Sisyphus

"Things that I once felt (perhaps) 'needlessly' complicate the D&D game...things like time and aging, encumbrance, disease & illness, training requirements, weather (and its effects), or a 'living' economy...these things have the potential to make for a richer gaming experience. They also make the game more difficult to play, and much harder to manage. They are not Dungeons & Dragons in its Little League form...they are ADVANCED Dungeons & Dragons."

JB on his post, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

Coming from one of the smartest advocates on the web for simple game-play, this is startling ~ along the lines of Berlin Walls falling down.  I try not to get my hopes up, however.  For one thing, I don't want to put any pressure on JB.

There's a comment on JB's post from Bob Portnell that provides some context for how most people view the difficulty to creating those things JB mentions ~ a living economy, weather, etc.  Portnell talks about how it sounds great, but that it never quite works out.  I'm going to shorten his full comment down to this on pertinent aside: "Me, I'm still flailing to make a spells plug-in work on my game."

I see that and for me, it speaks volumes.  It may be the keystone for why so many people do drift so purposefully towards simpler, elegant games ~ that being, they just can't bring themselves to get along with ... well, to put it simply, with the rules.

A good example is the spell system.  I read JB's blog on a regular basis, wastefully checking approximately every 30 hours to see if he's posted something, when for the most part every 108 hours would be sufficient.  JB spends a lot of time talking about D&D's spell system.  A lot of time.  I don't want to go into particulars, but like many bloggers talking about D&D, he's mostly unsatisfied with the way spells work, what classes should have spells, which spells should exist, which new spellcasting classes ought to exist, etcetera.  Which is fine.  These are questions that deserve evaluation and every DM should sit down and figure out an answer.

Only ... JB's been running D&D for quite a long time and this issue still isn't sorted.  I'd be willing to bet that Portnell, above, has probably also been playing for a long time ... and yet spells are still something bogging down his game.

In the kindest way possible, this is like a surgeon who has given up performing operations because a twenty-year quest to design a better scalpel still hasn't paid off.  I'm picking this metaphor carefully.  I'm likening the problem to a very smart person with an absolutely laudable goal of making a better scalpel missing the point that maybe, after so many years, with other people also working on the same problem over that period of time, it would be better to just perform operations.

I don't want anyone thinking I'm calling JB or even Portnell, whom I don't know, "stupid."

On one hand, I can accept that the magic spellcasting rules in the game aren't ... hm ... let's say efficient.  Every spell needs its own description and every description adds to the possibility of misunderstandings taking place in game sessions.  But, hey, some things simply aren't efficient.  Love and relationships, for example.  Or raising children.  Or taking a non-disastrous vacation.  Not everything in life was purposefully designed to be simple.  It's no fault of the designer; it's just that some things, however we'd like them neatly cut into and then sewn up, get messy.

I'd propose that part of the reason why some ~ and hey, I'm not necessarily saying this applies to JB ~ find it necessary to keep everything else simple because some of the big, glaring problems of non-efficient D&D defy proper, reasoned, rational codification.  Like Portnell says ~ he'd really like a deeper, nuanced experience, but he buys this stuff and then he doesn't use it, and the spell thing still isn't working, so shit, how much stuff can we really handle?  This has got to be as easy as possible, at least until I figure out the real problems, like how do the spells work or how to make combat more ... something.

Combat is another one, isn't it?  How many combat systems for just the medieval to Renaissance time period have been created and published since 1975?  At least twenty or thirty major ones ~ probably five times as many minor ones.  Add that to the impossible-to-guess homebrewed combat systems that at least half of all DMs in the community are working on.  Combat is another one of those inefficient, unlikeable systems that so many people like to carp about ... but again, it really is something that ought to be settled on.  Yeah, it's flawed.  So what?  My partner Tamara would like me to lose weight.  She still loves me.  Things aren't always exactly so.

I'd guess that most of those out there who are running fairly complex games settled these issues in their minds within three to five years of starting their DMing.  I've tweaked bits here and there, but I haven't made a serious change to my combat system since 1986.  I've rewritten the descriptions, but I'm still using the same basic spells, in the same basic way, since 1983.  I haven't changed my game world concept since 1982.

No, these things aren't perfect.  I've redesigned my represention of my game world many times: in 1988, when I started hand-drawing 4 ft. by 3 ft. maps (since lost, I'm sorry to say).  Then again in 1996, when I started putting them on computer.  Then a new incarnation in 2004, when I adopted the hex system I use now.  Then I decided the hexes weren't quite perfect, so I redid every map I had up until 2009.  And I'm doing an upgrade with imaging now, that I've been poking at for the last two years.  But it is the same world, the Earth.  But it is the same concept.  I haven't thrown it away for some other planet.

I have time to refresh and remake the same concept because I'm not struggling with hundreds of details I settled long, long ago.  I'm accepting the magic system as is.  And the combat system as is.  And hundreds of other systems, as is.  Not because they're not flawed, or because I necessarily believe they're the best system that could exist on those lines ... but because they're good enough.  They get the job done.

There are a lot of things to learn in the world; a lot of things that can be improved.  If you can, make your peace with some of your old bugbears and just move on.  It's not as important to get it "right" as you think it is.  And being hung up on it is keeping you from doing a lot of great stuff.

You're not Sisyphus.  He had to push his rock.  You have a choice.