tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6955273997310100112024-03-19T00:50:57.121-05:00Walker's RetreatThe place where I collect myself online.Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.comBlogger3077125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-12157844183062271412024-03-19T00:00:00.093-05:002024-03-19T00:22:00.537-05:00Your Life As A Gamer: Conventional Play After The Collapse, Part Two<center><a href="https://imgflip.com/i/8jpj96"><img src="https://i.imgflip.com/8jpj96.jpg" title="made at imgflip.com"/></a><div><a href="https://imgflip.com/memegenerator">from Imgflip Meme Generator</a></div></center>
<h2>There Is No Future For You Here</h2>
<p>I have pointed out repeatedly that videogames are superior across the board at solving the problems of Conventional Play.</p>
<ul>
<li>Schedule Your Fun: Videogames have no schedule issues (where the least committed holds the rest hostage); even MMO raids routinely have hot-swapable rosters.
<li>Play The Man, Not The Game: Rules Zero turns play into Calvinball, which turns into Mother May I when the Referee figures out the full extent of his power when abused this way and like any other abusive relationship you end up having to learn how to read the Referee to succeed- thus what matters is not Player Skill, but Mindfuckery.
<li>The Game Is Not The Game: "Storytelling" is an excuse for abusive behavior in itself, with all of the dysfunctional dynamics that entails, and turns the hobby into the <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/02/what-is-the-longhouse">Longhouse</a>.
</ul>
<h2>The Road To The Storm</h2>
<p>Videogames solve all of this. You can't ignore the code, so you're forced to Git Gud or fail. You can play when you want, with whom, for as long as you like. There's no one able to just be LOLsorandom because Muh Narrative and Muh Fiction and Muh Drama to play Mean Girl Games. You boot up, show up, get on with it, and and go away when you're done. Performance is measured objectively, and increasingly with user-facing receipts available to analyze to improve performance.</p>
<p>Tabletop cannot compete with this, which is why more and more prospectively Conventional Play people onboard to videogames and more existing hobbyists switch media and don't look back. They want to play a game, and Conventional Play on tabletop has failed and is failing to deliver. That is, and has been, the trend for over a decade now- closer to 20 years.</p>
<p>And, as with Wizards' plan to abandon tabletop for vidya, <b>there is no plan to address this issue</b>. Largely because there is a mass denial that it even exists, a denial that is as much due to incompetence in reading the data as it is in accepting the results.</p>
<p>What there is, aside from the denial, is a lot of bumbling and flailing about trying to address symptoms that get into someone's face and not strike at the root of the issue: that Conventional Play <b>is entirely wrong due to have a premise that is a flat-out lie</b>.</p>
<p>So there is no future here. Anyone with a clue that wants to stay with Conventional Play will follow Wizards' play and become a vidya-based business (and property) with tabletop (at best) an afterthought. <I>BattleTech</I> is best positioned to do this now, as is 40K and Fantasy, with <I>Shadowrun</I> proven to be capable of making that jump; <I>Earthdawn</I> would slay as a videogame property in the mode of <I>Pillars of Eternity</I> and other CRPGs of that style.</p>
<p>Even shitposters can see that this is an obvious move for Conventional Play.</p>
<center><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Hear me out.<br><br>Elden Rifts Mount & Musou with Roguelike and Legacy elements.<br><br>Create a house/bloodline and wage marriage between permadeath runs.<br><br>Recruit Henchmen and Hirelings and lead them in open world battles.<br><br>Delve procedural dungeons for loot with just a party of Henchmen. <a href="https://t.co/0BoRPkbVuC">pic.twitter.com/0BoRPkbVuC</a></p>— JDSauvage 🏴☠️🎗🏵⚡️⚡️ (@jd_sauvage) <a href="https://twitter.com/jd_sauvage/status/1769899259237708230?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 19, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></center>
<p>If you want to build your creations into a real fortune, you go into videogames- and you leave tabletop behind.</p>
<h2>The Return To A Real Hobby</h2>
<p>Or you can choose to surrender all pretense of commercial viability, accept that the #BROSR is right about tabletop, and return to the club-focused hobby scene (The Clubhouse) and earn your fortune elsewhere.</p>
<p>Sure, your publications will (at best) be self-sustaining, and you will have to redesign them to operate in a Clubhouse environment, but they will still be there- and they will still be mostly unplayed because most hobbyists don't want what you offer.</p>
<p>You won't have to worry about onboarding hobbyists because the need for mass numbers will not exist; you need only maintain a local membership sufficient to satisfy local demand.</p>
<p>You won't have to worry about massive operational expenses unless you're operating the Clubhouse itself as a business, and that business model is not that of a retail store pushing product.</p>
<p>You'll instead have the hobby environment of old recreated and with it a need for massive product catalogues, 99% of which you will never use, goes away for good.</p>
<h2>Choose</h2>
<p>Which way?</p>
<p>The next two days will address each option.</p>
<p>Because where you are now? It's going to go away; you won't be able to stay for much longer.</p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-76470886180194412042024-03-18T00:00:00.002-05:002024-03-18T19:55:49.410-05:00Your Life As A Gamer: Conventional Play After The Collapse, Part One<p>It's going to happen.</p>
<p>The tabletop RPG hobby, as we know it ("Conventional Play"), is screwed.</p>
<p>Single-handedly propped up for generations by just one company--first TSR, then Wizards of the Coast--has led the entire (cottage) industry to never develop the capacity to replicate what the Big Man alone achieved: to get product, and thus the very idea of the hobby, in the places (and thus the places) where Normies go.</p>
<p>Every competitor has always ridden the Big Man's coattails <b>at best</b>. Yes, even when there was a successful licensed game (e.g. various <I>Star Wars</I> editions) this was the case.</p>
<p>With Wizards abandoning tabletop, and no one ready or able to replace Wizards (alone or in a group), nothing will prop up Conventional Play. This is the end.</p>
<center><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc88a42a4-8402-4f10-a699-509ee9b0ed2f_800x512" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="800" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc88a42a4-8402-4f10-a699-509ee9b0ed2f_800x512"/></a></div></center>
<h2>The Local Store Closes For Good</h2>
<p>It starts with remaining WOTC product selling through. Those shelves go bare, as there is nowhere near enough product left to fill that void.</p>
<p>The savvy stores, as they have before, replace that product with something else entirely. As more publishers leave the market, be it due to bankruptcy or to business operations pivoting out of that market, the stores either pivot themselves to adapt or they follow the publishers into collapse. <b>The result is the same either way.</b></p>
<p>A store that stops being a game store is as ruined as one that is burned to ash.</p>
<p>The number of stores in an area dwindle until only one is left. That one holds on for a time, maybe a long time, but sooner or later it either stops being a game store or it folds.</p>
<p>You no longer have a local store.</p>
<p>"But I buy online."</p>
<p>What makes you think you can always have access to that stuff? DriveThru can lose entire libraries with the snap of one's fingers, either by legal diktat or by other means- some fair, some foul. Amazon can just yeet what you want off their storefront at anytime, and most publishers can't do a damned thing about it- or won't even if they could; the same goes for all of the used product stores.</p>
<p>Yes, including the realspace ones.</p>
<p>If you think this can't happen, <b>talk to the Brazillian hobbyists</b>. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEbfjsaGbeg">They're dealing with this <b>right now</b></a>.</p>
<p>"But piracy!"</p>
<p>Is an imperfect patchwork workaround, not a solution, because unless you're willing to ensure that those files are also ready and able to be used to make physical product via Print On Demand (and you know how to do guerilla listings) you run the risk (increasing by the year) that the file remains readable as well as maintain its integrity across both OS and software display iterations. <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/03/devs-left-with-tough-choices-as-warner-bros-ends-all-adult-swim-games-downloads/">And that assumes that they just won't be yeeted Because Reasons</a>.</p>
<p>In short, <b>phyiscal media is better all-around</b>.</p>
<p>"But my group-'</p>
<p>Will slowly, inevitably, wither and die because you have no one recruiting new hobbyists to replace those you lose to attrition- you relied on TSR and Wizards too long for this and none of the now-all-but-extinct publishers never have and never did fill that void, so neither did the common players.</p>
<p>And it's only going to get harder becase this is your competition.</p>
<center><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xV3W16eaQUQ?si=bKKw1TMGbmkvxF55" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe><br>That's right. Just boot up, do the tutorial, join friends, and GET ON WITH IT in 10 minutes or less.<br><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?si=HmAFJ4wX6ma9jH1Y&list=PL5dr1EHvfwpMCloZauHnOPST0c-cAC8zb" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe><br>Want a full Conventional Play RPG campaign? Show up, link up, GO!<br><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MwlzdybPd5M?si=qmbMpSdFu0c3xBts" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe><br><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?si=t-YSvYq6ptUiDyP1&list=PLj_Goi54wf0cBK9RWa7lUGCkckQ4-6mbp" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe><br>And all those MMOs are still out there eating Tabletop's lunch daily.</center>
<p>The hobby you enjoyed for 50 years is about to fall away. You can deny it all you want, but it will happen--it is happening--all the same.</p>
<p>Now it's time to talk about what you're going to do about it.</p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-16833142028297572692024-03-17T00:00:00.003-05:002024-03-17T00:02:27.856-05:00The Business: Why Most RPG Publishers Should Just STOP<p>Thanks to Roll For Combat for actually talking about this, although not with the intent to dissuade.</p>
<center><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Zs0vhEVz8K4?si=j32zuEdFmar9h66Z" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe><br>Recap is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/Zs0vhEVz8K4?si=F4l2eDg-VqYLU3BV&t=8390">here</a>.</center>
<p>Far too many of you are complete incompetents that have no business publishing product at all.</p>
<p>I am no Entrepreneur Grifter. I will tell you flat out that you suck, you will always suck, that there is no demand for your crap, and you would be better off giving up and going back to a Big Corpo dayjob doing your 9-5 until you hit Retirement because the only way you will make this work is to do what the Pundit did and most of you will never even consider moving to a Third World country to play the geo-arbitrage game.</p>
<p>"But-"</p>
<p>It's not enough to put in the work. You can grind at it for years on end to hone your craft, and none of it will matter if you make Non-Games or other products that cannot justify their existence because they cannot address an unmet demand.</p>
<p>And buddy, <b>every single viable niche has had it demand met SEVERAL TIMES OVER</b>.</p>
<p>This is not only a mature and recovering medium, <b>it is also wholly discovered and saturated</b>.</p>
<p>What do you offer that existing products--real games--do not already fulfill? <I>Rolemaster</I> is a great game, but it still has no justification because AD&D1e existed and did all it offered just as well (or better) with a massively superior Network Effect going fo rit. <I>All Flesh Must Be Eaten</I> tried to carve out a space as Survival Horror, but it did not work because <I>Call of Cthulhu</I> satisfies that demand just fine and it had (and has) a superior Network Effect. The only reason <I>Star Wars</I> eclipsed <I>Traveller</I> is because the former had a superior Network Effect powering it before its original tabletop RPG adaptation, and even with the former's fading that remains the case (even though <I>Traveller</I> is a superior game).</p>
<p>You get the idea- which is why all would-be competitors to a Leader are better off being specialized alternatives to it instead, something TSR bumbled into with <I>Gamma World</I> vs. AD&D1e.</p>
<p>Remember that most RPGs are unfit for purpose and surplus to requirements; 99% of them could disappear tomorrow and no one would even notice, nevermind miss them.</p>
<p>You are wasting your time and capital trying to do what far better men, in far better times, failed to accomplish (barring the willingness and ability to copy the Pundit, and that is still no guarantee of success or worth). At best, do it as a hobby in itself; for all but a few of you, <b>STOP NOW!</b> You are not doing anything worth the effort; you are better off using one of the few real games and mastering it.</p>
<p>"But it could be a tax-"</p>
<p>No. That's pants-on-head retarded. Don't even finish that thought.</p>
<p>Do. Something. Else.</p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-83453363553095817562024-03-16T00:00:00.038-05:002024-03-16T00:30:24.096-05:00The Business: Wizards' Abandoning Of Tabletop Is Undeniable Now<p>More Conventional Play people are admitting that Tabletop is in chaos.</p>
<center><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ohAWTFRIc5w?si=obq9DsH8yqfJoX8z&start=3694" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe><br>Play at 2x Speed for your own convenience.</center>
<p>Wizards had no plan for tabletop; this is because they are abandoning tabletop for vidya. Therefore no one else in Conventional Play has a plan because no one, when presented with this fact, put forth an alternative.</p>
<p>There is <b>nothing</b> there to replace what Wizards has done since it took over from TSR (who did this heavy lifting before Wizards). No attempt to get into Normie stories. No attempt to develop a competent Normie-to-Hobbyist onboarding process. No attempt to shape the Narrative Frame about the hobby. <b>No attempt to do ONE DAMNED THING to replace what Wizards has done.</b></p>
<p>The Cargo Cult got confronted with evidence put before their eyes that The Cargo Shall Stop and they double-down on their dogma. This will end up in the business and cultural equivalent of the final days of the Jim Jones cult.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxWvq9dMEbo&pp=ygUQZW5kIG9mIGppbSBqb25lcw%3D%3D">You don't want that.</a></p>
<p>You can either flee to Vidya or repent and come clean to the Clubhouse. Choose. Now.</p>
<p>And you have good reason to come clean, <a href="https://jonmollison.com/2024/03/13/told-you-so/">because Wizards confessed that the #BROSR is right about D&D and RPGs.</a></p>
<p>Conventional Play peeps, you just lost the argument against the Bros. You're done.</p>
<p>And Roll For Combat just showed the other day yet more evidence for why Wizards is abandoning tabletop for vidya.</p>
<center><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jbGwvA-S1-I?si=7zZRHEg_SsA4dZIT" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>
<p>And Clownfish reminds you yet again of another big tell that the medium shift is the plan.</p>
<center><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dH3C9k9_dVE?si=a4mPGPZGBSsllWYH" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-40115222123445533022024-03-15T00:00:00.004-05:002024-03-15T00:15:18.455-05:00The Culture: Art Therapy Tools Are Not Games<p>The Critical Role crowd shill a product called <I>Daggerheart</I>. They call it a game. It is not.</p>
<center><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">For Daggerheart, these two sections just definitely cemented it's not for me. I mean, have the designers not played at a lot of TTRPG tables? The clashing personalities, the rules lawyer, the loud one taking the spotlight, the quiet person who barely speaks, the one on their… <a href="https://t.co/3fGlHcWOdz">pic.twitter.com/3fGlHcWOdz</a></p>— Zuby (@MagicWithZuby) <a href="https://twitter.com/MagicWithZuby/status/1767901615380443462?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 13, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br>Thanks to Zuby for posting the receipts showing that this is not a game.</center>
<p>This is Art Therapy in the mold of all those "Powered By The Apocalypse" products are Art Therapy pretending to be games.</p>
<p>They are <a href="https://infogalactic.com/info/The_Ungame">Ungames</a>.</p>
<p>And, given who pushes them and why they do so, <b>this is where the Death Cult wants to take the medium</b> because turning anything into a propaganda tool to use as an attack vector for pozzing populations. You can already see this in the degradation of videogames from a Ludocentric medium to a Narrative centric one.</p>
<p>This is something I will point out for everyone to see: <b>The Death Cult fears competency.</b> Competency is built up, for all but a few outliers, through trial and error- what videogames calls "Rogue-like" because it builds off the<a href="https://infogalactic.com/info/Rogue_%28video_game%29"> D&D-inspired</a> <i><a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1443430/Rogue/">Rogue</a></i>.</p>
<p>Real RPGs are all about that. You roll your man, you try, you fail (man dies), you reroll and go again. Iterative improvement in player skill is part of the hobby.</p>
<p>That's not in Art Therapy products, and given how nebulous the design language is (as it all revolves around "the fiction", hence The Narrative, so Narrative Tropes and Norms apply) this can easily turn into a Struggle Session given the opportunity by a nefarious Game Master.</p>
<p>A more throughout article on how nefarious these ungames are is now on the table for a near future date.</p>
<p>Don't end up like Caesar did on this day in 44 B.C.; take this warning seriously- this Art Therapy is not just a suck product, but a tell for where the Death Cult wants this medium to go.</p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-55639741570562001252024-03-14T00:00:00.005-05:002024-03-14T00:02:04.463-05:00The Culture: Alternatives Arise, Conversations Continue, & Opportunities Open<p>Rollin' Bones continues to deliver. Two recent episodes.</p>
<center><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Glto9nOaWVs?si=hm20ykrcS15dbKqp" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe><br><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5D42F3v16wc?si=ow4Ip3ThiBZQJWQ5" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>
<p>Dunder Moose interviewed Dorrinal of Geek Gab.</p>
<center><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EWohWPp5i1w?si=1QTLWQlKh72t6BSi" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>
<p>And Gelantinous Cube requests Patrons to come play in his campaign.</p>
<center><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">MY GRAND CAMPAIGN NEEDS PEOPLE TO CONTROL PROMINENT NPCS!<br><br>It's fun, not a huge time commitment, and you have a massive impact on the campaign! <br><br>I wrote up a Google form so choosing a faction would be easier. <a href="https://t.co/FZbCpCtvpm">https://t.co/FZbCpCtvpm</a></p>— GelatinousRube (@RubeJelly) <a href="https://twitter.com/RubeJelly/status/1767672948209394049?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 12, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/I3azE3WkPkw?si=ZPyGZrvwGCxG-Qda" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-51991819775277667312024-03-13T00:20:00.004-05:002024-03-13T00:20:53.676-05:00The Culture: They Defamed Gary & Dave Deliberately Because They Hate You<p>We're staying on this beat for another day.</p>
<center><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iA0M26Hc7bU?si=Vq93Sp4XS48gO9zR" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>
<p>Let me make the following clear:</p>
<ul>
<li>The cited video interview is a Public Relations stunt.
<li>The video, therefore, may as well be scripted.
<li>The video is edited <b>with the intent to show what is presented IN THE CREATOR'S EYES what is best/acceptable to know</b>.
<li>They wanted to defame Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, and all the rest of that founding cohort.
<li>They did that deliberately and with malice aforethought.
<li>They are not sorry that they did it- only that it drove an unwanted reaction.
</ul>
<p>Do you get it yet? <b>They hate you and want you dead.</b> They are too chickshit to just murk you themselves, so they do this gaslighting bullshit in the hope that your mental stability is weaker than theirs and you self-delete or get murked by the State instead.</p>
<p>There is no fixing this. There is only burning it down and salting the ashes.</p>
<p>You can start by ceasing to fund your own demise.</p>
<center><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087C4V1GM"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GIgHWqBXMAAMIDr?format=png&name=small" style="height:500px;width:530px"></a></center>
<p>The Clubhouse (and the Bros) will stand when this is over. Conventional Play will not.</p>
<p>Choose. Now.</p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-61789538913353887402024-03-12T00:00:00.001-05:002024-03-12T00:29:00.613-05:00The Culture: Your Own Fellow Travelers Admit It, Cargo Cultists<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KGArPZ7E_sA?si=zF0jYHGPHPyFx634" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>That video explains that YouTube's algorithm works off Network Effects.</p>
<p>Which means that YouTube as a whole works off Network Effects. By explaining why Current Edition dominates RPG content on YouTube, our host also explains why Current Edition has always dominated Conventional Play.</p>
<p>He's not stupid. He did not do that by accident.</p>
<p>What he left out is that Wizards' plans for abandoning tabletop for vidya <b>is also driven by Network Effects</b>. Videogames as a medium have orders of magnitude greater network size, scale, and scope so its Network Effects are likewise orders of magnitude greater.</p>
<p>Which means that being The Only Game That Matters in videogames is far more important than being so in tabletop.</p>
<p>If you are a basic bitch MBA slaved to Line Go Up ideology (i.e. the C-Suite as Wizards and Hasbro as well as their boards), There Is No Alternative. You switch media as fast as you can because bigger Network means Line Go Up Further And Faster.</p>
<p>The Cargo will stop coming.</p>
<p>There is no succession path if you maintain course; you lot cannot do what Wizards did, and you don't even try. Either one of you changes into something that does, or all of you change into something that survives without it. <b>What do you do?</b></p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-38072719648277535642024-03-11T00:00:00.001-05:002024-03-11T00:15:24.415-05:00The Culture: This Playstation Announcement Smears It In Their Faces<p>Why would you put up with this:</p>
<center></center>
<p>When you can buy a console or open an account at Steamand get this:</p>
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<p>That's what you Conventional Play people have to deal with.</p>
<p>I can't put it any simpler than that. Given what you say that you offer, and given what you have been proven to offer, <b>you have no value proposition to make to someone looking for that sort of experience</b>.</p>
<p>"Muh Narrative!" Videogames do it better.</p>
<p>"Muh Gameplay!" Videogames do it better.</p>
<p>Add on superior convenience and lower cost--yes, even at AAA prices--and you're pants-on-head retarded to see why Conventional Play is screwed when WOTC pulls out.</p>
<p>"But that's single player!" you say. Well fuck you <I>Helldivers 2</I> exists.</p>
<center><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D3uhG-wH0k4?si=DRmjOLrU66oZ5QZR" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>
<p>That's far more fun than anything you Conventional Play people can offer.</p>
<p>No DMs--and H2 has a Game Master--fucking with you via Rule Zero because they're incompetent, ego-possessed, or both. The game is what it is, and you can tell who the fuckwits are by how often they can't be bothered to fix their Skill Issues and actually get the job done- what good games force players to do in order to win.</p>
<p>No Schedule Your Fun bullshit either. Boot up, power up, form up, drop down and get it done until Real Life calls you back. No one cares if you dip out. No one cares if you're not able to play for a week or a month. Just show up, play your fill, and go home happy. <b>You can't do that.</b> (But the Bros can and do.)</p>
<p>These are not problems for the Bros; they're already enjoying the benefits of implementing Lindy solutions. It you Cargo Cultists that need to play catch-up.</p>
<p>That light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train. <b>What do you do?</b></p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-67625303528187459892024-03-10T00:00:00.087-06:002024-03-10T00:32:58.916-06:00The Culture: Wizards Stabbed Vets In The Back & A Fren Gets A Thing Out There<p>Friend of the Retreat Gelantinous Cube made a thing.</p>
<center><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I RELEASE A REVISED VERSION OF SEVEN WILLOWS<br><br>I made a mini-rpg last year for zinequest, the very first I actually *finished*. I've dedicated the past 4 months to revising this beauty. <a href="https://t.co/wzRjrEnU67">pic.twitter.com/wzRjrEnU67</a></p>— GelatinousRube (@RubeJelly) <a href="https://twitter.com/RubeJelly/status/1764848067868565531?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 5, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></center>
<p>You'll find it for sale at <a href="https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/438265/Seven-Willows-REVISED-EDITION">DriveThruRPG</a>.</p>
<p>And, in case you missed it, Margaret Weis shat all over Wizards of the Coast.</p>
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<p>Krynn is right after the Realms in overall popularity for Official Settings, and yet that is not enough for Wizards to give it any respect.</p>
<p>This is what awaits all Official Settings for The Only Game That Matters.</p>
<p>You Conventional Play Cargo Cultists had better admit to the evidence before your eyes that you have been stabbed in the back.</p>
<center><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">This is from a video on the history of D&D, made by WOTC/Hasbro, who currently owns it. I've never met anybody that talked like this.<br><br>You have to wonder why they bought this property if they found it so morally objectionable <a href="https://t.co/gyJ2JetNoA">pic.twitter.com/gyJ2JetNoA</a></p>— stricture (@bog_beef) <a href="https://twitter.com/bog_beef/status/1766180478543868189?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></center>
<p>It's a lot easier to change a thing into something that it is not when you move it from one medium to another. Remember <I>Starship Troopers</I>? The book is not at all like the movie, and Verhoven successfully changed the defintion of the brand by changing it to a more popular medium. <b>Same playbook.</b></p>
<p>It's not just chasing profits. It's changing definitions.</p>
<p>Wizards controls The Only Game That Matters. Therefore Wizards controls Conventional Play. If they change the definition of the hobby to that of a videogame exclusive of all else (and they have the media presence to do that), something that is greatly enhanced by making tabletop Low Status and Criminal Adjacent (which is what this defamation is about), then good luck getting people to play your Also-Rans and Never-Weres after 2030.</p>
<p>You Cargo Cultists are about to get screwed good and hard, and you're still acting like nothing is wrong.</p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-24025280514282052152024-03-09T00:00:00.029-06:002024-03-09T00:00:00.133-06:00The Business: Meanwhile, A Rumbling Across The Pond Grows<p>Wargamer Fritz asks a pertinent question.</p>
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<p>Nevermind Fantasy Flight screwing up a license to print money (as they do).</p>
<p>What Fritz is talking about is that Stupid British Toy Company sees that they too are pivoting out of tabletop. No, this is not the same thing as what Wizards are doing, but instead it is a far more ordinary pivot that any fantastic property takes when it acquires enough of Official Setting Bible material to merit pivot to a more profitable (and thus more Normie-facing) medium.</p>
<p>Nevermind what is said. Pay attention to what is done, both by the IP holder and by its audience.</p>
<p>What matters more to the corporate office now, the tabletop game or the IP as a whole? <b>The IP as a whole, duh.</b> This is why there is such a high-profile push into tie-in media, both passive (books, primarily) and active (videogames) while (wisely) letting their biggest fans do the marketing and advertising for them (mostly- sometimes you see them shoot themselves in the foot like they did to SODAZ and Syema Peterson).</p>
<p>By letting the fan-run lore channels go at it, that attracts attention first to the tie-in media and related merchandise (like those Bandai-made Space Marines, which are great toys) and then (it is hoped) to the tabletop game.</p>
<p>But the trend is not to remain focused upon tabletop as the cornerstone of the business. The brand is the cornerstone now, and tabletop merely a major element of Brand Expression- one that will, over time, be depreciated in favor of videogames, books, comics, and video.</p>
<p>No, Stupid British Toy Company will not abandon tabletop soon, but once the MBAs get into the C-Suite they'll start taking that soft and slow pivot now underway and rachet it up to a hard and fast one. Videogames and passive entertainment media are miles more profitable than tabletop gaming ever will be; anyone looking to maximize shareholder value will see this and demand a transition out of tabletop to achieve that objective.</p>
<p>This, by the way, is <b>how</b> Wizards avoids criticism from the business press about what they're doing to D&D and Magic; this is basic-bitch MBA "Make line go up" stuff that all corpos and stock guys agree upon.</p>
<p>I estimate that you've got, at most, until 2040 and that is me being very generous; tabletop could be a vestigial business element by 2030 and gone before 2040.</p>
<p>What will the tabletop people do then? Do they have a plan? The fans do, which is why 3D Printing has already become too entrenched to root out, so you can bet that they'll keep the game going without the corporation also.</p>
<p>And the Clubhouse will play on without the Corporation.</p>
<p>Conventional Play people had better start figuring out a plan because their biggest pillars are going to rug-pull them sooner than later.</p>
<hr>
<p>N.B.: There's a crowdfunding campaign for a 40th Anniversary edition of <I>Valley of the Pharoahs</I>, Palladium's first boxed game from 1984. <a href="http://kck.st/3ThLyVX">Check it out</a>.</p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-71349033230650414582024-03-08T00:00:00.012-06:002024-03-08T00:00:40.577-06:00The Culture: RIP Akira Toriyama<p>We interrupt our regular content to report on the death of a legend.</p>
<center><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Information ; Dear Friends and Partners<a href="https://t.co/85dXseckzJ">https://t.co/85dXseckzJ</a> <a href="https://t.co/aHlx8CGA2M">pic.twitter.com/aHlx8CGA2M</a></p>— DRAGON BALL OFFICIAL (@DB_official_en) <a href="https://twitter.com/DB_official_en/status/1765935471971213816?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></center>
<p>The <I>Dragon Ball</I> creator has died. Rest in peace, Mr. Toriyama.</p>
<p>He sits alongside greats like Go Nagai, Kentaro Miura, and Ken Ishikawa in creating enduring works of post-War popular culture that found a global audience and shaped global culture for the better.</p>
<p>A lot of <I>shounen</I> fiction Japan's Light Novel, Manga, Anime, and Webtoon markets in particular is as patterned after his work as Western fantasy followed first Burroughs, then Howard, and then Tolkien.</p>
<p>It will be an impact felt long after the fact, and soon it shall be apparent how great his presence was with all of the tributes coming around the world.</p>
<center><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Odas response to Toriyamas death <a href="https://t.co/u2wNwhrVbD">https://t.co/u2wNwhrVbD</a> <a href="https://t.co/ushdAbVFav">pic.twitter.com/ushdAbVFav</a></p>— Leo | Sengoatku No. 1 (@Leleo2211) <a href="https://twitter.com/Leleo2211/status/1765944111251837014?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="ja" dir="ltr">Rest in peace<br>Akira Toriyama sensei<br>ご冥福をお祈りいたします。</p>— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) <a href="https://twitter.com/Harada_TEKKEN/status/1765944448725434461?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></center>
<p>And there's more coming in.</p>
<p>I am not exaggerating on Toriyama's position being akin to Tolkien. He's that influential, and on a global scope and scale, that few of his peers can claim.</p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-66873533633260871372024-03-07T00:00:00.057-06:002024-03-07T01:00:03.449-06:00The Business: A Few Clubhouse Topics To Come Soon<p>Think of this as a preview for future Clubhouse articles.</p>
<h2>Games That Work Great In A Clubhouse Environment</h2>
<p>In no particular order:</p>
<ul>
<li><I>Adventurer, Conqueror, King</I>
<li><i>Advanced Dungeons & Dragons</i> 1st Edition (This deserves an article to itself, as there are caveats.)
<li><i>Gamma World</i> 1st edition. (2nd and 3rd deserve investigation)
<li><i>Boot Hill</i>
<li>Classic <I>Traveller</I>
<li><i>Car Wars</i>
<li><i>BattleTech</i>
</ul>
<p>This will be a series, going into detail as to why the structure of the game implies the use of a Clubhouse environment and find best expression therein.</p>
<h2>The Implied Setting of AD&D1e</h2>
<p>By request, I'll be cleaning up and reposting my Race and Class posts for AD&D1e at the Clubhouse.</p>
<p>The rewrites will build on the implications in the rules to construct what the game's implied setting actually is and how adventurering characters (and their monstrous counterparts) actually work.</p>
<p>This will tie into the caveats on 1st Edition's corpus, and why it's a good idea to cut out almost all of the '80s publications.</p>
<h2>Raising The Barn & Holding The Gates</h2>
<p>More on setting up and running a Clubhouse, be it physical or virtual.</p>
<p>This will seem Duh No Brainer, but I find that a lot of people just don't get how to do this because they've never put any thought into managing a group pursuit of any sort; at most, they showed up when and where they were told to.</p>
<p>This will include referring to current events in the scene as appropriate for illustrative purposes, <a href="https://addinitiative.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-battle-braunstein-campaign-day-1324.html">such as this one recently.</a></p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-62741505765723014372024-03-06T00:00:00.024-06:002024-03-06T00:29:36.948-06:00The Business: Hasbro Going Full Miser On Gaming<p>A reminder that Conventional Play is coming to an end on tabletop.</p>
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<p>The corner-cutting is not just on toys. They're doing this to the tabletop games also, justified by Reasons, and it all plays into Wizards' C-Suite's plan to abandon tabletop in favor of videogames.</p>
<p>What is your plan to replace Wizards, Cargo Cultists?</p>
<p>You know what mine is, and it's actually achievable given how little I (and others siding with me) have to work with. There's sweet fuck-all said about what you lot are doing to address the oncoming tabletop collapse, and none of you get admitted to the Clubhouse without repenting of your Cult and its errors so you find no shelter here.</p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-49876091264431039372024-03-05T00:00:00.047-06:002024-03-05T00:06:54.787-06:00The Culture: Explaining Why Conventional Play Is Screwed Like It's Five<p>As I see that this is still necessary. Let's get on with it.</p>
<h2>No One Likes To Schedule Their Fun</h2>
<p>A Conventional Play campaign is beholden to the least committed player. This has been a Known Issue for decades, with plenty of fake remedies that don't fix the problem, the result of which is that either everyone tolerates being held hostage by Flakey Floyd or the flakes get punted and then DRAMA ENSUES which can (and has) cascaded into IRL issues that persist for years. God forbid that it's the Referee that's unavailable; now nothing happens no matter what.</p>
<p>This problem persists because of the stubborn insistence in a One True Party coupled with a Forever Referee. That's a fragile formation, where a single point of failure cascades into play coming to a halt. There are no alternatives, so this dysfunction wears on until either people muddle through it all or (far more common) it falls apart entirely.</p>
<p>As bad as it is, it gets worse once the players are all mature adults with spouses, children, careers, civic obligations, etc. that inevitably causes players to stop playing. This inflexibility culminates in the "Six Session Campaign" meme.</p>
<p>Videogame alternatives don't have these problems. They can play them whenever they want. They can play for as long as they like. They don't have to dance around some retard's house rules that break the game. They don't have to tolerate some dysfunctional twat wasting time with pointless bullshit. They can skip all the Le Epic DRAMA! bullshit and get on with playing the damned game. Given the prices now asked for, and the inconvenience that anyone but the biggest publishers present in buying product, it's also now easier and cheaper to just play a videogame instead- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74pmKymKHhA">or do I need to link to that Bob The Worldbuilder video again</a>?</p>
<p>No amount of Conventional Play platitudes will fix this trend. Either you abandon the tabletop or you abandon Conventional Play.</p>
<h2>No One Gives A Fuck About Your Story</h2>
<p>Go figure that another perennial complaint comes from Forever Referees who are also frustrated novelists. (Looking at you, Wick.) Hell, "skipping cutscenes" is a perennial topic in videogame forums; that's how little players give a shit about it.</p>
<p>Lore and narrative is fantastic for film, television, and prose. It is corrosive to gameplay as it violates player agency, and would be better off banned entirely in favor of the players driving the bus on what is and is not in the setting- <a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/bradfordcwalker/p/lore-is-not-play?r=lcdzw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true">something I wrote about at The Clubhouse</a>.</p>
<p>"But Larian-"</p>
<p>Have you <b>watched</b> Actual Play videos? No one cares. They just want to do goofy shit for giggles, and goofy shit turns out to be far more entertaining to the target audience than whatever narrative bullshit the developer or publisher- both at the table and in vidya. When they aren't doing goofy shit, they're maximizing performance because doing that is the most reliable way to solve the problems that the actual game shoves in their faces. Walkthroughs are vastly popular because it allows players to skip the bullshit and focus on the actual game- something that tabletop could do, but Conventional Play and its Theater Kid faggotry routinely fuck up Because Reasons.</p>
<p><b>Stop resisting!</b></p>
<p>This is why Referees that let go the need to Tell A Story turn out to (a) be happier playing and running the game because (b) they give players what they actually want and thus (c) create and sustain a far more pro-social environment for everyone. <b>Let the players figure that shit out.</b></p>
<p>This need to fuck over players with Muh Narrative crap is another reason for why videogame alternatives are superior to Conventional Play; players can skip the bullshit and get on with it.</p>
<h2>Black Is White, Knights Move On Diagonals</h2>
<p>Rule Zero has proven itself to be a terrible idea. Nearly 50 years of newsletter and magazine articles, forum posts, and now YouTube videos have consistently demonstrated how ripe for abuse this idea proved itself to be such that some Psychology student with ambition could make their graduate career doing a PHD thesis on how this practice faciliates the mental and emotional abuse and predation of those subjected to it.</p>
<p>Players cannot make competent plans, or execute them, if the rules of the game are not set in stone. Revealed Preferences Are Revealed by the vast number of prospects and lapsed hobbyists going to vidya specifically because <b>that bullshit DOES NOT HAPPEN</b>.</p>
<p>Nevermind "Rule Zero" also being used for about as long by incompetent or lazy designers and publishers to shirk doing their fucking job and sloughing it off on the end-user instead. (<b>LOOKING AT YOU KEVIN SIEMBIEDA!</b>) Players don't want to play shit games. Players don't want to play incomplete games. Players don't want to play broken pieces of shit. Palladium is the only exception, and it gets by on being more of a Setting Bible to be read than a game to be played (that, and boy does the typical Palladium fan come off like a paste-eating retard). <b>The numbers of them dipping out for videogame alternatives proves this- NO ONE LIKES THIS!</b></p>
<p>And, as the recent addition of SSI Classics to Steam and GOG reveal, videogames have been a better alternative for decades. No wonder Conventional Play turned into the Put of Spiteful Mutants.</p>
<h2>Meanwhile, The Clubhouse Doesn't Have This Problem</h2>
<p>Proper play means it doesn't matter who shows up. Everyone can run, everyone can play, and no one worries about anything because playing strictly by the rules kills the anxiety on both ends of the table.</p>
<p>Strict Timekeeping kills One True Party bullshit, with all the issues that inflicts. Faction Play and Braunsteins kill the need for supplements, lore, etc. and all of this being goofy as shit acts as an effective filter getting rid of those too precious to fit into the club.</p>
<p>Conventional Play is just too fragile to stand up against adversity of any sort. This is why I tell those unwilling to do the real thing to play videogames instead.</p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-88969936323273183092024-03-04T00:00:00.001-06:002024-03-04T00:00:32.186-06:00The Culture: Yes, Even Your Pretentious Parlor Play Is Really A Wargame<p>"But this wargame paradigm can't work in my Gothic Punk dystopia full of vampires, werewolves, and so on. Your Clubhouse can't handle it."</p>
<center><img src="https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/2010-01-07-hbnc_085_4067.jpg"></center></center>
<p>Anon, if you insist that <I>Vampire: The Masquerade</I> is not rooted in wargaming you (a) never played in the LARP scene (where this is obvious to see) and (b) don't know shit about how World of Darkness games actually get played.</p>
<p><b>Summarized</b>: A World of Darkness campaign is, in fact, playing <I>Diplomacy</I> with Oh So Edgy set dressing and some poseur-grade Goth aesthetic right out of Hot Topic- complete with the tags still attached.</p>
<h2>The Pretentious Parlor Play</h2>
<p>For all of Mark Hagan's claims of "Stoytelling", what the game actually is in practice is an ongoing Braunstein with Faction Play hardcoded via Clans and faction-specific social hierarchies. That's not a recipe for fulfilling the wishes of frustrated novelists. That's a recipe for the mixture of Courtier Intrigue and Criminal Violence that, when mixed together, becomes Gangland Paradise straight out of <I>The Godfather</I>.</p>
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<p>You are not engagin in Narrative. You are hardcore old-school wargaming; you play a man, who has Objectives and Resources, and has to collaborate with some to oppose others- and whom to ally with shifts as events occur and circumstances change.</p>
<p>That's <I>Diplomacy</I> with extra steps people. Competent diplomatic corps pay you to learn how to do this for real, which is why a lot of the better players I knew 20+ years ago are now doing well as politicians, diplomats, field or flag-level military officers, lawyers, or in upper corporate management.</p>
<p><i>No one</i> claims that <i>Diplomacy</i> is not a wargame. The lack of dice and widgets does not mean it is not a wargame.</p>
<p>What is interesting is that (a) it is LARP, not tabletop, that drives this Brand and (b) no one observing (nevermind participating) such LARPs would fail to see the resemblence.</p>
<p>I have first-hand experience, having co-run a VTM LARP about 20 years ago, that this is how the game actually works.</p>
<h2>A Perfect Clubhouse Game</h2>
<p>Running a proper VTM campaign is easy. Use one of the first two editions for a ruleset. Dump all of the metaplot.</p>
<p>Each Referee focuses on one city, as was implied by the game's initial publications. Preferably, focus on <b>his</b> city. He'll have plenty of territory to work with between the metropolitan core and the surrounding area. Additional Referees control other cities.</p>
<p>Your first players are the city Elders, the members of the city's Establishment, preferably one for each Clan. They are Faction Leaders, and most of the lesser vampires will be those converted into vampires by one of them.</p>
<p>Other players are lesser vampires, mortals of note, or vampires from a hostile external faction (i.e. Sabbat in a Camarilla city).</p>
<p><b>You start with a Braunstein session.</b> The Elders have to be there; everyone else is optional. What comes out of that session is what drives regular play for months as Elders use their juniors (who have their own agendas) to execute various plans.</p>
<h2>Scaling Up</h2>
<p>As noted above, each Referee handles a different city. Ideally, these are in the same region (i.e. Twin Cities, Duluth, Rochester, Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, Gary) to allow for another level of Faction Play (City v. City). Now you are cooking with gas, and man does it pay to go hard on watching Gangster films as that is the obvious way that play is going to turn out.</p>
<p>Sure, there's a horror (and thus supernatural) element. Sure, there's some Noir and Hard Boiled potential. Sure, you have plenty of court (and courtier) intrigue going on. But the core of this style of game is Gangland and that's just <I>Diplomacy</I> with extra steps. The really ambitious will delve into Italian history to see how the various pre-unification city-states warred and traded with each other (including the Vatican) because Gangland is that after Modernity set in.</p>
<p>The endgame is always the same: Uncontested Power.</p>
<p>Whomever gets to that Win Condition first wins. "Everyone loses" means a Masquerade breech so bad that Normies Rise Up and you're worried about getting speared through a wall and dragged out of your Haven on a winch into the sunlight to burn.</p>
<p>And this is why Theater Kids lose to <I>Diplomacy</I> Chads.</p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-34361727139183318382024-03-03T00:00:00.088-06:002024-03-03T00:03:31.062-06:00The Culture: The Future Of The Hobby (Publishing Edition)<p>Most of you reading this need to Come To Jesus when it comes to publishing tabletop adventure games.</p>
<p>Unless you do like the RPG Pundit and move out of the First World, you are not going to make a living publishing this stuff; if you're not The Only Game That Matters, or The Only Game In This Niche That Matters, you're already forced to leech off of them or you're not really a viable business.</p>
<p>That's why I put forth the model that I did yesterday, as I think a lot of you <b>can</b> pivot from Product to Service.</p>
<p>Which leads to the question of "What about the product?"</p>
<p>Many of you are familiar with the concept of a loss leader. The product performs a similar function. It exists to draw prospective players into your secured space. It has no other value than to be playable advertising for your service business. The fact that videogames do everything that tabletop tries to do, in terms of Conventional Play, better across the board coupled with Wizards abandoning the medium means that tabletop publishing is already becoming non-viable commercially. <b>Get ahead of the curve.</b></p>
<p>Again, <b>this is already a solved problem</b>, and it was solved by Chris Gonnerman years ago: downshift to a self-sustaining hobby in itself.</p>
<center><a href="https://www.basicfantasy.org/"><img src="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61pjU4CASgL._SL1500_.jpg" style="height:375px;height:375px"></a><br>The Proof Of Concept</center>
<p>Your publishing efforts, therefore, need to focus upon competent technical writing and presentation over all else. Dump everything surplus to requirements.</p>
<p>The reason for your product is that it is the default game being played in your clubhouse, like Blackjack or Poker at a casino is the default game, <b>and this was always the case</b>. It just wasn't acknowledged until circumstances forced people to acknowledge that this is reality- like it or not.</p>
<p>And yes, "default game" is not only a loss-leading bait into a sales funnel, it is also the first secondary convenience that you provide. "You can buy your own copy of the game from the club at-cost" is a value-added conveience and people <b>will</b> appreciate that.</p>
<p>It still has to be a good game, but if you don't have it in you to hit that target then don't worry. You can just focus Games That Matter. Recall that AD&D1e, a game that ceased publishing in 1989, is still one of the most dominant games around, and will be until everything collapses and Civilization falls.</p>
<p>Go where the money is: the service of providing a safe and secure place to play. All a game does henceforth is to advertise for your secured space. Get used to it.</p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-83864823348827693212024-03-02T00:00:00.001-06:002024-03-02T00:18:02.455-06:00The Business: Towards The Future Of The Hobby (In Business Terms)<p>I talk about the business side have a future only as a service provider. Let's build on that.</p>
<p>What does a casino do? It provides a space for people to meet and play games together. Everything else exists to either increase the revenue generated via extracting it from players playing, or by making it comfortable and convenient to spend a lot of time there (increasing both the odds of gameplaying and using other related services).</p>
<p>You are <b>not</b> making a casino.</p>
<p>You are making a secured location for people to play games together. This is already a secondary function of game stores; it should transition to the primary one, with a secondary service being to be a secured location for receiving physical product <b>as well as</b> Print On Demand because you have a POD printer on-site or nearby (and I do mean "Can walk over and back in 10 minutes or less").</p>
<h2>The Core Business</h2>
<p><b>Your job is to secure a space.</b></p>
<p>First you need a location; <b>this can be virtual</b>. This is already a viable option; people already set up accounts on Patreon and Subscribestar (and other such things) to set up a subscription model, and that subscription them purchases access to Member-Only channels in a Discord server (or something like it).</p>
<p>You can do this with physical locations; what do you think Members Only clubs are about? Only Staff and Members permitted. Hell, <b>conventions do this as a matter of routine</b>.</p>
<p>That's securing literally. Now to secure socially.</p>
<p>Second, you are going to do Due Diligence on every single prospective member, especially those that you do not know, as if you were hiring an employee. Scour their socials, check references, etc. There's a reason for this effort: to cultivate a secured environment for each member when on the premises, such that they are able to relax and play. If they trip up red flags, then you decline their application with nothing more than "You are not a good fit for our members" and move on- done and done.</p>
<p>Part of this means that you are not going to charge a trivial subscription fee. You are going to charge no less than $199/month <b>per person</b> and those will go up as your success takes off. You must do this to filter out those bad actors, almost all of whom are unable to afford that fee and many more will object on some bullshit principle that they don't actually hold.</p>
<p>By doing this <b>you gain the power to police behavior via Contract Law</b>. All such clubs have behavioral codes, including at times dress codes, that are actively enforced by Staff and Management (i.e. you). Death Cultists, Tourists, etc. are all free to yeet because they will violate your Terms of Service, and those Terms will include banning the bad behaviors and practices that they are all notorious for. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlOWlaVlJQA">This is already being done and proven effective</a>; you are foolish to not do this yourself.</p>
<p>You also gain the power to be selective on whom to admit by erecting a clear barrier to entry. If the subscription fee is insufficient, then move to Invite or Referral Only as well as raising the subscription fee, imposing an application fee, or both.</p>
<h2>Objections</h2>
<p>"But this means-"</p>
<p>No free riders. This is meant to be a leisure pursuit, not a lifestyle, and as such <b>it is a luxury and should be priced as such</b>.</p>
<p>Every so often you may have open events, mainly to (a) advertise and (b) find new prospective members, but also to (c) identify potential threats before they become a problem by providing them the opportunity to demonstrate why they don't belong by their own (mis)behavior.</p>
<p>Remember, you are not selling product. Your business is <b>security</b>. For a specific purpose, but security nonetheless- no different than a nightclub or casino.</p>
<p>You charging for access is your primary revenue generator. You ruthlessly screening prospective members and enforcing a behavioral code on them is part of the service that you provide as your business. Once you get this nailed down and on lock, then you can expand <b>and no sooner</b> into secondary conveniences.</p>
<h2>Complimentary Services</h2>
<p>Once you've done a Bukele and made your space safe and secure for your members, then you can begin to add value to that membership by offering conveniences.</p>
<p>Remember, <b>you provide a service- not a product</b>.</p>
<p>For physical spaces, avoid food service; instead, make it convenient for members to order and receive delivery at the space. Don't sell product; make it convenient for members to receive packages at the space, and as soon as possible get one or more POD printers so members can (for a fee) get POD products on site.</p>
<p>For virtual spaces, you want to maximize user convenience having commonly-used virtual assets (or links to them) kept on hand for ease of use or reference. Those playing over Discord are already used to using dice bots in Chat channels, so having them already there is a no-brainer; a bot that can pull up rules from a reference document would be one to make your space stand out.</p>
<h2>More Objections</h2>
<p>"But doesn't-"</p>
<p>Now you're seeing where this is going because there are already trends going in this direction, but they are not secured properly because they are still in the mindset of needing to be a mass market affair <b>when the real money is in a smaller, but more lucrative per head, base of customers</b>; this is where you have room to usurp their market share via particularity and exclusivity.</p>
<p>You're aiming for the same goal as the indie authors: "1000 loyal customers". A membership-driven business works best with a policy of exclusivity and selectiveness, justified by high membership fees and added value via convenience service tie-ins.</p>
<p>The end goal is to be the destination for serious hobbyists looking for a safe, secure space to play and run campaigns. <b>This has massive value</b> and Wizards' pivoting in this direction (and taking up the low-end because they're the only ones that can) is proof that this is where the future of the business is- not in clearing forests for Yards Of Books that no one reads, let alone uses, as low-class coffee table status signals.</p>
<p>If you think this isn't viable, you've never been in a subscription-based Mastermind space. This is a proven business model.
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>I'm adapting a business model that works because there are enough hobbyists with money that would value it- just as the Hollywood Gaming Gang (and how they spend LOTS). The virtual space, in particular, is going to become a growth segment in the years to come because it is location-independent, can take members from anywhere in the world, and does not take a lot of time or talent to erect and maintain. High revenue, low cost, easy to erect/maintain- fantastic business model to pivot to as publishing collapses.</p>
<p>I ought to make a consultation business out of this. $5k for a one-hour call.</p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-6132363080737973352024-03-01T00:00:00.009-06:002024-03-01T00:43:52.424-06:00The Culture: Life After Wizards, Part Three: People Still Do That? (Or "The Visibility Question")<p>Wizards of the Coast will go to an all-digital business model for its properties. This includes Current Edition.</p>
<p>This model is a Walled Garden, an enforcable version of what Games Workshop's claim of being "not a wargame, but a separate hobby entirely". This is the claim of there being a separate and distinct "Dungeons & Dragons hobby", defined by being an ongoing payer to Wizards within the Walled Garden company store to a <I>defacto</I> subscription.</p>
<p>Being that Wizards defines what "RPG" is to Normies, Casuals, and Tourist it is expected--and rightly so, given 50 years of past performance--that not only will most current players meekly go along with this change, but that being shoved into the faces of young Normies (etc.) will bring in orders of magnitude more people into the sales funnel to be tapped and farmed for recurring revenue.</p>
<p>What both Conventional Play and Bros alike will be forced to do is to distinguish what they do against this new all-digital alternative.</p>
<p>The Conventional Play faction will have a serious uphill battle, as they have to argue with the facts that what they offer is inferior to what the all-digital alternatives possess across the board: having to schedule your play time, be held hostage to the least committment player, be held hostage to the least competent or mature player (including the Referee) because Rule Zero faggotry is a thing, and have to put up with people wasting their time by not paying attention or being prepared to haul ass and get shit done- among other flaws solved in Vidya alternatives.</p>
<p>But the Bros won't be on Easy Mode; the issue with getting people who are too-long accustomed to doing all things digitally, with all that involves, have a hard time going analog and thus playing the real game. Older players, who do have prior experience on the tabletop, as well as those who have no previous contact with this form of game at all, have proven themselves more receptive. That said, they face the "People do that?" problem because they are not widely visible to Normies (etc.) unlike cyclists, Poker players, etc.</p>
<p>This is the two-part question going forward: "How do we let people know that this is a thing?" and "How do we bring the curious into the hobby?"</p>
<p>For Conventional Play, this is part of the larger "Oh shit, we have to do real business operations!" issue. For the Bros, this is more about getting out there more and more and letting the winning moves heretofore get bigger audiences- people are drawn to confident folks having fun mogging on squares.</p>
<p>"People still do that?" not only is something that can happen, it's something that has happened; Normies (etc.) don't go out of their way for anything, so if it's not in their way they forget that it exists- and YouTube just demonstrated that this is indeed How It Is.</p>
<center><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FPfxuui3hBw?si=LmaiSdH2wz7QvCKn" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe><br>Pat here also explains that YouTube also works off <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoeal3ljnqw&pp=ygUPbmV0d29yayBlZmZlY3Rz">Network Effects</a>.</center>
<p>It's on everyone--not just Wizards--to do marketing and advertising for the hobby and its games. Videos like this is what happens when you don't.</p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-17057404006183089942024-02-29T00:00:00.001-06:002024-02-29T00:02:06.089-06:00The Culture: Life After The Wizards Leave, Part Two: Back To The Clubhouse<p>I remind you that the Wizard Imperium's retreat continues before moving on to the main topic.</p>
<center><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WEbfjsaGbeg?si=hgo6rPF_DZ-GMCKX" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>
<p>It is my position that going corporate was a mistake. It should have never left the vibe captured herein.</p>
<center><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BGag8Qllgnw?si=Rzx40l0PaQloHuvF" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen><br>Yes, that's British acting legend Peter Cushing. Wargaming was once <b>mainstream and acceptbale</b>.</iframe></center>
<p>This is the vibe that I--and others--are aiming for by Returning To The Clubhouse.</p>
<p>The point of having full, complete games as the only acceptable products is that each campaign is to be a bespoke creation of the participating hobbyists. The point of the Clubhouse is to be the social hub for hobbyist activity, both in the playing and in the associated social action. There's a reason I keep embedding that clip from the very start of <I>Casino Royale</I>; the old-school upscale social club is the fully realized form of the Clubhouse wherein there is a focal activity as well as side areas for members to speak discretely, if only to be social.</p>
<p>The other point of a Clubhouse is to screen out bad actors and distractions. Those distractions include filtering out bad products (non-games, games by schitzos, games that don't work) as well as Shit You Don't Need (extraneous paraphenalia of all sorts).</p>
<p>The need in this hobby is not More Product. It's Better Service. Better networking, better skill development, better space management (so play can go on at all), etc.- all things best done by a Clubhouse operating as an informal social organization and not a formal legal entity.</p>
<p>As this is the subject of my Substack newsletter, I'll direct you <a href="https://bradfordcwalker.substack.com?utm_source=navbar&utm_medium=web&r=lcdzw">there</a> for more.</p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-10354643755620907122024-02-28T00:00:00.003-06:002024-02-28T00:08:54.302-06:00The Culture: Life After The Wizards Leave, Part One: The Opportunity Of The Void<p>Wizards of the Coast abandoning tabletop means that there will be a massive void erupting in the tabletop hobby business.</p>
<p>Cargo Cultists think that they'll be able to step into that breach and take over without much issue. <b>They will be shocked at how wrong they are.</b></p>
<p>As I have said previously, Wizards does all the heavy lifting. Wizards does all of the marketing outreach to prospective players that are outside the hobby, does all of the funneling of those prospects into the hobby, and on-boards them into the norms of Conventional Play. <b>Everyone else leeches off of these efforts.</b></p>
<p>Yes, everyone.</p>
<p>The current C-Suite at Wizards knows this, and they are aware of their totally dominant position, such that (like Games Workshop) they can claim that their product is a separate and distinct hobby from all other fantastic adventure wargames- <b>and they are not wrong</b>.</p>
<p>They aren't correct either, but they get away with it because the closest competitors are so far behind that no one that isn't already familiar with the hobby has heard of them.</p>
<h2>The Cult's Challenge</h2>
<p>Not all Cargo Cultists are complete retards. The best of them are in touch with reality to some degree, and as such they can see what needs to be done to step into that breach. They see that they need to get into Normie-facing stores like Walmart or Target. They see that they need to have a storefront presence on Amazon, not just their own site or on DriveThruRPG. They see that they need to get in the faces of Normies with targetted advertising campaigns, sales funnels where buying product (and teaching them how to use it) is necessary.</p>
<p>The problem is 50 years of inertia, coupled with a normative culture of incompetence in business. "To make a small fortune in RPGs, start with a big one" is not just a joke.</p>
<p>There are very few properties that originated within the hobby that have any presence outside of it, and that usually means either tie-in media (books and videogames, usually), such that I can name them here: 40K, Warhammer Fantasy, <i>Pathfinder, Shadowrun, BattleTech/MechWarrior, Call of Cthulhu, Vampire The Masquerade</i>.</p>
<p>Games Workshop are even worse than Wizards about the Walled Garden business model, having pioneered the concept decades before, and even then most people think of it as a videogame property first and foremost- not a tabletop one. Why? Piss-poor processes to convert vidya players to tabletop players, starting with a piss-poor product (including the use of that product) vs. vidya; it is cheaper, easier, and more convenient to do wargaming via the PC games than their tabletop counterparts, and any Cargo Cultist aiming to replace Wizards has to solve that problem or end up failing as GW has.</p>
<p>The Cult's challenge, therefore, is to become basic-bitch competent businessmen complete with basic competence at sales and marketing to people who are not already hobbyists. <b>They need to get into mainstream retail outlets and advertise in mainstream media offerings or they will wither into irrelevance.</b></p>
<h2>The Bros' Time To Shine</h2>
<p>The Clubhouse shall become the castle for the Bros to operate out of, using it to raid Conventional Play as it weakens and show the increasingly disaffected and dissatified hobbyists that (a) there is a better way and (b) there's a veteran cohort ready and waiting to show you how it's done so you too can have the fun you've been seeking all this time.</p>
<p>This is not a product-driven alternative, but a service-driven one by default. Players teach other players how to be good hobbyists, as iron sharpens iron. Some sad sacks that can't hack it get filtered out, and that's fine; lots of people are present right now that should not be because they are wrong about what this is and how it works- and they would be far more happy, satisfied, and thus be better people if they just went where they belonged instead.</p>
<p>The products that remain, having been shorn of all the status-striving "Please validate me! I'm really a High Status leisure pursuit!" bullshit we get rules for full and complete games that are clean, clear, and consist as well as competently crafted. We do not get drowned by Yards Of Books about things no one reads or cares about, wasting wood pulp and ink in a backdoor attempt to craft a Setting Bible for some IP Brand business (what all the tie-in media is for).</p>
<p>This is harder to sell as there's no product to sell, and what service is offered is there more as a gatekeeping mechanism than anything else- same as a real Club does.</p>
<p>But, instead, the tradeoff is the recreation of social networks like what the Boomers enjoys before they atomized them all in the '80s and '90s as they pulled the ladder up behind them. It's just going to be online as often as not, with all that such entails.</p>
<p>And with more and more Conventional Play outlets shuttering, taking their crap non-games with them, what remains will be The Games Worth Playing- and that is a number small enough to be counted on one hand with digits missing because those real games can handle far more than they get credit for.</p>
<h2>Product Or People?</h2>
<p>Given the generational pattern of incompetence by the Cargo Cult, I'm betting on the Bros filling the breech by teaching others How To Win At RPGs and How To Filter Out Non-Games.</p>
<p>Taking a curious kid aside, showing him how to play--and how to win--is far more effective at filling that void than some publisher that doesn't have what it takes (and none of them do, not even those who otherwise could like Catalyst) to replace a massive entertainment corporation so large that its affairs get mentioned on CNBC and its properties get made into (very bad) movies.</p>
<p>(Oh, how we could have had a banger of a <i>BattleTech</i> series before that abortion of a cartoon; just watch the FMVs done back in the day.)</p>
<p>And, quite frankly, the hobby will be far better in the long-run by receding back into the underground where it came from- back to being a leisurely hobby pursuit, and not Big Corporate Business.</p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-90395314588841724092024-02-27T00:00:00.001-06:002024-02-27T00:04:00.371-06:00The Culture: The Past Is The Future (What Hobby Games Will Be After Wizards Leaves)<p>Wizards of the Coast is abandoning the tabletop medium, taking its properties with it- including Current Edition.</p>
<p>This is the existential threat to Conventional Play from above, from the macro-level of considerations, as Wizards abandoning tabletop also rips out everything that everyone else relies upon to make their own publishing viable (or give the illusion thereof) and--as I said previously--there was not then and is not now any attempt by anyone else to take up that slack.</p>
<p>The #BROSR has recovered from the Memory Hole what the Cargo Cult buried: the truth about what RPGs are and how they work.</p>
<p>This is the existential threat to Coventional Play from below, from the micro-level of considerations, as it upends all of the Just So mythology about the hobby promulgated by the Cargo Cult to justify Conventional Play. Everyone that engages with the Bros in good faith ends up converted to its position because it approaches the game as a game to be won (something Normies think is normal because it is) and not some form of Art Therapy for failures and fuckups.</p>
<p>What, therefore, is the result of these two trends as they reach their culmination in the form of converging upon Conventional Play and the Cargo Cult within it?</p>
<p>Put simply, it is the return of the past as the future.</p>
<p>The reason is not hard to comprehend. The conditions that allowed the Cargo Cult to usurp the hobby have dissipated over the last 25 years from above and below, accelerating over time. Environmental conditions are as real in economic, social, and political contexts as they are in environmental ones. The historical moment that let the Boomer's character flaw (the inability to see the value in passing on the patrimony that they inherited, so they don't) become the opportunity to install themselves as gatekeepers is over, and now the foundation of that position shifts away from them as if they built their castle on sand.</p>
<p>The result is as predictable as the tides.</p>
<center><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/q4LH5dzCrVg?si=ZHzYFmi4KXZgUqDx&start=293" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>
<p>As this is now an inevitable event, it is no longer worthwhile to argue about if it will or won't happen.</p>
<p>It is now time to discuss what will fill the gap, and how it will replace what Wizards' actions will wreak upon the hobby and its associated cottage industry.</p>
<p>For the rest of this week I will talk about Life After The Wizards Go Away.</p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-50788327494348144872024-02-26T00:00:00.065-06:002024-02-26T00:03:57.294-06:00The Culture: You Can Prove That The Bros Are Right By Yourself<p>Friend of the Retreat Jon Mollison mentioned this over the weekend on Twitter in a one-two punch.</p>
<center><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Normal people: if you want X result you're more likely to get it if you do Y.<br><br>RPG weirdos: <a href="https://t.co/wfGrQ7Vwvg">https://t.co/wfGrQ7Vwvg</a></p>— Mr. Self Inflicted TPK (@NotJonMollison) <a href="https://twitter.com/NotJonMollison/status/1761873216556138832?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Regular reminder: the RPG community is plagued by a chorus of analysts chanting 'no wrong way to play' because their methods don't provide the promised results.<br><br>Effective methods of RPG play validated themselves via results at the table.</p>— Mr. Self Inflicted TPK (@NotJonMollison) <a href="https://twitter.com/NotJonMollison/status/1761853484625002674?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></center>
<p>What people willfully refuse to accept is that the claims by the #BROSR, due to the copious amount of evidence provided, can be independently verified. Furthermore, they can be applied to games other than those common played by the Bros.</p>
<p>I mentioned two candidates in two posts late last week. Time to systematize it.</p>
<h2>Hypothesis</h2>
<p><b>Claim:</b> The #BROSR has successfully recovered how to play tabletop fantastic adventure wargames--"RPGs"--from the Memory Hole, as proven by their years of receipts to date and growing by the week. These are now proving to be Best Practices for the hobby in this medium. <b>Implementing them will always improve the quality of play, even when using unfit products such as those published by Cargo Cultists for Conventional Play.</b></p>
<h2>Method</h2>
<p>The test involves taking up a curious product and implementing Best Practices, including recording the results and publishing Actual Play reports as receipts for a period of no less than six months of weekly play, and preferably a year or more.</p>
<p>These reports aim to solve a set of standard questions, which are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Does the game work when played Rules As-Written?
<li>Does the game work best when using 1:1 Timekeeping?
<li>Does having players assume the roles of Faction Leaders improve campaign play?
<li>Does having periodic Braunstein sessions keep the campaign fresh without resorting to publisher diktat via supplements?
<li>Does having the all of above questions answered as "Yes" still maintain the promised experience?
</ul>
<h2>Discussion</h2>
<p>We already know that this works for <I>Adventurer Conqueror King</I>, <I>Advanced Dungeons & Dragons</I> 1st Edition, <i>Gamma World</i>, <i>Boot Hill</i>, and Classic <i>Traveller</i>.</p>
<p>We already know that <I>RIFTS</I> is vastly improved by doing this, which means that we know that all Palladium products are improved by doing this.</p>
<p>We also know that this works for the World of Darkness because this is already the norm in its LARP scene- it's tabletop that's the aberrant outlier there. We can also extend that to every other product published by White Wolf Game Studio.</p>
<p>This is something for Bros--especially those of you not yet involved in the scene--to consider taking up and running for a while. I mentioned <I>Shadowrun</I> and <I>Star Wars</I>. Others to look at include: <i>Cyberpunk</i>, <I>Earthdawn</I>, <I>Call of Cthulhu</I>, <I>TORG</I> (and its successors), <I>Runequest</I>, at least one <I>Star Trek</I> edition, and <I>Rolemaster</I> (1st or 2nd Edition to start with).</p>
<p>Right now, we also have <I>Twilight 2000</I> 1st Edition under inquiry by JD Sauvage. Mind his <a href="https://twitter.com/jd_sauvage">Twitter</a> to keep up with his discoveries.</p>
<p>Now is the time for those watching from the sidelines to get something started where they are. Pick something and go for it.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>I expect that the Hypothesis will be confirmed, once bad faith actors get the gas face and get round-filed.</p>
<p>I expect, as I said previously, that the actual result is that this testing will serve to sift the wheat (full, complete, and competently designed products ala AD&D1e) from the chaff (those that are not: Palladium, WWGS, all D&D editions from 2e forward, etc.) with further identification of specific defects identified and remedies recommended.
<p>Try as anklebiters, Tourists, and Cultists (of all sorts) might they cannot escape the truth about this medium or the hobby. It is a wargame, and wargames are inherently a competitive medium with winners and losers, which means that all good faith inquiries are going to replicate the Bros' successes and thus independently confirm the truth.</p>
<center><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GHNKpdNaoAAuz8_?format=jpg&name=small"></center>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-33736111786333377522024-02-25T00:08:00.001-06:002024-02-25T00:08:47.338-06:00The Culture: BDubs Show The Receipts <p>Early this past week Dunder Moose had BDubs on to talk about 1:1 Timekeeping, proper play, and the receipts showing that the Bros are right.</p>
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<p>BDubs is great at this stuff.</p>
<p>"It's great to know that I'm better at playing than Gary (Gygax)" is fantastic Rhetoric, and a perfect response to anklebiters using purloined authority to attack the Bros.</p>
<p>A lot of the objections involve an incorrect premise: "This is about a story."</p>
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<p>It's a wargame.</p>
<p>There may be a team. They have an objective. They have limited resources (time, material, personnel) to employ in pursuit of that objective. The time it takes (in game time) is what it is; that is the tab that the players run up for the mans participating, and that tab is paid off by putting the participants into Time Jail after the fact. The catch? Those mans are protected (as are the deeds done) from contradiction or other intervention. It is, simply put, a Canon Event and cannot be changed.</p>
<p>This becomes obvious once Player-v-Player action goes down. Suddenly all these "rules don't matter" complaints go away because <b>no one</b> wants to lose Because Reasons; they'll suck it up if they lose fair and square by the rules.</p>
<p>And there's so much more to gain when players drive the bus like this.</p>
<p>As this spreads beyond <I>Advanced Dungeons & Dragons</I> 1st Edition, <I>Adventurer Conqueror King</I>, and Classic <I>Traveller</I> there's going to be more and more receipts produced and published proving the superiority of proper campaign play- and how unfit for purpose most tabletop "game" products are, as they are not complete games.</p>Bradford C. Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810129226163375188noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-695527399731010011.post-91940029856739864192024-02-24T00:00:00.008-06:002024-02-24T00:20:31.782-06:00The Culture: Games To Investigate: Uncle George's Space Opera (WEG Edition)<p>In 1987, West End Games published a licensed tabletop adventure game based on George's space opera as part of the 10 year annivesary of the original film's release.</p>
<center><img src="https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/93/8a/938a45b9-6217-42f4-9006-74156ad05807/sww01_both-books.png" style="width:350px;height:250px"></center>
<p>There was a second edition in the 1990s, which had a Revised edition after that, and today this version of the game endures <a href="http://d6holocron.com/downloads/books/REUP.pdf">as a PDF file</a>.</p>
<p>Why investigate a game whose very origins in cinema, with all that entails, means that West End's products embraced all the bad Conventional Play practices?</p>
<p>Why? Because, believe it or not, there is more than enough information <b>and mechanics</b> to run a campaign properly.</p>
<p>Are there legacy issues? You better believe it. West End's version of the game <b>invented the Expanded Universe</b> that the Devil Mouse (and Kulty Kathy) discarded when they bought it from George. For some, this is a benefit; for others, a detriment.</p>
<p>The biggest issue is the Canon Event Problem. Fortunately, using the old EU means that you can safely discard everything the Devil Mouse originated. Unfortunately, this also means that you're having to work around George's own not-so-great ideas that he put into film or television. Furthermore, the big draw for this game <b>depends</b> upon adhering to Canon Events- however stupid they can be. If you're not already good at working with or around these things, you're going to have a bad time.</p>
<p>That said, I think those bold enough to give this a proper investigation will find that you can proper play out of it.</p>
<p>Again, the questions:</p>
<ul>
<li>Does the game work when played Rules As-Written?
<li>Does the game work best when using 1:1 Timekeeping?
<li>Does having players assume the roles of Faction Leaders improve campaign play?
<li>Does having periodic Braunstein sessions keep the campaign fresh without resorting to publisher diktat via supplements?
<li>Does an affirmative response to the above questions still maintain the promised <i>Star War</i>s experience?
</ul>
<p>I think you may need more than just the file provided (or a used rulebook) to get the full experience--this is a game that needs a few key supplements to achieve full power, so to speak--but you'll be surprised at how well it can play. You might even be able to do this with WOTC's editions of the game, believe it or not.</p>
<p>As for working around Canon Events, that's a topic for <a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/bradfordcwalker/p/the-canon-event-issue?r=lcdzw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true">The Clubhouse</a>. Subscribe now to ensure it's in your Inbox this weekend.</p>
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