Enough Fetish - Let's Play Instead

From the 10,000 word post, in reference to choosing a setting for a D&D campaign:

"No one appears for a football game in order to watch the field. The field is lacking as an entertainment medium. It's sole purpose is as a measuring device to determine who wins and who loses."

This, I felt, deserved a few words of its own.

Very often, in fetishizing a setting such as we read in books or see captured in a film, we tend to attribute a greater importance to that setting than it really deserves.  This is the meaning of a 'fetish' - to take an ordinary object in embue it with supernatural power, such as a cross or a book.  This supernatural fetish takes hold of a culture and continues to manifest itself in ridiculous traditions, such as having a President swear to be a good President with his hand resting on a Bible - as though the swearing itself means nothing if it is not supernaturally "enforced" by the Bible's presence.

Consider a setting familiar to most gentle readers: Middle Earth.

Some Americans can indicate the location of Rohan on a map more easily than they can Romania.

Here we have a host of so-called 'well-known' places ... the Shire, Fanghorn, Mirkwood, the Lonely Mountain, Gondor and so on.  We've read the books and watched the movies and we perceive we have a definite idea of what these places are like.

But remember that Rohan does not look like "Rohan," not really.  Remember that what it looks like is New Zealand.

Fact is, as a setting rich with interesting places to see for D&D, it's actually pretty crappy.  If you don't believe me, get out your copy of The Hobbit and then copy out everything the book says about the Misty Mountains.  Don't embellish, just write out the actual descriptive words from the book.  Good.  Now how long did that take you?  A couple of weeks?  A day or two?  Did it take as much as an hour?

The reality is, there's almost nothing, really.  Tolkein knew he didn't have to extensively describe the mountains, because he was writing a book, and not an RPG setting.  He knew his reader would fill in the greater details from the reader's familiarity with mountains in Norway, or Switzerland, or Poland, or America ... or New Zealand.  That's why encyclopedias of Tolkein like this one are loaded with oblique references of what King Durin VI or Azog or Balin did that happened in the area of the Misty Mountains, but virtually not a thing about the mountains themselves.  The mountains ARE mountains.  There's nothing really special about them.

But is it different for an RPG?  I'll tell you truly, no.  I run the real world, and my setting does take advantage of a cultural reflection in people's minds of the Alps or the Urals or the Andes ... but most people have not spent great gobs of time in those places, and even if they have - we're still talking mountains here.  I have lived most of my life in and around the Rocky Mountains, and though I've camped overnight hundreds of times around them, and tramped up and down their slopes in summer and winter, I can't make the mountains themselves interesting or exciting for very long, not to people sitting around a kitchen table.

The mountains aren't important.  Middle Earth isn't important.  If you think that by running Middle Earth you will be running a setting that is amazingly more interesting than a setting of your own cobbled-together imagination, you will be amazingly disappointed.  We are talking about a big, empty map, with less words written about what's actually there than you'll find in the smallest pocket travel guide, and in the whole it won't matter.  What will interest your party isn't the magic word "Rohan," but instead the seventeen orcs standing fifty feet away.

Settings are deathly dull, in case you didn't know.  This is why a dungeon that presents empty room after empty room makes for a dismal night of running - even if the last room found is full of creatures and treasure.  What you really want is a setting where EVERY room is full of some kind of creature, and some kind of treasure (informational, if not pecuniary), because living things that threaten or cooperate are only about ten thousand times more interesting than four walls with a door.

Advice like this will not stop would-be DMs from scratching out walls and doors, one juxtaposed with the next, ad nauseam, as though the shape of a hall or a room somehow in itself creates excitement and drama.  In roleplaying this truly is a fetish - otherwise, how can you explain representations of a campaign environment like this:

The people who dug these passages - did they want to spend every minute of their lives on their feet?

Nevermind that a culture that would devise something like this would soon murder one another over arguments of who had to get up and walk half a mile to fetch the water for dinner, the actual contribution this set-up offers for dramatic momentum in a campaign is sincerely suspect.  I know, oh I do know, that DMs swear vehemently by such maps.  No fetishist in the world patiently carving stone into the shape of a woobie doll compares with a 17-year-old DM composing a map for a serious long-term dungeon crawl.  But is this necessary?  Are all the doors and the turnings and the choosings of lefts over rights and rights over lefts really conducive, or is it just habit?  Wouldn't it be better if the party could get straight to the matter of fighting and bargaining and chasing and fleeing from the creatures themselves, who were spaced apart by simple straight passages that did not require 90 minutes of navigation?  Or is it that the boring bits are a way for DMs to mock players who'd rather be going up levels than going down staircases?

Or as my offline party likes to say, "You have now gotten through the maze that allows you to reach the next maze."

So streamline your world.  Make it less about your world and more about the people in it.  A conversation with a wall is very, very boring.  A conversation with seventeen orcs, MUCH more interesting.

Tailoring

From the 10,000 word post:

"Fundamentally, the first step is to present a setting.  Without burying ourselves in a long discourse about what settings might be presented, the principle purpose of the setting is to 'ground' the campaign in something tangible that can be incorporated into the player's imaginations.  If the player cannot visualize the setting. or how to move or interact within that setting, then the setting is worthless to your game.  Flogging a setting for the sake of novelty over the principles of interaction is a poor proposition, and will result in a sharp decrease of momentum once the novelty departs.  Your setting cannot exist for the sake of itself - it exists to give the players identifying markers upon which to play. "

Very well, let us bury ourselves in a long discourse about what settings might be presented.

Most obvious are settings which have come down from fiction authors, who have contrived lands and cities and gods and monsters which seem to fit perfectly with a D&D setting.  Tolkein has conveniently provided us with descriptions of Middle Earth, so that players at the table can picture the Inn at Bree, or the White City, or the Lonely Mountain.  The flavour, too, of the land is laid out so that each player at the table - who has read the books - can imagine how their characters might think or act in such a place.  And the same can be said for the other vistas, neatly listed for you in the infamous Appendix N.

Then of course there are the pregenerated worlds, convenient for your use.  These are even better than the post-fictional worlds, since the 'grittiness' doesn't depend upon a few mere books with inconvenient time spent on plots and characters that won't ultimately be useful to the DM.  The Outer World, Greyhawk ... even Dragonlance ... these offer so much MORE detail for your use.  Enough, in fact, that you may never get to read all the possible materials that might be of use to you - and a seemingly bottomless well is a good thing, yes?

Even better, if your players are equally familiar with the pregenerated setting, then they should be able to visualize it.  Better still, if the infrastructure of that world is sound and consistent, your party will be able to judge their actions against what they think the consequences will be ... that will be reassuring for them, and will increase their willingness to take risks.  Overall, that's good for the momentum of your campaign.

Why, then, should novelty be a poor proposition?

If you have travelled, or can conceive of travelling, to a vastly different culture, you can see the difficulty at once.  Let us say that we snap our fingers and appear in the deepest corner of New Guinea, or in a heavily populated part Ulaan Bator in Mongolia.  What are the social rules?  How should we behave so as not to offend anyone?  Are we in danger, or is this ultimately a safe place?  Upon what am I to base my expectations when I attempt to address the residents, or ask for a place to stay, or even to buy things from the market?

A common tactic that many adopt when finding themselves faced with these questions is to bull their way through.  Westerners are famous for stepping on toes and brazenly insulting locals by demanding that things be handled or taken for granted in the same way they are in rural Devonshire or suburban Ohio.  This has led a great many people into situations of great distress ... but that's what embassies are for.  Thankfully, there IS a Devonshire and an Ohio, where people understand why we might have acted the way we did.

But if we extend the question to a unique, isolated world scene that has popped out of a DM's imagination, what then?  As a player, how am I to judge what is right and what is wrong?

Often, a DM will take the trouble to provide a long list of contrived social moraes and institutions, which the players are to imbibe and hopefully channel through their roleplay.  The only thing is:  creating an entire cultural milieu is an incredibly daunting task - just consider the length of the Bible, or the complete Upanishads and the Vedas besides.  It's just not possible to create a new reality with a few pages of 'traditions,' based upon nothing more than the DM's imagination.  Thus, whenever it's tried, the proposed novelty relies upon the crutches of the social system we ARE familiar with - only with the uncertainty of where the DM's conception ends and where the usual social values begin.  Inevitably, the DM's vision fails and the world either dies on the vine, or the more familiar values assert themselves and take over.

There's a reason for this.  Our social values, norms, virtues and what have you, exist because they have proven to endure the test of time ... and that test has been thousands upon thousands of years.  Something that's been in existence for a few weeks in a DM's notebook can hardly stand against that.  Parties will return to the only behavior they know how to exhibit - their own - and the world will either bend to that behavior or the world will die.

Every author and filmmaker learns through trial and folly that there are some realities that must be adhered to when presenting an alternative "reality" to a modern audience.  Concepts like love, loyalty, right-and-wrong as we understand it, attitudes towards sexuality and family - these must be maintained or else your audience will depart.  It does not matter if it makes no sense in the context of the story.  If Spartacus fights the Romans, it must be for the sake of an American-style freedom.  If the poles of good and evil are to be maintained, the men who fight against Mordor cannot be demonstrated to be fornicators and idolaters.  There can be drinking, but it is happy drinking, and taverns are happy places.  Such are the expectations of the audience.

Yes, there is a disconnect here.  Our social expectations do include an amount of unpleasant, undesireable expectations - there are drunks in the world, and people do rise up against corrupt governments only to be as corrupt themselves.  Good and evil are outdated, outmoded - even ridiculous - concepts to many of us.  And still they won't work for your players, because that is not the game they want to play.  Even if your world is dark and gritty, it is dark and gritty only where those things are on display to be stamped out and the world made better.  Your players will still need fantasy and sunshine if they're going to keep playing.

What I am saying is that if you will have a GOOD world, that world will be recognizable.  I don't mean it follows the pattern of what your players see on their commute to work each morning.  I do mean that bad people will present themselves in the way you would expect bad people to do so ... perhaps lying in the beginning, perhaps apparently virtuous and well-meaning - but always with that moment of treachery that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt what makes them who they are.  And they will have familiar, appreciable motivations - greed, power, wrath, pride.  These motivations will likely not fall into the lusting, perverse categories.  Your players will not appreciate it.

Obviously this does not merely apply to people.  Rivers should be expected to run from the mountains to the sea.  The sea should be expected to have waves.  Grass will grow, and clouds will roll across the sky, and rain will be composed of water.  Oh, you can play around with these things ... but if you play too far from the norm, you will only exhaust your players.  Your world will become a laughing stock, as the rivers flowing up into the mountains will inspire first jokes, then exhaustion.  An uphill flowing river is a like a joke that is funny once.  After awhile, it loses its novelty and just becomes an inconvenient, tired thing that the parties have to be reminded of again and again, because they've forgotten.  You will smugly report that it is raining mustard again, and the party will stare at you with dull eyes and dull expressions.  "Yes, so, what of it," will be their opinion.

You will not make a good world with gimmicks.  That the mountains are grey or green or off-pink with purple edges will not make any difference in even the short run.  You won't get anywhere populating your world with weird and unfamiliar denizens.  Birds of  different feathers and conceived breeds do not inspire the imagination, they shut it down.  Your players will not ponder your concoctions any further than the questions, "can we kill it, can we eat it, can we sell it."  And in answer to those questions, your birds might as well be eagles and mackaws.  The human imagination ponders that with which it has already developed a fetish.  People like penguins and turtles and panda bears because they have grown up in a world rich with references to those things.  Your players will not get excited about your sznifloos, because they did not receive stuffed sznifloos for Christmas, years ago.

If you will insist on creating all these things to make your world uniquely your world, you are climbing an impossible hill that offers no view.  You're not tapping into the ready-made reservoir of player emotions already held in their minds for creatures that do impress them.  An ordinary hippopotomus may seem too mundane for your world - but everyone knows what they are, and everyone can guess what they would do when stumbling across one.  What does one do with a sznifloo?

Stop and think.  If you were a tailor, and a man entered to have a suit made for himself, would novelty be your primary concern?  Or would it be to fit your customer excellently, so that as he moved about in the suit you had made, and felt its sleeves upon his arms, and the reassuring grasp of the fabric about his shoulders, he marvelled at what a good tailor you were.  It is little understood by DMs that the actual world fits us rather like a good suit - with food that we can grow and eat, and animals we can domesticate or shepherd, and aspects we appreciate and adore.  True, the world is a nasty, scary place - but we have been fashioned biologically for this world, and it is that biology that makes it such a good fit.

Take the clothes made by others - novelists and game designers - and make alterations as you will, or mark your fabric and create your conception from scratch ... but set aside your grandious conceptions of novel artistry, and concentrate instead on just being a damn good tailor.

Drama

Ah, there has been a bit of drama, and the drance has appeared everywhere, buzzing about and sucking gluttonously at all the shit that's dropped in the last twenty-four hours.

This morning my wife and I agreed that Drance, for me, is my own personal Paul Lazzaro.  Some of you might not understand what I mean; some of you might recognize the name, but in the time since High School you've forgotten all about Slaughterhouse Five.  I have a quote from the movie, not the book - the movie is a fair simplification of Vonnegut's vision, and will serve to make the point here:

Billy Pilgrim (speaking to a crowd): "You see in Tralfamador, where I presently dwell, life has no beginning, no middle, and no end.  For example, many years ago a certain man promised to have me killed.  He's an old man now, living not far from here.  He's read all the publicity associated with my appearance.  He's insane.  And tonight he'll keep his promise."  (murmurs through the crowd)  "If you protest, if you think that death is a terrible thing, then you've not understood what I have said."  (Lazzaro appears on a high balcony with a rifle)  "You see, it's time for you to go home - to your lives and your children.  It's time for me to be dead for a little while.  And then live again.  I give you the Tralfamadorian greeting:  Hello.  Farewell.  Hello.  Farewell.  Eternally connected, eternally embracing.  Hello.  Farewell."  (Lazzaro shoots Billy; the crowd screams)

Somehow, I see that scene playing out in about thirty years.

The internet is a strange place.  It is full of people who you'd cross the street before thinking about walking right by them.  It is full of people who stink on busses for lack of deodorant, and who scream crazily at coffee shop vendors over a few cents change, and who regularly cut pedestrians off at traffic lights.  And these people step onto the net, and create a nick for themselves, and try to pass as ordinary, worthy citizens.  It is their chance, so they reason, to be finally accepted and respected as worthy persons, which they perceive themselves to be ... but as it is in their lives, they've done nothing on the internet to earn that worthiness - nothing at all, except to create a nick.  For all they can see, that nick is a license to sit in a balcony and shoot at the people for whom the crowd has come.

If the only evidence I gave of my person on the internet was slapping around people and screaming at the mob, I would very rightly be despised.  But what the mob cannot understand - what the mob will never understand - is that I have done more on this blog these past three years than scream at people.  I have written funny; I have written clever; I have written a ton of carefully backed arguments.  I have run a campaign that is a mass of labor and creativity.  I have given more evidence of my value than the mere nick I have chosen.  If there are those out there who cannot, or will not, understand why it is that people continue to defend me, or read me, or link to me, let them remember that I have not just spent my time eating the shit that drama creates.

Listen, Dungeon Masters, and those of you who are youngest.  You will always find yourself in a position where some player has taken something you've said so much to heart that they are now screaming at you in your dining room to 'get fucked,' while you are screaming at them to 'get out.'  After it happens, you're going to feel the shakes of adrenaline.  You're going to question yourself and your players, wondering if you are a good DM or not.  You're not going to have a clear idea of why the whole stupid drama played out at all.  You said something, then they said something, and then suddenly the drama was full-blown.  And ten minutes after it was over, you'll wish it hadn't happened, whatever it was that did happen.

If you'll give me a moment, I'll explain it.  It is called real life.  You, the DM, have gotten off your job on a Friday night, or you have just spent all day Saturday fighting crowds at the mall or weeds in the back yard, or shovelling snow for the fourth time from your damn huge driveway.  You're exhausted, you're pressed for time, you want to run your world more than anything and you're downing coffee and other caffeine drinks to keep going.  Your players, too, they've had their rough days, and they're doing likewise.  And all of you, jacked up on drinks and concentrating your whole attention on this one fucking night being the only goddamn decent five hours in your otherwise shitty week, are under pressure.  You're under a lot of pressure - more than you know.

And foolishly, you've hinged all that pressure, and all that energy you've poured into your bodies chemically, on die rolls.  It's what you've chosen to do.  And when those rolls don't go right - and inevitably, they won't - those hinges are going to strain and tear ... and this is going to be made worse when the tear happens in just such a way that you're reminded of your real life, or the DM or a player reminds you of someone or something that you have to deal with unhappily in your real life.

The reminder doesn't have to be conscious.  The human mind is chock full of unconscious triggers.  There's a thousand moments of stress that we all deal with and handle, that we don't want to deal with and handle when we're having 'fun' around a table throwing dice.  But that moment comes, and our minds do start to deal with it, and all of the sudden we're screaming mad - and we don't know why.

After the fact.  After the moment.  Then we know.  We can sit down and piece it out and realize we did this for those reasons and that for these reasons and suddenly it all seems really stupid and unimportant.  We have a moment of comprehension that only we ourselves truly grasp.

Sometimes, these moments end friendships that never needed to end.  Sometimes, we can pick up the pieces and fix it.  Now and then, it just takes a handshake.  "Sorry buddy.  That was stupid.  I don't know why I was being such an idiot."

But then, there's the internet.  The wonderful, marvelous, I-wouldn't-want-to-live without it internet.  The internet and its built-in fan base, screaming just because it needs to scream.  It's numerous souls have also had their shitty weeks, only they don't have any five hours to play the game, or dice to roll.  Or the games and the dice they have aren't enough to shed off the fucking misery of their lives.  So they go looking for the flash of anger that others feel, and feed off that anger for all its worth.  They need that anger.  Desperately.  It is their moment to shine - to post comments to perceived compatriots who are just like them, who are 'in the moment' of a misery just like their misery.  And for as long as that misery lasts, the flies will share it with you, and commiserate on your unhappiness, and send you flowers and candy to remind you of just how important and valuable YOU are ... all in the hope that you will say to them the thing they really, really need to hear to make their unproductive lives seem a little more important:

"Thank you guy.  I really needed to hear that."

Disappointed

Not everything in the world that you wish for pans out.  I have unfortunately come to a position of impasse with JB of B/X Blackrazor, who only this week began running a character in my world.  I'd like to say that this is not because of something that he said to me.  I'd also like to say that this is not due to his wishing to break it off with me.  I do not know what his wishes are.  This impasse is something entirely of my own doing, and has more to do with my perception of what it is that defines a gentleman than it does whatever sort of player JB happens to be.

I write this preamble for the benefit of my other players, and those who would play with me, and no one else.  I take the position that I have, which can be read on the comment threads of these two posts, here and here, because I firmly believe that the character of an individual is defined by the manner in which they approach opposition to their behavior.  I believe there is a time to apologize.  And I believe there is a time not to apologize.  When the apology is given, it should be done unreservedly.  When the apology is not given, the consequences should be accepted graciously.  With regards to JB, I expected an apology.  I did not ask for it, but I expected it just the same.

I do not like it when people apologize to me for things that don't matter.  I am, however, intolerant when I fail to receive an apology for something I think does matter.  JB demonstrated himself ready to apologize quite profusely about misunderstandings and minor errors and timing errors - but where it came to apologizing for open disrespect, no apology occurred.

I am old.  I have found this is often the case.

The above said, and my reputation as an intolerant made marginally clearer, I would like to ask a question I asked in the second linked thread:  Why is it that whenever players declare that they are 'playing in character' they invariably act like fucking jerks?

I suppose its because if they weren't being jerks, there wouldn't be any need to use the argument that they are acting 'in character' to justify their behavior.

But then it comes to mind, why in particular is it that people who claim not to be jerks in ordinary life, who act like jerks in D&D games, while arguing that they're being 'in character,' feel they need to have characters that are jerks in the first place?

Is it that there's a particular kind of person in the world who is not a jerk, who wants so much to be a jerk, that D&D is their big opportunity to do so?  I know this is what television would have us believe - television shows from Our Miss Brooks forward have pitched this as a dramatic device hundreds, perhaps thousands of times.  It makes for lively interaction between the actors, and serves to moralize about it one ... more ... time.

But here's the thing.  Most of the people I know who are not jerks, aren't jerks because they actually feel that being a jerk is a bad thing.  Even I think being a jerk is a bad thing.  Oh yeah, I'm an asshole, and I write like an asshole ... but I have yet to do anything worse than blow a lot of air.  I'm not actively trying to make my players jump through any hoops or actively mistreating them.  I don't even wish JB any ill will ... I just don't want to run him in my world.  This post is without question an insult to him - but you, gentle reader, and most everyone reading this will put all that down to Alexis being wrong about that, true?  You're bound to put it down to Alexis blowing air, and for fuck's sake, you're probably right about that.

It boggles the mind, then, that someone would want to run in my world.  I personally would like to know why someone who indicated that they would want to; who knew without a doubt how intolerant I could be; who in fact competed to run in that world - would then choose, as his DEFINING character trait, an intolerant, pushy, insistent, self-serving asshole.

Did it not occur that a player displaying this personality might run smack bang into the DM's personality?

Hey, let's point out the very obvious.  Do you know what kind of 'in character' personality NO ONE in the whole wide world of RPGing likes in a player they have to run with?  Just guess.  Come on, you don't need me to say it, do you?

I have known games where EVERY player had this personality.  Funny thing was, it wasn't 'in character' around those tables.  Those guys actually were fucktards.  They weren't pretending to be anything.

Well, that's the thrust of it.  I'll just add a couple of words about what DMs should do when faced with players who reach for and channel this asshole personality as an 'in character' roleplaying choice:

Boot them.

The Mill and The Cross

Let's talk a little porn.

Any medieval scholar must eventually wonder at the intensity with which Europe fetishized the death of one particular man of foreign extraction - an intensity which could be measured at a ratio of perhaps 10,000:1 against the fandom surrounding Star Wars or even the NFL.  In the minds of the ordinary European, every element of the death was painstakingly examined and extrapolated: the actual death itself; the very words that were spoken; the behavior of every person present; the reason for the death; the arguments used for and against; the systematic application of torture before the event and the theological ramifications thereof, even with elaborations of mythological events coinciding with those of a mundane nature.  This one death held European society in a sort of terrified, contemplative, contradicting ecstasy that lasted over a thousand years, and which still holds a dwindling few - comparatively - heartily in its grasp.  This one death was - is - the very definition of the term 'passion.'

We hardly imagine what it was to the minds of our distant ancestors.

Over the weekend I caught the film, The Mill and the Cross, which every review you will find will tell you is "about" a painting by Pieter Bruegel, The Procession to Calvary.  Calvary, for the uninitiated, is the hill upon which the aforementioned man died.  I'd like to express my extreme distaste with reviewers, who live in the small-minded state of existence that leads them to believe that a film which takes place within a painting must be about the painting, and not ALSO about the thing the painting is about.  It is as if to say that Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is about the senate chamber, because it happens to take place there, or that The Shawshank Redemption is about prisons.  But this is the sort of ignorant deconstructionalism I've come to expect from modern day reviewers of films, for whom the rims of the glasses upon their noses is a far-sighted observation - naturally a film of unusual purpose and design could achieve no better effect than the casting of pearls before swine.  I have not for some time seen any movie so rashly misunderstood.

I would tell you, see this film.  It has everything to do with a man's death, and nothing to do with the edifice that has built extensively and appallingly upon the man's death.  The edifice itself, the worshipped entity that has proported to tell Europeans how to live, and then execute them when they do it less than well, is the villain in the 'canvas,' demonstrated eloquently in the work without any character's wagging finger.  But I shall not be more precise than that in describing the 'edifice,' since I don't give a fig if the ordinary, uneducated, ignorant person knows what it is I refer to - the movie takes the same high road, and I shall not veer from the path.

But then, the director,  Lech Majewski, is Polish, and clearly speaking to Europeans in this film and not to Americans, so I think it fair to say that his audience knows of what he speaks.  Majewski does not bow to explain; he does not bow to moralize; he presents a tableau and an argument, and demands that the viewer should apply brain to problem.  I did, and in doing so, watched the movie twice through.

I do not think that any film made has ever captured the sense or the flavour of my Dungeons and Dragons world so perfectly.  I shall have to say that if there is a texture to my world, it is the texture to be found in this film - from the ordinary happenstance of people rising from beds to eat, to the setting out to do a day's work, to the fear and casual abuse perpetrated by authority upon the helpless and ordinary person.  One does not "enter a picture" in watching this film, but into the very condition and state of living to be experienced in the 16th century.

I remain astounded. 

The "Magical" Assassin

I have this fantasy where I have time to post something again on this blog - oh wait ... I seem to have time right now!

I want to talk about assassins.

It's true that a lot of campaigns won't allow them.  I know that for some, it's the whole idea of a class dedicated to cold-blooded murder, and the squick related to that ... but for most, I think that's just a convenient excuse for a bigger issue:  players don't know how to run them.

There are certain tropes that have built up over the years in D&D - mostly engendered by young people who did not understand very much about life, or about nuance - and one of the worst of these is that an assassin can simply walk up to someone, anyone, on the street, and 'assassinate' them.  Even worse, there exists the idea that in the middle of combat, when the opponent misses, the player assassin declares, "I assassinate him!"  Whereupon the 14-year-old DM answers, "Roll percentile die!"

This ridiculous scenario is fostered by the belief that assassins don't have much going for them.  They have the same crappy hit points as a thief, they haven't got even the thieving abilities of a thief, they don't fight any better than a thief ... and it takes more X.P. per level to go up.

Jeez.  Why would anyone run an assassin?  Heck, better treat that assassination ability like an instantaneous reloadable magic spell that can be applied all the freaking time.

And that's what happens.

Part of the problem that 14-year-old players buy into that kind of bullshit is that the idea drifts upon the wind that assassins in D&D are something like the modern day syndicate Hit Man - a fellow who takes contracts for money.  Gygaxian Logic  dictated that a 'guild' had to be created where said contracts could be distributed out, where assassins could get together for coffee and cakes after the job, and of course the local officials paid just to look the other way.  So once again, there's another trope ... the assassin stomping into your campaign and asking you straight up, "Hey, where's the assassins guild?  How much do I pay them?  Have they got any contracts for me?"

Like yes, what I'd really like to do now is have all my players squat motionless around a table while the assassin in the party spends the next four hours carefully hunting down the pre-generated victim, who obviously can't wait to die.  Or, alternately, the five minute episode where the assassin picks up his contract, heads around to the bar where Pick the Needle is known to down drinks, dispatching him with a quick percentile roll before turning up again amidst the party counting his cool 200 g.p.

Can I just say:  do we need more proof in this world that the originators of D&D were a bunch of really, really, flabbergastingly stupid pud-pounding morons?

But heck - I'm known to be biased about such things.

So basically, having gotten rather sick with the assassin schtick, DM's just settle the problem once and for all by denying the existence of assassins as a class.  Sure, people still "assassinate" ... but without the percentile roll.

My personal feeling is that the percentile roll is fine.  I have no trouble with an imagined assassin having a solid biological understanding of the humanoid body, and being able to take advantage of that with a swift knife thrust, or a garrote, or what you like.  I really don't mind this being a percentage, it works or it doesn't kind of roll.

But there has to be an infrastructure behind that roll that makes sense.  The assassin HAS to surprise the victim - and the assassin HAS to do so at a distance that allows absolutely no time at all.  It doesn't do any good to surprise the victim from seven feet away ... unless the assassin is running flat out, and if so, a little surgery is going to be a little more difficult.  In films, assassins who go for the throat NEVER miss ... but in reality they would all the time.  So we're talking adjustments - adjustments for weapons, adjustments for movement, adjustments for all kinds of circumstances.  But I don't think those adjustments are easily managed by a few tables ... there are too many circumstances.  For myself, I tend to play it so that whenever the assassination set up isn't perfect, the assassination chance is halved, or quartered, depending on how many relevant details there are.

What's perfect?  You're in the shadows; the victim steps out a few feet from you; the victim is distracted by a pocketwatch, or something in the sky - and you step out and kill him.

Now, if you make that happen as an assassin, I'll give you the experience points for assassination.  But if you blunder around and don't think things through ... well fuck, who does?  I have yet to have a player who really has the cold natured heart necessary to carry forth the process behind the assassination.  I've been hammering on this point for quite a few years and for quite a few years I come up short.  It doesn't really surprise me - on some level, I think that if you have a player at the table able to really think like a killer, you might have to wonder just what you're doing having this person in your house.

Still, that's how the assassin ought to approach it:  "How do I put myself in the right place at the right time to murder that fellow there whose standing in my way?"  And the removal of obstacles is definitely the point - there is no "assassin's guild" in the sense of a house in town where assassins hang out.  Any assassin's guild would form around one master assassin, and every member of that guild would be a FOLLOWER of that master assassin.  Thus, in the game, NOT A PLAYER CHARACTER.  By definition!  A player assassin who was a follower would have to do what the master assassin told him to do - and that hardly works well in a campaign, unless that assassin is the only player.  Among other players, the assassins would have to be an ordinary serial killer, who might someday organize a collection of serial killers ... but in the meantime, they're on their own.

Which means, if they want to have a contract to kill someone (plausible), they're going to have to figure out how to get one without it being handed on a silver platter.  Good luck with that.  I'd love to see a player really figure out how to do that ... it would really take some serious freakin' thinking.  I know as a DM, I'm going to be picking any plan apart for the opportunity to send the guards in and catch the player - it better be a really good plan.

Still, anything's possible.

Inside the party, I can see benefits for the rational thinking assassin.  Someone's harrassing the party?  The assassin will take care of it.  That guard's in the way?  The assassin will take care of it.  Three guys are following the party?  The assassin will take care of them.  And so on.  With forethought and planning, always.  Never - absolutely never - by walking up to them, waving hello, and magically assassinating them.

Shit.

Rock-Paper-Scissors

The contest is very simple.
All persons will play at the same time.  Because my comments are on moderate, each person can comment on this post with their choice.  All persons will have a chance to comment before I publish all results for each round.  Your first choice will be the only one I will accept - subsequent choices in a particular round will be ignored.  It might be possible to finish this in one round, or it may take several.

To repeat.  You, the players, will write one word on a comment: say, "scissors."  When all persons have written one word (or willingly bowed out), I will publish and declare the winners for that round.  Remaining winners will then compete in following rounds, if these are needed.

Calculating results:

The choice with the largest number of proponents will wipe out those one step down from that choice.  Left over persons will survive, with the winners, to the next round.

Example: Three persons choose 'rock'; one person chooses 'scissors' and one person chooses 'paper.'  In that round, rock destroys scissors, so that person is out.  Both those who chose rock and that one who chose paper will survive to the next round.

If there the largest number occurs for two different choices, then the superior choice will destroy the other; left over persons will survive.

Example:  Two persons choose 'rock' and two persons choose 'paper'; one person chooses 'scissors.'  Paper will destroy rock, so those two persons are out; those choosing paper and scissors will survive to the next round.

If the largest group fails to kill anyone, then the second largest group will have considered to have killed all persons in the largest group.

Example:  Four persons choose 'rock'; no one chooses 'scissors;' one person chooses 'paper.'  In this round, the one person choosing paper destroys the four people choosing rock.

If all persons make the same choice, or if an equal number of players makes each of the three choices, then the round is void and repeated again.

Example:  Everyone chooses 'rock.'  The round is played over.

Example:  With three persons left, one person each chooses 'rock,' 'scissors' and 'paper.'  The round is played over.

If one person is chosen without having designated a second person, those still surviving will play for the second position.

If for some reason Alexis accidentally publishes some results too early, due to the nature of blogger, that round is void and will be played over.

Rounds are played until there is one final winner and one final loser.  This may not be completed today.  Please note, there is a hole in the middle of my day when I will be unavailable.

I will continue to publish comments which do not contain results.  If I have missed something in my logic above, please inform me immediately, and I will rule.

JB, Imon Fyre, Oddbit, Wickedmurph, Arduin ...

You may begin.

God Rot DDO

In 1984, when I was 20 years old, I went to watch the movie Revenge of the Nerds with my friends.  We knew nothing about the film except the commercials that went before it, and as it was the first weekend, and there was no internet, we had not even heard word about the film from anyone who had seen it.

But my crowd was a definitely odd-looking bunch, punk and pre-goth and dylanesque, channelling everything from Elvis Costello through the Marquis de Sade.  As it happened, waiting for the movie to start in the era before theatre advertising, we found ourselves sitting in front of a line of four Paris Hilton-wannabes ... though of course Mme. Hilton was then only three years old.  The Paris type has been around a lot longer than Paris.

They did not know anything about the film, either.  They knew less than we did.  This we found out because as my crowd was loud and obnoxious in the way that only hardcore nerds can be, and because the film was about us (we were sure), these girls eventually came around to asking us what a 'nerd' was.

You see, they didn't know.

Putting aside that they were obviously stupid, and that they were obviously NOT going to like the film, I turned about, leaned on the back of the seat behind me, and explained nerds to these four girls.  I was a lecturing bastard even then.

They called me a few rude things, I said I didn't care, and then I turned around and spread my arms wide as though to embrace the movie screen, and cried out loud enough for the whole theatre to hear, "THESE ARE MY PEOPLE!"

How very, very right I was.  The film remains one of my favorites.

But we know now how the term 'nerd' has been co-opted to death and how it has come to replace the word 'expert' where it comes to ordinary, white collar work.  Every Disney movie (and most other studios besides) contains a nerd who is in no way like any nerd I ever knew once upon a time, and every said depicted nerd appears, at worst, to be Hollywood ugly.

These are definitely, very definitely, NOT my people.  Not, not even those guys.

This is all working its way towards the title in this post - DDO players do not play D&D.  Oh, my gawd, do they ever NOT play D&D.

Not that this will come as a surprise to the more hardcore of my gentle readers.  So you may rest easy, I'm not going to write a point-by-point comparison.  I'm sure others have done so already ... and in any case, i think I would have had to have played DDO at some point in my life to do a credible job.  I haven't, so I won't.

But people who have played DDO and not D&D drift into my campaign and I don't mind that.  They find out soon enough that the games are different, and then a strange thing happens.  They like D&D better.  Imagine that.  They would rather spend a Saturday night fumbling with archaic ideals like dice and such, and who can blame them?  Computer games suck.  We all know computer games suck.  They're one redeeming feature is that they don't require social graces, they can be played a long time and they don't suck nearly as much as television.  Or most everything else.

Someday, computer games won't suck.  But as long as they depend on cut scenes and side quests and monthly payments and bullshit filler and player-player competition, they are going to suck.

Here's the thing, however.  Computer games were around when everyone who played them wasn't a nerd.  In fact, in strictest definition, nerds are so rare that a computer game company would die brutally trying to survive on that base.  In my 1,850 student high school, there were exactly six of us.  I don't mean there were six nerds in my particular crowd ... I mean in the entire school, there were six nerds who could legitimately be classed as social lepers - which is what nerds are.  Sometimes they are social lepers because they are really smart; and sometimes because they are mean; and sometimes because they are a-political or amoral or just not all there.  And all of them have a long, long history of having their social leprosy proven to them.  These are not people sitting around waiting for the diagnosis.  They know what they are.

We played computer games because they sucked less than everything else.  And we built computers and radio telescopes and guitars and wrote books and sang on street corners because we had gobs of time not spent being involved in ordinary social conventions.  Through our long, lonesome years, we read and read and read and lived with society like Jane Goodall lived with the chimps, watching them, worried about being killed by them, and learning all about them.  And we took that learning, most often than not, and applied it to ART.

Yes, some of us were about computers and electronics, but not because computers and electronics meant jack shit in themselves - we were into them because of what those things could CREATE.  If you fuck around taking computers apart and rebuilding them in your basement, you're not a nerd.  If you fuck around rebuilding computers with the idea of modifying a river-spanning bridge into a moog upon which you can play something by the Clash, then you are a nerd.  See the difference?

What's my point?  Oh, there's no point.  I'm just fucking around with this blog, finding out what it can do.

Wanted: Player

The onblog campaign has been gaining momentum again after our December hiatus, but as it happens one of the players has simply vanished.  There's no word at all, and we have no idea what happened - he had seemed very into the game, suggesting something nefarious.

Still, we all know the game ... and since four players make a better session than three, the time has come to start looking into finding another regular player for the game.  If said individual shows up later, then five is still manageable ... and five is better than three.

So ... if you are interested in exploring my world as a player, now is the time.

The criteria is fairly rigorous, I'm afraid.  The campaign is played on a blog, so the first thing a new player needs to have is an ability to express his or her self in the written word.  You should be someone who likes to write, and who is willing to do so on a regular basis.  You should have good grammar, and have the ability to be precise and to the point.  Saying all that needs to be said in the least number of words is a priority.

The game is entirely played between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.  Notes pass back and forth sometimes in the evening, but the game is played during office hours, so you should have reasonable access to the internet at that time.  Most of have meetings, work, things we do, so game moments get suspended constantly and sometimes for whole days, but we'd want someone who could log on, check to see what's happening and offer an action to keep things going.  I really couldn't base an event around your character if it took three days to hear from you.  We play virtually every day, even if it's just a little bit.  Fanatics, therefore, are wanted.

You should be completely familiar with the nature and the style of the campaign, and I think you should be flexible about what rules you want to play by.  I'm not going to change rules in the game just to suit you, so if you depend on things like skills and feats, my world won't be for you.  It is highly modified AD&D, but the structure is basically still the old game from the late 70s.

It wouldn't hurt to know my blog, and to have learned by now that I'm not an asshole all the time.  A lot of people around the blogosphere seem to think I must be painted black, not gray, and are constantly surprised when I say gray, or even white things.

I would like to hear from you, either in the comments section or to my email at alexiss1@telus.net.  I must tell you I'll be more impressed if you write me in the comments section - how can you ask to play openly on the blog if you can't give me the reasons you'd play just as openly?

And I want to hear reasons.  Not just, "It will be fun!" - but honest reasons why you'd want to give it a crack, what kind of character you'd like to run, what you'd like ultimately to do with the character and how you think you'd interact with the present three players running.  Be specific and give examples.

I'll be open minded ... but the game online is a good one, so if I don't see a good fit, I won't take anyone.  The other players will be watching this post too, so if you ingratiate yourself with them, they'll have a lot of pull when it comes to convincing me to let you play.

Give it a try.  I won't eat you.

Actual Life

In my long post I made an association between the roleplaying game and something I called 'actual' or 'real' life.  The quote ran as follows:

"Your actual life consists of moments of panic and discord; of terror and bliss; of boredom and intensity. The DMs goal is to reduce the boredom circumstances as much as possible, but to otherwise provide for the same opportunities as a real life provides in terms of distraction and interest."

Very well, what is real life, and how does one achieve it?

Let us not, to start, bog down into a question of whether or not we exist, or for what purpose we exist, or how we came about to exist, or by what means ought we to continue our existence.  These are all very interesting questions, and bear great application to the daily habit of real life, but they are of secondary value in terms of reflecting the qualities of real life, which is the subject upon the table now.  Life, for all its variances, for all its difficulties and rewards, feels remarkably real, does it not?  In that I mean that it possesses a quality that seems to capture all of your attention.  It is, in a word, absorbing.  I don't propose that your job is particularly your cup of tea, or that your relationship is going as planned, or that you've achieved the goals you'd hoped to manage by the age you're at now, no - I only mean to say that whatever quality of life you're experiencing at the moment, you are, in fact, experiencing it.  You've got to admit - real life is pretty goddamned distracting.

This is all a round about way of tackling the subject of immersion, which my functioning wikipedia tells me "... is a state of consciousness where an immersant's awareness of physical self is diminished or lost by being surrounded in an engrossing total environment, often artificial."

Let's be reasonable.  You are not going to achieve this to the nth degree around a gaming table.  Your players are still going to be aware of the location of the cheetoes, the dice are still going to demand them to recognize the presence of a mechanic apart from the 'game world,' and you're still going to have to get up and take your physical self to the bathroom every hour or so to expel the real coke you're drinking.  No one here is pitching virtual reality.  All we are asking for is a reasonable amount of distraction, something for our imaginations to take root upon so we are not thinking about our jobs, our relationships or our failed ambitions ... right?

Recently, reading Raph Koster's blog, he described the death of immersion in the cloud of internet interconnectedness ... as in, how can there be immersion in video games if thou art repeatedly interrupted by pop-ups and jingles of your internet moving and shaking?  There you are, in the middle of a scene between you and the Princess Raglia, who's husband has just died, and you're informed that BleedingMonkeyFuckBoy22 has just come online.  Kinda sucks.

And I get his point.  There's a general sentiment going around the bourgeois that interconnectedness is both a joy and a curse ... that you need apps to tell you to get off your computer, to fight off the apps that tell you to get on, like people in the 70s taking downers and uppers to sleep at night and get up in the morning.  There's something reassuringingly moronic about the nature of the social middle class, and about the way one-time Bohemians are pulled into it once seduced by owning a house, a car and the comforts of life insurance.  But immersion, or 'real life' as I prefer to call it, isn't passed on, or even feeling a bit sickly.  It's doing very well ... it just isn't the stale product of a repeating video screen.

In a very bad film from the early 80s (never mind which one), David Cronenburg tried unsuccessfully to tackle an emerging social phenomenon - the blurring distinction between actual reality and perceived reality, brought on by the universality of television.  We can't blame Cronenburg for failing - he always fails.  He fails because he always tries to cram incomprehensible contexts into a two-hour film, as though that's the right medium for them, with the recognition that there is no right medium.  In this particular case, he has one of his characters propose the following argument: "... whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it.  Therefore the television is reality ..."

Have you stopped to consider that a part of your memory; a part of the environment that made you you, that fashioned your character and rationalized your decision-making process, has been founded in the passage through several small stone corridors that led you from a perceived surface to a perceived underground chamber, when thence you barbarously slaughtered a bevy of imagined creatures in order to obtain an imagined reward which you then - in reality, mind - transfixed into your consciousness by writing said reward out in detail upon a piece of paper?  When you compare the person you are with the persons your parents chose to be, do you assign a value to how far your adventures went towards making you an adult?  And when you sit at the table as a dungeon master, do you contemplate your effects upon a comparable basis?  Do you consider that you're presenting a perceived reality that is nonetheless teaching lessons commensurate in some degree with not touching a hot stove and not telling your friend that his girl is sleeping around on him?

I would guess not.

The reality of your world begins and ends with the reality you choose to present in it ... or if you prefer, the degree in which you believe in your world.  This is not a strange or unstable phenomenon.  Most writers who invest fully into their works come to accept that their characters have become real persons ... that they, in some alternate reality, walk about and go through the actions of eating and surviving for their own sakes, apart from the writer's actual work.  This is then conveyed to the audience, that reads the work, which then itself comes to believe in the reality of the characters.  Does it not seem necessary that in some place, in some existence, not quite established by science, that Frodo and Bilbo must exist?  Is it not remarkably easy to suppose that in San Francisco in the 1940s there was a Sam Spade, or that a Yossarian spent the 50s quietly and happily burbling to himself in a Valencian cafe, reached after a long sea voyage?

But how do you achieve that?  How do you make your world real, given that you buy into any of this argument and accept that your world being real would be a marvelous thing?

To begin, you must make the conscious decision that it will BE real ... even if it is not.  It is the conscious decision to dismiss reason and judgment in this particular instance, and to embrace that your insistence is a great influence upon your belief than is your observation.  This is not as difficult as it seems ... but it is also not something that can be negotiated.  It is all or nothing - a bit of doubt tears the structure down.

Then you must apply the observances you have made of the world around you to the world you intend to make.  If your experience with this world denies the existence of something, then the matters of your world must not have that thing.  There is nothing physical, for example, to keep me from lifting this computer over my head and bludgeoning to death the fellow sitting at the next table.  My muscles will lift this computer, and swing it.  The fellow may struggle against me, but if my first hit is sound I will have the upper hand.  There will be no god who will restrain my actions.  No rule of existence will intervene.  It is down to my will, and my will alone, that decides what I will do next.  Consequences may come, but only after the event.

If your world is rife with player restraint, it will never be real.  It will never measure up to real life, and will therefore never truly distract from it.

The same is said for every element of your world.  If your setting cannot be explained or expressed to a degree equal to how you would describe your work place, or the village where you holidayed last year, or the house in which you grew up, it will never lift your players to believe in it.  If your player's characters are not fleshed out somehow; if the rules apply like frogs scattering on a pond; if swung weapons fail to terrify; if magic does not cause players to wonder, as it must; if a journey does not take time; if invented foes do not speak or act with the ring of truth; if blood and sweat always produces a reward, or if rewards come regardless of blood and sweat; then your world will fail.  It will always fail.

If you will be a DM, you must lift yourself from your stupor and go look at the world, and see the thing you dare to offer distraction from.  You must understand the world, comprehend it somehow, not merely in its physical manifestation, but in the means by which the denizens of that world struggle and achieve, or wallow and die.

If you will not do this, you do not have a creator in you and you should quit now.  From your limited experience - the experience of only one life, your own - you will manage to do little more than whitewash a cardboard surface ... and this will be the reason you have no players.

My Agency

This will be short.  I don't seem to have as much energy as I'd like, and I've got a bevy of other things on the go.

Last week, I talked about player agency, and got slapped around a bit.  I don't mind.  Mostly, I got the impression that people just didn't think grammar was that important; that the future tense is as viable as any other tense; and that in general the social system is breaking down and this is what we've got.

My players offline did have a real good time regarding issues of permission when they came around Saturday to play.  As it happened, I was too sick to run and we chatted about life and sociology and watched a 1959 movie, The Bridal Path, which my daughter, her Scotland-loving boyfriend/husband (they live together), and the lesbians who run in my world hadn't seen.  A good time was had by all.

If I am talking about agency, I intend to make a simple point:  I have power as a DM.  We don't play without my say-so, and if we are playing, then I'm going to lay out some rules of propriety and address that I think are appropriate for players to follow if the game, as a whole, is going to run smoothly.  There is a shibboleth to running in my world, and those who participate and enjoy the pleasure of my labor are going to adhere to it.  It is, if you can forgive the absolutism, a point of privilege of being a DM.

Why should I care about grammar?  Because communication requires clarity, and communication about action, doubly so.  If I make a statement as a DM that is unclear to the player, I do not quibble and haw about how I made the point previously.  I fix my statement and extend my effort to make the point clear.  I expect in absolute terms for a player to do likewise - and if my insistence on clarification includes that they will put the previous statement into the present tense, I don't really give a damn how inconvenient that is, or how much permission it requires, or whether the player is in the mood.  Clarity is more important - by a damn sight - than the differences between future tense or present.

I run a good world.  When I ask a player, "Are you doing it, or will you do it?", it is done for good reason.  I attempted to express that good reason, but I suppose I missed getting that across.  Lord Thanatos, besides, put it better than I could have hoped.

Such little idiosyncracies and shibboleth's are the way it goes.  I wonder how many DM's recognize the frequency with which they give ground on things they find important just to make players happy.

I wouldn't recommend making it a habit.

Wikipedia Fades to Black

For those who may not know, wikipedia is a lifeline for my world.  I would hate to have to go back to encyclopedias and ordinary websites for my data.

You may also not know that Wikipedia is going to black itself out for the 18th of January.  You can comment on the matter here - I suggest you make your voice heard.  My comment is number 4348.