The Culture: The Bros' Deeds Are The Quake That Shakes Things From Below

Friend of the Retreat Jon Mollison did a retrospective on the Bros' rediscoveries.

Looking back on 2021, it occurred to me that the most important event in tabletop gaming in decades might have been the PvP death of Bob Dobs (run by Kestutis Kalvitis), who was eaten by cave bears on the command of Chief Fudd of Fug. Cirsova, the man behind the United Caveman Federation, tells the tale here, so let me just whet your appetite with this:

"I don’t have my stats at hand, but I’m pretty sure a lvl 2 fighter/level 1 cleric can’t take 10 cave bears in a fair fight. Let me see what kind of spells I have."

Ever the optimist, that Kes.

Why is that event – which happend almost exclusively between two players in backchannels and which others learned about later only because both players thought it too funny to keep to themselves – so important?

Go ahead, read the rest.

The #BROSR has done some real work over the last several years. The things that the Cargo Cult of Conventional Play threw down the Memory Hole got found, secured, and brought back up out of the hole to be put back into practice.

Of course things were iffy at first. No one that knew bothered to teach their successors about how the Real Hobby works, so the Bros had to learn how to do it the hard way. That process is now complete. The next step is what is going on now: figuring out Best Practices, documenting implementation, and demonstrating the facts by applying them to games other than Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition.

This is now happening with the Bros doing Braunstein games using other games: Gangbusters, Cyberpunk, RIFTS, Shadowrun, Boot Hill, Traveller, ACKS, Current Edition are all being played or have been.

The results continue to prove the Bros' positions on what the Real Hobby is and how it works correct. Furthermore, as more people become exposed to the Real Hobby they convert over to it because it delivers superior results to Conventional Play.

As SOBS' Big Move imposes a massive top-down pressure on Conventional Play from above via its commercial operational vulnerability, the Bros are shaking the earth from below by showing people how the Cult sucks ass and does not deliver on the promised play experiences while the Real Hobby can and does- without commercialization being required.

Conventional Play operations great and small are going to be forced to deal with the dual pressures sooner than later. I don't have faith that most will find their way out; few will endure the seismic shift now rumbling. Most will fold because adapting in any viable direction means abandoning Conventional Play in Tabletop in some form or another, something most Cultists cannot get themselves to do.

The Clubhouse awaits some of you. I will see you there.