The Culture: The (Lack Of A) Future For Tabletop (Conclusion)

The Tabletop medium is the home of the Cargo Cult of Conventional Play, the retarded cult of Bizzaro people who replaced the real hobby with their dysfunctional non-game.

This got propped up because it was also turned into a form of Consumerism, where Publishers (with and without a Cult of Officialdom) used Edition Churn and the Supplement Treadmill to sell useless products while turning hobbies into Brands complete with Setting Bibles.

The dominant Publisher in the medium--first TSR and then Sorcerors By The Sea--controlled the only hobby user network that mattered as it control The Only Game That Matters, and everyone else either could not or chose not to replicate the core business work necessary to identify, market to, and funnel prospective hobbyists into the hobby. TSR and SOBS got into the mainstream, got into where Normies see and do (Walmart, Target, movie theaters, Big Box bookstores), and sold an illusion of power far outsized of the reality.

Now that dominant Publisher is controlled by C-Suite executives that come from the other media where fantasy adventure games found fertile ground and became orders of magnitude more profitable, more prominent, more successful, and more prestigious. It should not surprise anyone that SOBS is going where the action, money, and prestige is best.

Furthermore, there is no one ready, willing, and able to replace SOBS. The load-bearing pillar propping all of this up is about to get yanked out.

Some will go to videogames. Some will go to boardgames. Some will quit. There is one other option: The Return To The Clubhouse.

The Old Is New Again

The tabletop hobby arose out of a network of local gaming clubs and societies. These were wargaming groups, originally about historical eras, that would experiment with fantasy wargaming and end up creating first Braunstein, then Chainmail, and finally Dungeons & Dragons.

Wargaming then focused around local campaigns. In time the convention was that specific campaigns got named after the name for the campaign map (Greyhawk, Blackmoor) or a prominent location therein (Trollopolous). Games got designed with this environment in mind, where there is no wasted space and the rules manual is clear, concise, and decisive in its language and presentation- and were one-and-done affairs. Every campaign, even those using the same rules, were a bespoke creation by a local club for a local club.

This is what the Cargo Cult threw down the Memory Hole. This is what the #BROSR brought back. This is the Clubhouse.

Only The Faithful Remain

The future of tabletop adventure gaming is to go back to the Clubhouse.

There is no Product to Consume. There is only the game to play. Your rules manual will be spartan and utilitarian, but it will be full and complete. Your campaign doesn't work around some external party's pre-established lore; lore is generated by your group only through play. Your campaign is not Conventional Play, but the Braunstein-rooted wargame form that the #BROSR proved to be the original superior form that actually fulfilled all of the promises made about this form of entertainment.

There is no Narrative logic. There is no Spotlight. There is no Schedule Your Fun. No ongoing commitment. No One True Party, no Forever GM, no Get Along Gang, no Adventure Path, no Rule Zero- none of that crap. There are winners, there are losers, and during a campaign one player can (and will) play many mans so it doesn't matter how many of them end up getting taken out like bitches or some similiar undesireable manner.

You will Git Gud or you will GTFO. If you can't hack it, the gate is there; don't let it impale you as you leave.

So what if so many leave for videogames or boardgames or quit entirely? That's not the real hobby. The Clubhouse is where the #winningsecrets are found and mastered, and only those willing to be Bros shall be let into the Clubhouse- and that' s proven by your deeds, not your words.

At the Clubhouse is where the Hobbyists rule the Hobby across the board. Not some Publisher. Not some media company. Not some dangerhair weirdo, or some werido in a robe- us, the people who play the games run this shit. Everyone else will go pound sand.

Let's see who's left when there's no money to make, no clout to farm, no Neckbeardia video subjects, and nothing to grift. You'll find us at the Clubhouse.