Narrative Warfare: Full Copyleft! How The Hobbyist Seizes Control Of The Hobby (Step Two: Order Of Operations)

One Force To Fix The Enemy Into Place

This is the more immediate front. It's more friendly to shitposter sorts. It's where the memes flow and the bantz barrage the blowhards.

This is the Meme War Front.

The purpose of this front is to degrade enemy morale, improve friendly morale, and begin undermining the legitimacy of the Publisher's claim over the Brand. It is a more organized and deliberate effort than what is already going on, and has gone on, to date.

By itself, this force cannot win. Neither can be ignored; effective memetic warfare can, and has, won major elections. Its value is in the ability to compel the enemy to engage with it and thus to spend time and resources dealing with it because if the enemy does not do so it risks ceding the Narrative Frame to us.

That's right, this front is all about breaking the enemy's Narrative Framework and replacing it with our own.

It has more to do with Rhetoric than Dialectic. Once the enemy's Frame is broken, those within it become open to persuasion and thus to be brought into our Frame. The 2016 Trump campaign is the big scale example of how this is done; the small-scale example is how the #BROSR successfully confronts Conventional Play in the tabletop adventure game hobby.

It is the easiest to do, so this is the force that goes first.

It is the easiest to enjoy, so this is also the force that is best for those that have to cycling in and out of active engagement for various reasons.

It is the easiest to sustain, so this is also the force that exists to buy time for the other force.

It is the easiest to make entertaining for onlookers, which is the Rhetorical element of persuasion at work here, and because the attackers come off as cooler, higher-status, and far more interesting and alluring than whom they target the audience gets interested in our side and start asking about alternatives.

Since we're all thrown together side by side on a handful of websites, there's no real way to gatekeep any online group.

For most people, all this is just a form of maybe slightly dangerous entertainment, and they are going to listen to whoever amuses them (the etymology of the word amuse means causing someone to stare stupidly).

As such, you can never really shut anyone else up, all you do can do is let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.

If you want someone else to be quiet, you have to be louder, brighter, better. You have to mog them.

Shouting at people in the cloud might demoralize them for a moment, but ultimately it only increases their influence and makes them stronger

--Zero HP Lovecraft.

If you want to know what a devastating Memetic Attack looks like, here you go- the attack that broke Kulty Kathy's glamor.

What did this do? It made her look lame. It made her look cringy. It make her look like the unlikeable and insufferable striver bitch she is.

That one South Park episode accomplished what years of YouTube outrage failed to do. It broke her Narrative Framework and brought in the one that makes her and her cause look low-status and undesirable, something that the trades in Hollywood noticed and set off a Preference Cascade that coincided with the ESG/DEI money drying up and now there's all this freaking out about "Diversity Going Backwards" in Hollywood and elsewhere because the US Supreme Court just shitcanned the DIE Regime there.

That, gamer, is the power of Memetic Warfare. Do this deliberately and you--some shitposter operating out of Nowhere--can end a multi-national media empire overnight.

The Other Force To Hammer The Enemy Into Pieces

This is what the memetic warfare is there to buy time for and prepare the battlefield for as it is this force that creates, curates, and promotes the alternatives to what the Publisher offers for the Brand.

Even at its fastest, making rules manuals, play accessories, and tie-in media takes far more time than what waging memetic warfare entails. Refer back to that wholesale replacement for Mouse Wars RPG. Even using the existing d6 RPG as a basis you still needed to spend time (re)writing rules procedures, layout the manuscript, procuring and setting artwork, editing copy, and ensuring that trade dress and other elements conformed to standard.

"Alternatives?"

Yeah, like Stupid British Toy Company once encouraged- and also confessed forking and remixing themselves in the process.

Even if you are blatantly copying an existing minature, you still need to take the time to sculpt the unit and get it up to standard so that when you offer it as an alternative to the Publisher's highway robbery it's a no-brainer decision. Yes, even if you are doing cardboard stands or counters this is the case.

The substitute rules manual needs to be a Forever Edition that does not change. BattleTech, try as Catalyst might, is already there. So is Car Wars (not that SJ Games isn't trying hard to change that), and yes that means that Warhammer (both Fantasy and 40K) are open to the same treatment. This is where the bulk of the work needs to go at first.

Minis, maps, counters, etc. are already abundant in offerings; it's more the effort to sort and curate for specific Brands that needs to be done.

What follows after this is the Lore Media replacement. In conjunction with the Memetic Warriors, the alternative lore breaks the Publisher's frame on the lore and replaces it with one that exclude the offensive changes that the Pozzed put into it- "Take the chick out and make it cool and awesome!"

Put your replacement rules up first as a mobile-friendly Wiki or something similar so that it's easily found and used. Do not allow anyone that you do not know to edit or moderate, and host it someplace where it is not easily fucked with by bad actors- you can ask Joshua Moon all about that. Then put it into ebook formats (PDF first, then epub, then MOBI; use Calibre for this purpose), and worry about POD listings last.

All of these alternatives need to be collected, sorted, curated, and put into a convenient place for Normies to find and follow. That's work unto itself, of the promotional sort, and it is contingent on the creatives being on the ball and getting things out there to use. Those links to those alternatives are to be furnished to the memetic warriors to deploy on request to those curious about the alternatives.

Seeming And Substance

It is not enough to be right. It is not enough to be seen to be right. Both of those are secondary to being seen to be high-status, to be seen to be fun to do and fun to be around, to be seen to be exciting and engaging- in short, to be cool, aspirational, and attainable.

You'd think that the Publisher would have this on lock. Gamer, have you SEEN the state of Marketing and Public Relations in this hobby? Fuck no, they don't. They don't have a clue, and they are very likely to have never had a clue- and when they do hit upon something that works they become very uncomfortable with how or why that is so.

Once this is put together, the memer mogging on the Publisher will be able to direct those piqued by the entertaining exchange to the alternatives and get them on board with the Cool Kids Club that smack around the Shrill Harpy Publisher That Wants You To Stop Having Fun.

Tomorrow we'll examine the case for Warhammer, then the next day BattleTech, and finally look at a few other IPs worthy of this treatment before wrapping up over the weekend.