The Culture: Diffusion, Convergence, & The Necessity of Contention

Over the weekend I saw a video that should be watched by more hobbyists.

The channel does Alternate History, but for our purposes this should be considered a very big campaign premise.

Imagine doing something like I'm doing at the Clubhouse: setting up a nearly-blank map, putting as many playable factions on the map edges as I can handle, and then letting them run for a season on weekly turn-arounds.

Would this work for setting a campaign into motion? Yes, as I have shown at the Clubhouse, it would. But because of the distances involved relative to the speed of travel and the lack of information on what is there beyond the starting area, there would be a tendancy for each player to turtle up and thus you'd end up with a series of solo instances until one player makes contact with another for some reason.

This is not desireable. You need a point of contention.

That's why I put one faction in the middle of the map, gave it a mission directly at odds with the others, and put in an escalation mechanic that (a) others could intuit and (b) put pressure on the others to haul ass towards their own objectives.

If I were to run the above video's premise, I would do something similar; there would be places on the map that are too dangerous to be left alone for long, yet cannot be left uncontrolled either because of both the benefits to be had and the ability to deny same to others.

Why would I do this? To compel the players away from Diffusion and towards Convergence. Without a point of contention to focus attention upon and thus drive efforts towards, players reliably tune out everything not directly and immediately in their face in favor of their own interests like an autistic child hyperfocused on their object of desire.

That point of contention needs to not only focus attention and drive action, it must do so in a manner that cannot result in a Win-Win conclusion. It can end in a No Win conclusion, but it cannot end in Win-Win; if Win-Win is possible, then players that deduce or intuit its possibilty will try to arrange for that to happen, especially if anyone is too concerned about offending people's sensibilities like a Marge Simpson sort.

Which puts down another error of Conventional Play, "No Winners or Losers". Oh no, in the Real Hobby there are definite winners and losers.

If this sounds like Braunstein, that's because this is but drawn out over a longer period of time; smaller session-length Braunstein events are where moments of Convergence, prompted by this structure compelling it, happen and the consequences thereof play out as the survivors diffuse again before the strucutre once more compels them to converge until the final convergence arrives, the premise concludes, the matter is decided, and a final winner (which can be "None") declared as the campaign ends.

Which leads to the most important error: "Forver Play"

No. Real campaigns have beginnings, middles, and ends. So then do the fantastic adventure campaigns we play on the tabletop. There is a matter to decide, those contending strive to decide in their favor, and it ends when that matter's decision arrives. There is nothing wrong with saying "We are done here" when a campaign concludes. There is no reason to go on once the point of contention is decided conclusively.