The Culture: No Replication Crisis Here, Bros

What we're seeing with the use of Braunstein structures outside of AD&D1e is that, as I predicted, the results get replicated.

Be it Jeffro with Classic Traveller or Gamma World, BDubs with ACKS, Dunder & Company with Gangbusters, JD Sauvage bullying Palladium into conforming with his RIFTS experiment, and I bet Dorrinal will do the same when he gets that Cyberpunk game going.

Hell, folks using Current Edition gets these results.

The experiment has been replicated multiple times, with key variables being changed along the way, and getting the same results every time. This is a success.

We have, conclusively, proven that we have recovered the Real Hobby from the Memory Hole.

We have, conclusively, proven that the Real Hobby is a wargaming hobby that has sweet fuck-all to do with Narrative consideration. Yet, because of how the Player-v-Player dynamics work, the result of play produces the illusion of a Narrative medium that Soup Aisle Sadsacks mistake for Muh Storytelling- just like how real history is not a Narrative medium, but seems so because of how it is reported after the fact (as revealed by how the history of military actions as presented and recorded, ever).

The necessary consequence of this successful recovery and proof-by-replication is that the Bros have also successfully restored the definition of what this hobby medium is and how it works away from the Cargo Cult of Conventional Play- and thus away from any need for, or concern with, commercial viability or operation. The Bros, maybe inadvertantly, put in the work to confirm that Chris Gonnerman's self-funding hobby publishing model is the correct one for the hobby: make it available, make it pay for itself, and (more or less) leave it alone.

Next will be the restoration of the original hobby culture, an idea who's time has come again and not just in our hobby:

Having your own private lounge is NOT OVERRATED. Really can’t be beat. Should have done this years ago, but the location had to be PERFECT. We are at 30 members. We close at 40. Then only way it is via the existing membership.

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) September 1, 2024

While we're not so able to acquire physical space as the politicos that Mike Cernovich deals with are, the ideas are the same and so are their execution.

What else will come? The mass extinction of product offerings. Well over 90% of what is available for sale is surplus for requirements, unfit for purpose, or both. Most of them can die tomorrow and not be missed; entire companies--almost all of them--can die off and nothing will change because they do not matter.

Instead, what will happen with the de-commercialization of the hobby is that most players will centralize around The Games That Matter and the rest will be tossed into the trash (where they belong) because the hobby runs off Network Effects and this forces players to consolidate around The Games That Matter or get frozen out entirely.