The Culture: Only The Fantastic, Adventurous, And Warlike Are Allowed

(Following from yesterday's post.)

This the Fantastic Adventure Wargame Hobby.

A viable Brand for this hobby has to hit all three parts of that label, because it is the presence of the entire triumverate that the four pillars of proper play leverage to create the unique gameplay experience that this hobby--and this one alone--allows a participant to experience.

I expect that by pointing out the necessary pattern that you, the reader, will be able to filter things accordingly henceforth. Therefore an exhaustive list of Brands is not necessary, but rather a representative sample focusing on either well-known Brands general or those specific to the hobby.

It Must Be Fantastic

Note that I mean "fantastic" and not "fantasy" or some other Madison Avenue-style of fake genre sorting. Solomon Kane is a fantastic adventure hero. So are Kimball Kinneson and Koji Kaubto. Their respective settings differ significantly from each other, but they are all departures from the ordinary everyday lives of common people everywhere and it is that difference from the mundane and ordinary that is the draw that pulls people into the game.

If the Brand focuses on being "comfy", on ordinary things and doings (despite the trappings), and is otherwise indistinguishable from garden-varity sitcoms or petty dramas then it does not belong here. If it does not Step Out Of The Ordinary then it is a bad fit for this hobby. It's the difference between The Rockford Files and City Hunter.

It Must Be Adventurous

The Brand's identity must involve Going There. Coming back is optional. There needs to be an element of going into the unknown, be it a literal unmapped frontier or in a more metaphorical sense of going outside friendly geopolitical territory. There needs to be some degree of uncertainty in what to expect, and some degree of unreality (even of the "Reality Is Unrealistic" sort), even if a Brand is a wholly materialist one with no supernatural presence whatsoever. (And yes, Brands do nail this; why do you think upscale brands look like they came out of James Bond film?)

There is no room in this hobby for Brands where everything is known, everything is solved, and thus the world is closed. Even a Brand focused on expressing Dystopia leaves plenty of liminal space where things are uncertain and unreality manifests because that's where the story that Brand wants to impart to its target audience will be told. If your Brand has no room for adventure, then it has no place in this hobby.

It Must Have War

Be it the Total War of FightStick39K or the subtlty-but-deadly intrigues of the mafia underworld, a Brand that fits is a Brand that features multi-faceted conflicts settled by force and guile and has room for plenty of fighting both man-to-man and Empire Vs. Empire. There is Diplomacy, there is Total War, there is Warriors of Fate, and there is Art Of Fighting. Squadrons clashing in the air (or on the seas- literal or metaphorical), armies on the ground, courtiers before the Emperor, duelists on the street, and assassins in the dark- and that's just the internal factional fighting on one side of a massive war against an equally massive enemy.

If your Brand doesn't allow for this, it has no place in this hobby. Dictating that certain characters cannot be touched, or ruining the appeal if they are? Disqualifying.

The Pillars

A viable Brand therefore has in its Setting Bible the things that matter to proper play. It has the capacity to thrive with Factional Play, as the Brand's setting is based on multi-faceted (almost fractal in nature) conflicts that players can seize upon and play out. From this basis comes the capacity for Always On play and with it the requirement for Strict Timekeeping and adherance to Rules As Written.

It also demands competency in the presentation of this information to the audience, in addition to the competency of designing and communicating the rules of the game to the target audience for the Brand. It is this step, more than the rest, that culls so much trash out of the running.

Good Brands

I mentioned a few yesterday.

What a good Brand does is not only to put the player into a position where he can exploit the opportunities to be found by being an ambitious and adventurous figure in a time of tumult, but to show the player that they can become the winner in such a grand campaign and bring order back to the setting on a defacto or dejure permanent basis- the core appeal of the hobby is permanently solving the Big Problem before it.

And I do mean "permanent", as permanent as time itself passing being permanent (and thus neither reversable nor repeatable). Your man become the great hero that destroyed the Omnicidal Pepperpot Potentiate and told the meddlesome academic to take his overengineered tool and shove it up both his assholes. (As Kinneson would do; no Lensman would blink at genociding such an evil race.)

I also mean "can", not "should" or "will". Plenty of people that could choose not to, for reasons fair or foul, and instead do something else. That is meant to be entirely up to the players, and the Referee is not to interfere at all.

This loops back to what makes a good Brand fit for the hobby. A lot of popular external Brands that people like--Macross, Gundam, Galactica, Gene's Space Opera, George's Space Opera, Middle Earth, etc.--can be good fits if you change the perspective. That shift is the one forced by adherance to the Four Pillars, where you are compelled to play more than one character in the campaign because of mandatory downtime rotating them on and off the bench.

This permits players and Referees to (a) swap chairs at the table and (b) swap tables. Take, for example, Gene's Space Opera. This week Bob runs the ongoing mission of the USS Bismarck, and next week it's the Imperial Cruiser H'tch from the Proud Prune Juice Enjoyer League. Or for George's Space Opera you have one table focusing on space knights fighting space heretics, another where you have I Can't Believe It's A Squadron somehow not dying in their guerilla raids on enemy shipping, and the third is Total Furry Death fighting a siege against a hostile third party while also fighting the Empire.

In each campaign you also have players running the factions in the campaign, submitting orders and getting results back. Players drive the events, for the most part (because adherance to (a) canon is part of the appeal of the Brand so some (very, very stupid) external events are Fixed Outcomes that can't be changed- only worked around.

Go ahead, take a look at Your Preferred Brand with this in mind. How much better would things be when done that way?

Now put that perspective under a Game that supports this and readily provides mechanical structure for the narrative that the Brand champions.

This forces hard questions, and equally hard answers, but also better games- and gamers. A lot of trash gets flushed out of the hobby, making it better, and already some of it has seen the tidal wave coming and are running for the exits. No shame in seeing yourself out now if this isn't what you're looking for.

As if it is, go get yourself some new sandals. You have jewelled thrones to tread under those feet.