The Culture: You Don't Need The Widgets To Game

Tabletop Moron shares OPINIONS!

There is one thing here that Moron exhibits that is actively detrimental to the cultivation of wargaming: the insistence upon including terrain and miniatures as requirements to play. His shot at BattleTech (originally played with cardboard maps and cardboard standees, still playable now with counters and a paper map) proved this. He has Warhammer Brain and it affects all of his OPINIONS.

Fuck no, minis and terrain are not required. One of the best wargames published proved that over 40 years ago.

Let me say this louder for the folks in the back.

WARGAMING IS A CHEAP HOBBY WITH STATUS ANXIETY!

The reason for Warhammer Brain--what I call the insistence upon requiring miniatures and terrain to be considered "real wargaming"--is because publishing tabletop wargames is not commercially viable otherwise.

Games Workshop pushes minis in particular because that's what makes the money- not the games. They change the game for the same reason that governments under Modern Monetary Theory (all of them) impose taxes: to compel the adoption of the widget associated with it (minis/currency).

The thing that people forget is that the game plays the same with counters and a paper map. You can play 40K or Fantasy or Shitmar just fine with a Ziplock bag full of counters for each army and another for terrain- something G-Dubs is desperate to keep people from doing for very obvious reasons. Kill the sales of minis, paint, terrain, etc. and most Big Tabletop companies like GW suffer a stroke and die.

GW (and others following its lead) uses the Cult of Officialdom for the same reason that governments shove guns in your case: to pressure you to adopt the widget. Unlike guns, cults run solely off social pressure- dilute the pressure and the cult loses power. GW's practices are no help in maintaining that pressure, and having Death Culists in their ranks only makes it worse for them due to incompetence.

Yes, you can just cut a series of counters and put art on them for your army. GW can't do shit about it. Yes, you can just throw down a vinyl mat and use overhead projector pens to draw terrain features on it. Yes, you can--and, given how some armies are meant to operate, should--use far larger tables than they say; hell, you could (and should) just play on the floor. If literal War Colleges can do it, you can.

GW's brand cult relies on unthinking Consumerism, which in turn relies on you thinking that you have to have the widgets to play. You don't. The game is not the merch; the merch is not the game. (The Network is not the Brand; the Brand is not the Network- you see this every day when some YouTuber does a React video to one of Bricky's Intro to 40K vids.)

You want a viable resistence to the Stupid British Toy Company? Start playing without the widgets. Counters, paper maps, ad-hoc terrain- whatever it takes to reduce the cost as close to zero as possible. Then pirate the rules and strip out all of the Coffee Table bullshit bloating up the page count to get at what the actual Technical Manual is; clean that up and distribute that instead.

Now you can play The Game That Matters without giving the shitbags in the UK a penny. That is effective resistance, and GW knows it.

So, regarding D&D, does Wizards of the Coast- which is why they too are going full Brand Cult and will do what they can to get that same cult pressure going.

You want gaming to be a hobby again? Kill commercial viability at every turn. That's how it has to be.