Arch, following up from Janovich, on Trench Crusade pulling a fuckover job that GDubs would never do.
Shit like this is why TC will not surpass or replace either Fantasy or 40K. At this point it will struggle to compete with BattleTech.
Calling out the YouTube shills for boosting these Commies is just and proper. Arch and Janovich remains undefeated; Pat's looking kinda suspect right now.
Listen to this. They confess everything I've said.
They confessed to the primacy of Network Effects.
They confessed to the primacy of Rules.
They confessed to the primacy of Procedure being how Play is experienced.
They confessed to the primacy of the Revealed Preference of Rules As Written as soon as serious stakes are perceived to be on the table.
SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP!
Everything else is insanity pretending to come up with justification for Cargo Cult norms regarding Conventional Play. They confessed to the data supporting my position. They confessed to Revealed Preferences supporting my position. They confessed across the board, and they carried on as if nothing happened.
They don't want to go to the conclusion because they earn their living, in whole or in part, from the delusion.
The conclusion is this: Just. Play. D&D. Everything else is delusional to varying degrees in commercial terms. (Non-commercial? Different story, largely due to not needing to make money or feed the ego of collectors who only--at best--read and never play.)
I am so glad that things are going to force these delusional people to quit.
Pundit talks about WOTC's recent personnel changes for The Only Game That Matters.
TLDR: Don't expect WOTC to stop sucking anytime soon. Too many Molech Cultists fighting with Mammon Mobsters.
That doesn't mean that WOTC doesn't dominate and rule. That's sorted, permanently, in WOTC's favor; yes, the D&D Network Effect is that strong.
What needs to be done is to pivot towards competing within the Network Effect. You can't beat D&D. You can beat Current Edition if you use Past Editions to do it.
Because the hobbyist audience at-large is still Normie-adjacent, that means they still think and act like Normies; Normies rely on Brands and Networks to discern value, so that's why Temu D&D (all you OSR clones) doesn't get the draw that the real thing does.
Within the Brand you can compete, but you can't use the old Endless Product Slop model. You have to compete on Service and Connection to win; you have to teach people how to play the Real Game, not the Cargo Cult Just So fake game you think you know (but you don't).
The Bros get this. That's why they focused on AD&D1e, and still do. Some are also drawing connections to Chainmail/OD&D to show continuity from the origins of the hobby in order to fully comprehend the flow of the game, and realizing that indeed AD&D1e is fully capable in just the three core rulebooks of replicating what Chainmail and OD&D put down first and then proceding to a perfected form.
The Clubhouse is the model that provides a service (secure locations, vetted membership) and connection (fellow hobbyists, not randos and clout-chasing poseurs).
All we need to complete the arrangement is to secure independent access to the materials required for play perpetually, and that's now possible.
The Beast shows the value of competent technical writing.
DCC's a Collector's Purchase Choice because they write to be read, not to be used. They are incompetent at technical writing.
Look at that stuff. That's far too reliant on art style, trade dress, and other aesthetic elements to get attention and keep it long enough to get purchased. What Beast put out is that stripping that away reveals that DCC is not only incompetent at product design, they are incompetent at technical writing; it's a serious pain in the ass, moreso than using the original version, to use what they published at the table. It is only fun to read and show off the art.
This is the sort of publisher that needs to be run out of business and the hobby, and thanks to the collapse it's going to sooner than later becaue you can only coast off crowdfunding in a collapsing economy for so long. Meanwhile, people playing Real Games with procedures for easy emergent content generation are going to thrive because it's a Buy Once, Cry Once affair with no further expense (or upkeep) and that's how the hobby has to be going forward.
I can't blame them for doing this. I can still say that it's a waste of time; these were Roll For Combat's end-of-year filler streams.
What astounds me is the continued resistance against the logical conclusion to Just Play D&D and dump the Also-Rans, Never-Weres, and Never-Wills by Stevie, Derik, and Pat despite acknowledging this state of affairs.
No, they even acknowledge that there is no competition for The Only Game That Matters. They acknowledge that everyone else is wasting their time and money pretending that this is not so, but then carry on in the same breath as if they didn't just confess their own insanity.
If they weren't trying to pretend that they were viable commercial operators, I wouldn't care; non-commercial hobbyist publication is how things ought to be in this hobby. The objection comes from the insistance that there is competition; there isn't, and they keep refusing to accept the conclusion that they ought to just shut down and do something else or openly become solely motivated by fulfilling patronage demands- i.e. being paid to do what someone else commissions them to make for them.
These people can't crash and burn fast enough.
You compete within the D&D Network Effect, which means only Past Editions can compete with Current Edition.
Not knockoffs. Not Temu D&D. Not Just So Theater Sports. Real D&D Editions.
Everything else is better off shutting down commercial operations and going non-commercial hobbyist publications or going with neo-patronage and just fulfilling commissions.
The following video came across my feed and hit something I've been talking about for years.
Set aside the conclusion. Focus on Tabletop applicability, both in terms of worldbuilding and in rules/content design. We, like the video presenter, shall take the perspective of an engineer here.
Remember Runequest? What's its big deal? That religion, in its full complexity, is made playable in a manner that players can comprehend in a manner analogus to the way that non-Christian religion actually works. Call of Cthulhu does something similar with how it presents Lovecraft's nihilistic cosmos via its rules.
This video explains how and why the human practice of religion works as it does, and it is far more applicable to non-Christian practice (something that is how things are in most Fantastic Adventure gaming play, at least in theory) than to Christianity due to specific elements of Christianity that make it the outlier in religions.
It also, without even addressing the hobby, shows why the Cleric (a) is not a generic priest and (b) why implicit cosmologies hard-coded into a game limit the scope of practical religion capable of being modelled in a game. There's a reason for why you can't have a proper representation of Christianity in Legend of the Five Rings/Legend of the Burning Sands: the rules regarding how the supernatural and sacred work get shattered by implementing Christianity into its setting.
The obvious conclusion is that this justifies other priest classes.
The obvious follow-on is that games will get the priest classes that the rules support via their mechanics and procedures.
The catch is that people will do this poorly and get shit results that don't deliver on the expectations; to do that you have to know the game you're designing for, which means you need to read the fucking manuals and then draw out the second and third-order effects of their rules and procedures. With that mastery in hand, your design will leverage those structural elements and emergent effects to fulfill the expectations that users will have.
There's a reason that I've made a draft adaptation of Palladium's Warlock O.C.C. to AD&D1e; it is to illustrate this very thing, because AD&D1e can support the concept, but those who don't read and study the game's manuals will fail to achieve the desired result. Shaman adaptations are likewise not just a variant Cleric.
The same applies to other games. Your priests need to reflect the mythos and cosmology that comprises their religious practices, and that needs to be coded into the rules so it is part of the experience of play.
