(you load) 16 Tons of ...

Luke Stratton: I want to talk a little bit about kind of what you're tapping on here with the communities. I feel like all of our brands, if you will, the communities are such a big part of it, and they're the thing that is different between, say, big corporate D&D, right? I mean, there are communities for those, but that's very like the two entities are very separated. You've got the corporate official stuff and then this like kind of back corner, illegal, you know, third-party stuff. Whereas, we're making stuff where they're putting our logos on the products. We're uplifting them. We back all the Kickstarter projects for Pirateborg and sell them in our store. (to Kelsey Dionne) I know you back all the Shadowdark stuff. Like Kelsey, tell us about your community. What about your community is like so vibrant and important to the Shadowdark brand?

Dionne: Yeah, it is kind of, it's become sort of a brand like an ecosystem. They, the community, is the most enthusiastic evangelists of the game, and we've kind of hit a critical mass where because there's enough of them, they're spreading sort of uncontrollably amongst... like, you know, 'cause like word of mouth for us is huge. Like, that's kind of how we make our first entry is through word of mouth, and so, we just have a really engaged enthusiastic community.

I was sent a video by the OSR by a colleague, which he did not want to post a link to, not wishing to give these people free advertising. Myself, I don't think it makes a difference. This group of dolts is what happens when a vaguely motivated vapid creators find a market in slightly more vapid consumers, creating opportunities for the savagery of the English language one can read above. The video features "members of the OSR" Luke Stratton, Kelsey Dionne, Brad Kerr, Matt Finch and Yochai Gal.

Luke Stratton created Pirate Borg and publishes pirate-horror OSR material through Limithron; Kelsey Dionne created Shadowdark RPG and runs The Arcane Library; Brad Kerr writes concise, atmospheric adventures such as Hideous Daylight; Matt Finch co-authored OSRIC and created Swords & Wizardry; and Yochai Gal created Cairn and co-hosts Between Two Cairns with Brad Kerr.

This blog blasted Matt Finch in January for his OSRIC, deservedly so. Otherwise, I don't know who these people are, nor do I give a fuck. I could tell, just spending a half hour with them, that I don't want to know them. Ever. I would find it difficult to be in a room with them.

I've worked a number of office jobs. There's always that up-and-comer who has learned all the corporate speak, is utterly oblivious to how ridiculous they sound to "normal" people, is incredibly sychophantic to upper management and is always to ready to make the minions "cheerful" about their commitment to the company. That is, just these up-and-comers down-and-implode, ending their fabulous trajectory and finding work in a warehouse. Maybe, if you've worked office jobs, you've met them.

Now, imagine that person has designed a role-playing game.

It's plain from the way these people speak about their products, which they are trying to sell, that they're not artists, players or hobbyists. They're small-brand operators who have absorbed a small, scattered and barely-understood corporate marketing language which they're amateurishly fitting into their speech in a desperate attempt to sound like they have a clue what they're doing or saying. Underneath the veneer, with the exception of Matt Finch, who is old enough to have done this so long that he's now competently slimy, it's more than evident that the other four are poster children for "imposter syndrome." They trip over their words, they change verb tense mid sentence, they fail to end sentences, they cram in phrasing like "critical mass" and "uplifting" that do not quite say what they want it to say, while using "community" as a word that miraculously launders their ill-conceived and probably misunderstood business position. I'd guess that none of them, Matt Finch included, though by now that part of his brain has suffocated along with his legal comprehension, have the slightest clue why their stuff is popular, why they have a lot of money and what they need to do to keep the money rolling is. Their speech patterns suggest that fear and doubt. Just to be clear, this is Luke Stratton's 17th Pirateborg podcast episode and he still talks like this. Constantly.

If they were genuinely passionate about their products, they would demonstrate passion. If they were in the last bit self-aware, they'd be so embarrassed by this level of performance that they would never appear on a podcast again. Not only can these people not speak casually, or for one moment appear to be authentic at all, every sentence literally feels like they're veering off a cliff of some kind, that they they have to keep pulling themselves back from.

Consider this phrasing: "we've kind of hit a critical mass where because there's enough of them, they're spreading sort of uncontrollably amongst..."

At this point, I'm fairly sure that even Dionne has realised that she sounds like she's describing the spread of a disease, which is why this thought just stops dead and gets translated into a completely benign cliche about word of mouth. There's no question she knew her language was careening out of control... because it happens again, and again, with all of them. I could easily just give twenty examples. Watch the video. It's a drinking game. You have to take a shot every time a speaker changes the subject mid-sentence.

These speakers all sound like people trying to maintain a product that they infer is unstable, needs marketing language to make acceptable, while at the same time being actually unable to factually speak about the products they're making.

Matt Finch: It's solely I think the fact of the internet being out there that people nowadays are reading on screens and even on phones, which have you know have different... there's just a different physical interaction with what you're doing, and the best way to read something on a screen is to have all the... every discreet piece of information isolated from every other piece, because you're going to be scrolling up and down and you need to... it's much more importan that you need to know where your eyes gonna fall (sic), and so you know I-I-I think anyone who is-is-is younger or has been on the internet a lot is now much more familiar and expecting to see information broken out that way.

Okay. That was three shots... and maybe I don't know what he was trying to say there because I'm now drunker than I was 40 seconds ago (the time he took to say this; it was hard to pound them back at that speed), but, seriously... what the fuck.

A couple of things. First, the channel Limithon, which hosts to the podcast, felt this was such a valuable quote that they cut it from the five-person discussion and published it as its own video. Yeetch!

Secondly, OSRIC was published 20 years ago. After widespread use of the internet, by the way, that can no longer be described as something happening "these days." Nor can phones, for that matter, which have had interactive screens for 19 years. So... yeah. That. One would expect that Finch, after twenty years, could express himself better than this... especially with that constantly invoked legal background of his (he constantly invokes it, so I might as well). Again, yeetch.

You'd think after 20 years you'd have realised, "I'm not really very good at this public speaking thing. Maybe I shouldn't be doing it any more."

Then again, no doubt, he needs to believe he's still relevant.

Honest to gawd, all due service to my colleague who didn't want to link this, this is an excellent demonstration of what's happened to the community.

The Old School Renaissance emerged as a reaction to what many players saw as the increasing complexity of newer editions of D&D — particularly 3rd Edition and onward, which accentuated elaborate rules, point-buy systems, intricate character builds and heavy roleplaying structures. Enthusiasts wanted to return to a more streamlined, improvisational and often harsher playstyle of 1974 to 1981 D&D, where the rules existed primarily to support play rather than constrain it. This meant: simple mechanics, fast resolution, minimal bookkeeping and a focus on emergent interaction between the players that would inspire and increase immersion for the table's culture. Players could run adventures quickly, handle combat and treasure without extensive prep, and rely on improvisation instead of predefined character arcs or vocal performance.

Just so we're clear, a "renaissance" is not expected to adhere to the products of the original time; much was produced during "The Renaissance" of the mid-2nd Millenium that did not exist in ancient Greece or Rome. From what I've been able to learn about the products these persons have created (excepting the podcast presenter), at least three of them seem to be creating products that are in line with old school play. I can't say, because I have no personal experience, that Cairn, Shadowdark or the products produced by Kerr are "good" or "bad," because I haven't seen them. Some research suggests that they do provide what they promise to provide: a deviation away from 5e concepts (though with Shadowdark there is reason to think this deviation might be superficial, as the game does embrace concepts like character identity, campaign themes and player investment that reads 5e-adjacent).

I have, on the other hand, seen OSRIC, which is just plain shit. It's not a redesign, it's a butchering of the original source material which has been repackaged in a way that made it worse, which was sold during the "golden age" of new shiny youtube, when so many rubes existed for the taking that OSRIC lucked the fuck out. That's all that was.

If I wanted to invest five minutes in any of these products, a pretty big if, then that desire is butched by meeting these people in this video. This sort of thing is supposed to increase interest, not reveal that the designers are in fact a bunch of losers who also got lucky, right there with Finch. I don't know that to be the case... but when you hear them, and see their body language, and then you put them beside Finch, whom they clearly admire (not respect, I'd expect respect, it's not your podcast), then it lessens my motivation to have anything to do with their product.

This is not how marketing is supposed to work.

Someone should take these people aside — that is, Dionne, Kerr and Gal — and tell them to stop having one-on-ones with marketing analysts and try getting back to their real, authentic selves; what they personally see in the product, why they made they changes they did, what they'd like to do next... and just stop talking about the fans as objectified things they're so proud to possess now. Yes, I get it, it's great to have fans... and no doubt, they all pay marketing lipservice to "thanking" the fans every day, because fans do in fact like that pandering shit. But really, the fans aren't in it to be acknowledged as a sort of contagion that's spreading fast. They're in it because they want to know who you are, because in your eyes, you're pretty cool.

Therefore, get some lessons in not sounding like what you like is the money you're making, because that's what business speak is designed to convey. "Word of mouth for us is huge" means, in corporatese, "we are raking in tons of money and we love it."

That's not good. Don't talk that way.

I have no notes for Finch. He's irredeemable... an old word that says, in essence, his soul is so much in debt now that there's no way of paying it back.

And as far as Stratton goes, it's pretty clear he doesn't give a fuck. Limithron has 5,080 subscribers and after three days, it has 3,400 page views. Even subscribers aren't listening to this shit. But these are his best numbers since producing a like post a month ago with Dionne again and three other guests, which yielded 3,900 page views. Apart from the 3,700-view post with Mike Shea, the rest of his work generally doesn't top a thousand. But that's okay. He's found a button that works, so expect to see a lot more "panel" episodes of this cast.

Ten years from now, if my luck continues as it has in the past, Luke Stratton will be more popular than Mr. Beast. Because, well, that's how far I am from the way the rest of the world is.

Certainly, Stratton hopes this will be the case. I doubt he thinks about anything else.