I began to see other things in the rules that way. I just didn't see why orcs had to be painted with one brush. Why did all the orcs have to be "evil"? Just what agenda were we serving? Was there something wrong with occasionally letting orcs, goblins and other intelligent monsters act with other motives that an incessant compulsion towards cruelty? Sure, some orcs could be bad. Some humans are bad. And perhaps it might be beneficial to have a society where the badness was more influential than the society's goodness. But I saw no reason why a particular orc should be erudite, polite, considerate, generous or even respectful. I saw no reason why orcs shouldn't plant farms, herd crops, attend their own form of religion ... and act more to defend themselves against aggressors than be aggressors themselves.
After I had been playing three or four years, I steadily re-examined everything that I was told to believe about the game world the books were proposing. There was no internet. This was 1983. There were few people around with which to debate the issue, and most of those were my players. I was free of influence. I was the dungeon master of my own world. I did not need a consensus of opinion, I did not need permission ... hell, I didn't even need to explain why I wanted to change things. And my players, as it happened, didn't care. Once they began to meet goblins and orcs who were ready to parley first and perhaps not attack at all, they shrugged their shoulders and went along. Because they didn't care, either.
When I stopped asking my paladins to live up to a code, my players seemed fine with that. When my rangers could focus on relating to the wilderness instead of how good they are, everybody was good with that too. It seemed there were little bits and pieces in the rules that existed for no good reason at all, not when I looked closely.
Yet how odd it was, 25 years after I started playing, to find D&D blogs on the internet. I had never been much into dalnet, so I came late to this party. That would have been about 2004. And all around were these bitter flame wars going on, about whether or not goblins should be evil, or how much players should pay to go up a level, or when it was right to take away paladinhood from a character. These wars are still going on.
Isn't it all just silly?
Silly? The things they “war” about? Or the fact that they war at all?
ReplyDeleteTolkien spun his orcs one way, his later imitators a slightly different way, and neither bore much resemblance to the dark (“unseelie”) faeries of folklore. Why do they exist in the game at all? To hoard treasure and wait in the dark to be killed I guess...like every other monster in the game. The premise of D&D is plenty silly on the surface.
But it is a game. The rules exist to make it harder to play. That includes alignment and training, too (in AD&D)...as much as I gather anyway. You’ve done away with those rules, and implemented others (i.e. other limitations) instead. That’s fine. You examined the system as designed and found it wanting in several regards.
I think some of the arguing (the “wars”) are just a poor, limited fashion of examination. Not in every instance (certainly some are shouting for their own ego edification), but dialogue (heated or not) can be a tool for analysis.
I can clearly remember a point in our old AD&D campaigns when orcs simply never showed up...or any humanoid opponents for that matter. Probably 4-5 years into our gaming. This was not a conscious choice on the part of the DMs...encounters with orcs or goblins or bugbears simply failed to interest the players. Likewise alignment played little role when players used characters less beholden to its constraints (we had no paladins, Rangers, druids, assassins, etc.). These were unconscious decisions...but, then, we were kids (and teens) and not overly prone to examination and analysis As adults, it’s not a bad idea to look a little closer.
I'm sorry ... the rules exist to make it harder to play? Where did that premise come from?
ReplyDeleteOh! Whoops! From my brain.
ReplyDeleteRules provide organization and structure, but also limitation. Why can't my wizard wear armor? Rules. Why does my character die at zero hit points? Rules. Why do we rely on a 20-sided die roll (as opposed to simple narration or rock-paper-scissors) to determine success of an attack? Rules.
Rules establish boundaries and limits. They define play.
I think they do anyway...now you've got me second-guessing myself. I *was* writing this comment at 2am (and dozed off a couple times while typing)...and I'm still a little dozy at the moment (having gotten up at 7:30am). If I missed some flaw in my thinking, well, it wouldn't be the first time!
I don't think rules are intended to make a game harder; they merely make it predictable. Without "if, then" type statements, the imagined world risks becoming too inconsistent to enjoy and share. The predictability enables weighing the pros and cons of a given choice.
DeleteI don't deny that rules provide limitation, but they don't "exist" for that purpose. Moreover, I can't see any logic whatsoever that would argue that "more limitation" in any way improves a game. I would imagine the point is to provide the Least Practical amount of limitation necessary to preclude the game falling into chaos.
ReplyDeleteRemember me? I'm the one always saying there ought to be more rules. But that is because the game is so elaborate and complex that bulwarks have to be put between the DM's proclivity to be draconian and arbitrary, Not so that we can just randomly stop people from doing stuff.
Your example, "Why does my character die at zero hit points?" is answered easily: the character has to die at Some Point, or else combat becomes pointless.
Your example, "Why do we rely on a 20-sided die roll ..." makes no sense in syntax. We don't "rely" on it. We employ it as a tool. We don't rely on a hammer to pound a nail: we've Invented the hammer so that nails can be pounded. In the 1950s, members of the Rand Corporation Think Tank in the United States invented the 20-sided die in order to experiment with random number generation programs they were running to fight the Cold War. They invented multiple geometric shapes and the 20-sided proved the most effective TOOL for that purpose. The Johnny-come-latelys of the 1970s simply used a tool that had already proved its value for its purpose. We could apply a different die, but after 60 Years of evidence that it does its job better, it would be stupid to do otherwise. A rock will also pound a nail. Do you use a rock just because it's an alternative?
I'm saying, the "rule" of punishing paladins by stripping their powers if they role-play incorrectly is an Arbitrary Construction to limit the power of paladins ~ because it was believed the character class was too strong. This. Is. Bullshit. And I have 37 years of running paladins AS WRITTEN without any of them overbalancing my campaign in any way to prove it. We cling to this nonsensical crap because we're prejudiced and we refuse to run the necessary tests.
Which forces us into arguments that rules exist to make the game harder to play, which is not why they exist, and to call out other rules as evidence when in no way are those other rule examples "arbitrary."
If you want to make an argument, give me a Good, Solid, non-Arbitrary reason why any non-human race must be universally "good" or "evil," or why paladins should be stripped of their power, or why players should pay for their supper (levelling up).
I'll listen.