Narrative Warfare: Full Copyleft! How The Hobbyist Seizes Control Of The Hobby (Step 3B: BattleTech Strats)

You Don't Need The Phone Company To Stop This Invasion

Despite recent events, things are rather encouraging with regard to BattleTech because most of the Hobbyist resistance elements already exist.

First, because memories are too short, the Razorfist video from over four months ago explaining that the Hobbyists here have been successful for decades to date. This is nothing new to the audience here.

And now his Sidescrollers appearance explaining the present problem.

Razor's final statement to the Lore Channels in that Sidescrollers video there is one I will get back to below.

The Enemy's (Mistaken) Perspective

The Death Cultists at Catalyst share the perspective of their fellow travelers at Stupid British Toy Company: they believe that, via Cult of Officialdom, they can wield social pressure on vulnerable people and compel them via cult psychology to submit to the Poz.

Catalyst is trying to turn BattleTech into the Warhammer model without having the elements necessary to make it work. That's collosally incompetent, and that was before the recent cult takeover.

This explains why Catalyst is in such deep shit financially, a financial difficulty that this episode only made worse.

The Hobby's Strategy

We have a strong foundation of effective practices to work with. There are plenty of rules manuals available already on the market; it's just a matter of curation. Physical copies are plentiful in the used market, and piracy of the digital versions is a long-standing practice. Catalyst doesn't have the means to enforce Edition Church or any other form of Officialdom upon the Hobby.

As Razor notes, BattleTech explicitly disclaims the need for miniatures to play the game. Sure, there's plenty of independent offerings anyway, but if you really want to you can just dice as unit markers. (One game I played had books used as hills, Solo cups as oil tanks or grain silos (different colors for each), and the guy fielding Savannah Masters used M&Ms as unit markers- he's eat one when it got taken out.)

In short, Publisher attempts to use Officialdom as a cudgel to compel compliance is already a failure.

The lore channels are going to get pressured, but one (Mage Leader) is already refusing while the others are ignoring Catalyst entirely at this time.

And, bothersome as it is to have fan disccusion forums taken over, that would not have happened if the owners were not massive pussies. That's a fuckup that only happens once; the replacements will be run by far harder folks, and now that the playbook is known they'll be kept out with much greater ease.

"But the lore-"

I want to remind you that the atrocious TV series got retro-actively changed into risible Inner Sphere anti-Clan (specifically anti-Jade Falcon) propaganda. That's a former Publisher surrendering to the Hobbyists due to a previous revolt.

What does this tell you?

The Hobbyists have had a far easier time diluting the legitimacy of the Publisher's claim to the Brand here than anywhere else. Social pressure killed the TV series. Social pressure, combined with memetic warfare, made the UrbanMech LAM a thing. Social pressure, combined with memetic warfare, have turned Stephan Amaris into a joke and turned the Blackwatch into a unit of 'Mech-piloting Chuck Norris types. Hobbyist-driven social pressure and memetic warfare did this, along with plenty of traffic in used bookstores and rampant piracy.

All that needs to be done here, on this front, is to do all of this in a more deliberate and coordinated manner.

An Easy Victory

Use other manuals; collect a master Forever Edition online, incorporating Sarna's stuff as needed. Keep Sarna (the wiki) in the hot seat; don't let them bend so much as a toenail to the Publisher- and have a mirror on hand to go live if they do so there is a clean fork available immediately. Refer all curious people to these resources, and not to Catalyst products.

The memetic warfare front here should still be one that dabs on the haters, but the overall frame to affect is that Death Cultists Can't Even Mechwarrior. Make them look like the sort of people Stephan Amaris would use as disposable street snitches, but cynically execute when their usefulness (which was short) ended- usually by lumping them in with the targets of a bigger op and executing them all en masse.

That's right, frame these people as being so useless that all they're good for is getting taken out for snitching by those they snitch to- much like we're seeing in real life as of this post throughout the Western world, but especially in Academia.

By framing Catalyst and its supporters as parasitic predatory losers that tend to Circular Firing Squad themselves, such that even Capellans seem like geniuses by comparison, the Hobbyist frames the Enemy as low class, low status, and low agency impotent losers that hate fun, hate life, and hate themselves. Again, "Stop Having Fun!" is a potent Rhetorical frame to use.

No one wants to associate with loser killjoys that nag, nag, nag about shit they clearly have no idea about- and that opens the observer to joining the Hobbyist's reframe of being high-energy, high-fun, high-excitement, pro-social people that are out to have a good time with stompy robots. They'll want to know more, and you had best be ready to answer them.

Spread the word about Megamek and Mechwarrior Living Legends as replacements for Harebrained's PC game and Mechwarrior 5/Mechwarrior Online- the latter two as contingencies Just In Case.

Find, curate, and spread the links to any and all fan-created lore that is clean and not pozzed. Go hard, use the old FASA trade dress, and publish new stories and artwork using that old dress; make it clear that the Hobbyists are the ones loyal and true to the Brand, not the Death Cult skinsuit front group. Tex and the BPL hire artists for all that cool artwork; you can do that too, and you should.

Mirror everything to guard against shutdowns, takedowns, etc. and have those live links on hand to hand out to the curious wanting to join the hobby.

BattleTech is already a Brand dominated by its Hobbyists, and has already kicked offending Publishers to the curb more than once, so doing this to Catalyist is nothing more than Tuesday to them. Others should learn from this part of the greater Hobby scene, because what has been done here can be replicated everywhere.

Tomorrow we'll run down some problem sectors that could stand to learn from these two case studies.