The Culture: It's A Purpose-Built Machine With Objective Standards To Be Met

The big thing that the #BROSR found is that the Real Game is a holistic, purpose-built machine whose every part is required to achieve the desired and promised result to the user. It is not a bucket of LEGO. It is not Calvinball. It is not subjective in the least; BDubs has the right of it.

You think I’m exaggerating until yoh see the profile flags of those who use the most moronic talking points. “Ur 1st point makes 2nd pt bad bc it gives me the sads and ur 3rd point reminds me I hate my dad”. 100% #SoupAisle#BROXT #dnd #ThankYouJeffro https://t.co/6rlx8SaUSZ

— BDubs (@Bdubs1776) November 25, 2025

All of the rules that the Bros talk about, and the practices that use them, are designed to interact in order to use emergent properties to generate the end result.

Braunstein is the summary of what the result is, and Total Non-Stop Braunstein is the practical implementation. (From UMBROS, pg. 65)

But what if, instead of running a Session Braunstein now and then, you refused to stop? What if every week, without fail, the factions of UMBROS clashed? Every week, a Session Braunstein. Whystop? Instead make it NonStop. A Total NonStop Braunstein!

Do you believe in three referees working in concert? One running Session Braunstein, one adventuring, one mid-level wars. A campaign in constant motion with every level of play represented. That is the Total NonStop Braunstein.

The TNB method will assure a drastically changing game world week to week. And, if you use 1:1 Jeffrogaxian Time (which you should), then you can easily allow Co-Referee’s to run weekly Sessions in your game world concurrent with your TNB campaign.

Total Non-Stop Braunstein is the Real Game.

The Clubhouse is the institution to realize this ambition.

This is how the hobby survives after the collapse of Conventional Play is complete, the Cargo Cult is dead, and the Normies/Tourists/Casuals fuck off to Vidya/Boardgames which is what they really want as Revealed Preferences have shown for decades. It is underground, it is elite, and it is non-commercial- a true hobby scene by and for those willing and able to meet the standards demanded.

We already know how the fight against the Cargo Cult, against the Soup Aisle, ends. I'll just do the portrait now.

Black Friday 2025

First, the list for you:

• UMBROS in PDF (FREE!) and POD TBA.
• BROZER in PDF (FREE!) and POD (AT COST!).
• APPENDIX N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons at Amazon
• How To Win At D&D at Amazon and at Pilum Press's store.

Second, a link to my Wish List collection. There's been updates to the linked lists.

Third, if you're going out there today in the US good luck. This is Peak CONSUME PRODUCT Madness, so all sorts of crazy is out there; I'll stay home and just order online. For you Euros, I hope you have Christmas Markets that you can enjoy.

Oh, and this is a good weekend to just tune out the madness and just chill out.

Thanksgiving Day 2025

It's Thanksgiving Day in the United States.

I'm doing things with family today. Consider it touching grass, even if that grass is covered by snow.

Have a free movie.

There's a (brief) Black Friday post tomorrow. Enjoy your Holiday, fellow Americans and guests thereof.

The Culture: A Call For Aid Regarding Lost BattleTech Media

Mage Leader has a request.

First, fuck Catalyst.

Second, receipts for his claim are here.

Third, this is a big deal. The tools are now here for small, dedicated teams to not only preserve this lost media but to bring it up to a state where it is stable on current systems and thus make it available again. This is the sort of thing--like MegaMek and Living Legends--that is what makes BattleTech truly owned by the hobbyists and not some shit-tier corpo cockgobblers (dangerhair optional).

The Culture: There's A Different Business Model

Questing Beast's new video is timely, and may sell some product in time for Black Friday later this week.

The question is not "Which of these is the best approach to take?"

The question is "Why didn't the publisher of the game teach their users how to use the game to make their own playable content?"

The answer is "Because they don't know how to monetize tutorials and training."

This is stupidity in action, not the least because there's a massive--if mostly underground--industry in doing exactly that and getting paid a lot to do it.

Other forms of Tabletop game have no problem teaching you how to play the game, though some rely too much on third parties to do this.

Don't tell me you can't do this for the Real Game, not after Jon Mollison's AD&D1e videos did exactly this.

Sure, you can do rolling mans and combat encoutners--plenty of videos there--but Jon's the only one so far to do the whole game.

And guess what? You can monetize your video channels and thereby earn revenue from doing tutorials that teach people how to play. You can monetize livestreams that handle user questions, which can be referred to after the fact, and then be edited into shorter videos and short-form reels (for Tiktok and YT Shorts, for example). Different skillset, but (a) far more applicable to the current young adult and youth cohort, and (b) can be done with FAR less overhead than Endless Product Slop and all the costs so incurred (because so many of you are retards and don't automate hard enough to reduce them).

Teach more people how to use the thing, and more of them will buy because they won't feel weird about using it. Simple as, you retarded faggots.

The Culture: Dunder And BDubs Talk UMBROS!

Last night, Dunder had on BDubs to talk UMBROS.

It's always good to see BDubs in action.

Welcome to the next False Idol of the Cargo Cult of Conventional Play to get the hammer: PVP Is Fundamental To The Real Game.

The players must drive the bus to make the game work as intended, as promised. That means that players must engage in PVP, both in the small-scale man-to-man action that is one long Prisoner's Dilemma, and especially in the big-scale faction-focused action that shapes and reshapes the campaign map.

BDubs dropping the knowledge is huge.

The solutions to Conventional Play problems is reverting to Braunstein. Total Non-Stop Braunstein. Quoting UMBROS, pg. 63:

This style of Braunstein play is where you “attach the game calendar directly to the real world calendar, communicate with all players virtually through Discord chats, cell phone instant messages, and/or social media direct messages. Any action can be declared to the Referee at any time and for game purposes at the precise second that the referee receives a comprehensible and actionable order” (Johnson, BROZER, P. 11). This approach can obviously overwhelm Referees and Players. I won’t belabor why as it should be obvious that, with players able to demand the Referee oversee a Downtime Order for them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; it can be tiresome. There are more thoughts about the advantages and disadvantages to this approach in BROZER.

What is left unsaid is that additional Referees distribute the load, and that is a capacity that should grow out to include all players in the campaign; players need to be pushed to handle more of the work of running the game, such that when two players' mans come into conflict they sort it out on their own if they can and just report the results to the Referee.

TNB is easier to accomplish when players can be trusted to handle more of the game without the Referee having to look over their shoulder all the time. This is desirable, as it distributes cognitive load across a broader surface thus making more complex games practical to play and allowing the Referee to let the players drive the bus and enjoy what goes down- to enjoy being surprised alongside everyone else.

This is the Real Game.

The Culture: Showing How Traveller Is Done

Quoting the Description:

A group of Travellers each get a tip separately that a high dollar communique is passing hands at Heaven's Edge starport, but when they make it to the cantina it quickly becomes clear they aren't the only one trying to make payday, and the job spirals out of control.

Welcome to "Voidstein" a massive, classic science fiction tabletop adventure game using the venerable Classic Traveller! 17 players comprising patrons, factions and adventurers contest in a solar system in flames for credits and glory!

In this episode we begin by creating Classic Traveller characters with it's infamous and deadly Chargen! (Yes, characters die in creation!) Then we go into a deadly, live-session Type 1 Braunstein.

Mythic Mountains Folk Tabletop Club is an online tabletop club where we play games together weekly.

The version of Classic Traveller they're using can be had for free here.

This is how folks start unlearning Conventional Play and relearn the Real Game: by showing how it's done.

(Yes, saw that. Good times.)