The Business: Why The Cargo Cult Had To Lobotomize The Hobby

The fact that led to the lobotimization of the hobby and the Memory Holing of the Clubhouse

Even from a conventional perspective, this should be the least onerous BROSR take out there after 50 years of disappointing setting books/pdfs pic.twitter.com/vDURIaXtAI

— GelatinousRube (@RubeJelly) December 14, 2024

This is why Fantastic Adventure Games are an inherently anti-commercial hobby.

All material after the rules manuals of the game are completely superfluous and surplus to requirements, if the tabletop publisher is competent and did their job. (Guess what? All but a few of them were not, and are not, and of those that were all but a few of those went to Vidya because you can actually not be in poverty that way.)

In the years before the Internet, sharing the unique creations of hobbyists in local Clubhouses was impractical. That has not been the cast now for 30 years.

The commercialization existed because a few of the old timers thought they could make a living, even a fortune, off doing so. In that historical moment, a moment now long past, they had a workable idea. Unfortunately, that idea was not "Let's teach these kids how to play the game we created" but rather "Let's sell them endless slop" and that would have very bad consequences down the road (as the entire Free-To-Play/Pay-To-Win microtransaction business model came out of the Cargo Cult's gutting of the Real Hobby to make room for Endless Product Slop).

We don't have that now. We don't have the lack of networked communications. We don't have the lack of speed of communication. We don't lack the ability to participate remotely. What we do lack is a very large demographic of young adults and adolescents with plenty of disposable income to throw around, and plenty of alternatives that better serve the Revealed Preferences of the target audience. The conditions that enabled Boomers exploiting their juniors while denying them their rightful patrimony are now gone.

In short, the Cargo Cult of Conventional Play--while it arose out of Boomers fucking over their kids for cash--was only possible in a narrow historical window, one now closed. As the winner of the Boomer Business Bustout, WOTC's on their way to Vidya. That sucking sound will collapse commercial viability and wreck everyone else- including those that live by e-begging, as DriveThru is also going to die a like a bitch when WOTC's defects.

The Cargo Cult of Conventional Play will get wrecked as that collapse goes down.

Tourists, Normies, and Casuals will follow WOTC into the Walled Garden and get sheered like the sheep they are. Conventional Play cultists will follow along or quit, save for a few. The result? The hobby will become as it should have been all along: wholly non-commercial.

The Clubhouse will replace the Game Store, designers will stop being a thing, the con scene will die (Thank God!), publishers will close, and what will replace it are a network of Clubhouses all focused on playing one game to mastery in a single decentralized campaign. Hobbyist creations will be the only additional content sources, spread by publishing as part of the practice of always bringing the receipts for others to review and learn from.

Bust out the stores and the studios. Bring back the Clubhouses. Burn the industry to ash, then mix the ash into the cement that rebuilds Clubhouses worldwide. A better hobby future, one that follows the road not travelled, awaits once we torch Omelas and purge the derelicts from the Soup Aisle that inhabit it.