The Medium of Tabletop RPGs Is That Of A Perpetual Braunstein

Following on from yesterday, this is my position on tabletop role-playing games: they are a wargame derivative, specifically of Braunstein, and can be played this way.

This is Rules-As-Written, Always On, 1:1 timekeeping, etc. as the #BROSR has shown to work in practice.

There's a very practical reason for why I favor this: every alternative has been superseded by competing media.

The common practices of RPG play make why this has happened obvious.

• Game time happens only at the table.
• Game events happen only at the table.
• Everyone plays together as a group operating as a unit.
• Nothing happens otherwise; time stands still and events are frozen until the players act.

Why would I choose this, with all the hassles of scheduling times to play, when I can just pop over to Steam or GOG and get any one of a number of PC RPGs and get the exact same gameplay experience? Not only that, but I have a guarantee that the rules will never change because someone had a bad day, can't read for comprehension, didn't like what they read, can't see how Rule X interacts with Procedure Y, or any number of very common excuses to fuck with how the machine works.

"But MMOs!"

The closet you get is EVE Online, and even that game falls short. Star Citizen is still in alpha, as is Ashes of Creation, and other would be takers aren't even that far. As for the ones that are making the money, those are themeparks that go out of their way to specifically deny that agency to players as well as dilute other aspects.

No, you want to look over to games like Heroes of Might & Magic and the Total War series or (on the smaller scale) Battle Brothers and its ilk and--again--they also fall short because they are not entirely player-controlled, not always on, etc.

Until a videogame comes along that replicates the core gameplay of the Perpetual Braunstein of tabletop RPGs, the tabletop medium remains the only one that fulfills the promise of the medium and therefore justifies its existence. Without that justification, it should not exist and therefore IT WILL NOT EXIST.

Many have some of the elements of a proper Perpetual Braunstein, and a few come close only to choke at the last mile. Something, somehow, conspires to make it fail to meet this challenge.

If not for the common misunderstanding of what a RPG is, we would not have the massive confusion about the medium that we have now. The #BROSR's strident insistence upon its roots, and demonstrations of this definition being true and correct, will force everyone else to redefine themselves in reaction to this in due course.

I have a complete game, out of the box, that Just Fucking Works and delivers what it promises. For what opponents offers, this is better done on PC and console; for the real deal, it's as the #BROSR offers because no competing medium can do it.

And that's just videogames. I can also replace a lot of naysayer alternatives with board and card games. "But I just wanna dungeoncrawl!" means "I just play HeroQuest/Descent/Dungeon" just as "I love narrative gaming!" means "I like to LARP"- so they do that instead. Don't get me started on folks whose primary action with BattleTech is entirely via videogames, and increasing common with Warhammer fans also.

Why in Gygax's name would I want to mess about with what other media do better, especially when so many of them are dirt-cheap now and the new releases get deeply discounted sooner than later if you just wait past the launch a while?

It's fucking retarded.

Braunstein defines RPGs. You will not succeed in making one that can't be put back into that box and improved by doing so.

I'm as old as RPGs themselves. I've seen this, and when I celebrate my birthday tomorrow I'm hoping for adding to the library. More on that is here.