The Culture: The Clubhouse Doesn't Need Endless Consumption

My man Cirsova nailed it with a Twitter thread the other day. This deserves collection into a single post, editing only for clarity.

One of the major reasons heavy-hitter OSR types hate Jeffro Johnson and the #BROSR is that their message doesn't move products. Quite the contrary.

Take Tonisborg. It's a "lost" OD&D module that was "rediscovered" and "recreated" through notes from the 70s when Griff was pushing a conventional play narrative countersignaling Jeffro. #TonisborgTruth

I believe Tonisborg itself was real and there was a DM who kept meticulous notes on his megadungeon, but I do not believe it was created with module play in mind as Grift insisted. Nor do I think it was ever actually meant to be a commercial product.

Heavily embedded in the pitch was the counternarrative of "buy product to make you a better DM" to Jeffro's "Play the rules, it's all there and will make you a better DM" narrative.

This is the same reason why Urbanski was constantly countersignaling Jeffro's work on Appendix N, which showed that you if you were literate and versed in the fiction that the game was designed to recreate at the table, you did not need to buy settings products.

Now, the notion that you and your friends can play a largescale Braunstein with nothing more than the AD&D core books and handful of dumb ideas poses an existential threat to boomers who may be trying to make buck repackaging and selling you the Lost Secrets of Braunsteins.

So, the next time someone calls Jeffro or the #BROSR grifters, look at what they're trying sell you and why the free ideas being explored by the bros might pose a threat to their wallets.

It's this simple: The Hobby does not need CONSUME PRODUCT. It needs Hobbyists doing for themselves, starting with Reading The Manual.

Use the game as it is given to you. It works. We have years of receipts showing it. You don't need a new purchase; you need to master the tools that you have.

Yes, this assumes that you have tools that is, and a lot of the same people pushing product like a dealer also have no problem selling crippleware "rulesets" that do not work as intended so you need to buy more products to get a complete game.

In the Clubhouse, we make our own because that's what Hobbyists DO.