The Culture: The Quest Is The Sugar That Coats The Poison Pill Of Cargo Cult Play

In a discussion about fantastic adventure wargaming as a medium, this exchange occured. Behold what having Succumbed To Theory looks like in real life.

No, it's simpler than that.

Players with ambition get that fantastic adventure games are a medium of _agency_ and USE it to get what _they_ want.

Players that lack it go along with what whomever _is_ in the driver's seat wants. CRPGs/MMOs serve this group better.

— Bradford C. Walker (@MrBCWalker) November 9, 2023

This is what I was talking about when I said DM fiat. "Quest" implies an "official" status from the DM who conceived of the circumstances that make it necessary or meaningful. Agency, by contrast, implies making your own "quests." See world state, pursue outcome.

— Ludite Sam (@LuditeSam) November 10, 2023

Bashir has Succumbed To Theory.

Conventional Play--Cargo Cult Play--is Succumbed To Theory Play. Don't be like Staaden. Be like the Bros; stick to practice and conquer the universe.

In theory, questing is not denying players their agency. In practice, it is AS PROVEN BY COPIUS VIDEO AND WRITTEN PLAY REPORTS!

The proof is simple enough to construct logically.

• The Referee wants the players to pursue a quest.
• The Referee makes no preparation for, or consideration of, anything but the quest.
• The Referee makes no qualms about quashing any attempt to deviate from the quest because he has nothing else prepared or desires to run anything else.
• The Referee, therefore, has no problems violating the agency of players to decide against pursuing the quest and instead puts them on a single path.

Questing, therefore, turns a medium of player agency--as proven by decades of receipits and confessions by players and publishers--into a vehicle for all the Known Issues with Conventional Play. This Cargo Cult cannot avoid herding players all aboard.

Why would anyone put up with this horseshit when you can get a better experience for cheaper (or free) at Steam or wherever (and get superior convenience to boot)?

This is why the argument is self-defeating, because Cargo Cult norms are self-negating and nihilistic. Only proper play, as the Bros have recovered from the Memory Hole, proves to be a viable alternative to what videogames offer to typical players.

And the cornerstone of that viability? Player autonomy. The Referee does not drive the bus; the players drive the bus. However, due to two or three generations of passivity being pushed in the hobby (and normalized due to technical requirements in videogames), players have to be retrained to be assertive--even aggressive--at the table and drive things instead of waiting to be entertained.

The Referee has to communicate this requirement to the players before a single die is rolled. He will often have to Explain Like They're Five because, for many players, that was the last they bothered to exercise any agency in their lives.

Players must drive play. They must decide--call the shots--and they must suffer the consequences of those decisions, and the connection between the two must be made obvious because to this day there's a distressing deficiency in both the ability to do so and the maturity to admit error in too many prospective players. (This was put on public display just the other day on Twitch.)

Not all players want to be grand conquering heroes. That's fine. So long as they want something and it is suitably ambitious--yes, "Being the greatest warrior!" is good enough--and with AD&D1e in particular that can't be avoided because it's baked into the Character Class advancement schema across the board. Other games (Palladium is one of so many examples) lack this and thus users have to impose it themselves.

Instead, I want to see more of this in earnest.

*flipping through lore*

“So… uh… there’s this kingdom… where elves and men live in peace… and you guys are in this town… uh… there’s a dun…”

“We’re going to usurp the lord
and terrorize the elves.”

“N… n… no…. you c… can’t.”

“How many mercs can we buy here?” https://t.co/Uyi74roZgB pic.twitter.com/OTNUXSIPtO

— Crom (@DoomstoneCrom) November 7, 2023

The Gaming Imperium belongs to the Brolean Dynasty.