The Culture: The Only Future Is The Clubhouse

What the recent announcements and revelations out of Converged Grids Latherator, Magic-Users By The Water, and Stupid British Toy Company show is that if this is part of your hobby life and norms you will lose sooner or later to the Death Cult.

I remind you that all of the advice that Razorfist gave for supporting his favorite tabletop game (BattleTech) without supporting the pozzed IP licensor apply to all tabletop games.

And as I have no problems with preying upon the economies of my enemies, as they are legitimate targets in warfare (and they declared it upon us), I encourage people to cut the converged out of all flows of custom- especially when they openly hate you. The hobby belongs to the hobbyist, not the product pusher.

"But if there's no viable business, the hobby will die!"

Fuck no. It will lose its popularity, which will allow it to slough off the parasites--the Tourists and you Cargo Cultists, etc.--sucking it dry and weakening it enough for the Death Cult to move in and take over.

Reverting to the hobby's origins in self-sufficient social clubs, what I call "The Clubhouse", and reverting tabletop games back to this original environment from which they came is the only future that the hobby has. For you Cargo Cultists, you have no idea what this is or how it works because the Boomers that should have taught you failed to do so (as they have with so much cultural patrimony bequeathed to them).

This is a hobby. It was never meant to be an industry. Its existence as such is now in its final, terminal, phase. The means to revert to the Clubhouse now exists because of all the tools at hand to (a) publish widely and freely, (b) pass the cost of physical product to the purchaser (Print On Demand, be it book or token), and keep desired products available despite the wishes of IP holders (rampant and uncontrolable piracy).

Which is why we're in a massive cultural shift, one that's going to be an extinction-level event for the Cargo Cult and a Great Revival for the real hobby scene.

So what if Big IP is pozzed? We can play the real game indefinitely in the Clubhouse, where we have control, because the Clubhouse is not a business and thus can (and will) be far stricter on who gets to play.

"But-"

Private POD listings can keep product available indefintely, especially if the company itself is in a location where enforcement is impractical or impossible- and those jurisdictions exist. 3D Printers exist and are cheap. POD machines are getting cheaper by the year; by 2030 they could easily be like 3D printers now, and they'll reach the level of the Ghost Gunner well before that (i.e. a luxury purchase, but one that rapidly pays for itself).

Soon enough, no one will care about Consume Product in this hobby- and thus no one will care about the latest Fake & Gay shit from Converged IP Holder Inc.

The Clubhouse was the past. The Clubhouse is the future. Only those who can't function in a social environment fears the Clubhouse.

Speaking of The Clubhouse, I'll post a piece this weekend about what it is and why it is better than the Consumerist Conventional Play model of the Cargo Cult. Subscribe now and see it delivered to your email inbox.