The Culture: The Biggest Shift In How RPGs Are Seen

As I showed (again) yesterday all RPGs are wargames.

This is a head-turner due to nearly 50 years of Cargo Cult bullshit about what RPGs are and how to play them, something that's as much due to Boomers not bothering to pass on what was bequeathed to them (again) as it was deliberate memory-holing by the cohort between the Futurians and today's Social Justice death cult. When you sever a people from their roots, it is easy to gaslight them into believing anything.

I will Explain Like You're Five how this works.

• The Referee decides on a campaign premise. This involves at least two contending factions, the core Point of Contention (what they're fighting over) and why they do so (why they fight), which in turn defines the initial Win and Loss Conditions for each faction.
• The Referee draws up (figuratively, at the least) a campaign map and puts up a campaign calendar; these exist to track the movements of participants across space and time as the campaign goes on.
• The Referee then recruits one player (minimum) to run each faction. They play this level of the game in a manner akin to the games aforementioned; they turn in Orders on a regular interval, those Orders are tracked by the Referee on the map and calendar, any interactions adjucated, and the results reported to all faction players involved. Faction players only see what the Referee permits them to see, and knows only what they are briefed upon.
• The Referee then recruits as many players as he is comfortable managing to play individual characters who play at the small-scale or tactical level, where "ordinary play" goes down.
• The Referee looks for uncertainties in faction Orders to generate scenarios for the individual characters to intervene upon at their choosing. Otherwise, he looks to specific plans or goals that individual characters pursue to determine what is played out at the table by these players when they meet. If the Referee is unavailable, he may designate a substitute to run in lieu of himself.
• As soon as possible, the Referee should ensure that faction play generates scenarios for individual characters to deal with on a regular basis, and then those results feed back into the faction level of play to form a perpetual gameplay feedback loop.
• The campaign continues until someone hits their Win Condition or everyone loses. The instant either event happens, all play stops; the campaign is over, the game is over, and the matter in question is decided.

Notice the big differece there? There is a clear point of conclusion. This is not Endless Fantasy Themepark Funtime. This is a game, there is something to fight over, each player has limited resources and information to work with, each player has a point where they win and a point where they lose- and while it is likely that someone will win, it is guaranteed that you can lose and losing is always a bad thing.

This is not a Writer's Room exercise. This is not Improv Theater. This is a full and proper wargame, and like any game there are winners and losers- only this is war, so "winners" can be Pyrrhic Victors that merely lose least.

It is time to reconsider, therefore, how the games that exist can be rewritten, redesigned, and relaunched to conform to what they are- and to decide which well-known properties are better off cast out as not-RPGs.