The Culture: Jeffro Explains The Suppression Efforts

Jeffro explains why the Bros lack visibility despite their paradigm-shaping work.

This is an interesting suggestion. I can tell you what has happened over the past few years. 1) The big brains of the BrOSR inner circle have been entirely eaten up with working out what rpgs really are and how to achieve the best results of them. This effort largely upends what even the progenitors would say about it all. 2) Meanwhile commentators, historians, and YouTube personalities have taken on a reading of rpg history that interpolates today’s BrOSR practices and framing and even terminology into the past. It is presumed that people in the bad old days did things the BrOSR way even though everyone else in communication with the BrOSR has been telling us that “no one played that way”, “not even Gygax played that way”, and “Jeffro does not play RAW”, etc. etc. 3) My own work, “How to Win at D&D”, which outlines elements BrOSR thinking that actually were extant in the actual game rules of rpgs produced in the 70s and which subsequently evaporated over the course of the 1980s as rpgs were redefined…? It is not cited by anyone at all even though it is the first work ever published to conclusively make the case that something is wildly off in how people have been describing rpg history over the past few decades. I don’t know what the next move in all of this should be, but I have gotten practically no requests at all for me to continue doing “anthropological” work of that sort. People that have attached themselves in a more or less parasitic manner to the BrOSR scene tend to speak of it not at all and betray little interest in the matter. Perhaps because there is no money in it or perhaps because someone bullied them and/or paid them to lay off.

- Jeffro Johnson

Read on Substack

TLDR: The engineers did engineering things why the sales guys continued to shill shit no one needed.

He is right about the money. Implemented as we've done, all the money in Tabletop flushes out because no one need to buy anything but the rules themselves. The commercial side of the hobby is all about pushing product. They have no concept of supplying services, other than Wizards of the Coast (and they have their own solutions that are not what we want), so they have no incentive to promote the solution that actually works.

Observe Revealed Preferences: everyone who'se tried did the (very old) meme.

The same goes with the Clubhouse and all it entails. Once they grasp how it works, particularly by seeing it in action, THEY SIGN THE FUCK UP!

The plan is simple: show people how it's done. They will believe it when they see it in action.

The OPFOR plan is simple: suppress awareness.

This didn't work last time. It won't this time. People like free things. People like free things that enhance their autonomy and lives. The Bros offer that.