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.

The Hollowness of the Male Pitch

Putting the last of March's Lantern together and last night I was hit hard by a toothache. Nasty, vicious one it was, but I made it through the night before being able to see my dentist. During that time, the tooth well and truly died, so it's a root canal next week, and I'm not feeling tooth pain just now, rather just a bit of sick from the sewage dripping down my throat from the small abcess that was caught in time and is now diminishing. Good times.

As such, did not spend a lot of time working today, with the deadline close now, while I spent too much time watching youtube. That usually means some discussion on writing these days, as I've already said, this time with the main complaint being the poor white male writer who has been mercilessly cast aside by the publishing industry, the bastards, mostly in favour of women. Such diatribes that I see are usually put forth in content hosted by women, because this stuff is even worse when the subject is on a video hosted by men.

There are a few reasons I don't count myself as part of this pity party. First, I know I didn't "make it" as a mainstream writer largely because of my angry youth period, when all those who reached their hand out to help my career got it slapped away. Later, I didn't "make it" because I tended to rise up among groups of writers rather fearlessly to point out that their material wasn't going anywhere because it wasn't any good, just as I did not consider my work at the time of about the same caliber. That tended to make sure my work was not included in that sort of "grant sanctioned" collection that became so popular (and now so obscure) in Canada in the 1990s. Since then, I haven't "made it" because, well, fuck the publishing industry. As such, no pity party. There's a responsible person for this white male failing to become a bestselling author, that being me.

As such, as I write in my inimical, less than polite style, I want to make a point here that as I writer I've never self-identified as either white or male. Obviously, others have done so; I argued that on this blog less than a month ago. But I can't ever recall stopping mid-sentence and thinking, "Wait, is this how a man would write this sentence?" or "is that description of a farm house in Saskatchewan legitimate from a white perspective?" Predictably, I'm going to be accused of this by default anyway, since obviously there are fifty ways to describe the slats of an old house in a sparsely wooded country — the white way, the black way, the catholic way, the Guatemalan way and so on... with my knowing only the first of these. As such, I can only write about anything in the particular way associated with circumstances of my birth having nothing to do with my choices, and therefore I pay no attention to this. Not only do I pay it no attention while I'm writing, I pay it no attention if I hear someone else comment on this while they're reading... for, as well all know, there's only so many ways to read a text also: the white way, the black way, the catholic way and so on.

All of this is attitude is a ridiculous game that I am not interested in playing. Because of my name, and because I grew up in an age when a great deal was expressed through letters and mailings, I have been mistaken hundreds of times of being a woman. Far more, I think, than a Sandy or a Sidney or a Sam might be, because for the most part, people are aware that those names might be a man or a woman, and written responses are less hesitant to judge. But as an "Alexis" in erstwhile days, virtually unknown at that time as an Eastern European or Russian name in the very bland whiteness of Alberta where I still dwell to this day, I have nearly always been assumed to be a woman first, and a man only later at the "unveiling" that happened again and again. And, of course, being a writer, where the name is attached to the work that is in text, there has always been the moment where it comes out: "Oh, you're a man. I though you were a woman."

That is perhaps a reason why my rhetoric, what I write here, is in a different tone from my "writing," such as occurs with the Lantern and other official works. Not to prove that I'm a man writing this blog, but because I have little reason to cultivate my reader. The more I cultivate, the more gracious and kind I am, the more likely it will be that my reader will think I'm a woman... I am, after all, in such cases, "so polite." Because I can, if I wish, write just as sweet as cream. It's really not that hard.

I think this relevant because none of those who assumed I was a woman back in the day added the phrase, "But you don't write like a man."  Rather, the instant they understood what I was, once they'd seen the label on the wrapper if you will, then in their heads my writing automatically snapped to being that of a man. If this happens once or twice, it might be overlooked... but when it has happened many, many times every year, and especially so when I was writing for articles and newspapers, the whole "write like a man" or "write like a woman" frankly becomes an obvious hoax. It's all just horseshit to assume that because a writer includes constant references to a cultural frame or a supposed "identity" in text, that the identity is automatically "authentic," is just hokum. What makes the identity "authentic"is that the Guatemalan author's name is "Juan José López Pérez" and not "Carlos Martin," either of which are common names of that country.

Even after it was known that Cary Grant's given name was Archibald Leach (the name appears on a gravestone in the film Arsenic and Old Lace), they preferred Cary Grant because he didn't "look" like an Archibald.  I mean, really... Grace Kelly and Archibald Leach?  Ridiculous.

If it really is that tough for a man to succeed in the modern publishing stream, then for heaven's sake, why not just write like a woman? In the late 1940s through the 1950s, the Hollywood blacklist turned authorship into a kind of covert tradecraft. Writers accused of Communist sympathies found themselves unemployable under their own names. The result was an underground economy of authorship in which blacklisted writers continued to work by using "fronts," pretending to submit the author's scripts under their own names. It sounds awful, but it let writers go on making their living as writers, and not as ditchdiggers, cooks or door-to-door salesmen.

I don't bring it up to argue this should be the method employed, but rather to argue that it almost certainly IS being used by someone, and probably with the publisher's consent. Many people hate the junket end of publishing; they despise the road trips, the hotel stays, the audiences and the questions. At the same time, no doubt, there are many women and men who would be happy to enjoy this side of it while he remains home doing the actual writing. Of course, even suggesting this is sacrilege... despite the evidence that it's been going on for at least a century now.

I have ghostwritten two books. I'm under contract never to reveal anything more about this except that one fact, in case I want to sell my services to someone else someday. I don't mind that my name is not on the cover of those books, nor what benefits the payer received. I was paid.

Some people are "shocked" to discover this about me, far more so than learning that I'm not a woman. I find this funny. I rather like having my prose being mistaken for that of a woman, because it says very clearly to me that there is no such thing as "gender identity" writing. That's just a thing people made up. All the carping about male authorship and the lack of male readers and such only reveals that whatever the problem, it's almost certainly that the writing itself isn't really all that good. I say this as someone who, I argue, does not write well enough to win the Booker Prize. But then, that's not an atmosphere I ever want to breathe. What a bunch of stuffed mannequins.

When I find myself watching a video that features a white man bleating about the unfairness of the industry, and how his thoughtful, nuanced book about a man undergoing trauma about some thing or other reveals the depths of his themes or his value as a writer, I usually take this with a grain of sale. I have had too many discussions with both would-be and successful writers (far more successful than me, yet strangely no more secure for it) to be certain that this "deep theme" is more than dishwater with a few plates in it. And when I hear that this self same book has been struggling to get published for 15 years, I am not assured that this isn't another case of Chinese Democracy by Guns and Roses... a sort of competent work that in reality is almost instantly forgettable. And when I am actually told what the book is about, it invariably falls into the realm of some other book written by a white man between seventy and a hundred years ago — because it turns out that this is a man struggling in his marriage in a way not unlike Revolutionary Road, or this is a young man being crushed under his responsibilities and ennui not unlike Catcher in the Rye, or this is about a man from the rough sides of the tracks trying to get out, not unlike The Man with the Golden Arm, or this is about a man whose dreams didn't pan out like he thought they would, not unlike Death of a Salesman. In fact, I never hear anything about a white man's trauma that I can't locate in some book I read before I was twenty, when the actual age of the book was much older than that.

The emotional value of these books is important, and were valuable at the time, but my having read them convinced me that they were also ground I didn't need to cover. I recognised while the age of Biff in the play the pitfalls of Willie and thus did not allow myself to fall into them. I have zero desire to write such a novel because, first, if I wanted to make the point I'd tell the reader to see the play or read it through themselves; and second, because I lived my life entirely different from Willie, the thoughts rolling around in my head are not mixed up with feelings of inadequacy. My not "making it" as a writer is not a Willie problem for me; in the end, the writing in fact mattered more than the glitz. Willie's problem is that he hated being a salesman; he sold his comfort for a dream that never materialised, while I gained comfort and joy despite a dream that never materialised. My "trauma" isn't one. That's how good Arthur Miller's play really is: it taught me as a young man the pits and perils of not going down that road. So when I meet an author now who wants to write a book that sounds like Death of a Salesman, all I can think is "Why didn't you read the play young and learn something?"

Yet, I see these same books pitched over and over on the Internet by white men who bemoan the system that is aligned against them. Yet to paraphrase the line from Sorkin's American President, the failure isn't that the modern male writer doesn't get it, it's that they can't sell it. No one is interested in their 1950s based emotional problems not because they are white problems, but because they are problems that none of us have any more. No one anywhere believes that a man who cannot deal with his marriage has a right to complain about the "trauma" he's suffering, because there are now literally a hundred different approaches a person willing to be flexible and change their nature can do something about that. It's not the 1950s, it's not the land of fault divorce, it's not the male's responsibility to do all the earning, it's not the male's right to have a pity party because the marriage isn't going well. Those are problems that dinosaurs have. Present day males simply agree with their wives to call it quits, take up an activity that encourages growth and self-awareness, accepts that life is pain, that everyone feels it, and moves the fuck on. There's no room left for wallowing, which is what those old works of 70 years ago did. Not to their fault, but due to the time in which they were written.

This explains why so much literature and so many films take place three, four, even five decades ago, so that writers who want to write about the old problems all over again can do so without looking idiotic. But really, these stories only tell us to be grateful we're no longer those people. They don't enlighten, they don't really engage. They're largely judged on how faithful they are to the time period (within specific modern taboos), never upon the insight they offer into anything.

The pitch for why I should care about such writing — for there is always a pitch — suggests to me a fellow who arrives at my front door to sell me a new, great product he's invented. It's "sensational," every home needs one, it performs a service unlike no other appliance, the very presence of it will change the way I start my day every morning... and then, the reveal: it's a toaster. The man has invented a toaster. It may be a very nice toaster, it may do the job it's designed to do, but I already have one and it's the least modern gadget I own. In fact, I'm so tired of toast after a lifetime of eating it now that my toaster has one single purpose: to toast bagels. I don't eat sliced bread and the buns I eat don't fit in the toaster, so now this is all that's left. And if there are no bagels in the house, the toaster goes in a cupboard — where it sits, for months, until I want bagels again.

This is modern writing produced by the kind of complaining male I happen to find on youtube. Mind you, outside the "lit" community, I have no problem whatsoever finding books written by males... about history, science, geopolitics, mechanics, you name it. But I don't buy these.

I have the internet now.

Session 2: Kobalds and Rats

Friday we had another session, a week after the first... the next won't be for two weeks. The situation had been set up by the previous running, in which the players had seen three kobalds above ground engaged in making charcoal. One of these was killed at the end of the running on Feb. 6th, so we picked up Friday last's game with the party on one side of a swirl of smoke and, uncertainly, two kobalds on the other.

After the usual uncertainty about who should do what and how, which always seems to accompany these things (I have lately come to the conclusion that no one wants to force the other players into something not agreed upon, which is why the military assigns that responsibility to a leader), the party braved the smoke. Two kobalds were encountered, a bunch of missing happened and then both were dispatched easily.

Revealed also was a pathway down into a subterranean lair, pictured here:

Once entering the anti-chamber to 1., the party fought a running battle against 7 kobalds into room 2.  These generally had 1d4 for hit points, except the leader which was a "first-level" by my system, my having no trouble with the training that can be applied to humans being learnable by kobalds. This gave one kobald, armed with a dagger and shield instead of a club like the others, an AC of 6 and 12 h.p.; he proved to be quite durable and managed to land a triple-damage hit on Matyas for 12 damage. The hit demonstrated the no-helmet rule perfectly: I rolled a 20-crit, then a 19; Matyas didn't have a helmet. So it goes.

One kobald escaped, the party looted the body for a little copper and silver, found nothing else of worth and decided to press on. They met a second levelled kobald at the top of the stairs at 3.; as I remember, and I might be wrong (I'm old and doddering), it was the cleric Zoltan who managed to thump him twice and short order, leaving him dead at the bottom of the stairs. At that point the earlier escaped kobald released all the pet giant rats down below, 12 of them, so that these surged up and attacked the party.

Overall, they went down quickly... but in one particular round, I rolled two 20-crits against Ti out of three rats; then I rolled another 20 on one of these so that one of the rat hits would cause double, and the other triple damage. Rats do 1-3 damage on a hit; I use a six-sided counting 1-2 = 1, 3-4 = 2, 5-6 = 3 in the usual manner. I grabbed two d6 of different colours and rolled boxcars. Ti took 15 total that round, survived it but was knocked into negative hit points. As the damage was 6 and 9, there were no wounds (Matyas had suffered a wound earlier), so Ti was able to just stagger to the back of the group and let them finish off the rats.

At this point, the party were ready to quit. However, I taunted them into checking the bottom of the stairs (they hadn't gone down) as they counted their resources and hesitated, until I succeeded in getting Orsos to look. There he found the sprite princess in a cage, a sack beside her and scrawled across the door that would have led them nearer the mage purportedly at the bottom of the small dungeon, "Take her and GO!"

The party took the deal; the sack had a hundred gold, they returned the sprite princess to her people, got themselves healed... but unfortunately Matyas picked up a disease from the rats and was set to be laid up for perhaps as long as four weeks.

Joey, player managing Matyas, had participated in my Juvenis campaign once upon a time, when he ran a gnome cleric named Lexent. This being a character from my campaign, I offered an arrangement for Lexent to step into Matyas' place (just 4 x.p. shy of 4th level) and then, upon achieving 5th level, take Matyas as henchfolk. The party were given a veto on this and chose not to take it, so the next running will begin with the party again in Ozd, having met Lexent, while Matyas remains with the sprites to recover. He'll then remain in limbo until Lexent reaches 5th.

There you have it. Basically, a straight-up combat session. We'll see how the next one goes.