The Culture: Explaining Why Conventional Play Is Screwed Like It's Five

As I see that this is still necessary. Let's get on with it.

No One Likes To Schedule Their Fun

A Conventional Play campaign is beholden to the least committed player. This has been a Known Issue for decades, with plenty of fake remedies that don't fix the problem, the result of which is that either everyone tolerates being held hostage by Flakey Floyd or the flakes get punted and then DRAMA ENSUES which can (and has) cascaded into IRL issues that persist for years. God forbid that it's the Referee that's unavailable; now nothing happens no matter what.

This problem persists because of the stubborn insistence in a One True Party coupled with a Forever Referee. That's a fragile formation, where a single point of failure cascades into play coming to a halt. There are no alternatives, so this dysfunction wears on until either people muddle through it all or (far more common) it falls apart entirely.

As bad as it is, it gets worse once the players are all mature adults with spouses, children, careers, civic obligations, etc. that inevitably causes players to stop playing. This inflexibility culminates in the "Six Session Campaign" meme.

Videogame alternatives don't have these problems. They can play them whenever they want. They can play for as long as they like. They don't have to dance around some retard's house rules that break the game. They don't have to tolerate some dysfunctional twat wasting time with pointless bullshit. They can skip all the Le Epic DRAMA! bullshit and get on with playing the damned game. Given the prices now asked for, and the inconvenience that anyone but the biggest publishers present in buying product, it's also now easier and cheaper to just play a videogame instead- or do I need to link to that Bob The Worldbuilder video again?

No amount of Conventional Play platitudes will fix this trend. Either you abandon the tabletop or you abandon Conventional Play.

No One Gives A Fuck About Your Story

Go figure that another perennial complaint comes from Forever Referees who are also frustrated novelists. (Looking at you, Wick.) Hell, "skipping cutscenes" is a perennial topic in videogame forums; that's how little players give a shit about it.

Lore and narrative is fantastic for film, television, and prose. It is corrosive to gameplay as it violates player agency, and would be better off banned entirely in favor of the players driving the bus on what is and is not in the setting- something I wrote about at The Clubhouse.

"But Larian-"

Have you watched Actual Play videos? No one cares. They just want to do goofy shit for giggles, and goofy shit turns out to be far more entertaining to the target audience than whatever narrative bullshit the developer or publisher- both at the table and in vidya. When they aren't doing goofy shit, they're maximizing performance because doing that is the most reliable way to solve the problems that the actual game shoves in their faces. Walkthroughs are vastly popular because it allows players to skip the bullshit and focus on the actual game- something that tabletop could do, but Conventional Play and its Theater Kid faggotry routinely fuck up Because Reasons.

Stop resisting!

This is why Referees that let go the need to Tell A Story turn out to (a) be happier playing and running the game because (b) they give players what they actually want and thus (c) create and sustain a far more pro-social environment for everyone. Let the players figure that shit out.

This need to fuck over players with Muh Narrative crap is another reason for why videogame alternatives are superior to Conventional Play; players can skip the bullshit and get on with it.

Black Is White, Knights Move On Diagonals

Rule Zero has proven itself to be a terrible idea. Nearly 50 years of newsletter and magazine articles, forum posts, and now YouTube videos have consistently demonstrated how ripe for abuse this idea proved itself to be such that some Psychology student with ambition could make their graduate career doing a PHD thesis on how this practice faciliates the mental and emotional abuse and predation of those subjected to it.

Players cannot make competent plans, or execute them, if the rules of the game are not set in stone. Revealed Preferences Are Revealed by the vast number of prospects and lapsed hobbyists going to vidya specifically because that bullshit DOES NOT HAPPEN.

Nevermind "Rule Zero" also being used for about as long by incompetent or lazy designers and publishers to shirk doing their fucking job and sloughing it off on the end-user instead. (LOOKING AT YOU KEVIN SIEMBIEDA!) Players don't want to play shit games. Players don't want to play incomplete games. Players don't want to play broken pieces of shit. Palladium is the only exception, and it gets by on being more of a Setting Bible to be read than a game to be played (that, and boy does the typical Palladium fan come off like a paste-eating retard). The numbers of them dipping out for videogame alternatives proves this- NO ONE LIKES THIS!

And, as the recent addition of SSI Classics to Steam and GOG reveal, videogames have been a better alternative for decades. No wonder Conventional Play turned into the Put of Spiteful Mutants.

Meanwhile, The Clubhouse Doesn't Have This Problem

Proper play means it doesn't matter who shows up. Everyone can run, everyone can play, and no one worries about anything because playing strictly by the rules kills the anxiety on both ends of the table.

Strict Timekeeping kills One True Party bullshit, with all the issues that inflicts. Faction Play and Braunsteins kill the need for supplements, lore, etc. and all of this being goofy as shit acts as an effective filter getting rid of those too precious to fit into the club.

Conventional Play is just too fragile to stand up against adversity of any sort. This is why I tell those unwilling to do the real thing to play videogames instead.