Clownfish did another follow-up on what Corpo Game is up to.
As I said to them, alas this is nothing new.
From the source material to the early crossovers (before Lester Del Ray's diktat took hold post 1980) and longer, this has been a thing and it's been as stupid as it is now; there's a reason that TSR went HAM on third parties in the 1980s and 1990s, and not just because they wanted all of that for themselves.
There is one other thing I want to make clear: Wizards of the Coast are just copying the Fortnite model. They're doing it because it works, as we've already seen with its use in Magic.
All the Cargo Cultists are going to lose their acquisition funnel to WOTC because what C-Suite wants the hobby to be is more appealing to Normies, Tourists, and Casuals than what they offer- and this is proof that (a) C-Suite sees where the money is and (b) they have an idea (if imperfect) on how to slowly pivot Official Game to conform to this business model that is orders of magnitude more profitable all around.
And yes, Videogames do EVERY LAST FUCKING THING that Cargo Cultists insist as Dogma BETTER THAN THEY DO!
This is why I have neither patience nor tolerance for that faggotry anymore. Vidya does the Cargo Cult model better, so fuck that on Tabletop. Therefore I will only do Braunstein--the Real Game--in Tabletop because that's how the game is structurally built to be played.
As for Muh Narrative, write books you Theater Kid wankers. You'd actually enjoy yourselves by doing the thing you actually want to do.
Last week, on the 13th, Roll For Combat did a panel about Muh Settings and Muh Mega-Modules.
You will see this repeatedly: admit that both Corpo C-Suite and the Bros are right, then CogDis right back into Cargo Cultism.
Admit that Wizards of the Coast wants to go all-digital, remove all the friction from playing, and switch over to being a Live Service model because it is the superior and proven way to make Conventional Play commercially viable and then turn right around vaccuuming Copium so hard that you'd swear they'd suck a Gas Giant to death in an hour over how they continue to justify their failed model.
Admit that Braunstein is the superior and proper mode of play for the hobby, and then turn right around and talk about Narrative and DMs being petty shits is okay and other Known Issues.
Admit that both sides are superior for meeting the hobby needs of adults with careers and families, and then turn right around and talk about how this hurts product development of the very PDF Merchant dogshit they're continuing to spew out like Jeets shitting on the beach.
Admit that all of the commercial pressures are fucking them in the ass, that WOTC is doing the smart thing on their end (while admitting that the Bros are doing the smart thing on the hobby end tacitly), and then turn right around to snort Copium like Tony Montana at the end of Scarface.
Yuri Bezmenov famously stated that "a person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell him nothing, even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents and pictures, he will refuse to believe it."
He elaborated on this concept in several key ways:
Irreversibility: Bezmenov argued that once demoralization is complete, it is "irreversible" for that generation, requiring 15 to 20 years to educate a new, patriotically minded generation to replace them.
Resistance to Proof: He claimed that even showing a demoralized person "authentic proof" or taking them to a concentration camp would not change their mind; they would only understand reality "when a military boot crashes his balls."
Core Definition: He summarized the tragedy by noting that "exposure to true information does not matter anymore" because the demoralized individual's perception of reality has been fundamentally altered to reject sensible conclusions.
This is what the Cargo Cult does to its True Believers, and just like the Useful Idiots that Yuri talked about regarding Communism there is no future for the Cult in a world where WOTC gets their way (and they will, so far as the commercial side is concerned) and the Clubhouse freezes them out seeking them as the zombies that they are.
Bifurcation is now inevitable, and the Cult is doomed; their own members admit it.
Grifting Beast is again ankle-biting the Bros and promoting Cargo Cult Dogma because he needs the Cult to buy shit he shills.
No, it's not Calvinball. It's not a folk tradition. It's no different than Chess; it's a game with a strict ruleset that is there to be used and obeyed. Using it wrong--"folk traditions"--doesn't stop being wrong because you did the meme.
Because no, Grifty-Boi, you can't read. So many of you can't, so you resort to Calvinball to cope with being unable to read what Gary wrote and comprehend what he said.
Proper gameplay means that all of your problems cease to exist.
You can play when you want, how you want, for as long as you want because there are gamemodes and procedures that focus on it- Schedule Your Fun isn't an issue.
Strict Timekeeping means that the world is always in motion and thus opportunities for Happenings to play out are always there, and mandatory upkeep costs keeps all mans on the map focused on securing and protecting their logistics lest they be knocked out of play.
No Calvinball. The rules say what they say, they are what they are, and everyone is bound by them- including the publisher. The Word Is The Authority, not the Referee, the publisher, or any other man. They can be read, studied, known, and mastered- same as Chess, UNO, Scrabble, or any other game because that's what this is.
The focus is on being an independent actor operating under a Fog of War pursuing objectives. Some are individual mans, some control factions, and there are no permanent parties so you mix up who you play and who you play with on a regular basis.
This is presuming that Grifty does suffer a reading a comprehension problem. Far more likely is that he's doing this shit again.
These people don't know a goddamn thing about game design, so they fuck with things things that they shouldn't and then wonder why shit doesn't work.
Initative is one of them. It's there to manage information flows in combat by keeping things confined to one subset at a time; the more granular the procedure, the worse things are at the table and the more you argue for digitization and automation (i.e. Vidya) instead because that level of complexity is better done in competing media but that would mean that Grifty can (a) read and (b) consider Second and Third Order effects, and we see that he can't.
The LOLcow sees what Ryan Dancey saw 26 years ago.
NETWORK EFFECTS, MOTHERFUCKER!
Folks gainsay Garipay here, but he's right: all competitors ultimately feed The Only Game That Matters, which is why they are not competitors at all. This is the old-time Blizzard playbook, and it works.
Dancey published the receipts on this when he announced the OGL back during the pre-release and early post-launch phase of D&D3e; he explained, in person at cons and at-length on forums, how this worked- the very process Garipay explained in his video above.
This is not new. This is how "The Industry" has always worked, because it's a bunch of tinkering twats doing Cargo Cultism because sweet fuck-all know jack shit about game design despite all pretensions to the contrary- as shown by their results.
(The ones that do know anything go into Vidya and actually make a living doing this that can afford children, at most keeping Tabletop as a sidegig like Mike Pondsmith did.)
This is why I immediatley dismissed the Darlings as the flashes in the pan (if that) that they were, along with the rest of the PDF Slop out there, as completely irrelevant; any good ideas--LOLNO--would filter up to The Only Game That Matters in due course.
Just play D&D- and play an edition that actually works. Braunstein is far more relevant and influential that this crap.
Instead, it's nepos and those with nepo-baby friends or connections making these "to make a statement" or something equally fatuous on one hand and delusional incompetents on the other making their Fantasy Hearbreaker.
(Blanked) By The Apocalypse. (Blank) Hack. Flowery Bullshit Vaguely Based On Fagshit Books From Fellow Travellers Decades Ago. The Writer's Hobbyhorse & Fetish As A Game. All of them and more litter the shelves and would be better off throw on the pyre and burned- and the "games" too.
Either way, as I have said many times, it is a waste of time and money to make and to buy. Stick to The Game That Matters. Learn it, study it, master it because that one gets played and the rest sit on your shelf.. JUST. PLAY. D&D!
