The Culture: To Campaign Against The Dark

If your clubhouse only has room for a handful of games to do campaigns with, then you can guess what I recommend:

• Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition
• Classic Traveller
• Gamma World 1st Edition

Given the proven strength of the older games, it should be no surprise what I recommend for those wanting Horror.

You'll note that I am recommending an earlier edition of the game.

The reasons are similar to earlier editions of the three aforementioned games: they are (a) better products and (b) actual games.

Due to Death Cult convergence in the publisher, and many now involved being Death Cultists themselves, the current edition and its immediate predecessor cannot and should not be trusted- and neither should the publisher.

This is a strict Buy Used recommendation. Do not, under any circumstances, buy new from Chaosium. You are better off doing without.

Backups

Chill, if you can get it, will be a fantastic substitute. It doesn't get the nod inititally only due to COC being to Horror adventure gaming what D&D is to Fantasy.

After that, things leave the "complete game" track and you're into the Non-Game or Incomplete Product wilderness, means going to Uncle Kevin's catalog and buying a copy of Beyond The Supernatural, Nightbane, or Dead Reign. Uncle Kevin may be bad at making games, but he does not hate you.

But It Plays The Same

Whatever you choose, you're not going to have the full suite of procedural generation tools that AD&D1e/GW1e/CT have.

You also won't need them because you're playing in a contemporary or historical real world setting, so you have leave to use real world resources to make up the lack. Instead of a blank hex map, you get a real map of the area (and, if applicable, the time period) you're campaigning within. Real places, real legends, real things- but made horrific in the manner prescribed by the game being played.

That's how Horror games get away with not having the full suite of tools that Fantasy and Space games do. (Other games with similar settings get the same treatment, such as Boot Hill, Twilight 2000, and Top Secret.) This also means that all you need is the rulebook; you can skip all the supplements, even if some (usually more monsters) are desirable.

Otherwise, all of the dynamics of play are the same. It's who the Patrons play, and to what end, that changes.

If you need an example of a viable campaign, go look up all the Resident Evil games and map what goes down when. That could easily come about through a proper Horror adventure campaign.

The Culture: The Best Space Adventure Game For Clubhouse Campaigning

One more game that is best done in a clubhouse environment, and without Muh Official Setting dragging things down.

You approach this game exactly the same way as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition.

You print off a blank hex map. You roll up one planet. You run adventures on that planet. Other players in the campaign can pick another hex and roll up their own planet to run adventures there.

That planet you rolled up, using the tables in the rulebook, can produce some wild results that are open to interpretation and will prompt questions whose answers cannot help but to generate playable adventure scenarios and factions on-world sufficient to have planetary (or intrasystem) Patron Play conflicts in themselves.

Then there's going to be intersystem Patron Play, which will build upon that intrasystem layer, leading to a fractal explosion of playable adventure scenarios.

And yes, there's going to be room for bigger actions.

You don't need the Third Imperium. You don't need anything but what you and your fellow players generate off the procedural content generator tools in the rules, and the setting you generate as you play will be more substantive, more real, and more visceral than anything Games Designers' Workshop (or any of the fansites or successors) ever published.

And yes, you can find this stuff used; don't buy new unless you're out of options. This is the space adventure counterpart to AD&D1e, and it should be honored accordingly.

(Honorable Mention goes to Renegade Legion; good luck getting all of the subgames, but you do have an ideal clubhouse campaign product line with that.)

My Life As A Gamer: The Gameplay Is Serious, The Players Are Not

Reading #BROSR blogs, or watching videos/livestreams, shows that the Bros are not entirely serious about certain things.

One does not name their Magic-User "Macho Mandalf" without having one's tongue firmly in cheek, and yet the man behind the magician is one of the best players among the Bros.

You'll find this come up time and again across the Bros' characters, settings, and events.

Some of the detractors point to this as a demerit, but it is not; whether you are at the table or you're watching from the sidelines, this silly element is a vital component to the success of the Bros- and it is another element evident in the hobby since the beginning. (Or you do really need to have it explained that "Drawmij" is "Jim Ward" spelled backwards?)

And you can do this too, here and how. Let me show you.

Talon of the Fear Owl

Let's pretend that I'm running an area in the larger campaign, and I'm Making Shit Up as I go.

Let's get out those dice and roll up a man. I roll 3d6 in order six times and get this as my best array: 12,11,15,12,12,13. Some of you are going "That's a decent Cleric" and you would not be wrong, but I want to see what my options are; I see that this array qualifies for the Assassin class, so I decide to go with that. Furthermore, leaving that Cleric option open, I skip being a Half-Orc (Cleric capped at 4th level, PHB pg. 17) and instead note down the Dual Class requirements I'd need to go as a Man from Assassin to Cleric.

I choose to be a Man, roll Hit Points, note Class Abilities, pick Weapons and other gear, etc. until I get down to things like a description and a choice of a god to worship.

I look into the mirror and confer with the Referee about my Assassin worshiping an Evil sect of a Lawful Neutral Goddess of Civilization.

Oh yes, I can turn the entirety of Hololive into a mythic pantheon.

And no, that's not the only option.

I told you this wasn't that serious.

Why "Fear Owl"?

That's why.

The Fear Owl sect leans hard into the fundamentals of the Assassin class's core function of Disguise and Sucker-Punching to remove Enemies of Civilization, so they are a Lawful Evil cult in an otherwise Lawful Neutral religion. They are sociable, personable, and easy to get along with as much by training as by inclination. The paper boy you see every week, the dogwalker you run into daily, the girl-next-door bringing you food from the grocer- all the pleasant faces and voices you see right before they shiv you in the ribs or poison your lunch and you die because the Fear Owl decreed it so.

Congratulations, you just watched me Make Up Lore On The Spot for a campaign setting.

Now you have proof that you don't need to fork over money to some publisher, who may or may not hate you, to do this for you.

The Culture: The Well-Known Game That Can Only Justify Its Tabletop Existence Via Clubhouse Campaigning

Despite my complaints, criticisms, and the current ownership--if you missed that, see Razorfist's video--BattleTech remains a suitable clubhouse game.

Tex's intro the Inner Sphere video demonstrates why.

The issue is that the videogame adaptations, including the most recent ones, are far easier to get into and enjoy and yet deliver equal or superior experiences.

Therefore, it is only BY going Full Clubhouse Campaign that you get an edge over the videogames.

How?

You go hard on the Patron Tier.

A Clubhouse Campaign using this game demands to be driven by the top powers' machinations doing a Diplomacy game on top, supplemented by more players getting in on the fun by playing out the wargame scenarios that these shenanigans are going to produce.

This is not just the lords of the Great Houses, the Phone Company, and the Clans. This also includes all of the various corporations--you think Discount Dan isn't above putting out hits on Despucito Manuel?--and all levels of ambitious warlords, pirate gangs, local officials, and mercenary groups (often the same people at different times)--each of which want their own piece of the action.

Steiner wants a new Aerospace Fighter? You better believe that there's going to corporate fuckery of the lethal sort going on to ensure that Your Guy gets the contract. The Phone Company denies any involvement in the disappearance of a notorious mercenary company? Someone may pay well to get some straight answers. Why is that old guy doing the perpetual traveler thing showing up at places just months before some major person, place, or thing blows up?

God forbid you end up in a nasty pocket war on the Periphery over someone's recipe for banana bread that somehow got misinterpreted as a Star League technical cache. (Yes, something like that can happen.)

You get the idea.

This game comes to live as a clubhouse campaign for tabletop play, especially with all the Combined Arms goodness that can be had, like Car Wars can (and should). That's why tabletop seems so lame otherwise; the videogame versions do that faster, easier, and with absolute dominance in convenience. Only in a big clubhouse environment can tabletop hit its full potential.

Not that Catalyst is even trying to do this, and neither did Wizkids, with FASA half-assing it via convention stunts as so many did back in the day.

Now excuse me. I'm aiming to inflict a new horror on the Inner Sphere: The Urbanmech LAM.

Yes, it's both a reference and a joke.

The Culture: My First Clubhouse Campaign

The first time I encountered the concept of "the clubhouse campaign" was back in the 1980s. But it wasn't Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition; the Boomers had already failed to pass on that vital information by then, to disastrous consequences.

No, it was a silly tabletop wargame with a weak RPG element, and it's still got a solid audience to this day.

Yes, I am aware of the new edition.

No, I don't like it. This is a game that needs to be cheap, not expensive, and readily available; counters, paper maps, and standard six-sided dice do this while miniatures, high prices, and non-standard dice do not. (It's what keeps me from Gaslands, which is a better version of what Sixth Edition is after.)

What made it ideal was its core gameplay: arena combat with armored cars.

You had war-as-sport in the autodueling arenas of a collapsed North America, you had bandit-v-convoy scenarios on the dangerous roads beetween the walled and armed cities, and you had plenty of room for small-scaled conflicts to nontheless influence bigger conflicts between bigger powers.

And you had the ability for celebrity to bridge the two tiers of play. A really skilled road fighter could move into (and out of) arena fighting, taking the street cred he earns taking out bandit gangs and using it to get himself famous in the dueling arenas, which gets him sponsorship deals (and makes him a target in turn) and similar opportunities.

And it didn't take itself deathly serious. The Boy Scout Commando Corps was a thing, the "bad guy" counterpart to the American Autodueling Association was Big League Unlimited Dueling (BLUD) so you had a Babyface-Heel dynamic going on, and you could see the spirit of Smokey & The Bandit, Convoy, Cannonball Run, the classic Mad Max films if you were familiar with the zeitgeist behind the game.

I was in a Car Wars club back in the day. Never won the club championship, but only once did I get wrecked something fierce. Because of the collapse, there was always danger and opportunity to be had outside the city walls, but there was also no viable alternative to over-the-road travel either hence arena combat juxtaposed to road combats was an easy thing to do.

Add in trucks, big rigs, choppers, bikes, and later on boats and hovercrafts for people to ride around on (when not on foot) and you had plenty of fun times- all of which could be done in a small area and mapped to a calendar like you do with AD&D1e, Gamma World, Boot Hill, etc.

You may not be able to get the classic edition from Steve Jackson Games for much longer, but you will find copies being sold used. Get on this; it's fun.

The Culture: What Variability Does AD&D1e Have Without Going Rule Zero? (A Teaser)

It's Boxing Day.

Folks are going to be busing with returns, exchanges, cleanup, holiday travel, etc. so again not a big post today.

Rather, what I'm taking time to post here today is that this weekend at the Clubhouse will be me answering the very question in the title, so if you're not already subscribed then hit this link and do just that.

No worries about this one being paywalled; that's reserved for a later article that's in the works.

As for this week at the Retreat, due to this being that end-of-year period where folks are (and should be) dealing with family, friends, and festivities, expect shorter posts and not long think-pieces or rants.

Christmas Day 2023

Merry Christmas!

Most of what I got from the folks was a change of wardrobe. The gift cards will become belated buys from Wish Lists.

Which reminds me: Palladium Books extended the Christmas Grab Bag offer to January 15th. Still the best deal in tabletop RPGs, so put in your order here (and my Palladium Wish List is here).

And Tex's Urbanmech special is at 1pm Central today. Don't miss it.

Christmas Eve 2023

My family comes over to celebrate and exchange presents today. No time to (shit)post.

Merry Christmas to one and all.

Oh, and tomorrow you do not want to miss this:

All proceeds go to charity. Tune in live if you can.

Speaking of Tex and the Black Pants Legion, he (and they) got a shout-out from Australian geopolitics channel Perun at the end of yesterday's video on India. Turns out that Tex knows a thing or two about Indian small arms. Not the crossover we expected, but a welcome one nonetheless.

The Culture: Three Proper Adventure Games Will Keep Your Clubhouse Going For Decades

Okay, enough dunking on Conventional Play and the Cargo Cult.

Let's make this easy. You want a proper tabletop adventure game. Time to short list with links; no you're not getting them by Christmas unless you buy PDFs or you pay out the nose for overnight shipping.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition

You may well have to buy new copies, in which case you have to go through DriveThruRPG. I took the liberty of linking directly to a Print-On-Demand search for AD&D1e, which has the three core rulebooks- and that is all you will ever need, as the Bros proved. Unearthed Arcana can also be had new in POD. Oriental Adventures, Deites & Demigods, Manual of the Planes, and the Fiend Folio all have their fans but are not essential in the least. The rest? Not so much, and needed even less.

Gamma World 1e

Again, you're going to have to hit up DriveThru for the rules if you buy new. Jeffro has a series talking mostly about GW3e, but a lot of those demerits go away with the original version of the game. Do keep in mind that any pop culture references will reflect the date of original publication, same as with AD&D1e.

Classic Traveller

Guess what? DriveThru again for new product. The best start is The Traveller Book, and that's enough to run entire campaigns for decades on end; you don't need the later books or other supplements at all, but you may want what they offer. The same caveat about GW applies here.

Buy Used When You Can

Half-Price Books, Books-a-Million, Abebooks, Noble Knight Games, Alibris, and Ebay are all good places to go hunting when the local game store turns up empty. I would also pay attention to garage sales, estate sales, and similar owner-run used product sales; you can score some treasure that way.

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My Substack account--the Lakeside Clubhouse--is now live. Please subscribe.

The Culture: Conventional RPGs Cheaper Than Current Edition

Is it possible to get the gameplay experience that the Cargo Cult insists is normal at a fraction of the price, with no inconvenience, and no issues with weirdos?

It is if you have a decent PC and an account with either Steam or Good Old Games ("GOG"), both of which are now in Winter Sale season.

Below is a short selection of titles on sale on both storefronts that do Conventional Play, as the Get-A-Long Gang insists.

• One True Party
• We Do Everything Together
• No PVP
• No timekeeping accountability
• Muh Narrative
• Muh Path

Also, as all of them are either Current or Former Darlings (or are Old As Fuck) they are all documented and thus have Walkthroughs in text or video form for those too impatient, stupid, or a games journalist to just play the game and Git Gud enough to beat it instead of getting filtered.

Links to both Steam and GOG store pages will be provided with each entry.

The Culture: Everyone Needs A Copy Of "How To Win At RPGs"

There is one other thing I am going to recommend for this Christmas season, Jeffro Johnson's How To Win At RPGs from Pilum Press.

My copy came from the man himself. It's a short, brisk read and worth having it in print; this is something you want to study away from screen and noise so you can engage the text with the intensity of focus that you should be applying to the rules manuals of the hobby games.

If you get a gift card or some cash for Christmas, and you actually want to Git Gud, throwing some of that this way and showing Jeffro some love is a good idea (after, of course, putting in the effort to upgrade your skills).

In addition, engaging the Bros in conversation isn't that hard to do. Many are on Twitter, and several (including Jeffro) maintain their own blogs.

(P.S.: Steam Winter Sale is live. Makes a lot of my Wish List items so much cheaper.)

The Culture: Games For Clubhouses

Since Christmas is about to hit, and folks are doing that last-minute thing, some suggestions:

• Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition
• Boot Hill
• Gamma World 1st Edition
• Classic Traveller
• Car Wars
• Twilight 2000
• Adventurer, Conqueror, King

I'm keeping the list short to avoid Analysis Paralysis. Feel free to add others in the Comments below, along with purchase links. As almost all of this stuff has been around for decades, you'll be able to find them used; Half-Price, Abebooks, Alibris, Books-a-Million, Noble Knight, etc. are all worth hitting up in addition to the used section of any local stores. (That's where you'll find, for example, Renegade Legion.)

But here's how I'm judging them:

• No modules needed.
• Can be administered in the proper manner as explained by the #BROSR.
• Can be run exactly as-written without issues arising from unanswered logical questions that the rules or the source materials ought to cover. (e.g. if Bob is laid up, how long would it take for my man to get to him to finish the job; how long does it take to go from putting in an order for a new-built ship to taking delivery of it)
• Has either very obvious content creation procedures or very easy--and handy--tools to do so (as this replaces modules).
• Thrives under a clubhouse campaign environment, where you have player-run tables overseen by a campaign Referee.

There's other products available out there, and sifting through the used market, that fits these criteria; there are also plenty of products that get filtered out. Some may surprise you.

The Culture: The Clubhouse Campaign

Since we're talking about returning to past, let's talk about how a clubhouse can have a massive campaign without a single Referee calling all the shots.

Every clubhouse needs a war room.

One War, Many Theaters

As I mentioned yesterday, the idea is that the entire campaign runs using one game played exactly as-written. Each member running a table handles a specific area on the map. Players' characters can--and, inevitably, will--move between those locations and thus between tables. That, alone, necessitates uniform rules.

The map need not be fleshed out. Folks running tables merely pick a hex (or equivalent) on the blank map and goes on from there; that's why the only products worth having are those that have functional content-creation tools so they don't need to keep forking out cash to a publisher for playable content.

Each table runs a separate game, meeting at a separate time, in coordination with the campaign Referee (to account for cross-table transit, events, etc.) but what goes on at one table can--and inevitably will--effect the play of other tables.

Eventually threads arising from gameplay will create conflicts that build pressure, pressure that has to explode sooner or later in resolution, and that means that the two tiers of play (ordinary adventuring and macro-level play) combine in a frantic mass participation event.

The Big Loop

We now have a campaign-scale gameplay loop.

Players playing adventuring characters pursuing their own objectives create ongoing threads in the campaign. These players can, and will, act at cross-purposes which generates conflict.

Those conflicts build over time, as the parties manuever to achieve a winning position. One party decides to initiate battle, forcing the battle session that resolves the conflict.

The consequences of the conflict's resolution change the situation and opens heretofore unseen opportunities for characters to exploit in pursuit of their own objectives.

Lather, rinse, repeat until someone wins.

The Key Element

Players must drive conflict. Individual characters and macro-level play alike thrives under PVP conditions, so players are expected to pursue objectives that involve taking on (and eliminating) threats to their agenda.

This does not mean that collaboration is off the table, but--like the wargames they come from--a proper fantastic adventure campaign has one winner and it is in the way that characters and factions ally and cross swords that makes pursuit of that winning objective interesting and worthwhile to play out.

But, once there is an uncontested (and uncontestable) winner that campaign is over. Mark final positions on the map, publish post-mortems, and say "Good Game".

Then get ready to do it all again.

That's the last thing missing from the hobby: campaigns must not only being, but end- either someone wins, or everyone loses. A game that can't do this is unfit for purpose, which is over 90% of products on the shelf- maybe 99%.

The Culture: "Greyhawk", Not "Dungeons & Dragons"

One Product, Many Games

One other former practice primed for revival is the return of identifying a given hobby table by its location- not the product name.

"I run Trollopolous", not "I run Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition, in other words.

As most people weren't around at the time, and far too many of you aren't paying attention to the #BROSR (which has revived this practice), let me summarize: each table has its own particular culture that influences what is done and how it is played DESPITE BEING RUN EXACTLY BY THE RULES.

You will get the exact same effect if there were a bunch of Boot Hill tables, all named after their location, with players and characters moving between them (as they are in the #BROSR games). "Bob runs Pig's Eye, Dick runs Eagle Point, and Harry runs Golden Valley" you might hear at the clubhouse.

The same applies to Gamma World, Classic Traveller, ACKS, and a few other products that are actual full and feature-complete games (instead of half-assed bullshit like 90% of the cottage industry's catalogs).

There's a reason for this being primed to return: most products are going to wither away and die, taking their user networks with them, and only those that are full and complete games will remain. Therefore there will be little in the way of confusion within a decade or so after Magic-Users By The Water pulls the rug out, rounds up the Tourists and the Cultists, and fucks off for vidya.

The Clubhouse Hates The Module

A tabletop adventure hobby scene that refocuses around clubs and clubhouses will mean that club campaigns will also return, the precursor environment for location-based game identification over product-based.

The reliance on complete products, each with user-content-generation features as AD&D1e and other games prefered by the Bros do, means that the Cargo Cult insistence upon modules will also get the chop as they are surplus to requirements, unfit for purpose, and only came about because of performative play in public (i.e. conventions).

As conventions are now irrelevant, so is everything tied to them, which means that modules are on the block now also.

A clubhouse campaign, with multiple games running at separate tables, replaces all need for (and liminal space for) modules because those user-content-generation tools get used and thus fill the void that modules otherwise would.

Tying all the games together into a single campaign is what prevents each from mutating into a non-game or incompatible variant game; everyone plays the same game, so everyone needs their own copies of the rules, and as any player can start up their own game under the same campaign rules conformity between them becomes not only necessary but desirable.

The Bros are already proving this in action, and have been for a few years now. Trollopolous, Red Frontier, BROvenloft, etc. are all under one ruleset; Dubzaron is the outlier, being under ACKS and not AD&D1e.

The future is the past, and this time the promise of that past will not go unfulfilled.

The Culture: Rebuilding The Clubhouse

"But Walker, if fantastic adventure games as a tabletop gaming hobby collapses back into a non-commercial hobby, how will we play?"

You mean "What is the social order to become?"

Again, the future is the past. The Shiba of Color summarized this as "Return of the Lodge", but for most of you it is better explained this way.

You will not be this cool, alas.

I'm exaggerating for effect, but this has the key elements.

The Return of the Club

A club, and its clubhouse, is an exclusive social group whose carefully-curated membership devotes itself to the pursue of a particular form of activity.

Tabletop hobby games, being inherently esoteric as a pursuit (as befits their wargame roots), lends itself well to this form of organization. So far, not too unusual; it's just a revival of a social practice that's fallen off in recent decades.

Except for that one word that gets Death Cultists and Tourists mad: "exclusive".

That means another word--a necessary word--that's been rehabilitated: gatekeeping.

And it is this function that leads the Shiba of Color to say "Lodge" instead of "Clubhouse". Drawing on what's in this book by John Michael Greer, the idea here is that the hobbyist group should be unashamed to practice their hobby in private and to be quite selective in whom to admit into their group as a matter of security.

One, again, need only look at Neckbeardia to see the wisdom in such gatekeeping and general discretion.

The Necessary Elements

You need barriers to entry. Given that bad actors are a problem in this hobby, verbal affirmations are worthless--with one exception--deeds must be demanded.

In the Lodge paradigm, this is the purpose of Initiation. For a Clubhouse, this is meeting (and maintaining) membership requirements.

If you think this isn't a viable concept, then you don't understand why Magic-Users By The Water wants to herd players into D&D Beyond and transition the game into an all-digital subscription-based experience. The same psychology that keeps subscribed players paying that subscription is the psychology that keeps Initiated members of a Lodge willing to follow its rules.

What you're after is (a) proof of commitment to the hobby, (b) proof of commitment to the club, and (c) proof of commitment to (and submission to) the authority of the rules.

This is why you commonly see clubs demanding that would-be members buy and keep their own copies of all gameplay materials, why they require new members to play at the table for a time before being allowed to run it, and why they require players to participate in play in a given manner. Some even charge dues.

The problem, of course, is that any such group dependent upon a public institution opens itself up to Civil Rights actions by exercising exclusionary discretion. This is yet another reason for talking in terms of a Lodge--which keeps itself secret, or at least private legally and literally--because those groups cannot be cracked open by lawfare- only the old-fashioned form of entryism can work, and a Lodge is specifically organized to detect and defeat entryism.

Which leads to the next element: a continuing body of knowledge and practice, formalized tradition, to be passed down from Senior to Junior and enforced upon all members.

This is not just the rules of the game. It's also the body of the social norms of the club, and such a club will--like a Lodge--insist on members keeping their mouths shut as to what it done within the walls of the clubhouse save for what is specifically sanctioned.

The Necessary Customization

Every club will, by definition, be a separate and distinct entity. What is necessary for one is not for another, so some groups will be more like old-school social clubs and others will be more like magical lodges.

But there is now another dimension to customization: The Internet.

The club, and the clubhouse, is often a virtual one these days. There are tightly-gatekept Discord servers whose members are closely-guarded secrets, and whose actions are not made public. There are other groups that just fire up Tabletop Simulator and act like Russian Badger's crew while chucking virtual dice and pretending to pile orc skulls by the dozen.

And you may be surprised as to who is in what group.

But whatever form this takes, and whatever particulars apply, We Are Returning To The Clubhouse, Boys!

Every gaming wants a hall like this.

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Note: If you are ordering anything, especially not from Amazon (e.g. Palladium), get your order in today to guarantee that it will arrive by Christmas.

My Wish List post is here, should you wish to gift me anything.

The Business: Welcome Back To The Cottage, Gaming "Industry"

This is your future, tabletop publishers: THE PAST.

You are not going to be mass-market. You are not going to have your own conventions. You are not going to be major components of other conventions. You are going to become a hobby pursuit with no commercial viability, and you are going to hit that wall far faster than you think.

As such, you are going to be forced to confront this fact--that pushing paper, and especially pushing text-as-pixels, has no future as a business--and you will be forced to reconsider your options.

Shifting Operational Focus

The Business: Hobby Game Publishers, You Determine Your Fates NOW

The receipts keep coming.

This is not typical shitty corpo cost-cutting at the end of the year.

The Business: Even The Vidya Vets See The Writing On The Wall For Conventional Play

I am not the only one seeing the change coming for tabletop and Conventional Play.

BG3 is killing DnD, not saving it.

Tabletop rpgs will always be around, but niche.

Everyone introduced to DnD via BG3 isn't going to play the paper rules. They want a rich online experience beyond what a VTT can deliver.

100x the market.

— Grummz (@Grummz) December 14, 2023

Mark ought to know. He was on the World of Warcraft team 20ish years ago, and that MMO was a major contributor in the decline of tabletop as a major force in the culture as it provided Conventional Play experiences of the day better than what Cargo Cultists promised.

The Business: The Effects Of Not Giving Money To People That Hate You

The recepits keep coming.

There's an article about it here.

What is the TLDR? This is a DOT Strategy. YOU MUST BE PATIENT AND LET THE DOTs DO THEIR WORK.

Damage Over Time. That's what "not giving money" means in practice. You don't get it done instantly; you have to sustain the effort over time and watch carefully for tells that the damage is adding up.

This is the tell of the damage adding up.

Magic-Users By The Water and Hassle Brothers are hoping and coping that turning Current Edition into a videogame with a subscription fee and microtransactions, like it was some mobile trash shitfest, will be the answer to their (self-inflicted) woes.

That can now be put into doubt. Debt isn't free anymore; the rates are going up past that point and not ceasing, so a lot of the funny money fueling the Death Cult's efforts in tabletop is drying up.

If the Biggest Boy is faltering, everyone else will feel an earthquake and most trying to make living at this will feel The Big One and up buried by the rubble.

I said it two days running. I repeat it now: You Cargo Cultists, you Tourists, you Death Cultists HAVE NO FUTURE HERE!

Only the real RPGs, as described by the #BROSR, will survive. Repent your errors or get left behind when the ramp to the ark goes up.

#JeffroIsRight

The Business: Here Come The Receipts On The Doom Of The Cargo Cult

As if in answer to my post yesterday, a one-two from Clownfish.

Magic-Users By The Water and Hassle Brothers are tanking.

The transition by MBTW of Current Edition into an all-digital psuedo-videogame can't come fast enough, and they're already deploying shills to push it.

Guy who always ends up shilling for MBTW ends up shilling for MBTW. Same formula as the Devil Mouse for Mouse Wars.

This is proof that Cargo Cultists have no future in the tabletop hobby. The Tourists will go where MBTW wants them to go because they are weak to social pressure and easily bullied into going along with stupid ideas like what MBTW wants to do with Current Edition. The Cargo Cultists will follow them because they'll run out of people to play with otherwise.

The (Not So) Friendly Local Game Stores will have to go like the Comic Shops and dump the Cargo Cult crap in favor of Things That Sell, which means they too will become Manga Stores and add on related merchandise. Tabletop hobby games will scale back to Real RPGs--the few that exist--until the stores phase them out as useless vestiges that are no longer commercially viable unless they also sell lots of related crap like miniatures (and all that goes with that- the Stupid British Toy Company approach).

Once the Biggest Boy goes, the next in line will follow; they won't be able to fill the void, so the collapse expands to consume them in turn.

After that, the last brick in the wall falls out and the dam breaks. The entire sector collapses, taking out companies left and right unless they are prepared to pivot- either to Real RPGs, or to some other product category entirely (i.e. boardgames, card games, IP farm for videogame adaptations, IP farm for merchandising, etc.). Even the dinosaurs will fall in short order- a great culling heretofore unseen in this market niche.

Too many think they can replace this with Neopatronage. They won't. Too many offerings chasing too little money means only a handful can hang on enough to attempt a pivot, and given how pants-on-head retarded too many in this niche are most of them won't even conceive of needing to do so; they only delay the inevitable.

Some will go like Gonnerman and downshift to a self-funding hobby. A few will switch media and continue that way. Most will just die, and they won't be missed as they've always been surplus to requirements, unfit for purpose, and thus their demise will be better for everyone.

And sooner than many will ever admit, they will be forced to admit it.

#JEFFROISRIGHT

The Business: Conventional Play Has No Future

Victory Has Defeated Them

In case you missed it, the Video Game Awards went down this past week. Baldur's Gate 3 won Best RPG and more.

Why does this matter to you, a tabletop hobbyist? Because the Mediocre Masses that #suckatrpgs are the people that made this happen, and one look at any Actual Play videos show you why.

Larian Studios--the folks behind Divinity: Original Sin and its sequel--know their market and audience. They delivered on what they promised.

What did they promise? The Conventional Play experience in videogame form.

Every. Single. Thing. that the anklebiters in support of Conventional Play, the Cargo Cult norms wrecking tabletop, are here in abundance.

The Business: Don't Give In To People That Hate You

Goodman Games never read SJWs Always Lie.

Goodman Games:
>remove all the male/female pronouns from your Dcc book to please tbe hard left
>hard left attacks you in the replies for only having white men in your panel
Was it worth it? #brosr #inlivingcolor https://t.co/TC5VWYefg7 pic.twitter.com/7BHPzvGXPU

— Heel Dubs (@Bdubs1776) December 1, 2023

As anyone that has read the book knows, the demands did not cease; the Death Cultists moved the goalposts and made newer--more extreme--demands as one expects of a fanatical Death Cult that does not believe in Redemption or anything subset of it.

Goodman, being Cuckservatives, will learn nothing from this. The poz is taking its toll; count it Converged and consign it to the bin. This means that all said about BattleTech now applies to all Goodman products.

As Goodman favors Fake D&D and Cargo Cult play, I feel no sympathy for these events. They let the zombie bite. It was only a matter of time.

There is no future for the hobby but what the Bros have recovered from the memory hole. Learn to #winatrpgs and become #elitelevel or end up Cleric fodder.

The Culture: Not Giving C-Bills To Cultists That Hate You

Despite my criticism of BattleTech, it can be a fun time taken on its own terms.

Which means that "Don't give money to people that hate you" comes into play due to Catalyst Game Labs being pozzed and aggressively subversive to the detriment of the properties that it exploits.

The Excellence of Elocution has a timely rant, given the season, on how to square that circle.

Albris can be found here. Half-Price books here. Books-a-million here. Abebooks is here. There are others that you should consider, and hit up friendly local game stores that sell used product.

As for 3d Printed miniatures, that's something to ask around about. Same with counters.

And for online play, MegaMek still exists.

(NB: XMas Wish Lists are in this post. No BTech tabletop specified, but I'll take it.)

The Culture: Rube Schools Fools On Proper Timekeeping

Gelantinous Rube had a livestream after the Dorito Pope Show late last night.

I will pull the TLDR here for the newbs and the slow out there.

You can spend ALL THE TIME YOU WANT during a single session. This is no different than running up a tab at the bar.

At the end of the session, you need to settle up that bar tab. You can't spend anything but time to do this, hence what the Bros--taking from Frank Mentzer and Jim Ward--using the procedure of Mandatory Downtime for those characters involved.

Spend three months during your session? (Say, for example, long-distance travel with little or no chance of random encounters.) They're out of play for three months of real time after that because otherwise you run into temporal paradoxes. They can't be anywhere else, do anything else, and no one else can make them be or do otherwise than what was done in-session.

That's how 1:1 Timekeeping is applied to campaign play. Training to level up? Mandatory downtime. Get injured or afflicted and can't get magical healing? Mandatory downtime. Making spells or items? Mandatory downtime. Recruiting Henchmen or Hirelings? Mandatory downtime. Building structures? Same. Raising armies? Same. Add up all the time costs together if more than one such situation applies and that's the total amount of Mandatory Downtime imposed upon a character.

It's that simple. People that can't grok this are Not Tall Enough For This Ride.

My Life As A Gamer: To Win As An Assassin (Part 3)

(Following from yesterday's post.)

Your Assassin makes out of the street and rises through the ranks to become a Man of Respect. How do you win now?

The Master of Assassins

My Life As A Gamer: To Win As An Assassin (Part 2)

(Following from yesterday's post.)

From Hangaround To Made Man

Your Assassin starts his career as a stalker and a sucker-puncher. Eventually he proves useful or resourceful enough to learn some of the trade secrets of the Thieves he's sometimes mistaken for (Thief Skills, 3rd Level) and the Organization allows him to form his own crew (may recruit other Assassins as Hirelings, 4th level).

Learning Thief Skills opens up more options for stalking targets and setting up sucker-punches. Despite being two levels being a Thief of the same level (save for Backstab), there is no doubt that merely having them is a benefit.

The trap is in thinking that your Assassin is now like a Thief. He is not. Your Assassin's role is not the Thief's role; Thief Skills exist to exhance and expand the Assassin's core function of stalking targets and setting up Assassinations. Your man is not limited to dressing and acting like a Thief. He can use Pick Locks (etc.) while in armor. (There is no prohibition on using Thief Skills in armor in the rules, just on what armor he can use.) He can Assassinate and Backstab with any weapon. Poison use can be done with any applicable weapon.

My Life As A Gamer: To Win As An Assassin (Part 1)

(Building off my Assassin post from a while back.)

How It Started

When You Become The Guildmaster

Who Are You?

The 1st level Assassin disappoints on first look. What do you get for meeting the higher minimum attribute scores? You still roll 1d6 for Hit Points and are restricted to leather for armor, same as a Thief, but you gain the use of any shield or weapon in return. You have no access to Thief skills yet. You just have access to poisons and the Assassination table.

The title for such beginners is "Bravo", and that fits how to win early on. You're a bushwhacker and a sucker-puncher; you hit it and quit- you do not stay and play. Not the true ambush specialist that a Ranger is, but one who seeks to make the most of them nonetheless.

Your play revolves around setting up sucker-punch situations that grant you Surprise so you can roll on the Assassination table. Learn and master the Surprise rules and how they open access to using the Assassination table. That's your bread-and-butter; everything else faciliates this core gameplay loop.

Your man is not the stealth actor that a Thief is. Thieves are able to climb sheer surfaces, walk in total silence, disappear into shadows as if they were one, etc. like something out of ninja movies from the beginning- your man can only play catch-up. That doesn't mean that he can't sneak around, but that he needs to use more ordinary means- and as Spying is an Assassin function, he is trained in doing so.

I didn't use Assassin's Creed pics for shits and giggles; learning how to blend into crowds, eaves-drop on others by being A Face In The Crowd, quick-changing clothing to camoflage your presence, and doing extensive surveilance of a target (to kill or to report upon) is part of an Assassin's training. You don't need Alter Self to conceal oneself effectively- but man, does it help.

Your ability to wear leather armor, use any shield, and wield any weapon plays into this. You don't need to creep along the rooftops; you do like Agent 47 (Hitman) does- you take out a hireling, hide him, then don his garb to blend in and approach the target. You think this is lame? People get away with doing this sort of thing for real FOR LAUGHS.<

This mode of operating also means that you should not neglect Charisma.

Interacting with others is necessary, and unlike those who use Charisma to stand out your man uses it to blend in and be overlooked.

This comes up more in the legwork phase of a mission than in the execution phase (i.e. on Spying missions of medium to long duration), but in a common delve scenario Charisma matters when you're found and point the guards in the wrong direction with a "HE WENT THAT WAY!" (need that favorable Reaction Roll to get them to buy it).

Everything about the Assassin as a class builds off of this foundation. You have two levels to master these basics before Thief Skills complicate things at 3rd Level.

You Are Not Le Edgy Boi

You do not call your man Soulfuck Killshitter. His (assumed) name is Robert or John or Mike and he looks like he's someone that belongs wherever he is, doing ordinary things like making wagon wheels or collecting firewood.

He avoids standing out and attracting attention. Remember what I said about Assassins being in syndicate or cult? What's the big thing for them? No unwanted attention. It's bad for business- and your man, just starting out, ain't his own man yet.

He's part of a crew, which is part of the organization, so even if he ain't sanctioned to operate in the city he's at he's still in The Life and knows the rules. He's likely to worship a god or goddess that favors Assassins, albeit in secret- and Cleric/Assassin is a potent dual or multi-class combination.

This necessity for secrecy and discretion means that he can--he must--outright lie to outsiders, starting with other party members.

"What do you do, Robert?"

"I am a mercenary for hire. I specialize in skirmishing and related duties, like scouting." (Not unusual; the Romans had dedicatd units for that.)

What will give an Assassin away is very subtle: his fighting style. He doesn't have the endurance of a Fighter, despite being able to dress and use the tools of such, and he has no capacity for command like Fighters (and their sub-classes) do, and this bears out if observed over time.

The winning Assassin avoids endurance contests in combat, shuns situations where he is not in control of the encounter (no fair fights, ever), and prefers to break contact to reset a fight to his liking over sticking it out if he doesn't lock in a win right away.

With that in mind, good luck. If you make it out of being a bushwacking sucker-puncher, you're ready to start building upon this foundation. More on that tomorrow.

The Business: A Palladium That Survives Through The 21st Century (Part 8)

(Following from yesterday's post.)

The 21st Century Palladium Game Business starts with a core technical manual like this:

The Business: A Palladium That Survives Through The 21st Century (Part 7)

(Following from yesterday's post.)

You are far, far too used to think of Experience like this.

A believable adventure game does not work like this. Verisimilitude doesn't hold up when Experience is just a DING! That creates, and has created, all sorts of ludological dissonance where players act contrary to how real people think and act in such situations.

Which is why AD&D1e has the only leveling system in a Class/Level game that doesn't make people do that.

Summarize, for those coming in late:

• Gain Experience Points sufficient to qualify for the next level in your man's Class (or Classes, for multi-Classed demi-humans).
• Get your performance graded by the Referee, with the primary rubric being "Did you PLAY the ROLE in the GROUP that your man's Class fulfills?" Your grade, a number from 1 to 4, sets the number of weeks your man must spend in Mandatory Downtime in training to receive to level up and get all the benefits thereof.
• Find a trainer. If the Referee does not let your man self-train, he cannot level up without a trainer; the DMG specifies when this is an option (hint: PLAY the ROLE well).
• Spend a number of time measured in weeks in training. Take his current level (not the new level) and multiple it by 1500; this is the cost in Gold Pieces (or equivalent value) per week he spends on training expenses. Failure to pay either the time or the gold means NO TRAINING.
• Track the time spend on the Campaign Calendar; that man is out of play until Training is complete and can do NOTHING ELSE. Track the gold spent; that cannot be used for ANYTHING ELSE. Write down the man's return date on the Calendar, and his adjusted wealth upon returning in your campaign notes.

This is part of the overall feedback loop that keeps players hungry to sortie into the wilderness to seek out dungeons to delve and lairs to loot. It's a great system.

Palladium has NOTHING like this at all. Palladium is all about the DING!

Guess what's not being allowed anymore? We're taking that DING! and throwing it against the wall.

The Abstraction Explained

A mandatory downtime for leveling up represents the man taking his experiences in the field and, under supervision of his betters, refines them into actionable lessons.

This is akin to a professional athlete, such as a boxer, watching recordings of his recent bouts to analyze his performance (and that of his opponent) to find what did and did not work and thereby identify what specific things he needs to do to improve as a fighter. American Football greats do this as a matter of routine, and they take this seriously. So do champions in any sport, or martial endeavor.

In time, those that gain valuable experience and survive rotate back to train the next batch- well, in functional systems they do. (Axis powers during the war, looking at you.) It also becomes harder to find better-than-you people to train under, so the skills and habits needed to be effective at being auto-didactic become necessary for professional development once at the peak.

This is how, therefore, we use the AD&D1e scheme under Palladium.

Adaptation Notes

For Fantasy, this is used straight. (Again, it's just Kevin's House Rules, so reversion to Orthodoxy is AOK.)

For the other games, the clause heres are "...or equivalent value" and "trainer".

In the gonzo kitchen sink of RIFTS, a Coalition Grunt doesn't pay in cash but in Services Rendered to the State; this often means (a) reassignment to a position of greater authority with concommitant accountability (No more E-4 Mafia for you, Bob!). Meanwhile, a Godling may well be voluntold by Daddy to do something upon emerging from his training. By comparison, that Headhunter gets to pick his poison because he's either doing contractual work in return for training or he's banking credits like his Fantasy counterpart.

Ninjas & Superspies characters, often tied to an Agency, get to pay for training with services rendered. Heroes Unlimited characters get to self-train more often, depending on their powers (or lack thereof), with all the extra time spend that such entails; people join teams like the Avengers and the Justice League for good reasons.

You get a sense of how this works now, don't you? In lieu of cash, valuable services may be offered instead as payment.

It's also how players running Patrons can build up a Faction (or exploit one they've built already): offer the necessary training, and cut deals for payment. That Lizard Mage is willing to train you in Summoner magic, but you'll be required to render him a service in return. Want your Splicer's Bio-Armor to be more like a Guyver unit? (A leveling up perk in Splicers: more BIO-E to play with.) Be ready to take a big risk against a Machine installation to get the data necessary to do it.

And with each service so rendered, your man gets an opportunity to rise up in that Faction's ranks. Maybe even enough to make his own bid to take power and rule it.

Totally not how Prosek took over the Coalition States.

Introducing this most basic degree of verisimilitude improves campaign integrity greatly. It breaks up One True Parties. It encourages players to have multiple PCs in the campaign (or to take breaks when their man is out of play). It allows players to have their mans do something useful if they stop playing for a while--they become trainers--and it plays right into the big wargame level of Domains, Kingdoms, Diplomacy and determining the fates of nations and empires- what this hobby is all about.

Yes, even in your slasher scenario right out of prime 1980s B-movie horror. Today's Final Girl becomes tomorrow's Faithful Matriarch, able to stare down vampires knowing full well that God is with her, and the man who survived the Zombie Apocalypse becomes King of the Ruined World after he slays the last of the Dead Lords and all the zombies crumble to dust.

Death to DING!

Tomorrow, how all this works together to make a better Palladium.

The Business: A Palladium That Survives Through The 21st Century (Part 6)

(Following from yesterday's post.)

Time to talk Skills.

No, that's not at all how things work. First, a goofy truth and then the drier explanation.

And In Ludological Terms

The Business: A Palladium That Survives Through The 21st Century (Part 5)

(Following from yesterday's post.)

It's time to talk movement. This applies at all scales, in all combat situations. Examples are illustrative.