My Life As A Gamer: The #BROSR Has Already Won

Jeffro Johnson made a bold post on Twitter yesterday.

Gygax wrote the definitive elaboration of the D&D rules that was so comprehensive that it nuked his closest competing rpg and set AD&D up as the definitive rpg rule system for over a decade. But nobody was going to play what he wrote until I told people what they were missing! https://t.co/nry3iNhW0u

— Jeffro Johnson (@JohnsonJeffro) August 29, 2022

Yes, Jeffro talks big. He should. He delivered on his claims and showed receipts.

This is what his detractors across the board fail to comprehend. He not only made a bold claim, but he--and others in the #BROSR--have stepped up and showed what they did and how they did it. That's no different than showing your work, step by step, when you explain how you solved a math problem in High School.

This is what people like the Pundit fails to respect.

Jeffro claimed that Gary Gygax wrote a specific ruleset that made specific promises, and that if you did not do what Gary said that you would not get the promised results.

Jeffro showed by example, sometimes by very meticulous example, that Gary wasn't bullshittting. That proof is Trollopoulous, and results have now been replicated by others.

What the OSR set have yet to accept is not just that Jeffro was right, but that this means that Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition is as I describe: a specific game product that promises a very specific gameplay experience but only when used exactly as directed, and not a box of LEGO to mess around to do what you want.

The OSR counterpunch is not to gainsay Jeffro. That's a losing proposition due to the growing pile of recepits proving Jeffro correct.

The OSR counterpunch is to accept the second-order truth--specific game promises specific experience when used as-directed--and start making new games that deliver the specific experiences that they want.

The more general thing to do is to accept that this frame is true and accurate, and use it to judge and critize all tabletop RPGs going forward. Don't think so? Then why is it so often said--accurately--that GURPS terrible for superheroes while HERO is terrible for scrappy normie scenarios? Specifics matter, folks.

What does the game promise? Do the rules as-written, and the manual to use them as-written, allow the user to achieve those results as-directed? That's what people should be talking about, and this is why I don't bug folks like the Pundit much; even though he doesn't say so, his own work shows that he does comprehend this and designs things in that manner. Lion & Dragon and The Invisible College are not AD&D 1e, even if they share many trappings and design elements.

This has long-reaching implications.

The most profound is that we have a means of purging the Gamma Male presence plaging the business and the hobby, but that's for another post. In the more immediate term, we have a path out of this generations-long morass of suck: to reconnect to the wargaming roots as the cornerstone and rebuild away from there, and take the path that should have been gone down before it all got wrecked circa 1980.