forward To Doan's Island

The trailer for Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan’s Island came up just over a week ago. This version has English subtitles in the Closed Captions.

I have to give Bandai credit for taking a notoriously horrible original TV episode and rehabilitating it into a full feature film in this manner, up to and including using the original off-model depictions of standard models as field-expedient variatations- complete with (of course) official Gunpla releases meant to support the film's release.

They took the original TV script and put in the time to rewrite and expand it into a full feature-length narrative. That allowed the writers to take one-off Villians of the Week and make them into fully-realized characters with motivations of their own, and otherwise turn this into something ideal for the Gundam brand: a story simple enough for the primary audience (boys edging into adolescence) to appreciate, but complex enough to hold the attention of the legacy audience and the primary's parents, and thus hold its value over time.

That's because this film follows the style of Origin and Thunderbolt, and the art style is the tell. Will it be good? Likely so; this team has yet to disappoint, and the two immediately aforementioned did a lot to bring the brand to a new global audience of young adults, and I fully expect that the Gunpla sales will be satisfactory for the C-Suite figures in the company.

What does bother me is the absolute dominance of Gundam in the Real Robot space these days, but that's not Gundam's fault. I'll be seeing this film as soon as I can.

Narrative Warfare: GAMA Done Fucked Up

Jon del Arroz, the Leading Hispanic Voice in Science Fiction, ran afoul of the SJWs in tabletop gaming- specific GAMA.

Unfortunately, Eric Lang didn't pay attention to Mr. del Arroz's history or he would know that he successfully defeated WorldCon for pulling the same stunt, a feat Jon is already saying that he's willing to repeat.

Yes, Jon has the same legal situation with GAMA that he had with WorldCon. Same inputs? Same outputs. GAMA will lose. GAMA will be ruined financially, and specific individuals--if Jon targets them specifically--will be likewise destroyed.

Go ahead, GAMA, go talk to the WorldCon people that got wrecked in court. See what's in store for you if you don't yoke those SJWs and make nice with Jon right now.

Then thank God for the mercy of dealing with a man in a state where this behavior is only liable in a civil action, rather than someone in Minnesota where doing this is criminal offense. SJWs find out the hard way that their usual array of narrative attacks not only do not work in court, they are counter-productive and only makes their case worse. Akilah Hughes found this out when she went after Sargon of Akkad, WorldCon found this out when they went after Jon, and Patreon found this out when Owen Benjamin bent them over in arbitration.

Jon may ask for help with legal expenses. If he does, please do him a favor--and yourself a favor--by supporting him as best you can. And as for GAMA:

Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself Ice Cube GIFfrom Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself GIFs

My Life As A Gamer: Josh Stryfe Hayes Revisits Balder's Gate

Josh Stryfe Hayes revisits Balder's Gate.

TLDR: Yes, it was- and is.

Compare this game to many made since its original publication circa Cultural Ground Zero, including--in many respects--its "Enhanced" edition. Along with other games of its day, you find that it has much that people today still think of as desirable qualities in a PC or console adventure game, qualities now often weak or missing entirely- and not just due to SJW Death Cultists inserting their Satanic dogma into the work.

This is a game where morality actually matters, where you can't get it all and do it all in a single playthrough, where you can take on challenges that are difficult yet doable, and has so much playable content that even at its current price you're getting well more than the acceptable standard of One Hour Per US Dollar- you're getting three or four.

The only problem I have with it is that it's owned by Death Cultists now, both the original IP and the CRPG specifically. Therefore I cannot in good conscious recommend paying for it. Instead, contact Captain Harlock or borrow a friend's copy. Don't give money to people that hate you.

The Business: Make This Happen Before Someone Else Does

This needs to be made.

Call it "Hero Delivery Service" (because global trade reasons), and write the story of the guys who drive the trucks that send isekai protagonists to their destinations. Write it as a dark comedy, and have the truck drivers be thinly-veiled former antagonists who are serving cosmic sentances doing this as a form of Purgatory, knowing that they are contributing to the final defeat of all evil everywhere by their actions, and thus the futility of doing evil.

Good comedy is hard to do, but evergreen when it is done.

My Life As A Writer: This Is What Epic Space Opera Looks Like

If you want to know what truly epic space opera looks like in action, watch this.

Hundreds of thousands of capital ships, involving millions of men per side, spread across a stellar frontier until culminating in a single system dominated by a giant red star. That is the stage; the admirals are the star players, with a few secondary characters getting attention here and there to emphasize specific themes that recur throughout the story, and theirs are the actions that shape the narrative. By word and deed you can see each character demostrate their qualities and make themselves memorable in manners that too many in OldPub and the Hellmouth cannot execute even if they can comprehend it.

You will not find a Western mainstream in film or televsion that gets close to this. Uncle George's Evil Empire had a "grand fleet" of 25,000 Ships of the Lines for an entire galaxy, and neither its predecessors nor its successors were any better. Only classics like E.E. Smith's Lensman series meet or surpass this grand scale and scope, fully embracing what "epic" means and showing the withered wretches of today how poor they are by comparison.

In Japan, you don't have this problem. While no one's reached the fleet sizes of Legend of the Galactic Heroes, you'll still find Space Battleship Yamato showing scope and scale that makes Western alternatives look tame and various Macross series demonstrating that the Pulp spirit lives on across the Pacific- especially its roots in Romanticism. While this video focuses on fleet action, other clips around YouTube show the Romanticism at the heart of the story- that soundtrack wasn't chosen for nothing.

Compare this against what passes for Space Opera in the West, and you see just how badly we've been screwed by the Futurians and their successors when they murdered the Pulps almost a century ago. No wonder it's such a pain in the ass to get eyeballs back on what was once lost, and is now being rebuilt; generations have hardly any idea what "epic" is, or "space opera" other than what Uncle George accidentally created in 1977.

But it can be done, it is being done, and therefore it is only a matter of time before it is done. We just need to hold out until we breakthrough.

My Life As A Historian: Sabaton History Talks About The Race To The Sea

It's been a while, but Indy and the boys are back to talk about the start of World War One and the failure of the Schlieffen Plan.

Naturally, this is promoting song and the rest of the new album.

This is your reminder that, in addition to their excellent World War Two series, Time Ghost has a channel dedicated to World War One. It is "The Great War", and you can find it here. A quick search reveals two videos on the Schlieffen Plan, so watch those if you want more information.