The Culture: Some Snakes Are Smarter Than Others

I told you the grifters had to get out in front of the Bros, and here we are.

First lie hits not a minute into it: "D&D is not one game."

Yes it is you lying motherfucker. You read the manual, you do what the manual says, you get what the rules prescribe. Lather, rinse, repeat. Everyone playing it properly plays the same game. This is up there with "Free Parking" in Monopoly being done wrong in its pervasive presence despite being obviously incorrect as in "READ THE FUCKING MANUAL YOU MORON!".

He gets it wrong be he's played the game wrong for Muh 40 Years. They are the same thing: Fantastic Adventure Wargaming. "Epic" doesn't exist anymore than "Grimdark" does; both are fake genres. The structure of play is always the same; same inputs means same outputs.

I'm going to have to explain how this actually works. Fine, here's the Quick & Easy Launch Process.

1. Get your AD&D1e core rulebooks.
2. Get one sheet of graph paper.
3. Get one sheet of hex paper.
4. Get one notepad or notebook.
5. Open the DMG. Go to Appendix A. Roll 1d10/2. See those five starting room allotments? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Roll, then write the winner down on the sheet of graph paper in the middle of the page. Stop. That's your starter dungeon.
6. Go to Appendix C. Roll 1d8 and look at the chart where you determine what terrain type an outdoor hex is; look across the top, as normal. Then roll 1d4 to determine which corner that generated hex is in.
7. Using the Settlement subchart for that chart, determine the starting settlement size and who is in charge. The dungeon will be nearby.
8. Tell folks you're running a starter dungeon delve, and which Method to use to roll up a man. Set a date and a time; use Appendix A exactly as it's written and you'll do fine as I've shown for over a year. Done. Never do any work unless and until play forces it.

No negotiations. No Session Zero bullshit. Your mans are about broke and dungeons are where they can get paid. No one--including the Referee--has a fucking clue about what's going on beyond that initial 24-30 mile hex and until someone goes beyond it that wider world doesn't exist The rules work as intended when you use them as directed to create the promised play experience. Stop fucking with it.

This is where he bullshits hardest; you don't need to do anything more than this to start with, and you should never do anything more until it is required. He lies about in the same breath as confessing to the Six Session Suckout of Cargo Cult Non-Game Play and praising The Keep On The Borderlands, which uses the above paradigm.

The Professor is one of the better grifters due to his seeming reasonableness making it hard to detect when he's playing Word Sorcery games to trick you. "I plan one session ahead" is that sorcery; you shouldn't plan at all because that's the players' job (Fantasy of Agency, remember?) and all you do is administer things. Planning means that you are assuming the role of the Adversary, when that is not your job. That's what players do, not you.

It's that one subtle shift that introduces the poison of Narrative Logic into a pure Ludological hobby. Reject all Narrative logic by sticking to Braunstein structure; this is how you beat that bullshit.

This is a far simpler thing to comprehend than many have been told to expect, so PDF Merchant grifters have to complicate it to create a space where they profit.