The Culture: Macris & Griff Talk ArneCon

Last night Alexander Macris had on Griff Morgan to talk ArneCon.

First, the movie. You can get it at Amazon here for Prime Video rental and "purchase"; this is the store page for buying a hardcopy, but there's none for sale as of this post.

Second, the tie-in book. Again, Amazon page is here. "Within the pages of this book, you will find maps and writings by David Arneson as he recounts the events and people in his Blackmoor, a living game environment that gamers are still experiencing over 50 years later."

Third, The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg is here.

Finally, ArneCon's page is here.

Griff's summary of what went down early on is summarized easily: The Upstairs (creative/business) went to war with the Downstairs (shipping/packing/etc.), in part due to a lot of hair-trigger egos due to most being young adults as well as (at the time) "long-haired hippies" making games in an environment where tabletop games were firmly something for children and not acceptable for serious adults (nevermind the War Colleges and long-running historical hobbyists, but that group kept it discrete).

Griff goes over Braunstein first as preface for Dave Arneson iterating upon this by using the dungeon as a different way to impose Fog of War on players, with the difference being--as he explains it--the former is mostly Player-v-Player and the latter is Player-v-Environment; I notice here that the rise and domination of the latter as the core of commercial publishing to the point of creating the Cargo Cult of Conventional Play mirrors the dominance of PvE in MMORPGs vs. PvP- down to the focus MMOs that go hard on PvP repeatedly crashing as commercial enterprises save for a couple of outliers (e.g. EVE Online).

(Note: Yes, you can conclude that if you want to making gaming stuff for a living, PvE is good for the Endless Product Slop business model that Conventional Play in both Tabletop and MMOs are all about; PvP is not viable commercially in these media under that model, which is why Warhammer and BattleTech are always having crisis issues or end up being Brands where the gaming is ancillary to Brand development, so they need to be either non-commercial or use a different business model.)

Note to the ArneCon ConCom: do more promotion! I didn't even know this con existed, and I'm MINUTES FROM THE HOTEL!

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My birthday is a week from today. I may or may not punt on that day; plans are still in flux with the folks.

Dunder Moose did send me his copy of Four Against Darkness and a copy of Secrets of the Undercity for ACKS; I do not have a print copy of ACKS, and I would appreciate it if I got one as a present for this or Christmas.

Yes, review of the former forthcoming.