The Down Side & The Up Side

For the last month I've been committed to producing more positive posts about D&D ~ and no, not so much here, but elsewhere.  That has got me thinking about the game's bigger picture.  I could say that I'm trying to grok D&D on a different plane ... to "drink" it, for that is the definition of "grok" that Heinlein offers.

The problem has always been that D&D is hard; and, if we're going to be honest, it costs too much effort for most people.  I'm not just talking about the rules or the process of playing.  D&D, and other role-playing games, carry other forms of baggage that we tend to downplay.  It is socially difficult; even if family and acquaintances can appreciate and approve of the game's play, this doesn't mean they get it.  The game separates us by giving us a vocabulary and a set of memories that can't be easily shared with outsiders.

As well, many of us can point to the game as a place where we've lost friends.  I could do the same with a baseball diamond or football, but somehow I feel the friends lost through D&D more keenly than with sports.  Perhaps that is because I've given more of myself to the game.  I have, for game purposes, gone some distance towards humiliating myself ... acting like a clown to produce a certain effect from the players, making spooky voices, letting my emotions pour over the table.  With those moments in the mix, the bitterness reflects other serious relationships, where I've exposed by vulnerable side.

A number of times, those breaks occurred because, in running the game for anywhere from five to nine players, or more, I couldn't give all the personal attention that some players felt was their due.  I had to keep order.  The game gives little help to managing the endless details that arise and it demands that an honest DM, one who won't reshuffle the cards for the players, must be willing to kill a player's favorite character ~ which is, for a great many people, an unfair ask.  This is the hidden truth underlying the present movement to justify constant and unrepentant fudging of the dice, "for a good game."  We're really talking about the tension that D&D puts on the social contract between all-too-human persons.  As a species, humans are rarely equipped to let an inanimate object like a die, or a small game rule, cause pain and suffering to a friend or ~ potentially ~ a stranger whose reaction is impossible to predict.  Better, most think, that the game's function should be suspended than having to deal with the real consequences of playing out the game as written.

The game is hard.  We can play it to assuage the feelings of sensitive players and entitled strangers, but what that does to us ~ knowing what we're doing and why ~ can steadily push us towards apathy and self-doubt.  And every time we do the opposite, and stand up to the players ... well, even if the friendship survives the fallout, we grow hesitant and less certain of our skill as game masters.

Just now there's a real rush towards the game by parents who have discovered that D&D offers their nine- and ten-year-olds' what's called "face time" ~ an alternative to cell phones and video games.  But these are people who often have very little personal experience with the game, if we can believe the manner in which the phenomenon is being reported.  The initial rush of rolling dice and killing monsters wears off; without a deeper understanding of the game, the surface experience is ~ after a mere two or three years ~ ultimately unsatisfying.  Except for a few outliers, most just don't last very long in a sustained campaign.  We're not teaching children to like the game.  We're teaching teenagers to hate it.

I've sat and stared at that last line a few minutes now, wondering if its unfair.  I would say "yes" if there were any signs that the gamestores or the company had any overall plan for non-beginners.  So much of the rhetoric, the books, the resources and so on are geared to a particular kind of player ~ and once past those first ten adventures, the players are more or less cut loose.  We're expected by the company to just keep coming back to the next adventure, without the ennui of growing experience.

We all have stories of that phenomenal DM that we played with ~ or that we still play with, for a lucky few ~ and how they took the game to some higher level.  But rarely do we question the underlying truth here: that some people really get how to run; and that most don't.  And with recognition of the latter, we must face the possible truth that even after several years ~ even after ten years ~ some of us are not ever going to be good at this.  Even saying it out loud is cruel.  But where are we going to say it?  Are you going to sit in a counselor's office and talk about your feelings of loss and inadequacy with respect to a make-believe, fantasy game?  A process that has to begin with explaining what the game is first, before you can try to explain why your sense of inadequacy is swallowing down your soul?

How many of us, as we get into our 30s and 40s, are beginning to wish we'd never encountered the game?  I'm not speaking for myself; these are not my feelings.  I'm an insane, engaged, potentially sociopathic fanatic who's able to live and breathe the game at will.  I'll happily spend twenty hours explaining the game to a stranger so that I can get to the point about where I'm planning on taking my concepts next year.  No, I'm fine.  But look around.  You can find hundreds of D&D bloggers coughing up their last post, expressing their helpless lack of interest, the cold reality that they're just getting too old to play the game any more.  And a horde of others who still "want to play" but can't quite bring themselves ~ after an absence of years ~ to get back into it.

This isn't the reaction that an endlessly fun activity produces.  I won't find fanatical skiiers talking about not skiing or foodies deciding to purge themselves of cookbooks; car fanatics don't quit going to car shows "because the crowds are different now."  The crowds aren't different.  We're different.  It's not the same game for us anymore ... because we aren't 17 anymore.  We got genre-savvy.  We're not moved by a great hook the way we used to be.  We're so bored of the "questgiver" that we can write out the script before the DM speaks.

Maybe ... maybe the new family is more important.  Maybe the job is more important.  Maybe it is a silly game.  Maybe it was fun while it lasted, but hey, sometimes we've just got to move on.  It's a part of growing up.  And hey ... I'm really tired of explaining what this game is to people anyway.  They never seem to get it.

It's hard to explain why I never felt that way.  I started playing with my 15-year-old friends in 1979.  By 1986 most of those were out of university and trade schools and looking for jobs.  By 1990, they had kids.  By 1994, they had two or three and were starting to feel the pinch of having to buy a house.  By then, none of them were playing in my world.  The last ones made their excuses and I took a personal break myself.  I should have quit.  My own daughter was six and I had responsibilities.  I was writing as a journalist, I was editing a magazine, I was having some tough times.

I wanted to work on the game.  I knew it wasn't the thing I'd been sold.  I knew that from the beginning.  It wasn't just a vehicle to put characters in front of monsters for the purpose of solving puzzles and resolving combats.  Some of that mattered; but there was a bigger thing going on, and though I never found anyone who admitted it, the whole human experience is capable of being measured by this game.

I couldn't let go of that.  I could contain the whole experience of the world in a story I wrote; I could write a play about anything and work to have it staged.  I could work with friends to make films.  I did work with plays and film; and I liked the group dynamic involved.  But it never matched the potential for me personally that I found with D&D.  I didn't need stages and equipment and all the trouble it took to make theatre and drama; I could produce that drama spontaneously, again and again, every weekend ... and every weekend the plot, the dilemma, the danger and the investment were always new.  They were always felt.

I can't imagine quitting.  But it breaks my heart that the game is so fucking hard that it breaks people's resolve to overcome the troubles involved with creating those weekends.  Cut out the rules, cut out the human factor, reduce the pain or the risk, simplify the decision-making process, reduce the player character structure to a facade, strip the gears, pull out the guts, don't give anyone cause to quit or walk out or feel inadequate.  Process the game in a blender until it oozes out as the greyest possible sludge.  Anything it takes so long as sitting down for a game session doesn't cost anything.  Because life, and relationships, and time, and imagination, and whatever else might be in short supply doesn't give us enough capital to pay that cost.

Whatever the reader might think, this is looking at the game positively.  For me, at least.  I can go through each one of the "negative" points above and see the cure.  D&D is hard.  It is hard enough to provide enough sustenance to keep our attention engaged ... if we're willing to engage ourselves.  And no, engagement does not mean watching another quick fix or easy answer video on youtube.  We have lost friends through the game. We've also made friends; and all that embarrassment has made us better friends that we would have had through sports or any other game.  It is hard to stand up to our friends; and it is hard to hurt them; but it is also a chance to find what we're made of, to stand up for something, to defend the hours of effort we've put in to create our worlds and to be respected for those worlds ~ even by people we've hurt by killing their characters.  When those players will take it, and stand up to it, and praise us for being true, we all win.  No one has to feel ashamed or servile.

We can make more game for those kids who want to play.  We can explain to them that it doesn't end at just the next adventure.  We can explain that the whole of human experience is available.  It doesn't have to be a simplified, two-dimensional game.  It can be more.  It can be art.  It can rise above what the gamestores and the company and even what the parents expect.

If we don't treat the game like make-believe fantasy nonsense, we won't show any doubt as we explain our part in it to anyone, not family, not co-workers, not counselor's, not even those who have played and want to say that it's just fun bullshit to do sometimes.  Being genre-savvy isn't a curse; it's an opportunity.  If the questgiver is an obvious trope, stop using it.  Find another way to engage players.  Find a better way.  Build a world that is so rife with opportunity that the players never feel they need be given a reason to adventure.  Rise above the grey.  The sky is blue.

Those who quit do so because they will not see what's next.  That doesn't have to be you.  There is always a next step.  To take it, however, you'll have to change your shoes.  You'll have to try a new road.  You'll have to stop walking the same familiar path.

And that will take work.


I have found another path.  I am finding it easier to publish positive posts about D&D when I know that not everyone is reading.  Those readers who are used to finding my posts on a regular basis can continue to do so, for a $3 donation a month through my patreon.  It's easy, it's painless and you can assure yourself that there are a month's worth of posts you can catch up on when you join.

Let me add, it doesn't hurt to give a little more if you'd like me to keep doing what I'm doing.  I love this game.  I want to keep showing its full potential.