Bronzeman is an intervention

I am used to being thought foolish, so I shall proceed, inviting you to make of my words what you will.

—Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia¹, 1978

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” The most terrifying question an adolescent can face. All their life they’ve followed the path laid out for them: behave, study well, make friends, stay in school; indulge in the occasional tomfoolery. Suddenly they’re asked to decide a path of their own.

If you ask them this today, the top answers are YouTuber, Instagram influencer, TikTok creator, and live streamer. You roll your eyes. “Those fools. Don’t they realize how impossible that is?” Of course they do. And yet, they dream on.

Others abandon their dreams and stay on the well-trodden path: get a Bachelor’s in something they vaguely care about, maybe even get a Master’s because why not? Anything to prolong their adolescence. Many more go on to get a job they loathe, marry a spouse they resent, and rear children they despise. In all cases the root is the same: the path was not chosen freely.

In Marstead’s RuneScape is Awesome, And Here’s Why, he argues that OSRS is not really an MMO like WoW at all. It’s a metroidvania. The appeal is constantly obtaining permanent unlocks to your account. OSRS is so elaborate in its tech tree—the garden of forking paths so large and the delightful detours so frequent—that its depth overshadows almost everything within the actual metroidvania genre.

However, there’s an obvious problem here: eventually, there’s nothing meaningful left to unlock. Jagex can only put so much content in the game. One day, your character becomes strong enough. The payoff of any particular grind no longer lines up with how long that grind takes. At this point, the game is over. Many people burn out and stop playing here, well before trying all of the content the game has to offer.

For most players, this happens around finishing their Quest Point Cape. Curiously enough, this is often described as “the end of the tutorial.” The idea is that unlocking almost everything in the game is not really the game at all; that’s just the start of it.

Both of these perspectives have their merits, and neither is well served by any of the game’s current modes.

Let’s say I am an alcoholic. Drinking ruins my life, but I also can’t help myself. Every day I am tempted to drink and sink further into despair.

One day, a djinn appears before me. I must pick one of two options. The first is that I can no longer drink: alcohol on my tongue will taste so revolting that I am forced to spit it out. The second is that for the rest of eternity, I may summon a drink at any moment. I still have to pay for it, but there’s a little demonic bartender with a credit card swiper beside me, ready to serve me whatever and whenever I want.

Now, which of the following challenges is harder? The first is to pick the first option, knowing that I will never drink again. The second is, failing the first challenge, to live out the rest of my life maximally tempted to drink.

I am sure you can see the parallel. The first option is ironman; the second is main. The ironman only needs to resist temptation once. The main needs to do it every day.

The Grasshopper defines the lusory attitude as “that curious state of affairs wherein one adopts rules which require one to employ worse rather than better means for reaching an end.” These rules are adopted because the ruled-out means are deemed “not in the spirit of the game.” That is, for whatever reason, those rules make the game more like the kind of game that one wishes to play.

Ironman mode is, at its core, one rule: You cannot get help from other players. This was a self-made rule that players such as itam69 and MetalManiac9—progenitors of the ironman mode—devised for no reason other than they felt it would make the game more like one they would like to play.

The question, then, is what positive change did they think it would have on RuneScape when they invented this rule? What is their lusory attitude?

For MetalManiac9, his manifesto, Who is MetalManiac9?!?!, is illustrative. He—

1. does not permit himself to buy anything at all, even from in-game shops
2. has exceptions for what can be bought (“things that I can’t get myself” e.g. party hats)
3. has no restriction on selling items, which he does proudly
4. forbids bonus XP on non-maxed skills
5. forbids XP lamps on non-maxed skills

His ultimate goal, it turns out, is to maximize the GP/XP on every skill. His lusory attitude is to level up with the most residual wealth possible, with no concern for his XP/hr or even GP/hr, and to do so self-sufficiently. If a skill cannot be made profitable, as with Construction, then he will still find the cheapest way possible to level it. “I don’t really like to waste.”

Then he uses his accumulated wealth to buy prestige. In RS3, this takes the form of the blue party hat, which he conspicuously dons throughout the video. If I were to be presumptuous, he wants to show off in precisely this manner: I earned this party hat my own way.

All of the elements of ironman mode, as it’s understood today, are visible: self-sufficiency, prestige (the party hat), exploration (“I find that I can explore RuneScape to its fullest like this”), self-direction (“play the way you want to play it, no matter what anyone says”), challenge seeking (“camping at Armadyl or Saradomin for months to make over 900M just to buy all skills isn’t really a challenge if you ask me”) and—if we’re honest—a hint of elitism: “Maxing has become like a must for every runescape player. That’s how the attitude is nowadays, but I won’t follow it.”

What’s missing is verification: proving to others that this is a game he has in fact followed the rules of, that his blue party hat means something that others’ doesn’t. I suspect his videos and forum posts were for exactly this.

MetalManiac9’s lusory attitude centred on his unique goal for skilling.

itam69, on the other hand, had a lusory attitude centred on collecting rares.

Quotes from itam’s HC diy’er thread (2009): “by then ill have 100 pair of dboots <3” “i only have enough supplies to do 500 kills max” “ugh. going through gwd withdrawls [from having to gather supplies]” “once i get sgs ill be a retired sgwd runner and move onto bandos/arma” “i still need verac flail/skirt but ill never get” “clue rewards from 99 slayer would be intense” “the way i play kind of forces me to be a skiller… 99fishing for mass gwd runs/slayer” “ill ahev enough food for about20 bgwd runs with tuna tates” “i love collecting clue rewards and i’d never get rid of em”.

Today, players would immediately clock this as a proto-clogger.

Both of these players are described by The Grasshopper as triflers. They do not set out to play RuneScape as designed, but rather a different game, one entirely of their own making.

For that particular game, however, they are nothing short of its most devout players.

When I first heard of bronzeman, I was confused. Why would anyone want this? The biggest pain point of ironman, the so-called red prison (and every grind beyond that), is not addressed by it at all, so clearly that was not the point. With a poor understanding of the bronzeman’s lusory attitude, I figured self-sufficiency might have been it. So I suggested a revision, let’s call it copperman, where the rule is you can never buy anything on the G.E. except for specific earmarked rares. One would still be taking self-sufficiency seriously, just slightly less so than ironmen, to directly address the apparent pain point.

Approximately nobody was interested in this. “This guy doesn’t get it” “lmao this has to be a troll post” “You’ve missed the plot” “thats the worst idea ive heard on this subject” “You’ve let reddit brain poison you.”

The unanimity of this rejection is instructive. Self-sufficiency is so far away from the bronzeman’s lusory attitude so as to appear insane from the inside. “That is just a main” is, to the bronzeman, an entirely accurate assessment of copperman, a mode which makes over 99% of items in the game untradeable.

This episode revealed the bronzeman’s lusory attitude: I want restrictions on item use, so that I can permanently unlock gear myself. It’s nothing like MetalManiac9’s extreme self-sufficiency, and much closer to itam69’s proto-clogging.

The sentiment: It doesn’t feel right that someone can swipe their credit card and have a scythe without completing Theatre of Blood even once.

The Grasshopper highlights a distinction between closed and open games.

A closed game is one as typically understood: the game has a finite goal, such as jumping over a bar in high jump. Players make moves in line with the rules to meet that goal as effectively as possible. And once the goal has been either met or failed, the game is over.

An open game, however, is played expressly for the purposes of continuing the play, the goal an infinite one. The example is two players deliberately engaged in a volley of table tennis. Rather than trying to strike the other out and score points, as one does in a closed game of table tennis, both players are engaged in a cooperative arrangement, where each returns the ball as gently as possible.

When we say the Quest Point Cape is the “end of the tutorial”, what we really mean is that this is when RuneScape transforms from a closed game to an open one. What the QPC does, with its elaborate tech tree and unlocks around every corner, is force you to spend time inhabiting the world of Gielinor for long enough to decide whether or not you like it here.

It drags you around the world, teaching you its lore and mechanics and quirks and people. It forces you to get intimate enough with each skill to know whether you like training them. It does this just enough for everything to become deeply familiar, and then it sets you free.

Your challenge, then, is to forge your own path in the world. Do you want to follow clues, host house parties, organize a clan, create content, grind post-max XP, get grandmaster with restrictions, speedrun bosses, acquire the most wealth, run 6h records, update the wiki… or maybe sit around writing thinkpieces? The possibilities are both endless and equally frivolous. It doesn’t really matter what you choose, only that it’s a path you chose, that the doing of the thing is its own reward.²

Failing that, your challenge is to stop playing.

There is, however, a slight issue: there’s no QPC equivalent for PvM. The QPC teaches you the lore and the skills, but it doesn’t teach you the bosses. There is no closed game that forces you to fight any bosses at all (outside the quest bosses), to learn their mechanics before earning their rewards.

This is the point of bronzeman.

For too long, many have said that ironman is the “proper” way to play the game. “If something isn’t fun for ironmen, that’s just highlighting a flaw in the game’s design.” I believe this to be mistaken.

Consider, for the sake of argument, a gameplay loop that for 99% of players is not just boring but actively repellent. Try as they might, they cannot bear to do it for more than a second. And the output of this loop is something very valuable, a rare item that everyone wants.

But, for the other 1%, this gameplay loop is not just appealing but something akin to a big dose of heroin. They love the experience so thoroughly that they, once set free into the open game, decide to do almost exclusively this.

In a world of ironmen, such a thing is not allowed to exist. “I’m forced to do this revolting thing just to get the valuable!” Patched out in a week. The thing that was special for that 1%, destroyed, forever.

In a world of mains, such a thing is not just allowed to exist but celebrated. For the 1%, they get to play their part in the world. For everyone else, they get the fruits of their labour.

This is how the open game functions: everything is an option and nothing is required.

Ironman, as a rule, never steps out into the open game. It stays within the closed game indefinitely. And this closed game, as every player who de-irons at the red prison would attest, isn’t for everyone. In fact, the intense demand for bronzeman reveals just how rare the lusory attitude of ironman mode really is.

This brings us to the intervention. Many of you are ironmen who grinded past the red prison, well past the point where you no longer enjoy it. You do not enjoy the long PvM grinds for their own sake. You view this suffering as a sort of character building exercise, or maybe you are still grasping for that fleeting bit of prestige left in being an iron.

Many of you are mains who grinded your skills or cash stack well past the point where you no longer enjoy it. Perhaps you’re chasing combat achievements, elite diaries, a max cape, or maybe enough gold to flex a 3rd age pickaxe.

In all of these cases, the time the grind takes has exceeded the payoff. A max cape is not that useful. It doesn’t unlock anything new that you couldn’t previously do, in the way that unlocks in a metroidvania tech tree do. It’s just quality of life.

You are addicted. You need to stop. You need help. Every day you continue to struggle only worsens your condition. You’re not building character. You’re dying.

The only help I can offer is a prescription. Enter the open game and forge your own path. Failing that, quit the game.

There is no third option.

Now, it is my view that far more irons are victims of this than mains, as per the djinn parable. The ironman only had to test his resolve against temptation once, so once he falls into an addiction he can scarcely even see that he’s in one. The main has had his resolve tested every day since he was born. With absolute freedom, the onus is more clearly on him to decide what path he wants to follow and which he doesn’t.

Now that we know what the lusory attitude of bronzeman is—a desire for PvM to have gear unlocks the same way that skilling has quest unlocks—we can diagnose where it’s lacking and where it is not.

First, where it’s not lacking: bonds and smuggling GP from a main. Bronzeman mode is not a prestige mode. It’s an extension of the QPC tutorial. Being able to receive a large transfusion of gold is not an integrity violation any more than it is for mains. The ethos of ironman, “The ironman stands alone”, was never the point of bronzeman.

Now, where it is lacking: having a separate leaderboard. Again, bronzeman is not a prestige mode. As such, there should be no separate leaderboard. It should just be shared with mains.

If one goes down this road, bronzeman could become a rehabilitated main account. It could beat the “GPscape” allegations without saddling players not built for that iron life with a world of despair. It could, contrary to ironman, genuinely become the “proper” way to play the game. But for that, it still needs a patch to address those late-game PvM grinds, because as established, most people are not built for that.

So, the whole point of bronzeman is having to unlock your own gear progression. As currently envisioned, this means getting the drop yourself, in line with the self-sufficiency goal of the ironman. There are two problems here: the bronzeman was never about self-sufficiency per se; and there is no particular reason to believe that the drop rate automatically creates a well-tuned progression.

That latter problem is precisely the one that Jagex has been facing ever since adding ironman. On one hand, in order to balance the main economy, items intended to be valuable must be made extraordinarily rare. On the other hand, there is a very, very large gap between what could be considered “completing the tutorial” for a particular boss and actually hitting that drop rate. Based on rates from the wiki’s money making guide, with “minimal downtime, few mistakes and efficient strategies” it takes about 170 hours of ToB to get a scythe. Dare I say that one has “completed the tutorial” well before that.

So here is my proposed revision to bronzeman, which I call tinman³: You can also unlock the ability to buy uniques via combat achievements. Which combat achievements unlock which items would depend on the boss and be at Jagex’s discretion. This creates separate levers for the economy (the drop rate) and for the progression (when should gear be unlocked). Without this separation, Jagex can’t tune the difficulty of gear unlocks without disrupting the economy, and bronzeman will forever be diet ironman instead of the rehabilitated main it’s meant to be.

This also lets PvP players have what they want, where right now they’re left out to dry. With tinman, there’s no reason why loot obtained via PvP couldn’t count as an unlock as well. There’s no integrity to be violated, because prestige was never the point.

Think of tinman like a vaccine. It doesn’t even pretend that you are meant to suffer through that long and arduous grind. If ever you decide to grind that scythe out yourself, it will be because you wanted to anyway, because you just really love ToB.⁴ It won’t cure anyone who’s currently an alcoholic, but it will save many others from ever going down that path in the first place.

Moreover, by accepting that bronzeman is not a prestige mode and that ironman mode has lost most of its prestige, we open the door for a new game mode designed specifically to bring that prestige back. I think that is the “hardcore main with fresh start servers” idea, but that is a subject for another day.