My Life As A Gamer: The Ludo Gate Is The Gate Of War

The greatest heresy against Gross Nerd Orthdoxy in tabletop RPGs is this: that a tabletop RPG campaign is a wargame, and a wargame campaign is a finite thing that ends when one player wins or everyone loses.

Said orthodoxy that they perpetuate is that it is an endless Happy Fun Adventure Time with no beginning or end, just players and characters that come and go along with the rides--I mean adventures--like it was some seasonal episodic series. Clearly no one would think such a thing, right?

The cancer killing RPGs.

Turn a wargame into a shitty TV show, and you get shitty TV show people pretending to play a wargame. Nothing fixes the Tourist/Loyalist/SJW entryism problem without fixing this.

The remedy is obvious: lean harder into the wargame roots of tabletop RPGs.

The problem is also obvious: this turns nearly 50 years of Cargo Cult mindset about the medium on its head.

We see this already with just the freakouts from RPG Pundit and other adjacent to him that sperge out about the #BROSR. Once this starts reaching the Tourist and Loyalist set like Questing Beast, Colville, etc. you can expect the screeching to be heard across the planet.

There is no reason to not go hard into those roots.

The effect generated by doing so will compel those repelled by such a competitive environment to recoil and keep themselves out of such a revitalized hobby scene.

The reason is as simple as it is obvious: they can't handle it.

I will define what the tabletop RPG medium is in terms of the videogames that now popularize them. Thusly, it is:

• Hardcore (one life, permanent death is the default; ressurection is neither presumed nor guaranteed if it does exist and can be used)
• Rogue-like (every time you re-roll, you start over from scratch barring specific rules, mechanics, and procedures to the contrary)
• Two-Tiered (personal/skirmish scale where most adventuring play occurs, and faction/theater scale where Domain Play goes down; action in one influences the other)
• Ongoing (consequences carry over from scenario to scenario and session to session)
• Double-Blind (players only know what Fog of War allows and have to relay all actions through the all-knowing Referee; this is how Real-Time Strategy/4X works)
• Real Time (campaign play is mapped to a calendar, and time spent in the campaign is mapped to the real world on a 1:1 ratio measured in days resulting in periods of mandatory downtime)
• Objective-focused (play centers around parties contesting objectives)
• Asymetic (parties do not have identical-but-opposed Win/Loss conditions, resources, etc. and learning how to win when disadvantaged is part of the game; this also means that two or more parties can win if they hit their Win Conditions more or less simultaneously)
• Finite (there is a definite limit to the game, and when that limit is hit the game ends; this is usually expressed by hitting a Win or Loss condition)
• Massively Multiplayer (multiple active groups in a campaign capable of interacting with each other, vital for faction play)
• PVP Allowed (players are allowed to directly conflict with each other, and suffer the consequences for doing so)

In more simple terms, we have a fantastic heroic adventure wargame where players controlling Hero Figures freely mix between collaborating and confronting each other in pursuit of their objectives. That's where we can summarize with "Chainmail + Diplomacy by way of Braunstein and Kriegspiel".

The naysayers focus too much on the personal scale, thinking that this is the whole of the game, when the faction play at the Domain level is the missing half that completes the experience- and without that higher tier, where the strategic and diplomatic level is most apparent, the full power of the wargame is absent and thus opens up the very error on the table.

Going forward, this reconsideration of what makes a RPG back towards the wargame roots is going to become vital for long-term success and revitalization that also serves to purge those that are not here for the game but instead--like using wrenches as hammers--are using the medium and hobby to do something it is not meant to do. Insisting on this will purge them; being merciful about it means pointing those pushed past the gate towards where they actually belong- usually to writing fanfiction or improv theater.

Insist on this as a standard and the results will come.