The Culture: Braunstein, Convergence, & Diffusion Defined

Jeffro started talking about the loop of Diffusion and Convergence as fundamental to proper campaign play recently, and again the other day. He did this in the context of mastering how to comprehend the way Braunstein play works, how to run them effectively, and (by implication) how to incorporate the process into an ongoing campaign to ensure that the Perpetual Play Process works so the Referee can do his actual job properly. As usual, this is having immediate impacts with outsized effects.

Braunstein is already known. Since I use one of those terms in a different context, it is necessary to define both before continuing further:

• Diffusion: Actors separate to pursue their own agendas as interests diverge from one another and thus have no reason to remain together.
• Convergence: Actors, pursuing their own agendas, come into conflict that forces them back together to resolve it as conclusively as possible.

This is the Push-Pull process that generates emergent scenario play at both big and small scales. The necessary element that ensures that it works is that the actors contend over something external that cannot be shared; someone has to lose if there is a conflict.

That necessary element is the core of wargaming, which proves that Tabletop Adventure Games are a variant wargame hobby with a lot of bullshit muddying the waters. Comparing how this process plays out to real wars and similar conflicts reveals that this is accurate; actors pursing interests come into conflict over a common objective, which brings them together to resolve it, and upon resolution they split again until another conflict arises. Lather, rinse, repeat until someone wins or everyone loses.

The liminal spaces that appear when conflicts arise are the playable scenarios you work out at the table, and what you work out comes down to determining what Is and what Is Not for the undertermined questions at issue. Bob wants the nuclear launch codes. Does he get them- Yes or Not (Is or Is Not)? Chad wants to come back from his deployment alive, which nuclear weapon launches do not allow. Does he stop the nukes from flying, Yes or No? Sarah wants both Bob and Chad, but cannot have both, so whom does she choose- Bob (Is) or Chad (Is Not)?

You get the idea. Each actor in the scenario gets the opportunity to resolve the conflict in their favor, with the superior players setting things up beforehand to tilt the table in their favor, but chance remains an element and Black Swans can occur at any time to throw the resolution into a direction no one saw coming. These moments of conflict resolution, brought about as a direct consequence of actors pursuing their agendas, is where the magic in the hobby happens.

And then the loop resets and we build anew to a new convergence.

This is brilliant design and Jeffro again shows why he's The Man forcing 50 years of bullshit to be dumped in the ditch where it belongs, especially as Conventional Play's doom looms ever-larger over the hobby.

We have what we need to take the hobby out of the commercial concerns and back to the by-and-for hobbyist scene that it arose from for good. The Clubhouse awaits.