The Culture: Fuck Game Balance

The Pundit makes an attempt.

What is left out is the thing that ensures that Muh Game Balance gets shot and tossed into a ditch: BRAUNSTEIN.

As I and others among the Bros have found out first-hand, the Real Game--multiple independent actors, operating in conflict, under a Fog of War--guarantees that balances gets tossed into the ditch because competing actors want to win and that requires achieving a power differential in their favor- i.e. to deliberate upend the balance in their favor.

This is, as every last martial artist and military sage ever keeps saying, Fair Fights Are For Suckers.

In a proper campaign, beligerants will only be in a balanced fight when both sides fuck up and fail to cock the table in their favor. This means that sometimes you get curbstomped, and sometimes you do the stomping; in the Real Game, most hostile encounters start and end on the Surprise Round. Those who get it can seize control of the fight, making it theirs to determine how it goes; those who are able to routinely seize control via Surprise will dominate most encounters due to having the capacity to choose when they fight and when they do they go first- and they tend to bring the most.

Then let things happen. So what if shit goes south? That's not the Referee's problem.