The Culture: Why Do The Bros Have A Future When Conventional Play Does Not?

"Okay Walker, if videogames are eating Tabletop's lunch so bad, why do the Bros have a future?"

Because, try as they might, the videogame people are not yet able to do what Real D&D does with a fraction of the effort or resources.

"What do you mean?"

In videogames, the closet any get are the MMORPGs. Among them, only a few even try. Among the old titles, it's EVE Online.

After that, you're looking at games that either tried and failed (Star Wars Galaxies) or aren't out yet (e.g Ashes of Creation, Pax Dei). All of them will fall way short, take far more effort and expense, and--due to commercial incentives--will deliberately lack all of the feedback mechanisms that Real D&D (and thus Real Adventure Gameplay) possess.

Come down to it and I might as well just post the meme.

from Imgflip Meme Generator

The Bros are able to routinely outplay, outgame, outclass, outentertain, outengage, and flat-out dab/clown/mog billion-dollar corporate enterprises with three books from the 1970s, a chat channel and a dice bot (the latter pair for free).

Go watch that Dunder Moose stream about the last round of Battle Braunsteins in the #BROSR. You're not even getting close to that in any MMO. You're not getting that in a survival game like Rust, Valheim, or Kenshi. EVE is as close as it ever got, and that still lacks a lot of key elements to what the Real Game is.

Player-controlled Factions? Controlling armies with Hero Figures? To do that, you need some form of RTS game as no MMO does that since EVE falls down there.

Players' mans at any level able to pull off stunts that turn into the catalyst for a Braunstein event? No MMO, or any other videogame, comes close.

Had a new player scam a tribe of lizardmen into believing he was a great shaman by crushing an elemental gem and summoning a wind elemental. Ended up capturing a fort occupied by kobolds and a young black dragon the same night. This was his second session. #DubsElitePCChallenge

— Cacalotl (@Kiterion1838131) June 10, 2024

No MMO allows for this. No videogame allows for this. The medium cannot allow for it by its nature. That's before commercialization. Electronic media cannot allow for this exercise of agency, even with the best intentions. Only the Real Game allows for this.

This is why the Bros have a future in Tabletop. Tabletop is a medium of user--player--agency. The Braunstein roots are where this agency springs from, not the Longhouse convention of Le Epic Game Master-as-Storyteller. Conventional Play is just a shitty offline videogame, which is why it loses to videogames when it isn't actually some Theater Kid's Art Therapy grift.

And man, have you seen the showcases yet? So much Theater Kid Art Therapy grift rotting both Tabletop and videogames.

Conventional Play cannot hold out when it loses coming and going. The Real Game, as recovered by the Bros, can't not win time and again. The only reason we got here is because a lot of old-heads turned out to be either retards or double-talking faggots.

And I resent being lied to by Boomers here as much as I do everywhere else.