The Culture: This Is War, Not Theater

The Basic Expert is right to get on Grifting Beast over this.

Grifting Beast is a double-talking faggot, but that's no surprise to any regular reader here. When you cultivate a Conventional Play audience of Pop and Death Cultists, being forked-tongued is a survival trait.

Flat out, what Beast is after is The Fantasy of Agency. The problem is that nothing he plays delivers on that fantasy because it never permits the players to root themselves in the source of Agency: power. Both in the having--and using--of it as well as the pursuit and development of it, Agency stems from that one root. This is why wargamers easily get what the hobby really is but those that never have routinely fall into the fallacy of applying Narrative media (passive media, spectator media) to what is a Sport medium (which is what wargaming is- sport, i.e. training for war) of active engagement.