The Culture: Death To The Prussian Schooling Scam

I'll put up a longer thinkpiece on this video at another time, but for now know that the woman who exposed Lester Del Ray as the man who made "Fantasy" a thing has a new (and very good) video- especially if you have children or grand-children under your care.

I may narrow this down into something for gaming in particular, since there is so much remedial work that needs to be done.

Do note that other language cultures have works of similar seminal status; if you're in or of that world, adjust the plan proffered above accordingly.

The Culture: The Second Story On Narrative Warfare

Remember what Arch did yesterday? Hilary Lane comes in for the layup.

The reality is that Public Relations professionals--the secularlization of ancient cult indoctrination techniques--knew this over a century ago; again, read Propaganda by Edward Bernays and Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann (they're the two founders of Public Relations, the category that holds Advertising and Marketing as jobs).

Pay attention to her usage of a woman's perception of Korean men being warped by K-Dramas as an example. This is how Public Relations techniques can create an illusion of How Things Work, and if the systems of everyday life don't match up to the illusion then that disparity becomes the liminal space wherein weaponized resentment becomes the festering wound from which Death Cult political action roots itself.

Yes, this is how Hannah the Post-Wall Heifer gets radicalized (an irreversible process, like Chaos Corruption) into voting for Death Cult people and policies so long as they can hold out believable promises to guarantee that Hannah gets a state-mandated K-Drama Korean man issued to her for her enjoyment.

Hilary brings the receipts. She shows the troon in Minnesota justifying child access to porn (specifically child porn) as being necessary and proper for the cultivation of troon identity. Talk about giving away the game.

Watch it. If you are an honest man, you will see that she is indeed right- and the tell is that all the right people are furious with her.

This is becoming more than just about porn-addled shitlibs Hannahs.

The Culture: Others See Wider Implications For The Bot Apocalypse

I am not the only one to see where this bot apocalypse is taking us.

Just as the printing press rendered the monastic scriptoria entirely redundant, the Internet has placed universities under increasing threat of obsolescence. Libraries and academic publishing have already been rendered useless by preprint servers. It is no longer, strictly speaking, necessary to attend a university to learn things: the Internet has every tool an autodidact could desire, and insofar as it doesn’t – for instance, university presses and private journals charging outrageous fees for their books and papers – this is due to the academy jealously guarding its treasures with intellectual property law rather than any limitation of the technology. One can easily make the argument that academia has become an obstacle, rather than an organ, of information dissemination.

You can read the rest here.

The author takes his time to get to that point, as the case for comparing the bots eating Academia to Henry VIII's dissolution of the monestaries needs to be shows, but once it arrives the point is made and made clearly: this is the opportunity to dispense with an enemy power center, one that had become contrary to its eucivic mission, and worse had been rendered surplus to requirements by technological advancement: the printing press.

One can argue that the monestaries could have--should have--been reformed, at swordpoint if required, into being wholly places of seclution (i.e. hermitages) for the good of the faith and supported by the Crown. That same argument can be applied to the universities, and it should, because there is still a purpose in an institution that engages in a mission without hope of material gain or worldly power- but not until the wider government is itself purged and cleansed of the enemy.

As for myself, I am all for letting the bots destroy the universities. First-hand experience revealed that they are as the monestaries had been: turned from their purpose, converged to another (skinsuited), controlled by the enemy and used as a power bloc against Civilization- against us. What to do with what is left after these enemy castles are reduced and their garrisons slain to a man can be figured out then, and no sooner.

The Culture: The Science Backs The Chuds Against The Woke

To cap the year, here's Aydin Paladin's big video essay on not just how Muh Diversity fails but why. Yes, with receipts the size of the long-gone World Trade Center.

Everything said here about Vidya applies to Tabletop, to OldPub, to the Hellmouth, and thus to all entertainment media.

Yes, all media.

It clocks in at just over two hours, but it's time well spent. If you want to cut to the chase, skip to Conclusions and then track back for the receipts proving them. Yes, some of what we've long suspected and speculated about is confirmed by study and experimentation, but there's details that we can and should use for our benefit that have been missed and there's more to the matter than what we've suspected.

And remember this gang: Rhetoric is for outgroups, Dialectic for ingroups. We are looking for Rhetorical applications first.

My Life As A Gamer: Filling The Holes In RIFTS (Part Five)

(Previous Parts: One, Two, Three, Four. Also, Braunstein defined here.)

There is no need to reinvent the wheel. As Palladium is a D&D-derivative, the solution--summarized--is to revert to D&D. As much as possible, the goal is to flat-out substitute orthodox AD&D for Palladium versions. Fortunately, this is easier to do than it seems.

In order to fix RIFTS, we start with Palladium's Fantasy game, which can also be summarized:

• Attributes: "Physical Beauty" and "Speed" are eliminated, and the remaineder reverted to D&D labels and AD&D1e tables.
• Races & Monsters: Reverted one-for-one where possible, use closest approximation in the Monster Manual(s) or Fiend Folio.
• Classes: It is convenient that Palladium has "Men At Arms", "Men Of Magic", and "Adventurers" (and a nebulous "Other" which should be NPCs). This maps to Fighter, Magic-User, and Thief; if the Palladium class isn't a direct D&D analog, then it will fit into one well enough most of the time (e.g. Longbowmen are Fighters with Longbow specialization, Knights are Fighters with cavalry training, etc.). We could make Priests (etc.) akin to Clerics, but that messes big time with what Clerics actually are (i.e. Van Helsing in plate, not generic priests) so they remain Magic-Users by default. Simply lump all such classes into one of those categories and be done with it; certain difficulties like the magic practices are better handled by other means.
• Magic: Psionics just get moved over wholesale and "Mind-Mage" is just a Magic-User that focuses on Psionics. Wizardry is standard spell-casting. Wards and Circles are written as spells with stupid-long casting time and bothersome material component requiments, and the Palladium terms for them are (mostly) ignored. "Warlocks" are elemental specialists with a weird backstory, but still Magic-Users.
• SDC: Gone. Just use Hit Points and Item Saves.

It really is this easy, and you won't have to do much more than this to unfuck Palladium Fantasy.

Moving this up to RIFTS, you still have Arms/Magic/Adventurer for general classifications and Other that covers corner cases or improperly includes NPCs like random saloon whores.

• Magic: Still Magic-Users, and their abilities are still best handled as specific spells. Tattooes are magic items, not something to build a class around.
• Tech: Still gear. Yes, even Full Conversion Cyborg shells.

You'll note that I ripped out the Skill system entirely. It's a needless complication. All that matters is if a character can do the thing or not, and a lot of what Skills cover don't need that sort of detail. "Can he pilot the giant robot?" is just as relevant as "Can he ride a warhorse into battle and not get thrown?" and deserve the same manner of answering that question.

As for religion, get yourself a copy of Deities & Demigods (go for the original version with Elric and Cthulhu). Palladium, for a reason that only makes sense if you know the US comic zeitgeist of the '70s, flat-out appropriates Ancient Egypt's pantheon as the major pantheon of Palladium's fantasy world and thus influential in RIFTS (followed, of course, by the Greco-Roman and Norse pantheons) and there's just enough Dollar Store Lovecraft to pretend to be all "Oh noes, Muh Sanity Blasting Horrors!" in the Old Gods and a few similar things in RIFTS.

You'll note that I also yeeted the PPE system. Palladium original did Spells/Day--up through Transdimensional Turtles for their TMNT RPG--so that's hardly a stretch to revert to. What needs to be accounted for are the effects of ley lines and Nexus Points, which isn't that hard to do, and the effects of sacrifice (etc.) as a means of fueling magic usage.

For this, we can look to (believe it or not) White Wolf's now-abandoned Scarred Lands setting for D&D3.X, where ritual magic provided boosts to effecting casting level (and thus to the effects of the magic). If you want to add value to the tracting of the passage of time, or of the movement of the starts, this boost to magic-usage efficacy is how you would go about it. If you want to add value to maintaining a body of cultists or other non-caster participants, this sort of procedure will work.

Statting things up will take time, but if you have a framework in place then most of it will go quickly and all that remains to be determined are specific ratings for things like the Armor Class of Coalition Body Armor and the attack table of a man-portable railgun.

Some subsystems, like the BIO-E system for Mutant Animals, can be ported over without much (if any) changes. Others, like for Martial Arts, need things like Oriental Adventures to handle.

The end result is that you now have a ruleset ready for Braunstein play that actually supports Braunstein play because it's rooted in proper wargaming. Have at it.

My Life As A Gamer: Filling The Holes In RIFTS (Part Four)

(Previous Parts: One, Two, Three. Also, Braunstein defined here.)

To say that religion is handled poorly is an understatement. Across the board, Palladium makes no attempt to treat religions as anything other than what you'd see out of a Silver Age comic book, and that's on a good day.

For those looking for Domain Play, they need to know what the relationship between God and Supplicant is in terms that matter in play. Gods and their agents--cosmic and mortal alike--are Patron-level characters inherently, so no religion is going to be nothing more than trappings and word salad. Yet that is exactly what we have in Palladium's games, and nothing exposes this more than its supplements that deal in gods and religion.

They're cosmic-level supers. Yes, including the Vampire Intelligences. Yes, including Lord Splynn, the True Nauruni, and several other cosmic parties. You could replace them with Captain Marvel (either version), Black Adam, certain iterations of Superman, DC's New Gods, etc. and no one would notice the difference.

This is a failure of imagination.

Also, religion does not work that way.

Because of this absolute disrespect and disdain for one of the most fundamental aspects of human psychology and culture, all of the published settings in all of the games come off as superficial and cheap. People knock AD&D's treatment, but (a) it is a valid approach and (b) it accurately reflects the nature of most non-Christian religion.

What to do about this?

First, remember that religion is not independent of culture because religion is a manifestation of mythology. Therefore religion, as a matter of ludological practice, is rooted in the cultural paradigm of the religion's culture and the worship or veneration of said gods or heroes will reflect that paradigm because it is through those figures that cultures perepetuate themselves across the generations.

In short, you don't get Aztecs conducting human sacrifices to the Sun God unless they actually believe that it works. This is independent of whether or not it does (or you cannot get false religions, or false gods). This is lacking in Palladium material, and that includes RIFTS.

How does this interface with magic?

Like it or not, magic systems are derivative of religious practice and it is why being a "sorceror" or "witch" ususally is a bad thing; they wield the power of the gods for mortal, material, and often degenerate or base ends. It's also why the line between priest and witch is often very thin and rooted in the ends to which they wield supernatural power. (This also serves to distinguish priests of evil gods from sorcerors; the former are sincere servants of evil cosmic powers, the latter are users out for themselves.)

What to do then?

Change your approach. Why do false gods want power and worship? Because they benefit from it, as they are sorcerors; reference yesterday's post on magic, and consider that PPE can be willingly yielded without killing or violence. One such obvious example is worship, wherein the ritual exists to offer a framework by which the celebrant voluntarily yields PPE to the recipient (the false god, although the false priest often takes a cut or a kickback). Real gods want worship for almost identical reasons, but their powers are more or less inherent (check your mythology).

Consider that cosmic beings like Lord Splynn of Atlantis cultivate false religions fully aware of this being a thing. In return for this worship, even the most evil of gods--real and false--will use a portion of this power to benefit his worshippers somehow and the smarter ones do so in a manner that reinforces their belief in (and thus make it easier to give worship to) that god.

A normie may only have 7 PPE, so he can only yield a few at a time. Multiple that by several million or more and that becomes a steady income stream of PPE, against which the god (real or false) can work magics that mortal magicians can only seethe at; put that god on a Nexus Point, let him benefit from auspicious timing or celestial alignments, and suddenly those magic-wielding Patrons and Domains start cooking with jet fuel. Upgrae the base worshipper to someone able to yield double or triple-digit PPE totals at a time, and you get the idea.

Palladium does not even bother to think about this at all despite putting these things in the manuals. It doesn't happen in Silver Age comics.

For those wanting to run RIFTS as a Braunstein, such oversights are inexcusable. For those wanting a product that delivers on its promises out of the box, this is also inexcuseable. For those wanting a clear, clean, and consistent ruleset this is also inexcusable. Having to spot-rule, port things over from other games, or otherwise address such holes is inexcusable out of a professional game company.

A user wants to buy the thing, take it home, and just use it. "Plug in and play". Every single instance of such inexcusable lapse of design or technical writing is a Quit Moment, and it is not surprising that Palladium relies on a die-hard core of tinkerers/Game Masters because most people will not put up with this long-term and they haven't.

Can you make this game work as a real RPG, as a Braunstein? Sure. Can you do it without turning the game into something other than what a user will find if he buys the rules? Maybe. Is it work the hassle, or would you be better off using another ruleset and just playing your game using that with this setting (or roll your own variation of it)? The latter.

After this, I'm going to get into how I'd remake it to suit.

My Life As A Gamer: Filling The Holes In RIFTS (Part Three)

Magic in RIFTS is not as well-defined as it is in its fantasy game, which is a shame because that game has entire magic-using classes that shine on the Domain level and make excellent Patrons.

But there is defintion. To summarize:

• "Magic is an energy that can be controlled and manipulated by the humanoid mind and force of will." (RIFTS Ultimate Edition, pg. 185)
• Every being has this energy, but most unwittingly spend it developing non-magical capacities. (ibid)
• Inferred, therefore, is that magic-users are those that are aware of this energy and acquire the capacity to wield it consciously; the means to do is defined by their magical practice, which is in turn defined by their beliefs and convinctions fueled by their will. Not quite Alestair Crowley, but close enough.
• P.P.E. can be taken from magic items that store such energy, and it can be taken--either as a voluntary measure, or by force--from others in a ritual manner. (RUE, pg. 186) Lethal sacrifice is very efficient reaping of such energy.
• Ley Lines and Nexus Points are sufficiently saturated to permit drawing from it to replenish or augment one's own stores. (ibid). Doing so when time of day or celestial bodies are in alignment greatly increases the power available to draw upon.
• Spells and rituals are specific formulae devised to reliably achieve specific effects, effects that only get stronger with experience.

This means that magic in RIFTS is both a natural resource to control and a power source to exploit. It is clean compared to mundane alternatives, stupidly-abundant on Earth and in most established sub-settings of the game, and therefore whomever has the mind to do so has a Perpetual Power Plant at their disposal should they device a spell, ritual, or item capable of making this potential actual.

Y'know, like Atlantis- both the current alien usurper and the indigenous Atlanteans currently displaced. Or their Lemurian cousins. Or several other magic-focused states or nations in the game just on Earth, and far more in other subsettings in the game.

Like fucking Tolkeen, which sits on a nexus fuels by 100 ley lines.

That no one in Palladium's office, at any time between the late 1980s when this was in development through to the present ever took this seriously should say volumes about how Domain Play is not even on their radar.

What is missing, however, are things that really nail this home: PPE/time interval (round/minute/hour/etc.), specific procedures on how to erect (thing) that does (x) that are going to be called upon in play by Patrons (e.g. Magic Pyramids, Automata), and other aspects that fall into the real of Strategic Operations and Physical Economy (i.e. Logistics).

Complicating this further is Dimensional Fuckery. Remember when I said that RIFTS is played out across all space and time? I meant it. There are slow-time dimensions, fast-time dimensions, weaponized dimension fuckery, and flat-out time travel with all the headaches that comes from adding Temporal Fuckery to Dimensional Fuckery.

This is a game where The Doctor is not just one Patron, but several, and he can easily be butting heads with himself several times over before Corwin of Amber shows up out of nowhere (several times over) to get in a drinking contest with Kimbal Kinneson and do Barsoom kareoke before heading off to have a talk with Elric about his soul-sucking sword problems.

You, the Referee, need to know things like "How long does it take to replenish the PPE of (place)?" because The Doctor can help Doctor Strange and Dr. Fate crank that rate up and you need to be able to tell those Patrons (and their players) an answer that they can act upon and use going forward. The rules do nothing to help you.

You, the Player, need to know how long it will take to master Magic Tattooing so you can then figure out how long it will take to churn out your own legion of Magic Tattooed Warriors. Again, silent.

This is a mess.

There's no way around it. You're going to have to take what crumbs you can find in spell descriptions, vague definitions, etc. and do even more of a piecemeal patchup than I did to make a Morale and Reaction system that can work.

You're going to piece together how fast a ley line (etc.) regenerates PPE by inferring it from the listed information on drawing from it. Then you're going to start looking at the listed relations between Ley Lines and Nexus Points to math out the effects of crossing or merging streams. As this seems to be drawing from real-life water flows as a model, that's going to be multiplicitive and not additional; the more lines meeting, the bigger the synergy and thus the more potent the Nexus, and the longer a line runs in a given place the greater its flow becomes.

This is what needs to be done to explain Tolkeen--nexus of 100 ley lines--as well at Atlantis and several other locations.

From Techno-Mages, Stone Masters, and other artificers you'll be able to tease out the relation between PPE expenditure, material requirements, time spent, and skills/powers necessary to make widgets, build portals, turn squishies into Tattooed Men, and so on. (Oh, and Tattooed Men shouldn't look like Outlaw Bikers or OnlyFans sluts; we have historical examples of this belief, so use those instead as your models.)

Tracking time and celestial alignment is a no-brainer for Braunstein. It also makes magic-users predictable; big power moves go down when big power draws are possible, so you have a timetable to get your shit together before heading off to deliver dimensional warheads to the Supreme Temple of the God-King of the Great Lord of Blood (i.e. a Vampire Intelligence) that drop said being directly into the Sun.

Oh, and remember your Super-Soakers and Water Cannons of Endless Water. Need those for the vampires. (Not joking about the Super-Soakers; how can you make vampires lame?)

You get the idea. The Referee is going to spend a stupid amount of time resolving such matters because Palladium does not design for Domain Play and that's where Braunstein gaming makes the magic--ha--happen.

And since magic is tied to relgion, man is that going to be a mess. Tomorrow.

My Life As A Gamer: Filling In The Holes In RIFTS (Part Two)

Palladium never made its games with Patron or Domain Play in mind, despite being derived from D&D, and the lack of rules and procedures that D&D takes for granted shows that the rot many decry now set in decades ago when those in the '70s that either did not like or lacked familiarity with wargaming didn't grok the importance of such systems so they deemed them irrelevant and tossed them out.

Palladium also never got away from its amateur sensibilities. Today we call how Palladium does things "making players pay to beta-test, and then ignoring the feedback" (i.e. "acting like Blizzard's World of Warcraft team does"), and this has become the norm in tabletop gaming by now which is one of many reasons for why Palladium endures.

As yesterday's post shows, you can tease out just enough existing information to create viable gameplay procedures to address common issues in Braunstein play. This is not desirable.

And now I will continue to show you why.

Returning again to our poor Coalition Grunt, only this time you're not looking at things from his perspective as a playable character. You're looking at him as one of your many subordinates, for you are his superior officer.

You're in a bandit suppression campaign along the Magic Zone. You're in command of a company of Coalition personnel, and your job is to eliminate a bandit gang making raids from the zone into Coalition-held territory to protect the settlers there engaging in the necessary work of feeding the population and providing industry with raw resources.

You have at your disposal four platoons of infantry plus attached support elements.

This is a wargame scenario. Palladium--failed Robotech tie-in notwithstanding--is not set up for this out of the box.

But, in your ear, you hear the whispers of Jeffro Johnson say "Hey, just apply some basic concepts from Chainmail." Now you don't have 40 individual men to control and roll for, but four units--one per platoon--with their Lieutenants informing things like Morale and so on. You don't have four SAMAS armor, or Sky Cycles, but one stack of four or two stacks of two. You get the idea.

Whomever runs the bandits does the same for their side. Any serious individuals--giant robots, monsters, powerful mages/psychics/etc.--can stand alone. Thing usually ignored like the blast radius of a missile warhead now have direct impact on play in an obvious manner. Now what could easily have taken longer than the dueling gunlines on the 40K table next to you can be handled before they finish Turn One.

The hole is Mass Combat. The fix is to group similar characters together into a unit, assign a Morale score (and bonus to checks with a suitable leader), and presume that they act as such; the size of the unit is their HP and each hit in excess of a unit's SDC/MDC takes out one or more unit members.

Yes, that's scuffed, but it's a good baseline and you can tinker with it from there until it does more than Just Work.

You'll now find that Magic Spells and Psychic Powers that heretofore seemed useless will gain new appreciation because you'll see obvious utility. Keeping track of, and accounting for, Morale now makes threats like the Mechanoids palpable in the minds of players.

Oh, and if you're looking over at Splicers--and its "Terminator Meets Guyver explicit war scenario--something like this is required because sooner or later you're going to be in a Mass Combat scenario.

This can be applied for Fleet Combat in the Three Galaxies also.

Now you will find, yet again, why the Tolkeen War was fucking stupid- and that is before accounting for magic. That I will do tomorrow.

My Life As A Gamer: Filling In The Holes In RIFTS (Part One)

Let's start seeing what needs to be done.

Again, we start at the bottom because this is where most Palladium games operate at and therefore where the rules are mostly functional.

Returning to our Coalition Grunt, we need to know--like a post-Marian Legionaire of Rome--how much can he carry and how far can he carry it. The following is from RIFTS Ultimate Edition, pp. 281 and 286.

• SPDx20 = Yards Per Minute at a run.
• SPDx5 = Yards Per Round (per 15 seconds).
• Yards Per Round/Actions Per Round = Yards Per Action. (Yes, this means higher-level and better-trained characters more in more frequent but shorter bursts.)
• Physical Strength determines Encumbrance limits. For normal characters, with scores of 3-16, this is a straightfoward PSx10 in Pounds. At PS 17, this jumps to x20. For Robots, this modifier is x25 (Giant Robots, at 40+, are x100.) Supernatural characters at 18+ are at x50. Lifting is double this number, and hold it for for three second per Physical Endurance point (1 minute per PE for Supernaturals). Weaponized throwing takes "W.P. Targeting" and uses the carry limit, not the lifting number.

What's missing? Miles Per Day. Penalties for being encumbered. You have to make a guess, and so we shall here.

We can presume that the run speed is not the march speed, but let's put that down as a point of reference. For a typical Grunt--rolling 3d6 across the board--that's going to be half 10s and half 11s; let's give the poor pleb a break and give him the 11s in the phyiscal attributes. That means this Grunt hauls ass as a pace of 220 yards per minute, and he has a PE score of 11 to fuel that run.

From "Running" Skill, pg. 317: "...the character is able to run at an even pace (half-speed) for a half-mile every one point of PE without undue fatigue. If pushing one self to the limit and ryunning at maximum speed, the character can run one third that distance before collapsing." Plug in our values. He can run at an even pace for 5.5 miles and just over two at a full run before collapsing. We can put a march at below this rate.

"Forced Marching", ibid.: "Practiced training in uniform marching with a full field pack and weapons. This is done at an even pace and rhythm that enables the marchers to cover great distances on foot at a faster than normal pace. Increase the the normal Physical Endurance rate as to how long an anctivity like marching can be maintained by five times; applicable to only to forced marches/traveling. Maximum speed on a forced march is 60% of one's Speed attribute." Plug in the values. SPD 11, at 60%, is 6.6 (rounded up to 7) and at an effective PE of 55.

Problem: There is no "normal" defined. Proposal: We infer it between "Running" and "Forced March". "Normal Pace" isn't much less than 60% because real training is focused on endurance over speed; the training is one long cardio progam supplemented with learning how to pack and distribute carried weight better. Call it 50%, but the real kicker is that you don't get the PE multiplier. So normal would be 5.5 (round to 6) at PE 11 (5.5 miles). With training, this is 27.5 miles.

This also infers the rate while near or at Carrying Capacity, which is 110 lbs. for our Grunt (PS 11), which can be augmented further by gear. If we cut the absolute time of march per day to an 8 hour day (to allow for making and striking camp), we can cut this down by half to 13.75 miles.

Yeah, those numbers seem out of whack. We can revise them as required, but for now let's set this aside.

Recall that our Grunt deals with civilians, and that our Grunt gets into combat situations- both of these involve Morale and Charisma. This means that Mental Affinity is a useful thing, in the form of Charm/Impress, but the straight percentage chance is only specified for MA 16+ and that's not where our Grunt (MA 10) is. The % chance is in 5% intervals until MA 26, so we can infer downward to 0% from 16 to 10 (where we hit zero; this is why Officers have higher MA scores).

Command skills complicate Morale checks, but they can be handled as on-off enablers. Social encounters are also complicated by Language, Literacy, Public Speaking, Sign Language, Intelligence, and Interrogation skills. In short, we can treat the skills as on-off enablers and turn the % to a Reaction Roll. As we can infer that MA is Charisma, and training compliments inherent Charisma, we can treat the Reaction Roll as well as the Morale Check as a variation of the Insanity Save.

Insanity Saves base around a 12+ on a d20. Skills enable the possibility of a successful save; can't command those that can't comprehend your commands, and you can't communicate with those who don't comprehend your inquiries. (Supertech and powers can negate this problem.) Convert the % to Charm/Impress to a + or - 1 per point over/under 10 and make that throw when Morale of Reaction is called upon.

Again, it's enough to get started. We can improve upon this as we go.

Before I conclude for today, let's scale up to the Army. We can count on a unit of Grunts to reliably march 13 miles per day in standard field kit, and so long as they have an Officer they stand a good chance of getting favorable reactions from neutrals encountered and to maintain order under fire. A senior NCO may also be able to pull this off, as they tend to be both higher level and thus more skilled.

We can also intuit rates of Coalition military casualties to trauma, and from there figure out what needs to be done to get them patched up in the brainmeats and back in action- something the Coalition is ruthless enough to do and possesses the means to do it.

We now have Strategic and Tactical Movement, Encumbrance, Reaction and Morale good enough to work with. Tomorrow I'll move on to another hole to patch.

Narrative Warfare: An Accidental Revelation On Education Working As Intended

Indy and the boys are back with a new Sabaton History video on the 1918 Treaty of Versailles.

Indy brought the nuance here, mentioning details that are routinely overlooked in all but the most competent university-level (and graduate level at that) courses. In short, most people have no clue as to how involved this was.

This lack of detail and nuance is detrimental to comprehending events as they are, as we see in social media every day. Most people stop there--itself the same mistake--and just presume that this is mere incompetence.

It's not. It's malice, it's intentional, and it's not new: this was intended by the originators of state-mandated public schooling as explained by the late John Taylor Gatto at length and in detail.

His fans operate a video archive channel on YouTube here, with (much shorter) videos all about this stuff.

The Death Cult works best when their prey is ensnared in a delusional distortion of reality. That's easy to do when you control the flow of information from cradle to grave, which is what was implented after the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and exported globally by the end of the 19th Century under the guise of humanitarian and nationalist concern.

Homeschool your children, and do it properly.

On The BROSR's Revival Of True Campaign Play, Its Applicability Across The Tabletop RPG Medium, & Exposing Fake RPGs Thereby

The BROSR's emphasis on Rules-As-Written to explore how a game actually operates at the table is not to be disdained. Right now, this is focused on Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1st Edition followed by other early D&D editions. What this produced is the rediscovery of the true campaign paradigm that Jeffro Johnson is responsible for, that the BROSR is responsible for promulgating up to critical mass, and now others are stealing credit from him for clout.

That complaint aside, it is now time to consider doing the same to tabletop RPGs that are not D&D.

The question that I want to be considered: "Will using the same approach lead to the same result as D&D, or will something else emerge?"

I speculate that the answer will, at times, be "something else". I also speculate that which games will produce that "something else" will not be so obvious as it seems at first glance, or even given long-time popular perception.

I speculate that one could, as-written, run Call of Cthulhu and get the same campaign style as D&D- just with less player-controlled NPC assistance as there is no expectation of player-controlled Henchmen or Hirelings. I speculate that, likewise, Pendragon will not; the campaign model therein has been very consistent across its editions over the decades and it is significantly different from D&D despite sharing some literary (and thus cultural) roots.

But, and this is the big one, I speculate that far more tabletop RPGs will conform to the D&D campaign model than those that will not. This is because far too many RPG designers are lazy and, wittingly or otherwise, presume familiarity with D&D to fill in the gaps that appear in their rulesets and especially their gameplay models. Therefore the D&D models are the default position, and when employed even in games like RIFTS or Legend of the Five Rings you will see that they do work and have the same effect.

In short, I hypothesize that a tabletop RPG has to go so widely from the wargame roots of the medium to avoid this result that few will remain actual RPGs. The aforementioned Pendragon and its offshots (Paladin, Prince Valiant) are the one universally-recognized example of a clearly not-wargame RPG that is yet a RPG, and there are a few others, but most true RPGs will turn out to conform and fake RPGs will be most of those that do not.

Narrative Warfare: A Note On The RPG Medium And Why It's Under Attack By SJWs

There is a very good reason for why you should follow Jeffro Johnson and his rediscover of how to properly play tabletop RPGs.

It is because the habits of thinking that you acquire by playing them as intended are directly transferable to everyday life, and not just in the sense that learning to drive a car is transferable to learning to drive a truck. It also applies in the sense of mindset and attitude, something that men like Ivan Throne charge plenty of money to teach to you, and if you think that's overblown then consider the following.

In a proper RPG, you have no control over your character's genesis. You roll the dice, you take what you get, and you do the best you can with what you've got. Sometimes that's a long run that leads to much success. Sometimes you get curbstomped walking out the front door. Either way, eventually you hit the end of you run, and it's time to start again.

What does this teach you?

• Resource Identification and Management: You learn how to identify your strengths and play into them, and conversely how to identify would-be collaborators that mirror you so that combined as a team you're stronger than each are individually. This cultivates strategic thinking and rational decision-making, increasingly for the long term and thus to promote long-term planning that's necessary to maintain Civilization.
• Stoicism: You know that both strength and weakness are passing conditions, so you should neither become intoxicated by the former nor embittered by the latter, but rather to accept all in turn for what it is, and in time you learn what matters and what does not- and thus that danger is real, but cowardice is a vice. Failure happens, so recovery as fast as you can so you can try again, and learn from it as you do so. This cultivates resilience of character and persistence as a habit.
• Risk Management: You learn how to intuit the probability of an uncertain thing over time--again, the benefit of having and adhering to a knowable ruleset--so that you can, under stress, quickly figure out if the reward for doing a thing is worth the risk of suffering the penalty for failure if you don't succeed.

That's very basic stuff I can suss out of proper RPG play, and if you have sons then I strongly recommend using RPGs in this manner. Using a virtual environment to get them used to thinking not only in terms of being responsible for their actions, but also in terms of having--and insisting--on the authority required to make that responsibility practical and worthwhile well before they go out into the wider real world and have to deal with all the bullshit therein.

It is most effective when used alongside more formal instruction--teaching abstract subjects like Math is easier when there is concrete application, and emphasizing resilience of character gets reinforced when you then take your son on a real trip out into the wilds--and with other real-life referents to attach useful gameplay mindset and habits to.

This is also why the Game Master must be strictly neutral; he must exhibit the solidity and stoic character of a mature man, allowing the characters to be stupid or unfortunate and thus to suffer accordingly- fatally so as the dice dictate. Learning how to sift the real from the ephemeral, the rational from the emotional, is part-and-parcel of maturity for boys into men and this is best done by experience and example- something RPGs are very good at doing when played properly.

This should not be a substitute for doing real things, but rather a place to train in a safe environment; let them crash and burn here, where they can learn without injury, rather than out there where the consequences are real and permanent.

And this, I put to you, is why the Death Cult so badly wants to converge RPGs into SJW trash. It not just "a male space", it's one of the few remaining that have real impact when employed properly; fathers, I implore you, use this to aid in guiding your sons to manhood. You will be astounded at how well it works to begin teaching your boys how to be men when you can point to their own virtual experiences to bring the point home.

My Life As A Historian: Documentaries At Your Fingertips

I've been binging Indy Neidell's Great War and World War II channels over the last few weeks. I had nothing else to do while in the hospital, and while he follows the official narrative across the board his presentation is on point and proves that neo-patronage can compete with Big Corporate productions. The recent Pearl Harbor special proves that.

Other channels do the same thing--high quality original productions on a crowdfunded budget--or make available otherwise inaccessable older works (e.g. the excellent Battlefield series from decades ago).

In addition to having plenty of good non-fiction at hand, some are better at citing their sources than others. (Indy's very good at this.) Take notes, jot down the names of the works cited and their authors--you have a Pause button, so use it--and look up those works so you can follow up on what is said.

Next thing you know, you'll be teaching yourself How To Do History without all the Death Cult pozzing corrupting your results.

My Life As A Historian: Rescuing The White Russians From The Memory Hole

Mystery Grove Publishing is doing some fantastic work bringing back stuff from the Memory Hole.

We are very happy to announce that Always With Honor, the Russian Civil War memoirs of legendary White Army cavalry general Pyotr Wrangel, is now available in print for the first time in decades. One of the most important conflicts in modern history!https://t.co/9s5qbeUmhT

— Mystery Grove Publishing Co. (@MysteryGrove) October 24, 2020

Why is this one important? Let the Description show you.

Russia, 1917. As World War I drags on, political turmoil slowly paralyzes the Empire. The Czar abdicates. His replacements are ineffectual and incompetent. Violence sweeps the country. One by one, institutions collapse under the weight of chaos and terror. The Bolsheviks, a small group of communist radicals initially supported by German intelligence, launch a revolution that sends the country into a tailspin. The nation is plunged into a terrible civil war which by its end will leave over 10 million Russians dead, with millions more scattered across the globe.

This is about the Russian Civil War that immediately overlapped World War I and led to the Communist conquest of that fallen kingdom. Specifically, this is a memoir from one of the men that fought for the Tsar--the White Russians--against the Communists.

It should surprise no one that the Communists in the Soviet Union that usurped the Russian Empire deliberately distorted, denied, and destroyed the White Russians that survived that war as well as their accounts of those events. That includes their fellow travelers in the Western publishing world, the same publishers that would deliberately destroy the Pulps, sabotage Science Fiction (and still are), and would go on to reformat their heresy into Cultural Marxism and use that to destroy the West.

The lies have gone on far longer, the censorship far harder, than our recent hysteria. It's been a problem for a very long time, so long that most people don't even realize it's an issue because they aren't even aware of it- which is exactly the desired result!

This is not all Mystery Grove has restored from Oblivion. You'll find more of their offerings below; click through to find the store pages.

And all of them are good Christmas presents for me, or any other with an interest in history.

History: We Remember, In September, When The Winged Hussars Arrived

In addition to this being the day that Pinochet took power in Chile and the day that our enemies destroyed World Trade Center 1,2, and 7 it is also this day that the greatest cavalry charge in history occurred. Quote Alexander Macris on Twitter:

On the 11th of September, 1683, an army of 150,000 Ottoman Muslims under Kara Mustafa attacked Vienna, defended by only 11,000 Christian soldiers. The defenders held out until King John Sobieski III of Poland arrived with a relief force.

Sobieski led the largest cavalry charge in history, his force of Winged Hussars charging down Bald Mountain to route and destroy the Ottoman forces. The glorious victory of Christendom is recounted in the Sabaton song "Winged Hussars".

*ahem*

And dramatized in Day of the Siege, which you can find on Amazon Video in the United States and is on DVD, if you can find it.

And if you want to read more on this glorious turning point in history let me suggest a few books:

And to finish this post, I return to Macris:

318 years later, Osama Bin Laden struck back in revenge for the Muslim defeat at the Battle of Vienna, annihilating the Twin Towers in New York City on 9/11.

War has a long memory. Never forget! And never forget the day the winged hussars arrived.

Narrative Warfare: They Admit It's About Stealing Your Kids

More mask slipping. This time it's teachers and what schooling is actually about.

Since the original tweets are now hidden, here are the tweets he’s referencing. Scary stuff if teachers are worrying other adults might hear what they are “teaching.” https://t.co/Tg3ZsMZVdJ pic.twitter.com/ttEU9oKQ01

— Wayne (@wyv_123) August 9, 2020

Which reminds me that you should know John Taylor Gatto. He was on this beat for decades before he died.

This is why the Death Cult doesn't care about their anti-natalism. They know they have the means to steal your kids and poz them into their replacements instead of yours. Don't believe me? Go look at the useful idiots rioting under the Antifa flag. Their narratives routinely include Cultist stories of being "saved" from "racist bigot" families and using their lives to decolonize/queer the "whiteness" they came from.

It's also one of the big reasons driving their impetus to conquer and destroy. They fully expect to seize the people they conquer and coerce them into compliance, psychologically breaking them and them remaking them into zealots for the Death Cult. (This is what university, in particular, is meant to do now. It's why those fresh-faced graduating seniors from high school turn into self-hating undergraduates in record time of arriving at university.)

And that rapid radicalization ain't coming out of nowhere. They want your kids NOW, as early as pre-school, and because you buy into the status aspiration that dual-income li ving is meant to (but doesn't) provide, you let them. Tell the wife to stay home and do her job. Learn to live like your (great-)grandparents, let her school the kids until they're old enough for a proper apprenticeship, then learn on the job from there.

Once you've made that step, you'll be ready for further moves away from what the Death Cult wants and back to what Civilization requires.

Campaign Update: Final stretch, folks. About 65 hours to go before closing. Get that Stretch Goal. Build-a-Mech slots remain, Character Illustration slots, remain, Build-a-Starship, Be/Die in a Book, and Back Cover too. Hit up the page here and get in while you can.

My Life In Fandom: Vash The Stampede & Moral Courage

As if you needed another reason to watch Trigun, here's one to keep in mind if you have children: the show has a teachable perspective.

Anthony Marchetta's analysis of the protagonist's moral character and how he relates to the philosophy espoused is great if you're looking for something entertaining that also has something important to discuss, and in this case it's not just the philosophy displayed and its actual effectiveness. It's also good to talk about the damage Vash does to his character to cope with his guilt, approaching it as if you were taking apart a malfunctioning machine to discern the source of the dysfunction so you could fix it and bring said machine back to proper working order.

No, you're not doing this with young children. Adolescents? Certainly. (Same with Rurouni Kenshin.) You're also not doing so on a binge-watch procedure; this is Prime '90s anime, so it's meant to be watched serially and not all-at-once like you're a starving man at an all-you-can-eat buffet. You need the time between episodes to properly and soberly assess what happened and how exactly these events reveal the moral courage (or lack thereof) of those involved. Yes, this means putting in significant time if you're going to take this route, but by then you've already decided to have children at all so you've demonstrated that you're willing to do long-haul work like this; it's just another layer added to the cake.

And yes, you can do this for a lot of the best Japan has to offer, especially for my favorites, and I say that you should if you're concerned with ensuring that your children don't grow up to be basic bitch surface-skimming media illiterates that are easily suckered by media manipulators. The best works have depth, and this is one of them. Use it to your advantage.

My Life As A Gamer: The Metro City Boys Talk PS5

The PS5 reveal was today. The boys went live to talk about it. As of this post, they're still live so come on in and join the chat.

(Admin: Due to spam, comment approval is turned back on for everyone.)

Narrative Warfare: Motte & Bailey Defined & Demonstrated

This video focuses on the examination and employment (especially in practice, with examples provided) of a dishonest Rhetorical technique commonly used to trap targets in the manner of a Franz Kafka horror story. This goes on frequently online, such that "online debate" is synonymous with "virtual lynching" and as such you see online cults form around such Rhetoricians and be weaponized against designated targets. This is the basis for deplatforming attempts, failed and successful alike, and you will see this narrative warfare used in mainstream media once you see how the magic trick works.

Why? It works. Quoting the video's creator: "A lot of people are naive about the damage done to your reputation by these smears. I've reached out to multiple people for interviews who have told me privately they can't associate with me even tho they have no personal problem. Everytime the accusation is thrown, the stench of the smear gets a little stronger."

This is about power, and this tool is a core component to how men like Saul Alinksy seize and hold it.

#StarKnightSaga Lore: Terra, Center of Galactic Christendom

MOVED to the Study.