The Culture: Witness The Cargo Cult Madness In Action

Chubby Funster dropped this video earlier this week.

To which Jeffro responded:

This is legitimately weird. 1) it demonstrates that playing in a conventional game is really about playing in a game world that nobody is playing in 2) it highlights how turning even a supposedly good campaign setting into a “living world” in this fashion requires you to ignore half or more of the adventure hooks outright. Who is actually going to do this? 3) to simulate the effects of braunstein play in a conventional game requires the referee to track all kinds of things and then present events and scenarios in such a particular way that neither the players nor the factions have any real autonomy 4) it would be far easier to actually run any kind of Braunstein game… But of course, this type of gaming content isn't for people that actually run games. It doesn't have to work. It doesn't have to produce replicable results. It just has to sound smart. That's it!

- Jeffro Johnson

Read on Substack

It is simpler and easier for all involved to just use Braunstein methods. Literally the meme here.

from Imgflip Meme Generator

The Business: You Can't Carrot Your Way Out With Retards

On Monday, Arch dropped this.

Pain--the whip, the stick, the brick--is far more likely to get the desired results than the carrot when dealing with midwit and worse quality people.

Arch didn't get into it, but those familiar with how Jeets in power operate are not surprised; they are always eager whip-wielders when placed in power over others, willing to enforce whatever they are told by their masters and patrons, and women are not only no less likely they are often more hair-triggered when they do. Thus Queen Jeet of XBox doing this surprised no one aware of this.

She serves the shareholders. The shareholders want Number Go Up. Whipping the studios producing the products that drive that number, when they have been indolent and incompetent for years on end, is going to produce positive results for now. Given the cultures of those rotting in their chairs there, that is the only way to get results out of these losers.

It's a mixed bag; the shareholders are not our friends, and there is no guarantee that the games produced will be any good, but for now this is a net-positive development. The question that remains is if the public--us--have any leverage over the shareholders, ideally by just Not Buying Shit and (just as important) Not Talking About Shit.

That includes a certain movie currently in theaters.

The Business: Behold Grifting Beast Shilling Crap No One Needs For Games No One Plays, Again

When I say that most Cargo Cultists are Consumerist Product Pushers constantly shilling on the position of "Your game is shit. Buy this widget to fix it" this is it.

Civilized societies string these leeches up and hang them from lampposts.

You don't need this if you have a competent game. You make your own as you go, and as such you care about what happens because YOU HAVE SKIN THE GAME!

This? This is Frustrated Narrative Faggot Syndrome in action, the refuse shat out the anus of a frustrated fake writer and repackaged as a Tabletop supplement hoping to score some sucker's paycheck. Even the Pundit doesn't crap out this waste of wood pulp.

You need a real game (AD&D1e), a blank map, some dice, and about 15-30 minutes. This, at a leisurely pace, gets you what you need to get started.

Everything else is a waste of time, a waste of money, and a waste of attention. Everything. Else.

The Culture: They Keep Trying To Steer Things Back Into Their Cave Prison

When Jeffro and BDubs shit on Cargo Cultists for willfully misrepresenting things, shit like this is what they're talking about.

Fuck off, retard.

This faggot knows that the Bros exist- I've flat-out TOLD him so.

He's been SHOWN BROZER and UMBROS. He knows about Winning Secrets. He's no different than the Oldfags who keep trying to steal #BROSR developments and try to reframe them in Cargo Cult non-game terms.

He is willfully avoiding the fact that this hobby runs off Braunstein, which means he's not an honest actor- and that applies to all of the Cargo Cultists, regardless of whatever flavor of shitsandwich they shill for. This is what "Gamers are terrible people" means when you hear people like Jeffro or BDubs shit on them.

The Culture: Oh Look, That Thing The Bros Talked About Turned Out To Matter After All

The thing Oldfags say never happens happened.

Oldfag PRESUMED that a greeble did X, when the rules state that it did Y.

Why did Oldfag do this? Calvinball.

When you go "Rules LOL, do whatever, LOLSORANDOM ain't I hip and cool?" you end up making these kinds of fuckups because you never take the time to do the one thing that always prevents this fuckup from happening.

What would that be?

READ!
THE!
FUCKING!
MANUAL!

Lazy faggot got caught out and now he has a sad about it. Off to the Carousel for you, Oldfag. Time to Renew.

Play the game. Play as-written. Do not deviate. This means that you read the rules, study the rules, and master the rules as they are- not as you wish they were. This may involve exercising reading comprehension skills long rusted to due decades of disuse, but that's not my problem.

The Bros are right again.

The Culture: Yes, Point Out The Obvious One More Time

Oh look another Oldfag having to pivot to softer targets after breaking his ego on the Bros.

Again, a summary:"This system shifts player motivation from "killing everything" to finding creative ways to secure loot. Because combat is highly lethal in older editions, players are incentivized to use traps, distractions, and clever negotiation to avoid direct fights"

Again, "Fucking duh." Again, too many Commies and retards in the hobby so this needs to be made brick-to-face obvious.

That's nice. Why are they after the treasure?

It's not for the XP. It's for what that treasure buys, which XP is symbolic of: power, prestige, property.

You need it to pay the Training costs. You need it to pay medical costs. You need it to pay Upkeep costs. You need it to do Spell Research. You need it to do Item Creation. You need it to hire/retain Henchmen and Hirelings. You need it to build our your man's power structure--the castle, the town, the farms, the mines, the manufactories, the housing, etc.--needed to seize and hold land, land in turn needed to be the base from which your man strides forth to achieve his objectives and win the campaign.

All of that needs metric fucktons of gold and gems to do, as it is the fuel and the lubrication that keeps the war machine that is your man going.

Doing all of that cannot help but to lead to acquiring the experience needed to accomplish the Objective; Gold For XP merely formalizes this into a playable useful abstraction.

Which would not need explaining if this OldFag actually played the game properly.

The Culture: Early Cargo Cult Consumerism

Last Saturday, the Pundit cut this video.

Arduin is one of the first expressions of the Calvinball Doctrine that uderlies the Cargo Cult: "The game is broken and doesn't work. Buy this widget to fix it."

Consumerism came into the hobby early, driven by the folks who didn't know how the game worked and never bothered to question their own priors or discover how the game does work- they PRESUMED it was broken so of course they had to fix it.

The entire picture of how Muh 40 Years got it so wrong all this time has become clear, and I can't help but to hate them more for it.