Jon Del Arroz has been on the beat with GAMA and Tabletop, focusing on boardgames, and how the poz is being pushed hard. The convergence is complete at GAMA.
These folks collaborate with their Fellow Travelers at Kickstarter, Indiegogo, etc. to deplatform enemies and--if they can--debank them too, or at the least have Stripe cut their enemies off (usually via the Mastercard 10 blacklist).
What is going on with GAMA is exactly what went down with SWFA, and the result will be the same: a collapse in the commercial viability of the market sector where these people hold sway, and given how most people are already cutting out the organs that GAMA holds sway over that's going to happen right quick.
All of the talk that Brian Niemeier has said about NewPub, and how it's overtaking OldPub, now applies here; you're not going to overtake the Top Dog, but you will be self-sustaining as a hobby if you stick to this sort of operation.
Pat here demonstrates a common delusion among the Terminally Online sort.
The delusion: That Wizards of the Coast has any competition within Tabletop.
WOTC is not stupid. They know who their competitors are--Fortnite, World of Warcraft, Genshin Impact, etc.--and there is not Tabletop operator that matters.
Most people who play Current Edition are not Terminally Online and do not care about anything but Current Edition, the same way that most wargamers are 40K Only Andys and don't care about anything else and that cardfloppers are Magic Only Andys and don't care about anything else. If they aren't playing The Only Game That Matters, they aren't playing at all. This has been known for 25 years thanks to Ryan Dancey.
This has been reinforced multiple times, in multiple media where Network Effects are the source of value, over those 25 years. The majority of players in a given medium of that sort are not general players; they are Top Dog Only Andys and refuse to play anything else because, rightly, they see anything else as a waste of time and money. We see the reason most clearly with MMORPGs, but it is there in all of them: the sheer size of the Network enables these people to play how they prefer, and smaller competitors do not. Josh Strife Hayes proved this with math a while back.
Skip to the Conclusion; it's the Highlight skip. That gets to the point I've made, which he independently arrived at.
Pat's assertion that any of these defections matters is delusional. If that were the case, Palladium Books would have overtaken WOTC (or TSR before that) by 1990- by 1995 at the latest. That never happened, and it never will happen. All of these folks, like folks who quit WOW for another MMO, will be back in short order once it becomes clear that Current Edition is where the action is.
Watch for it, and watch how shameless they're going to be about it.
They do not interpret your complaints as valid so long as you buy their shit- any of it.
This is why they go after third party alternatives, legal and not alike. This is why they enforce Official Product Only and maintain their Cult of Officialdom, and why they turn on fan channels on a dime.
They want to establish and enforce Fear of Missing Out and There Is No Alternative. If you would only ignore them and just print your own minis, use counters, and just use PDFs downloaded for free you'd starve these people into compliance with your will.
Again, BattleTech fans know how this is done; learn from them. You can play the game without giving Catalyst a penny.
You can do this, but you have to actually put in work and maintain discipline.
He's got the right idea. He just doesn't take it to the conclusion: all of the milieu is collaboratively-determined, using random generation first and reasoning out from there.
This is why you don't need to buy settings; the Real Game has the procedures needed to generate one on the fly, so all you need (top-down or bottom-up) is a blank hex map and some dice, generate what players will interact with, and stop. Don't do more until a player makes it necessary.
This is why you don't need to buy adventures; the Real Game has the procedures needed to generate one on the fly, so all you need is a blank grid map and some dice, generate what players will interact with, and stop. Don't do more until a player makes it necessary.
No preparation required. No need to waste time on things that won't get used. No need to pile on the cognitive load.
Now the next part: make the players do the work. Total Non-Stop Braunstein is the way. With the reveal of the existence of gameplay loops being a key driver of action in a campaign, both in general and character-specific ones, we can use these loops as the way to implement off-loading worldbuilding to players without overtaxing them cognitively; they just need to be told that fulfilling the requirements to advance the gameplay loop is their problem to solve, not the Referee's, and then suffer consequences when they don't- no leveling up, minions fuck off for not being paid, holdings go away for lack of maintenance, and even having their man benched for not paying upkeep costs.
There is no need for Endless Product Slop when the Real Game has all that you need to generate what you require when you require it, such that all players participating can just handle their shit themselves as required.
Which is why 99% of Tabletop products are not Real Games, never have been, and never will be- and thus are not fit for purpose, and as a result can be summarilly dismissed.
It's been quite some time since the last Tex Talks BattleTech.
We are due for another. If what I saw earlier holds, this will be about the Black Knight.
No, Sven hasn't dropped anything new in a while other- aside from his Mechwarrior streams (big deal if you're wanting to know if it's worth the money). Big Red has, but his videos about as long as the BPL and Sven's now so they too are few and far between (aside from news videos) but he did drop one recently. Mechanical Frog is far more frequently--weekly, usually, on Mondays--
But everyone knows that Tex's videos are the Big Event. Soon we'll get another. SOON!
