The Monster as a Player Character: Part 1

Reading over this section, I see immediately why I embraced it so hard and why Gygax's argument against using monsters as player characters failed to convince.  Amid the criticism that I've launched against the DMG, what's wrong with it and what needed improvement, this passage — and others like it — expresses an element to the game that would later get swept under a rug and forgotten.  Gygax correctly interprets the problem; he correctly predicts the damage this practice will cause to the game; and he expresses most clearly what the game is for and the responsibility of the dungeon master.  Ideals that affected me deeply, that sank in and stayed with me ... and ultimately formed me as a DM.

Were I to try and paraphrase it, much of the integrity and meaning would be lost: I couldn't put this passage better than the author does ... which makes me want to believe that Gygax didn't write it, since it is unnaturally clear and free from his usual dichotomy.  Gygax and I have similar styles; in writing sentences, we swing for the fences, we throw in vicious little asides and we write passages that anticipate the reader.  Yet there's very little of that here.  Gygax's usual adverbs have melted away and it speaks much more in the 2nd person than usual.  That doesn't mean this isn't Gygax.  It probably is.  I mention it only to point out that Gygax clearly worked on this passage.  A lot.  His concern is evident; he wants the reader to comprehend what he's saying and take the advice to heart.

I see no way to handle the material except one section at a time.  Let me say, first, that I don't do this to bury the passage, but to praise it.  Gygax writes,

"On occasion one player or another will evidence a strong desire to operate as a monster, conceiving a playable character as a strong demon, a devil, a dragon, or one of the most powerful sort of undead creatures.  This is done principally because the player sees the desired monster character as superior to his or her peers and likely to provide a dominant role for him or her in the campaign."

Direct and to the point.  The motive here is undeniably a selfish power-grab.  Players will invent all sorts of reasons — that they're bored of playing with "ordinary" characters, that they want to have something different, that the game is about imagination and "what's the difference" between playing one kind of race or another.  The argument presages the host of racial classes that would emerge decades hence, including the named dragon type — and the personal problems that arose.  Make no mistake, however, even if the player legitimately believes the excuses made: this is an end run around the DM's campaign.  Since the rules are lacking for running strange and different monsters, even those that are less powerful than the ones Gygax lists, the wiggle-room for the player increases.

"A moment of reflection will bring them to the unalterable conclusion that the game is heavily weighted towards mankind.  ADVANCED D&D is unquestionably 'humanocentric,' with demi-humans, semi-humans and humanoids in various orbits around the sun of humanity."

Gygax is speaking ex cathedra here, where in fact more reason was needed.  He's correct.  He's taken stock of the humanity sitting around the table and from that he's perceived that it will be impossible for human players to be anything except human.  Elves, dwarves and halflings may not be definitively "human," but in game they have human motives, human concepts of emotion and human frailties.  Things that many monsters simply wouldn't have.

Unfortunately for Gygax writing in 1979, he hasn't perceived the nightmare that's ready to be unleashed on culture in the name of "identity politics."  In his era, the 60s and 70s, the common feeling was a sentiment that we're all human and that "getting along" was what mattered ... but marketing and political forces in the 80s and 90s would pressure culture to shift to the importance of individuality at any price, the social fall-out of which we're experiencing now.  Players would refuse to identify as human because it's not enough.  We're going through a crisis of, "More individuality! More individuality!" ... so that the average reader would today see the passage above as a form of conformist fascism.  "I have a right to play a lizard man," shouts the present-day player, because denying the player that right is stepping on his or her identity.

Essentially, however, the lizard man still gets played as a human; with human expectations and human grievances.  The perceived special-case "lizard man" motives invented by the player are necessarily contrived human motives because the player IS human.  And what results are scenes of a lizard man, or whatever character it is, walking into a bar like any other patron, while everyone appropriately ignores any difference between the lizard man, the dragonborne, the tiefling, the minotaur or the lamia, because this is the political culture's present-day guidelines.

Gygax will come back to this point and so will I.

"Men are the worst monsters, particularly high level characters such as clerics, fighters, and magic-users — whether singly, in small groups, or in large companies. The ultra-powerful beings of other planes are more fearsome — the 3 D's of demi-gods, demons and devils are enough to strike fear into most characters, let alone when the very gods themselves are brought into consideration. Yet, there is a point where the well-equipped, high-level party of adventurers can challenge a demon prince, an arch-devil or a demi-god. While there might well be some near or part humans with the group so doing, it is certain that the leaders will be human. In co-operation men bring ruin upon monsterdom, for they have no upper limits as to level or acquired power from spells or items."

Marvellous point that.  Most DMs play the game world with humanity as the underdogs: they're so weak and spongy, so easily speared or torn apart with vicious teeth.   The perspective helps excuse the atrocities committed upon dungeons by player characters.  But if the monsters are the lords of the earth, then why is it the humans live out in the open, in scattered farmhouses and in easy to find settlements, while the monsters live in secret, cowering underground behind trapped defenses?

Gygax is making the argument, why would you want to be a monster?  Sure, they look powerful, but we kick their ass, every time!  Being a human character is cool.  Isn't that obvious?

"The game features humankind for a reason. It is the most logical basis in an illogical game. From a design aspect it provides the sound groundwork. From a standpoint of creating the campaign milieu it provides the most readily usable assumptions. From a participation approach it is the only method, for a11 players are, after all is said and done, human, and it allows them the role with which most are most desirous and capable of identifying with."

Again, Gygax fails here to intrinsically make the point — because he sees the point as painfully obvious.  Oddly, for me to make his point clearer, I have to give credence to the argument that Gygax is writing from the cultural perspective of an entitled white male whose essentially racist.

Where he speaks of the "milieu," he refers to the traditional game setting: cities with human residents, trading with other like cities, surrounded by a settled rural and hinterland production complex that provides raw materials to the manufacturing base.  Because this structure is "logical" and forms a "solid groundwork" for the expectations the players will have of how the world fits together — being that it's the world they know — it stands to reason that threats to that world from the outside, i.e. monsters, don't have a place in this humankind-oriented place.  Therefore, if you're a player character and you want to visit the town, or roam safely past the farmer's fields, or wave hello in the morning to passersby on the road, then it's probably a good idea if you don't look like a demon or a dragon.  Gygax is arguing that the world would rightfully deny you access to the marketplace and the tavern; that no, you wouldn't be welcome at the festival, and that the king's guards would kill you if you showed your face on the city streets.

In short, you'll be deliberately persecuted as a monster if you don't fit the acceptable standard for appearance and race, because we don't want your kind around here.

Get it?  This kind of sentiment is awfully squicky in the present 2021 culture.  Players don't see why it should be this way.  This is a fantasy game.  "If I can fantasize playing a weird-looking monster type character, why can't I also fantasize about a cultural game world that totally accepts that character as 'acceptable' and 'respectable.'  Why all this racism?  I don't identify as a human.  I identify as a gargoyle.  What's wrong with that?"

This is hard to answer.  To begin with, personally I'm not a gargoyle or any other fantasy creature, I'm a human being.  I traditionally (which means, "old white man") view those who seek escape in cherished falsehoods — who then insist that I play lip service to their cherished falsehoods — as part of the abusive small-'e' evil in this world.  From my fool-on-the-hill vantage, I question whether this four-decade experiment with individuality has contributed to our liberty or happiness.  I see the plethora of viewpoints gathering themselves in groups to use the same tactics of accusation, propaganda and ostracization that have permeated world history ... I'll be damned if I see more than a grey sludge of hatred and demands for constant attention, regardless of the individuality in full bellow.

I think it does players good to get a slap in the face when they're told, "Nope, you get to pick from these seven races.  No, I don't give a good gawddamn for your feelings.  No, I'm perfectly fine if you don't want to play.  My emotional pity is not your human right."

Yes, that's right.  Humans are the real monsters.

Let's continue this on another post.