Lots of problems solved by their Cargo Cult and Theater Kid priors being taken out back and shot.
Meanwhile, over at Substack, Jeffro recently talked about unfucking this crap.
Why would you “convert” your game to a Braunstein? This is just weird framing all around.
Consider:
1) You can delegate monsters to an adversary player in order to work out how a particular entity will respond to player activity.
2) You can set up a session Braunstein in a single region of the campaign map and then fold the results into the overall campaign state.
3) You can run more traditional style adventure scenarioswhile exploring a mix of competition and cooperation both during session play and also in down time.
4) You can set up a fluid conflict between two distinct adventure parties to be played out over several sessions.
5) You can run a sessionless battle scenario over a span of several weeks with troop movements and a mix of strategy and tactics.
None of these options require a consensus or significant cooperation from more than a handful of people for any length of time.
The only person preventing you from doing this is you.
Not there won't be resistance, but until the AI DMs come online it's Dexter or Death for these people so wear the black hat and Dexter them for their own good.
That resistance has its root in its wrong assumption of what this hobby is, as Rule of Thule explained.
It’s not an objection to something happening elsewhere, it’s an objection to something real happening—to the game being actually played.
Consider an abstract game played in a vast abstract space. Within the spaces are two kinds of players: Navelgazers (Ns) and Conquerors (Cs). The Ns believe that all players are Navelgazers and have a shared common understanding of rules that don’t actually exist in the game such as “don’t be unkind towards the pieces of other players” or so on.
The Ns are playing a fundamentally different game from the Cs because they presume restrictions and protections etc. which do not truly exist (i.e. they are not actually rules of the game). When they see something that is the product of real play, they will immediately identify that it doesn’t accord with their presumptions. “No one who was trying to Avoid Unkindness [or other such presumptive descriptors] would have engineered this situation.”
As soon as they see signs of the game being played to win, they are immediately on the defensive. This explains much of the maligning of powergamers, as Meffridus intuitively understood, because they represent the same threat: that someone will undo the fake game by leaning into the real one.
David Sirlin talked about this concept in the context of versus fighters. There are players (he calls them “scrubs”) who come into a tournament with the idea that e.g. certain moves are “unfair” or “cheap” and, despite the obvious signs that these moves are clearly powerful, will be shocked and appalled when they are blasted to pieces by other players “abusing” them.
The scrub’s false internalization of the rules has caused him to become blind to the game’s actual rules and has led him, on his path of player development, to not only navigate false spaces but to arbitrarily close doors whose opening is necessary for him to achieve his real potential.
In the arena of RPGs, we see that scrubs have found ways to form coalitions. They have the ability to aggregate in collectives. Their particular internalizations are not only sanctified by Rule Zero, but each distinct collective can claim membership under a united Rule Zero collective—so long as they acknowledge all the others—and they feel emboldened to claim that no one can tell them they aren’t playing the game, even when they’ve thrown out half the rules and added others.
These coalitions are akin to a rogue tournament scene where everyone involved must abide by the new made-up rules, and anyone who insists on following the plain rules can be exiled. We can see the effects of this everywhere. I think it’s no coincidence that Sirlin’s book is titled Playing to Win.
A One-Two for Roll For Combat. First, last week's show.
And two weeks ago.
Glickner and Derik repeatedly display that they do comprehend how fake, broken, and dumb the Cargo Cult is and yet they immediately turn about and continue to double-down on the dumb at every turn instead of acknowledging the trend and how this means that their model is on its way out. They cannot acknowledge, if not comprehend, second order effects. Neither can they perceive trends and directions.
Last night Jeffro and BDubs1776 come back two years later to share with you the Triumph of the #BROSR and TTRPG's bright future!
No one comes at us anymore with any teeth.
They are all found out as fake-assed faggots, especially the Oldfags, so said ankle-biting assholes have pivoted to softer targets. They refuse to Git Gud; they sucked out just like the Theater Kids they whine about.
We have won, decisively, and as such we are moving on to fix problems that the Oldfags could not and cannot even comprehend.
Note the BrOSR’s departures from the old guard:
Wesely’s Braunstein One: Each player has three goals. Players are scored based on whether they perform their goals.
Wesely’s players: “Okay, let’s just read our goals to each other and see if there is anything we can collaborate on.”
Jeffro and Budbs after reviewing 12 playtest reports on session Braunsteins: Braunsteins are better without assigned goals and without point scoring mechanisms. The key thing for producing great play is honestly… for the players to lean in to playing their roles. When the dust finally settles, nobody will be able to deny who the winner was.
Gygax’s: “As this book is the exclusive precinct of the DM, you must view any non-DM player possessing it as something less than worthy of honorable death.”
Gygax’s Players: “Derp derp… Gary didn’t use his own rulez! Lolzololzo”
Jeffro: This game is too big for me to master on my own. I need all of the players to be familiar with the rules so that they can help me run the game.
The BrOSR: Here are a dozen ways to remove the referee from the position of being the bottleneck on campaign activity. Here is the best way to distribute the load he bears across every player in the campaign so that scaling becomes possible.
The old guard did not isolate what made these games work. They did not identify what was holding campaigns back. When Gygax attempted to make a giant leap of refinement in the medium… they turned on him because of his attempt to walk back rule zero type thinking.
The old guard was committed to chaos and disorder from the very beginning. About the only reason they speak up at all is to take credit for creating the nongame that D&D quickly became during the eighties. But they don’t even deserve credit for that.
People that had no idea what in the heck the early D&D pamphlets were talking about were quite up to the task of inventing that without any help from anyone in Wisconsin or the Twin Cities.
We not only drive the bus, we designed and built the bus. It's our bus now; you're just riding in it and being a bitchy backseat bozo. Either step up or fuck off.
Ignore the wider culture faggotry. Skip to the Theater Kid Roasting Hour.
The Oldfags can't (and won't) contend with the Bros, so they have to go at easier game like Theater Kid fags like that wanker they roasted.
Then came the Oldfag Yells At Clouds segment featuring Bob The Bullshitter where they whine impotently about what Wizards of the Coast are doing, when the correct response is "Pirate that shit, buy used or turn those PDFs into POD-ready files and use Lulu for private guerilla products." (Yes, that works; no, it's not necessarily cheap.)
And yes, Bob's a Tourist clout goblin twat who only does Calvinball.
The Bros will steamroll these people as the restoration of the real hobby spreads, in large part due to it not costing you money to play.
The Comments confirm his observations about why how you roll your man matters.
The hangup people have over this is that they still think that they are married to their character sheet. That's because they play wrong.
This stops being an issue once you play proper--you play Braunstein--and thus are forced to stop being married to a sheet; the rules of the game force you to play a roster of mans, each of whom is in different places at different times doing different things, and you can add mans to that roster at any time.
Having a roster means you cease to be overly invested in any of them, and being overly-invested is a dysfunction of the hobby that plays right into the rest of the Known Issues in Tabletop.
Last week, on the 13th, Roll For Combat did a panel about Muh Settings and Muh Mega-Modules.
You will see this repeatedly: admit that both Corpo C-Suite and the Bros are right, then CogDis right back into Cargo Cultism.
Admit that Wizards of the Coast wants to go all-digital, remove all the friction from playing, and switch over to being a Live Service model because it is the superior and proven way to make Conventional Play commercially viable and then turn right around vaccuuming Copium so hard that you'd swear they'd suck a Gas Giant to death in an hour over how they continue to justify their failed model.
Admit that Braunstein is the superior and proper mode of play for the hobby, and then turn right around and talk about Narrative and DMs being petty shits is okay and other Known Issues.
Admit that both sides are superior for meeting the hobby needs of adults with careers and families, and then turn right around and talk about how this hurts product development of the very PDF Merchant dogshit they're continuing to spew out like Jeets shitting on the beach.
Admit that all of the commercial pressures are fucking them in the ass, that WOTC is doing the smart thing on their end (while admitting that the Bros are doing the smart thing on the hobby end tacitly), and then turn right around to snort Copium like Tony Montana at the end of Scarface.
Yuri Bezmenov famously stated that "a person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell him nothing, even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents and pictures, he will refuse to believe it."
He elaborated on this concept in several key ways:
Irreversibility: Bezmenov argued that once demoralization is complete, it is "irreversible" for that generation, requiring 15 to 20 years to educate a new, patriotically minded generation to replace them.
Resistance to Proof: He claimed that even showing a demoralized person "authentic proof" or taking them to a concentration camp would not change their mind; they would only understand reality "when a military boot crashes his balls."
Core Definition: He summarized the tragedy by noting that "exposure to true information does not matter anymore" because the demoralized individual's perception of reality has been fundamentally altered to reject sensible conclusions.
This is what the Cargo Cult does to its True Believers, and just like the Useful Idiots that Yuri talked about regarding Communism there is no future for the Cult in a world where WOTC gets their way (and they will, so far as the commercial side is concerned) and the Clubhouse freezes them out seeking them as the zombies that they are.
Bifurcation is now inevitable, and the Cult is doomed; their own members admit it.
They play Calvinball. They can only say they know why you should not, but they don't believe it because they go on to hem and haw over Not Being Cheating Wankers.
This is the Soup Aisle, and why it deserves to be crushed.
They can't agree to just READ THE FUCKING MANUAL AND DO WHAT IT SAYS!
You do not waste time with agreement-incapable people. You crush them and move on; even Wizards of the Coast, for its own reasons and perspective, gets this and is doing what it can to achieve it.
None of these graybeard oldfags would even broach the subject if weren't for the #BROSR reviving the Real Game and with it the Real Social Institution that makes it viable, playing the game good and hard for extended periods of time, posting the receipts early and often where people can easily find them, and talking about it loudly and proudly where everyone can hear it.
Fuck these wankers and their Basement Boys cult cells where they do the Get-Along Gang chasing the ruby while putting up with Calvinball bullshit while shilling for Endless Product Slop from PDF Merchants. I look forward to all of them cutting their own "I Quit" videos as the gravy train dries up- all of them. You know who you are.
How useless is this twat? So bad that another D&DTube LOLcow had his number.
Don't tell me that the Cargo Cult ain't feeling the pain when their YT mouthpieces are falling off, having to either pivot away or quit entirely.
What did our LOLcow say about him that nailed it? "He had nothing unique or valueable to say about Dungeons & Dragons."
When a LOLcow has you dead to rights, give up and walk away in shame. That's why his rants get any attention at all, despite being himself being a total shill for Current Edition and the Cult Non-Game of the Cargo Cult as preferred by Wizards of the Coast, because he's got the Stopped Clock thing going for him: he hits just often enough to maintain an audience, who otherwise laugh at his way off base bad takes (as we see with him being positive about FD "I'm a Resentful Spiteful Mutant Commie Traitor Screaming About Muh Oppresshusns And Muh Reparationisms" Signifier).
This is what opens the noetic space for the Bros to take over, and they are taking over because these desperate dingbats are going to keep stealing from the Bros to stave off their own demise while WOTC crushes them from the corporate level by freezing them out.
You think I joke about the corporate stuff. Nope.
This is on top of the digital-primary pivot. They are seizing full control of the Network Effect. You either get in line or get cut out to wither and die.
Most people in this scene aren't even Kevin Siembieda; they won't be able to stand on their own, so they will wither and die, so they will bend the knee and get in line so as to stay in WOTC's good graces.
Meanwhile the Bros, eschewing the idea that this is a commercially viable hobby at all, cuts off the Cargo Cult's line of retreat by freezing them out of the Clubhouse.
Hammer, meet Anvil, with the Cargo Cult and their shit-tastic takes on what this hobby is and how it works as the sad sacks stuck between them to be struck repeatedly until they either get hammered into shape or get broken into bits. Count on the latter. Why?
Summary (taken from the video): "A former game designer analyzes the changing landscape of tabletop RPGs and the financial realities of industry giants versus indie creators. The discussion explores new crowdfunding models, direct-to-consumer sales, and how companies are engaging with their audiences differently."
FORMER game designer.
This is no different than asking Sandy Petersen about Current Edition. It's a bait-and-switch scam meant to clickbait you into buying his bullshit.
What is that lie? "Indie is beating The Game That Matters!"
Meanwhile, the Mammon Mobsters and Death Cultists at Wizards of the Coast repeatedly tell people in their legally-mandated quarterly earnings calls that they have no such competition. Not only that, but that print products are not worth producing and retail is not worth bothering with in pursuit of their objectives to make The Only Game That Matters into a Billion Dollar Brand.
WOTC targets Normies, Casuals, and Tourists- a demographic that is does not go out of their way for a God-damned thing. They don't even know that older D&D editions, let alone any indie dogshit stinking up DriveThru or bilking buffoons on Kickstarter. Those people only use D&D Beyond. They only play Current Edition. They neither know, nor want to know, of anything else. They are the supermajority of people in this hobby. Beasty Boy here is taking you for a Ruse Cruise by claiming otherwise.
You want to know where WOTC's going? Pay attention to their Investor Calls; that's where they give the straight dope to those cutting the checks (and have attack lawyers on speed-dial if you bullshit them).
There is no "winning" here. WOTC is leaving the Soup Aisle behind. These grifters on YouTube are just flat-out lying to people to keep the adbux and Patreon Dollars flowing instead of getting a real job.
Remember the massive Proof Of Concept that proved the BROSR correct, the Drakonheim Campaign? They're back, they're on Dunder Moose, they're talking Winning Secrets, and they got Jeffro and Rule of Thule to come on with them.
You can all sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up now. The receipts are to the moon! You can read for yourself when you back Winning Secrets.
There's plenty of commentary to be had. Players deserve less. Frustrated Novelists deserve nothing. Muh 50 Years Are Always Wrong, and The Bros Proved Themselves Right.
It took a while, but they did hit on the core of the "problem": Wizards of the Coast, and TSR before them, used Economies of Scale to artificially set the price below what would otherwise be profitable specifically to get prospects into the Acquisition Funnel and thus link them into the User Network.
This means that everyone else has to get into that level or get dumped, and that's before "Who will play this with me?" comes in to derail the purchase.
The reality is this: Dead Tree--something you can hold in hand--has value, and intangible digits does not. Secure locations you can gather and play in have value. Useless widgets that exists only to Spread The Brand like you're appropriating religion to shill cheap crap to suckers does not. The entire "industry" is in the Upside Down and needs to be brought upright again.
This is why not only do I not fear the collapse, I welcome it; this should never have become a Consumerist pursuit of Pop Cult Idolatry, but here we are and it's long past time to smash all the idols- and, so doing, restore the hobby back to its roots as a hobbyist avocational pursuit as it was back when this got started. We need the Clubhouse and the Real Game, not whatever that is.
This one is good when it comes to Jeffro going on the attack.
He's good about hammering this point: Dungeons & Dragons is a Braunstein.
He's also good about hammering that wankers like Grifting Beast constantly try to steal from the Bros in order to get in front about the parade. His culture commentary is some of the best partes of this Winning Secrets promotional tour.
Sunday saw Jeffro go on with the Superversive crew.
Winning Secrets is going to be a world-shaking book, first in Tabletop and then--because Tabletop exercises stupidly-outsized cultural influence globally via Dungeons & Dragons--into other culture-shaping media, where it is not out of line to conceive of Jeffro being a hidden pillar in the future culture to come by the end of the century as Gygax and Arneson was for the 20th (and preserved that of the 19th via Appendix N).
This not being a Gaming show, we get to see Jeffro talk about the intellectual and spiritual side of the hobby.
You want the other side of the matter? You'll get it here.
Jeffro and Rule of Thule appeared on the Gab over the weekend.
Daddy Warpig mentions a Tweet showing that the Bros weren't making shit up.
The TORG Infiniverse campaign, and EVERY SINGLE PUBLISHED SOURCEBOOK, MODULE, AND THE INFINIVERSE NEWSLETTER ITSELF ran on 1:1 campaign time from April of 1990 until it ceased publication in 1995.
Jeffro mentions that SJ Games handled Car Wars the same way.
But no, the Bros are going further. The Bros are solving the problem that turns most prospects off from the hobby because competing media does what Conventional Play does so much easier, better, and cheaper- something Wizards of the Coast is painfully aware of and seeing it as a problem.
It's now clear that not only did the Boomers deliberately lobotomize the hobby, but many of those still alive from back then have shown their ass regarding their own competency at the game.
Nope, all those old-timers did--after 50 years--is provn that They Played The Game Wrong For 50 Years.
The Bros, simply by READING THE FUCKING MANUAL AND FOLLOWING ITS RULES EXACTLY, have proven by doing that they play the game right and thus are better than the OGs at the game and thus the hobby.
There's so much ass-madding over this.
Fuck them. The Bros brought the receipts. The Bros have evidence; they have asspulls. The Bros win, and the result is that YT grifters and strivers are moving (and have moved) to get out in front of this repeatedly to steal credit for it (e.g. Grifting Beast, Earthnote, etc.) while riding a rising tide changing--fixing--the hobby to farm clout and boost their YT and other social media profiles and thus make them better at shilling for paymasters.
Note something that a lot of detractors omit: Jeffro mentioned that the Bros got to where they are BY ITERATION VIA TRIAL AND ERROR. Step by step the Bros pulled all of what the Boomers tossed down the Memory Hole back, figured out how it worked, and (as of now) not only got each part working but successfully reconstructed the real machine that those Boomers originally published and got it operational again.
"The rules were not incomplete for Braunstein play."
The Real Game was complete. People played it wrong and the Boomers did sweet fuck all about it. They just willfully lobotomized the game. That should have led to outright seizure of the company instead of what went down, but that would have inconvenienced Boomers so no- and that's before the Blumes and the Buck Rogers heiress did their damage.
The Bros recovered the Real Game, and restored the Real Hobby. The machine is spreading in its use; all that remains is the organization that needs that machine, which is why the Clubhouse is now ready to return.
