The Culture: The Necessity To Be For Something Better

The word is getting out.

I know I write a lot of words, but I do address this idea in the thread. OSR took us back to form, retreating from the monolith and conventional play. But #BrOSR took the fundamental critique further, and this will result in TTRPGs finally moving FORWARD.https://t.co/IPnhlMb1Gq

— RuleOfThule (@RuleOfThule) July 25, 2023

That is, in fact, the point of all this: to chart a new course forward.

It is as I have explained many times before. When you get into a dead end, the only useful course of action is to turn around and go back the way you came. You go back, step by step, undoing every action done in turn, until the dysfunction stops and proper function resumes.

Once you reach that point, stop. Sever that connection and go down the road not travelled, never to revisit those failed practices again.

YOU ARE HERE!

The purpose at this moment is to reorient a hobby back to its healthy, functional roots so that we can forge a new path forward. My particular aim is to go from a comsumerist pseudo-lifestyle back to being an avocational pursuit of mastery of skills and acumen transferable to everyday life, something that is anti-consumerist by nature.

Others may have different takes. We'll figure that out as we go.

While I have been critical of extant games, I am not unwilling to highlight games that do encourage good practices. Macris' Adventuter, Conqueror, King is one of them, and others I will mention as I find them.

Macris is one of the folks moving the hobby forward, and this is one of the things he's doing to make that happen. He too has gone back to the wargame roots, and that shows in ACKS across the board.

There are others, and you'll hear about (and from) them in the days and weeks to come.

Each of these people are out there paving a better path, brick by brick, to a better hobby and thereby to a better tomorrow. A hobby where you don't have Fear Of Missing Out because CONSOOM PRODUCT! is not a thing, a hobby where the players produce the playable content that they consume and not some publisher, a hobby that's about playing and mastering a game so that you can compete and win- not a toy that you fold, spindle, and mutilate until it becomes your dopamine drip dispenser.