Game Store Culture

There was no session on Friday.

Nothing untoward, the campaign is sound, it just allows some flexibility. We agreed to push things off until this upcoming Friday, the 3rd, so there will be a session. Sometimes this is for the best, even though, naturally, there's always a feeling that something is missed.

That's because D&D is a good game, and of course a good time. Those who commit to it always do so wishing they could play every week, that they had the energy and the available time to do so, but of course there are other things in the world also. I only wish, for myself, that a suspension wasn't automatically seen as evidence that there's something wrong... which is why I had to start this post by assuring the reader that the campaign is fine.

Now, why do I have to do that?

Because, simply, in this day, "commitment" has come to mean something totally different from what it once did when I began playing in the 80s. Then, our participation seemed awfully loose, a comfortable sort of, "Well, you're not here today, but I know you miss this and you'll be here next week."  I could count on that as a DM, while my players had faith that if I began a campaign session with, "You know guys, I'm just beat from the week I've had... how 'bout we just play poker and pick up the game next week?"

Can't do that now. People are so ready to quit, they assume everyone is. Cancel a session and the worry immediately is, "You're not dropping the campaign, are you? We're still playing, right?"  And this is made worse in that a player won't actually call up and say, "Oh, hey, I'm not feeling well, I won't be there Friday." No, they just don't show. And they don't ever show again. And they don't say why.

Trust is in short supply. I don't expect someone's word to be their bond all the time; that's just silly. Past the age of 20, there are too many things that come up, too many accidents, too much chance that something of unexpected bad health will crop up and say, "I'm here!" So yeah, for the last forty years, I've made it clear that all I want is notice. It's not a job, no one has to pretend to be sick to get out of a "shift," but hell, we'll all supposed to be civilised. You don't want to play, call and say so. It's simply decent.

Now, the reader here is trying to figure out which player is dropping out and my answer is, NONE of them, not presently. I have no reason to doubt these folk; I've known them for years, they've known me; it's been an internet knowledge, a "knowing" of each other through character names and avatars and user-monikers and in a large part not faces — though Discord has fixed that, I'm glad to say. But it is knowing, in the sense that none of these fellows picked up the game yesterday and none are going to stop playing it tomorrow. This is not a game-store sample. These are true believers and therefore I know for a FACT that if one of them wanted to stop playing, they'd definitely say so. For one simple reason: they want to be well-thought of by me, just as I want to be well-thought of by them.

That is the core of where the lack of trust lies.

The 80s carried a sting that the present does not, which is rarely accounted for. I started playing with people I went to school with, as most do. I then moved onto people I was in university with. And then I played with people who I worked with, who knew my wife, my daughter, my home, my job and so on... which meant, if they didn't show up ever again, they gave up a lot more than a D&D game. They gave up playing with a smart little girl, they gave up my Wife's cooking... and they had to face me at work, or in class, or when I continued to invite their sisters and their cousins to my house for parties. Walk out of my game and that made a pretty big hole, because I didn't play in faceless gamestores. It makes a difference when you can't call me up and ask me to help you with your resume, or move your shit the next time you change apartments, or any of the things we used to do for each other because we weren't just D&D players together, we shared our lives together.

An unexplained absence carried weight. This made the "We'll play next week" culture stable, because we were, in fact, friends. The same way we played baseball together, and went to the beach together, and stood up at each other's weddings and so on. This is all gone because, for reasons that surpass understanding, game store culture obliterated it. Because, I suppose, it's so easy to just not give a fuck if you don't show up on Friday. You owe nothing to nobody.

This, I think, is one of the reasons I didn't jive very well with the 2010 perspective of how players approach the game: the assumption that I was out to screw them, or cheat them, or make stuff up designed to humiliate them, or whatever. And why, in some cases, the anger at my insistence that they "suck it up and just play" was so unexpected and absolute. Because they could, in fact, just flip off my game like a switch. I never played like that. With those kind of people. It wasn't the game culture I learned to run my game in.

It's a sort of pre-emptive way of protecting themselves... of sparing themselves an investment in something they know, from the outset, they can't actually control. Knowing they can't, or having that demonstrated for them — and heck, my last post was about the kind of prick I can be — creates this assumption that if they can't get around me today, that's it, there's no point. D&D, they think, is a give and take... and honestly, they couldn't be more wrong.

Something like a thousand years ago, I wrote that I wasn't a cruise director. I'm not here to make sure everything runs smoothly and that all the passengers have a good time, are entertained and are pleased with their stay. I'm not charged with my players welfare and comfort. I'm not here to provide social activities. I'm not an event planner, a master of ceremonies, I don't do customer service and I'm not a cheerleader.

Since, I've revisited the "cruise director" concept, here and there. I think it comes down to the idea that I'm willing to plan events, I'm willing to do customer service... I'm willing to be a cheerleader, even.

It's just not my JOB.

In fact, everyone exists to do all the parts listed here. If the campaign is sound, everyone has opportunities to help everyone have a good time, to think about others enjoying their game, to give ground regarding cheerleading and such.  D&D is absolutely about giving.

What it's not about is taking. And this is where the "give and take" model collapses, because those who go into this game with the expectation that the two things are going to even out in the end, that they'll get their opportunity to "take" as much as they give, in their minds of course, the program falls apart. Anyone, ever, who approaches a social activity with the headspace, "What am I going to get?" is a null signal. It's the player no one wants at their table.

But again, this is the game store culture fucking everything up. Because these aren't friends and they're not people you give to — because you don't know them. Hell, you don't even know if they're good people. You sure as hell don't know that you'll ever see them again. So it's natural to head off to the game store with the same ideals that you use when heading off to the theatre, the eatery, the hockey game or the bar:

"I am here to be served. Serve me."

What a terrible, terrible culture.

No wonder it invented concepts like D&D as a sport, where groups compete against each other to win fucking prizes and prove that they're better players than others. No wonder it invented player-vs.-player, then called it a virtue. No wonder. Because this isn't about four people helping each other survive, this is the "virtue" that screams, "He got his, where the fuck is mine?"... with the other side of that flag reading, "I got mine, so fuck you."

I'm too Canadian for this nonsense. Though, of course, we have game stores here and yes, it thrives there.

Funny, I don't have an inkling from any of my present players that this nonsense is present at the table. Perhaps it's playing by Discord. Perhaps its their familiarity with this blog. Or with my previous game, since three of them have played with me online before. But I also like to think its because they've got the right mindset about why we want to play. Not just that it's fun, it obviously is... but because its fun in a way that doesn't actually expect anything specific. We're just going to play, and see how it turns out. Investment as play and not as success.

Gives me hope.

A Rational Self-Sorting Model

I created my Patreon page, I think, in May of 2015. Patreon wasn't "new," but it wasn't widespread either and I was certainly ahead of the game there. In all honesty, I'd been released from my job in January of that year and I needed the money.

These last 18 years of running this blog (the anniversary is coming up in May) has not hidden from the world that I have a sharp tongue, a low tolerance for foolishness and a visible willingness to publicly swat stupidity. That would logically produce resentment, and it has. I've toned it down somewhat these last five years and I notice that the hate rhetoric on boards and reddit has subsided out of existence. I've been here long enough to have people simply tolerate me.

Still, I'm not especially nice. I'm a hard case, I won't easily change my opinion, I'll wade in swinging if I'm challenged... and in a space like a chat room I'm especially vicious. I write faster than most people, and I think at the pace that I write, so often I'm dredging out five hundred words of argument in the time it takes a lot of people to work out what they want to say in thirty. Its not unusual for me to find that I'm answering them with a breaknet three to five minutes with a deluge, while they're getting back to me fifteen to twenty years later.

Like the character Ramsey Michel (played by Oliver Platt) says in 2014's Chef, "You started a flame war with me... are you kidding me? I buy ink by the barrel, buddy."

Yeah. I write a lot. And in an online text fight, it shows.

I received word today that Patreon has created a new page for it's site. It's a "refund page," where patrons can go and manage all the refunds for their creator page in one place.  Here's a screenshot of mine:

I don't think this is evidence of my value.

I think this is evidence of a self-selection process my readers have, because logically the only kind of support I should be getting is from those who aren't easily offended, aren't easily influenced, aren't wilting flowers, aren't here to feel better about "supporting an artist" and definitely don't do it from pity.

This says boatloads more about my readers that it says about me.

For whatever reason — I prefer the theory that you're all damaged in some way — you all feel that you're getting value from what I'm doing. Your reasons are probably best left for your therapists to puzzle out. I'm contented that, despite my shortcomings over the years, despite my projects that don't pan out, despite the decimation of the game con culture that covid left, obliterating my plans there, the ledger of my work is in the black and not the red. That matters a lot to me.

I haven't posted much this last two months. February was a shit-show that poured into March and then, when everything cleared up, I found myself more or less thinking, "fuck it. I need a vacation." Which is what I've been taking. I have one commitment at present that I won't shirk, and that's the online campaign. I wish everyone could all come and play, but that would get a little complicated. I am kicking at the wiki a bit, which I haven't in quite a while, and building some content specifically for the campaign here and here. No doubt, there's going to be more of that. I'll keep you posted.

The game players have asked me to create a private discord channel for them and for me to keep off it, which I've done; so far as I know, however, this other channel is still open to anyone who wants to poke about and ask a question, until 6 p.m. EST this upcoming Friday... as then we'll be playing our game on it for four hours.

https://discord.gg/jtte95JY

Don't abuse it please.

Session 4: Campaign Goes to the Dogs

Friday the 13th's running picked up with the party atop the ridge where they'd witnessed the goblin settlement, where changes were made to the game's participants. Orsos the 1st level fighter stepped down and the search for new players turned up previous participants in the Juvenis game from pre-covid times: Pandred, 5th level fighter and his 1st level druid hench Arduin, and Mikael, 2nd level mage. This considerable increase in the party's strength played havoc with my original number of creatures (the party's strength increased from 7 total levels to 14), which in turn went down easier that expected, but the combats proved interesting. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

After some discussion, Mikael, whose father was an assassin and blessed the mage with a bonus stealth ability, made a run around the goblin settlement and found it to be peaceful, unwatched (despite the presence of an unused watchtower) and busy with the early summer planting, this being May 14th. The party decided to risk stepping forward and parleying with the goblins (with one of them tagging my intended narrative before it happened as one of the "possibilities" to explain the slaughtered freeholder and family). This turned up a story that nine of the hamlet's former goblin residents had joined a cult led by a cavewight, had left the hamlet and had, for nearly a year, been roaming around the landscape killing and looting. Being the toughest members of the settlement, who themselves were occasionally suffering impredations from this rogue group, the settlement was not up to undertaking their putting down... much less the possibility of overcoming the cavewight (a creature outside the party's ken).  Local hunters do know of this "cult," but so far as the goblins knew, nothing had come of that knowledge.

The elder of the hamlet, named "Falva," drew a map for the party as to the location of the cavewight lair, as shown, which the party duly began to follow. After moving through a rocky, dense part of the forest, they broke out into a flat and encountered a slaughtered deer carcass upon a great beech tree, marked with symbols and it's dried entrails hanging out from its crusted body. An application of comprehend languages from Mikael identified the message was essentially, "Go no further, or else," or for Dante fans, "Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here."

Naturally, the party entered and were immediately attacked by three large wolves, though not dire wolves. This was our first "dog" encounter of the night. I wasn't taking notes during the combat, but essentially Pandred thumped, Lexent thumped, Ti thumped and most of all Zoltan thumped, doing 14 damage in a hit and killing one of the wolves by sentencing it to bleed to death.  Arduin dropped once, Pandred dropped once, no harm done. The party moved on.

They came to a large burnt out area, a mile wide, and tried to cross it directly. Zoltan was seized by a sinkhole and was saved before being sucked down by it by a good rolling Mikael, who then needed to be grabbed because the male is just a light-bodied elf and not as big as the 200+ lb. Zoltan and his equipment. But the party jumped to it, then backtracked along their own steps back the way they'd come. After some hemming and hawing, of which there always seems to be some, they went around and made camp.

With a small flame, as the night turned to the 15th of May, a strange sight took hold. By chance, looking to see what phase the moon was in on this night, the year 1650, I discovered that a lunar eclipse took place exactly here. What are the chances?  I made some changes and the werewolf that was due to attack the party in another part of this adventure was upgraded to alive and in wolf form in the here and now, as the moon turned red over the party's heads. The werewolf caught Arduin with initiative and caused 14 damage to the druid, the wound of which was immediately dealt with. The werewolf did not stand and fight but chose to attack individuals by hoping to catch them unawares, one by one. This didn't work, because Pandred got lucky with a crit, followed by Ti getting lucky with a crit, and then I believe it was Lexent getting lucky with a crit... and scratch one werewolf.  Still, there's a 14 in 23 chance that Arduin has caught the disease. The party just doesn't know yet.

The joke was made, "Will I be a super-werewolf because I was infected during a lunar eclipse," which brought the sort of D&D laughter that one wishes for, whereupon I answered that I could always argue he'd be the sort of werewolf that only changed during a lunar eclipse." That brought laughter too. Overall, the session was full of jokes, kidding, smart comebacks and all that a DM could ask for, the kind of thing that made the old school game terrific.

At last the lair was found, and entered. Two giant stone blocks were set to turn upon pins of carved stones, in a way that deliberately baffled. The party entered, found themselves in front of two passages and took the right one, with Ti at the head. Both Ti and Zoltan levelled after the werewolf fight, Ti from the x.p. and Zoltan from a silver necklace worth 500g.p. found around the werewolf's neck.

Here's the scene with Ti leading. Encountering an 18 ft. deep pit, without spikes, and seven ft. long, Ti expressed a desire to leap it. With no special skill for doing so, I nevertheless gave him a +4 advantage to his dexterity, so that he needed a 17 or less on a d20 to succeed. He rolled an 18, then got lucky and took only 7 damage.  But then, at that moment, an ochre jelly emerged from a crevice in the pit and attacked Ti, while the party were figuring out how to get him out, stunning him for 10 more damage.

Pandred leaped in and fought against the ochre jelly, to protect Ti, causing 3 damage but taking six. Whereupon Lexent, still above the pit, saved the day by asking, "Will salt of Ammon have any effect on an ochre jelly?"

Salt of Ammon is the medieval term for sodium chloride, is an item available in my equipment list and, Lexent having medicine as a sage study, decided to buy some. Without any idea, always a pervasive problem with this sort of thing, since there can never be enough rules in D&D, I asked chatGPT:

"Would salt of Ammon be effective against a D&D ochre jelly?"

I saved the answer and here it is:

Yes. Salt of ammon (ammonium chloride) would plausibly be effective against an ochre jelly, depending on how you want to model the interaction.

An ochre jelly in D&D is essentially an acidic, protoplasmic organism. Its offensive mechanism is corrosion: it secretes acid and dissolves organic matter. The creature is typically immune to lightning and slashing effects because those divide the mass rather than damage it, while cold and fire affect it normally because they change the physical condition of the substance.

Ammonium chloride is strongly hygroscopic and dissolves readily in water, forming an acidic solution. When applied to a gelatinous mass that is largely water and organic colloid, several things would happen. The salt would rapidly dissolve into the jelly’s fluid matrix, increasing ionic concentration and disturbing the internal balance of the organism. In biological systems, high salt concentrations draw water out of cells through osmotic pressure and destabilise proteins. For something like a jelly, whose structure depends on hydrated organic chains suspended in water, that effect would tend to collapse or stiffen the gel. In practice it would act as a chemical desiccant and disruptor rather than as a burning agent.

From a practical D&D perspective, if a character scattered powdered salt of ammon onto the jelly, the effect would likely be similar to throwing a corrosive chemical or strong desiccant into a slime creature. The powder would dissolve and locally break down the gel structure, causing the surface to shrivel, stiffen, or fragment. The result would be damage to the jelly without triggering its division mechanic, since the mechanism is chemical disruption rather than cutting or electrical stimulation.

If you want a simple ruling at the table, treating a handful of salt of ammon as equivalent to a small acid attack or alchemical reagent would be reasonable. It would damage the jelly but would not cause it to split the way slashing or lightning does.

In your face, anti-A.I.! I ruled the powder affected the creature as a "burn," equal to a flask of burning lamp oil, and had Lexent roll 2d6 damage. That produced 10 damage, which drove the jelly back into its hole and both Pandred and Ti were saved.

We called the game there.

Two New Players Located

I have two players who are legacy from the earlier Juvenis campaign, so the opening is closed. But message me anyway if you want to get on a list for further openings, if they should occur.

Seeking a New Player

Because one of the players of the present existing game has stepped down, there’s now an opening in the Discord campaign. We're starting our fourth session this upcoming Friday, the 13th. Play begins at 6pm central time and, if previous sessions hold, runs about four hours. The game is played on Discord, so your location is irrelevant if you can fit yourself into the schedule.

I would prefer a player who wants to run a character who is not a fighter or a cleric, though I will not hold you to this. A $3 fee to my patreon is required.  The game is in the traditional D&D style, though with my own set of Frankenstein-like house rules, as might be guessed. 

My previous campaign began on a blog and continued onto a wiki, if anyone wants to see an example of play.

There's no need to make a character ahead of time; I prefer to do so at the start of actual game play, so other players can see the rolls decisions you make.

Comment below upon this post, write to alexiss1@telus.net, find me in the patreon chat room, or upon discord at https://discord.gg/dqkhzsYQ.

Session 3: From Owlbears to Goblins

Friday's running last began with the party having returned to Ozd on the 3rd of May, whereupon I pointed out that, seeing people in the town using charcoal and coal, that they'd left about 50 to 200 lbs. of charcoal on the ground back at the kobald lair... for they had been making charcoal outside when the party had attacked. Charcoal in Ozd sells for 2 g.p. a bushel, or about 56 lbs. Thus, they decided to return to the dungeon, with Lexent this time, to see what was there.

It totalled 220 lbs, for which the party had brought baskets for (the cheapest form of container).  They checked in with Matyas, asked the sprites some questions and established themselves to be "allies" of the sprites, who would likely be there should the party need something of them.  Then, on their way back to Ozd with their charcoal, they encountered a dire wolf at a distance, deciding to keep their heads down and not attract the beast. Soon enough, the wolf was called for by its master, a tall bugbear; the party discussed the pros and cons of engaging, decided not to and let the pair go. Then they headed back to town with their additional booty, which they sold for 5 and a half gold.

Having heard that owlbear feathers served as a magical ingredient for something or other, they investigated this with the local apothecary and were told that if they would simply cut off the scalp of the owlbear, the apothecary would be happy to pay a hundred gold for it. Armoured with this knowledge, the party set out again to find the owlbear that had left signs over the countryside, and whose presence was confirmed by the sprites. They searched a day to no avail, however, set up their camp and, with a fire burning, set up their watch.

The owlbear appeared at 4 a.m., did not catch Ti by surprise and the party was aroused; the cleric Zoltan rushed forward with the others in his wake to face the beast, who managed to give a pretty mean swipe for six damage to Ti, then proceeded to roll a fumble against the cleric; the 1 on a d20 was followed by a second 1 on a d20, so that the beast lost it's beak attack (broken, sprained, whatever).  The party then utterly failed to miss, succeeding in killing the 30 hit point beast in two quick rounds. Easy as pie. I found it very disappointing.

Hurrying again back to town, the party collected their 100 g.p. and went on a buying spree. Because Ozd does not have an everyday market, but only a full market on Sunday.  All week, there is a craft-bazaar, where ordinary wares such as ceramics, woodcrafting, clothing and such can be purchased, as well as an everyday town market for meats, livestock and produce... but the party wanted armour and weapons, so they had to wait for Sunday, which was the 8th of May.

Having geared up, the party, especially Lexent, wanted to look into any gnome residents in the area, learning that they were most likely associated with the local coal and iron mines in the hills. Lexent is considered building a congregation; the owlbear pushed him to 4th level, which is "priest," and he has the ability to preach and proselytise in his religion, which is "gnomish" in form. The party travelled out to Uraj, a hamlet of 33 people, then to the coal mine a mile and a half south, where Lexent spoke to a dozen gnomes. He hasn't decided what to do yet.

Thereafter, the next day, the 10th, the party struck out west of Uraj into the hills, where the way was made easier by a found animal trail. Still, it took hours for them to reach an abandoned freehold, where evidence showed that it had likely been attacked at least a month before.  They went on, finding a sort of archery range, with evidence of goblinish arrows; no goblins, however, nor any evidence of when the range had last been used. The party returned to the freehold and spent the night.

Striking out the next day, they found evidence of a hunter's camp, where it was probably the freehold's family had been taken and slaughtered. Such camps feature stone areas for slaughtering game, ready-made windbreaks and usually a natural water supply like a freshwater creek. The scene of gnawed bones, bloodstains on rock and such disturbed the party, who nevertheless decided to continue. They began to climb the hill where the map shows a "3."  On the far side of the hill, they spied a large hamlet of some kind, and silently withdrew. This is where the game was left.

Now, I may be off on some details. It was six days ago since we played the game, I've been very distracted so I may have misremembered things. I leave it to the party to correct me, to bring us up to scale.

I'd say the party's engagement throughout was very strong. They were acting together, solving puzzles, standing up to me, acting perfectly like four gentlemen with plenty of experience in the game. The outdoor campaign is flowing well and not wasting a lot of time; much of this session was used up in purchasing, very understandable, rather than in discussing strategy from place to place. They haven't made up their mind about the hamlet; they don't know who it is occupied by, they didn't get close enough. Might really be anyone, but the hint is obviously biased for goblins.

I've always been comfortable with this sort of campaign. Players can move around from here to there, having short adventures which are good for low-level parties, leaving it open for a small dungeon to be stumbled across at any time. There's no real need to go marching across the map to find another place that's really just going to produce the same sort of area as this. Everything to the west and southwest of Ozd is unoccupied, with zero infrastructure, while adjacent to a large populated mining and farm land. Perfect for a low-level D&D campaign.

Status

Tamara came home safe and sound, she is doing well, rapidly improving and much better than she was before the procedure. I, on the other hand, have successfully produced an infection in my toe... all the running around at the hospital... and am laid up.  I'll have a proper post tomorrow.

Interesting Times

I do not think that I'll shall manage all the reportage that I have this week, because I am simply tired. I shall start with the troubles that have occurred, which I shall preface with the statement that I am, this Monday night at 9:32 as I write this sentence, well.

The reader may remember that while I working on The Lantern last, finished a Sunday ago before yesterday, that I'd been interrupted by a toothache, which led to a temporary filling, an extra days rest, antibiotics and a scheduled root canal, this Wednesday last.  Well, a week ago today, the large toe on my right foot began to pinch in an unpleasant way, that increased steadily until my Tuesday evening, I was in a fair bit of distress about it. Therefore, while my appointment with the dentist was at 2 p.m. Wednesday, I called my doctor and had an appointment with him on Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. This is a strange thing, I must tell you, to see a doctor about one thing, come home for lunch, then head out (in a blizzard) to see a dentist about another.

The toenail was identified as ingrown and the nail cut back from the side of my toe, bringing relief. The canal was filled, bringing relief. Thursday and Friday progressed well, I ran D&D on Discord Friday night and yesterday I should have given an account of that running, but... well, I'll explain.

My partner has been having bladder problems of one kind or another since May of 2025. Several measures were tried, until finally she was scheduled for a surgery that was to take place today at 11 a.m. Thus, the weekend was spent managing my partner's distress here and there, getting us both ready for the "big day" at last. In Canada, yes we wait, but we also don't pay.

Saturday, I unwrapped the bandage from my big toe, which had been bothering me off and on, such that I'd been applying polysporin. What I found was an enormous blood-and-lymph blister that had formed alongside the cut toe, in the space of about five hours. It grew bigger until midnight, when I spoke to a nurse on the 811 emergency we have in this country. At 12:30 a.m. I lanced it, pushed the blood out, and it felt much better. But, unfortunately, as Sunday, yesterday, progressed, it got increasingly worse so that...

Today, after getting my partner to her surgery, and getting her comfortable, and making sure everything was going to go according to plan, I was forced to leave her before her being taken away and go over to the emergency myself to have my toe looked at. This took a wait of about two hours, in which it was observed that yes, it was bad, but no, it probably wasn't severely infected, despite it leaking and some of that leakage having a suggestive yellow (pus) hue upon my sock I wore. The toe was bandaged, whereby I hurried back to the Day Surgery to find my partner's surgery had gone fine and she was now in recovery. I had ten minutes to eat lunch before fetching myself up to her and meeting her upon her coming out of recovery.

Is that all? No.

While the surgery went well, and will probably be fine, my partner's reaction to the small amount of botox used to manage the infection she had pretty much seized up her bladder. The rest of today has been spent comforting her, easing her experience while limping around on my experience, culminating in her being kept over night there. Now I am home, having had an "interesting" day, after an "interesting" week, and I could go with some "boring" for a bit.

This is a perfect place to immediately insert, ironically or facetiously, take your pick, the details of Friday's game. But I'm not going to. I'm tired, I have to hie my ass out to the hospital in the morning tomorrow and I trust everything there is going to be well.

Frankly, at my age, I felt I held up fairly well. Thanks be to my daughter, who helped make everything possible.

Safety Last Blog

The film blog Safety Last managed to climb over 200 page views yesterday (it's at 233 now), having reached 11 posts with a visit to every decade from the 20s to the 90s. It is limited in that I'm only reviewing films that can be seen on youtube, for free, so that readers don't have to work hard to find the film or pay money for it. Naturally, I don't expect readers to actually do so... for some reason the film has lost it's verve. Most argue that it's because people can't concentrate on one product for so long, but I tend to think it's because general knowledge has flattened to the point that people can't get anything out of characters that aren't exactly like themselves. That opinion arises from film commentary I see on youtube.

I haven't discuss the blog here because I wanted it to find it's own voice first. The movies reflect my eclectic taste in film, not what a film critic would pick. For example, I've posted eleven films and none of them were made by Kurosawa, Kubrick, Tarantino or Nolan. Shock and horror. Jeez, one of them is about 15-year-old girls. And pretty soon, I'm going to add an actual musical to the list. I haven't decided if it's going to be something from Doris Day or Julie Andrews. You'll just have to see.

For a long time I've argued that a DM has to comprehend film if any possibility of campaign-nuance is to be understood. That doesn't just include "D&D films"... which are for the most part the worst possible examples, since they reflect what Hollywood utterly misunderstands about fantasy or the like. There are exceptions, of course... but the point isn't that films themselves reveal the plots and structures of D&D elements, but that narrative, structure, elaboration, conflict or resolution are in fact universal to all films, yes, including romantic stories, comedies and musicals. Blindness isn't to be found in not seeing the "right" films, but in failing to understand that every film provides it's unimagined bit of value... which is the reason to get "good" film out of one's structured approach but rather to take the stance of "I will see all films..." in whatever time is left on this planet.

The benefit of this is not immediate. In fact, probably, the reader won't notice a benefit until past the first hundred films... which will only be true if they're the films the reader wouldn't normally see. Watching another Star Wars sequel won't add to one's store. Virtually every show, every bit of "content" now produced is rehashed from some other content done in some previous decade, better. I don't say this to disparage modern film and television making. I don't have to. It disparages itself. But I do say it to point out that content today used to be "story" once... and that one does better to go find the example of it when that's what it was.

This is enough.  Preachy D&D guy will shut up now... brings hope for millions.

The March 1636 Lantern is Published

Okay, The March Lantern is available. Those fast on the draw may have noticed that I mistakenly published it as free access for 56 minutes.  I was just so worn by finishing it that I failed to adjust the publishing details. But it's behind a paywall now, I'm so sorry.

The reason this thing is such a bugbear for me is twofold. In the first place, publishing anything comes with hesitancy, because like any writer, I constantly doubt the value of my own work. I can't see it through the lens of other people, so I have no idea really if it's good or not. So, irrationally, I struggle in fear to put it out there.

The other side of that coin is that if it isn't good, then what the hell am I doing all the work for?  This is also a form of poison in an artist's head. Work is work. I was remarking to my partner yesterday that by dinner time, as I was incredibly stiff throughout my joints, that it comes from concentrating so hard that any movement of one's muscles becomes a distraction. Thus, when I'm working at anything that is extremely particular, as The Lantern is, not just in writing but in overall layout, the ads, the voice the "writers" use, physically I become more and more stone-like and more and more my whole effort is toward my thinking process. Eight hours of this and my joints get very ugly when I get up to eat something.

I don't experience these symptoms with a blog post. There's nothing riding on this. I'm not charging for this. It doesn't matter if I don't write this. What I write has no long-term consequences for me. Thus I can write calmly, fuck around even, and it doesn't matter. I can't see The Lantern in those terms. It matters too much to me.

Anyway, it's published. Yay.

The Lantern is Late

The March Lantern isn't going to be ready today. Losing Tuesday and Wednesday to a toothache, abcess and dentist's visit pretty much put me on my back heels, but I've caught up a full day on what's been lost. I would have managed this otherwise. As it's looking now, provided nothing goes wrong, this should be done sometime tomorrow evening, perhaps sooner, and no later than Monday a.m. Believe me, no one wants this done more than me.

Please be patient.

Panic at the Game Table

From the as yet unpublished March Lantern:

"Before any counsel might be taken—whether we should press onward through the opened door, or else withdraw and be content... Warth strode forward without hesitation and passed between the doors..."

I wrote the above specifically because of a behaviour than one of my Discord players actively called out as the reason for not directly taking action: because they did not want to volunteer the rest of the party by compelling others to act in accordance with their actions. On the one part, I like that its appropriately assumed that if, like Warth above, someone just bulls forward, the party will step up from a sense of commitment, but on the other part I find myself bristling that a player would resist trusting that. It's a characteristic I don't see in my offline games... and it is a characteristic that causes parties to default to a place where they have to check and be sure first, in essence getting permission, before acting. Which demands that every step the party takes forward be first resolved by committee meeting.

It's worth discussing how the player's "I act" is transformed into "I commit others to my action."  The structure of the game, divorced of the Gygaxian "leader" model, which is for shit, asks for players to step up and take the helm when they see what needs doing. The problem is that most everyone has played with incompetents and damn fools that just rush forward blindly at every opportunity. One naturally gets tired of kicking someone else's chestnuts out of the fire. Too, responsibly minded players, the better players, assume a default mode of looking after one's fellow man which is hard to shake off. It's all well and good for characters from a film to watch Shalar the Monk go off running and fifty enemy by himself with the line, "What does he think he's doing?", followed by a sigh and, "Getting himself killed." Around a D&D table, no one actually wants Shalar to die. So while there is a sigh, it's almost always followed by, "All right, we all go too."

No better player wants to be Shalar. They want to respect their fellow players and not impune their agency by forcing their hand. This is why the "committee" is not evidence of timidity, or poor play, or even self-doubt, but in fact an example of mutual respect.

Which makes it all the worse for being a bad strategy.

The problem with this character-action design is that requires the DM to reframe time to allow for a committee meeting to take place between the party members, even when that insertion of time is utterly irrational. A combat round in my game lasts 12 seconds, but even if it lasted a minute, it would not be long enough to account for some of the conversations I witnessed in our last session of combat. At present, with a new party, in a new game, with an uncertainty about the combat rules (though the party did extremely well with them), it's not reasonable for me to hold them accountable for unfamiliar decisions... yet. But soon enough they will know the combat system, and soon enough it won't be reasonable for them to have a discussion about who stands where or who does what this round or what the strategy is now that there are rats flooding up the stairs. Sooner or later, rationally, within the time frame imposed by the game, decisions by committee are not only going to be impractical, I'm going to have to take a stance that attempts to discuss will be complimented by forfeitures of attacks and other action. When called up to the plate, it's time to swing, not have another confab with the coach.

Now, is where I must insert the scene from the ancient film The Untouchables, where Al Capone says,

"A man stands alone at a plate. This is the time for what? For individual achievement. There he stands alone."

Thereafter, Capone goes into this whole thing about the team and being there for the team, culminating in a brutal murder but hey, spoilers, right?  And Capone's point is made. But the reverse also has to be true. The team can field themselves the livelong day, pitcher, first baseman, outfielder, but if someone doesn't score a damn point on their own, then the best the team can do together is TIE. None of that is discussed in the film, it wouldn't make the writer's point, but it's just as true as anything the Capone character says.

This is how D&D is structured, however. When it's time for the player to act, to fight, to throw a spell, to leap across this gorge, the team cannot, by virtue of their location in the setting, by virtue of the action taking place in the setting, speak their opinions about what a player does with the character. I have not hesitated as a DM to tell everyone else to keep quiet, to put the player on the spot. I have not hesitated to state that the character fails to do anything because they have taken too long to act. This aspect of my game has not come up where I've played in text, because it simply wasn't practical. But Discord is closer to the real thing now and I'm not going to let time stretch forever.

In face-to-face play, there is less hesitation in taking an action before discussing it. One can look around at the other players and see in a glance that they're intention is plainly to go ahead. Excited people after a success cry out and jump around with excitement once the stress has passed; but excited people on the cusp of stress tighten up. They visibly begin to sit still; it's a body language that most of us register without thinking about it, as we have a hundreds of thousands of years of biological selection related to freezing while watching one of our clan approach a tiger or a mastodon or some other beast with a flimsy spear. I have repeatedly argued that the fundamental genius of D&D is not the rules, the culture, the structure of the DM or the reward system, but the way these things work together to create moments of feeling extreme danger and threat without our having to risk breaking our bones on a playing field, or getting shot at in Venezuela.

Intuitively, in the physical company of the party, the need for pre-verbal consent diminishes. We trust our instincts. We're sure the party will approve if we just go through the doors without asking first. We're confident that they have our backs without needing to ask first. In fact, it's more than that, we feel that the zeitgeist of the group together is willing us to act without the wasting of game time a committee demands.

In a moment like this, where every D&D game wants to be, asking permission isn't just unnecessary, it's actively immersion-obverse. Asking first ruins the tempo, the tension, the thrill of the game as it spins forward. These things are what makes "flow" happen in-game... where the players cease questioning themselves, cease putting a wall between themselves and their character, even cease considering survival as functionally relevant to just moving forward in the compulsive need to do so.

Some players can't do that on their own. They can't "let go" of the grey of real life. But they can be pushed, and one way of doing that is by saying, "What do you do?" and then one time — it usually only takes once — saying to the player fighting to make up their mind, "That's it, your round is done," before moving onto the next player. It sobers them. It shakes them from their sense of "this is a game, nothing matters" into "fuck, if I don't pick it up, I'm going to get killed here."

I've seen this produce a "tunnelling" effect into players that is both upsetting and mind-blowing, depending on their character and the number of times they've experienced it. The term describes moments of extreme stress, threat, obsession or motivation where one's attention collapses to manage a narrow set of cues and actions. It is a state, which people report as one of clarity, urgency, even simplification. If the reader has ever experienced that moment where time seems to weirdly slow down at the moment of an accident, where every detail of an oncoming car, or the sense of flying through the air, is comprehended with unnatural perception, that is tunnelling. In real life, it can be dangerous; drivers can find themselves unable to pull their gaze from an obstacle they end up hitting, or pilots can find themselves so fixated on a single instrument that they fail to take action to save themselves... but around a D&D table, I assure the reader, it is quite safe.

The very idea that D&D can achieve this state of mind feels specious; some reading this will outright state that it cannot be so. Others, however, have experienced this and it is queerly the reason why they refuse to surrender this game despite the growing dearth of players. I have experienced it. Hell, I've experienced tunnelling while writing. I nearly always experience flow while writing.

For those experiencing either for the first time, it is like achieving an alternative cognitive state without doing drugs. In Nichiren Buddhism, the term is shakubuku (yes, where Grosse Pointe Blank finds it), meaning to "break and subdue." It forcefully refutes a person's interior beliefs in a manner that shatters delusion and compels acceptance for that which was formerly considered untrue. This is what's upsetting for many —it usually means that the lies they've told themselves for years just won't work any more. In D&D, it means that the other game that the other people play has in a flash ceased to be good enough.

As I'm a prick, I tend to carry out this approach in D&D. Not because I'm a Buddhist or a Taoist, but because I won't suspend my privilege as a DM in attempting to impose this spiritual kick to the head. I'm ready to be fair, to not use my privilege to gain power over my players, to not fake dice or cheat or assume I'm my player's keeper. But, as a performer, if I can make you, the person, feel something through your engagement and attachment to the character you're running I will.

Time, as a game rule, is on my side in this. While party commitment by committee is not. As a DM, I will not hesitate to use time, real time, to create tension, discomfort, fear and their compliment emotions control, resilience and bravery, to produce an experience that a movie can't produce, that a book can't produce, that a VR table can't produce... and that the whole WOTC, for all it's money and influence, hasn't even heard of.

This is what makes this fun for me.