The Character is Only a Game Piece

The image shown is from p. 10-11 of 4th Edition's DMG, How to be a DM.

Rating: garbage

If you are a modern D&D player, who feels that players creating a background in order to "flesh out their characters," then realize that much of what's written in this post won't fit with your ideals and perception of the game.  Particularly if you believe that the agenda of D&D is to live out your fantasy life, rather than addresssing your personal ability to succeed against the standards involved with game play.  I strongly suggest that you do not read farther.  This post isn't for you.

Sooner or later with 4th Edition, we were going to come head to head with this point: that as a DM, you have a "story"; and that as a player, it is your privilege to contribute to that story.  I've already written about the misuse of the word "story" in this context, so we need not cover that ground again.  Instead, let's focus on background.

I take the view that the proceedings of the game world both: a) carry on in large part without being observed or recognized by the player characters; and b) that they did so before the players adopted characters in the milieu.  This applies to my game world in particular, since that world was designed prior to many potential players acting in my world having been born.  If you were born after June 1985, my game world is older than you are.

I am the DM of my game world.  As I designed the world, I am the one to say what events took place prior to the appearance of the player's character.  This is true no matter what age the player character begins their existence at.  If the player wishes to roll a character and then play them from birth, I am STILL the only source for what has happened in the game world prior to the player beginning to play.

Therefore, it is not up to the player to decide what starting relationships their characters have at the start of the game.  The player runs the character, and only the character.  The character's parents, grandparents, home town, local lord and so on are all NPCs ... and therefore it is NOT in the player's purview to decide what the player character's father did or did not do, or whether or not the player character's father is alive, any more that it is the player's business to decide where the bartender comes from who serves drinks in the local pub.  Therefore, the player cannot, in any fashion whatsoever, dictate what happened to the player's character before, during or after that character enters the game.  At all.

Many modern D&D players would argue, "Why?  What difference does it make?"  This argument is based upon a game world that is imperceptible for the most part, clumsily designed, full of inconsistencies and completely mutable because nothing that happens in the past really matters.  Moreover, the argument is based on the player's belief that the achievement of "fantasy" is the goal, whereas in my world it is the world that is fanciful and not the player's participation in it.  The player's participation is based on strict game principles, demanding the player succeed at acquisitioning materials and surviving threats.  My world is not about empowering the fantasies of the individual player.

I do not want the player feeling that they can bend any part of the game world in their favour except through the action of game play.  That is key.  The player must comprehend that nothing is gotten for free—not even the choice of a character "flaw," which presupposes the player is allowed to grant a set-back for them to "play against."  I will provide the set-backs, not the player.  It is the player's role to overcome those setbacks I choose, or which the dice choose, not those the player chooses.

The value of the game is the emotional response it produces.  What I want for my game is the emotional response that humans are evolutionarily designed to have with regards their environment.  Humans cannot simply bend the real world to their will.  The fantasy of doing so is a common experience—we all imagine, especially when we're young, what it would be like to be rich, or more attractive, or have super-powers or whatever other thing we might wish for.  These wishes reflect both our inability to accept reality and our lack of motivation to change that reality through our personal action.

We cannot, so far as we know, decide that it would be fun to have a superpower that enabled invisibility, then attend university, become trained, build a lab and make that fantasy come true.  I grant this.  But we can, with training and maturity, come to realize that things we can obtain are more important and satisfying than things we fancifully wish for.  The secret to a well-lived life is to wish for something that is attainable, and then attain it.  We are built as biological creatures to gain spectacular degrees of fulfillment and personal wellbeing from the attainment of this kind of goal.  In comparison, the whiling away of our time imagining that we can do something is far, far less gratifying or empowering.

Yet it is the latter that can be done at a fingersnap, while the former—to succeed—is often unimaginably hard.  In our relationships, however, we may quickly sort out those among us who see fanciful dreaming as an end-goal from those who want to achieve something meaningful and astonishing.  Fancy contributes nothing except a feeling for the fancier.  Everything we have that's valuable in the world comes from someone taking a step to achieve something, even if it's just doing their job well every day and chatting amiably with others.  Fancy looks inward; achievement looks outward.  Fancy is selfish.  Achievement contributes to the general welfare.

I want to run players who seek achievement.  I do not want to run players who believe that the value of their characters comes from something they "made up."  I want those players to understand that the value of their characters derives from what they've survived and what they've done, INSIDE the GAME, not outside of it.

The whole philosophy of the quoted text is wrong.

My players do not need to invent relationships between themselves and other characters.  The relationship occurs naturally because we are all friends here, and concerned about one another's welfare.  It matters not that Dirkum and Drick are brothers; what matters is that Dirkum caught Drick that time before he fell, or that Drick carried Dirkum's body thirty-eight miles back to town, without a drop of water to drink.  If these things happen outside of the game, they are frivolous inventions, just as I've written them out here ... and you and I can have a tiny emotional feeling about them, as comes from frivolity.  To the actual players running Dirkum and Drick, these were deeply personal, heartfelt moments that still burn in their consciousness, that they feel proud of doing and that bring a deep affection bordering on love.  You and I cannot begin to understand what those two players really feel; we're on the outside.  Yet the things that happen to us personally always mean more than the things that happen to other people, or the things we pretend have, or will, happen to us.  Between two players who sacrifice for each other, the connection is FORGED for real; not in our minds, but in FACT.  This is something that the background-players and purveyors cannot seem to grasp.

Things that happen between player characters do not happen between imaginary beings.  They happen between two real humans playing a game.

The more imaginary crap that's shoved between those two people, the less value the game has.

It is painfully difficult to explain to most roleplayers that what happens during a game is NOT imaginary.  The properties on the Monopoly board may be pretend, but there's nothing pretend about Jeremy gaffawing at our losses or our punching Jeremy in his face.  Amateur football players, participating in a game, without pay, are willing to injure one another for REAL things like team spirit, school, self-respect or glory.  The consequence of failing to make a touchdown has nothing to do with the feelings of the ball or the lack of the game's ability to accomplish anything more than trampling a lot of grass.  The game is all-important, not because of its nature, but because of how we perceive our ability to overcome that nature.

When we allow players in D&D to whip up a character from nothing more than their imagination, and then we pretend that lack of actual game play matters, we've raised the character above the player.  That is not how a game works.  The character is nothing more than a piece in the game.  It is the player's manipulation of that piece that matters; not what colour the piece is.

This series continues with Oil to My Elbows