The Business: Braunstein Is The Answer RPGs Need, But Also One That Is Hard To Accept

The tabletop RPG business--as opposed to the hobby--has been trying to squeeze blood from a stone for decades.

The issue is that, as I explained yesterday and have said time and again before that, the medium of the tabletop RPG is at odds with the demands of commercial reality.

The common tabletop RPG business focuses upon pushing a product line upon a targetted demographic of consumers. Long before the plague of microtransactions, broken product launches, paid downloadable content, and so on we've had the exact same paradigm pushed in tabletop RPGs.

No, I am not exaggerating.

Take a Normie to a game store. Point them to one specific product line and ask them "What do you think you need to play this game?"

You should not be surprised to see that Normie say "All of it, and that's why I don't want to touch it. I don't have that kind of time."

This fact is well-known to the veterans of the business, and there are terms for this: "edition churn" and "supplement treadmill".

The reason for this problem is for the reasons I described the other day: the assumption that the players play one character at a time, that they have to play as a group operating as a unit of specialists, and therefore that they have to do everything together.

Now add on this: "Only the Game Master is responsible for creating or preparing pre-made playable content, or even knowing the rules. Everyone else just shows up."

Go back to your Normie. If he's like most people, he'll express relief as he has no expectations of actually running the game. If he's like a small, but influential, minority, he'll repeat the previous complaint because he knows he's the one doing all the work.

It is no secret that Game Masters drive most sales, in terms of Things That Get Used, because most people--if they bother to get their own dice--also only get the one manual that they feel any relevance to their needs, and that assumes that there is no sharing (or that the player cares enough to bother).

from Imgflip Meme Generator

Again, I am not exaggerating. Braunstein fixes this in its entirety.

Let me review the key changes in assumptions:

• Players do not play as a group by default.
• Players play more than one character at a time, as their discretion.
• Players can work at cross-purposes.
• Players' interactions are the primary driver of playable content.
• The Game Master is nothing more than an impartial, disinterested, and uncaring Referee that adjudicates results and resolves disputes.
• Play continues away from the table, as the campaign is Always On.

What is the biggest consequence to handle in rebuilding your tabletop RPG around the example of Braunstein, as every D&D edition between Original and AD&D1e did? The game attracts the ambitious, enterprising, and pro-active personalites to the table. Players do not just show up. They arrive with a plan, and it is the Referee that just shows up; the players pursue their own objectives, and all that the Referee needs to do is ask "What do you do?" followed by "How do you do it?" before discerning what rules procedures are to be used, execute them, and then announce the results.

Away from the table, this is much the same, but you're playing at a bigger scope and scale; you're far more of a pure wargame, played in the double-blind fashion. In the old days, this was handled by phone calls, snail mail ("Play By Mail"), and incidental social contact (i.e. meeting with the Referee over lunch, taking a moment to talk about stuff at a party, etc.). Vampire LARP veterans will recognize this, along with the concept of "downtime actions".

Today this level of play is far easier to do. Email, text messages, Direct Messages over social media or in certain videogames, Discord servers (and chats), etc. all make this level of play far more convenient and easy to do than ever before- and most of it is free to use.

At the table, therefore, can be confined to very specific action items--i.e. playable scenearios--that arise in an emergent fashion from player interactions at the strategic level. One player, while doing one character's actions, finds an abandoned mine; this character doesn't have the time to investigate himself, so he dispatches others to do so- that's your next table-play scenario.

"But I just want to play."

Meaning what? Be specific.

This is play. What it is not is passive and reactive. Rather than wanting for someone else to make something happen, you go out there and attempt to make it happen on your own terms. If all you want to do is show up, tag along with everyone else, roll some dice and farm dopamine hits then you're going to be in for a rough time unless you attach yourself to a go-getter and follow his lead.

Such people do not need accessories or supplements. They generate their own maps. They generate their own settings. They generate their own economies, their own politics, their own religions, their own cultures, and in time their own monsters, spells, treasures, races, classes, and whatever else they attempt that is neither countered by other players nor overruled by the Referee.

This is the reality of the medium, and therefore the conundrum of those seeking to make a living from it, which goes a long way to explaining so much of what is wrong about both the business and the hobby of tabletop RPGs (and that's before Death Cult fuckery).

Because there is another very uncomfortable truth that TRPG publishers and designers must face: the "standard" mode of RPG play is entirely superceded by videogame versions of it. Superior reach, superior convenience, superior penetration, superior awareness- all across the board, those who "just want to play" are better off loading up Steam or their console of choice and slotting in some videogame. No need to coordinate schedules, no need to learn the rules, no deal with people you may not like or get along with in many cases, and no concern over favortism.

That, folks, is a rock and a hard place for business. One mode has no commercial viability. The other is losing to a superior competitor. Some see this--"lifestyle branding" is a giveaway--and others don't, but it's going to come for the entire sector sooner or later.

Which leads me to the last point in favor of Braunstein as the way out: it's a lot easier to teach than you think.

So what if the business crashes and burns? The hobby will survive. Be more like Chris Gonnerman and Basic Fantasy, and make your money elsewhere.