The Business: Operational Tempo & Proper Campaign Play

There's something else that needs to be kept in mind when we talk about how Vidya beats Tabletop for a lot of adventure game stuff.

Vidya, for certain games so far, does a far better job realizing how a man in that environment has to think and act to succeed than on Tabletop. The game that illustrates this best is BattleTech. Both the Harebrained Schemes adaptation and the Pirahna Games one handle all of the actual campaign stuff better than tabletop because it's shoved into the faces of the typical player; you have to master logistics to win the game.

Streamer commentary makes the experience so much better.

Notice that both of these games have their own ways of doing Conventional Play's disregard of Strict Timekeeping because both of these are single-player games with no pressure upon them by hostile actors; they are both games with Narrative at their core, so you have to trip Plot Triggers for things to happen that matter- just like Conventional Play.

When you go to an Open World mode of play (which both of these videos do), even that is gone. You can do all the refits, train up pilots, go wherever, and the only costs that matter are time and (sometimes) availability. Yes, this is exactly same thing as the old joke about JRPGs where you have to Save The World Right Now, but you spent as much or more time doing sidequests than the main quest because that's where much or most of the game is.

As JD Sauvage said on Twitter the other day, Operational Tempo matters. Conventional Play does not have this. It cannot because it is taken as Referee cheating players, and due to several infamous episodes that got turned into comic strips and running jokes there is substance to that seeming.

Pressure comes from outside the player. Want your man to get that loot in the dungeon? Got to get down there and grab it before some other man does, and that someone else is run by a player- not a NPC run by the Referee.

That player can be you, as you may be forced to bench your first choice man due to what goes down at the table and have to resort to a backup choice to secure that bag instead. (Get used to the idea of having a roster of mans when you play in a real campaign, rotating them on and off the bench as required.)

That player can also be someone else, whom you do not know, and you will not know until that treasure is taken or otherwise removed from the campaign and thus no longer relevant.

That's how things really work when you play a real tabletop adventure game, and you play it in a proper campaign environment. It will not feel like a Narrative; it is not play-acting. It will feel like war, like business- like the competition that it is. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose- and sometimes you win or lose for reasons that have nothing to do with you.

And the experience is vital to achieving the full power of the tbletop adventure game as a medium.

The Business: What Makes A Good Rules Manual

(Following from yesterday's post.)

The qualities that define a competent rules manual are the qualities that define a competent technical manual.

That manual must tell the reader--the user--what the widget is, how it works, and why it works that way. In particular, the manual to a fantastic adventure wargame must presume total nescience on the part of the reader; the writer must write for a user that has never played any such game before, has not even heard of the hobby before, and therefore must write for a target audience lacking familiarity with hobby-specific jargon and linguistic shorthand.

For most hobby products, the writer must also take into account the common literary competency of the target audience. In Gygax's day, that was a far better-read and cultured man than what we have now. Today, in practice, this translates as "Explain Like He's Five" and "Assume No Culture Familiarity Of Any Kind".

What does this translate into? An outline like this:

The Culture: The Search For Good Hobby Game Manuals: Heroes Unlimited (Part Six)

We're finishing up this look at HU2e today.

This being a superhero game, superpowers are a thing. The procedure for determining powers varies by Type (Phyiscal Training doesn't have to do this), and that is adequate. One can--and should--critize the game for being incapable of replicating the existing characters upon which these Types are based, but in terms of technical writing what is there is okay.

The gear and guns list is the same that Palladium uses in every other contemporary or futuristic product line that it has in its catalog. Barely adequate, especially as costs are frozen in time and what is available is never updated to account for changes in availability or technology. (Especially laughable for firearms, which have changed greatly since the 1980s.)

There is no consideration given to campaign play at all. There is no consideration given to scenario play. Nothing at all akin to the treatment of adventures and campaigning that AD&D1e provides in its manuals, and--again--this is consistent with Palladium products across the board.

Palladium consistently publishes under the assumption that the user is already familiar with Cargo Cult norms, and with playing (A)D&D- and doing it wrong. This is the only reasonable conclusion to draw from the combination of the lack of care given to matters that competent game manuals always address, and the published opinions of Siembieda himself past and present.

The only conclusion to be drawn is simple: as a technical manual, it is almost fit for purpose; the reason for it being a failure has a lot more to do with failures of game design than failures of technical writing because you can't write rules or procedures that DO NOT EXIST.

The sad thing is that there is just enough present in the manual that one can see that a useful product can be had, but that it requires the user to finish the job that he should never have to do because he bought this product to do that for him.

You don't buy a Glock expecting to build it up from parts, half of which you have to buy separately or fabricate on your own initative; you should never tolerate a product professing to be a fantastic adventure wargame (i.e. what a RPG actually is) that doesn't deliver all of the necessary rules and procedures necessary and proper to fulfill that function. Yet that is commonplace with Palladium products.

It does not need to be.

Fixing this can be done, and I will explain tomorrow where to start and how, despite the fact that nothing can (and thus won't) be done until Siembieda retires and sells off the company.

The Culture: The Search For Good Hobby Game Manuals: Heroes Unlimited (Part Five)

(Following from yesterday's post.)

Injury is part of the game. Your man's going to get wounded, fall sick, get poisoned, suffer infections, etc. and need medical attention to overcome and recover.

A competent rules manual treats this with due seriousness and provides the user a clear set of procedures to handle all of this at the table. Incompetent ones half-ass it or ignore it.

Let's compare, shall we?

from Imgflip Meme Generator

The Culture: The Search For Good Hobby Game Manuals: Heroes Unlimited (Part Four)

(Following from yesterday's post.)

Character Advancement. Both games are Class/Level systems. Leveling up is part of both games.

from Imgflip Meme Generator

AD&D1e: DMG pg. 84-86 explains what Experience Points are, how players earn them for their mans, how to weight awards and when to do so, and that when a player's man reaches the threshold to level up it is only to indicate eligibility to do so. That man still has to depart from active campaign activity and go into mandatory downtime to undergo Training, itself determined by how well the player played that man's role in the party (i.e. ROLE-PLAYING, defined RIGHT THERE clearly, concretely, and conclusively) via grading of performance by the Referee in a time measured in weeks and a price tag measured in thousands of Gold Pieces.

In just those few scant pages two entire procedures are laid down, explained in detail, and the reader walked through them- including variations thereof for Name Level characters and Bards. Contra decades of complaints, this is competent technical writing and game design; a reader--a user--knows exactly what to do, how to do it, and why it works that way.

HU2e: Page 26 is where you'll find what passes for the same thing, and all Palladium products are like this. Literal "just use whatever" is recommended, along with a list of sample awards that don't even try to account for difficulty, or incentivize core gameplay behavior, or provide a clear rubric for grading performance (including on what grounds to do so). A reader--a user--gets NO INSTRUCTION AT ALL about what to do, or how, or why on the presumption that the reader is already familiar with this from other games (i.e. has played some verion of D&D).

That is wholesale abdication of responsiblity as a designer, and thus forcing the technical writing to omit a core objective to the manual. Not even The World of Synnibarr is that bad, and that game is one of the worst ever published. "Just make it up!" is not fit for purpose. It opens the door to "Level up Because Reasons", which quickly becomes "Because Plot" and turns it into a storygame.

That's the third major failure, both in the writing and in design.

We'll see if it gets any better tomorrow.

The Culture: The Search For Good Hobby Game Manuals: Heroes Unlimited (Part Three)

(Following from yesterday's post.)

There's more to the game than shooting, punching, or stabbing people in the face.

Today we're going to move on to the things that many games address with a Skill System, something AD&D1e is not built around at its core.

Defining Capacities

The Culture: The Search For Good Hobby Game Manuals: Heroes Unlimited (Part Two)

(Following from yesterday's post.)

Kitting Your Man

AD&D1e: As per PHB p. 35, a Fighter starts play with 5d4x10 in Gold Pieces. I roll a total of 15, for 150 g.p.- not bad. This gives me some options. A Fighter also begins play with four Weapon Proficiencies, and he can act as a Serjeant (DMG p. 31) instead of hiring one to do that job for him.

Taking an eye at my man's future (if I am successful), I avoid weapons that I could not also use as a Thief or Bard; a quick consultation with PHB pp. 19 and 118 puts me at Club, Dagger, Longsword, and Sling. I intend to pick up Shortsword and Dart later on.

I choose Leather and a Small Shield, a Longsword, Dagger, and Sling w/ three dozen Bullets (approx.) for my man. I check with the Referee on Henchmen availability, and some Light Foot are available; I get five and they get Clubs, Slings, and Padded armor. Together we're a skirmisher and scounting unit for hire. I spend some more on vessels to carry shit and we're set- and hungry for paying, profitable adventure leads. No other power choices to make either, so aside from jotting down a description he's done.

HU2e: My man has 5d6x100 in U.S. Dollars to work with (18, so $1800), and only IRL contemporary gear to choose from. He has a 89% chance of owning a car. (44, yes; 1d6 years old, 2 years) He's presumed to have some personal possessions, a part-time/low-paying job, and an apartment.

He'll live in an apartment above the gym he manages, and works part-time at the gym. His car is used BMW, formerly leased by one of his mentors. In terms of fighting gear, he doesn't need it; he'll have a few different knives, usually packing one of them and that's usually the easily-concealable one instead of something like a kukri or a Bowie.

No options for having a (NPC) crew to lead in the manual, so he doesn't have one. No other power choices to make either, so aside from jotting down a description he's done.

Time To Tussle

The Culture: The Search For Good Hobby Game Manuals: Heroes Unlimited (Part One)

Introduction

(Following from Friday's post.)

This week we'll be looking at Palladium's superhero game, Heroes Unlimited 2nd Edition ("HU2e"). I'm comparing it to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition, with the former standing in for Palladium's catalog in general due to how similar they all are.

The purpose of this series is to analyze these as technical manuals. The purpose of a technical manual is to teach the reader how to perform a task or use a product, and playing a fantastic adventure wargame is both simultaneously. Good technical manuals make this easy. Bad ones make learning how to do the thing far harder than it ought to be.

To give this the space required, I will break up the process across the week's posts. Today will be Character Generation, and we'll go over core gameplay procedures and operations over the rest of the week.

Making Your Man

My Life In Fandom: Yes, Western Mecha Usually Suck

ProfessorOtakuD2 cut a video expressing his frustration with Western mecha design that is hardly a hot take in Western mecha fan circles.

I can put this very simply: it's the influence of the Hard SF cult.

This influence is why there's so much Western Real Robot fiction as a subset of Western Mil-SF fiction, while the wonder and awe of Super Robots remains so difficult for Western mecha properties to capture without openly aping or outright deriviing from Japanese properties.

This is despite the roots of mecha fiction being Western (powered armor first appear in Triplanetary, well before Starship Troopers); the Murder of the Pulps and the the Treason of John Campbell includes this very consequence as part of the larger array of consequences that came from this epistemocide and the loss of those aethetics.

If not for the Japanese, this memory-holing would be complete.

This is, once again, a problem solved by Regressing Harder. Watching and reading the Japanese works is necessary, but not sufficient, because they build off Western media antecedent to their creations- indeed, often antecedent to the rise of contemporary Japanese popular media as we know it. If you want to succeed where others failed, it is necessary to be familiar with those Pulp Era works that informed the classic Japanese Super Robot shows.

We can do better than Very Gray And Brown Real Robot Mil-SF. We can have our own original Super Robots, and the conditions that made those Japanese Super Robots break out in the 1970s are coming around again, so soon--very soon--the window of opporunity will be present to do the same here.

Get ready.

My Life As A Gamer: Rick Stump Returns To The Gab To Talk ATLANTAVERSE!

Today on the Gab: "Veteran designer Rick Stump joins us to talk about his new HERO game, ATLANTAVERSE: Gaming in the Psychotronic Universe!" Well, that is, after Daddy Warpig has a Warpig Rant and Dorrinal talks about the week he had. It'll be a good time, and it goes down at 1pm Central Time today. I'll be in the chat. See you there.

After that, you may want to check out last night's Galaxy's Edge podcast where Walt and some of the Leejs hung out for about an hour talking GE and so on.

Signal Boost: Atlantaverse: Gaming in the Psychotronic Universe

Friend of Geek Gab and game designer Rick Stump, a man who has also contributed to the #BROSR, has a new superhero RPG product out via Harbinger Games. (Click the image to go to the store page.)

What you have here is a ready-to-go setting complete with NPCs and playable scenarios to get your superhero campaign going. If you're not used to what you need to get a viable setting started, a product like this will be useful to you.

As for what you can expect to find, the Description answers that question handedly. Rick Stump dug deep into the Pulp roots of superheres for this product, and it shows in that sizzling sales copy that I will quote below. This demonstrates that Rick gets the core of superhero gaming and fiction, something that too many in all media either forgot or actively denigrates.

Atlantaverse: Gaming in the Psychotronic Universe contains details of one of the most exciting settings for superheroes ever. Inside the Atlantaverse you can fight aliens in deep space, Lemurians in the deep ocean, hordes of supercriminals on land, and the villainous Fourth Reich in the air - and more!

Packed full of heroes, villains, settings details, and with over a dozen adventures and plot setups, Atlantaverse: Gaming in the Psychotronic Universe will help your game explode with fun.

That's right, pure adventure, the way God, Gary, and Dave (et. al.) intended.

Give it a go if you do superheroes.

Signal Boost: "Ascendant: Star-Spangled Squadron"

Alexander Macris's Autarch published a new tabletop superhero RPG recently, Ascendant. It's doing well at DriveThruRPG, but Macris isn't satisfied. He knows that genre-driven games benefit from genre media that ties into such a game, which is what lead him to form Ascendant Comics and launch his current crowdfunding project: Ascendant: Star-Spangled Squadron.

The full details are at the campaign page (here), but I will exerpt below that which I find most compelling:

Graphic Novel + RPG Bundle

$90 USD

This pledge gets you a copy of the graphic novel with your choice of standard cover plus a copy of the second printing of the Ascendant RPG rulebook, as well as the digital PDFs and stretch goals. NOTE: Your shipping fee will be added later via pledge manager

Included Items

• Graphic Novel Standard Edition
• Ascendant RPG Hardcover
• Digital PDF Download
• ALL Unlocked Stretch Goals

As many of you regulars are tabletop gamers, and as this is aimed at adult readers and players, this Perk tier and its price tag are reasonable for what you get. That's two print products, plus any yet to be unlocked that are so when the campaign ends, and their digital counterparts. Go to Ascendant's DriveThru page and see what it costs to buy that same print+PDF combo for the RPG alone and you can see the obvious value in this price point.

Yes, I am telling you that $90 (plus Shipping) is reasonable for this, especially given the obvious shocks that the Neo-Tsar's war in Ukraine has had in addition to other indicators of economic instability we've had to deal with since the Cabal Coof got loose two years ago. You're paying that much for Adventurer, Conqueror, King's full ruleset easily, if not more, and ACKS gets nothing but acclaim. If you're into superheroes and tabletop RPGs, then this is worth it.

And if not, check the other Perks to see if something else is more to your liking. Macris is a solid performer, so check this out and back this one.

Signal Boost: Autarch's "Ascendant", A Superhero TRPG By People That Don't Hate You

In case you missed it, Alexander Macris' Autarch have released their superhero RPG Ascendant.

A superhero role playing game of infinite possiblities! Elegant mechanics for simulating the physics of comic-book worlds, grounded in real-life benchmarks, allow play of heroes at any power level – from streetfighters to cosmic powers. Comprehensive investigation and invention mechanics support both super-detectives and super-geniuses, and extensive rules for handling disasters from disease outbreaks to hostage negotiations through tornadoes and volcanoes round out the gamut of superheroic adventures.

If you want a superhero game from someone that clearly does not hate you, this is one to check out. Click the image to go to the DriveThru store page.

And if you want to hear from the man himself, here's an interview stream from two weeks ago.

Narrative Warfare: The End of Hollywood Capes & Institutional Incompetence

Razorfist cut his rant about the inevitable fall of Hollywood cape films.

First, he's not wrong. Hollywood consumes genres over roughly 10-20 year cycles. That goes longer depending on source material, quality of adaptations, quality of execution, and cultural conditions creating demand therefore. There isn't that much good source material--especially now--when compared to Film Noir, Westerns, War, or Spy/Caper films. The execution has only been good consistently in the MCU (until now), and the conditions for capes is already shifting away from promoting the demand. That Endgame did prove to be prophetic was obvious to anyone familiar with how the Hellmouth works.

Second, while this is a typical Hollywood genre cycle, this factors into the larger decline of the West brought about by Death Cult convergence and its irrational incompetence. There should be another major genre waiting in the wings to break out and keep the business rolling, but there isn't because the institional convergence into the hands of said cult results in the promotion of incompetent cult loyalists that cannot even put out propaganda that people want to watch or read.

The proof of this is the overwhelming success of non-converged mainstream media that otherwise would be dismissed as terminally stupid--e.g. Pratt's Tommorrow War--merely by being sincere entertainment works with non-Death Cult narratives as well as media from non-converged rivals to Hollywood such as Japan, Russia, India, and even (some may say especially) China. Then there is the independent scene in the West, which is where dissidents can and do thrive if they can find an audience.

Film, television, comics, novels- all of them are seeing this happen, starting first with more online-savvy cohorts and spreading out to Normies over time. Demon Slayer fits this model very well, as both its film/TV and its comic versions utterly dominate Death Cult alternatives wherever it can be had.

This cannot be going unnoticed by the Death Cultists in senior management across the industry. What can be going on is stupefication over how and why--it runs contrary to their narrative--and thus heretofore ineffectual or nonexistent attempts to thwart this threat to their domination. Once something not just non-Death Cult, but explicitly anti-Death Cult comes to their attention we can expect an apopletic response out of these converged institutions.

As I said previously, the Death Cult must have a monopoly on the narrative. Right now, they don't. If they cannot converge these rivals into loyal Cult outlets, then they will attempt to destroy them. If they cannot destroy them, then they will move to cut off access to them by the population they seek to subjugate- to erect their own Great Firewall and do as China has successfully done for its own subject population.

Yes, I said "successfully". Try to convince some visiting ChiCom kid that Tiannemen Square happened and see what they do. Narrative monopolies work very well.

With audiences tuning out of Hollywood capes, and audiences tuning out of Mouse Wars, Fake Trek, Not My Who, etc. in droves they are finding alternatives that satisfy their wants and the Death Cult can't have that. They just aren't willing to admit that they are under threat yet and act accordingly; you'll know they are when they move to choke and censor all non-converged media, usually under some form of "hate speech" or "protecting people" excuse since no one gives a shit about the lie that is Muh Piracy anymore.

Be glad that the enemy is not competent, just cunning and ruthless.

The Business: Arkhaven Comics Launches Arktoons Today

Today is the day that the Supreme Dark Lord's latest culture war move goes into operation.

Quoting the press release:

As noted above, Arkhaven promises that “every Arktoons title will run weekly episodes, and the site is expected to feature more comics content in the first month alone than was solicited by DC Comics in May.”

Arktoons is a free to view website. However, it does a have a subscription model. Subscription options range from $5 to $50 per month and allow subscribers to support the creation of the comics as well as “various rewards that will be announced in the coming months.”

Every title currently available at Arkhaven will be in the Arktoons app and following that update schedule. Bounding Into Comics has more info here, and the man has his own blog post here if you want to see how the regulars regard it.

Narrative Warfare: When They Don't Hate You

Yesterday I talked about the Pop Cult and its run-in with its reality of being a front for the Death Cult. Let's compare that with the Japanese counterpart.

Legendary Creater Leiji Matsumoto Returns For A Brand New Captain Harlock Series! https://t.co/OJiaqnA8JY

— Bounding Into Comics (@BoundingComics) March 19, 2021

The key difference between Tokyo and Hollywood is this: Hollywood hates you, and Tokyo does not.

That sounds like oversimplification, but it's not. There are valid similiarities to be found, chief among them being the reliance on franchise properties and atomization of the people, but merely having a corporate establishment that doesn't hate its customers makes things seem like night and day and it shows on the balance sheet. Oh, and that's one of the more noticible differences: Tokyo cares about the balance sheet, and Hollywood does not, so Tokyo still cares about satisfying its audience--its customers--while Hollywood does not.

This care isn't just not treating customers with contempt. It's also making sure that their marketing, soft and hard, maintains sufficient distance between the two parties in the exchange. The entertainment business in the East still adheres to norms that were abandoned in Hollywood sometime between 1970 and 1990, and social media did not change this; those Twitter accounts of idols and actors are even more carefully managed than their Western counterparts- you won't see the insanity famous Death Cultists or the forthright speech of famous gainsayers either.

Image and persona are very important in that business, so everyone involved acts to stay on-brand and there are consequences that only a functional culture can inflict. This translates in very managed media appearances; this two-part promotional appearance of the upcoming Macross Frontier film show it. (Sorry, no subs.) These are carefully scripted appearances, moreso than you see in the West, and make no attempt to be otherwise; count on the audience knowing this is the point, as this is soft marketing.

The key to why the franchises of Japan, more or less, remain vital enterprises is that their creators remain involved. In those above-linked videos, Macross creator Shoji Kawamori--who was very involved in Frontier--is right there talking with his two key female leads. None of the Western creators remain involved in the zombie franchises that the Death Cult wears as skinsuits to preach their heretical propaganda; they're dead or sidelined. See the above tweet; the creator of Harlock is involved, so even if it sucks at least it will be done in good faith.

The same applies to Sailor Moon, Hunter X Hunter, Attack On Titan, and so on. As these creators die, the same vulnerabilities will appear, but they aren't so easily exploited at the present time due to Japanese corporate stewardship still valuing good customer relations. (e.g. Getter Robo, as its creator has died and the upcoming Getter Robo Arc is made based off his notes for what wasn't finished.)

Also, unlike Hollywood, Japan hasn't yet abandoned the regular creation of new IP knowing that most won't hit well enough to take to the franchise stage; that's why they can still create new popular culture and Hollywood has forgotten how.

Oh, and I've been talking in terms of anime and manga. Nevermind their live-action counterparts, which is heavily franchise-driven and yet because they refresh on an annual basis you never see things get stale; some things work, some don't, but you never get bored because each series is a thing to itself- and that's not accounting for long-running IPs like Ultraman.

Must be nice to have mega-corporations that don't hate you, but instead appreciate your business and wish for you to come again.

Once that's gone, it'll be time to walk away from Tokyo too.

My Life In Fandom: Fandom Menace BTFOed By False Idol

The leading Hispanic Voice in Science Fiction, Jon del Arroz, held a livestream late last night. Recapped in this video below.

Jon calls Geeks & Gamers and the Fandom Menace generally "coomers", as they exhibit the mentality of the sex addict, but given that they attach religious fervor and devotion--to the point of seeing this in moral terms--to their pop culture obsessions I agree with Brian Niemeier and call them Pop Cultists. These are not contradictory appelations, but rather complimentary ones; the latter is what's driving the mentality, while the former is what it appears to those outside the cult.

This particular Pop Cult made an idol out of a mediocre capeshit film, bought into the idea that it would be better if the original director's version got released, and pushed for it relentlessly with exactly that religious fervor I previously mentioned. They got their wish, they thought they won, and they were taking a victory lap by participating in a charity drive that also included said director- the object of their idol worship of the moment.

Their idol specifically named them, disavowed them in no uncertain terms, and condemned them as anathema because they are not part of HIS cult- the Death Cult.

The Fandom Menace vastly overstates their reach, their power, and their influence. The only serious damage they did was to point out the rotting merchandise to contradict the narrative that the Devil Mouse's sanctioned fan films are doing very well, knowing full well that said IP relies on merchandise sales to actually make a profit- especially between major media releases. The only other useful thing they did was when one subgroup proved to be a semi-professional outlet and began churning out semi-pro news and analysis of the entertainment business. (That, by the way, is Midnight's Edge.)

Most of the clique, on the other hand, are like Geeks & Gamers and thus are useless goobers who will either come of their delusions or become the very things they say that they are against: SJW Death Cultists. Given that they already cede the moral frame to their supposed enemy due to their pop culture obsessions, this will be a matter of time and it will be sad to watch.

Don't be like the Fandom Rejects. Walk away from the Death Cult. Support people that don't hate you and produce new, original works. Jon's got his books and comics going; you'll find his campaign for Deus Vult here. Brian's got plenty of novels, and he's branching into games and merch; you'll find the campaign for his next book here. Both campaigns have at least one option for getting a pile of catchup stuff to tide you over.

There's plenty more out there. Go explore!

P.S.: I see that the Rejects are using "Muh Charity Fundaising!" to deflect. That didn't work, did it? Oh, and if you think Hollywood is corrupt, wait until you dig into the charity world. How much of that money is actually going to people that actually need it?

The Business: Big Corporate Entertainment No Longer Has A Lock On Tie-Ins

Lueten09 dropped another massive 40K lore video the other day. This is, as usual, pro-level audiobook stuff. If you're a fan, have at it. For the rest of us, skip below.

Lueten09's lore videos, the BattleTech lore Black Pants Legion does, and more like that are evidence that making pro-quality audiobook w/ visual accompanyment (and yes, I say it that way because you don't need the visuals; it's icing on the cake, not part of the cake itself) is no longer prohibitively expensive save in terms of time. This is a big deal, and I'm going to spell it out for you.

• The means to make this stuff is now cheap enough to be affordable--if not free--to common users.
• Which means the skills to use them competently is now widespread (and growing) so learning is easier than ever before.
• The means to distribute them is now easy to acquire, so getting an audience is easier than before.
• The means to hire help to cover skill gaps--Lueten doesn't do that VO work--is easier than before.
• The means to exploit what you create while maintaining full control and ownership now exists.

I am dead-ass serious when I say that Catalyst Game Labs, Games Workshop, et. al., ought to be cutting these lore channels fat checks for doing their marketing for them. This is time spent, as a hobby, putting together professional-grade productions that attract and retain audiences that then go on to spend real money on the corporate property that these channels promote via their hobby-done lore videos.

Maybe you're a writer. Maybe you do comics. Whatever you've created, if you're making a property--regardless of its medium or product category of origin--that has this sort of lore quality attached to it then you really ought to be thinking about making use of those massive notes that otherwise gets made into content for a wiki and then forgotten about.

These lore videos demonstrates that what formerly was the exclusive domain of Big Corporate entertainment is not any longer. As with merchandise and tie-in products, small indie creators can now pursue these options and add more value to their creative output and extend that long tail even longer so that what you produce today still pays you years down the line (and, hopefully, becomes passive income for your heirs).

This means that you no longer need to sell out. You can keep full ownership of what you create and still exploit it to full effect, and that should scare the hell out of Big Corporate if they were at all paying attention- which they aren't.

To appropriate the enemy's language, you now have full access to the means of production. What are you going to do with it?

My Life In Fandom: Geek Gab Talks Ascension Epoch

This week on Geek Gab, in addition to a Warpig Rant on the most pathetic and bitchy slashfic/revenge-fic AAA gaming has yet seen, the show welcomes the team behind the indie Ascension Epoch: Mike DiBaggio and Shell DiBaggio.

This is a multi-media project operating as an Open Source project.

No one has tried this before. That's what makes Epoch notable and interesting, giving it a position that makes it stand out compared to mainstream or alternative competitors, and the structure of their property and business spans multiple genres with interlocking--but not required--reading. This is intended, and built into the property from the very foundation. They get into this on the About page and the FAQ. The link for Heroic Adventure Fiction is here.

They take the time to explain how it all works, so come for the rant and stay for the heroes.

My Life As A Gamer: Most TRPGs Are Irrelevant

In light of this utterly fucking retarded display of incompetent by WOTC's D&D Lead Rules Designer, it's time to talk tabletop RPGs and why so few matter.

This is the LEAD RULES DESIGNER of Dungeons & Dragons, and he doesn't even know how roleplaying games work.

Your advice is bad, and you should feel bad. Same for Justice.

RPG's are not improv. (For one, no improv troupe would put up with that many rules.) Learn them, play them. pic.twitter.com/EkSjltW0YD

— Daddy Warpig (@DaddyWarpig) June 3, 2020

Let's start with a fact most TPRG publishers would rather deny: most TRPGs are irrelevant and can be safely discarded.

The reason is that most TRPGs bring nothing to the table that is truly worthy of attention. They can be--and have been--repackaged as supplements for a TRPG that does matter and do just as well or better commercially than being a stand-alone product. Why? They neither play sufficiently different from a relevant game to be notable, nor do they present a play paradigm that is done better in another medium, and both assume that what's being done is actually entertaining in and of itself.

You can, therefore, pare your TRPG collection down to three titles and cover everything of note that TRPGs as a medium offer you: Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller. In all three cases, you can even go so far as to not bother with anything but the original version of that game and do fine for the rest of your days.

The key is that all three games use separate, distinct, and novel gameplay paradigms that are entertaining in and of themselves without needing to resort to borrowing from narrative media in any way. D&D is properly focused on the exploration of dungeons and the recovery of treasure as a microcosm of exploring a frontier and claiming its resources for your settlement. COC is properly focused on investigating the paranormal and dealing with the consequences of encountering that which is beyond Man's ability to comprehend. Traveller is all about making your way as an intersteller actor in the far-future, with subsets focusing on merchant and military activities as most action involves one or the other most of the time.

Other well-known properties can be slotted into one of these three, and some hybridize them. Cyberpunk 2020 takes Traveller and scales it down into a single city. Borderlands blends COC and D&D, while Shadowrun blends D&D with Traveller. Some properties can be straight-up recreated within an existing property. (e.g. BattleTech w/ Traveller) Others offer nothing more than a novel sub-system and call itself a full game. (e.g. Champions, and superhero gaming generally)

I can go on for paragraphs, but the rubric above shows just how pointless most TRPGs are. The best thing that could be done is to identify what novel and entertaining bits a property possesses, and then rebuild it as a third-party supplement for one of those three games. (Successfully done with Legend of the Five Rings, not so well with Star Wars, both referring to their d20 System versions.) It is an expression of hubris to continue to insist otherwise when we have 45 years of data to show this to be the case, especially with regard to games chasing the D&D end of things.

This medium has shown via generations of revealed preference what works and what does not. If it were not for the lack of barriers to entry, most of these products would cease to exist by now, forcing either product redesign that conforms to the reality of the market situation or the creation of a Brand Cult that leverage the psychology of worship to compensate for the lack of product relevance.

TRPGs are products. Products exist to solve problems. It turns out that the problems solved by D&D, COC, & Traveller are what exists to be solved within the tabletop RPG medium as any other successful would-be solution ends up spinning off to another medium entirely- usually tabletop wargaming, LARPs, or some sort of videogame. This will be the case unless and until a new problem of entertaining gameplay is identified and addressed with a new, novel and in-itself-entertaining TRPG.