The Culture: The Awareness That Vidya Does Conventional Play Better Broadens

We have a nice one-two punch here.

Completely agree, although I would throw Traveller in there as an important one too; its impact has been unfortunately dampened. ACKS is brilliant and completely avoids the "make a video game, but slower" problems at the bottom of the 3E and PF glass.

— RuleOfThule (@RuleOfThule) April 1, 2024

Let me repeat, with emphasis added, the key error Conventional Play makes (and has since the 1980s): "ACKS is brilliant and completely avoids the "make a video game, but slower" problems at the bottom of the 3E and PF glass."

For those coming in late, allow me to (again) hammer this point home.

As I have said repeatedly: Conventional Play is better done by videogames across the board AND HAS BEEN SINCE THE 1980s!

This is why the Bros have stuck to ACKS and AD&D 1e, with occassional diversions into games from other genres (and publishers).

It's not just a search for a game, but for the game--for what defines the medium and justifies its existence vs. competitors--and these inquiries continue to bear fruit both expected and unexpected.

Meanwhile, the corporate party that matters which owns and operates The Only Game That Matters continues to signal with the subtlety of the gravitational pull of a black hole that (a) it also sees this fact and (b) it also wants the orders of magnitide more profit, power, and prestige that videogames have over tabletop. This came up last week on the regular Roll For Combat stream, again.

The also-rans and never-weres cope, seethe, mald, and bury their heads in the sand regarding the most obvious conclusion that Wizards is taking D&D to Vidya and leaving Tabletop behind as a dead medium- and taking their business with it.

Because they don't have a viable product of their own; their viability is entirely predicated on D&D being there, holding it all up, so they can leech off it somehow, which is what everyone else does at some level.

ACKS is one of the few stand-alone products whose origins aren't in the 1970s that will endure the collapse of Conventional Play on the tabletop. Why? It builds upon the real wargame that this medium is about. The adventuring and campaigning has believable context in the frame of a wargame, and this is the case with every other full and proper game in the tabletop medium.

Pathfinder? Nah, better as a videogame than on tabletop- same as Conventional Play across the board. Call of Cthulhu? Hah, no. Hell no. All the "No"s. So many "No"s. (And the best one? Not even licensed.)And BattleTech is far more famous as "MechWarrior" than its real name- an artifect of the PC game series, not at all helped by Harebrained's PC adaptation.

That's what tabletop publishers refuse to admit: so many of their products are better off as videogames. They even made Heroquest into a three-game series.

What does your game provide on the tabletop that can't be done as a videogame with people talking over Discord, done as well or better than the same, and with equal ease and cost?

Because right now, for most people, they'd be better off co-cop playing Baldur's Gate 3. That assumes they don't play a MMORPG or similar game (e.g. Valheim, Minecraft).

Conventional Play on tabletop is facing the Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid. What are you going to do about it? Choose. Now.