Orbiter Broadcasts

total war as practiced by the soviets and allies was an economic program of subordinating productive capacity to national requirements, because the people running the show were fundamentally rational. you did aluminum drives because you needed more planes than refining could provide, you dug victory gardens because farm workers were being drafted, war bonds was understood as a method for the government to finance the war. you made sacrifices because the government outlined what they were for and why they were needed.

total war as envisioned and practiced by the nazis was essentially a spiritual affair. 'wholly mobilizing the populace' was an obsession, because there was this belief that the material needs of the war effort could be overcome passively by a sufficiently motivated population, one would would dynamically make all necessary sacrifices and thus naturally overcome limitation. they genuinely, genuinely believed that victory was assured against any odds because sufficient willpower would overcome anything.

the nazi obsession with superweapons was a direct manifestation of this; as the war became more dire and it became clear nothing short of a miracle would salvage it, it became the doctrine of the nazi party that this miracle would be manifested by the brilliants and determination of the german people, as missiles and jet engines and radar death rays or whatever, and it was a thing people believed even as artillery shells were coming down on berlin.

this form of thinking recasts everything into a simple binary functioning on a single factor; there is success, which comes from sufficient willpower and belief, and there is failure, which is always the deliberate betrayal of a coward.

and it fucked them constantly. they made non-stop errors predicated on the belief that doing the same thing again but even harder would eventually work because it had to, it only failed the last time because the people who did it were weak-willed. they started the largest war in history because their strategic thinking all eventually boiled down to 'only bitches lose'

you can already see the trump administration doing this exact thing. the shamelessness it enables is how they make early progress; their refusal to back down lets them bully their way through systems that function on norms and mutual agreement, they score victories by doing the kind of shit that every right-thinking person thinks would be too stupid to try, and it convinces them they're invincible. but sooner or later, they run out of road, and will grind themselves down to nothing trying to smash reality into the shape they desire.

Hey, this world's on fire, so it feels a little silly to be recommending my imaginary one, but if you'd all like to give it a look, I've got a playtest packet up for my upcoming TTRPG of asteroid belt traders in the far future.

Follow the link, and share your thoughts!

Either that or the way they treat said highly effort intensive approach to DMing as the obvious default such that other styles need not be mentioned and ought be implicitly disparaged. It's a very "one size fits all" "my way or the highway" stance from the "let people have fun" crowd to make absolute statements about what makes a "good" DM.

I'm not even as opposed to their styles of DMing as you folks seem to be, but the fact that it's so damn unquestioned, and that questions are met with ridicule, that bothers the fuck out of me.

One of the big issues is the idea of “DMing style” even existing, at least in a vacuum where they are universally applicable, when in reality different TTRPG rulesets themselves have preferred styles of play even if players or even the designers themselves are not aware of it.

Many very lauded “GMing styles” actually clash severely with the rules of many very popular TTRPGs, and it is when you expect the game master to fight against the rules to maintain this kind of already-high-effort “GMing style” that it destroys them.

Juggling is an impressive skill, and seeing a juggler in the right context is awesome, but it isn’t appropriate for all types of entertainment and certainly isn’t one I’d seek after for my, like, fishing trip, because fish are hard to juggle and even successfully juggling fish will not make the fishing trip any better.

The idea that juggling fish you catch with your bare hands while swimming against the current in this analogy is considered the bare minimum for a GM to be “good” is the problem. And if you just want to go fishing, which is what the majority of TTRPGs are about in this analogy, having a guy who can do that is not even desirable. Traumatized GMs have to be trained out of habitually trying to juggle anything you hand to them like their lives depend on it.

It’s why in Eureka, we spell out in very explicit terms up top that this RPG only works if you play it with the style it was meant to be played with, and GM it with the style it was meant to be GMed with. If you don’t, you’ll be fighting against the rules the whole time. Unfortunately the idea that all styles and preferences in TTRPGs are not valid for or universally applicable to all TTRPGs is shockingly offensive. All we’re really saying is the TTRPG equivalent of “No, you really should not try to play a ‘DPS’ in Animal Crossing.” In TTRPGs this is controversial.

Cairn and Into the Odd are both similarly minimalistic (only three stats, most things handled via saves, combat is entirely based on damage rolls without separate to-hit rolls and at 0 HP characters start taking critical injuries). Errant uses a lot of those same principles but adds a bunch of procedures on top for an extremely cohesive fantasy adventure game. Those I feel are the best in terms of having a similar mechanical skeleton as Mausritter but with the player characters being mice.

Cairn is free, Errant has a free version available via their website but the for-money variety has some nice art.

Hey folks! I'm crowdfunding a reprint of Hard Wired Island, my cyberpunk TTRPG. Backers can get a discounted physical copy or just a PDF!

Hard Wired Island is a retrofuture cyberpunk game, inspired by 90s anime. It's set on a space station orbiting Earth in an alternate 2020 where a meteorite strike supercharged public interest in space exploration. The player characters are regular Grand Cross citizens doing their best to live their everyday lives while fighting for the station's future.

This 400-page game includes:

An easy-to-learn system where social actions and problem-solving skills are at least as important as hacking and getting into fights.

An alternate 2020 setting in an O'Neill cylinder near Earth.

Descriptions of the many locations of Grand Cross, from the busy downtown Voyager Ward to the high-tech parkland of Mariposa to the Agriculture Ring that feeds the station.

Seven Occupations, including the Fixer, the Hacker, and the Influencer, along with a plethora of character options.

Over 100 detailed NPC descriptions, from corporate heavyweights to android crime lords to just regular citizens of an Earth-orbit city.

A flexible mission prep system that allows characters to adapt their plans on the fly without wasting their earlier efforts.

A wealth system that tracks the financial burdens placed on you by the capitalist system you live in.

A cybernetics system that doesn't dehumanize you for installing augments.

A lot of great art from a lot of great artists.

No genAI because we're not gormless hacks.

It is funny yeah. Like, here we have an item whose very existence within the game makes it clear that this is a game that cares about logistics and carrying capacity (even though within the context of 5e carrying capacities are so huge they don't even become an issue) and then people will be like "Hmmm actually I like D&D but I hate logistics and resource management."

Encumbrance adds a new level of decision-making by making the party have to choose which items they carry and which they leave in the wagon, and adds a new potential consequence of bad decision making in that they can lose the wagon with all their shit in it (as happened in a PF2e game I ran). And that's...fun! It incentivizes the party to study and look up challenges so as to be properly prepared. Threats to the wagon are a painful consequence that the party can recover from. Having a treasure be physically large and heavy means that getting it out of the dungeon is a fun puzzle. And encumbrance makes the bag of holding a fantastic and exciting reward that indicates that the player is on a new tier of power where they permanently overcome (mostly) a problem that had been bugging them for the last four levels.

or straight up telling their players 'the loot's twice as much as you can reasonably carry, and what you can carry will turn a three hour hike into twelve.'