The Culture: No Tolerance For Delusional Cargo Cultists Anymore

The delusion is obvious here.

"Everyone" is playing The Only Game That Matters. They are not playing Faggot Bullshit Theater Kid Pirate Fanfic Crapfest.

There, saved you a few hours of wasted time. Go play D&D.

The Culture: The Tribal Chief Is Still Around

Jeffro is on Substack.

He is active there.

Behold an example of what he posts there.

The "folk tradition" that sprung up around D&D is not a game. It is a failure to play a game. There is of course a modest range of well established variations within the tradition. You have innocent children who play pretend while occasionally roll dies or make rough sketches of monsters and wizards. You have unimaginative adults who hide behind a screen and pretend that the players have only just barely managed to beat the big bad evil guy with their last hit point. You have paid actors that pretend to be amazed and utterly dismayed with their coworker improvises a brief soliloquy while their PC bleeds out in a pivotal scene. But these diverse manifestations of the folk tradition have one thing in common: they are not games. Some people are explicitly pretending to play a game. Others are clumsily or perhaps sometimes charmingly tinkering with and playing WITH the pieces of an actual game and occasionally dabbling with some actual procedures from a game. But the activity they are engaging with is not itself a game. Now, one might be inclined to raise any number of objections at this point. Most of us are familiar with the passages from the rules texts and the accounts from the bad old days that are appealed to in this context in order to lend an air of legitimacy to this "folk tradition". This is of course in vain. Because anyone that is committed to this activity to any degree will tell you that the first rule of this "game" is that there aren't any rules to this game. Only the most imaginative sort of people, they assure us, can look at a relatively complex game, ignore 80% of it entirely, change the rest at will, and then throw out all of the rules entirely during the heat of play because, after all, why would you want to "break immersion" and "kill the sense of dramatic tension" by pausing play in order to consult a rules manual? This is very persuasive to some, I suppose. And sure, the phrase "playing D&D" is of course today synonymous with all of the hokum and balderdash I have alluded to above. And all of the people that pretend to actually believe these things insist very loudly that they are having a great deal of fun. Nevertheless the fact remains they are not playing a game. And the disciplines of game design and game development have nothing to do with what they are doing and what they advocate for. The people that make products to sell to such people could be called any number of things, but in no world could they honestly and accurately be described as being game designers. The correct term, I think, would be "hacks".

- Jeffro Johnson

Read on Substack

You'll find more of that there.

The Culture: It's About The World, Not Your Man

Dude makes a valid point.

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.

The Culture: Or You Can Do Braunstein And Get The Same Result Faster And Easier

They keep trying to get in front of the Bros.

They are again doing the meme.

from Imgflip Meme Generator

Meanwhile using Braunstein play I had no problems getting things to happen once players bothered to stop turtling.

Battle Report: The Sack Of The Elves' Capital by Bradford C. Walker

It Was A Bad Day To Be A Knife-Ear

Read on Substack

And there's been consequences in that event's wake immediately that are ongoing and effect everyone else. Players must do more, and players deserve less.

The Culture: Proof That They Reject The Evidence In Favor Of Their Dogma

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.

And we know how he went out. The Cargo Cult won't be so lucky.

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.

The Culture: Ross and I Talking About The Clubhouse

The podcast I recorded a while back is now up on YouTube.

This episode got recorded before UMBROS took off, before the Frenly Clubhouse stood up, before John Norman succeeded in his IRL efforts, and so on.

A lot of what I have written about, and said here, has started coming to pass. The future belongs to us- not WOTC, not the Soup Aisle.

The Culture: Remember To Not Give Money To People Who Hate You.

You don't have to give money to people that hate you. You have options.

PDFs are free. I have 432 PDFs at home. POD, on the other hand, well for that you need to ask around and be prepared to pay- especially if you want a high-quality hardcover.

Remember that Captain Harlock is the friend of all free people.

Because, for the users, Piracy is nothing more than a calculation between convenience and cost.

The Culture: Dunder Does Dropship TONIGHT!

The MOOSE GETS LOOSE TONIGHT!

I'll be there in the chat. See you there.

They're talking Dropship.

The Culture: They Say They Have Locked In Simps So They Don't Care

Roll For Combat offers its own explanation for D&DTube's collapse.

"We grift on Patreon and Kickstarter, LOL!"

Yeah, that won't last. Just ask The Butterface That Fucked Five Guys And Ended Globohomo.

What is barely touched upon is the confirmation that LOLCow Garipay said: they have nothing useful or interesting to say.

Instead they pivoted towards the insulting proposition that simps on Patreon, Subscribestar, Kickstarter, etc. are so locked in and down that they can ignore YouTube. That is the talk of a cult leader (or wannabee) and not a honest hobbyist, or even an honest merchant and once it becomes clear that the cult leader isn't even Jared Leto levels of charismatic that means they need to deliver and they have nothing.

This is how they end themselves. Good riddance. You did the meme.

The Culture: You Can Smell The Desperation From These D&DTubers

Speaking of D&D YouTubers stealing from the Bros.

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.

The Culture: Good News, Everyone! Another Useless D&DTuber Quits

Another useless twat gives up.

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?

Because Fuck Them Why GIFfrom Because Fuck Them GIFs

The Business: You Can't Run From Your Fuckups Anymore

On Thursday of last week, Black Lodge Games cut this video on RuneQuest.

Ars Magica got this right.

The trick is to design the rules of the game to be the reality of the world and then present those rules in the manner that your man would comprehend them in situ. Runequest somehow fucked up what Pendragon/Paladin/Prince Valiant and Stormbringer/Elric! as well as Call of Cthulhu got right.

Doing this is how you ensure that, no matter who picks up the manual, they operate the machine the same way (so long as they actually follow directions). What has gone on instead is what too many Official Setting projects do: become Setting Bibles for Intellectual Property development.

Furthermore we see that these guys became lorenerds for their own creation. No one fucking cares about your fucking lore. Players need to know the stuff that matters to play here and now; if it does not directly and immediately matter to play, it is irrelevant and should be discarded. If rolling a man looks like it involves doing homework, you fucked up and you deserve to fail.

This is what Ars did, across its editions, which is why it still gets played by its cult-like and cult-sized following. You don't need to know shit about Europe in the Middle-Ages; you need only to know what your man's specific situation is, and how he relates to everyone around him. Everything else can be done as you go. Hell, even the "Hermetic Magic" is made-up bullshit (vs. IRL Hermetic Magic).

AM is what Steve here wants RQ to be.

This why RQ is on borrowed time; its fuckups are catching up to it, and to Chaosium, which threatens both game and publisher in ways unique to them unless and until they correct course and put out the proper products that people have consistently revealed--there's that Revealed Preference thing again--that they want.

Dry academic bullshit ain't it, chief.

The Culture: The Bros Have Won So Now Comes The Conquest Phase

Friend of the Retreat Jon Mollison made this post over this past weekend: "The Archipelago of Emergent Play".

Below are the salient points:

• Five Blogs, Five Angles on the Same Idea: "These five blogs, and the others listed in the right hand column of this blog, form a coherent intellectual ecosystem. Each one approaches the same core questions from a slightly different angle."
• What Actually Unites These Writers: "... the connective tissue is clear: Rules shape behavior more than intentions do, Emergent narrative over authored narrative, A wargame‑adjacent worldview, Simple rules → complex worlds, The GM as referee, not author
• Small Pebbles, Big Ripples: "They’re about how systems shape behavior."
• Why This Differs From Most RPG Discourse: "Instead of echoing forty years of RPG discourse that asks, “How do we tell better stories?”, these guys ask, “What happens if we stop trying to tell stories at all?” 1And the answer, the emergent answer, is way more interesting than anything a harried GM could script."

The result is that the BROSR is having an outsized influence on a hobby scene that has outsized influence on popular culture. The receipts are in the wholly independent arrival of others on things that the Bros previously presented, argued, demonstrated (with copious recepits), and proved beyond a reasonable doubt to be correct about what this hobby and medium is and how it works.

And we are seeing those threatened by the dying Status Quo of Endless Product Slop and GM-centric/Narrative-centric bullshit already trying to contain that influence in the most Mean Girls manner possible- and it's not going to work, not when one of the most important practice of the Bros--to show the receipts--is also being independently adopted and used.

I have to disagree on this one. We don't do Skinsuit playing at my table. We use 1:1 time to allow players to interact with the world in more immersive ways than just adventuring. They can do their training, research, shopping, etc. outside the table as the world progresses. Then…

— Matthew Tapp - Barrows & Borderlands (@SpaceCowboyVFX) April 5, 2026

More people will come forward doing the same thing: independent confirmation of independent arrival at the same conclusions that the Bros have made, with receipts proving that doing so vastly improves and upgrades the experience into something that justifies its existence apart from competing media (because the Soup Aisle's Status Quo cannot and does not, which is why it loses).

There is no benefit to the Cargo Cult's mode of play. Everything they do is done better by Vidya and boardgames. Everything.

Only the Real Game--recovered from the Memory Hole by the #BROSR--can compete against these other media and win, and it does so by doing what they can't. This is what the PDF Merchants, the Theater Kids, and the Soup Aisle won't admit- and they won't for a damned obvious reason.

One need not be a Commie to have one's interests color one's one judgement. The Bros exposed the reality that the hobby is not commercially viable when played properly, which threatens the Merchants and Corpos, so they are incentivized to bullshit to protect their paychecks. This, ultimately, drives freakouts like we see about people playing the game properly no matter how they arrive at that conclusion.

The Business: Seattle Pulls A Bait-And-Switch

GaryCon went down over the weekend. There was some Wizards of the Coast-related announcements.

Wizards of the Coast's D&D Design Team made an appearance at Gary Con XVIII and discussed the future of the brand at a press conference on March 19, 2026. Big news came out at this press conference, which was led by Gary Con founder Luke Gygax (see “ICv2 Interview”) and the new head of the D&D franchise Dan Ayoub, starting with the announcement that Luke Gygax will be collaborating with D&D design team on upcoming projects. Gygax specifically noted that he will be lending his expertise on the Greyhawk setting to future projects, and mentioned a possible Melf's Guide to Greyhawk book coming down the road.

“I grew up playing in Greyhawk,” said Gygax. “The names on the Greyhawk map are named after not only my family, but my friends and relatives. It is a place where I experienced all those adventures as Otis, the Ranger... the places we visited in those early campaigns are all seminal memories for me.”

Ayoub discussed his passion for the D&D brand at length, and acknowledged that he is aware of how D&D design may have gravitated away from fan expectations in the last several years. He addressed the gap in new release information that occurred at the end of 2025 into February 2026, which was primarily due to team transition, and limitations on the team's ability to block releases due to the creation of new content. Ayoub also committed to an annual unveiling of the next year's D&D lineup at Gen Con, starting in 2026 (for the 2027 lineup).

Ayoub also addressed plans for the new Season model for D&D (see “'D&D' Roadmap“), which span roughly three to five months depending on the product release. Ayoub is an advocate of the module format, so aside from the banner releases announced for each Season, there will also be modules on the way.

For retailers, Ayoub reaffirmed the company's dedication to publishing print copies of D&D books. He also reaffirmed the D&D brand's commitment to supporting retailers:

“(The hobby channel) is the beating soul of D&D,” said Ayoub. “I think it is something we've lost sight of a little bit. We've started sharing plans with retailers our plans to support retail...part of the plan behind Seasons was to help support retail.”

I wouldn't get your hopes up.

According to @LGosumba who said he is part of the team working on it with Luke, he seems to say no WotC internal personnel is involved

— Nobleshield (@Nobleshield) March 21, 2026

The Pundit continues.

So in other words it's not really a wizard's product at all. It's just licensed... https://t.co/bleFQyZT8P

— RPGPundit❌ (@KasimirUrbanski) March 21, 2026

Which means it's not really part of the Brand. The target audience--Normies, Casuals, Tourists--will not engage with it, especially if this is a print-primary product when Wizards of the Coast have already pivoted to being digital-primary and root the business on Beyond and its service-based model.

The Soup Aisle still thinks that print is going to be primary, that retail matters, and that their siloed cult cells in their basement playing Calvinball is the hobby. Like it or not, WOTC's C-Suite is correct to see that going digital-primary is the smart play because it removes the friction that's been a Known Issue for decades. Beyond is now the root of the business because it is superior in recruiting, training, and retaining players from those three demographics; they pay, they pay early, and they pay often with little difficulty because C-Suite's making the game resemble what they're already familiar with in competing media.

Tabletop, as a business, is driven by Network Effects. That means control over friction. Normies (et. al.) treat friction as failure, so they always go with the least-frictive option; this is why they accept Beyond and other digital formats over what the Cargo Cult demands is still the way to go- even when the data says otherwise.

WOTC isn't stupid or wrong to go digital-primary when all of their competition--Vidya--is already there. We already have online play via Discord as normal; using Beyond is just a fait accompli once you've made that shift for Normies.

This is the pressure from above crushing the Cargo Cult. The Clubhouse is the pressure from below. The collapse is in process for Conventional Play, and anyone thinking that this changes a damned thing is maining Copium straight into their veins like a junky. Either way, the Cargo Cult is on borrowed time and is counting down to extinction; what will remain is WOTC's Walled Garden and the Clubhouse- and the Soup Aisle will have nothing.

The Culture: We Are Now Seeing Second & Third-Order Network Effects

Late last weekend, Jon Del Arroz cut this video on the end of Rise of the Merlin.

Near the end he makes plain the same thing that Professor DM did with regard to his YT channel: if you are not talking about The Dominant Thing YOU DO NOT MATTER!

YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Google (i.e. SEARCH ITSELF) deliberately tanks whatever is not the dominant thing in a niche; this is a Second Order Network Effect because what is happening is that one technology utterly dependent upon Network Effects exerts its power over a lesser (and yes, Trek is lesser than Social Media in itself) Network by culling all discussion within its network of anything but The Thing On Top within that niche.

This is before any deliberate manipulation. The technology, by its nature, does this.

You can't blame Elon, Dorsey, the lizardman at Meta, the Illuminati, or whatever for this. This is entirely on the Nomries themselves. What the technology did is give real power in real time to the Revealed Preferences of the anonymized mass of Normies, Tourists, and Casutals that dominate all niches within the global culture industry.

You are seeing, in real time, just how difficult it is to fight against an undesirable position when Network Effects are so strong a factor in How Society Works.

No, you can't Thousand True Fans your way out of this; mass media, by its nature, cannot be splintered down to such small silos that you can have that be a viable option and yet maintain the mass media cultural institutions- nevermind seize control of them.

What this means is that a lot of discourse about the corpo-controlled mass media brands and their Network Effects is 100% wrong.

Paramount gave no fucks about JDA's book. Paramount brought out the big guns against Axanar, and Paramount is dog-fucking Seth MacFarlane over The Orville. The Revealed Preferences are the tell. Books DO NOT MATTER. Comics DO NOT MATTER. Film, Television, and Streaming matter.

We see this repeated in Tabletop. WOTC ignores most of Tabletop because Not-D&D DOES NOT MATTER. Games Workshop only cares about minis (still, for now, the cornerstone of their business model) and tie-in mass media (i.e. videos and Vidya). Not-40K? DOES NOT MATTER. Not-Fantasy? DOES NOT MATTER.

Normies, et. al.--i.e. THE AUDIENCE YOU'RE AFTER--will not, even if God Himself said so, turn away from the Brand until it is so disgusting and repgnant that it triggers a critical mass of them all at once; then something equally ruinous (for us) happens- they switch off THE ENTIRE CATEGORY permanently, barring successful rehabilitation attempts (rare, expensive, but possible), and nothing will convince them otherwise- and no, you're not going to rehabilitate it.

Network Effects are the strongest Walled Garden system that there is. They reinforce Brand Loyalty by making the friction for defection so high as to be ruinous for Normies to do so, until it is preferable to amputate that cultural element entirely than suffer futher.

If you want to win, you have to be seen by the people you're fighting over. Like it or not, "Complain about Brand, then offer The Same But Different alternative actually fucking works and moves the needle. No one would care about the Bros if we didn't talk about D&D. No one cares about what Josh Strife Hayes says if he didn't talk about World of Warcraft. You get the idea.

You are not fighting this war as an equal. You are waging an insurgency. Your job, right now, is to generate and sustain support by the population. You cannot do that outside the Network, so you cannot succeed outside the Network; you have to learn how to leverage it to your advantage- the Bros successfully did this by changing the discourse about The Only Game That Matters such that YT grifters try so hard to either steal them for their own gain or to defame the Bros to the same end.

Therefore a different approach must be taken, one that well-meaning dissidents will balk at, but the tells from the corpos show--by their fears--what needs to be done.

Make your own Branded material. Corpos play dirty; you gotta play dirtier to win, and the tools they use--information disparties, global arbitrational arbitrage, etc.--are now at your command also.

Make that 40K fanfilm. Host it where GW's lawyers get told to pound sand. Hide your names behind global privacy rules. Learn how outlets like Caribbean Thule publish and distribute actually banned books and shamelessly copy their methods; this includes their finances. Make that Trek series; host it where takedown requests get routed to /dev/null. Make a 40K rulebook that isn't shit, share the PDF freely and include a POD-friendly version so folks can run off their own copies at-cost via unlisted Lulu uploads (or something like it). You get the idea; this is Samizdat Territory, so act like it.

Then promote the hell out of it; show off your hardcopies on your socials. Screen it at cons; have QR codes on hand for folks to access it online. Get folks to donate to Uncle Gene's Better Space Literature Society and be surprised (LOL) at getting your own copy of The Trek Show That Paramount Won't Make arrive in a 20 disc BD boxed set a month or so later.

"But that's-"

No one cares. Normies run off vibes; corpos went hard after Axanar because it has better Trek vibes than anything official so the Normies embraced it as legit. That is what must be done; make things with superior vibes and shove it into their faces. Trek, Star Wars, D&D, 40K- you name it, it can be done. Now YOU control the Netwok Effect, and that vast mass media audience will default to listening to YOU.

That's what the enemy understands--go read Edward Bernays; this has been in the open for over 100 years--and it's time to face that these are the rules of the game.

The Business: Does This Look Like ANYONE In Tabletop To You?

I'd mentioned previously that my interests intersect with some moneyed people now and again. One of them, pitching his business incubator, had this as his sales copy. I've edited it to remove the hard sell salesman vibe. Just imagine this with far more obnoxious formatting.

Let me tell you the simplest way to make money online. Not the prettiest. Not the sexiest. But the one that actually works.

Because the truth is most people trying to make money online are doing everything backwards. Here’s the reality: you don’t need a funnel, you don’t need followers, you don’t even need to know how to solve the problem yet- you just need a market with money and a problem they desperately want solved. That’s it.

Here’s the simplest system on Earth.

1. Find a market already spending money. Competition is good. It means wallets are already open. Trying to invent some genius, never-seen-before niche is the fastest way to starve. Instead, find a group already being sold to such as realtors or local businesses. If people are selling to them then there’s money there.
2. Identify their #1 painful problem. Every market has one. You don’t even need to know how to solve it yet. Just identify the pain.
3. Send 50–100 personalized messages every day. Instagram, X, Email, LinkedIn, Cold calls- doesn’t matter. What matters is this: don’t talk about you; talk about them, their problem, what it’s costing them every month. Then tell them you can help fix it.
4. Give them a call to action. “Want help with this?” “Want to talk more about this?” “Want me to show you how this works?” Simple.
5. Follow up. Most deals happen in the follow up, so follow up until they say “yes” or “please fuck off.” Both are useful.
6. If you can’t solve the problem, find someone who can- seriously. Partner with someone. Hire someone. Contract someone. Just make sure you know your costs BEFORE you price the offer.
7. Collect payment. This is the part where it becomes a business.
8. Do everything possible to get them results because results create the next step.
9. Ask for testimonials and referrals. Now you have proof. Now the flywheel starts spinning. Clients → Results → Testimonials → More clients.

Simple. That’s it. No funnels. No ads. No viral content strategy. Just find problem → offer solution → talk to people.Every day.

This is NO ONE in Tabletop.

You think there would be--the VTT guys are closest--but no, they're not. Wizards of the Coast--as often as they shoot themselves in the foot--are still the closest because they, at the very least, have the language necessary to describe the problem while everyone else refuses to accept it: FRICTION.

Network Effects serve to reduce, and in time to remove, friction if you adhere to the Network; if you defy it, friction increases exponetially because you're swimming against a deep and powerful current.

The VTT guys were the last people to make any serious progress towards solving the Tabletop problem before the Bros came along to solve it by correcting the frame of reference; the only viable form of business in Tabletop is the one that reduces friction to ZERO, which being a PDF Merchant (yes, that means selling anything that isn't The Game That Matters) or YT shillfag (ditto; they admit that their own metrics punish them for going away from The Game That Matters) does not do.

What is the biggest friction point in Tabletop? Playing the fucking game! What does being a Rule Zero jobber do? What does not playing The Game That Matters do? What does ankle-biting the Bros do? Increase the friction by wasting time relearning a game!

Therefore the only viable business left in Tabletop is offering a secure Third Space with a curated, gatekept membership of committed participants. Not shilling on YouTube. Not shoveling product. Running the fucking Continental.

The only viable business left--if you deign to call it such--is the Clubhouse.

The Culture: The Big Proof Of Concept That The Bros Recovered Winning Secrets Returns!

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.

The Business: The MMO Guy Gets Why Network Effects Work

Josh Strife Hayes, again, uses World of Warcraft to explain Network Effects in gaming.

Dungeons & Dragons also set an impossible standard for Tabletop.

Yet that standard is what Normies, Casuals, and Tourists expect and demand from all Tabletop products. They expect to be able to go wherever and play The Game--not your game, The Game--and if they can't do that, they quit.

Tabletop, therefore, cannot be a "Thousand True Fans" thing and Wizards of the Coast knows this. That's why their smarter, more successful moves are those that reduce or kill an element of friction keeping those three segments from playing the game (and thus connecting to and engaging with the Network Effect).

Publishers that refuse to acknowledge this are those that fail. Ryan Dancey recognized this, which is why he tried to reduce that friction by introducing the Open Gaming License (reducing/eliminating friction between products). Some of his successors at Wizards of the Coast have tried to do this from other angles--this is why Beyond is now the primary arm of the D&D busienss and not any form of retail; digital Walled Gardens have far less friction than dead tree books and in-person meetups--while others fucked things up.

What Network Effects do is reduce friction in the most fundamental manner: the ability to do the thing at all. The larger the Network, the easier it is to do the thing and the more likely that other friction-reducing powers come to bear to further reduce overall friction inhibiting Doing The Thing. If you play D&D, you are likely to Do The Thing; if you play it properly--i.e. as the #BROSR has described--in a Clubhouse environment that is globally-networked that reduces friction to near-zero; you'd have to play WOW to get a comparable situation.

Just Play D&D.

The Culture: Jeffro Talks Winning Secrets With Jack McCarthy

Jeffro was on with Jack McCarthy last Sunday.

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.

The Culture: Jeffro And The Superversive Crew Talk Winning Secrets And The Culture

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.