The Culture: The Poz Did Not Go Away

Wednesday last week, Diversity & Dragons posted this.

Sensitivity Readers.

That means pushing the poz, which means that Hasbro has begun gutting Wizards of the Coast of its excess capital via laundering it through stunts like this.

Note I said "excess"; Hasbro wants WOTC to be an operational subsidiary, which requires capital, but as a digital publisher using a lot of LLMs you don't need a lot of people (and thus salaries) or machines (thus physical capital); you need a handful of people and some IT infrastructure (because of Beyond), which is a far leaner operation than WOTC is now. (Go look at the Gatcha operations.)

For all the complaining going on, there is only one publisher in the Commercial side of Tabletop constantly in the Top Five that isn't a poz-pusher: Palladium Books. All others are of the Seattle Set, meaning that those publishers depend on WOTC and WOTC's funding sources for their own operations; most of the also-rans, being Death Cult fronts, are also poz-pushers to varying degrees when they are not Pop Cult heretics.

The Clubhouse side, being non-commercial, can push back effectively against this. No commercial operator can due to Network Effects smothering their efforts, coupled with the far more active efforts WOTC made to cut off recruitment of their castoffs and rejects and the continued refusal to actively market and advertise themselves in order to create their own customer acquisition funnel as well as a customer retention strategy- something every business worth a damn actually does.

The Culture: A Modest Macross Proposal

Okay, that Macross campaign proposal.

There's some gap on what goes down on Earth after the First Space War (specifically after the end of the original series). We know that (a) there's been an immediate push to start launching colonies into space to settle and tame Earthlike exoplanets, an effort that would succeed within a generation or so (e.g. Macross Plus).

We also know that the Zentran Fleet was not 100% annihilated, and that remnants did not 100% assimilated into Earth civilization; splinters remained an issue for generations after the First Space War (e.g. Macross Plus, Macross 7, Macross Frontier, Macross Delta).

Unfortunately, because of HARMONY FUCK YOU GOLD, Western licensing for play in this period is between shit and fuck-all. Therefore we'll have to make due with Robotech material because Palladium came up with some good asspulls that (with a little massaging) would fit just fine. Behold!

Like I said, there needs be massaging.

As these are long out of print, it would probably be wiser to call upon Captain Harlock to deliver some PDFs instead. You'll also need to make use of sites like MAHQ.net and the Macross Mecha Manual to fill in the gaps (in stat terms) that Palladium's former licenses could not provide for.

The top-level players control the factions vying for control. Other players can come in when Convergence inevitably occurs and combat occurs.

You'll need to change what Palladium published to conform to the Macross timeline, removing the HG RT BS, but otherwise keep 90% of the design structure. This means that you don't need to write up stuff from scratch using HERO, GURPS, or Mekton Zeta.

(You'll be able to replicate this for playing Southern Cross and MOSPEADA.)

The Culture: SIXTH. OF. JUNE. 19. Forty. FOUR!

We take a break from our usual ranting about Tabletop to remind you that it's D-Day.

Sabaton not only has the best song about it ever, but Sabaton's AMVs are the best AMVs.

And yes, I've been thinking about a Macross Grand Campaign proposal.

Tomorrow.

The Culture: It's The Campaign, Stupid!

Mythic Mountain gets it.

To an RPGer this is a wild notion. “Doesn’t this defeat the whole point of the game? Session play?” Slowly in our clubs I see it dawning on us that we’ve had D&D backwards for 40 years. The campaign itself comes first in the original sense of the word. In Tony Baths Ancient Wargaming you simply roll to see the resolution of combats, the entire point of the game is actually the intrigues, movements on the map and tracking the details of kingdom and man. Have an in depth tactical resolution, or not, the game as a whole is the point. It is an utterly revolutionary concept, but we are circling back to the beginning of it all. I’m beginning to see dawning, a hope for a hobby hidden and crippled for 40 years.

- Mythic Mountains RPG

Read on Substack

Not your man. Not you. Not the Referee. Not Muh Narrative. The campaign ITSELF is what matters.

The integrity of the campaign matters, which is why the rules need to be obeyed and not LOLSORANDOMed into fucking Calvinball by incompetent retards who think they're smarter than the game.

The Culture: GeeDubs Getting Mini-Mogged

Thumbing Games Workshop in the eye is a display of confidence.

Grimdark Future Box Sets now in stock! by Michael DiBaggio

Great new plastic sets from One Page Rules

Read on Substack

Check them out while you can. I expect some form of legal fuckery to come at them sooner than later.

The Culture: The Real Hobby Work Is Now At Substack

All of the development on the non-commercial side of the hobby goes on at Substack now.

This Past Weekend in the DolmenStein by Dungeoneer

After Action Reports on several play session during Turn 2 of the Dolmenwood Braunstein Campaign

Read on Substack

I'm not a Dolemwood guy. Don't see the point of it.

But it's worth it get a passing familiarity because then you can easily follow along such articles to find and appreciate things like this:

The Duke’s player’s intention for this Braunstein was supposed to be a ducal summit to redraw borders. Instead, the capital was invaded, the Duchess was kidnapped, Baron Hogwarsh was murdered by a (star) man wearing his face, a senior Church official died in the streets, and half the great powers of Brackenwold watched it happen. Whatever this setting was before this, it is not that anymore.

Hie over to Substack if you're not already there, find the Bros and their friends (including myself), and read along.

The Business: The Licensing Lifeline Just Got Cut

On Friday last week, the Pundit dropped the following.

The Pundit gets what the issue is.

This is not a question of "You got Skiffy in my Fantasy!" because that's been part of the game since before its official publication in 1974, made brick-to-face obvious with the crossover rules for Gamma World and Boot Hill in AD&D1e.

No, the issue is Brand Collaborations. This means that Wizards of the Coast are pursuing the Fortnite model, which is where there are license deals made to allow for officially-licensed adaptations for The Only Game That Matters in Current Edition, and as we now see that's going to be fed directly into D&D Beyond where it will remains there as an exclusive offering to draw in new users and retain existing one- further reinforcing platform lock-in, weaponizing the Network Effect to cut off the acquisition of customers to all of the Temu Tabletop tinkerers bottom-feeding off of The Only Game (And Publisher) That Matters.

This will work because it already has for Magic: The Gathering.

This also will cut off license opportunities for everyone else, because WOTC will have the money and the time to suck up any and all such Brand License opportunities going forward and thus deny one of the lifelines that many Temu Tabletop publishers used to keep their operations going heretofore. WOTC is not a high risk proposition for a Brand; even Palladium and Paizo are now, and they're the perenial also-rans. As it is for other Big Corpos, so it will be for everyone else- such as the Burroughs, Howard, and Vance Estates.

You won't be able to court a dormant, but attractive, brand to go with your Temu Tabletop product going forward- not when WOTC is able to pay more, reliably, to a far larger target audience and thus open the door to yet further brand collaboration deals.

If WOTC (and Hasbros) has the sense that God gave a diseased donkey suffering from syphillis and dying of AIDS, they will make it clear that they are the only Tabletop party in town so they should just ghost everyone else. That's it for the PDF Merchants; you can only reskin B/X so many ways, the customer pickup pool from WOTC's castoffs is drying up, and they have neither the skill nor the will to do what it takes to compete and win. The Dying Time is here for them.

If you think this is not an issue on the commercial side, you STILL do not comprehend Network Effects. Pundit is wrong about the lock-in being a bad move because that has already proven itself to be a success. C-Suite is very happy with this; most players now use Beyond exclusively, disdaining print media entirely, precisely because being in the cloud allows for users to log in and play anywhere that supports the client. The shift to being Vidya is already halfway there, and the profits prove it.

Commercial Tabletop is over for everyone but WOTC. What remains is the lagtime between Cause and Effect. It may take a few years, but it's coming all the same. Only the Clubhouse survives.