The Culture: The Bros Cracked The Code

Too many people pretending to play the game, but instead are doing Theater Kid bullshit, are enamoured of pretending that they're in a movie.

The Cargo Cult of Conventional Play could not argue against this error.

Having everyone be in the Get Along Gang acting as a unit against whatever the Referee puts before them, and presenting events in a manner where only what they matter and there is no substance otherwise--a form of Object Impermanence, the sort of thing babies grow out of before they reach pre-school age--which is a problem that's been written about at length recently elsewhere. Go read that.

What the #BROSR did was figure out how that mistake got made.

Now the #BROSR figured out how to apply the solution practically. BDubs, via #BROXT, showed the way.

Jon Mollison summarized what I laid down last week and over the weekend.

"But but but...this isn't RAW."

Damn right. We're talking RPGs in strange new directions and you can come along for the thrills or get left behind.

The choice is yours. pic.twitter.com/glohkPrMi4

— Mr. Wargaming (@NotJonMollison) February 3, 2025

He's right. What I put down is not in the manuals.

It is one thing to play Rules As Written. It is another thing to go where the rules are silent. That is what I did.

By taking the time to lay out what BDubs did with #BROXT, and then (at the Clubhouse) explain how to use social media stunts to attract attention to your campaign and draw in a whole new cohort of people to participate in it, provoking the forming of Points of Convergence that other parties can choose to involve themselves in or not I've put down one more piece in the puzzle of How The Real Game Works.

Jeffro Johnson coined "Total Non-Stop Braunstein" last year to label the concept of constant faction-driven gameplay at all scopes and scales of play. What I laid down is how to do this organically, in a form that you--you, reading this right now--can apply to your table, to your game, right here and right now without delay.

Now combine this with a primer like BROZER and you're figuring out fast how players (a) can drive the events of a campaign no matter who or what they play, (b) how campaigns can have far more than a handful of players participating at any given time, and (c) how the use of public-facing media can be exploited to attract people and engage them in play.

Jon Mollison's doing this right now for his game at home. Others can pick up what I've put down.

And man, what kind of fun would it be to have--say, for example--a Twitter-driven event where people can post concept pitches for new monsters and the winner of a series of polls is the one that gets dropped into the Liminal Labrynth of Isla the Illusionist.

We did it, Bros. We fixed the hobby. We have unfucked what the Boomers broke.