The Business: The End Comes For The Cargo Cult In Tabletop Adventure Games

The Cargo Cult is between a rock and a hard place, and it's a bad time for Conventional Play.

First, Magic-Users By The Water are on track to yank out the load-bearing pillar propping up Conventional Play on the tabletop when they move The Only Game That Matters from tabletop (and physical media) to an all-digital, online-only videogame experience.

That move will take the Normies, Tourists, and the majority of Conventional Play people (including several YouTubers current decrying it) out of the reach of the Cargo Cult for good.

The product category collapse will be "slowly at first, then all at once" as existing groups continue on via subcultural inertia for a (brief) time. Then as they collapse they find that they can't so readily reform and mix people around like they used to because more and more of their former fellows left them behind.

A lack of demand results in a lack of product consumed, which starts backing up the sales channel and results in publishers shutting down or changing operations. Some, like I said before, will scramble to copy Magic-Users. Some will admit defeat, downshift to a hobby and go back to boring corpo life. A few--those sufficiently delusional, well-positioned, or just popular enough with an audience just flush enough with disposable cash--will move over to Neo-Patronage.

Or you can just give up that Consume Product mentality entirely, change your ways, and come over to the Clubhouse.

But no matter how you slice it, the Conventional Play scene's days are numbered as The Doom Approaches. Despite all the posturing and brave faces, they know. Most of them Just Can't Even, but they know nonetheless and so they cope the only way they know how- by acting out.

partner there's no need to tell me you've been playing wrong for 40 years

i get the voice makes people insecure, but there's no need to expose yourself like this! pic.twitter.com/PBnBIUZS9d

— GelatinousRube (@RubeJelly) January 22, 2024

As the Conventional Play scene collapses, you're going to see more and more freakouts like this shot at the Bros.

Why? It's the second thing--the hard place--that they're coping with: The Return Of The Hobby.

What the freakouts center around is the claim that they've been doing it wrong for nearly 50 years- that the Cargo Cult that they adhere to has been wrong, and has lied to them, for nearly 50 years.

They have their identity wrapped up in their conception of what fantastic adventure games and campaign play are, and to have it so effortlessly blown apart by a bunch of shitposting bros on Twitter that mercilessly mock, dunk, and meme on them--that are so obviously having the fun that the Cultists are not having, but wish that they did--is too much to bear.

That's why they freak out and act up like we see above. It's not the first time, and it won't be the last.

But there's something more to the freakouts, and it is in the term I've taken up to label the social end of the hobby: The Clubhouse.

This crazy fantastic wargame derivative we play did not need then, never needed, and sure as Hell does not need now mounds upon mounds of physical product. What it needs is a social group with clear social norms that are enforced by its members, and a complete product to use for the purpose of having the desired entertainment of a fantastic adventure campaign.

That is why the #BROSR so easily turned an old edition of Dungeons & Dragons into the hard place for Cargo Cultists. The Bros took away their fallback position, their backstop, their Place of Retreat. The Bros took a "dead game" and not only showed that label to be a lie, but also showed that everyone played the game wrong all this time- which negates the entire Cargo Cult position justifying Consumerism as a core element of Conventional Play.

The Bros proved that you don't need endless modules, Yards Of Books, Official Settings, Reams Of Lore (nevermind entire YouTube channels dedicated to that), or anything other than one full and feature-complete product. Think of all the publishers (and "publishers") and designers (and "designers") whose business is directly threatened by this proof that Consumerism is antithetical to the real adventure game hobby that Gary and Dave bestowed upon us. You can play for all your days on just the core rulebooks for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition; everything else is player-created as play goes. Classic Traveller has the same thing going for it.

If you're a Cargo Cultist, that might as well have been confronting Haster face-to-face.

You can't reach that realization and remain a sane Cultist. Either you break and remain a Culist or you stop being a Cultist- you quit tabletop for vidya, you quit entirely, or you repent and join the Clubhouse.

Doom approaches for the Cult, and I am here for it.