The Culture: This Is What Tabletop Contends WIth

The week before this past one, and over last weekend, we had the annual Summer Games hypefest with the Dorito Pope and others.

Of those on the PC Gaming Show showcase, this caught my attention.

Valheim has been around in Early Access for years. It is one of the best alteratives to Fake D&D that Vidya has which scratches the itch, and it's less than the cost of most Tabletop rulebooks worth having- certainly less than The Only Game That Matters.

Look at the Steam page. Most PCs rigs are able to play this game now. It's $20 at full price. You can play along or with others, and your deeds can have persistent results.

This is what Fake D&D has to fight with to stay relevant. It doesn't fight with lesser knockoffs. It fights with superior products, and it fights with superior hobby forms (e.g. the Clubhouse and Braunstein).

And for many prospects, Valheim is the better value proposition! Only the Clubhouse competes.

The Culture: "Do This AD&D Thing To Fix Your B/X Problem" Is What Oldfags Always Do

All these OldFags stuck on B/X "solve" things by doing what AD&D1e presumes as Standard Operating Procedure.

This will become fucking obvious when players start running opposing factions. Now players start seeing why they need to do things with that gold beside rack it and stack it.

Calling them on this has predictable responses. Contempt for Oldfags is justified; just play AD&D1e.

The Culture: Even PHDs Can't Fix Cargo Cultism

This shrink almost gets it.

You can tell that he can't solve the problem because he's a Fake D&D Cargo Cultist, so his Just So priors prevent him from accurately identifying the problem and thus from solving the problem.

He cannot comprehend that Tabletop is about the Fantasy of Agency, about being The Man In Command, as befits this being a form of wargaming.

He's never played Braunstein (and I do mean Weaseley's original here) and it shows. He's been told to catch up, and he'll be dragged kicking and screaming to the truth along with everyone else.

The Culture: Your Game Sucks Because It Is Out Of Order

In case you missed it, friend of the Retreat Jon Mollison is back and he ain't mincing words.

He'll be adding to this going forward; subscribe and enable notifications.

His blog is also showing this pivot.

• Folk Bullets – So Many Bullets
• Lessons From Dirt: Rango and Your Campaign
• Screwtape: The RPG

You miss gems like this if you don't read him.

When the GM’s whim overrides the written rules, the rules stop being a system to engage with and become a set of suggestions that might matter or might not, depending on the GM’s mood. Players learn quickly that deep understanding is wasted effort. Why study the mechanics when the GM can nullify them with a shrug? Why plan a clever strategy when the GM can “adjust” the encounter on the fly? Why worry about how the dice land when the GM can override them at any time? Why question inconsistencies when the answer is always the same: “Because I said so.”

Get your shit in order. Then your game will stop sucking.

The #BROSR blogs and publishes the receipts proving it.

The Culture: Normie-Friendly Dungeon Delving

"Okay Walker, I'll take your hint about other media doing Fake D&D better. Got any suggestions?"

There are TWO go-tos for boardgames: Dungeon! and HeroQuest.

The former is Normie-acceptable in price and difficulty. The latter is pricy as fuck for Normies, but has the depth that most Normies will cap out on. You can go harder, but this will satisfy most of those wanting your bog-standard dungeon crawl kill-loot-powerup experience. The former is more PVP while the latter is PVE.

Yes, your Gloom/Frosthavens and your Descents and your Mordheims (etc.) are all out there. That's more than most Normies will tolerate; these are within Normiesphere expectations for what a game is and is expected to work. The only one I'd even bother with getting out is Orcs and the Gates, if you can find a copy because (again) Normiesphere-ready.

(I should get an affilate link for the amount of linking to Amazon that I do.)

The Culture: Winning Secrets Up For Ebook Preorder

In case you missed out on the Winning Secrets Kickstarter, you now have a chance to buy your own copy.

Click on the image above to preorder a Kindle copy, which will be released on the 17th. Another post will be made when print is available.

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.