The Business: The Bros Alone Share What Makes Tabletop Compete And Win vs. Vidya

When I say that videogames do Conventional Play better than Tabletop, I do bring receipts.

Your typical Pink Slime Get Along Gang dungeon bullshit? Always better as a videogame. More people prefer playing MechWarrior on PC than BattleTech on Tabletop. The data makes this not as controversial as it seems; Revealed Preferences are revealed.

But one thing we should be aware of is that videogames can and do encroach upon other shadows of the Real Hobby. XCom and its offshoots, which mix strategic and tactical play, show this encroachment in action.

What seeing games like these--which includes Jagged Alliance and its sequels, Company of Heroes and its sequels, The Lamplighter's League, the PC versions of BattleTech and Shadowrun, and many others--proves is that what makes Tabletop compete favorably against Vidya is everything Jeffro and the Bros recovered from the Memory Hole. What got laid out in BROZER is what makes Tabletop compete and win. As Jeffro said back in August:

We define Braunstein Play as “multiple independent actors operating in conflict under a fog of war.” This derives from the Braunstein model of play where the players interact with the referee in succession one at a time and possibly in groups. The key feature of the game is that– a la Diplomacy– players can scheme and negotiate with each other when they are not conferring with referee. It produces extremely volatile play dynamics that are in distinct contrast to conventional play which is generally static in comparison. (Conventional play is defined as players generally operating cooperatively and mostly staying together in a single group and very rarely operating secretly, independently, or in conflict with the other players.)

A Braunstein type game with no conflict will generally be referred to as a LARP. A Braunstein type game with elaborate combat rules that become the focus of the gameplay will be typically referred to as a wargame. A continuing rpg campaign which allows for independent action on the part of the players can accommodate both play modes, alternate between them, or combine them.

An “Aways On” campaign that as run with 1:1 time becomes a sort of Continuous Braunstein because it has so many players operating independently under a fog of war. This type of play was developed by the BrOSR in an effort to recreate what we saw of Arneson’s Napoleonics campaign in the justifiably infamous Blackmoor film documentary.

Note what Xenonauts and all the other games in the XCom vein do not have: multiple independent actors operate in conflict under a fog of war. Can you program that? Maybe. With the bot-logic we're seeing, vs. the bots too many Normies/Casuals/Tourists have become, you can argue that it's Good (i.e. Close) Enough.

I don't agree. Having participated in real campaigns in different forms, the real Tabletop Adventure Game hobby and medium cannot be approximated by a single-player wargame with a tactical and strategic tier play split. No, not even with bots- all you need to see as proof is multiplayer Starcraft vs. some guy and a pile of bots for this.

This is the way for Tabletop to stay in the fight while Vidya consumes Conventional Play, but this is not commercially viable; at best it's able to pay for itself.

That's fine. This is a hobby. Hobbies do not need to be commercially viable.

The Clubhouse abides, and within its walls wars are waged and worlds are won (and lost), contending not against silcon and code but against living minds and vigorous wills. All the excitement of sport, all the imagination of play, and all the practical value of training in skills not now necessary- but vital to have when the need again arises.