My Life As A Gamer: BDubs Shows How To Delve & Baghdad Bob Routines Are Lame (#BROSR)

The man of #Dubzaron, BDubs, posted a session report today.

The big thing I want to point out is here:

The Forward Operating Base near Queens Rest Mountain was deemed FOB Queen and it's a safe place for PCs to rest or park after an adventure. So to those uncreative sorts that talk about "how can my pcs adventurer deep into the wilderness with 1:1 time? It's impossible!" I say to you that the players involved (including Patrons) will work within the limitations of the rules and come up with creative solutions.

FOB Queen was Kyle's solution to having a dungeon he wanted PCs to delve which was far out from civilization.

That forward operations base is, for all intents and purposes, a town.

It fulfills all the functions of a town: place to rest, resupply, recover, debrief, and swap out personnel.

Even if you aren't big on doing the big Domain play, acknowledging that a FOB solves the "must go back to town at the end of the session" question would go a long way towards being seen to act in good faith- something a lot of you naysayers are not doing.

Each and every report, each and every video, each and every Twitter thread, etc. is a separate and distinct recepit. That's hard evidence. That's proof that what the #BROSR claims is not only possible, they are showing you by doing it themselves. Gainsayers and naysayers have nothing of equal or superior substance to rebut this, and as such they lose the argument. All they can do is deny that the recepits exist.

This Baghdad Bob routine is pathetic and unbecoming. Yes, you ankle-biters, this is you.

I will now do you naysayers a solid.

This is how you respond.

"The medium of tabletop role-playing games can accomodate more than one ludological structure. We are not interested in the Braunstein-based structure that dominates tabletop role-playing games because we do not find that style of game, or that mode of play, to be entertaining. We do not know yet what, specifically, we want--we do not yet know what we are for--but we are certain that we are against this Braunstein-style of play."

There you are. That, oh naysayers, is how you can be honest in your opposition and do so in good faith.

"But what comes next?"

You need to figure out what you are for. This is going to be a discourse among yourselves, and do not be surprised to find that you don't agree on what you are for. "Not #BROSR" is not good enough because you need to start publishing RPGs that models the ludological structure that you want in a tabletop role-playing game.

The Pundit's output is the furthest along, but even he remains within the boundaries of Braunstein as of this post. If you don't like this, you have to accept that you cannot put out a game that allows for it in the slightest.

That means that you're going to have to do a radical reconsideration of what game design is and how it works, and that means you're going to have to start looking at the Storygamers because--surprise, surprise--they have already done this. Sometimes they actually did a good job--e.g. Burning Wheel--and sometimes they ended up with a decent party game (FIASCO) or otherwise missed the mark, but they're actually putting in work.

This is one of the reasons that I respect the Pundit; he saw an opportunity to serve a market niche heretofore underserved and went for it. You can, and should, do the same but instead you sit there do this Baghdad Bob bullshit. You're not helping anyone.