Mnemonic

Recently, for anyone who might be reading the blog, I've introduced a host of rules.  In the last two months, I've introduced rules for burglary, half-elf and half-orc physiology, the paladin's warhorse, spellbooks, commoners & comrades, how to train non-levelled persons to be better combatants, how to teach proficiencies, character secondary skills, nutrition and the preparation of food, a few spells and a few demons.  Today, by request, I'll be working on rules for wear & tear on equipment.  This has not been an unusual month.

I know that for most, while the rules may be interesting and we might pick and choose what we like from among them, most readers (particularly not my die hard fans) look at all this and shake their heads.  "What is the point of all these new rules?" they ask.  "How are we supposed to memorize this?"

Listen carefully, because this may be the most important post I ever write that teaches the gentle reader how to DM.  I was thinking about this last night, sorting out an answer to the eternal complaint, "more rules just means more work and less time for real gaming."  All we need do is think about piles and piles of splatbooks and we have cause to shudder.  There is only so many rules we can keep in our heads at any one time ~ and if anything taught us that lesson, it has been trying to run the game based on too many splatbooks.

The remarkable convenience of splatbooks.

The largest problem with splatbooks is that they are books.  They're analog.  Their substance was released at random, without proper indexing.  To my knowledge, a mass index was never made for all the splatbooks, and if it had been, it would have still been a book.  It wouldn't have included a note to that one paragraph you remembered from somewhere, gawd knows where, that you'd like to use now that it's popped into your head.  But you could waste an hour trying to find it in as few as three different splatbooks, and yes, that does steal time from play.

Book indexes are nice, but they are so last century.  Books serve the publisher.  They do not serve the user.

But this post is not about why you should computerize your game play.  This post is about the moment I just described: something you read, or you knew about, has popped into your head and, just like that, you remember it exists.

There is a way to force rules to pop into your head.  It is a process I have been employing since I was a teenager, without a moment's thought.  And, as I realize it now, it comes from a peculiar linear way I have of picturing game play.

Our brain is a memory device, a retrieval system which will store far more information than it takes to manage a role-playing game.  You remember the beach you played on when you were eight.  You remember how the motel you and your parents stayed in for that one night, whenever it was, when you were nine.  You remember the name of the first girl or boy you kissed, even though that was 35 years ago (or less, for some).  You remember when your parents were so big, they loomed above you.  But you didn't have any reason to remember any of those things, until I mentioned them just now.  And though some of you, perhaps, can't remember these specific things, the mnemonic I just used caused a host of memories that you haven't thought of in a long time to come tripping out of you.  That information has been there all this time, ignored for years at a stretch ... but you happen to hear someone mention the beach, or you physically see the motel, or you hear a name that sounds close to that first girl you kissed ... and there it is.

I'm only saying the capacity is there.  You're fully capable of tapping into a wealth of detail, if you approach the unlocking process just so.

Suppose we take the example of the food rules I've added.  To use them, we'll need to discard "daily rations" and replace them with specific items on the equipment table.  Then we'll need to organize those items according to the quality of food they fit.  They'll need to be priced accordingly.  The players will have to be informed of the rules.  Which means we'll have to know them and be able to explain them.  And then we'll need to remember to use the rules, every day of the campaign.

And this last is the kicker.  We'll need to remind our players to make food, then to cross it off their character lists, then we'll have to remind them to make checks, which will result, most likely very soon, in vomiting and diarrhea, which the players will carp and moan about, and say, "These rules are shitty," while complaining about them every time we mention them in our game.  Pretty soon, the players will train us not to bring up the rules, by making us feel ashamed to have ever installed them, so that we'll kowtow to their demands, forcing us to ...

What?  You don't think this happens?

First and foremost, as DM, we're the ones doing the training.  The players do not shame us into dropping rules, we shame them into not having the strength of will to overcome them.  So when they vomit and whatever, we shake our heads and observe, "Well, if you're going to eat this garbage you chose to buy ... if you're not going to hire a cook ..."

But still, there's that problem, how are we going to remember to fit the rules into the campaign?

I would guess that most readers go about the game like I did many years ago.  The players decide they're going to go out to a dungeon, and we say, "Okay, three days later, after travelling over some rough country, you arrive at the dungeon."

We can find this approach used everywhere ~ on episodes of Critical Role, in game modules, encouraged by youtube pundits, wherever.  We didn't just forget to eat, we forgot to live for three days.  Why don't we just put the dungeon entrance across the street from the tavern?  It amounts to the same thing.

Hey, we have monkey brains, okay?  When the DM says, "After three days, you get there," you may be able to puzzle that out intellectually, but your monkey brain interprets this emotionally as, "Oh, it's across the street."  And that's why we don't care where the dungeon is.  We didn't have to pay anything to get there, so it doesn't feel like it cost.  It doesn't feel like we're three days from home.  It doesn't feel like we've got out asses hanging out here and we're in serious trouble if something goes wrong.  It doesn't feel like it really would if I popped you 60 miles from anywhere and said, "Okay, we're three days walk from food, medicine, help, a telephone, everything."  There's no emotion at all.  And as such, your monkey brain is bored.

As I got better as a DM, I began to fit in more detail.  I was still far short of the mark, but follow me on this.  I would say, "Okay, this is Tuesday.  You're a day out of town, I'll see if there's a wandering monster; nope, nothing.  You get about twenty miles towards the dungeon, climbing up into some hills and walking your horses much of the way."

The players would say a few things and I would begin again, "Okay, this is Wednesday ..."  And so on.  Until we got to the dungeon.

Now, a lot of online pundits will shrug at this and pooh-pooh it, saying don't waste your player's time, don't waste game time, etcetera.  And it will sound right to most of us, because we hate having to commute to work and work would be way better if we could just get there and have done with it, and not have to commute home.  So why shouldn't the journey to the dungeon work the same way?  And even if there is a wandering monster, it's so booooorrring, because it doesn't mean anything to the adventure and there's hardly any experience and certainly very little treasure, so why do we have to waste our time fighting this thing?

Well, the pundits are wrong, because the fact is, I was half-assing my way through the "commute."  Yes, given the way I was doing it, discarding it seems rational, but the fact is that the longer I took to elaborate on the days, the more the players would fill up the intervening time with their thoughts.

When Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Treasure Island, he didn't just write, "After Jim got the map after Billy Bones died, the ship arrived at the island."  Why?  There's no action.  We just meet some people, travel about, get a clue or two ... but heck, why wait?  The stuff that happens on the island is waaaaay more interesting.  Why don't we just jump ahead?

Because we've got to get used to the idea.  The longer it takes to get someplace, the bigger the idea grows in our monkey brains.  We don't have to account for every twig and stone along the roads, but we've got to give a sense that we're walking along, we're thinking about what's coming, we're doing things, we're meeting people who might have something to say, we're growing the idea in our minds as we're going.

Early morning, the last sight of civilization.

We take our time.  And as long as we're taking our time, we envision ourselves being there.  Now, think about it, as DM.  It's morning, you're getting out of bed, you've got three days walk ahead of you.  Get the picture in your head.  You really are there.  You can feel the splinters and the feather ticking of the bed in your ass.  You yawn, you stretch ... and what is the first thing you do?

You eat, of course.  This is the last decent meal you'll have before you have to eat what's cooked over a campfire.  Bingo.  Right there, you remember the food rules.

Okay, what's next.  Well, you're need to get your gear together, but before you can get fully dressed, what are you going to do?  That's right, you're going to look outside and see what the weather is like.  There, you've remembered to use your weather rules.

So, you get your gear ... the gear you're going to be relying upon for your life in three days.  Is it new?  Is worn?  How long have you had that rope?  Okay.  Now you're ready to invoke the wear & tear rules I'm planning to write.  Anybody want to spend half a day shopping, to replace something they've forgotten?  No?  Good.

Get your animals, get your equipment loaded up.  Some is going to go on the animals, and some of it is going to go on you.  That wakes up your mind to the encumbrance rules.

You haven't even left town yet.  But you've remembered all the pertinent rules, so you're good as a DM.  The players have quibbled and hawed at these details, but you're going to say very adroitly, "I sure hope you're ready for this dungeon.  It isn't going to be an easy dungeon."

That's going to put some spark in these rules.  Speed of movement is going to matter.  The quality of that rope is going to matter.  Is the rope going to kill me?  Jeez, it's warm now, but the DM said it rained last night.  What if it's raining hard when we get there?  And when we get out on the road, on our first day, on Tuesday, and we all have to make rolls for food effects, jeez.  Sure was easy, given we ate that fresh pork roast for breakfast.  Did anyone bring something other than salt pork and beans to eat on this journey?

We're five miles from town and one of the players is saying, "Maybe I should have picked up a new rope."

And someone else says, "Don't worry, I've got one."

Followed by the reply, "Is one enough?"

And now I'm not running the Tuesday journey, the players are.  They're not bored.  They're painting a picture from the details we're giving them and they're building up the dungeon in ways we could not hope to manage.  This is how rules expand game play.  And we remember the rules by playing the game ourselves.

When a man-at-arms joins the party, we're meant to think, if it were our man-at-arms, what would we do?  And if we were the man-at-arms, how would we view this party?  We don't do this in terms of story, but in terms of fitting ourselves into that position.  "Look at this group of louts I'm working for now.  Well, the druid seems pretty decent.  Wouldn't want to tussle with that fighter though.  And what is the cleric's problem, anyway?"  This gives us a frame when the party asks their man-at-arms to do something.  It makes us think of morale rules, and how we look at cooking rules, and what it must have been like for us before we became a man-at-arms.  That reminds us of the secondary skills rules, which then takes us in a hundred directions.  Taking our time to figure this man-at-arms out reminds us that he has aspirations, too.  He probably wonders about the day when we'll ditch this bunch of losers and get proper training as a fighter.  Maybe its something he'll tell the druid during a shared watch, perhaps on Wednesday, as we're still making our way to this dungeon.  Tell a nice, hopeful story, and the players' monkey brains will feel it when "Bob" dies.  "Damn it," says the cleric.  "I really liked Bob."

There really aren't so many rules they can't be remembered, if you're in the right frame of mind.  If you're thinking a step or two ahead of the players, you'll have a moment to look up detailed rules on a paladin's warhorse while the party is discussing the merits of a good rope, so that when they stumble across such a horse on Thursday morning, while still wending their way to the dungeon, they'll have reason to puzzle why there's no paladin on it.  You'll have the rules fresh in your mind, because you'll have found them on a computer, and will not have to have gone through five splatbooks to find the right passage about paladin's warhorses.  Why were you thinking about warhorses just then?  Maybe because some part of the dungeon has a religious bent, and there's no paladin in the party.  Or maybe because ol' Alexis wrote about it earlier this month.  Or maybe because you dream about warhorses nightly.  The point is, you have time to look up rules on the fly because the players have something to argue about.  You didn't skip them ahead three days to the dungeon, wrecking all this interesting opportunity to get to know Bob or puzzle about riderless warhorses or double-check the number of daggers that can be carried and still maintain a 4 movement rate.  These things make the party busy ... whereas skipping ahead, and making it easy for the party, only encourages idle hands.

The game itself, and the ebb and flow of events, from place to place, and from monster to monster, is a mnemonic.  But you have to live the game play as the DM first, as much as the players do.  If you're ready to jump forward through time, then no wonder you haven't time to ready yourself, or your players, for the task at hand.  No wonder everything in your game feels tawdry and cheap.  You're cheapening it by hurrying, by simplifying, by snuffing out the life of the thing in order to speed up the commute to the "good stuff."

Take your time and it is easy to remember all the rules you'll need.