The Culture: BattleTech Is Not The Only Game That Needs No Publisher

Remember what I said that one week recently about Hobbyists not needing Publishers? Mage Leader does, and he reminds us of another forgotten gem.

Sure, you'll likely need to call up Captain Harlock for the videogames and you'll need a hookup for tabletop play tokens, but Mage Leader's point here is valid. This game is now taken by the players and run by them for them.

Hunt around and you'll find the rules you need for the original tabletop game, and maybe even WizKids' Clicks version too.

What I want to point out is that Mage Leader got the memo on settings: never advance the timeline. He correctly concludes that this is for players to decide, not the publisher, and it won't be long before he does as I did and makes the connection between doing this and turning the property into a Setting Bible for an IP Brand (i.e. going down the Hello Kitty road).

This is another setting ripe for Braunstein sessions being integrated into the established Conventional Play paradigm, making the game better by putting all of the action into player hands.

He mentioned using Savage Worlds for adventure scenario play, but there are other options that are just as good or better at getting the feel across (TORG is good for this, using the Nile Empire rules, but a more old-school minded folks could easily adapt Traveller).

And as there is no Publisher to fuck things up, you don't have Community Managers playing the role of Human Resources to poz properties.

In 36 hours, I've seen Trench Crusade spike in popularity—and promptly shoot itself in the foot.

The major lesson here is to onboard community managers aligned with the community, not against it.

It's been real, but it's time to pack things in and move on. https://t.co/6tnLZhLzFK

— Kit Sun Cheah (@thebencheah) May 16, 2024

TLDR: CMs use their position to kick out their enemies and lock in their friends, pozzing the property and turning it into a Death Cult propaganda outlet.

That they are consistent in doing this even for micro-properties shows that this is not cynical clout-chasing, but sincere cult fanaticism and attendant zealous pursuit of the Black Crusade against all enemies.

And that is what not having a Publisher prevents.

Kill the commercial aspect of gaming and you solve over 80% of the problems. Kill the Publisher and you solve it nigh-completely.

This is applicable to far more than tabletop and videogaming. This applies to all cultural and hobbyist pursuits.

The Culture: Mainstream Visibility Is Entirely Expendable

Both in Vidya and in Tabletop, the Gamer yearns for the Clubhouse.

Yes this is what I want.

I want gaming to lose mainstream support and be an edgy niche again. I want outsiders to not understand it, raising the cost of entry into the subculture.

Better than the universalized lifeless gray slop we've all been subjected to for the past decade. https://t.co/YHyyVDzI5u

— Dev (@sleepy_devo) May 15, 2024

Dev (aka Short Fat Otaku) is no Dissident Right edgyboi. He's a shitlib, and he too has had enough of this crap.

If the price for culling the Death Cult from the medium is the destruction of its viability and visibility in the mainstream, hobbyists will pay it gladly.

People are independently coming to the conclusion that the Shiba of Color summarized a while back: to return to the underground, as a non-commercial pursuit, kept secret from outsiders. In short, a lodge- a Clubhouse.

As things get worse for Conventional Play in Tabletop and AAA in Vidya, this will become increasingly obvious. So what if ShitCorp goes under? The games can and will go on without them, and if it means boiling off the dead weight and bad actors as seen with Tourists and Casuals (like we saw the other day) so much the better.

You can't poz what you can't see, and you can't choke off what you can't touch, both things doable by going strictly non-commercial hobbyist-for-hobbyist work.

The Business: The Problems Beyond Conventional Play Are Now In Conventional Play

Louis talks about technology and legality issues. As Conventional Play is increasingly digital, those issues are Tabletop issues.

That video does get into having access revoked due to either human or machine error, but we all know that there is also deliberate malice.

Always-On Connection requires means that things you paid for (a) are actually glorified software licenses that can be revoked or altered at any time unilaterally and (b) because of that what you bought can be bait-and-switched out from under you without you knowing until it's too late. (The Stellar Blade incident is just a blatant example.)

Some publisher gets pozzed? Now your all-digital library gets "updated" to whatever stupid shit they decide to push out there.

Get some Death Cultist functionary mad at you? Your library access gets yanked, or your account yeeted; even if you reverse that, it's still time and money wasted so the process becomes the punishment.

Now consider that as many publishers as possible want to do like Sorcerors By The Sea and shove their users into an all-digital walled garden where you have no local files, nevermind physical products, so what you're paying for is a subscription to a service that has all the stuff needed to play and matchmatching capability to boot: no access, no game for you, no refunds fucko.

I'd been saying that this is the play for a while. So far only SOBS has the means, but others want the same power and for reasons I'd mentioned previously: to finish creating a cult compound, albeit a virtual one in two respects, and then once cult psychology has become wholly normalized wield the fear of explusion to compel compliance to Death Cult dogma. Like Scientology, but lamer.

You laugh. There are sites devoted to making that happen.

SOBS wants that for itself. So does Stupid British Toy Company and the other bad actors running publishers in the Tabletop medium. This is serious business, with millions to be earned training others to do this, and I remind you that SOBS (and Hasborg) has former MS and Zynga executives in C-Suite (i.e. other successful business cults).

There is, ironically, a way out of this: The Clubhouse.

The irony is that the image of the Cult Headquarters (in the form of a Lodge House) is now the image for freedom from that very cult madness.

None of the Bros intended it, but by eschewing Consumerism and CONSUME Product and the pursuit of commercial gain in Tabletop in favor of mastering the (very few) games that are already out there- and culling the vast majority of product out of consideration due to be excuses to extract money from suckers long accustomed to solving problems with products by buying more products to fix the bad products.

Insisting upon physical products, using free resources, playing the actual game and not some Just So Mother May I theater kid bullshit, and enforcing those norms. Will this result in a lot of people getting filtered out? Yep. There's similar things brewing in videogames, and my reaction to that is the same as it is here: GET FILTERED, POSEUR!

We survived just fine that way before. https://t.co/Q7KmCRfsR5 pic.twitter.com/VhHRdDsBC7

— Mr. Wargaming (@NotJonMollison) May 15, 2024

The Clubhouse can accept anyone. The Clubhouse does not accept everyone.

The Culture: This Is What The Clubhouse Keeps Out

The consequences of turning a hobby into a commercial pursuit are not obvious, but they are felt.

This thread at Reddit showcases one of them. The Original Poster is a self-admitted freeloader who prefers Current Edition because it caters to his preference to use the Referee as his personal funny monkey.

Respondants were not universally approving, but you could tell who runs for these people and who does not by the responses.

This set is a good summary of the matter.

This is not how the hobby works. Hobbyist, by definition, require that you put in work; some of the respondants get this, even if they can't articulate it as such, and some do not (mainly due to not having that demand put upon them either).

This guy just want to show up, take up space, and leave. Dealing with him is easy, assuming that "Get the fuck out and don't come back" doesn't stick: make him put in work.

This is another element that proper campaign play, with proper games (e.g. AD&D1e played correctly), has as a feature: built-in gatekeeping functionality.

The OP is able to do what he does because Current Edition is designed to cater to him. By his own admission, taking him out of that environment acts to dissuade him from being at the table taking up space and being dead weight.

This is the final form of most Conventional Play Cargo Cultists; the fast-burning-out Forever Referees are the minority, and they are not valued despite being the only ones willing to run games for these people.

This Cargo Cultist is the one that will welcome the transition to an all-digital business model. This is the guy that will welcome the removal of human Referees in favor of bots because bots don't burn out. This guy wants to play videogames and is in denial about it.

Put him at a #BROSR table and he'll be running for the door before he finishes rolling up his man. He will blue-screen at the first encounter with having any work demanded of him; he will freak out at Player-vs-Player conflict, act like a character in a Lovecraft story when encountering Braunstein, complain about not having everything on the sheet, and God forbid his side loses a Surprise roll and his man gets murked during the Surprise segements or via the Assassination table.

Just as we should welcome those who are willing and able to Git Gud, we should be equally swift in shutting out those that won't. He should be directed to something more suitable to his preferences, which means he should lurking in a chat channel on a livestream watching others play the game because he's already 99% of the way there. This man is someone that would be better off watching Critical Role. He should not be taking up space in the hobby.

So stick to the games whose very operation compels him to flee like a vampire before the Cross. The Clubhouse can welcome anyone. The Clubhouse does not welcome everyone.

Fortunately for the hobby, and the culture, it is anti-fragile and so useless sacks of shit like the OP are on borrowed time. Everyone that comes at Jeffro only ends up proving him right and getting more people siding with him. He recounts the recent thing with Harmony here, which did that.

I can't want for Conventional Play to kill itself.

The Culture: Let Hobbyists Teach Hobbyists The Hobby (h/t Dunder Moose)

"I would like someone to walk me through the process."

Dunder Moose has your back. (He has a blog, Tales of Dunderia; see the Links page for this and more.)

This is what we need more of now: hobbyists teaching hobbyists how to engage in the hobby.

Not shills shlepping product. Not corpos creating cults of CONSUME PRODUCT. People who enjoy a thing teaching other people who are curious about the thing how to enjoy the thing.

Y'know, like teaching someone how to play Baseball or how to cook with a campfire.

That's what we need more of instead of "Just buy more product. Consume more product. Product no work? Buy more product to fix bad product!" that we get with Conventional Play. For the Hobby to fully revitalize, this Hobbyists Teaching The Hobby stuff needs to proliferate.

We don't need a culture that sells shit that no one needs to address problems that should not exist; we need the old culture where people learned how to use and master the tools they already have.

That is a threat for more than a few out there, hence the freakouts, but it needs to be done.

Good on Dunder for stepping up like this.

The Culture: Unforced Errors Due To Pursue Commercial Gain

One thing that I wish people would stop doing is making things that don't fit the Brands that they're shilling for.

I am not unsympathetic to the premise.

Like Eberron, Dawnforge, and Midnight this Planegea premise is a campaign premise that doesn't belong with the Brand that it is actually associated with.

The knowledgable hobbyists should have been thinking "No, there's a far better game to use with this premise, to the point of being made for it."

(Honorable Mention: Adapting Pendragon, because it's been done before.)

Why do I say this? Because everything in that pitch video says "This gameplay loop has more to do with Runequest than D&D" just as those other settings did.

The only reason this is being pitched for Current Edition is the same reason that the others aforementioned got pitched for D&D3x:

That, in turn, is all about pushing product as a commercial consideration- in other words, because this is a business.

If this was a proper Hobbyist-made hobby publication by Hobbyists for Hobbyists, (a) it would be far smaller with far less filler and (b) it would be meant to use something other than Current Edition (likely not even Past Editions or forks thereof).

I am certain that the Planegea team tortured the crap out of Current Edition to make their product suitable for use for Brand Cultists, but that didn't help Eberron and it certain didn't help Dawnforge or Midnight (the latter of which even got an indie movie).

But it is the right tool for the job?

That, ultimately, will prove its downfall and will join the three aforementioned in due course.

Stop trying to sell shit. So much wasted wood pulp and digital detritus out there exists due to chasing commercial concerns instead of handling it as a hobbyist project.

Try this using some version of Runequest, (OpenQuest is your best bet if you're going to continue being retarded and pursue commercial gain in a niche that has none unless you're at or near the top.) If that's not enough, try some version of Pendragon (including Prince Valiant and Paladin). You'll get what you're aiming at far better when you use tools that fit the purpose of the project.

As it is, this is an Unforced Error.

The Culture: The Consequences Of Memory-Holing The Past

Yesterday we had a one-two punch of Why Your Conception Of Fantasy Is Pants-On-Head Retarded.

One came from Cirsova and the other from Grames Barnaby. I'll put both threads' first posts here; click through to the linked threads for the rest.

Something I've observed and repeated is that most people's idea of "Tolkienian Fantasy" and the modern state of the fantasy genre is actually Warhammer filtered through the lens of Warcraft. https://t.co/jGb44EPdxH

— Cirsova - JD Cowan's Star Wanderers Live Now on KS (@cirsova) May 11, 2024

Daddy Warpig's post starting all this, regarding Tieflings, had in turn exposed just how degraded our culture has become.

Modern day “Twee & D” isn’t for me.

It makes epic evil into something cute, harmless, and twee.

Tieflings are Demonspawn and Demonspawn GET THE KNIFE.#BringBackActualEvil pic.twitter.com/d3BmNdilSP

— Daddy Warpig (@DaddyWarpig) May 9, 2024

Which feeds back to Jeffro Johnson's quip: "Don't read anything after 1980."

The Cargo Cult of Conventional Play coincided with the latter generation of the Fanatics in American adventure literature ("fantasy" and "science fiction") taking over OldPub during the 1970s, with 1980 being the tipping point. You did not see today's "fantasy" and "science fiction" before then.

This older, better literature is what Gygax put into Appendix N. This is also literature which most Cargo Cultists have never read, as we have seen after Jeffro Johnson wrote his book on the subject years ago- something so threatening that there's been deliberate attempts to gaslight people away from Jeffro's book.

That includes many of those making deratives of the game, in any medium, and that definitely includes Fightstick and Fightcraft. The most charitable take is that this is the result of information degredation via a long game of Telephone (aka Chinese Whispers).

The more likely take, given the histories involved, is deliberate Memory Holing by a few and the exploitation of the laziness of the many; it is no surprise that every edition of D&D after AD&D1e deliberately went further from its literary (and thus cultural) roots, sometimes for crash and petty reasons (e.g. anything to do with Lorraine Williams and the Blumes) and sometimes for ideological ones (e.g. the latest gaslighting out of Sorcerors By The Sea).

Severing a people from their roots takes many forms, but one manifestation is persistent across incidences: making it easier to gaslight the targetted people into believing lies that their forefathers knew to be such.

"It's not evil. It's just misunderstood and unfortunate."

"Alignment is just a personality marker."

Both of these are lies, and it would not be possible to say them with a straight face had the culture of yesteryear not been deliberately hijacked, suborned, shivved, and tossed into the Memory Hole. This is what Daddy Warpig got at, and thus what Grames and Cirsova followed up with, to predictable blathering from Death Cultists (arguing in bad faith, as usual) and others engaging in Normie-style Ego Defense freakouts.

In short, non-answers. Just bullshit and tantrums.

It is no surprise, therefore, that the same Memory Holing that threw the real game--and thus the real hobby--into a dank dungeon of its own until Jeffro rescued it was also the same process that pulled a Satanic inversion of morality on the hobbyist subculture as part of the larger cultural inversion via lesser successors of a great original game.

The literature that persists is that which is grounded in the real. Fantastic literature is no different. Folks already forgot about Westeros, but remember Middle-Earth.

The same thing will be true when Globe of Gankcraft finally dies; no one will remember it for long. The same has, to a great degree, already happened with the "legendary fantasies" and "epic science fiction tales" from 1980 to the present.

They are built on lies, from the cornerstone on up, across all media. No one wants to watch, or play, a Humiliation Ritual- which is what Death Cultists make everything they take over into.

This is why AD&D1e is one of the few games that are worth playing, long after it was Current Thing; it is rooted in the real, while its successors are not and thus why they fade ever-faster once they are replaced by a new Current Thing.

This is why Call of Cthulhu persists, above and beyond Network Effects, while others like Chill and All Flesh Must Be Eaten are forgotten.

This is why Traveller persists. This is why BattleTech persists. This is why RIFTS (and all things Palladium) are in deep shit once Siembiedia is gone.

That rooting in the real, in a real more real than mere material existence, matters.

And that's why severing that connection, even in something that seems so inconsequential as tabletop adventure games, matters. It's not the only thing that matters, but it is often the decisive thing, and too many find out too late why that connection matters when they're ruined due to something that their severed connections would have prevented.

Your game sucks because it's fake. Simple as.