Though I sympathize, however, I am coldly hardheaded about holding myself to a standard. Others may not want to do so, granted. The presence of creativity in D&D and RPGs dictates that the game will adhere to the same essentials that rule over any artistic endeavour... and all such endeavours are hard. Unless the reader has had their head in the sand, even the dopiest of us realize that even making a cheap, cheesy movie like Empire Records would far surpass the hardest things that most have done in our lives. The number of details, the limitations put on a production by virtue of available money, the personality conflicts that are present in dealing with a hundred or more touchy, easily offended artistic types, the pressure of wondering if anyone will even watch this thing, much less like it, while putting ourselves in debt and spending time away from our families, while working 18 hours a day and more without getting enough sleep, as even medical problems begin to crop up because we're not giving ourselves enough rest ... in the midst of it, we wonder why in hell we ever wanted to be a filmmaker.
With this in your thoughts, consider this. Some filmmakers, and other artists, decide to take all of the above and increase the stress and difficulty by exponential levels by deliberately assigning arbitrarily limitations to the form of work being accomplished. An excellent unphotographable example would be Monet's waterlily paintings located at the Orangerie museum in Paris ~ as the link says, the paintings dominated Monet's life for 30 years.
But since we're looking at this from a film director's perspective, and because we have reason to consider the subject of imposed limitations with reference to D&D, I can't think of a better example than 2019's film, 1917. Here the director, Sam Mendes, held himself to a set of rules where the film had to follow the main character from beginning to end, with time breaks in the single shot but without editing cuts. Here's an early scene from the film that won't spoil what happens, if you haven't seen it (and really, you should; more than once).
From a purely practical point of view, why would an artist break their heads producing a film that follows these rules, when it probably won't make more money that a more traditional film and it will increase the headaches usually experienced on a common film set? The answer should be obvious, but surprisingly it is not to some people: because stretching yourself within a set of self-imposed rules makes you solve creative problems outside the box. You cannot make your film, or your book or painting or what have you, using the standard, simple, easy-to-employ tropes that artists come to rely upon. You have to forget what you know. You have to teach yourself, the hard way, by skull sweat alone, because there is nothing out here in the world to help you, how to do something that has never been done before. This forces you to push past the daily business of being annoyed on a film set into the realm of "Gawddamn, I have no idea if I can even do this." You lie awake and structure the problems over and over in your mind; it possesses you; and when you find the solution, you realize that not only have you solved the problem, you've solved a problem that no one realized even existed before you settled yourself to solve it. In those moments, you cease to care if the film will do well; you cease to care if anyone else recognizes that you're an artist. You know you're an artist ~ in a way that you never conceived of knowing it before. In that moment, you realize you've achieved that thing you dreamed of achieving when you were just a little person, and the opinions of everyone else becomes irrelevant.
It is hard to explain to someone who hasn't done it. All I can say is, yes, it's worth it. And, like Monet, it is worth doing it until you die.
Understanding how to solve difficult problems is a step forward for anyone, not just an artist. If you look around, you can find artists talking about it, working out their own prejudices in the works they write. One thing that bites is watching some lazy writer invent a half-assed solution to some corner they've written themselves into, which they expect the reader, or the filmgoer, to simply accept. Stephen King created an excellent example in his film Misery:
People will latch onto the words "cockadoodie car" as though the scene exists to have Annie Wilkes betray her obvious nutjobbiness, but this is not the point at all. Her prisoner, Paul, is a writer trying to slack ass his way out of a problem; he has killed off the favoured character, Misery, of his many fans, because he hates the character and wants to move on and write other things. But Misery is the reason he's a famous writer at all, and as Stephen King often does in his stories, he imagines his characters as unsuccessful or successful writers who are always unhappy and always struggling to be "good." In this specific scene, the problem of resurrecting the dead character Misery is being forced on Paul the writer, and he's invented this "blood-transfusion" solution because he doesn't actually care. But his fan cares, and Annie's not letting him off the hook:
"Misery was buried in the ground at the end, Paul. So you'll have to start there."
She's a fan. And she doesn't care if it's hard. She knows her bitch pup Paul is capable of doing better, and she is going to hold him to the standard that She Wants, not the one that he does. Like King does with himself, as demonstrated here, it isn't good enough to dodge your way out of things. You've got to do better than that.
For any DM, this is a solid, memorable lesson. Your players do not care if you find it hard to DM. In fact, the more you complain about it, the more they'll entertain fantasies about hobbling you with blocks and hammers (though it was different in the book than in the movie and believe me, you don't want to know). By sitting down at your game table, your players are putting their trust in you. Their opinion of you is better than your opinion of yourself, and it really, truly sucks to have to live up to their standard and not your own. Which, of course, is why some DMs pray to be players. And some DM's adjust the stress by turning the volume Up, like Sam Mendes did with 1917, and Annie Wilkes wants Paul to do.
Which brings us to another movie. Before writing this post, I was talking over the question my supporter asked with my partner, explaining to her what I've just explained above. And as I am want to do, as I cast around for examples, I jump to bits and pieces inside movies, because I've seen these movies many times and because I have a vast lexicon of thousands of movies that manage to be fresh in my mind when I want an example.
If we're going to talk about things being hard, and why that's lousy, we have to see this:
Quitting. This is about quitting. This is about turning in the DM's responsibility and questing to be a player. This is your players saying, "You know, I really thought you were a DM," and you answering, "Well, you were wrong."
But you don't like Dottie in this scene, do you? Maybe you appreciate her position, maybe you get why quitting "only a game" isn't that big a deal and that you don't need this. But then, why did you do it all that time? Why did you put yourself through that, up until now? Didn't it light you up inside? And isn't that something you're going to remember, for the rest of your life, as you sluff your way through a more common, less challenging existence, one without the artistic creativeness you've had the honor of experiencing? Is it really "too hard"?
"It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. It's the hard that makes it great."
I don't know all that much about making movies but when I saw 1917 in theater (and I went in cold, having seen no previews and read no reviews), I about crapped myself with joy once I realized what the director had done.
ReplyDeleteI want to do that. Whatever that looks like for my game, that's what I want.