The Culture: When WOTC Waltzs Off, Conventional Play Goes With It

(Continuing from yesterday's post.)

The problem with the Cargo Cult and its Conventional Play is that it is Normie-repellant.

Consider what you have to do to play every D&D edition from AD&D2e forward, and every tabletop Cargo Cult product made in a delusional belief that it competed with Current Edition.

1. Wrangle a herd of retarded schitzo-cats together, get them to all agree to meet at a single place and time to focus attention on using the fresh-purchased product offered.
2. Get everyone to agree to a specific set of House Rules and practices, all of which differ from group to group and product to product for no good reason.
3. Meet more or less on time, then proceed to do Muh Story/Muh Narrative with maybe some actual gameplay with proper agency exercise.
4. Somehow not murk the weirdos that somehow slip into the group who do stupid shit and make things unfun (see Neckbeardia videos).
5. Be bored, but pretend you're not, all evening because nothing happens and nothing matters lest it upset Muh Narrative.
6. Reset to One for next time until about six sessions in everything falls apart, then go buy more product and restart the cycle.

Meanwhile, this is what goes on with the Bros

1. Someone in the Discord asks "Who's running this week?"
2. Someone else pipes up offering to run. People check to see who's out of Time Jail and available to play.
3. The day rolls around, folks show up if they can and want to.
4. Attending players drive the action, Shenanigans!, and folks go home with fat sacks and fatter XP totals.
5. Attending players write up the after-action reports and post them to their blogs for everyone to see.
6. Attending players, being trustworthy bros, handle their own upkeep and downtime actions. Consequences that go beyond the table get felt.
7. Lots of shit-posting on Twitter, some livestream talk, folks get and stay excited and more people decide to become bros- eventually to stop wasting money and time on products no one needs, wants, or can justify having.
8. Reset to 1 next week.

These are two separate hobby pursuits.

The difference is that one of these is driven by a fucking meme and the other is driven by Clubhouse social dynamics.

Why does that matter? A hobby driven by product consumption is a hobby dependent upon an external party--the publisher--to keep it running and viable as a pursuit, especially if it claims to have any social cachet.

A hobby driven by Clubhouse social dynamics does not; no one has to bring their own card deck to play Poker, no one uses their own shoe to play Baccarat, and no one lugs around their own table to play Car Wars.

This is not a lifestyle brand pursuit. Cargo Cultists, like it or not, have made Conventional Play into exactly that. "(X) doesn't satisfy you, but with ALL NEW ALL ORIGINAL GAME Z you can get that satisfaction! Guaranteed by Discount Dan to take your money and give you product. CONSUME PRODUCT AND BE HAPPY!"

Once you work through how the Cargo Cult works--and yes, OSR guys, that includes you too--then this is the end state of Conventional Play in tabletop. The current owners of D&D are delivering the Final Form of the very thing you claim to be about, but so loudly complain about as you suckle from its underbelly like the remora that you are.

The known issues of Conventional Play and Social Dysfunction are so well known that there's been endles 4chan threads, scores of YouTube channels--not videos, channels, several parody comics, and ongoing jokes running all of which are almost as old as Conventional Play itself.

Like I said, you people are Normie Repellant.

In addition to all of the videogame alternatives to Conventional Play available on Steam, GOG, XBox, PS, and the Switch there's also the Abandonware archives full of free and legal downloads. I would sooner point a curious Normie looking for the experiences Conventional Play offers to a videogame than anything you people push.

You only have an audience now--and you have only ever had an audience--because of Dungeons & Dragons. That is what Ryan Dancey proved over 20 years ago when he made the Open Gaming License happen. You people do not now, never had, and never will have, the critical Network Effect on your side. Normies, and Tourists, are in this for the social cachet; they go where the Social Proof is, and that proof is solely with the brand.

This, by the by, is why the Bros have a future--we are playing D&D, and you're not--while you don't- not in tabletop.

But unlike Conventional Play, we went back to the Clubhouse and thus broke the dependency upon product consumption to drive hobby interest and pursuit.

You are slaved to it utterly.

Wizards of the Coast knows this. Their business model counts upon it, and they have Social Proof as their asset. When the jump from tabletop to vidya comes with the next edition change, you can watch on like a Lovecraftian protagonist losing their last few SAN points as you witness that not-so-permanent pool of players ditch you all like a toy that's no longer cool so they can stay in the Cool Kid's Club behind WOTC's new walled garden in vidya.

Yes, that will happen. Yes, WOTC read the tea-leaves correctly. Yes, they will succeed. Yes, Dancey will again be proven right as you are all left behind.

No, you won't be allowed into the Clubhouse unless and until you repent, admit that #JeffroIsRight, and do as Yoda says:

Oh, and you might as well sell off those bookshelves full of product you never used and never needed. We only play full and complete games here.