The Culture: No One Wants To Do Homework For Entertainment

I said a long time ago that Normies don't work for their entertainment. They sure as fuck don't do homework.

This is not how it's done.

Normies have a toleration for two prior movies or series before they quit in big numbers; this is known to the Hellmouth, which is why Trilogies are a thing and long-running franchises have soft resets between them as well as recaps/reintroductions and why there are few exceptions to this rule.

Feige could easily sort all of this continuity stuff in the opening minutes of this movie--Bond films have used the opening credits sequence to do this, and Jackson did this with the LOTR films with the loredump as the sequence--but he's turned out to be a collosal retard so no we have to witness this incompetence in action.

This applies to Tabletop.

As Macris noted recently, most Tabletop products are bought to be read and not played; they are not real gameplay products, but instead disguised Setting Bibles and Adaptation Pitches with extraneous game shit attached.

This is why, in addition to the Cargo Cult, we have the majority of buyers being Lore Nerds and Worldbuilding Wankers who inhabit a space without engaging with it at all and get mad at anyone--publishers and players alike--that do.

Cargo Cultists that play hate being constrained by Lore as it gets in the way of their autonomy. Real Players, being The Man In Command with agency, make the lore their bitch by assuming the roles of those able to shape it and then doing so.

The reality is that players only care about what happens in play. Everything else does not exist. This is why making players run all actors with agency in Braunstein forms is the hobby that works, why Cargo Cultists keep crying about shit games, and why publishing publishes disguised Setting Bibles because the real hobby does not need or want what they find viable commercially.

No one wants to do homework for entertainment. Feige's just the latest to figure this one out the hard way.

The Culture: Sole Play Tabletop Rises For A Reason

Jon Del Arroz made this observation.

Roleplaying Star Trek and not having to deal with any humans sounds fantastic. pic.twitter.com/iF4ZijRyrI

— Jon Del Arroz | Sci-Fi And Fantasy (@jondelarroz) August 9, 2026

He's been to, and thus has seen, what the common Cargo Cultist is like.

For those unable or unwilling to get admitted to the Clubhouse, this is their go-to option to get away from those losers while staying in Tabletop.

You can't get derailed (unless you're utterly dysfunctional) by some low-rent loser, get held up by the least invested player, get tyrannized by a power-tripping Dexter, or have any other Known Issue in Cargo Cult Tabletop gaming if you just play on your own.

Those who do this, and then want the social aspect, post to social media their receipts. Some do videos on YouTube. Some post to Twitter, Instragram, etc. They use the parasocial aspect to show people how they play the solo game, and in so doing advertise for it; the smart ones get affilate links and then link to the game's online storefront page to get some cut of the sales.

The move is to solve the Known Issues by changing the product to remove the risk factors; you can play when, where, how, and as long as you like if you're the only player- the same value proposition that you have for single-player Vidya, only without the need for electronics.

This is also a losing proposition long-term, unless you want to change how this hobby is defined into a solo pursuit. The only route that preserves the hobby is the Clubhouse.

The Culture: Hawaiian Man Schools You On Things Cargo Cultists Want You To Ignore

Jon Mollison dropped a couple of videos recently. You should see and share them.

He's doing the Good Cop part of the Good Cop/Bad Cop routine.

You can guess who the Bad Cop is.

The Business: The Private WOW Server Scene Keeps Showing Tabletop Cultists Up

This got announced on July 31st.

I keep telling you that WOW and D&D are analogous due to occupying the apex of their respective media and market niches.

We see these private servers keeping coming despite Blizzard going after them because ONLY WORLD OF WARCRAFT MATTERS (as much as FF14 wishes otherwise; they had their chance to usurp WOW and MISSED- that's never happening again).

Look at what they consistently offer: giving the target audience what they want, with superior convience- same as what WOTC did and does, but no Tabletop competitor even thinks to offer. Only that Project Aurora guy has even broached the question- that's how deep in the sauce Cargo Cultists are. If this Russian-based private server can deliver half of what it promises, it will CLOWN on Blizzard hard.

This is how competition within a Network Effect works. You only win if you can deliver what the target audience wants better than the big dog. This can be done in Vidya; Tabletop should be easier, but it's not because Oldfags are retards who can't think past their nose or they'd be doing this sort of thing to WOTC on a regular basis.

This is how Blizzard deals with it: shut them down, then steal their best ideas (and code) to incorporate (in a watered down manner) on Retail and/or Classic servers.

WOTC could have done the same thing; they will not need to going forward because there will be sweet fuck-all to steal.

The Culture: JD Cowan Sees A Pattern Repeating

Last Sunday, the 2nd, JD Cowan dropped a post about the Enshittification of Culture.

He saw in that, thanks to the very pretentious faggot at Write Conscious, that the same pattern whereby Commies turned Adventure Fiction into "Sci-Fi" and ghettoized it into a forum for their fetish faggotry got played out across all of the Culture Industry.

The blueprint for the sort of literary takeover that destroyed OldPub is epitomized by the siffy cultists way back in the 1930s, who then seized the industry in the 1940s and turned a market for normal people into their own fetish playground. The pulp revolution over the last decade specialized in the rejection of their frame of "Don't Read Anything Before 1940" to discover just how much fantastic writing was buried for petty political reasons and deliberately left out of print. You can read more about this specific problem in The Last Fanatics where I discovered it for myself as I was writing about it. If one cares about art at all, OldPub is a failure at preserving any of it.

For a more general picture of what is going on now, I suggest the above video showing how the Literary Cartel used the Fanatic blueprint to do the same thing to the wider industry. Books about nothing written to no one and heavily leaning upon gimmicks and the promise of becoming a micro niche celebrity is what the Literary Cartel decided to do to their industry. It's like its own Oprah's Book Club, complete with the advertisement of religious cult figures for whatever ideology OldPub wants to foist on you.

The video in question, by the way:

There is no saving this without exercising State power to seize the industry, cull the enemies therein, replace them with sane people while in receivership, and forcibly reform the industry back into something functional and sustainable that can justify its existence.

The Business: Ryan Dancey Told You This Was Coming Nearly 30 Years Ago

Network Effects, motherfucker. You WILL grok this.

What did Dancey say?

TLDR: "Most people only ever played D&D. It's D&D or Nothing."

Then he explained why by introducing, for most of us back then for the first time, what a Network Effect is and how it works.

That's how the Open Gaming License, the d20 System, and the best time for Cargo Cultists to be around and making money came to pass before he got replaced at Wizards of the Coast and Yet Another Retarded MBA Faggot ruined the good thing.

Ryan, as he explained at the time, was being magnanimous. He wanted everyone to enjoy the prosperity that The Only Game That Ever Mattered brought, so he made it piss-easy to play nice; save for a few outliers, most Cargo Cultists did.

What Ryan downplayed, but did not omit, is that most of Tabletop, well past the 80/20 threshold, is UTTERLY IRRELEVANT.

Cargo Cultists did not believe him them. As most of them are Oldfags, they still don't; they think that somehow not being bankrupt and out of business means they are relevant.

Lex Luthor Wrong GIFfrom Lex Luthor GIFs

Relevant means "Can be found in Walmart or Target, and is readily played by everyone in a manner that doesn't invite mockery by mainstream media."

No one on Stranger Things played Theater Kid Fag Non-Game or Temu Oldfag Houserule Non-D&D. They played The Only Game That Mattered.

That understated fact, backed up by data at the time, was never contradicted after the fact. The one thing that has not been talked about, but plays a huge factor into the strength of a Network Effect, is control over friction.

The holder of an Effect controls competition within the network by controlling the friction generated by non-compliance.

Friction, in this context, is measured by inconvience. Tabletop is notoriously inconvient; if you're a commercial operation, solving that issue is your top priority, and nothing is more inconvient than getting people to play at all followed by deciding on what to play.

WOTC's new pivot solves BOTH. Going mobile-first solves the Schedule Your Fun part; you can play whenever, however. Going All You Can Eat Brand Crossover Buffet solves the what you play part by standardizing the form of play while increasing the options within it.

Going against this increases the friction, exponentially so now that WOTC will be mobile-first, which is detrimental to convincing people to go with your Temu Tabletop offering over Official D&D in commercial terms. Only non-commercial alternatives, which don't compete on the same level, are viable now- and no, that doesn't mean serial busking on Kickstarter. That means going with a different organizational model entirely, such as the Clubhouse, which solves the same problems differently.

Don't take my word for it.

This is, of course, terribly frustrating to those of us who release products intended to be played. But the reality of the network effects and switching costs of RPGs is inescapable. If people didn't buy for art and lore, there'd be almost no indie industry at all.

— Archon | Autarch Games (@archon) August 4, 2026

These people would be better off making this shit as glorified Coffee Table Art Books like Dinotopia, with playable notes as a separate PDF for download.

This is why I say that Tabletop is no longer commercially viable. There is only non-commercial alternatives and delusional Cargo Cultists.

The Business: Too Many Don't Grok How Normies Work And Thus Miss Why WOTC's Move Matters

At GenCon, Wizards of the Coast confirmed what I said was the play: the Fortnite strategy.

People do not grasp what this means.

All of the Brand collaboration releases for Magic are allowed in all formats. You want Aragorn and Optimus Prime and Y'stolha Rhul in your deck? You can.

This is exactly what WOTC's target audience--Normies, Casuals, Tourists--want: all together, all in one place, all under one ruleset, all Officially Sanctioned, in a mandatory crossover environment.

That is the Fortnite strategy. That target demo is a Low Agency Demographic. They do not trust Unapproved People. They only trust Brand because Brand is Approved. Brand is Authority.

The Big Deal here is granting permission to these Low Agency people to do what their Revealed Preferences say that they want: to have an All You Can Eat buffet of Approved Stuff that they like, priced cheaply, to play with in the Approved Sandbox.

They will not--have not, never have--just done it themselves. They do not accept the validity of homebrewing. They do not accept the premise of users just doing things. They show, again Revealed Preferences at work, that they need permission from someone they view as the authority on the matter- which in this case is the Brand. WOTC knows this. Hasbro knows this. Their Brand counterparts either know it or quickly catch on.

This goes well beyond HERO allowing Marvel vs. DC fights to be resolved.

As it is in books, so it is in games: NORMIES WANT "THE SAME, BUT DIFFERENT" ALWAYS!

That means NETWORK EFFECTS! Who is the Big Dog in Tabletop? WOTC and D&D. What do Normies only play? Official D&D. What does this move do? Load up the only game that matters with all the stuff that Normies want in the only place they will ever look. This is a very full, and growing, Walled Garden. Couple that with the announcement of Official D&D going mobile-first and you can see the plan--the pivot--in action.

All the Cargo Cultists are still deep in denial.

So are a lot of others that ought to know better, but due to those influences still refuse to see reality for what it is.

This is not a Death Of Physical. This is a Death Of Schedule Your Fun. This is a move towards what Normies proved--and have proved for over a century, by Revealed Preference--that they reward: CONVENIENCE AND FRICTIONLESS ENGAGEMENT!

Being mobile-first means that they can and will play Official D&D at work on their breaks, between doomscrolling binges, on their commutes, etc. and they will happily drop a fiver on a new race, class, etc. if it means they get a leg up on everyone else at the table. All that remains are the AI-controlled bot players and Referees.

Yes, you will live to see Snake Eyes, Optimus Prime, Estiniam Wyrmblood, Cloud Strife, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Tirian Fordring team up against Abaloth the Devourer in an official D&D module and the Normies will eat that shit up, making WOTC and their partners BILLIONS.

And because of this, "RPGs" will be defined as "Officially Licensed Brand Crossover Let's Plays".

No one will ever look at your Temu D&D again.

Commercial viability outside of this is OVER. Yes, even for Palladium; they'll just be among the last to die.

There is this, and there is the Clubhouse.

The Collapse is not only here, it is Past Tense.

The Culture: The Real Hobby Incentives After-Action Review To Upgrade Their Performance

Jeffro comments on Dunder's running adventures in the BROXT's UMBROS campaign.

This whole scenario makes no sense. Like, I really don’t get how guys like Dunder can hang around the scene for as long as he has and then still do this off the wall stuff. Judging from the way this discussion has gone the past couple of days, it is likely because he lives in kind of a cloud of people that reflexively fight any attempt to elucidate matters. Why would you put a canned OSR product into a bro campaign? Why? We already know from Trollopulous 2020 that players like doing whatever they want whenever they want with no planning. We know from Trollopulous 2023 that a couple of pages of one-page dungeons is easily enough to sustain ten or twelve 4-hour sessions. How do you look at all of that play experience and say, “man… what these campaigns need is some dude’s product dropped into it”? And didn’t we see earlier this year Dunder was talking about how he had made up all of these Settlers of Catan boards to represent kingdoms and [blah blah blah blah zzzzz] huh?! dude! what?!! Seriously, what is wrong with you?! If you are running D&D, then you need just enough of a scenario so that the players can be delighted that they have successfully stymied and thwarted whatever it was that you were trying to do. Any more than that is wasted effort. But wait. You drop this megadungeon product into the campaign because you are so taken with it. AND THEN YOU MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO GET TO IT. Okay, this alone is just awesomely funny. The BrOSR I remember would have teased Dunder relentlessly for this. Personally, I love this image of the plucky survivors running this massive gauntlet, dying in droves, players baffled and exasparated, everyone wondering just what in the heck is wrong with this campaign, and then finally… desperately… after ten or twelve or twenty sessions the players have arrived at the ENTRANCE of the adventure location and… a gigantic wolf eats half of them while they are vulnerable from breaking through the ice. The two surviving dudes get to the entrance somehow and realize that they can’t get in because someone sold the key. And the DM says that, yeah… well if you had all kept it you would have died from it because it was radioactive. Guys. That is a freaking masterpiece of game mastering awesome. IT SHOULD BE IN A MUSEUM. I mean, that is just deep meta-commentary on the nature of life, art and gaming. This is all going on in a backdrop of exploding frogs, some kind of wheelchair goblin charity benefit, and then something to do with an entire solo session with some random guy just because Dunder felt bad that he died pointlessly in the first session. But no, seriously. Here is what is so stupid. Dunder puts Fun Adventure Product™ into the campaign. Yeah, okay. Fine. Stupid. But whatever…. He then makes it practically impossible to get to the Fun™. Sotto voce: everyone has fun anyway because playing D&D is fun and stupid stuff happens no matter what you do Dunder then at every opportunity beats his breast, talks about how challenging it is to run a bro game, confesses to all in Evangelical fashion that “he has not arrived” and that he is still learning, still growing, still making mistakes. Dunder… one of the best Braunstein players in the world. He is just a babe, see?. A novice. An initiate. He has not yet attained to even a tithe of the gaming brilliance of the worst player from Trollopulous 2020. And on and on and on. He is putting out these session reports of all kinds of weird and crazy stuff. But it’s all wrapped in the framing of “something is not working. SOMETHING IS WRONG.” He has run what to the entire rest of the world is a “campaign”. And theme of the campaign was: *the players never got to the campaign.* Man that is amazing. Like I mean seriously, this is the zen koan of D&D campaigns. That is just such a deep comment on the life prospects of Gen Z right now. Incredible. Art imitates life! And that flushes out the other thing that is completely off about all of this. Let’s say Dunder made an intrinsically unplayable scenario. Let’s just agree that happened, because everybody seems to think this is the case. Even Dunder. But here’s Dunder… he has this stupid idea for a campaign which will never work. And then… all the players just dutifully feed themselves into the meat grinder week after week because, after all… that’s just what you do. You go to the table and you just do whatever it is that the DM his hinting that you are supposed to do. Because, I mean, there is just no way that you could play D&D any other way. I mean, that’s what D&D is. It is a game of pretend. The people who sell it pretend that it is a game. The DM pretends to create an adventure. And the players pretend to play it. Then the DM pretends the players won. Except you didn’t. The key was radioactive and there was a wolf at the doorway to fun. How is it that nobody involved ever thought for a moment that maybe deciding in advance what the campaign was supposed to be about was never going to work? Don’t you know by now that you just lay a few things out and then something will happen and then piece by piece, everything develops and fits together somehow and then something wild happens that is colored by things that were developed across a dozen sessions and OH MY GOSH THAT WAS JUST THE MOST AMAZING GAME. The idea that the players even went along with Dunder’s stupid idea for even a second is what really gets me. “This game is stupid and unfair,” said at least one ungrateful and unimaginative player. Maybe they won’t own up to it now, but SOMEBODY said it. And yet somehow none of those players ever attempted to take control of the game. “This game is not about getting into the Game Module of Fun™. This game is about me. This game is about finding a Troglodyte that looks like Steve Buscemi. We are going to use funds from a Goblin Charity front to create a gang of mutated freaks to take over level three of a dungeon that doesn’t exist yet. And Troglodyte Steve will be my henchman.” Or whatever. This is Meffridus 101. And no, Meffridus did not teach people to play AD&D RAW even the weird and dumb rules that the gross nerds never figured out. Meffridus taught players to take control of the game. The way Oghma did when he visited Trollopulous. That’s the craziest thing. None of these people washing up into a bro game ever thought to do that? Really? I don’t get it. If none of you can walk into an unfair game and then just make up your own victory conditions, then I don’t know what to tell you. You failed Bro 101. You all don’t need any of this #SuperAdvanced Braunstein theory. You need to go back to body builder memes and ridiculous hashtags that are weirdly inspiring. At any rate… thank you for running the bro campaign that proves we need bro campaigns. I guess it had to happen to someone. And honestly… that is just about the most Dunder thing I can imagine.

- Jeffro Johnson

Read on Substack

Don't think that the Bros don't criticize their own. That happens.

This is exactly that in action, and wiser heads will pick up what Jeffro laid down here.

"Wait. Why are we trying to do it all at once? Why didn't we secure the entrance to the Moon Pool first, set up a base camp there, and secure the road back to town? That would allow further pushes to start closer to the action, let parties react faster to developments, and allow for serendipitous opportunities to manifest that we could capitalize upon. Every time we get to another location like this, we move the base camp up and repeat the process until we're camped outside the target location and we have a secure logistics train all along the way."

Jeffro has a clear point here about seizing control of events: "Meffridus taught players to take control of the game. The way Oghma did when he visited Trollopulous."

What I wrote above is the most obvious form of doing just that.

At every point there is plenty of opportunity for player-driven action. Securing the route from town to the Moon Pool alone means beating a road down, clearing that route of bothers of all sorts, establishing and maintaining patrols, and then setting up the secure base camp--with supplies, Expert Hirelings, defenses, etc.--on the other end like any other serious expedition into dangerous territory.

Once that is done, action predictably goes two ways. One direction goes down into the Moon Pool as intended. The other goes out into the surrounding area, tracking down threats and resources- the former to kill, the latter to secure. Revenue from both forms of activity go into the maintenance of the camp and its garrison securing the route back to town.

Meanwhile, the Moon Pool needs to be swept and cleared of both threats and treasures while securing the route through it. Once secured, it must be occupied. The base camp slowly extends and expands into the Moon Pool in the wake of the expedition's sweeper teams. Meanwhile, the surface camp can now expand into a small armed town secured by a tower or motte as valuable resources extracted from below get used to build up the surface plant; maybe this becomes the seat of a rising adventurer's claim of dominion.

Does this slow the process? Sure.

Does this also make it something other than futile throwing of Polish mine detectors into the field? Also yes.

There is a considerable lack of a sense of agency at play here. A lack of currency does not mean a lack of economy; those prices become abstract Units of Account, used as a measure, but realized instead through non-coinage forms of exchange: oaths, contracts, in-kind barter, etc. as we see in a lot of tribal and clan-based societies.

This is a fantasy of agency- of being the Man in Command. Act like it.

The Culture: There Are Others On The Road That The Bros Blazed

I knew that others were similiarly dissatified with Cargo Cult norms.

Some of those others, with more experience with Vidya than Tabletop, used that Vidya experience to attempt to address the issue. This guy that gets paid to run Official Edition games went with that Vidya-informed approach and made a "MMO".

Project Aurora is literally the craziest undertaking I've done in my life. A Dungeons & Dragons online MMORPG the takes place on a VTT within a persistent living and breathing universe where its focus is not just the D&D game, but a full-fledged commitment to provide as much content inside the D&D game as well outside of the D&D game.

A Universe where the sheer number of people in a D&D game from where there is 6 players and 1 DM isn't just doubled or tripled, but significantly scaled more than 10 fold while keeping continuity, player agency, social interactions, professionalism, community, the ability to forge a legacy making a name for yourself being the forefront of everything that is Project Aurora.

Just, the Attempt alone to make something as vast in concept is mind-boggling to even think about as you've probably clicked on this video to learn more of what the heck this project is, what's it trying to accomplish, will it even succeed and is it worth getting invested in.

This is, for all intents and purposes, an Analog Private Official Edition Server. I took a look at the YT channel's catalog.

Yes, it runs out of a Discord server. Yes, it presumes Cargo Cult norms where it does not explicitly contradict them. Yes, it brushes up against concepts ajacent to--but surpassed by--Braunstein (specifically West Marches).

Yes, he's trying to get paid doing this. That's likely where he's going to run into problems once he gets big enough.

But he's got the incentive to come to where we are. Send that man a copy of Winning Secrets and direct him to BROZER and UMBROS. Then tell him about the Clubhouse.

The Culture: Observe Cargo Cult Cognitive Dissonance In Action

While I have little respect for Glickner, and none for that goblin with the receding lairline that shits out copy for him, that Derek guy gets it right more than not and Glickner if he in his very narrow range of expertise tends to be right half the time.

Derek said that Hasbro would push WOTC to spread their Fortnite strategy in Magic: The Gathering to The Only Game That Matters. WOTC is doing exactly that.

This is going to work. It worked for Magic. It will work for Official D&D because WOTC's target audience--those hopelessly yoked to Beyond--are exactly the sort of Casuals, Tourists, and Normies that want to do The Current Thing and have no problems treating D&D like an all-you-can-eat buffet.

They want it all. They want it in one place. They want to pay one price to get all of it. They want one set of rules to play all of it. That is the Fortnite and Roblox model AND IT FUCKING WORKS! They know it works because they have the data showing that it works, and they have sufficient institutional knowledge of what Network Effects are, how they work, and why they work that way to prove that this is the smartest strategy for them, Commercial Corpo Tabletop.

For the hobby as a whole? That's a different question.

Being that RFC is made up of Cargo Cultists, they cannot fathom why despite acknowledging that this is going to work and work like gangbusters there is no viable form of competition within the commercial sphere- and that includes everyone that begs on Kickstarter for money.

To the extent that they are played at all, it is because they are within D&D's Network Effect and leverage that to their advantage. That said, they aren't played nearly as much as boosters and publishers want you to believe; none of them solve the Six Session Suckout, the dropoff of interest is akin to that between Normal and Savage raiding in FF14-

Not exaggerating; that sort of "Fuck This Shit I'm Out" has been consistent across the generations, as Ryan Dancey revealed over 25 years ago. The Brand matters, as it is the heart of the Network Effect.

This is why Only D&D--real D&D--Can Kill D&D.

So just play D&D--real D&D--and leave the poseurs selling Temu D&D behind.

The Culture: This Oldfag Is Lying To Your Face

This is a flat-out lie.

Tenkar is lying to you.

You CAN run B/X (despite being inferior to AD&D) with wars front and center. It's not that hard; Bros, using AD&D, do this on a regular basis--I did this twice in as many months, and I expect more before the year is out, and that's just my campaign; UMBROS, etc. have battles and wage wars just as often or moreso--and you can have your standard adventuring stuff take place interlaced with the batles, logistics, and diplomacy. The warfare gives context to the adventuring, which in turn gives meaning to the warfare.

Tenkar is an Oldfag who is so deep into Sunk Cost Fallacies that he wouldn't know what not-drowning in them is to save his life. Such is the life of an Oldfag Cargo Cultist.

You can see the lack of skill at reading comprehension, his inability to draw inferences, to know how Order of Operations in use of material works (TLDR: if the rules don't say otherwise, it works as it does in reality so consult real world sources) as he drones on.

Don't believe the lies. Wage your wars. You don't need to invent new rules or use external addons; the trick is scaling.

The Culture: The Bros Showed How Simpler And Easier This Way Is

It really is this simple.

14 people are better at entertaining each other than one guy that thinks of himself as a brilliant world builder, fantasist, author and stage manager.

- Jeffro Johnson

Read on Substack

The Cargo Cult and the Techno-Corpos at WOTC are doing the meme.

from Imgflip Meme Generator

The Culture: Reading The Manual Avoids The Issue, Go Figure

This is another "READ THE MANUAL, RETARD!" moment.

Let me save you the time: Run the game as written and you won't have this problem.

Why say this? Because the Bros are forcing the issue.

The thing about Braunstein is that it solves the biggest problem in all of hobby gaming: getting players. No players exist to play the wargame on your shelf that you bought twenty years ago. No players exist to play in that obscure rpg that you have wondered about for your entire life. Every gamer I have ever met has entire shelves of unplayed games and practically zero opponents. Start thinking about everything through the lens of a Braunstein, and… suddenly everything works. Getting games on the table ceases to be a chore. Incorporating people that have no idea what is going on becomes not just feasible but also fun. While conventional rpg sessions seem to devolve into weird humiliation rituals, Braunstein events are more akin to a party. Play is simply happening in this decade in a way that was not happening previously. We know this is the case because BrOSR play generates new referees all the time whereas conventional “forever DMs” have nothing to show for their efforts.

- Jeffro Johnson

Read on Substack

The Business: Behold Grifting Beast Shilling Crap No One Needs For Games No One Plays, Again

When I say that most Cargo Cultists are Consumerist Product Pushers constantly shilling on the position of "Your game is shit. Buy this widget to fix it" this is it.

Civilized societies string these leeches up and hang them from lampposts.

You don't need this if you have a competent game. You make your own as you go, and as such you care about what happens because YOU HAVE SKIN THE GAME!

This? This is Frustrated Narrative Faggot Syndrome in action, the refuse shat out the anus of a frustrated fake writer and repackaged as a Tabletop supplement hoping to score some sucker's paycheck. Even the Pundit doesn't crap out this waste of wood pulp.

You need a real game (AD&D1e), a blank map, some dice, and about 15-30 minutes. This, at a leisurely pace, gets you what you need to get started.

Everything else is a waste of time, a waste of money, and a waste of attention. Everything. Else.

The Culture: Oh Look, That Thing The Bros Talked About Turned Out To Matter After All

The thing Oldfags say never happens happened.

Oldfag PRESUMED that a greeble did X, when the rules state that it did Y.

Why did Oldfag do this? Calvinball.

When you go "Rules LOL, do whatever, LOLSORANDOM ain't I hip and cool?" you end up making these kinds of fuckups because you never take the time to do the one thing that always prevents this fuckup from happening.

What would that be?

READ!
THE!
FUCKING!
MANUAL!

Lazy faggot got caught out and now he has a sad about it. Off to the Carousel for you, Oldfag. Time to Renew.

Play the game. Play as-written. Do not deviate. This means that you read the rules, study the rules, and master the rules as they are- not as you wish they were. This may involve exercising reading comprehension skills long rusted to due decades of disuse, but that's not my problem.

The Bros are right again.

The Culture: Yes, Point Out The Obvious One More Time

Oh look another Oldfag having to pivot to softer targets after breaking his ego on the Bros.

Again, a summary:"This system shifts player motivation from "killing everything" to finding creative ways to secure loot. Because combat is highly lethal in older editions, players are incentivized to use traps, distractions, and clever negotiation to avoid direct fights"

Again, "Fucking duh." Again, too many Commies and retards in the hobby so this needs to be made brick-to-face obvious.

That's nice. Why are they after the treasure?

It's not for the XP. It's for what that treasure buys, which XP is symbolic of: power, prestige, property.

You need it to pay the Training costs. You need it to pay medical costs. You need it to pay Upkeep costs. You need it to do Spell Research. You need it to do Item Creation. You need it to hire/retain Henchmen and Hirelings. You need it to build our your man's power structure--the castle, the town, the farms, the mines, the manufactories, the housing, etc.--needed to seize and hold land, land in turn needed to be the base from which your man strides forth to achieve his objectives and win the campaign.

All of that needs metric fucktons of gold and gems to do, as it is the fuel and the lubrication that keeps the war machine that is your man going.

Doing all of that cannot help but to lead to acquiring the experience needed to accomplish the Objective; Gold For XP merely formalizes this into a playable useful abstraction.

Which would not need explaining if this OldFag actually played the game properly.

The Culture: Can We Not Argue For Failed Ideas FOR ONE FUCKING MINUTE?

Oldfags repeating old errors.

No, retard, this is a bad idea.

"What idea is that?" you ask. Hit Locations.

50 fucking years, and this retard says "Slow down your combat resolution with a mechanic that only works when it's a man-to-man duel because otherwise you're wasting everyone else's time." Yes, that's been the consequence every single fucking time this has been done. Only in videogames can you do this at-scale because that automates all of the bitchwork that is required to make this functional.

Meanwhile, bog-standard Hit Points has proven itself far easier to implement, adminster, and scale across multiple media FOR GENERATIONS.

Fuck this retarded faggot. Hand him a hemp necktie and give him the Troon Retirement Option.

The Culture: Yes, Dungeons Are Good, But That's Not All Of The Matter

OSRfags confess their defeat by the Bros through studious avoiding of mentioning them while using their arguments is a theme for this week.

Case in point, below:

To save you the time, a summary: "This video features a discussion between Joe, Tim Shorts, and Paul Turner about why modern Dungeons & Dragons (5e) adventures—often written like long, novel-style modules—can detract from the creative joy of being a Dungeon Master. They argue that the best adventures should be defined by a dangerous location and a reason for players to explore it, rather than a rigid, predetermined plot."

To which anyone with the sense of a syphlitic surfer slut will say "Fucking duh" but NarrativeFags Are Not People so they lack this.

What is missing is WHY GO THERE?

Braunstein answers this by making that location be somewhere that either has something your man needs to achieve his Win Condition, has something an enemy needs for theirs, or otherwise is useful to control for strategic purposes. Yes, even the smashing of a random monster lair has uses to it; it provides a location that your side can control and thus operate from in turn.

Dungeons, once they're more than That Place To Jumpstart That First Wave Of Newb Mans, are ready-made defensible locations for ambitious actors to exploit for their own ends. Overworld lairs are the same way; they are no different than the castles, temples, guildhalls, etc. we see in other locations on a campaign map.

Which also means those in the dungeon should also be using them as bases to run their own operations from.

The result is that any serious move on a dungeon or lair should result in a Braunstein session, assuming you have enough players on hand to toss around playable actors like that- and in a proper Clubhouse, you will.

The Culture: The Oldfags Never Bothered To Figure Out Why So They Had Nothing To Pass On

Not one untrue word said. NOT. ONE.

Here is the evidence we do have: There were a number of campaigns being run was TINY. The expertise of setting them up and running them resided in a SIMARLY SMALL NUMBER OF PEOPLE. All campaign instruction documents before AD&D were rough prototypes. No earnest development could have occurred because each campaign was distinct from all others in its theme, concept, and scope. The people playing in these campaigns may have some nice war stories. But they have no idea what was actually going on due to the rules being entirely in, for example, Dave Arneson's head. (This is the “just asked Wesely” cultural ethos of the era.) Any commentary on 1:1 time type rules will immediately give you insight into the level of understanding of gameplay dynamics a person has. (See Lewis Pulsiphers's remarks on that from an old White Dwarf magazine as a PRIME example.) We have published material that shows that key figures were unfamiliar with second order effects of the rule and what type of play structures it could feasibly support. Wargamers of the sixties were not a preliterate culture. Many of them are still alive today. What did they do when there was a resurgence of interest in campaign play? Did they suddenly decide to show up with the “practice and demonstration and mentorship and play reports and conversations at the table” that would help us achieve success at the table? NO THEY DIDN'T. In fact, they did the opposite of all that. They elected to outright oppose the efforts to recover campaign play. Because “not even Gygax played that way”, “only David Wesely can run a Braunstein”, etc. AD&D was the first time in history that anyone elaborated on the subject of campaign play dynamics at all. Apart from Gygax, every one of these “preliterate wargamers” walked away from the very game rules that even make such campaigns possible. They didn't know what they had. And there would be evidence to the contrary if they did.

- Jeffro Johnson

Read on Substack

The Oldfags, too many of whom being Boomers, did what Boomers do and refused to pass on their patrimony.

The worse part is that what Jeffro describes here is something I've seen across the board from Boomers over the years. It's not just a Tabletop thing. They genuinely do not comprehend why they do (or did) what they did, only that it works/worked that way (at the time) so of course it always does so what's the problem? Why bother questioning a damned thing? It Just Works That Way.

This is why they get mad when you show the receipts. You are telling them, to their faces, with facts and evidence, that no It Does Not Work That Way You Fucking Retard and had you bothered to Read The Fucking Manual and properly comprehend--work through--what you read you'd be agreeing with us and not being an arthritic anklebiting asshole.

Now you know why I've come to call them "OldFags".

And those who echo them might as well be Oldfags, so they get the brush too.

The Culture: These Wankers Are Pathetic

This was a two-for-one.

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.