The Culture: You Can Prove That The Bros Are Right By Yourself

Friend of the Retreat Jon Mollison mentioned this over the weekend on Twitter in a one-two punch.

Normal people: if you want X result you're more likely to get it if you do Y.

RPG weirdos: https://t.co/wfGrQ7Vwvg

— Mr. Self Inflicted TPK (@NotJonMollison) February 25, 2024

Regular reminder: the RPG community is plagued by a chorus of analysts chanting 'no wrong way to play' because their methods don't provide the promised results.

Effective methods of RPG play validated themselves via results at the table.

— Mr. Self Inflicted TPK (@NotJonMollison) February 25, 2024

What people willfully refuse to accept is that the claims by the #BROSR, due to the copious amount of evidence provided, can be independently verified. Furthermore, they can be applied to games other than those common played by the Bros.

I mentioned two candidates in two posts late last week. Time to systematize it.

Hypothesis

Claim: The #BROSR has successfully recovered how to play tabletop fantastic adventure wargames--"RPGs"--from the Memory Hole, as proven by their years of receipts to date and growing by the week. These are now proving to be Best Practices for the hobby in this medium. Implementing them will always improve the quality of play, even when using unfit products such as those published by Cargo Cultists for Conventional Play.

Method

The test involves taking up a curious product and implementing Best Practices, including recording the results and publishing Actual Play reports as receipts for a period of no less than six months of weekly play, and preferably a year or more.

These reports aim to solve a set of standard questions, which are:

• Does the game work when played Rules As-Written?
• Does the game work best when using 1:1 Timekeeping?
• Does having players assume the roles of Faction Leaders improve campaign play?
• Does having periodic Braunstein sessions keep the campaign fresh without resorting to publisher diktat via supplements?
• Does having the all of above questions answered as "Yes" still maintain the promised experience?

Discussion

We already know that this works for Adventurer Conqueror King, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition, Gamma World, Boot Hill, and Classic Traveller.

We already know that RIFTS is vastly improved by doing this, which means that we know that all Palladium products are improved by doing this.

We also know that this works for the World of Darkness because this is already the norm in its LARP scene- it's tabletop that's the aberrant outlier there. We can also extend that to every other product published by White Wolf Game Studio.

This is something for Bros--especially those of you not yet involved in the scene--to consider taking up and running for a while. I mentioned Shadowrun and Star Wars. Others to look at include: Cyberpunk, Earthdawn, Call of Cthulhu, TORG (and its successors), Runequest, at least one Star Trek edition, and Rolemaster (1st or 2nd Edition to start with).

Right now, we also have Twilight 2000 1st Edition under inquiry by JD Sauvage. Mind his Twitter to keep up with his discoveries.

Now is the time for those watching from the sidelines to get something started where they are. Pick something and go for it.

Conclusion

I expect that the Hypothesis will be confirmed, once bad faith actors get the gas face and get round-filed.

I expect, as I said previously, that the actual result is that this testing will serve to sift the wheat (full, complete, and competently designed products ala AD&D1e) from the chaff (those that are not: Palladium, WWGS, all D&D editions from 2e forward, etc.) with further identification of specific defects identified and remedies recommended.

Try as anklebiters, Tourists, and Cultists (of all sorts) might they cannot escape the truth about this medium or the hobby. It is a wargame, and wargames are inherently a competitive medium with winners and losers, which means that all good faith inquiries are going to replicate the Bros' successes and thus independently confirm the truth.