The Culture: Putting The Fantastic Back In Fantastic Adventure Gaming

Jeffro laid down some scathing truths. While Traveller got namechecked, it's by no means exclusive to that game's fans.

90% of Traveller players spend more time combing through six editions of material pulling together the ultimate homebrew variant than they do actually running actual games.

— Cardinal Jefforieu (@JohnsonJeffro) July 16, 2023

A lot of this is driven by anxiety, and that anxiety is a fear of looking incompetent before one's peers, when the remedy is to just let go and let the game do its job. Jon Mollison explained this recently in a video; again, what game got namechecked is irrelevant to the point.

A competent ruleset is a complete machine. A machine is a complex tool intended to do a job. A competent game, therefore, is a tool intended to do the job of creating a gameplay experience. Most tabletop games are incompetent, unfinished piles of parts AND NORMIES DON'T LIKE THAT!

The gamers that are going to succeed are the gamers that just get on with it and play the game as it is. Because they let the game do the work, the Referee can focus on administration of the campaign and the players can focus on engaging with the campaign.

Furthermore, by letting the game do the work all sorts of unexpected emergent events can and do happen; the United Caveman Federation would never have occured in Cargo Cult play, nor the emergence of Macho Mandalf and Machodor, but they did in Trollopoulous because the game did the work- and continues to do the work. No grand theorycrafting is required.

"But isn't this a wargame?"

Oh, there you are; nip at the other one- that's still flesh and I might feel it. Also, see a dentist; biting at steel ankles tend to be bad for Gamma teeth.

We're going to address this question over the week because I see that a lot of people (in good faith, not the anklebiters) tend to get confused. Stay tuned, folks.